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Episode 165: Dating down vs up Do we embarrass to assess mate value
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all right good evening everybody it's Nate G here along with dr. Doug Lyall dr. Lyle how you doing this evening good about yourself doing pretty good Springs coming summers coming yeah Sunshine's coming we had a question I think I got in the email a couple weeks ago about why weather makes I can change our mood and it got me thinking that I mean I I don't know if this is a universal phenomenon but I do know that I start to feel better when the Sun starts coming out and I feel like moving around more sure yeah I think it's even more profound than that I noticed that my mood was shift even when the Sun goes behind a cloud so just in a matter of a second and then it will brighten again once the cloud passes so yeah I think that we're highly sensitive to weather because weather obviously has had a substantial impact on human survival capabilities and so as a result we're pretty sensitive to those shifts and yeah no question nothing nothing like springtime you know to sort of brighten your mood and make you feel more optimistic and it's the time to be taking chances and and fall and winter or the time to not be taking chances and to be essentially more conservative and more worried that would make sense to me Wow yeah I didn't even think about it in terms of taking chances that's a yeah and I like this I like this yeah all right well today we're not talking about taking chances well in a way we are actually we're talking a little bit more about dating questions and whether or not some questions about dating down versus dating up and whether or not women test their their mate to assess mate value in different ways and in a question about from an introvert who says that they need alcohol to to to kind of loosen them up when they're around many people and then another question about that you had said before that disagreeable people may not do so well when their pair bonded to each other whereas and so the question is whether agreeable people would be so without further ado let's just hit it see what's going on dr. Lyle you ready yep I'm ready so dr. Lyle I've heard there's a notion in evolutionary psychology that women mate up in social hierarchies while men mate down this makes sense to me because if a child shares 50% of the genes of both parents but females bear most of the physical costs then the only way for a relationship between two people of similar gene quality to work is for the male to supply the vast majority of the resources since the male would have to provide for not just himself but also a pregnant female would that resolve with that result in an evolved heuristic where women would rule out men particularly more special than they are if so should I then focus my pair bond efforts exclusively on females that are lower on social hierarchies than myself since anyone above my standing would rule me out anyway ah no okay so this this person is thinking very intelligently a very good question and thinking here there's a there's a few little assumptions that are sliding past Scruton here that we have to we have to to look at carefully so the notion there is not an evolved heuristic where women would rule out men who are not quote significantly more successful than they are that that doesn't make sense that's that's assuming that men and women your today social dominance hierarchies are significantly associated with money and that wouldn't have been true in the Stone Age so in the Stone Age the women are not we're not looking at men who are quote more successful than they are because the men and women are doing different things so this has to do instead with rating the relative men and trying to find the man who has the most Stone Age relevant abilities and the values to go with it so for example strength hunting ability social connection and dominance hierarchy the generosity etcetera so this is what it is that she's seeking so she's not seeking to quote sleep up she's seeking to get the the the most resourceful man possible and so that's that's how it is that she works now of course one of the resources that she seeks she doesn't just seek resources for her offspring and herself she also seeks the sexiest jinns because her children will be carrying sexual attractiveness along with them and that will be a huge determinant of their success in the next generation so she's also seeking beauty and that beauty may not be related to and very often is not related to that person's and stone-age abilities so this is sort of Beauty and the Beast so some guy could be a beast and he he may not I have the most attractive features and she may be far more attractive than he is in terms of just sort of gene shape and/or the shape of her body in the shape of this structure of her face on a percentile basis she may be a nine and he may be a seven but if he is sufficiently competent very competent more competent than men who are 8 to 9 s in that village she may find herself attracted to him and and willing to be his mate as a result of the greater resources that he brings to bear that's not likely to be the case if he's a 5 for example depends on what's available so you can you think of the female brain as effectively a two-factor pieces of equipment that one factor is rating the man's sexual attractiveness that will be passed on to offspring she's doing this unconsciously obviously sometimes of course amazingly it's conscious which undoubtedly were the only species