Modern Wisdom - #1041 - Dr Debra Lieberman - Why Don’t You Have Sex With Your Sister?

Episode Date: January 3, 2026

Dr. Debra Lieberman is an evolutionary psychologist, professor, and researcher. Why don’t we feel sexual attraction toward our siblings or close family? Evolution seems to have hard-wired the brain to prevent inbreeding, a pattern shared with many other animals. So how does this mechanism work, and what are the moral or ethical arguments surrounding incest? Expect to learn why evolution has designed you to not want sex with your sister, how animals actually detect who their relatives are, what the high level explanation is for why humans don’t want sex with their kin, the moral argument if it is okay if two adult siblings had consensual sex, how big the actual genetic risk is for first cousins, what crying adn tears actually communicate from an evolutionary perspective and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/deals⁠ Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/books⁠ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: ⁠https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom⁠ Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: ⁠https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59⁠ #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: ⁠https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf⁠ #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: ⁠https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp⁠ - Get In Touch: Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast⁠ Email: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/contact⁠ - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why don't people want to have sex with their sister? Or their brother or other family members. It ends up that humans have a natural inbreeding avoidance system that develops pretty reliably and most folks exposed to the cues, which I term kinship cues, that are available during childhood. Right. Well, what about animals? Because I understand there is this. label, that's your brother, that's your sister, how do animals actually detect who their relatives are? We just take it for granted in humans. You can point and say, but animals don't have language. So how do they know? This is a really good question. It's always fun to open up an interview with incest, incest avoidance. Incest of you, yeah. Yes. And so it's a really good

question. How do we know who our close genetic relatives are? And why is that important? Well, first, it's important to know who your close genetic relatives are, not only for the purpose, of not mating with them because mating with close genetic relatives can cause a host of problems. So it leads to less healthy offspring, for instance, and offspring who might suffer from greater genetic mutations. So evolution engineered into our psychology, a very sophisticated system to allow us to detect relatives, close genetic relatives, and develop a sexual aversion towards them. We don't even typically think of them as possible mating partners. It's not foolproof, but this is what tends to happen. And the other reason why we should have a system for naturally

detecting and automatically detecting genetic relatedness is for altruism. So being nice to your close genetic relatives follows from Hamilton's theory of inclusive fitness. We're nice to other people as a function. One way altruism can evolve is by being nice to people who tend to share genes by common descent. But you asked the question of, So how do we do this? And because humans aren't the only species that encountered this problem of avoiding mating with close genetic relatives for biological purposes. And so other animals without language or culture, they use cues, cues that correlated with another individual being a close genetic relative in that species, you know, evolutionary history. So whether it's being part of the same litter or a smith.

or imprinting on a particular place or a marking. These are the kinds of things that evolution can engineer to help guide kin detection. Humans have language, and so language and culture map very nicely onto these systems, but they're imperfect. And so even though we could join a sorority or fraternity and call people brother, sister, or in certain religions, father, mother, you know who your actual father and mother are. You know, well, with good certainty, you know who your mom is, who your daddy is, is always an interesting question. But certainly siblings are also individuals who you tend to correctly identify or would have, at least in ancestral environments.

So we don't use language. Likely, we just use the cues that correlated. And so if you want to go around the horn of the nuclear family to figure out how do we detect who our close genetic relatives are? well, how do you know who your mother is? This is the female who tended to primarily breastfeed you. So this type of imprinting or mapping onto the female who nursed you. How does a mom know who her child is? Well, that's kind of, yes, it falls out of you.

Unmistakable. How does a child know who her father is? This is not pinned down. I mean, it is a question. I mean, mommy's baby, daddy. maybe. So the question about how it is that people, how does people identify their father really probably goes through understanding who is, who's, have I correctly identified my mother and what males are investing in her? Because males are going to rely on their paternity certainty

in order to direct investment towards their offspring. So relying on what kind of who's investing in me heavily out there could be one cue that females use, but also the male that was around very early on in development has a better chance of being one's dad than the male that one's mom kind of is hanging out with later on in life. So, but it's a really, it's a really good question. So might phenotype matching occur? It could be. I don't, I'm not a fan. So sorry, that is, do people use facial resemblance as a cue to understand who's likely a relative? That hypothesis does have some interesting data backing it. I'm not a fan of it only because I think ancestrally people looked really similar.

