Maiden Mother Matriarch with Louise Perry5 Apr

What evolutionary psychology gets wrong

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My guest today doesn't reject evolutionary psychology as a discipline, but he is critical of many popular interpretations of the research on human mating.

Of course there are psychological differences between men and women, of course some people are more beautiful than others, and of course some people struggle to attract dates. But it's easy to exaggerate when talking about the psychology of sex and relationships.

If you look around you'll quickly notice that not every rich man is married to a penniless beautiful woman half his age, and being below average in terms of atttractiveness does not actually condemn someone to a lifetime of loneliness.

What Paul Eastwick is offering is something like a purple pill. It's not that the red pill narrative is completely wrong, but it misses some important nuance about how people actually behave in the real world.

Paul is a Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Davis. He's the co-host of the 'Love Factually' podcast. And his new book is titled 'Bonded by Evolution: The New Science of Love and Connection

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