Why Attraction Isn't What You Think - Dr. Paul Eastwick | E179

Dr. Paul Eastwick is a Professor at UC Davis where he runs the Attraction and Relationships Research Laboratory. Dr. Eastwick’s research investigates how people initiate romantic relationships and the psychological mechanisms that help romantic partners to remain committed and attached. He is one of the hosts of the Love Factually podcast. 

Today we discuss his 2026 book Bonded by Evolution - to explore the science of romantic attraction, dating, compatibility and long-term relationships.

We discuss why the idea of “mate value” can be misleading, how dating apps encourage us to judge people too quickly, why looks and status matter less than many online dating gurus suggest, and why real attraction often develops slowly through repeated interaction, shared experience and emotional connection.

The Love Factually Podcast: https://www.lovefactuallypod.com/

Interviewed by Dr. Alex Curmi. Dr. Alex is a consultant psychiatrist and a UKCP registered psychotherapist.

Check out The Thinking Mind Blog on Substack: https://thinkingmindblog.substack.com/

If you would like to invite Alex to speak at your organisation please email alexcurmitherapy@gmail.com with "Speaking Enquiry" in the subject line.

Alex is not currently taking on new psychotherapy clients, if you are interested in working with Alex for focused behaviour change coaching , you can email - alexcurmitherapy@gmail.com with "Coaching" in the subject line.

Give feedback here - thinkingmindpodcast@gmail.com Follow us here: Twitter @thinkingmindpod Instagram @thinkingmindpodcast

Give feedback here - thinkingmindpodcast@gmail.com Follow us here: Twitter @thinkingmindpod Instagram @thinkingmindpodcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Thinking about romantic attraction solely in terms of desirable traits is limiting. You have limited yourself to a tiny slice of the way that attraction works. And classically, attraction was built as people got to know each other over time. In the modern environment, we are really used to the idea that we can size people up very quickly about whether they're desirable or not, whether we're swiping on them, or even if we're going on like a short date with them, it's very common to say, nope, not for me, and fail quickly. It wasn't that long ago in our history when things tended to work a little differently. You might continue to interact with folks, whether you wanted to or not, right? You were part of the same neighborhood, you were part of the same local club, and you were going to keep running into each other no matter what. In these contexts, mate value starts to matter less than it does in those initial impression contexts. When we were evolving on the savannah hundreds of thousands of years ago, uh, it wasn't quick impressions and moving on. You knew a very small number of people, but you knew them over a longer period of time.

SPEAKER_02 1:15

Today I'm really pleased to be joined again by Dr. Paul Eastwick, returning to the podcast. Dr. Eastwick is a professor at UC Davis where he runs the Attraction and Relationships Research Lab. His research investigates how people initiate romantic relationships and the psychological mechanisms that help romantic partners remain committed. He's also one of the hosts of the Love Factory podcast, one I've personally enjoyed. And today we're here to discuss his book, Bonded by Evolution. Paul, thanks so much for coming back. Thanks so much for having me. Firstly, I did want to ask you today, because I forgot last time, what is it like to teach a course about romance and how did you get into that enviable position?

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Yeah, it's it's pretty great. I feel very lucky that I get to do this because I think, you know, young people, I think people of all ages, but especially young people, are interested in these topics. They're interested in what the science has to say about attraction, about what draws people together in the first place, about why people break up, about what helps people sustain relationships in the long term. Um, I think it's also it also presents this unique challenge because I think, unlike most topics that people go to college to study, this is one where people already have a lot of personal experience and you know their own attitudes and viewpoints that they bring into it. Um for me, that makes the whole thing kind of exciting because it really highlights the tension between, you know, people's individual experiences, what the science can say, what the science can't say. So um it's it's one of my favorite things to do.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

Have you been finding recently that students have been actually showing up with less and less of their own first-hand experience of what it is to initiate romantic relationships? There's a fair amount. Well, I I occasionally hear about research quoting, quoted on podcasts saying people are entering relationships less. Is this something you see?

SPEAKER_00 3:18

This is an excellent question. Um, my answer to this is no. I have not seen this in the student populations that I spend time with. Now, there could be a number of reasons for that. One could be like, I just don't know. I mean, my class is 400 people. I've talked to many of them and hear a lot about their personal experiences, but you know, even if it was like a drop of like 10% of people who are having those experiences, like I might not necessarily be privy to that. But I will note this at UC Davis, we have for a long time had a very simple question in the background questionnaire that the Psych 101 students complete every single quarter. And we have this data going back years and years and years. And I don't see much of it, and what this question asks is are you currently involved in a romantic relationship? Yes or no? That number has held pretty steady at about 35-40 percent for as far back as you can see, other than the pandemic. So in 2021, that showed a real dip of five to ten percent, and the number of people who who were now taking that psych 101 class, largely freshmen, who were in romantic relationships, but by 2023, it had more or less rebounded. So I, you know, I think um there's probably a delay in the level of seriousness, the level of commitment that relationships show these days. I totally buy this. And it's also possible that some of this relationship recession stuff, it's not these college students. It might be people who are lower SES, it's people who who aren't going to college at all. So um, but but it's an excellent question, and it's the kind of thing that I like I really have my antenna out for because I want to understand what exactly is going on out there.

SPEAKER_02 5:22

Uh and perhaps we need more data, maybe the appropriate studies haven't even been done yet.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