were that that gets conscious so very many women that I have met in the last 30 years have said yeah if I made it with that guy we'd make beautiful babies the so she's she doesn't even know what a gene is she just knows that those physical characteristics will be replicated and she's actually thinking about the the attractiveness of her children you know well in advance so however I think we can we can all agree that that's unlikely to be the case in a woman a million years ago not likely to have that thought so it's something like that thought was not possible to protohumans so the we can we can understand that the algorithm evolved before any conscious connection could have ever been made so the females are having a our two factor equipment looking for sexiness in the male just pure physical sexiness as well as survival capabilities and and that that they could confer to offspring into herself so that that being the case those things are not quote the same thing as status dominance hierarchies in the world today so some some guy who's a big strong guy with much tattoos may be very attractive to to some woman who may be higher in social dumb social and SES social economic status than the male but and she may be very attractive he may not even be that attractive but she finds those characteristics attractive because those characteristics are are pinging the Stone Age algorithms that have defined her mating psychology the so yeah the aunt the general answer to the question is no that's not how it worked you know it is not a it is not the algorithm that the individual was thinking so you're so that what's evolved inside the female brain is not a general thing of where to where does everybody stand with respect to socioeconomic status it's a far more specific conglomeration of algorithms so for example you don't evolve a thing to say well I just went attracted to beauty no its facial construction it's it's the golden ratios and the bones in the face its posture its movement its you know for in females it's their curvature it's literally where where fat is deposited and where it is not deposited it's the shape of fingers its hair its I shape it on males it's the torso it's the jaw it's like ah I see what it is it's all kinds of independent factors have been selected by natural selection in order to be useful indicators of mate value so it's not something as as such a broad brush as you know where a person stands with respect to some culturally defined social dominance hierarchy now now in response to the person's question about what would be a wise thing to do let's suppose they are of one ethnic or racial or religious group and that that group is is higher in the economic food chain than other groups if that were true would it be wise to be focusing on some of those other groups in order to essentially trade your your position you know in a way that might be advantageous they probably not that it might be true in some places in some cultures where that were the difference between a couple of groups might be so striking with respect to the economic advantages just by being conferred as a member of a group that that might be worth doing but that's not going to be true in the United States so in the United States that's going to be a person's individual abilities and what they've accomplished with respect to financial issues and status issues that's going to be what it is it's not going to be just simply a member of a group so your job is actually to focus on where you have relative advantages any kind that you can quote exploit you know this is arbitrage you're you're attempting to niche pick and try to get if you're a male which I think that that's who the question that's who brought the question what the male is attempting to do is it's he's attempting to trade for the best total package that he can get of which physical attractiveness winds up being a bigger and more important source of the variance of that package than it is for the female so therefore he is attempting to demonstrate his stone-age package of ability to bring resources to offspring and attempting to essentially accentuate that and the greater the likely to be more successful if he's speaking to females who are particularly sensitive to those issues so it isn't necessarily the case that those are going to be low socioeconomic status females it's going to be females who by virtue of their genetics their culture their perturb for their particular circumstances may be sensitive to that to that willingness to trade on that dimension so for example I think a an interesting example would be let's suppose you're a very bright nerdy stable conscientious well-educated non-athletic Caucasian male in the United States would you be wise to try to look down a socioeconomic status dominance hierarchy to a to a not very well supported economically and not very successful female of some other ethnicity no that's not likely to be successful what may be successful is to aim at any individual of any socioeconomic status that is particularly sensitive to those to the values that you bring to the table interestingly enough it's probably most likely and the best and the most fertile ground would probably be Asian women Asian women in the United States highly valley you education and emotional stability etc basically economic stability and achievement they are not themselves of any kind of low socioeconomic some trade of a hierarchy instead what they are is they're essentially far more risk-averse with respect to their essentially wanting to make sure they secure resources