Psychology Series 9: Todd Shackelford (18+) / Relations/ Jealousy / Sexual Competition

0:01 Welcome to another episode of Come Together, Todd Jackelford. Welcome, Professor Doctor Good to all of the above. It's thank you so much for joining. I'm really excited to have you here. How are you? My pleasure. I'm just fine, thank you. My pleasure. I'm so excited. I'm so excited to talk to you because I love psychology and I've recently been super fascinated with the, with learning about evolutionary psychology and understanding, you know how we get where we are.

0:41 I teach, I teach high school and I teach 9th, 10th and 12th graders and part of and I teach them English. But part of what I find so important is I try to explain to them not only why they experience what they experience, how you know what, what, what they're experiencing, but why they're experiencing it. You know, so we talk about anxiety, we talk about fear, we talk about sexual repression, we talk about all these kind of things. And, you know, on one hand you're like, yeah, we know they're all human. We know you experiencing a very, you know, you know, emotionally and very strongly and very potently. But why, you know, and where'd that come from? You know, and, and, and, you know, and it's fun to observe and it's fun to, you know, like, you know, ask them. But it's even more fun to talk to a professional about it or someone that's been researching it. So I'm really excited about this. Absolutely.

1:31 Well, it's a it's a great feel, no doubt about it. How did you get, How did you get involved in it? Well, I actually, I don't know how much you want my background, but I actually grew up in Oklahoma and I wanted to get out of Oklahoma. And so I went to where I got the best scholarship. And as it turns out, that happens to have been at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. And I thought, well, that sounds interesting. And so I went there and I didn't know it at the time, but I basically landed in what was then and to some extent still is, one of the hot spots of evolutionary science, evolutionary psychology in particular. And that was back in 19. When was that? That was back in 1989, nineteen 90. And so I mean, they had outstanding faculty in evolutionary psychology, in biology, in psychology and anthropology.

2:22 And so I basically took a whole bunch of courses in all of those different disciplines. You know, you asked me how I learned. I came to it. I mean, basically, I learned about Darwin in, as it turns out, in a, in a psychology honors class, the professor was actually strangely, he was a creationist, which is weird for a professor. But nevertheless, to his credit, he had us read, you know, sort of classic readings in, in psychology, one of which he decided to assign was part of Darwin's Origin of Species. And I had, I honestly had never known about, I mean, I probably heard about Darwin, but it was, you know, sort of religiously blinkered.

3:03 I grew up in a very religious sort of environment, very conservative. So I learned about it. And the truth is, once I read Darwin, honestly, I mean, I could not turn back. And that's where I talked to this guy and I was like, well, I'd like to learn more about this field. And he said we should talk to Stephen Gangastad, who was one of the faculty in psychology at the time. So I talked to him and then he introduced me to Randy Thornhill in biology. And he and Randy introduced me to a couple of faculty in anthropology. And I mean, I just, once I learned about evolutionary psychology, I just truly, I could not turn back. I mean, I knew that this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Wow, amazing. What's What's evolutionary anthropology? Well, I mean, basically, I mean, the way it was practiced at New Mexico, it was very much in line with evolutionary psychology. I mean, basically it was the application of evolutionary principles to human, in this case with anthropology, to human behavior as opposed to human psychology. And I mean, for me, it always felt a little bit off. I mean, I appreciated the application of evolutionary principles to human behavior, but it always seemed to me that they were skipping a step, namely what happens inside the mind.

4:13 I mean, behavior doesn't just drop out of the sky, it's motivated and facilitated by the brain. And so I sort of I enjoyed and appreciated learning about evolutionary anthropology, which mostly included, you know, reading and, you know, learning about non Western peoples, hunter gatherers. And, you know, I loved it. I mean, they're, you know, just as human as every other, you know, Westerner, for example. But it always occurred to me that, you know, it always struck me that, you know, they were sort of like I said, skipping, skipping the psychology step. But that didn't stop me from, you know, loving that field as well and enjoying the field. And, and similarly with biology, much of the work that we, that you know, much of the course work that I took, actually, I took a lot of courses with, with Randy Thornhill, who was a biologist, but applying evolutionary principles to specifically to humans.

5:05 And so I took a course with him in sexual psychology and behavior. And that's where I learned about this theory of sperm competition, which is, you know, widely used and established in biology. But there were some researchers at the time in the late 80s, early 90s, doing work on humans. And I thought that was so cool. I thought it was so interesting. And just, it kind of blew my mind. And so, you know, I was very, very fortunate to have kind of stumbled into a place where multiple departments were thinking about evolutionary application to humans in particular. Yeah, yeah, I noticed that a lot of the research that he did, it seems super, super cool about, you know, evolutionary processes that are, you know, very strict or I guess very strictly focused on on particular human, you know, behaviors or, or habits or, or, you know, actions, I guess, or, you know, relationships, which is really cool.

5:56 I, I want to, I want to ask you about the, about the sperm, the sperm, I guess race, I guess you call it. But before I do real quick, I want to just ask about because I, I am religious. You know, I'm, I'm Orthodox Jewish and, and you know, I grew up with, you know, I for the first probably 20 years of my life, I'm almost 30 for the 1st 20 years of my life, everyone always told me that religion and science, you know, were, would basically butt heads. And then I found out that they didn't necessarily need to and that it was kind of I, I don't, I don't know how much truth necessarily there is to this, But my understanding was that for a long time, religion filled in a lot of scientific, you know, blanks, you know, so we had like a big board with, you know, a lot of questions and, you know, we'd go to the creationist answers for whenever we didn't have a scientific, you know, breakthrough to, to really explain or describe it.

6:55 And then as science started developing, scientists started to say, hey, we don't need, you know, to use this creationist religious perspective as much. And I think that religion kind of took that as, like, indication of what, you know, a proclamation of war against it. And so they started responding by saying, oh, well, we don't accept science either, you know, and that kind of feels like it's falling away recently. Do you find that? I guess it depends on who you ask. I mean, I, you know, I am very persuaded by Jerry, do you know Jerry Coyne, biologist Jerry Coyne, he wrote, he wrote a book, wonderful book called Fact versus Faith, I think. And he basically makes the very strong argument that religion and science are utterly and entirely incompatible. And, and I agree with that.

7:41 I think they're entirely incompatible. Yes. I think there's no place where the two can find any kind of any kind of joining together. I'm not suggesting that there aren't religious people who are also scientists. There certainly are. And similarly there are plenty of scientists who themselves are are religious. But I think they're deluding themselves. You think so? Yes. Can you elaborate? I would love to hear what you think about that. Well, there's, well, I guess it depends on what what part of that I just think we're. How do you think they're incompatible? The way that I, I guess the way that I like to think of it is science helps me appreciate God's world as the way that I think about it.