Yeah, I mean the data are are not what I would want. I mean, I mean, say, you know, I mean, sometimes the data is very good. It's like national marriage data, that's great, but you know, again, I'm a psychologist, and I really like simple questions that people can answer subjectively, right? I care about the subjective. So questions like, are you currently involved in a committed romantic relationship or an exclusive romantic relationship, or just you know, a romantic relationship? I love questions like that. The number of questions like that that we have that capture everybody over time in a longitudinal way, oof, it like it is. And why what is it about those kinds of questions that you prefer? Well, because I think for me, at least with respect to the current hand-wringing, I think reasonable hand-wringing in many cases, about young people and their dating histories these days. Um, I want to know where this is starting. Like, okay, so we see a decline in birth rate, but does that mean that I mean people are getting together, they're just choosing not to have kids? Like, that could be one possibility. Oh, we do see a decline in marriage rate. Well, but is that because people are moving in together and not getting married, like the Scandinavian countries? Well, we also see people not moving in as much. I just want to back it up and ask, are you in a relationship or not? Because that would tell me that it's a coupling uh change, right? I don't even want to call it a problem, that it's a shift in the percentage of people who are coupling. And then what I'd want to know is among the people who are not, like some of these people are gonna be folks who in ages past would have liked to remain single, um, but they felt pressure to be in a relationship. So I want to know how much of that is what's happening. Again, that's a very subjective kind of question. Like maybe some of the of the rise in singles is a great thing that we should be celebrating. So, so I think we're all trying to get a handle on this. I do think that lack of socializing, lack of practice, with you know, just hanging out with people of your preferred gender and seeing where things go. I think this doesn't happen as much. Um, those are some of the subjective data that worry me the most. Things where people are like, yeah, like we don't go out as much as we used to 20 years ago. But it is, I think we're still learning how to pinpoint exactly where the problem is.

SPEAKER_02 7:48

Many people online are trying to pinpoint what the problem is. Yeah. In in Bonded by Evolution, you introduced this idea of the Evo script, which I love, because I can relate in the sense that you know, when I first started hearing ideas about evolutionary psychology, they're very seductive, they're very enticing. So, what what what is this idea of the Evo script and where does it go wrong?

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Yeah, so I this is like when I talk about the Evo script, I'm talking about the version of evolutionary psychology that everyday people have internalized. And, you know, there's a big chunk of this that actually does derive from the science, and there's also a component to it that has gotten spun out into some pretty nasty places online. But if we're gonna tether ourselves to what is true in the science, um, part of the Evo script refers to this idea that mate value is really important when it comes to relationships, that your romantic fate is uh gonna be heavily influenced by how desirable you are, the desirable traits that you have. Um, my take on this idea is that it's true in a limited sense. It's especially true in initial interactions, but we know now from more recent data that actually made value starts mattering less and less as people get to know each other over time. It never disappears completely, but it becomes a far smaller contributor to your ability to form a relationship and certainly to your long-term relationship health and well-being. Once we start looking down the line at what happens to people as they get to know other people, initiate relationships, and so forth. So I think that's that's one of the three examples that I go into at length uh in the book, where our popular conceptualization of the idea has gotten way untethered from what's actually happening in the science.

SPEAKER_02 9:48

And I guess the idea of mate value, as people tend to understand it, is it's based on things like your looks, your sort of superficial attractiveness, how much money you make, yeah, how tall you are. And I guess one problem as well with how the mate value idea is used is usually it's used as a static thing, like your mate value is kind of mostly static. Maybe you could move some things or max out some things, but it's quite static.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Yeah, I think when people think that their mate value is not only due to their traits, but is also fixed, that can be a real recipe for depression because then you start to feel like, well, the fact that I'm not having romantic success right now, this is due to who I am in a deep way, and maybe there's nothing I can do about it. And I think that's where um some of these evolutionary ideas have gotten some um unfortunately nasty traction online because if if you're if you feel that bleak about things, then it's common to to feel pretty angry about it. Um what I try to do is emphasize for folks that thinking about romantic attraction solely in terms of desirable traits is limiting. You have you have limited yourself to a tiny slice of the way that attraction works, because a lot of what attraction is, is dynamic and dyadic. It takes place between two people. And classically, attraction was built as people got to know each other over time. I think in this world, in this environment, the modern environment, we are really used to the idea that we can size people up very quickly about whether they're desirable or not, whether we're swiping on them, or even if we're going on like a short date with them, it's very common to say, nope, not for me, and bail quickly. Um, it wasn't that long ago in our history when things tended to work a little differently. You might continue to interact with folks whether you wanted to or not, right? You were part of the same neighborhood, you were part of the same local club, you were part of the same class, and you were going to keep running into each other no matter what. In these contexts, mate value starts to matter less than it does in those initial impression contexts. And I feel compelled to point out when we were evolving on the savannah hundreds of thousands of years ago, uh, it wasn't quick impressions and moving on. You knew a very small number of people, but you knew them over a longer period of time. So this new universe that we are living in today, where we swipe and we gauge people based on these very quick observable metrics and and and leave them in the dust, uh, this is bad for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 12:48

It's very uh easy to treat people as disposable nowadays. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

And so many valuable personality traits take just takes a long time to get to know people and for these desirable traits to emerge, like courageousness, uh, how determined someone is, how generous they is. You need a lot of time and reference experiences with someone before you can really get to know them.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

Yes. So this is the there are there's sort of two reasons why the getting to know people over time approach has advantages for many folks. And if you're like super hot and you got one of my and you you come across great and first impressions, I mean, you don't have to listen to me.

SPEAKER_02 13:28

You you got it mixed hot people, hot people need can switch off, they can listen to something else.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

I mean, the funny thing is they they kind of listen to me and then they're like, oh crap, you mean if people get to know me over time, they won't like me as much. Actually, on on average, no. On average, if people get to know you, hot people, they're gonna like you more too. But um the the point is that as you get to know people over time, the variability increases. Okay. So some people will start to like you more while other people will start to like you less. That variability is a good thing for most of us because it means that many people will have the good fortune of finding somebody who they think is a 10, even if everybody else agrees, and maybe that person will think you're a 10, and then congratulations, you know, you've you've you've done it. You've you've won the lottery, you've you've succeeded at the thing that we're trying to do here.

SPEAKER_02 14:21

That's I guess that's another important misconception that I like to clear up when talking about these issues, is like the goal is not to get everyone to like you. If your goal is to get everyone to like you, that's a symptom of quite deep insecurity. Your goal is to rapidly, well, not necessarily, but eventually separate people into people who like you, people who are kind of indifferent, and people who don't like you, so you can surround yourself with the people who are good for you.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

Like, there is no actual real life uh you know, likes indicator about like how many rights wipes you got. Like, that's not a thing that we actually go around with in real life. You don't get a prize or a medal for being super popular. That's not usually what people are after in the attraction game. I understand there are gonna be some people and maybe many of the men who are like, yes, but I would like to hook up with a different person, you know, every other night or something. So I actually do need to be popular to achieve that goal. Um I guess granted, um, are you sure you want that for yourself? Maybe you do. I'm not here to judge. Um, other than that, um romantic relationships can be very fulfilling, they don't all have to last forever, but you do not have to rack up all of the likes and rights wipes yourself to be successful, having one relationship for a while and then it ends, and you then have another one, like that's success. That's wonderful.