this is just a different mating strategy and we it could be argued and could be investigated whether or not this is called cultural this is genetic or whether or not the genes drove the culture etc who knows but the point is is that there's no doubt that this is that this is a truth that we face that we can see so therefore once again the notion is to aim your your assets and your advertisement of that those assets towards individuals that are more likely to be the most likely to be receptive if in fact those are individuals that you would be interested in so that's how that's how I see this working and that that's your job like any animal is to be looking for niche picking where you have relative advantages so we it isn't so it's not a simple matter of trading quote down in SES hierarchies it's a it's a more a matter of finding your market more specifically fascinating see yeah this question got me thinking about your comment earlier which was about jeans on sale I thought man you know and also got me thinking about the homeless population you know it's reported we don't really know because we can't really keep track of all the homeless people in this country but it's reported constantly that there's so many more men than women who are homeless and so this question got me thinking about the fact that potentially this is what's happening is the the the women are being provided for by males whereas males they don't have resources or ability require resources they're kind of outlook that would make a lot of sense that's fascinating I I was not aware of that as a statistic but it but it makes sense to me I'm actually I'm not surprised to hear it I would be very interested to see what the magnitude of that effect size is I mean whether it's whether it's a you know essentially twenty percent more males are homeless or whether it's a hundred percent more males or homeless I think that that would tell us a very interesting story about the essentially sexual value of the female even at that level of trade yeah so it's about fifty percent of homeless population this is this is an approximate report again but it's fifty percent are single men twenty four percent are single women and another twenty three percent our families usually single mothers now kind of interesting that if you're single woman you have very less likelihood to be Tia homeless but if you're single mother you know I mean so it's a right it's yeah interesting yep think that one through yeah all right on we go all right fantastic so our next question is dr. Lyle and this is about again now it's the man looking up dr. Lyle I'm a virgin well into my 20s when I'm talking to girls who are about in my league I just couldn't care less I don't even have enough motivation to carry the conversation without rolling my eyes 25 percent above me is where it's at am i some sort of hopeless narcissist how do I recalibrate myself join the club belt itself elope that's what it is alright what's up there's a we call this quote normal ambition okay so this is this is what drives male achievement is exactly this so if you're virgin in your 20s then you've got a little drum beat in the back of your head like hey I'm going kind of nowhere and there's a you're running the game of life against the clock and so you've got some some natural ambitiousness that is going to be encouraging you to do something about this problem now lots of things are done about this problem that this is your prostitution comes to mind it's a it's a major it's a major process around the world and that's why you find find this to be you know sort of it's the oldest profession now the let's skip over that sorted comment and we're going to go on to what we're talking about what we're talking about is the the need to actually distinguish yourself from your competitors who are essentially sexually similar to yourself you are probably not going to be successful talking yourself into being interested in somebody who that you would be available to you the probably not so that you there's probably going to be some hustle involved here this is what drives men to accomplish things and to display fitness indicators I can't remember some some some gal I went out with once we were talking this over and she she said there's I can't remember the four C's of the five C's was like cars closed condo country clubs something like that those other words these are these are sort of some of the Fitness indicators that are in the world that men are going to use in order to try to close the distance between you know what they can get versus what it is that they want we could call that the Delta problem and we now we now know from the evidence from the dating applications on the internet that that Delta problem looks to be a 25 percentile problem which is an incredibly incredibly difficult problem to traverse for people so in other words your job is to accomplish things and demonstrate those accomplishments then then you can discover whether someone exciting will ever give you the time of day it's worth a shot that's one way to do it there might be other ways to do it but I think that's the the I think that's that's where it is that that the Pater lies get busy now so sir can I ask some more detail about this sure get a guitar get a degree get a grade boy up there yeah like how ahead how does this progression work so the the male you know accomplishes or at least tries to show off certain things and then does the female approach him or she just starts I mean you know it we can see it in birds when they ruffle their feathers so we got a