8:29 It may make it helps me understand. It, but you're presuming there is a God. I am right? OK, well, we're already. On well, we can't, right? Right. Exactly. And I can't and and and God. And God is not scientifically provable because you can't. He's not subject to test or subject to. Our. Yeah, well, I mean, anything that's in a system that, you know, when there's a bigger system can't really make observation. Like soccer players, people in US metaphor, I guess I hear, is like people in like playing a sport can never understand what it's don't understand while they're playing what it's like to be a spectator of the sport. Because there's something else about the grand culminating experience of following the, you know, the team for X amount of time and investing X amount of money in a ticket and fighting traps to go there.

9:21 And you go there with family or friends and you buy a beer and you buy some snacks and you're sitting, you're watching the people that that you love do the thing that you know that that do do the best at what you love. And it's A and like what they're experiencing is something totally different than the people that are actually playing the game. Right. The people that are playing the game are not, Oh, you don't know? I would imagine. I mean, I think this sounds like a bunch of gobbledygook to me. It does. Forgive me. No, please. Of course, I mean, everyone's all entitled to, to our understanding that, that, that I, I, I think that bigger, there's smaller systems and bigger systems. I don't know the smaller systems can necessarily understand the bigger systems. But that doesn't imply that there's a God. It doesn't.

10:07 It just implies it is a bigger system. I don't know what the word I I does. I mean, how do you how do you know that the real God isn't Allah or Zeus? I don't. And by the way, I mean we could fill in any word you want for the word God. Like we could fill in, you know, what do you call it? The simulation, you know, the person that codes the simulation that you could fill in Zeus, you could fill in I I don't think it's Zeus. Maybe it is, but it's it could be most. It could be thought it was Zeus. Much of the world's. Just many humans. At one point in time, all smart people knew that Zeus existed. Yeah, it's true. You know what I mean? It's true. So, but I think, I mean, what I do appreciate is that religion provides comfort. I understand that.

10:47 And it provides what many people think is an explanation. And that's OK. I mean, I think it's, I, I wouldn't want to abolish religion. I think it's, you know, it can be very helpful for people who, you know, who are satisfied with those sorts of answers. Right. OK, But that sounds good to me. I like that, it's a very cool. Very cool area of evolutionary science as well. There's the cognitive science of religion and trying to understand, you know, the production of religious beliefs. I've been actually talk to people about that. If you could, if you want, if you can introduce me to anyone. I'm really, I'm really fascinated to learn about that kind of stuff, actually. Yeah, and I mean, one person in particular who's who's written a couple of books on it. He's also an evolutionary psychologist. His name is Jesse Bering.

11:32 He's, he wrote a book called The Belief Instinct and he isn't religious, although there are I, I actually do know there's a guy called Justin Barrett, who is a, an evangelical Christian who also is a wonderful cognitive scientist, you know, So again, there's no, So what I mean is that I know that there are people who are religious and also scientists, but again, that doesn't mean they're compatible. It just means that some people are really good at compartmentalizing. That might be what it is, by the way, it could very welcomely. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And I am interested in hearing exactly, you know, I'm more interested in hearing what you think because that's the point of this conversation. Great.

12:13 So now that we got that or at least talked about that a little bit, I want to talk about a lot of your research that you did because I was looking through it and I am fascinated by it. So do you want to, do we want to start from I guess the positive things and kind of work our way to a little bit of darker topics that you that you research, You want to start with the darker topics and work our way towards the lighter stuff? Well, I mean, I sort of, when people ask me, I, I sort of note that much of what I do is on the darker side. I, I actually, I mean, what maybe you've found things that are more positive. I, I guess I have done work like on personality traits, but generally I'm just, I'm much more interested in, you know, when things go terribly wrong and, you know, I'm, I'm very interested in, you know, when, you know, for example, with homicide and spousal killing, child killing, sexual jealousy, sexual coercion, rape.

13:09 These are the topics that I find most engaging. And so, yeah, I mean, I'm happy to to to talk about. Anyone of them? OK, so. So. Yeah. OK, great. So, so let's so so I mean, yeah. So we, I guess most of our work revolves around sexuality and relationships, I've noticed. For better, for worse in a, you know, And so I guess we could start with, do you want to explain? Maybe I know that sexuality drives everyone. And actually maybe I'll ask you this question. I've heard a quote, I don't remember who said it, but that everything in life is about sex except for sex, which is about power. Do you find that to be the case in your research?

13:50 No, I mean, I think that sex isn't about power. It has nothing to do with power or very little to do with power. That's a classic sort of, you know, yeah. I mean, I mean, you know, you hear these sorts of phrases like, you know, sexual portion of rape is not about sex. It's really about power. I think there's there's certainly no evidence for that. You know, that's, I mean it. Sex is about sex. I mean, men, when men rape women, they don't, you know, they take very great pains to almost always, you know, to insert their penis into the, into the vagina and then ejaculate. I mean, if it was about power, why not just bash her over the head and be done with it, right? So sex is very important in life and it's certainly very, it's a very important, you know, point of conflict between men and women in particular.

14:43 Now, much of the work that that we've done has been on heterosexual sex. We've done a little work on homosexual sex, much more on heterosexual sex. I mean, one could argue that reflects, you know, the proportional representation in the population. But we also find that, of course, sex generates a lot of conflict. Certainly there's, you know, requires a certain degree of cooperation. But much of what we've looked at with regard to sex is, you know, admittedly focused on male psychological machinery of mind that motivates sexual interest and the pursuit of sex. Much of that work has focused on long term relationships. So men and women who are in existing relationships.

15:23 And you know, some of the more recent work we've done has looked at, for example, has a has investigated various features of what I mentioned earlier is called sperm competition theory. And there's a huge amount of work, for example, in birds and other species, documenting that where there's a greater risk of so-called sperm competition, that is where a male in a relationship, where it may occur that his partner has sex with another man or another male, there appears to be evolved machinery of mind and evolved machinery of Physiology that for lack of the better way of putting it, corrects for that risk. In other words, response to that risk.

16:05 So what we find is that where there's where men and women spend a greater percentage of their time apart from their partners since they last had sex. This is in humans. Men report that their partners are more sexually attractive, more physically attractive. They report a greater urgency to have sex. And then when they do have sex, they report more frequent thrusting, copulatory thrusting, and also deeper thrusting. And it's not just men that report this, it's their partners that report this as well, right? So it's not self reporting. It's also almost objective. It's it's it's both ends of the spectrum. Sure, and so it helps when you have both partners reports and they match. Yeah. Now, perhaps one could argue that, well, they're both, you know, they're both self reportedly confused. Well, that may be the case, but they happen to be really In Sync with whatever they're confused about. But we've also gone, we've also extended this research in we have a fully functioning semen analysis lab. So we actually collect ejaculates from couples. So they have sex.

17:00 They, I mean, it's a pretty regimented process that's all fully approved. Actually, we follow a lot of the medical procedures and they have sex, they bring in the condom. Then we can do in a, as long as we get it within about an hour of ejaculation, we can get 17 clinical parameters in about 75 seconds. And so we can assess things like sperm number, sperm swimming speed, the track of the swim, we can see if it's relatively straight or more curvy. And so there we've, we've provided, we've found some evidence, we have a small sample size right now only about 35 couples have done this. But nevertheless, there's some indication that males, men, human males adjust their ejaculates as a function of the risk of sperm competition.