SPEAKER_02 15:51

When it comes to the Evo script, I guess one of the more obvious places that gets misused online is the manosphere, the so-called manosphere, so this online subculture of men talking about evolutionary psychology, usually as a means to help improve men's dating lives. Have you like consumed a lot of manosphere content yourself? And what do you think? What are your thoughts on it?

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Well, I guess I I guess I would say like, you know, um I've I've studied it more than studied it cons consumed exactly. But I I think and and look, this content varies a lot. Some of it I think is uh self-help material that is coming from a genuine place. And I don't want to sit here and say that's bad. I I think there are lots of things, especially in the United States, that people could be doing to take better care of themselves, they could eat healthier, they could exercise more, they could sleep better. I mean, there's a zillion things that we could all be doing better. I think that's great. But again, I want to point to the flaws in the metaphor, at least when we get locked in to the one way of thinking about it, which is romantic success is about my desirable traits. Because if that's what you think, then you think, well, then the solutions are I have to make myself more desirable. So I sometimes call this desirability as a project. And you know, I host a movie podcast, there are a lot of movies that talk about this and they're funny and they're charming. I like Clueless, I I like uh mostly the 40-year-old virgin. Like these movies have a lot to recommend them, but they are steeped in this idea that you are here and we are going to use techniques to bring you up here, and that that is how you're going to get a mate. Okay. But remember the variability point from earlier that if you get to know people better over time, it's not that you like become desirable to everybody through that process, you become desirable to some. And the kicker is yeah, it might be because they discover your inner beauty. That's awesome. But it can also be because you build something cool together as you get to know each other. A set of stories, a set of in-jokes that bond you to each other. And that's, I think, the part that gets lost if we just think attraction is about boosting your trait. You lose this idea that actually a lot of what makes us feel a kinship to another person, ultimately a bond with another person, is that we share stuff together. We have a history together. I make you laugh because I know things about you, and you make me laugh because you know things about me. And all of that beauty, it takes time to cultivate. And I and I think that's that's becoming a little bit of a lost art.

SPEAKER_02 18:44

Right. So you're you're talking about the idea which we talked about when we talked last time between people's general conception of compatibility and this idea that you have of constructive compatibility useful.

SPEAKER_01 18:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:56

So compatibility is almost perverse in some, I think it's gone really unquestioned for a long time. Conventional compatibility is this idea that you're almost like a product, yeah, like a car with a certain set of features. You can go this far, you have this many seats, you have these benefits. And people are so much more complex than that. And when people meet, they're not two static objects meeting, they're interacting and building something together, as you're saying. And this is constructed compatibility that the more you build something with someone, you create a compatibility with someone which wasn't there necessarily before you met.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

Yes, that's uh that's an outstanding description, and it it remains a little mysterious. And I think when I say that, it's common for people to think like, oh, okay, well, then it's like it's magic, and you know, we're never understanding it. I I think we just don't quite understand it yet. Like we don't understand why it is that these two people come together and it kind of fizzles, and these two people come together, and again, on paper, the matches were the same, but for whatever reason, that second pairing that things really crackle and they really take a liking to each other. I do think a lot of it is chance, situation, context, stuff that is uh essentially chaotic and not really controllable. But um, but I think there's also a possibility, too, that whatever those things are that make couple number two more likely to, you know, really bond with each other rather than couple number one are things that we haven't figured out how to assess and identify yet.

SPEAKER_02 20:32

Yes, and I think one factor that's uh commonly gets left out is because I I guess what often when people are having romantic fantasies, they're fantasizing about good times, about everything being great. And you do see this a lot in movies, but I think a really important factor that gets left out is couples facing adversity together can be tremendously helpful for bonding them out, at least in my experience, is that borne out by the science?

SPEAKER_00 20:58

Um, it's a good question. I think that I I guess I would think about this in two ways. One is like if we take the level of stress in an environment, and we look at what that does to existing couples on average, that tends to make things tougher. Now, these stresses tend to be things that uh endure, for lack of a better term. So things like you know um low socioeconomic status, right? Like lack of resources, you're working two jobs each, you know, you don't have a lot of time for each other. I mean, these things are tough, and these things tend to be rough on couples. But there's another way of thinking about adversity in the way you're talking about it, which is that it forges our story. That I think is where you could see some benefits, that this sense of and this really comes. Out of like the work on personality and narrative, which suggests that you know people really need to feel like they have an arc to their life, they gotta feel like they have a character arc, right? We're all you know characters in our in our own the films in our own heads, and it's really important that people have this coherent story for what they went through, what they endured, what they gained, and how that brought them to where they are today. And that's true for couples too. That it's also important for them to have that as a pair. So that's where I think you would see the benefits of adversity if a couple has come through it and then they've incorporated it into their story in a helpful, compelling way.

SPEAKER_02 22:46

Yeah, adversity that they've been able to handle, and particularly that I guess something that's about the way they work together as a team helped that help them handle and overcome that adversity. I can imagine that can be like glue for a couple. Right, right, exactly. Yeah. Um, in terms of the evo script, obviously I I've seen it a lot talked about in the manosphere. Have you seen it talked about in women-dominated spaces online?

