What the Manosphere Gets Wrong About Evolutionary Psychology (Key Moment w/ Dr Paul Eastwick)

In this exceprt from E179 of the Thinking Mind Podcast, Dr Paul Eastwick explains the “EvoScript” — the popular version of evolutionary psychology that many people have absorbed from online dating advice, red pill content, the manosphere and social media.

Dr Eastwick argues that while “mate value” can matter in first impressions, the idea that your romantic fate is determined by looks, height, money, status or fixed desirability is deeply misleading. Attraction is not just about static traits. It is dynamic, relational and shaped by how two people interact over time.

He explains why modern dating apps can make people judge each other too quickly, why romantic attraction often develops through repeated interaction, and why the science of relationships is more hopeful than the internet often suggests.

Interviewed by Dr. Alex Curmi. Dr. Alex is a consultant psychiatrist and a UKCP registered psychotherapist. Website: alexcurmitherapy.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

In in Bonded by Evolution, he 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 0:18

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 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_01 1:56

And I guess the idea of made 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 made 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 2:20

Yeah, I think when people think that their mate value is not only due to their traits, but it's 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 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 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_01 4:56

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

SPEAKER_00 5:00

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

And and so many valuable personality traits take it 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 5:19

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 don't want to money and you you come across great first impressions, I mean, you don't have to listen to me. You you got it made. Hot people, hot people need can switch off, they can listen to something else. 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 average, no. On average, when 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_01 6:29

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 6:54

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_01 7:59

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 8:20

Well, I guess I I guess I would say I'm like, you know, um I've I've studied it more than studied it. 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 as 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 traits. You lose this idea that actually a lot of what makes us feel a kinship to another person and 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.