17:43 So they, they produce faster. Yeah, they produce faster swimming sperm when there's a greater risk of sperm competition. And sperm and so and and, and just to clarify, risk of sperm competition just means time spent away from your partner essentially, right? Well, we've actually assessed it in multiple different ways. One is percentage of time spent apart from partners since they last had sex. That's In other words, that's time that he can't account for what she's doing. We've also looked at number of male friends the the woman has and time spent with male friends, male colleagues or. All this has an impact on on the sperms, on the sperms, you know, speed travelling, everything. And number, yeah, the number of.

18:28 It goes up or down. It's. Amazing. Increases, Yeah, Increases speed. Speed is faster. The number of sperm is greater, which is what you would expect if males are registering greater competition. In other words, greater risk that another male has inseminated their partner announced to them and therefore in order to compete more effectively, they increase the number quality swimming speed of the sperm that they inseminate. It's really amazing. Now. This is, yeah, See, this is what I've just told you has been known in birds and bats and fish and all sorts of species for decades. But then it was the application to humans that I found, you know, particularly intriguing.

19:14 Yeah, because it almost links our intentionality and consciousness to our, to something that that we would, that we would argue is totally separate from us. You know, like, what would that have to do? Especially once it even leaves, you know, like once, once the sperm leaves our body, Like what? You know, it almost feels like it's got like it's an intention of its own to like, do its own thing. It's crazy. Wow. And that's, that's really why I ended up getting into this research because I just could not believe it that this kind of thing could be happening. It just feels so strange. And but on the other hand, you know, looking back at 2020 hindsight, we really shouldn't expect that humans are somehow, you know, unique in that sense. You know, there's no reason to suppose that we wouldn't also have been subject to the very same processes of natural and sexual selection.

20:04 Yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah, it's really, yeah. And I guess, and I guess you can by by observing that in other animals like birds or whatever you can are you of the mind that other animals are quote UN quote conscious the same that the same way that we are. No, no, I don't think so. I don't think that. We don't have like that same level of like competition or jealousy or whatever you want to call it that would like encourage, you know, the, the, the sperms travel or, you know, to travel differently. It almost feels like it would be amplified with people relative to like a bird or another animal, right? Yeah, I mean, it could be. I mean when you when you said conscious, we should probably, you know, define what you mean.

20:46 I mean I'm thinking of like self aware. I mean, I do think that animals, non humans, they're most non humans. Anything with a brain experiences pain, for example, you know, and there's, I have no doubt that birds experience something like what we call sexual jealousy. And the reason I think that is because they behave precisely as human males behave or very similarly so when a male bird. And there's actually work in birds looking at what they offhandedly referred to as domestic violence. I mean, when males observe their partners having sex with another male, males look like they're sexually jealous. They look like they're mad. They chase their partner down. They Peck at her.

21:26 They immediately, wow, force the copulation. Yeah. And I mean, do we know that they're sexually jealous? No. I mean, because we don't have any way of accessing what they're actually feeling. But all the behaviors, Sure. Looks like it, yeah. Yeah, the so-called make guarding behaviors and you know, sort of sexually jealous behaviors. So they're conscious in the sense that they're perceiving their partner, you know, involved with another male and appear not to be pleased with that and then behave accordingly. I don't know what they're actually feeling. I mean, we know that animals feel pain because we can see how they respond with with stimuli that we find painful. But to the extent that they're self aware, I mean, I don't, you know, I'm not sure about that. Yeah, yeah, me neither.

22:10 I'm curious about I'm I'm really curious about that stuff. I really am. I'm do from your eyes. Do you do you see the psychology of sex to be for the sake of procreation or or something more than that? Because I know that obviously biologically pretty deep, you know, it's pretty deeply ingrained to want to procreate. But I'm thinking about situations like this where people become start acting territorial and it becomes more about quote, UN quote territory and relationships rather than just procreation and how that have an impact on our psychology and therefore our behavior. Yeah, I think most sex and most things we look at with regard to sexual psychology and behavior.

22:57 Are you still there, Edra? Yeah, I'm here. I'm here. Yeah, OK. I would say most most of our psychology is not motivating behavior in order to procreate. I think procreation most of the time is a by product of our sexual psychology, which motivates us to pursue sex because it feels good, because we want it. I don't think that there's any reason to expect that that humans any more than birds are frequently are you know more are most of the time are thinking about making babies. I think making babies is a is a consequence of that psychology and of course making babies is the natural, excuse me, is the is the consequence over our evolutionary history that built the psychology.

23:44 But if you ask people, you know why they have sex. In fact, people have done this. Very rarely will, they say, in order to make a baby. Right. Very rarely they will, but that's over the course of, of millions of years of evolution and that you know, that, that the entire society has changed. But I mean, if, if you know, one of every two or three of your kids were dying, you know, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the desert of the forest somewhere, then you really needed to be able to, you know, pass your jeans on and, and, and in as many ways as possible. Well, no, absolutely. I mean, the, the, you know, the production of offspring is of course what's selected for the machinery of mind that motivates our interest and pursuit of sex.

24:28 But sex itself is pursued because it feels good, because we want it, because we want to be closer to our partner. I mean, very occasionally in humans, of course, people will explicitly say, and sometimes more frequently people will say, I want to make a baby. But it's not necessary that there's a that people are conscious of the evolutionary logic that built their psychology any more than we expect birds ever think about making a baby. I don't think birds do think about making a baby. Birds have sex because you know, they can or because it feels good. I mean, we don't you know, know exactly why, but. Right, Yeah, right. I would imagine just just from speculation, just, you know, if I, if I were to speculate and you were to lay out this information to me, I, I feel like one, one of the things that I would conclude would be that procreation is important.

25:20 Passing on your genes is important. Therefore, we, you know, we would evolve or develop in a way that it, that, that act would be as pleased, as pleasant and enjoyable as possible as to encourage that behavior. And then we've kind of got caught up in the weeds of how it feels rather than understanding the root of why we're of the root of why it is that we're doing it. Yeah, I see what you're saying. It's just a speculation just from what we're talking about. Yeah. I mean, I guess I would say that procreation doesn't have to be important in order for those mechanisms to have been built by natural selection. Important in the sense that people care about it, People care about it.

26:13 The desire to have children isn't necessary in order to have children. You, you have to have sex to have children. And So what you expect natural selection to do is to build machinery of mind that motivates a, you know, a consistent and persistent pursuit of sex, not a consistent and persistent pursuit of having babies. That's not necessary. It's having sex. I mean, I'm not denying that. I mean, there are plenty of, you know, people want to have babies, they report they want to have babies, but even people that report they don't want to have children still sometimes have children. So at any rate, I, I guess there's a distinction between, you know, the process of, of natural selection and the product of natural selection. The process is differential reproduction over evolutionary history.