SPEAKER_00 23:12

Yeah, so the this is true as well, because you know, there's a lot of lay evolutionary psychology on the you know, male uh laden internet. But there's also uh a woman laden the internet that uh that also uh contains some of these ideas. Um I think they're all a little troubling. Uh and I think the one where you see this on the women's side, I think sometimes it's called like high-value dating or high-value women or something like that. I can't remember the exact term, but it really reinforces an idea that you can find echoes of in evolutionary psychology. It was this very mercenary approach to dating and relationships that you gotta get the best guy possible, and many, many men do not measure up, they are not worth it. But these men are being desired again for their external or tangible attributes. You you wouldn't see um much discussion of the things that I, as a relationships researcher, would point to, because these are the things that tend to be make people happy, like uh building intimacy, feeling like somebody has your back, feeling like you can celebrate something with somebody. I mean, these the you know, these are the squishy things that as a relationships researcher, um, I usually talk about and champion because that's what we see in the science. Those are the things that tend to make people happy. So it's not just squishy, it's also evidence-based. That's right. I mean, I'm it's so funny being a relationships researcher because it really is a lot of the warm, fuzzy stuff, and it's like where there's the most evidence. So, I mean, I guess like it makes me happy that I get to be out here and champion this stuff. But but I also I mean, compared to the people who are like, what are you talking about? I need to find somebody with the biggest bank account possible. That is my measure of success. I, you know, I mean somebody like that listens to me and they're like, like, who is this guy? Like, this is like this is and and uh it becomes more of a battle of of values and what you care about than about you know actually what makes people happy in the long run. But these ideas that like, oh, like as a woman, I need to find a man to provide. I mean, if if individual people want that, look, that's fine. Like, who am I to sit here and and say that that's not a good idea? That's great if that's for you. Um, but that this is a message about what women should want or what women naturally want. I mean, absolutely not. I mean, please, enough of this. The evidence for that is very bad.

SPEAKER_02 26:04

So it seems like from my experience, both the extreme female and extreme male ideology of you know, distortion of the Evo script kind of points in the same direction where the where women are saying, okay, we need the highest value man possible, and you have to kind of catch him almost, you have to nab him.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:21

And for men, I guess women's value is all about their youth, fertility, right, their physical attractiveness.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

And I think I mean the original the original culprit is the rules, right? I mean, that was geared toward women, that was like 95. What's the rules? I don't think it was a book um uh written by two women that was it it was like a set of guidelines for women to to land the highest value mate possible, and it was a lot of of lay pop evolutionary psychology dressed up as incontrovertible dating advice. So women like play coy in these ways, don't actually let him see the real you. You know, this is how you're gonna string him along. You you don't make the first move, you do all of these games and things. It it's it's just mind games upon mind games upon mind games that do not stop once you're even once you're in a relationship. Well, once you're in the relationship, once you're married, keep the games going, just keep it going for all time. I mean, it it is stuff that is actively harmful to long-term relationships. It's probably also not even gonna be helpful in the attraction domain, but it's definitely harmful in the long term. Um, yet this stuff like claims an evolutionary backing. Now, much of that stuff, no evolutionary psychologist is gonna is gonna sit up and tell you that that stuff's a good idea. Um, it's it's you know, way, way, way beyond what is scientifically reasonable. But even some of the standard, I think, like less radical evolutionary ideas in the science haven't held up all that well. Even the idea that women care about earning potential more than men, that is a finding that is limited to what people say they're looking for in a partner. If you track how much a partner's earnings or ambition, what are the effects on like how much you're attracted to that person, or what's its effect on your ultimate relationship satisfaction? There's no gender differences at all. Like men kind of like ambitious women, women kind of like ambitious men. You see that in every single context over and over again. We've known this for decades now. So some of this is just like trying to take some of these ideas that got way overblown and you know, you know, put putting the genie back in the bottle, and it's it's pretty tough work.

SPEAKER_02 28:47

You mentioned games, and it's funny, games, even from a psychotherapy point of view, they have a very precise definition. So in transactional analysis, which is where I think this point can't was uh coined, games are defined as basically manipulative or semi-deceptive communications designed to protect someone from the vulnerability of intimacy. There you go. There you go.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

I mean, I think I think that's really what it is, and I think and look, if I'm really trying to be kind to these perspectives, this is the kindest I've ever been to the rules. Let's go, yeah. Yeah, but I I do think people have been hurt, right? I I mean I think that happens, and then people look around and they say, I don't want that to happen again. And so I have learned to put up walls and defenses, and where I think this goes from an you know, like an empathetic story to something that becomes very troubling, is that then they say, and I'm gonna show other people how to preemptively put up walls, too. I'm gonna show them how to engage in defense mechanisms so that they don't down the line get hurt or get taken advantage of. This is the fundamental tension in close relationships. The more you put up the defenses, I'm telling you this, you know this, but the more you put up loss, the more you put up defenses, the less able you are to glean the benefits of close relationships, the benefits of social support, which are huge, the benefits of feeling like somebody else is celebrating you when you have successes, and all the you know, physiological closeness benefits that come with being uh in a in a uh a good relationship with somebody. So I think that's that's where I definitely part ways.

SPEAKER_02 30:50

Yeah. And I I guess that leads to the most harmful aspects of these ideologies because that can happen on an individual level as you wall yourself off from your partner and you come to resent them and see them as an other. But that's what happens at large in these ideologies. So in the manosphere, women are talked about like they're a different species and there's something to be feared, mistrusted, and the same thing happens on the female side, and that is the biggest problem is that you know men and women are probably the greatest team, yeah, you know, and we're we're encouraging people to to be to be pitted against each other.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

That that is absolutely right. I I have advice young men and women out there, okay. So these are studies that are usually done on like like adolescents, older adolescents. And what they're trying to do is they're trying to predict down the line, six months from now, a year from now, which of these heterosexual men and women, young, you know, older boys and girls, are going to be in a romantic relationship. And one of the strongest predictors, again, heterosexual men and women is how many other gender friends do you have? Okay. Being friends with members of your preferred gender, that is really, really important. And it's not because you're you're secretly into them and you're trying to woo them out of the friend zone. Okay, it's not that. It's you're actually friends with them, and then what happens is you meet their friends and you meet their friends of friends, and you introduce them to your friends, etc. And this is how social networks move and change and grow and bring in new people. This has classically been the tried and true way that people meet potential romantic partners, but you have to actually be friends with people, you have to actually be friends with people of your preferred gender and not just see them as like sex objects or success objects or whatever else. That approach, I think, ultimately is hollow, but being friends with folks for the actual sake of being friends with them is pretty great.

SPEAKER_02 33:04

So being in the friend zone isn't as bad as it's made out to be.