biologist will say yeah they're now ready but how does it work with humans the way it works with humans is is that in in various context there are places for displays so so that that's why we talked about the the five seas cars for example it makes a difference to females what car a male drives and so the if you're let's suppose you're some bright you know electrical engineer Nathan this our former I wasn't going all over that it is now doctor Nathan but it used to be an electrical engineer so the point is is that I have a friend of mine who used to be a bright young man now he's a bright older man but I can remember when in his in his 20s and 30s he rolled his eyes at the notion of spending any significant amount of money on a car and he just said yes a hunk of metal very utilitarian guy so he drove himself honda accord in the in the days when honda accord wasn't feeling the competitive pressure from all the other from the korean models and therefore had absolutely no pizzazz and was an utter signal of conscientiousness and that's what he drove and the and it was it was a perfectly reasonable entrance for his heavily weighted left brain but it didn't do anything for him in terms of animating cachet and so he was wasting an opportunity is what this was and that was a mistake and in that case and so the same thing would be true with clothes um he he would also address in in a very minimalist fashion and was proud of it in other words his clothes were inexpensive and and you know no no showboating whatsoever well you know he's attempting to demonstrate you know he's leaking his conscientiousness and his lack of openness and his emotional stability but it's not it these are drab tail feathers on a peacock okay he lived with his parents into his late 20s saving money oh good so this is again you know if you did he would if you get cross-examined by females they wanted to know where he lived who he lives with what situation is and you know under cross-examination he had no fancy place or an accomplishment to demonstrate even though he was reasonably highly accomplished so what we start to see is that these strategies matter and yeah your question is how does it play out it plays out in in a lot of little subtle cross-examinations that that will wind up you working their way through the female mind as if a male approaches a female where a male has a any kind of display process where females might be slightly interested and come over and ask a question you know it let's suppose that we have your I don't know you're at a seminar and you strike up a conversation with a relatively attractive female that doesn't have a diamond ring on you better have something interesting to say and some accomplishments that are going to be noteworthy because you're if you can manage to keep that conversation going there's going to be a mild cross-examination it's going to take place and you're going to have to look at that mild cross-examination not as a bunch of bullets that you need to dodge but instead as opportunities to advertise and so that's that's how this Gantz is done it's done through these subtle opportunities for advertising this is a very good friend of mine is about to graduate with a doctorate from Harvard University and the joke is how long in the new conversation can you manage to keep Harvard out of it if you have great self-discipline you'll last 60 seconds that's what you'll do that's that you get a badge of honor if you can keep it out of there for a minute okay so does this person happen to be vegan as well yeah she is haha yeah yeah yeah yeah did she also do CrossFit by any chance uh I don't think so sorry that's a lot of things to do to keep to herself a lot a lot of things to be - yeah your your your run some running some numbers on this the yeah but that but the notion here is that people will cross examine you your advertisements will in fact be noticed and that they will influence people to varying degrees and so that's why the job here is this quote normal ambition is to get a guitar get a degree get a job get a car get close get a condo join a country club those are just you know metaphors for what I'm talking about in other words if you're a male you better hustle and display some accomplishment that's the only way that you're going to solve the Delta problem my guys in the prison I would talk about this in the prison from time to time and they'd laugh and they'd say dr. Lyle d'jever age ever consider a bag of dope these guys had had a difficult act ik okay so they were sort of aiming at a different class of relationships that I expect that our listeners are aiming alright well said let's go on all right so the next question is still about dating and I remember when I first started this podcast I was looking through different forums there was some evolutionary psychology forums there was some these things called pickup artists it's like it's like the flaky guys who are trying to you know trying to you know mix this process used in some fashion or psychology but the concept that kind of stood out in this casual mating arena was that that women potential mates women will actually try to test their mates for main value and they had all these strategies of what to say when the girl says this and that and the other is pretty entertaining so this is our next question has to do with this and the question is dr. Lyle do women purposefully purposefully embarrass their boyfriends or put them in conflicts in order to see how much status they're willing to give up for her as an indication of his willingness to sacrifice resources