27:03 You know, some of our ancestors or those of our those early humans that were ancestors more were more successful at having sex and producing children, but that that that's what built, you know, whatever. Right now the the final product is that we enjoy it. Yes, yes. Which isn't to deny that over evolutionary time. Yeah, which isn't to deny that over over evolutionary time, that enjoyment led to babies more often than not. Right, right, right, right. But it but we still enjoy sex without having babies. Certainly. I mean, I mean, we know, we know that all over the world people are right because the amount of people, you know, population keeps dropping. What do you think about that?

27:46 Right? The. Population. Are dropping, Yeah, yeah, I mean, I guess it I mean it's still increasing in in many parts of the world, sub-Saharan Africa, for example, you know, population is exploding. Other parts of the world like Northern Europe, for example, I mean, you have a population decrease Japan. Korea, China overall. Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, it's decreasing. And many people do wring their hands about it because in particular, you know, if you look at, you know, national level, you know, intelligence, for example, people fret about, you know, the, you know, the people who are the least intelligent or the least well off or the least capable are the ones having most babies. And people do fret about this.

28:34 But I guess I really don't because, I mean, humans will go extinct like every other species went extinct. But we're not going to be around forever. You know, if you play out the, you know, the, you know, the astronomy, I mean, the Earth will go careening into the sun in about 5 billion years. And none of this will make a difference anyways. Right, right, right, right, right. Unless we find a way, I really don't. Travel. I guess. Yeah, perhaps. And I'll be long dead before that. Yeah, exactly. It's a, it's a lot, it's a lot of speculation, I imagine. Can you talk about the, the marriage research that you did, some of the marriage research that you did, especially over the course of time and you want to you want to explain just some of the studies that you, the research that you've done and what you've, what you've noticed. Sure.

29:19 So some of the earlier work I did, and really I've continued doing it, is with married couples in part. I mean, there's nothing magical about being married. I mean, it just it, it, it, it's a level of commitment that sort of standardizes, you know, who's involved in the research. And so we had a, a sample of married couples we followed over the years. And in one study, my colleague and I, this is my former graduate advisor, David Buss, we collected data on married couples. And one of the things we looked at was make guarding behavior. And this was actually inspired by research on nonhumans on this mate guarding behavior that men and women do to thwart their partners interest in another, another partner, for example.

30:06 And we found that for example, men's mate guard. We we measure both men's mate guarding and women's mate guarding, the things they do to stop their partner from getting involved with someone else. And we asked them to self to self report. We also asked them to report their own mate guarding, their partners mate guarding and then we had them interviewed by an independent interviewer, each member of the couple. And what we found is that men's mate guarding in these married couples varied with their partner's age and physical attractiveness. So men who are married to younger, more physically attractive women engaged in a lot more mate retention according to themselves, according to their partners and according to independent interviewers.

30:48 But here's what was interesting about that is that it wasn't women's independently assessed attractiveness, the interviewer assessments of attractiveness. It was what men thought their partners attractiveness was. So men who thought their partners were very attractive or engaged in much more mate retention behavior. Now, on the other hand, women also engage in mate retention behavior. There's no doubt about that. And we found that men's, excuse me, women's mate retention, that is attempts to stop their husband from getting involved with another woman. Women's mate retention varied with their, with their husband's age also and with their husband's social status and career trajectory. So women who are married to older men and men who were higher in social status and had a more positive career trajectory, their their wives were investing much more time and effort in guarding them and in thwarting other women. What kind of behavior?

31:42 How does that manifest for men and women? How does that? How does that? How? What does the guardian behavior manifest as? Yeah, that's a great question. So we've had, we assessed it with it's literally called the Mate retention inventory. And it's a, it's an inventory that we we've used with, in dozens of studies now across multiple cultures. And it assesses this, The longer version assesses 100, about 100 specific acts that men or women can do that is with the purpose of stopping a partner from getting involved with someone else. And so this includes things like direct guarding. We call it direct guarding. It's, you know, calling a partner to see if she's where she said she was, stopping by a partner's place of employment to see if she's.

32:27 Yeah, OK Rifling through a partner's mail or e-mail. It also includes things like concealment. Concealment. This is refusing to let a partner go out somewhere to a party or to spend time with friends. These are other things that both party, both men and women do. So it can be as obvious as, you know, tracking a partner and following them to things like. There's another type of mate retention that involves putting a partner down, you know, telling them they'll never find anything, anyone better than you. Or now a more positive, a more positive mate retention tactic is what's called displaying love and care. You know, telling a partner that you love them and, you know, giving them gifts, taking them out to a nice event, basically demonstrating emotional commitment.

33:17 Yeah. Do do you have you have you been able to observe or have you ever wondered whether the positive or negative retention behaviors was more was more beneficial? Like which one was a better method to keep a partner, you know faithful? Yeah, that's a that's an excellent question. We that yeah, I mean there's a lot more work recently on breaking these up into benefit provisioning tactics and cost inflicting tactics, you know, making things better to keep them here or inflicting costs, you know, if they are stray. I mean, I think generally speaking, the, I mean, well, what I can say is it, it appears that most men and women only resort to the negative stuff if the positive stuff is either isn't working or if they don't have the ability to display the positive stuff.

34:09 So for example, we know that men without access to resources cannot invest resources in a partner. So it's men who are economically poorer who are the ones who are much more likely to use, for example, physical violence as a means of retaining their partner. I mean, it's all they have. I'm not, I'm not excusing it, but I'm saying men who can't invest resources don't. And so they'll use physical force and they'll use psychological terrorism. Yeah, yeah. The short answer is the positive stuff works better if they the. Positive, right, That's good. That's good. By the way, I wonder if, and is there a correlation? And I guess unless this is just, you know, based on individual preferences, whether someone prefers that more emotional or physical type of, you know, for example, right.

34:58 Like if I can't afford to take my wife on a vacation every six months, you know, which a lot of people can then cannot rather then then I might find it more, I might find it more beneficial to say, hey, you know, we don't we can't go on vacations all the time, but we're going to have, we're going to go on walks together to have my phone aside. We're going to go on walks together and just it's going to be me and you time, you know, aside from the kids, aside from everything, just me and you. And we're going to do this once a week. Do we? Do we, do we do? Have you observed that there would be a difference between, you know, monetary or physical as opposed to emotional type of reinforcement reinforcing behavior? That's a great question. I mean, the short answer is no, Those can be just as effective. Those can be incredibly effective. I mean, displays of love and care are not mutually exclusive to or don't necessarily go with displays of economic resources. For some men or women, display of economic resources is very effective because of course they have those economic resources. But if they don't, there are other ways to invest that don't involve, you know, the negative or cost inflicting sorts of behaviors like investing time, effort, investing intimate feelings in the sense of sharing with a partner and spending time with a partner.

36:16 I mean, these can be and are and are, generally speaking, incredibly valuable and are perceived as a signal of commitment, a partner's interest in spending time and, you know, writing poems and, you know, giving small gifts that are really, you know, the kinds of gifts that we say, well, it comes from the heart. Yeah, and that all works out. Have you and and as and as time goes on. So this you, you, you, you, you have emphasized that this is particularly when we're younger, people are younger and people are, you know, younger, I guess how they perceived attractiveness. And I guess it's almost like social currency, how much competition they would be in your people would be interested in your partner.