SPEAKER_00 33:07

Yeah, don't be afraid. It's okay. Like, you know what? You're kind of into her, and she's not that into you, but if you like hanging out anyway, just do it. It's not emasculating, you're fine. You can be friends with people and then get to know their friends and see where things go from there. Look, look, I I understand there are going to be cases where you're head over heels for somebody, they aren't feeling it for you, and it's like too hard to be around them. I get that. Don't don't do that friend zone. That that friend zone is very painful. That's not gonna give you many benefits. I'm talking about the casual sort of like, I would date you, but I'm also happy to be your friend. Just be people's friends. It's a really, really good idea. That like to some extent, to some extent, I like can't believe I have to recommend this. But on the other hand, like I do think that the pandemic did something to folks, and we don't kind of casually hang out in the same ways. We got all this technology that we could be using that's pretty fun and pretty addictive. I I really do understand that. So the the the joy of just hanging out with other people for the sake of hanging out, especially if you're a young person, please, please, please go go do it, please.

SPEAKER_02 34:16

And making friends of the opposite gender gives you the opportunity to learn about the opposite gender and to learn the what in what ways you actually are very much the same, but then the ways which are importantly different and what might motivate you know a girl if you're a guy, or vice versa, and that can help you with when you meet other people and try to date them.

SPEAKER_00 34:34

Yeah, you know, and I and that's that's a helpful reminder because I want to differentiate between a couple things. Because one thing you hear today is that young people, and maybe especially young men, they're they're terrified of like being called out um for uh innocently bad behavior, for making a small mistake that would then get blown out of proportion online. And I've I have two things to say about that. One is that look, I I did have the luxury of grow growing up in an age where any mistakes that I made, they weren't gonna get amplified by social media in any major way. So I get that. And I would understand why that is a real concern. Nevertheless, I don't know what to say other than you gotta go out there and make mistakes. I remember distinctly being in a group of friends, it's like my senior year of high school, group of friends, about the same number of men and women in this group. And I was I was really good friends with many of these women. And man, when I would do something insensitive, self-centered, you know, you know, whatever dumb thing I did, they would just lash into me for it. You know what? That was good. I like learned a thing or two, like I learned to not be so self-centered. So I these things are really important. Like people, you you gotta like, you know, take your hits sometimes and and learn what other people like and what they don't like. If we don't get that feedback, we're never gonna grow. So I again I understand this the social media angle adds something that that is really uncomfortable. But if we can set that aside and just remember to like hang out and make mistakes, I'm like, they were my friends, like they forgive, they forgave me. It was okay. Um, but but I I really do think there is something to that.

SPEAKER_02 36:24

People do worry too much about it. Everyone thinks if they make a mistake romantically, like ask someone out and get rejected, that it's gonna go viral. But yeah, maybe take it from us, you know. We're on podcasts, it's quite hard to go viral, like it makes a lot of words. You asking someone out and it's not working isn't gonna it's harder to go viral than you think. As long as you don't do anything catastrophic, you know.

SPEAKER_00 36:48

Yeah, yeah, and that's the thing, is like, you know what, you're probably not gonna do anything catastrophic. Um, so you know, especially if you're if you're coming from a place of like genuine curiosity and friendship with other people. The the when we start to be mercenaries about this, we start to think like, okay, like I'm gonna be friends with these people, but it's just so I can like get laid, or it's just so like I can lock down that guy. I think I think this is when this starts to tilt into to risky stuff. But you know, the the the benefits of social connection uh with all genders, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

SPEAKER_02 37:33

The other sort of subculture within the manosphere that I've observed and we've talked about on the podcast recently is looks maxing. Yeah. Is this something you've looked into? And what's your take on looks maxing?

SPEAKER_00 37:44

Yeah, I mean, it's an it's another one of these back to our metaphors about you know what is it to be desirable to somebody thinking like, well, I have to boost my traits, and that's the way that somebody's gonna be into me. So looks maxing is sort of the um the final end stage boss of that whole idea, which is that you can do, I guess, extreme things to your body, to your face, in order to achieve those ideals. Um I think it's probably obvious to most people who have been following this discourse at all that um this gets uh at best hollow and at worst kind of grotesque pretty quickly. Um but nevertheless it it follows from that same overblown metaphor. Like at its core, this idea that like I'm a four and I have to get to be a seven to have any success is, I think, the the part that's undergirding this whole thing. And look, I can point to things in the science that reinforce exactly that idea. It is true that people who are consensually more attractive will have more success at speed dating than people who are less consensually attractive. I think those effects are sometimes smaller than people think. They're a good size, but they're not like dwarfing everything else. Like you can also go to speed dating, tell a few good jokes, and you know, be desired that way. But again, the the key thing I want to point out is that it's not just about how desirable you are on average, you will come across to some other people very well and some other people very poorly. That's regardless of where you start on the scale. That variability is a good thing. And for most of us, those of us who, you know, aren't nines or tens, and it this is something that you can lean into and and actually get some traction with this idea that all right, not everybody is gonna think I'm amazing, but if I get to know some people over time, they're gonna end up liking me more. Like, how much of an easier way of looks maxing is that relative to breaking your face? Like instead of that, maybe hang out with some people and then a few of them will start to see you as more desirable. I choose that option every time.

SPEAKER_02 40:10

Yeah, and again, from a psychotherapy point of view, why not personality maxing? You know, why not do your best to grow, you know, develop traits everyone loves, like courage, yeah, determination, generosity, does a I mean it's more abstract. Yeah. I think part of the attraction of looks maxing is how concrete it is, but there's so many ways to improve yourself in a substantial way that people find really attractive.