Not only that, just by the assortment of genes, siblings can look and fathers can look a lot like their offspring or not as much like their offspring, but still be really. related, you know, with good certainty. And so I'm not quite sure pinning how we determine kinship onto a few genes that happen to govern facial features is the right way to do it. But maybe it contributes, to be sure. Certainly, when we see people who look similar to us that can spark a type of kinship, but I think that has more to do with a friendship and... In-group, out-group, tribalism. Maybe. Or also, we're always looking for people who might value us and identifying people who share features, any feature. Like, you know, if you were to say, oh my gosh, I have a sister. Her name is Deborah Lynn. I'd be like, oh, my God. I like you even more. Oh, yeah. What's the naming effect? There's more people called butcher that end up being butchers and more people called Travis that live in Travis. And my mom and dad's names both start with a K. Oh, right. Well, whatever. Like, okay.

Oh, but they both start with a K. Well, that is very interesting. I mean, the idea that we can, we seek and we're always looking for people who might value us. So looking for overlap in any dimension is something we do naturally to form friendships. So are you saying that the same mechanism that we use to identify who our kin is in order to do reciprocal altruism, I need to look after them more than I would look after a cousin. or a third cousin or a friend or a stranger is the same one that does incest avoidance. So the system that is being used to identify kin for the purpose of being nice to them, like the inclusive fitness, is the same kin detection system that's operating for evaluating someone as a sexual partner.

Wow, that's so cool. You don't think that's cool? I think it's super cool. I think there's, I mean, it's economical, the idea that the brain computes one kinship estimate. Like, I have an, for every person I meet, I have an estimate of what do I think the probability is not explicitly, not consciously, but by exposure to these cues, my brain has kind of ratcheted up or not ratcheted up, this estimate that tells me, and I use to determine how related or likely that person is. to be relative. And that is an input into systems about how nice I should be to that person and how avoidant I should be of them sexually. Yeah, how close my heart should be and how far my genitals should be from this person. Okay, so has this been, this has to have been tested and adopted

siblings. So if you see pregnancy or breastfeeding, but you don't share the like early co-residence window, like does that still trigger incest avoidance? Like, you know, know, how can you play around with some of the triggers here to see, to see what really works? So my research focused on siblings. I did a little bit of the parent offspring as well, but the bulk of my research was on how do siblings figure out who they are, you know, who's related to them. And it looks as if there's two separate cues. So one unmistakable cue that someone is a close genetic, or is a sibling, is you see your mom, and to the extent you've met the right woman as mom. Your mom, you know, pregnant, give birth to caring for breastfeeding and

newborn. That is an unmistakable cue that that their kid, you know, breastfeeding from my mom being cared for, you know, by my mom is my sibling. And that actually operates regardless of actual genetic relatedness. So you can fake, you can fake it, kind of. You wouldn't need to give birth to it. You would just have to breastfeed it. Right. And there's a actually natural experiments that have shown this to be true. So in Taiwan, there was, that's no longer being practiced, but a form of marriage called minor marriage, where parents would adopt in a newborn girl into their family, either because they had a son or they were hoping to have a son in the next year or so. And they brought up this adopted girl alongside their son until

teenage years when someone said, and now you will marry. Oh God, but they didn't realize that they triggered this incest avoidance mechanism. Correct. And so, but one of the interesting findings is is that the mom, the adopted mom would oftentimes breastfeed the newborn. And so what happened is that the son would have observed his mother breastfeeding a child. That is in fact not an actual genetic sibling. I imagine that doesn't lay a particularly good foundation for a few a successful marriage? No, but here's, so we're going, we're going to go a bit far field here, but the idea is, here's one of the striking things about that particular natural experiment that occurred.

This was documented by anthropologist Arthur Wolfe. He found and reported that even among children who were raised together from very early age, many of them did marry and did produce offspring. So when cultural norms are that strong, it can actually cause you to, you know, do things that you otherwise might not choose to do. Now, in those marriages, those unions tended to end more often in divorce, and there were more extramarital affairs. So the record keeping was incredible by the colonial government, but it was, so those marriages, when they were raised together from birth, they tend to have fewer kids, but they did produce kids. greater, more marriage, more divorce and more extramarital affairs compared to marriages where it was the traditional arranged marriage, where kids were just raised in their natal household and then met

as adults. Okay, so the first one is breastfeeding. So yeah, so sorry, so back, back. So the first really potent cue to who is a sibling is who did I see my mom caring for, kind of this maternal investment. The second cue, so this is a great cue, but what happens if you're the younger sibling in a pair. You weren't around to see your mom care for your older sibling as a newborn. What are you to do? And so this starts to get into the Westermark effects. So Edward Westermark was a Finnish social scientist and he recognized that children who were raised together throughout childhood tend to develop a sexual aversion toward one another later in adulthood. This has been termed the Westermark effect. And what he was identifying is this second cue of co-residence duration.