36:59 As time goes on, what changes? What we have followed up are married couples. We actually assessed them first in their newlywed year and then we we followed up with them three years later to see how things were going. And unfortunately, non trivial portion of them had already divorced or had separated. But we ended up, you know, basically reconnecting with about half of the couple of the couples. And for those that were still involved, First of all, the main one of the main findings is that for both men and women, mate retention generally decreases over time, much less so for women than for men, which in some sense isn't particularly surprising because we know that, you know, make value, the so-called, you know, attractiveness as a mate on the quote mating market decreases generally speaking, decreases more for women than for men, given that women's mate value is more tied up in their physical attractiveness and in their youth.

38:03 On the other hand, men can be a much riskier investment. I mean, men's mate retention can increase dramatically. Excuse me. Men's mate value, so-called mate value can increase dramatically over time as they achieve, you know, status and reputation resources, but can also plummet. We know that number one reason that women report divorcing their husbands is he lost a job. And that's true in over across 160 cultures. The number one reason that women seek divorce from a partner is lack of financial resources. And so those men who whose status doesn't increase as expected are at risk of their partner leaving. But there are men who in fact their status increases and unfortunately, that's also a predictor of divorce.

38:48 When men register, perhaps accurately, that they have, you know more validity to attract a younger and. Attractive. Partner. Wow. So on one hand, the same thing that makes you more desirable to the woman also makes from the man's perspective, makes the woman less desirable to to him. Wow. So what's the how do you, how do you resolve that conflict? Yeah, it's ridiculous. That sounds crazy. Well, I mean, couples do stay married couples navigate, you know, you know, these sorts of issues. Often times women will become more interested, for example, in, you know, role-playing in sex, you know, in, you know, wearing particular outfits that their husband, you know, wants them to wear.

39:43 I mean, they'll, they'll be a little more open to sexual adventuresome, you know, you know, activities and, and, you know, on the other hand, I mean, I don't mean to suggest that relationships never last. Of course they do. I mean, most don't, at least in the Western world, most end in divorce, about 60% of them. But that means that 40% remain married. I mean, also couples become more tolerant of their spouses infidelities. I mean, women become, by their own reports, much more tolerant of their spouses infidelities as they age. Really. Men don't seem to. Oh, yeah, Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. I think in part they're registering that they don't have to put up with this when they're younger, but as they age, they have less leverage. That's not to suggest that all women are more tolerant as they age, but that's a general finding, you know? Yeah.

40:38 So that's another way that the conflict has been resolved or can be resolved. Yeah. But OK. But it is, I mean, there's no doubt about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I it's so interesting. All this is all this is so interesting. When you, when you're doing this research, how do you go about it? What's the? What's the process from your end? Well, with the couples we actually, we begin by, I mean, we've done it in a variety of ways. In fact, in that study, we actually advertised in a local newspaper for interest in this was many years ago when that was much more common, you know, to advertise in a paper, but you can also advertise online for, you know, you're looking for newlywed couples to participate in research and you know, you stay typically if you can pay them or not. So some of the work that we've done in our lab recently where we had the couples, we've tracked them, they came into the lab 7 * / a period of several months and we actually paid them at the end of their, their participation, we were able to pay them about $200.

41:43 Now that's not a whole lot of money. Mostly you get couples who are very interested in research and you know, there are lots of biases that you accidentally build into it. I mean, generally you're, you're bringing in couples who are, you know, are generally a little more intelligent, they're more interested in relationships. They're probably have a better relationship than the couples that don't participate. So you always have to be, you know, you know, you always have to respect, you know, the, the possibility that you, that you've introduced by us, but you simply, you know, you can put out a, a broad net and then you have them call the lab and indicate their interests. And then typically we'll talk to them and, you know, and make sure they meet all the various criteria.

42:24 And then we'll bring them into the lab. And then typically we'll separate them, put one, put the husband in one room and the wife in another room, have them complete some intake inventories like personality and conflict and relationship. And then we'll bring them back together and we'll schedule a follow up appointment. So it's, I mean, I'm fortunate to have, you know, many really excellent graduate students and undergraduate students who do a lot of the interviews and the intakes and in fact do a lot of the calling and scheduling. But it's, you know, it's, there's really no glamour. It's just a lot of, you know, just sort of persistence and hard work and bringing couples back in and scheduling them. And so that's what we do. I mean, would that work that just involves, you know, having them complete various surveys about themselves and about their partner and then we interview them.

43:12 You know, we have trained research assistants that interview the couples. Can I? How often do the self surveys and the interviews end up being contradictory to one another? I feel like that would happen pretty often because the way that you'd want to express yourself on a piece of paper might turn out differently in the way you're talking to someone when you're talking face to face. Well, I mean, especially if you're not careful, it can be terribly conflicting. But we know, for example, that there are, there are certain areas that we have to be exceptionally careful at how we ask the questions and we have to give them, the participants every reassurance that there's no way their partner is going to find out what they said. For example, we never have participants put their name on anything.

43:57 They only have a code. They know their code and we know their code, but but basically nobody else could possibly know that their responses were their responses. So we have to do that. We also have them complete their their surveys and then put them in an envelope, a nondescript envelope. That envelope is in place in a box with other nondescript sealed envelopes. Amazing. You know, typically they'll mix them in and that's fine. We assure them that we will not be able to determine who gave which response. I mean, ultimately we have a separate coding sheet that that assigns each individual person to a particular code.

44:38 And that's only in one location. So as a matter of fact, people looking at the data don't know who is who. You have to have access to the specific code. And that's actually kept in a locked office on a password protected computer. So we have to do all these things so that people will be more likely to be honest. And we, you know, look, there's no doubt that some people lie. Some people won't say they were unfaithful when they were unfaithful, and we understand that. And, you know, we can only do everything we can possibly do to encourage them to be honest. But our results generally line up with the results of of lots of other research on infidelity and conflict. We're not finding anything peculiar. You know, You know, much of the work indicates that about 30% of men and about 25% of women are unfaithful to their spouse at some point in the relationship.

45:28 And that's basically what we find about one in three men and about one in four women. How do you, sorry, what's the, how do you determine or how do you determine unfaithfulness? Is that physical contact? Is that emotional, you know, is that a date with another woman? And well, how do you, how do you determine that? Great question. Well, we actually ask it in several different ways, in a variety of different ways from a continuum from, you know, in terms of physical contact. It's, you know, we ask about kissing, we ask about holding hands all the way up to, you know, actually having sex, but including everything in between.

46:12 So we actually break it down into specific behaviors. Similarly, we separate out questions dealing with emotional infidelity. And so we ask about, you know, you know, time spent with another person. We ask about feeling in love with another person. We ask about did you share secrets of that person? Did you spend money on that person? And so we separate out as a broad, as a broad brush stroke, we actually separate sexual infidelity from emotional infidelity. In fact, there's a lot of work on sexual and emotional infidelity and on sex differences in responses to sexual and emotional infidelity with with women in every culture for which we've collected these data. Women are far more upset by a partner's emotional infidelity than by a partner's sexual infidelity. The reverse is true for men.