SPEAKER_00 40:32

And what those things are going to do, this is another thing, and actually I'm curious to get your take on this as somebody who knows a lot about psychotherapy. That a lot of times, if you want to think about boosting your traits, probably the most gratifying way of doing that, or the most uh gratifying approach is exactly what you're saying. Improve your traits, like you know, courage, optimism, even extroversion. And those traits are mostly going to rebound onto you, right? It's mostly for your benefit, the way you see the world. As a courageous person, those benefits are for you. Yeah, other people might recognize it too, but you're mostly doing it for yourself. That's I think the the best case for boosting one's traits as a project. Boosting one's traits for someone else's liking, for someone else's admiration, for someone else's benefit, even in a long-term context, I'm a little skeptical of that idea. I don't think it's totally without merit, but you know, when I think about psychotherapy in the context of, let's say, um struggling couple, I would say that there's two promising approaches, and one that I wouldn't recommend. Promising approach number one is you can go to therapy yourself to change your own viewpoint, your own outlook. That seems pretty good, and there's good evidence behind that, I think. A second is you go to couples therapy and you work on your patterns together. That that would probably be my number one recommendation if both partners are gay. The one I wouldn't do is, you know, I'm miserable in this relationship. You, partner, you go to therapy, get fixed. That's not that's that's not great. I don't think that's likely to work all that well at all, because you, you know, the change that you go through, like most of those boosts and attributes, like they're they're for you, right? They're not for my partner. I mean, maybe you get a few benefits, but but I would imagine that that's the that's that third route. Send your partner to therapy to help you. That that's probably the weakest of the three. But does that track with your understanding of of therapy and how it works?

SPEAKER_02 42:56

I mean, I think personal growth has to be done with your own goals in mind, because the more you're trying to create a version of yourself that someone else approves of, yeah, the you're creating a false serve. And the more you create a false serve, the more you're encouraging self-hate and self-esteem. I actually just released a podcast about self-hate last week. You have to like the because I guess one of the maximums in in romance is like be yourself, and there's like a newbie interpretation of be yourself, and there's the real value of be yourself. The newbie interpretation is be who you are, just as you are, don't try and change, don't try and improve yourself. That doesn't make sense. What makes sense is become like really the best version of yourself. What are you into, and lean into that as hard as you can. There are a few things I think uh there are a few things more attractive than someone who's really into something, like unashamedly into whatever it is they're into.

SPEAKER_01 43:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:54

And then you just have to find the people who also gravit who can like admire that and gravitate towards that. But even if they're not strictly sharing that interest.

SPEAKER_00 44:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:03

So even if you know, if one partner thinks another partner should go to psychotherapy, it's for themselves, it's for them, their own happiness. It's not merely to please the other person.

SPEAKER_00 44:13

Yeah, that's that's uh that's a really nice way of putting it. You know, I I remember there was a particular time when you know, this is like adolescence, when it was kind of cringe to be into stuff, it was cringe to care. And that sucked. That's a we're in a time like that now, I think. Yeah, right. Um that I you know, in some ways, I find this the most uh depressing and cynical approach of them all. That to to try to like uh aspire to something or to to have um you know more uh you know humanistic values, whether it's trying to make the world a better place, trying to make your relationships a better place, um this is uh this is a bummer. And and and I think the reason why I I think might be part sitting at this confusing intersection of why are you doing these things? Why are you trying to boost your attributes? If you're trying to do it for admiration or likes or clicks, this is ultimately gonna be more hollow than if you're doing it because there are benefits for your experience and and your worldview. I think often that's gonna go a lot better.

SPEAKER_02 45:39

And especially I think the people mistake the mistake people make often is they they they want to become more desirable for one specific person, like for their crush, as opposed to becoming more attractive in general.

SPEAKER_00 45:52

Yeah. So there's interesting data on people forming relationships over time and just how common it is that relationships form from friendships. And I think this is underappreciated that even in the online dating age, uh a huge portion of relationships are formed through friendships, like two-thirds of people who are in relationships that will say we were friends first. Now, some of these folks might have met online dating, but it's more of like the slow burn form as opposed to the we instantly knew the moment we locked eyes. So slow burn, very, very common. Now, even though people are often friends first, what is rare is the thing you just described, where we're friends, I'm into you, I'm going to gradually do things that that bring you over to me. Like that that can happen. It's just not usually how it happens. Usually that intentional, secretive, we're friends, but I'm trying to win you over thing, that is not usually the the a path that I would recommend. And that usually these friends first relationships are just kind of happening to both people gradually on approximately the same time frame. So friends first is great. I mean, I've already mentioned like just having another gen of friends is a really good idea, but but but to do it in this way that's like you're intentionally trying to reel them in is a little bit uh dicier.

SPEAKER_02 47:29

And for someone who's feeling stuck in dating, uh, do you have clear advice on should someone be trying to meet people in person as much as possible? Should they go for online? Should they be doing a mix? Does the science reveal enough about these things to say?

SPEAKER_00 47:46

Yeah, I mean, I think look, what I wish the science could say better is like, look, here's the the highest percentage approach to these things. Sadly, we don't really study things that way. I kind of wish we did. But what what I can glean is the following Using the apps is fine. If you're not burned out on them yet, they're pretty good.

SPEAKER_02 48:10

I love I love that yet is doing a lot of work. Right.

SPEAKER_00 48:13

Like, yeah, seriously. Right. The burnout is coming. But if you're not there, um I think that um using them as a supplement, using them to meet people, but then you know, if you're meeting people but then you're bailing quickly, you know, in you know, a one 20-minute coffee date, I'm out, I'm not feeling it. It's not clear that that's a great use of your time. Because many times you need to get to know somebody a little bit. So honestly, my challenge to folks would be this if you're gonna use the apps, then I think you should be outside of really extenuating circumstances, you should be going on three dates with these folks. Adapts three dates for each person for each person that you're gonna date. If that means you gotta date fewer people, so be it. Because your impressions are unstable on dates number one and two, right? I mean, and they're still unstable at three, but three they're like a little bit more stable, at least for a while. You have to like really go on a number more dates to achieve a measurable difference in in stability of your impression from there, right? And that's because look, people do one thing and we're like, oh, and they then we hang out a second time, we're like, oh, you know, like this this is the thing when getting to know people, like it these things are very fluid and very dynamic. So if you're gonna do it, then spend more time rather than less time with any given person. But of course, I'm for most people gonna recommend that they spend time in groups just for the sake of spending time in groups, spend time with people just for the sake of spending time with people. And when you get to know people over time, especially in groups where people don't get to opt out, there's repeated interaction. I think this is a wonderful thing. Now, I'm gonna this is gonna sound like dated and like millennial cringe, but you know, when I was in the 2000s, when I was in my 20s, I spent a long time in kickball leagues in Chicago. And you gotta imagine like a group of you know 100 to 220-somethings who were regularly getting together to goof around and play kickball. And then really the point though was to all like go to the bar and hang out afterwards and play goofy drinking games and stuff. Um, the diversity of backgrounds of these folks, I think would shock a lot of people. I mean, you got people who, I mean, we're like me, we're like in a PhD program at the time. A lot of people didn't go to college, maybe we did like a two-year college, right? So a pretty diverse array of folks interacting, having a great time. I can't tell you how many relationships I saw spawn in this context. People on the same team, people on different teams, just because these folks were interacting over and over and over again. So those kinds of milieus commonly are a breeding ground for relationships. If we take ourselves out of those kinds of groups, it's just much harder. So finding way, you know, you don't have to be into kickball. I get it. Uh but but find something where you can interact with people repeatedly in that kind of way.