and future main ting opportunities for her and her children this is sort of the the person is scratching the surface of a much wider and deeper question and but there's a question of the the social algorithms that sit inside human nature and can be activated under under varying conditions so the let me let me give you let me try to explain what I'm talking about yeah if you were to open up your finger with a knife you would find that there's an awful lot of tissues and there are different kinds and they're they're very very systematically organized and that would only just be the beginning because then if we had a microscope and we could actually look at the microscopic at the cellular level we would find that there were different cells that the tissue differentiation would be extraordinary so we go into the blood and we'd find out that there's different blood cells and different things in the blood etc etc so to is what I'm what we're getting at here is that the life particularly animal life is a study of extraordinary complexity the same is true of the human mind and its operations so the human mind has probably thousands upon thousands of instincts and those instincts have an extraordinary layering of interplay and hierarchical systems that will that they will only be certain instincts may never be activated in a given individual in their lifetime in fact many many of the instincts that you have in you may never be activated I had a client once who is a very hard driving extremely successful executive and in San Francisco and he was just just he was married Bechet testosterone pair-bond or just a just a just a corporate warrior and this guy asked after sort of squabbling about it for a while the couple had a child and I think they ended up having two as I recall but certainly had one and what what what he told me was after his daughter was about a year and a half he said to me you know I would kill anybody that did anything to hurt my daughter and he said it very matter-of-factly and he said I didn't even know that was in there he says had you had you said to me two years ago that I would have those feelings I would have said you were crazy but now that I have this daughter I'm telling you if anybody does anything to hurt hurt hurt you know hurt this kid they're dead meat that's it ie the conditions have now activated an instinct okay so when we're looking for instincts when we're looking for behavior sometimes behavior will look you know so this question that this person asks why would women embarrass their boyfriends well there's a lot of reasons why they might have bears their boyfriends okay and it's going to be an interplay between the dynamics of that relationship which are going to be a derivative of those two peoples signaling between each other of their relative mate value the personality of the women and the man involved all kinds of stuff the ecological situation in which the embarrassment takes place who might be watching what impact it might have on them this is a really complicated interplay of human instincts so to ask whether they would one of the reasons why they would test them for loyalty to look at future provisioning etc sure that's one possibility but it's only one of probably 50 possibilities so let me think about some other things I have definitely seen women embarrassed their mates in order to lower the mates mate value because probably under two two reasons the the interplay between those the couple was the the male was probably cooled off on the female and signaling that he might not be that interested and that committed and even if he was if he was married to her and tied up to her with finances in the church and societal expectations and in-laws and divorce courts etc looming in front of him that doesn't stop him from his Stone Age brain wanting to defect and it would not stop him from sending her defection signals like got a headache not interested okay I cat you know glance staying late at the office etc etc okay there's all kinds of ways that he could be sending those signals and so that female could be in a situation where she's attempting she's feeling threatened everywhere but in particularly under certain conditions where she might see that some other female might be potentially a fur and be highly competitive therefore she might want to reduce her mates mate value by embarrassing him and so that that would be there therefore cutting off his options so that would be one very common strategy for females attempting embarrassing their mates the incidentally it isn't like women wear black hats okay the truth is as males are going to do exactly the same thing these are going to be standardised mating tactics they're going to cross genders there's going to be these are basic basic competitive processes the another one might be a woman might be signaling her unhappiness with her mate and and therefore increase the the possibility of catching the eye of a poacher who might then come on to her so that could be the net of effect the net effect of doing such a thing in other words by signaling that you are not all enamored and considerate of your mate and you might be disgusted in some way and processing some of your disgust by embarrassing that that male it that rather than essentially trying to reduce his mating cachet because you're worried about him defecting you may simply be using that as using your honest sort of disgust and lack of regard as a way to signal that to the mating community and therefore increase your likelihood of you know essentially being poached out of the