47:02 Men are far more upset by a partner's sexual infidelity than by a partner's emotional infidelity. Fascinating. So fascinating. So, you know, it's so funny 'cause I earlier, maybe about a year ago, I was actually almost exactly a year ago, I was in between houses and I got an air, my wife and I got an Airbnb in Orlando for, you know, a month and it was a lot of fun. And you know, you took our, you took our kids to Disney a couple of times in the water parks. It is cute. And one time I was out by myself in Downtown Disney listening to some live Irish music, which I love, and watching some basketball. And I was sitting at the bar and there's a woman that was 2 that was two seats over for me. There's a scene in between US and she was getting up to use the restroom. And I pulled out the chair for her just to let her just to just help her out, just to get out.

47:50 And she started talking, you know, and we started talking. And I had not, you know, engaged, you know, with another woman, you know, one-on-one at a bar scene like that since I've gotten married. And the only thing that came across my mind was just sheer panic. Just, you know, I'm playing at my wedding ring the whole time. And I'm like, how do I give every indication that like, you know, I'm not, I'm not sure. I'm not, I'm not trying to do anything like this. But you know, I, I'm sure there's a good amount of emotional self, you know, emotional self regulating or self censoring that comes from that comes from both ends, I imagine, right.

48:34 Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, one of the things that both members of both men and women do is they they simply avoid any possible, you know, situation where they might find, you know, themselves talking to someone else. I mean, in fact, one of the one of the more interesting and memorable findings in in a lot of this work is that the best predictor of women's infidelity, either sexual or emotional, is their, their relationship satisfaction, how satisfied they are with their current relationship. So women who are less satisfied are far more likely to be ungrateful. On the other hand, for men, the the best predictor of men's infidelity is opportunity. No way. And so really, yeah, just if they have the opportunity. And that's why what you find is many men, many married men, explicitly avoiding situations where they might have the opportunity.

49:26 They sort of, you know, stop it before it starts. Yeah, yeah. I don't even, I, I don't even know what, I don't even know how it responds, if it even got more than like that emotion that, you know, that first initial conversation. But I, I'm assuming I would just probably just shut down out of guilt. I, I don't know. But I, I guess that could lead us to another conversation which I was actually really interested about the rape and murder study that you did. And I guess you kind of already kind of provided an answer to me because I was going to, I was when I was reading, when I was doing the research and I was just thinking while I was reading, I would have imagined that people would be less inclined to murder after a rape if your behavior is driven by the need to procreate, you know, and I guess we already covered that. That's not what necessarily drives your behavior, you know, so it's not necessary.

50:24 So, so, So what was? So can you tell me a little bit about that research that you're doing? Because I mean, it seems like we already got some, you know, you answered that, that aspect of my curiosity about that, about the topic, but you want to just maybe dive into a little bit. Sure. Yeah. So, well, we know that. I mean, there there's of course, a lot of work, a lot of unfortunately, it's controversial because people, I think, I think it's loaded up with lots of misunderstandings. But if you look at who is most likely to be the victim of rape, it's young women. It's young single women in particular. Now, one could argue, well, that's because men are trying to inflict, you know, power on younger women.

51:05 But I mean, the exercise of power will be so much easier, you know, if you would try to overpower an older woman. I mean, why is it, you know, I don't think it's, it's incidental that men target younger women, younger, more physically attractive women who are, who also happen to be single. They're single. They're less likely to have male partners around them. They're easier to prey, basically. So what drives, you know, men's men who are raping, you know, is not is there attraction to younger women who don't have a lot of men around them or have any men around them? And by their reports and by victims reports, women, younger women are more at risk. That's not to suggest that older women are not raped. Of course they are.

51:53 But it's just statistically speaking, the risk of rape is much, much, much higher for younger women. I mean, if you look at the risk, you know, risk of rape, it just plummets after about, you know, the mid 20s. And I think that's an indication of male sexual interest, not male interest in, you know, inflicting their power. Because after all, it would be much easier to overpower a child or an elderly woman than it is to overpower a young adult woman who typically puts up much greater fight than, you know, a young child or, you know, a much older woman now. But you asked specifically about. They're connected with murder, yeah.

52:33 It is a very interesting question. Occasionally men who rape women do murder them. I mean, it's first of all, rape is relatively rare, stranger rape. But let's just so it does occur. No, of course, no doubt about it. But rarely, sometimes men then kill the women that they've just raped. And that seems dramatically opposed to the idea that rape is about procreation. Well, that's because rape's not about procreation. I mean, historically, our ancestors were those men who did rape when the occasion presented itself and the the perceived costs weren't as great as the perceived benefits. Or I mean, bottom line is our ancestors were those men who did occasionally rape. That's the argument.

53:20 Our ancestors are not those men who avoided sexual coercion at all costs, because then they would have been less successful. We might say they were morally better, but that's irrelevant. I think that men sometimes kill women that they rape because of course dead people can't report them, you know. Do you think? They need to clean up your mess. Cover it up. Yes, yes. I don't think they're yes, I mean, by their own reports, men who are caught having raped and then murdered women. They report that they killed them because they didn't want to get caught. Right. And I guess that goes back to the cost, the cost benefit that you they were discussing, you know that.

54:03 Oh, I can't hear you. We lost the audio Ephraim. I'm sorry about that. You see, that happens again. I'm sorry. Here it is can. You hear me? You're back. On, you're back on. Great. I'm just turning off the camera now. Can you hear me? Yeah, I hear you. I'm turning off the camera to prevent that again. OK. Good. So we're talking so I guess so I guess it goes back to the cost benefit that you were mentioning that, you know, for the rape.

54:46 The benefit obviously is what you is, is you know, the, the rape, yes, you know, the, the sexual act. And then the cost would be that you'd have to pay presumably for the rest of your life. If you you know, if if this person you know, outs you. And so you have a better chance at getting away with it with a leaving a body behind than you do with a living person running around talking about how they got raped. Yes. I mean, that's the bottom line, Yes. And then, well, I should also say that I mean, of course, for most of our evolutionary history, rapists weren't imprisoned. There weren't prisons, but they were tracked down by the woman's husband or the woman's brothers or the woman's father. And it was not uncommon for rapists or suspected rapists to be murdered by the close family members of the woman. And so yet yet again, another reason to I'm not separate issue from the moral concerns.

55:50 Of course, another reason to kill her, you know, if but So what I think is selected for is male sexual interest in attractive young women. Another you know, combine that with male evolved psychology to use aggression and force to take what one wants, whether that's sex or a shiny object or money, and the end product is or can be rape. Right, right. Right. Right, man. Yeah. And I mean, and that was the way that people use, I mean, when you hear the term pillage and plunder, I mean, that's what you'd do in times of war. And when you would, when you'd conquer, you'd conquest or come to a new town, you'd kill the men and take all the women, you know.