SPEAKER_02 51:35

And kind of one factor I'm guessing that's under the surface that's a bit harder to pin down is I feel like culturally everything is quite different. I think we we live in a much less earnest, much more cynical culture. And I'll use like two pieces of fiction to illustrate this. And neither of these pieces of fiction are, I think, are like really accurate portrayals of what happened at that time, but they still show you they they're a bit of a litmus litmus test of what culture was like. So if you take a high school movie like Clueless, yeah, which was released in the 90s, and you compare it to something I've been watching recently, uh 2019 show, Euphoria. Yeah, right. Contrast them. So I would urge you if any young people listening, you know, below the age of 30, compare and contrast and see what that like shows about the cultural differences between the 90s and 2019. It is vast. The attitude, the the internalized beliefs about what life is supposed to be like and whether or not you should trust people and form relationships seems so different to me.

SPEAKER_00 52:34

Yeah, yeah. No, I I absolutely see that too. And the the cynicism is powerful out there. I think that relationships resonate with people in the same way. Like I think you know, relationships still provide the same kinds of well-being benefits, even for adolescents, that they always did. But it's it's almost like we've built these barriers now to it, and we've told ourselves a story that these kinds of relationships are impossible or they're dangerous, and and that that's the part that I think is the most unfortunate. I mean, sometimes you know, we call this heteropessimism. It's this idea like men and women are so different that they can't really find ways of of being together. I think the tide is turning now, I think. I think I think the backlash to the heteropessimism is coming. Um, but but I think it's gonna it's gonna take some unwinding that'll take a little while.

SPEAKER_02 53:45

Um, given that your book is kind of challenging some of these caricatures of evolutionary psychology as we discussed, how was it received and have you gotten any pushback from it?

SPEAKER_00 53:56

Oh, I mean, not really. I I think to the extent that I think the mate value ideas that I'm talking about are the ones that sometimes strike people as especially Pollyanna-ish. And so I often feel like I have to reiterate, I'm not saying mate value totally disappears as people get to know each other. I don't think like nines and four, I don't think that's a going to be a very common, you know, combination of people that are gonna form a relationship at all. I'm mainly saying that we have over-rotated on this construct. We are giving it way too much credence because we've forgotten about the lost art of socializing and getting to know folks over time. And that more important, far more important than how your traits stack up is how you feel about the person you're with and how they feel about you. Those feelings, how much I desire this person, how much I want to, you know, go on date number five, and and and how much I want to be with them in the long term, those things are barely connected to their desirable traits and to my desirable traits. It's much more about how we click as a pair, what we've constructed together, you know, our our stories, our rituals, our dynamic. That's the essence of close relationships research. So I think when when you've come of age in an era where it's all about desirable traits, some of what I just said like almost like almost sounds like mystical. Yeah. You know, like gesture. Some people might think it's naive, but it's not. Yeah, that's that's right. But but I don't know what to tell you. Like, I'm looking at the data here, it hasn't actually changed. Relationships are mostly about diet. And look, let me give a concrete empirical example. And this is the one that there are some scientists who who genuinely don't know this, but but here's this really important fact in the scientific realm. If I take any judgment, like how hot I think somebody is, the reality of that judgment, I think this person standing in front of me is hot. That there's three ingredients to that judgment. One is the me effect, okay? So, like maybe I think everybody's hot, or maybe I think everybody's ugly, okay, but it's about me, right? The judgments that I make. One of the components is the consensual agreement about that person. We all agree that person is hot. It that's what we mean by mate value. There's some agreement about what those persons' traits actually are. And the third one is what we might call the relationship effect, or what I call like the compatibility effects that I think this person is especially hot, above and beyond what I think about other people and what other think people think about this person. That third component is the biggest, okay? The eye of the beholder component, it is the biggest, and it goes from being big to gargantuan as people get to know each other. And that is just we see it over and over and over again across studies. Um, so this, this, you know, I'm I'm I'm tethered to the data, I'm a scientist, but I've been seeing that in the data for 20 years now, and it hasn't gone anywhere. It's still true. Um, taste is a really, really big deal when it comes to all of these subjective judgments, but especially to attraction. And I think that's a great thing because it means that we aren't depressed when we don't land the hottest person in the room because the person we land, we think is a 10, and that's really the whole ball game.

SPEAKER_02 57:43

And we need to keep in mind that people are a whole world to be discovered, and that you keep discovering someone even across a decades-long relationship.

SPEAKER_00 57:51

Yeah, that's that's right. I mean, right, we aren't static entities, we grow. I mean, this is one of the long-term close relationship secrets, is that to the extent that you have some growth with another person, you experience new things together, um, you know, have new adventures together, your story keeps evolving, that tends to be pretty good for the relationship. The data also suggests that look, to the extent that you're growing outside your relationship, that you're taking on new interests and hobbies, look, that's probably going to be good for you personally. And and that's not necessarily a bad thing for your relationship, too. And in fact, in many cases, if you then have those new growth experiences, if that adds a little bit of mystery to the relationship, that can sort of keep things passionate. So yeah, there are there is a lot to be said for the fact that we are not static beings, and we certainly are not the sum of our static positive traits. We are a lot more than that, and we have a lot of agency with the way that we construct relationships.

