Often cited as the founding mind in his field, David Buss is one of the most influential researchers alive today. For over 40 years, David has worked at the bleeding edge of evolutionary psychology, seeking answers to the most complex and disturbing human quirks. His award-winning work, which amounts to over 200 articles and several acclaimed books, explores the phenoms of jealousy, attraction, mating rituals, social status, cheating, stalking, and homicide.
Why did we invite him on?
“Love is an evolved emotion. I was told in school that it was a Western invention, something created by European poets. That’s not true; it was evolved specifically for long-term committed romantic relationships.”
We’ve hoped to have David on for some time, and we’ve also had designs for an episode covering the reasons relationships start and end. What attracts us to one another? What are the most universally liked features? Why do we cheat? Why do we fall in love? How do we fall out of it?
These dynamies shape our world, and getting to grips with them can help us avoid a lot of pain and confusion. If you want to learn more, there are few people more equipped to teach you than David.
What did we learn?
”If you want to test a potential partner, go on a vacation together. Go somewhere neither of you know. Different culture, different language, different food, different customs. Do they get thrown out of whack? Are they resilient? Can they adapt well? You’ll see how that person reacts to novel information, and that’ll tell you how they’ll react to things you can’t predict here and now.”
Evolutionary psychology is a divisive area of study. Depending on who you ask, it’s either the most rational, level-headed approach to tackling the impossible problem of consciousness, or a deterministic, reductive pseudoscience.
Whatever you make of it, it’s worth understanding. Even if its critics are right and it’s only appropriate to use when studying our most fundamental instincts, those make up more of our thinking than we’d like to imagine.
As David explains, once we see human beings as animals, they become easier to study. Ironically, it also helps mark out where we are distinct from our fellow mammals.
"Humans are unique in their mating system in several pivotal respects. One is ‘concealed ovulation’. A second is the evolution of long-term pair-bonds. No other primate species forms long-term committed relationships. We have the attachment system, the emotional love. That’s why, although women have the obligatory investment in child-rearing, most men do a tremendous amount above the bare minimum.”
This is one of the most bizarre curiosities of human evolution. Thinking purely rationally, the most optimal strategy for any man is to impregnate as many partners as possible and never stop moving. So why don’t they? Why do the vast majority opt for a committed, settled relationship with a single partner?
“Women have maternal certainty. No mother, in the act of giving birth, has ever wondered, ‘Gee, I wonder if this kid is mine.’ Men cannot have that. Ancestrally speaking, it could always be another man’s child. This creates a fundamental problem.”
And what’s that?
”In order for heavy male parental investment to evolve, men had to evolve adaptations to increase the probability that the kid is their own. If they didn’t, they could invest decades in the defence and provisioning of a rival’s offspring.”
Human beings have social and physical adaptations wired to detect traits in a prospective partner, and they differ between the sexes. Women, David explains, have a more holistic approach - tone of voice, demeanour, even smell. Men are much more visual and, for lack of a better term, shallow. The tools afforded them don’t make for useful readings. What do men do instead?
”The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. I studied murders, so ‘body count’ means something very different to me. Now, it means how many people you’ve had sex with. If a woman has had sex with a large number of partners prior to commitment, there’s a higher probability that she’s going to be having sex after you’ve committed.”
This goes some way to explaining why, across societies, a premium has been put on female virginity in a way that isn’t mirrored for men, and why a shared attribute of the major faiths is a stressing of fidelity. Konstantin asks: is this evolutionary phenom why societies all over the world, with all sorts of different pressures and circumstances, have developed means of controlling female sexuality?
Yes and no.
”It’s mostly the families that do this. They call it the ‘daughter-guarding hypothesis’; parents put more effort into restricting their daughter’s sexual activity than the songs. The modest clothes, setting curfews… It ranges from that, to things like genital mutilation. The families are very concerned with their daughter’s sexual reputation, so it’s actually the women within the family inflicting these wounds on their daughters because it increases their mate-value.”
Even under ideal, ancestral circumstances, these adaptations create enough complications. They misfire, we misjudge, and things end in mistakes. Or worse, outright sadism.
Today, these heuristics, which have served us for millions of years, are ill-equiped for the climate. They served us well when life was simpler. As it is, they’re ripe for hijacking.