56:34 And that was, I'm assuming that not all these relationships were consensual, you know, not even close. Oh, right. So I guess it's a. So would you call that a learned evolutionary behavior? Well, I mean, I don't think so in the sense that I mean we know that humans aren't the only species that you know, that engages in rape following overpowering of another group. I mean we know chimpanzees do this. Chimpanzees will kill males, but will will keep females for their own. But they won't kill them after they rape them. And I don't know that they've ever sorry. But the chimpanzees won't kill the the females after they rape them I imagine, right?

57:22 No, they most often will keep them and they'll become members of their group, which often happens in humans too, of course. I mean hunter gatherers, you know, who compete with one another, who get into conflict. They, in fact, they are less likely to kill the young, the young women, they, they, they will rape them, but they will also bring them back into their tribe and, and include them as members of their tribe. And they'll, you know, be sometimes second or third wives, for example. And they won't, it's less common to kill the women, of course, they'll kill the, the boy children and they'll kill the men, but they'll, they'll leave for their own use, you know, the adult women and, and even the, the young females.

58:05 And that's true also in other species, at least other primates like chimpanzees, for example. So anyways, what I mean is, I mean part partly it could be certainly learning is evolved. On the other hand, like in the modern Western world, we, you know, the the US Army, for example, and Western armies spend a huge amount of time and effort saying don't rape. When we go in there, you better not rape, do not rape. There's you will be court martialed. You will get in trouble. And still, you know, you know, modern, you know, warriors, do they engage in rape? It's it, it's so not only is it not taught or at least at some level, but it's actually legally, you know, forbidden.

58:54 Have you, have you, have you, have you looked into or researched the type of personalities that are more inclined to rape or the type of or, or, or the behaviour that, or the, you know, the circumstances that would lead to someone raping? Other than obviously, you know, like I understand, again, we're talking about the context of, you know, tribal wars, you know, from, you know, from, you know, anywhere from the relatively just relatively distant past. But today, you know, you're walking around the city or you're walking around Manhattan or you're walking around Miami, You know, are there indications personality wise or, you know, you know, just that someone would be more inclined to behave? Is, is there, is it aggression, Is it rejection? Is it, is it isolation?

59:36 What what causes someone to be to to to take take their frustrations out on another human being in that, in that form? That's an excellent question and I think in order to answer it, we have to distinguish different types of rape. So for example, there's think there's we've done a lot of work on spousal rape or partner rape, but there's also stranger rape, which I think should be distinguished from acquaintance rape. And so, for example, the work on acquaintance rape. So this is where you know the men and women, that the men who rape, the women, they know each other and they've actually maybe even had dates before, maybe they've even seen each other before. Those men who engage in acquaintance rape, they are typically rated as the most attractive men. They typically have more sex than other men. They're sort of the so-called players. And I think what's going on there is that these men don't think they're raping, You know, they basically think, well, surely she can't say no because who would say no to me? I'm, I'm handsome and muscly and I, I have sex with all kinds of women.

1:00:42 This she can't really mean no. Maybe this time no means no must mean yes. That's one kind of rape, the acquaintance rape. And that's why that's there's a lot of work showing that men who are more narcissistic, more extroverted, you know, these are men who are more likely to be the acquaintance rapists. They're also typically they display quote good genes. They're super attractive. And I think what's going on, like I said, is that they they just can't imagine that she really doesn't want to have sex or they think it's some kind of game that she's playing with him and it's not. And so those are one type of rapists, the stranger rapists. There's other work suggesting that men who, you know, sort of jump out of the bushes rapists.

1:01:24 These are guys who are basically losers. And they basically have so-called disadvantaged men who basically are ugly or poor or have nothing going for them. And the only way they're ever going to have sex, as far as they've determined and, and maybe realistically is to force it. And so these are the, these are often referred to as competitively disadvantaged men. Another way of saying loser, which is a very different kind of rapist from the, you know, the acquaintance rapist. And then with partner rapes there that's, you know, we, we've studied partner rape or spousal rape. And there it, it's predicted by, by many of the things that predict, you know, perceptions of, of increased risk of, of sperm competition. So, for example, men who have raped their partners typically report very high suspicions that their partners had sex with other men, sometimes multiple times. And sometimes this is pathological and sometimes it's it's accurate.

1:02:30 And again, that's not to justify their rape, it's to understand why they would do this. Yeah, I don't think any, I don't think anyone. It's none of this is none of this is justifications. It's all it's all just getting to the root cause of behavior, I think. Yeah, yes. And I think that's a common misunderstanding, though. People think that if you're getting an explanation for something that somehow you're justifying it. But that's like blaming oncologists for cancer. It's a good question. It's a good clue by the way, you. Know Word. Well, yeah, you mean, I mean, I shouldn't have to say that. I have three daughters, two sisters, a mother. I'm not interested in advocating rape. But see, that's what people sometimes think, especially if they take an evolutionary perspective. They they then think that, oh, so you're saying that because it's natural, then it's OK, just let boys be boys? Hell no, as far as I'm concerned. But if we want to stop it, we better figure out what's causing it.

1:03:32 Yeah, that's what I that, that's the way, that's the way that I look at things too. And I think that it's, I mean, you know, I mean, we've tried, I feel like you've tried the other way and the other way just doesn't work, you know, because you end up just running in circles and cutting out, you know, and you and, and you just end up do, you know, making the same mistakes or allowing the same kind of, you know, people to kind of bubble up the same type of personalities to bubble up to the surface. If you don't, if you don't understand what's causing that to happen. Yeah. So. Yes, I mean a general principle. I mean please. Please finish the thought, yeah. OK, well, my, my general thought was, I mean, as a scientist, it's, you know, as a researcher, my working assumption is that it's always better to know more than to know less. Yeah, yeah, definitely is, is, do you consider, do you consider manipulation to require a good idea? Sorry, I, I think there's a little bit of a, what do you call it?

1:04:33 I think there's a little bit of a delay, which is why we're answering each other at different points. Do is, is manipulation considered rape? If you guilt someone into something, if you manipulate them, if you use your words or your or, or or whatever to, you know, let's say my, I come home, God, you know, let's just say someone comes home and their wives are tired and they're feeling good and they and they talk their wives into it. Come on, please. Come on. You know, I'm not, you know, or you know, it's been so long, blah, blah. And the woman finally goes whatever, you know, and like they don't feel, especially if you're an associate or a, or a, or a spouse, right?

1:05:13 How do you what? How do you Where do we draw the lines for what's considered rape as opposed to not? I mean, that is an excellent question. And in fact, the way we've developed a measure of sexual coercion and it's called the sexual coercion and intimate relationship scale. And it includes, yes, we do ask about physical force, but it includes all sorts of things like commitment, manipulation, you know, saying that, Oh, well, you know, if you love me, you would hinting at, you know, at the fact that other wives have sex more often with their husbands than we do. I mean, we include we, we, we refer to that as sexual coercion.