relationship so those are a you know a couple of options and a third option for example would also be that this could be a retaliation for any number of things that the male has done to her in terms of withdrawing resources or said it wouldn't have to be tit-for-tat at all it in other words it wouldn't have to be that he embarrassed her could be that he simply said no I don't want to go on that vacation I don't think we can afford it and she's irritated about it she feels like yeah well you could buy three fantasy video games this year but you know we can't go on a vacation the hell with you and that irritation then leaks out in her attacking his you know his reputation in a group and so this is a way to to leak that irritation and threaten him that those types of things will continue unless he gets more cooperative so you can see how sophisticated this gets so it's a it's an outstanding question but I want people to consider that as we as we look at human beings and their behavior and you ask a question of that nature it's very likely that the answer is going to be that what you're what you were suggesting is one possibility of what could be many possibilities and so that that's how we look at that the context would be important and pre past behavior all kinds of things yeah yeah okay entire context of the neural circuits in the organism that is having that is activating that instinct the instinct is being activated inside the female's head the instinct says this is a valid opportunity for criticizing and embarrassing your mate why okay there's quite a number of modules that could be activated that would give rise to the activation of that instinct okay there would be a number of goals that would be furthered by that process so that's that's why it is that we can't know what it specifically is without knowing more about that individual and what the what the nature of that relationship is absolute best thing the more the more of this I think it's just it's just hard to hard to process all of them it's really cool young still trying to figure out what that 5th C is and I guess outlasting I think I can opt I have to the Nowak carats so with the fire these now remember yeah so in other words if you're going to drive another woman car car close Country Club cash and carats something like that carats so the vegans will be happy so you and I we can feed them lots of carrots and they'll be fine it's good all right right if you have uh speaking of impressing dr. Lyle I'm pretty introverted but I go out drinking with friends about once a month it's all great when I go out with one to two close friends I only drink a couple of beers and can do just fine without alcohol but when the group gets much bigger and there's more people that I barely know I get serious social anxiety I cling to my drink get on a slippery slope and by the time I've loosened up I've had a potential hangover like three or four or more beers at least I've now gotten comfortable enough not to lock myself in a toilet stall for five minutes twice an hour but I've been lately struggling with a no more than two or three beers rule for years I can't stick to it I feel like I need at least some alcohol as a social lubricant but I can be mistaken what what if any do you have any tips yeah I have a tip I this is a Bob Newhart thing why are you going there what is the point the I guess I don't get it the if we go there and we're nervous as hell and it's uncomfortable and we're locking ourselves in the toilet stall and we're having to get you a bunch of drinks to manage to get through the anxiety why the hell are we there so that would be my first question the it's not you like let's think through the function of that and you know what what's going on inside this person's head is but as the cost-benefit analysis of being in such a situation so you know they're trying to meet people well there's other ways to meet people that don't require us to go through such an ordeal so you know that's what Nats comms for meetup comm I don't know Bowling League Mendte Jeff ages ultimate weight loss group there's a lot proof you can join there's a so I'm not sure what we're doing at that social event you know in that amount of discomfort so that's that's what I would have to say about it be we're not going to could we work on this systematic desensitization try to maneuver your room your psychology a little bit script you and things that you can talk about to people so that you can get through to conversation with strangers could we do all these things yes we could go to a psychiatrist put you on inderal which is a beta blocker and reduce your anxiousness etc why like why not just skip the whole thing and go spend time under conditions that you're more comfortable that that would be my recommendation first thing I think about when you say that is if we were to beat our genes and essentially try to get those ourselves to more opportunities would that be a reasonable way to do it course on what do you what you asking me yeah like if you're saying well why why will we be there if it's causing us so much anxiety yeah and the first thing I think of is maybe maybe the person wants to be there because they're younger it sounds like a college aged person and that there they've got a lot of opportunities that they don't want to pass up I just got right up yeah yeah it doesn't sound like there's a lot of opportunities they're not if they're this anxious and it's this much of a struggle so it doesn't sound it doesn't sound like there's opportunities there that wouldn't be be able to be found in other