SPEAKER_02 58:59

Is there any uh science looking at the effect of something like self-esteem or an equivalent on someone's attractiveness to others, their sort of harmony with themselves, their relationship with themselves, anything like that?

SPEAKER_00 59:16

Yeah, so when I think about self-esteem in relationships, I think about two components. One is that um when people have lower self-esteem, on average, they're gonna approach the initial attraction phases a little bit more tentatively. They probably won't be as popular as people who have higher self-esteem. Now, some of that is a chicken and egg thing, right? It could be that like repeated rejection experiences leave you, you know, lead you to have a sense of low self-esteem, and then that leads to more rejection, right? So all of that can certainly happen. Um but uh the I've never seen any evidence that ultimately people with lower self-esteem uh fail to get into relationships. Many, many, many of them do ultimately get into relationships. And there people with lower self-esteem really face that avoidance problem that we talked about earlier, especially acutely. They're vigilant for signs of rejection, so they don't give themselves over to the relationship. Maybe they don't disclose, they don't exhibit that vulnerability to the situation. They might play games. Right, exactly. So it to be with somebody of lower self-esteem in a relationship does require a little bit more patience and grace. That's not the easiest thing to do, because it can like take a little bit to draw these folks um out of their shells, so to speak. So there's evidence for all of those elements. I think um, like ultimately, I'm I'm optimistic for most people who want to be in a close relationship. I'm I'm optimistic that they can do it with the right partner under the right circumstances. That that very few, relatively few people have traits that are disqualifying for be it being in a close relationship. I I'm even more optimistic in the about this than probably most close relationships researchers or most therapists. Um uh but that's not to say that that it's not a real challenge for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:30

Yes. I guess the challenge is like I'm I'm I feel optimistic for any one person because we live in modern societies, which means you can uh be exposed to tons and tons of people, which is a really good thing, yeah, more than ever before. But the key is you just have to be okay with again the making mistakes and the getting rejected because you have you have a million potential experiments you can try, again, as long as you don't do anything you know overtly disrespect disrespectful, abusive, catastrophic. But otherwise, you have this playground where you can try and try things out with people and see what works and what doesn't, and it can be quite a beautiful thing if you don't take every rejection too much to heart.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:11

Right. And I think I think sometimes, again, maybe I'm talking specifically about men here, but this idea of like, you know, oh, men don't approach women anymore, they don't go up to women anymore. Like, how many times did I do that in my life? Approach somebody cold that I didn't know at all, like at a bar? I don't know, twice? Like, that's not that's not for everyone. That's not that's not a prerequisite, gang, to getting in a relationship. Again, like locked into bad metaphors. Like, how about just again? If you're hanging out with people in groups, you usually the way it goes with is something close to this. At least this was my experience. Like you're at a party having a nice conversation with somebody, you're chatting, you're laughing, and things are good. Okay, that conversation kind of breaks up. You end up talking to some other folks, and then they're like, You guys seem to be connecting over there. I'm like, Yeah, we kind of were. Does she she was dating Mark? Is she still dating Mark? Actually, no, she's not dating Mark anymore. Hmm, that's interesting. Like, do you think she's into me? What should I like? What should my next move be? It's this stuff, right? It's happening in groups, yeah. It's it's happening in groups, it's facilitated by other people. Maybe other people are rooting for you, maybe people other some people are rooting against you. Isn't that exciting? Anyway, the this is these are the kind of risks that I want to see people taking more. I mean, again, you want to do the approach people cold at bar. I'm not gonna say no, like that was never for me, but there are lots of other ways that we can get practice with these things and that we can, you know, do some of the necessary risk taking. And and uh, and I just I just want people to broaden their minds a little bit that we we got other options here.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:56

Yeah, yeah. What what are some of the big unanswered questions you're thinking about now? Maybe planning some future research about about what's for you are the things you'd really like to see answered in the area of relationships?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:08

So I think the big challenge is this. Look, I've said already, we really, you know, we know that compatibility is important. We know that the lion's share of what attraction is, is what I feel for you specifically. It's not about how hot you are, it's not about my desperation, it's about something that you do for me specifically. So is that component predictable at all from things that we could assess beforehand? Or is it all dynamically created in the moment as two people start talking, a conversation goes in this direction or that direction? Okay. So far, with the classic machine learning models, we have not been able to account for it. I mean, zero percent. The models just die.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:55

I'm excited by those.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:56

Yeah, right. It's it is kind of exciting. The the models you you show them, like, yeah, you know, James really had a thing for Andrea. Why? And the models like, I don't know, because it didn't have anything to do with the way that their traits lined up. Nevertheless, is there something predictable about what James uniquely likes? So there are these new models now. They're called, I mean, the the nerdy term is they're called N equals one models. But the reason it's called that is because we're trying to fit the data to one person. So I would say, James, your romantic life is my canvas. And I'm gonna see, um, I want to know all about the the the women and maybe the men that you've liked in the past and the ones that you haven't liked. And then I'm gonna introduce you to new sets of people and see how much you like them. Can I fit a model to James? Is does James have a type? Right. Does James have a type, even if he, I mean, I know he can't articulate his type. I mean, we know this from the data that whatever you describe your type as, it's gonna do a crap job of predicting what you're gonna like in the future, at least crap job of predicting like what you're especially gonna like, that compatibility component. But maybe I could fit the model anyway, and I wouldn't be, I wouldn't know what the model is. It would be mysterious, but I would say, but James, I can predict for you with 55% accuracy, a little bit more than chance that you're gonna really be into this person rather than that person. I mean, that's the level that we're at right now, like 55% would be a win uh relative to where the models are currently performing. But I think all of it's all of it's interesting no matter what.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:43

Well, be sure to let us know when you have the answers to some of those questions. Yeah, it's tough. We're working, we're working on it, we're working hard out here. Dr. Paul Eastrik, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for your insights. If you guys want to find out more about his work, unless you're hot, in which case you don't need to. But if you want to find out more, you can check out his new book, Funded by Evolution, or you can check out the Love Factory podcast where they break down uh movies and find out you know, what you can learn about romantic relationships from movies or podcasts I've listened to, and I love. In the meantime, Paul, thank you so much for coming back.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:16

Yeah, thanks so much for having me.