1:05:54 That is a type of coercion. Now, you might not, I mean, I think rape flat out physical force, I think is, you know, is sort of the, is the at the extreme end. But there's all sorts of manipulative things that men do and it's typically men seeking sex from women. But if there's all, if there's a whole range of, of manipulative tactics that men use by their own reports. I mean, we actually developed this inventory by asking men and women, what are some of the things that men do to manipulate you to have sex. And we or, or we ask men, what are some of the things that you do to encourage your, your partner to have sex with you? And then we developed this inventory that has this, you know, it's a very broad assessment of sexually coercive verbal behaviors, you know, emotional manipulation, you know, all sorts of, you know, everything, you know, short of physical force.

1:06:46 Now we do, we do ask about physical force as well. But far more couples engage in, you know, sexually coercive, you know, verbalizations and behaviors. Then then actually for sex, I mean, that's fairly rare, forcing sex. I mean, men do it, of course, but you know, that's the last resort. And and even then men, you know, the vascular men don't force it. What's the difference between the the self reported methods for men and women to try to coerce their their spouse into relationships into into having sex?

1:07:32 Unless they're pretty similar? I mean, unless they're pretty similar. Well, I mean, we really haven't. I mean, the truth is that it's 99.9% of the time. If there's any coercion going on, it's women. Excuse me, it's men who are attempting the coercion. And that's in part because women are the gatekeepers to when sex occurs. I mean, outside of rape, it's women who decide when sex will happen, under what circumstances, under what conditions. And that's true in dating relationships just as certainly as it's true in long term married relationships. I mean, we've, we've done work on conflict and relationships and the number one consistently the most we've studied what we call sources of anger, irritation and upset.

1:08:21 And the number one most upsetting thing that husbands report that their wives do is withhold sex of all the things that their wife could do or say or, or, or how they could behave. I mean, the number one thing that men report is she withholds sex. She won't give sex when I want it. And that tells you something about, you know, about male psychology and about, in contrast, about female psychology. I mean, the short answer is females rarely have to coerce sex. I mean, sex happens when they say it happens. Yeah, yeah. That could attest to that.

1:09:01 Well, well, on the other side of that, the truth of the matter is that we really haven't studied female use of sexually coercive behaviors, in part because we just have not seen that as an issue of conflict where women are attempting to coerce sex from their husbands. Right. Do you think that falls under the same kind of category as, you know, the people that say that like, you know, that like when a high school kid sleeps with his, his, you know, a guy sleeps with his, you know, hot math teacher, it's not the same thing as like a guy, a male math teacher sleeping with his 17 year old female student. You know, you think that that meaning they're obviously both, you know, not obviously not acceptable in any kind of way, shape or form, but there's almost seems to be a different type of like response.

1:09:53 There is a different type of response when society hears that a, you know, a 16 year old, you know, high schooler got laid. Then when the 17 year old girl got, you know, you know, stuck with her math teacher, do you think that it's going to that, that, you know, we so even though we look at it differently, we don't say, you know, that obviously it does have the same kind of consequences. Do you think that that we're going to that there's going to be research that shows that there's going to be a little bit that there's going to be different manipulation tactics that women that women use to get sex when they don't want, you know, when their husbands don't necessarily want it is my question. I, I don't know. I don't know if I'm phrasing my question well enough.

1:10:34 I don't know if I'm making myself clear. Yeah, no, I mean, well, I would say that. I mean, I don't doubt that women, if you just take married couples, I I have no doubt that women sometimes do coerce sex. They must. But my guess is their tactics are likely to be less refined, less exacting, less, you know, because they don't have to be. I mean, women, generally speaking, compared to men, just don't have to engage in the kind of intense coercion to convince their partner to have sex with them. I mean, men are much less, well, men are much more interested in sex under any circumstance, under any condition and with any person.

1:11:25 I mean, they're, they're far less, you know, men are far less. What's the word choosy selective about when and where and with whom they have sex? And that's just not men. That's that's all males, right? The vast majority of males across the animal species. Right, right, right, right. But you're, yeah, you mentioned the the issue of the teacher, you know, especially the student. Well, I was going to say that. I mean, of course, legally it's the same thing, but I think you're absolutely right. It's psychologically and sociologically it's a very different activity in part. In fact, you know, there's often, you know, groans about, you know, the 16 year old that had sex with his hot 25 year old teacher. It's like, where's the crime?

1:12:15 Which you couldn't say ever. You know with, with, you know in the reverse scenario. Right. Yeah. I think it's interesting. What is some, what's some research that you're interested in now that you're going to be that you're looking to kind of build on and what's some stuff that you're looking to study in the future? OOP you cut out a little bit. I'm sorry about that. I said. What are some stuff that you're working on that you're interested in working on in the future and what are you working on now? What kind of research? Sure. So, well, let's see, we have several different projects ongoing right now.

1:12:59 And most of these, in fact, all of them are, you know, projects that graduate students are conducting for their either their master's thesis or their doctoral dissertation and or just collaborative work we're doing with other labs. One of the things we're doing right now is we're looking at, I have a student who's interested in homicide, suicide, spousal homicide, suicide. So we know, for example, that in particular, we know that and we're talking here about men who kill their their female partners, their female wives, excuse me, men who kill their wives. We know that about half the time they subsequently then kill themselves. And this is in Western countries. We don't really have a lot of data for non Western countries. This is, you know, police recorded crimes and so forth. And so one of my students is investigating whether or not there might be differentiating factors between men who kill their partners and don't kill themselves and men who kill their partners and do kill themselves. And what's weird or not weird.

1:14:01 But what's interesting is that, again, about half the time men kill themselves after killing their partner. Half the time they don't. And so she's very interested in understanding, you know, in an exploratory way, Why is this? Why do some men kill themselves and why do some men not? So that's one project that's that's going on. I also have another student who she's very interested in understanding why she's looking at a sample of intimate partner homicides. So these are and in this case, it's again men who have killed their partners. And one of the things she's become very interested in is understanding why non fatal strangulation is such a terribly good predictor of eventually killing a partner.

1:14:44 So what we find is that one of the best predictors of a man killing his partner is a previous report that he choked her out, you know, that he choked her to the point of she lost consciousness. When men non fatally strangle their partners, that is they're not dead, they choke them out, that is a terribly good predictor that eventually he's going to kill her. And so she's very interested in understanding why is that? Is it a peculiarly strong indicator of male sexual jealousy? Perhaps. And, you know, and we know that male sexual jealousy is a leading cause of wife battering and wife homicide around the world. And so she's looking at it from the perspective of male sexual jealousy, the psychology of sexual jealousy, and why choking a partner out in particular, hands on the throat, why that's such a good predictor of eventually killing the woman.

1:15:33 So that's another project. Yeah. Why can Why would you assume that it's about jealousy as opposed to the, I guess, perceived pleasure of violence with sex? Oh God, I'm sorry for him. I couldn't hear what you were saying. I said, why do you, why do we assume that it's part it's because of jealousy as opposed to pleasure associated with violence and sex? You're you're there's no the audio cut out. Todd, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate your time. Sorry I had a little bit of technical issues towards the end of that, but this was really, really, really insightful and fascinating and I really learned a lot and I really appreciate the time. I hope to be able to connect soon and record another episode sometime down the line.

1:16:27 Thank you so much and I look forward to being in touch. Have a good one.