places okay so it's a kind of like yeah I have this job that it's it's miserable and I strain my back and I have to put myself in traction every night but you know it's a living it's like well is there any other way to make a living like well yeah I could go to work for my uncle's firm and sit by Anna decimate phone calls talk to people how would that be well that would be a lot easier well then why aren't we doing it okay so the the beat beat your jeans is to to be smart enough to understand that there are circumstances that are going to cause you to be unhappy or anxious or depressed and in other words anxiety and depression or two signals to tell you that you're in circumstances that aren't too great for you and so why the hell would we want to drug the system so that you can function that doesn't make a lot of sense change the situation put yourself in circumstances where we don't have to do that and that's I think the the more viable solution faster yeah I think I was looking through some egocentric bias where that would be Prime casual mating strategy environment right and so that might be why why that's the overriding decision yeah no no no III can see right through that of course that would be true so that that's what that's what Tinder's for for God's sakes you know you don't have to be drunk to be on tinder but it might help okay I could just super new-new quotes coming out of the podcast you don't have to be drunk on tinder but it would help all right all right a last question dr. Lyle you've talked about how to disagreeable people not formed pair-bond what about to agree biblical can fairly agreeable person feel unfulfilled by another extremely agreeable person for some context I'm a thirty year old male and I just got out of a relationship where I felt like there was something missing because my partner was too agreeable and I am myself a fairly agreeable I would describe myself as 50/50 trader and she was probably 2080 I feel like I kept waiting for her to show some preferences so that I could entertain them which have excited me but it rarely if ever happened is this a known phenomenon or am I making an incorrect post-game analysis on this relationship you are wandering into the right territory but you're looking for a little bit simplistic of a formula so very often too agreeable z' is a great match so it isn't like that there's anything in principle wrong with too agreeable z' the yours didn't fly for a multitude of reasons and in fact the list of reasons why relationship might not fly is just about endless so in this case the the person's entrances is that the girlfriend was just too agreeable now a person can be too agreeable for you if even if agreeable is valuable that doesn't mean it's infinitely valuable and in fact you can start to sniff out that a hyper agreeableness carries social costs so the you can't put an agreeable wife on the phone to argue to get the the warranty back ok what we need a monster on the other hand ok so this is a this is how this works so agreeable is it can be super valuable within the context of how easy it is to negotiate conflicts of interests and how minimal those conflicts of interest can be between two people in a relationship where the direct issues between the two of them are the scope of the exchange processes that are being considered but that's rarely the case it's usually the case that there are third parties involved like the agreeable the agreeable wife says oh well I've just got to go over and help my worthless brother you know I'm saying because my parents are out of town and we have to make sure that you know he doesn't die from the DWI because you know he's already got three of them and you know he's not trustworthy so I got to go over and babysit him over the weekend yeah that's too agreeable right so the and the agreeable husband is saying okay honey but he's irritated and because now their lives are out of balance they themselves wouldn't have had any particular conflicts at all but now third parties are interfering and essentially poaching some of the time and energy that should be directed towards the husband in favor of the worklist brother okay so this is the so there are reasons why we have thresholds for agreeable so for myself I could you know I'm no prize but believe me there would be a women out there that would be too agreeable for me to be like no that's too soft too agreeable too accommodating for everybody and that I can feel like that would happen they would be you know stopping and helping everybody on the street and essentially you know I couldn't even take a stroll to downtown Sacramento without getting sidetracked with somebody that they would feel like they needed to help or somebody would call in on the phone and ask him for their help and they'd have to chat with him for half an hour and work it out because they've got some you know worthless unstable needy clingy friend that needs a bunch of help and they keep feeding them help and they've been feeding that help for 15 years so the could a partner be too agreeable absolutely they could be so what each each person it has a profile of personality characteristics that that we are scanning and we are getting a feel for whether or not that is a reasonable match and usually those characteristics need to be fairly close to our own they don't have to be super close to our own but they've got to be within some general range where it works okay and so in this case I have no idea whether the girlfriend being too agreeable was simply too far outside of disguise threshold it could have been a bunch of other things could have been the fundamental root of the problem but but it could have been the problem and the fact that his intuition is telling him that it might have the problem is he may be right and that that could have been a source of friction and a concern inside of his own mind as he computes the fact that her hyper agreeableness was ultimately going to be too costly for him and that he himself didn't have enough disagreeableness to sort of shut down and protect her from her hyper agreeableness whereas more of an sob male might be fine with it he'd be happy exploiting the white because she's hyper agreeable and meanwhile being a lion and protecting her from herself by snarling at every relative and every friend that comes near and tries to take any of her time and basically making making her giving her the cone of silence this is precisely what my dad did to my mother my mother's hyper agreeable and my dad was quite disagreeable and and he he terrorized anybody that would try to come around to get her time and in doing so actually protected her life from her own hyper agreeableness in a fashion that was not outrageous it probably wasn't an ideal fit that it wasn't a bad fit and that's that's how that fit worked fascinating past any such a balance dr. loud we've got person on hold right now just called in I'm going to take a call okay well we'll take a quick call and we'll see if we can knock it out in a few minutes if we can if it's more more of a more complicated issue we'll have to take it for another night but yeah let's go ahead oh no work no words yeah all right color X : it's I welcome to show what's your name where you calling from this is now a mid-laner how y'all boys no good good what's your name again nosh n AJ knowledge got it where you calling from Atlanta Atlanta very cool nosh all right what's on your mind what can we try to help you with well well not necessarily help I just want to hear what he would think about this just dealing with the talk if you guys are dealing with uh does it does there come a point to where we have to separate contents from container meaning humanity within the social structure therein and understanding that that social structure is a huge factor in determining not only outcomes but also behavior so can we really say ok this behavior is done by this because of like that's that's where it gets kind of difficult it's like the old crabs in a barrel thing but somebody says hey crabs in a barrel look kind of it behaves they pull each other down and you say the barrel is not their natural habitat so you're putting them in a you know controlled environment and then assessing the behavior or we make right same mistake when we talk about relationships and you know to certain degree so let me see so what your what your thinking is is that and then in the modern environment you're you're putting you're putting people in circumstances that are somewhat inconsistent with their natural history so you're going to see some things that are a little bit you're going to see pattern that yeah you're going to see some patterns that are going to be a little bit puzzling and it's going sometimes little patters are artificial you see right how many of these artists these patterns are artificial contents and geyser you know the new type of way yeah same old same old great question but I just want to hear what he thought of it right yeah I think that some of these that's a very good question and I think the answer is some of these things have to be considered from the fact that the container is artificial without a doubt so for example I believe marriage as we see it today is an artificial container and I believe it derived it derives out of pair-bond circuitry that is is consistent with the natural history of our species but it now now we have an artificial container because of hunter gathers cultural evolving into farmers but then had improvements in the line and that led to wealth and then now you have wealth you have the phenomenon of wealth that can be taken and you also have wealth that can be passed down to offspring so wealth becomes a very important player in human life in a way that it never was in human nature so you now wind up with wealth being essentially managed with rules with respect to marriages in a way that never would have happened in human sex and romance so yeah there there is a lot of stuff that is going on that is you would suggest is distorted by the social context and the institutions in the cultural context that we find ourselves in so there's no doubt about it that we can when we look through this particular lens of what we call evolutionary psychology we can see the outlines of the instincts that are driving the behavior but very often they're the the total causal picture can be a little bit complicated because there have been you know cultural phenomena that are that are interfering with us seeing you know plainly what those instincts might be but that's a really good comment najin and that is kind of part parcel what we try to piece piece together in this podcast thanks I'm glad I was on the right track and I'll just save it to end and then hang up and listen to you guys imagine a mongol in a tuba and yeah ridiculous to ideal yeah what we do and then try to assess we feel ridiculous it is a lot limiting it is but a guy who is Asian guys I'm adding black very good thank you sir Josh thank you very much for the for the call and for the wonderful question in the comments really appreciate it very did
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