So it's been operationalized as co-residents, meaning that if you're the younger sibling in a pair, you've got an older sibling, how do you know that they're actually a genetic relative? How does your brain figure that out? You track how long that they lived with you under the same roof, receiving care from the same two individuals. So it's really still about parental investment, shared parental investment, the amount of time that you see them being cared for by the same two individuals. predominantly probably mother, over the course of dependency. And so this is why the longer the duration of co-residents during early childhood, the more certain you are that an individual, again implicitly, is a genetic relative. And this leads to not only greater altruism towards that person,

but also greater disgust about the thought of sex with that person. We'll get back to talking in just one second. But first, if you have been feeling a bit sluggish, your testosterone levels might be the problem. They play a huge role in your energy, focus and performance, but most people have no idea what there's are or what to do if something's off, which is why I partnered with function because I wanted a smarter and more comprehensive way to actually understand what's happening inside of my body. Twice a year, there run lab tests that monitor over 100 biomarkers, they've got a team of expert physicians that analyze the data and give you actionable advice to improve your health

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Is there actually a clear cutoff? So it was thought that perhaps there was a clear kind of imprinting period. My research shows that it basically, it just each year of co-residents seems to add a little bit of certainty, or I should say reduces the uncertainty that someone is a genetic relative. So it looks like throughout the period of dependency, starting from birth, starting from birth is key. And so individuals who kind of meet later on, the effects still holds, but it's not as strong as people who are exposed to a sibling right from the get-go. I imagine the potential for an absentee father to come back into a daughter's life later in her life. this is one of the leapfrog avoided the Westermark window challenges that can cause some

pretty uncomfortable outcomes? Well, it's so I would say that fathers don't recognize their daughters by the Westermark effect. So Westermark effect is going to be all about, yes, it's co-residence duration and that might make it seem like it operates for all family members, but it's really about observing who is investing in whom, right? So the idea of I'm, if I have an older sibling, I see that the same female who's feeding me, yelling at me, you know, caring for me when I'm sick and so forth is also doing the same thing to another older child. I have a good idea that that's my sibling. And the longer they require that type of investment, that's the kind of period of co-residents that we're talking about. But you raise really important

things. So people who are not exposed to these cues, so what does this mean? So this gets us into fun territory. So people who are not exposed to these cues, they really don't map other people on as siblings. And so fast forward to modern environments where you now have these sperm banks, right? So you can have guys who are depositing their sperm and women are collecting it and they're having all these kids and now there's all these half siblings running around. And now you can meet them. In fact, I remember, I don't know, 10 years ago, but it was probably more like 20 at this point, that there was a show like that kind of brought together all of these. paternal half siblings and they all, they were really enjoying each other's company. And I think there was

one remark about even being attracted to one another. And so you wonder, how does this happen? Well, a couple things. There's a couple things going on. First, there's no natural sexual aversion that's developed. There's no system that's activated to say, this is my sibling. You telling me that that you're my sibling, that a person is my sibling, you know, that's not really going to do very much to me, you know, that explicit information. It's like someone, imagine someone knocking on your door and saying, you know, your mate that you've been living with for 15 years. That's really your genetic relative. And so it really wouldn't really change the way you feel. You might say, well, maybe we shouldn't have more kids. But in general, it's not going to kind of cause a disgust,

I would guess. But here's the other thing that's interesting. virtue of sharing, why is it you find what's called genetic sexual attraction? So it's been thought to be a thing. Have you heard of this? Genetic sexual attraction? That's good. Maybe it's not out there. Maybe I shouldn't talk about it to put it up there. Information has it. We need to share it. I'll put it out there and I'll just kind of wipe it away. So genetic sexual attraction, it's been thought that, oh, we actually really are attracted to our family members. So Freud was right and we kind of harbor these sexual desires. No. not so much. And so I would say probably what happens is that by virtue of the fact that we share

genes in common with our close genetic relatives, we develop very similar preferences. Right. So imagine designing your perfect mate, right? So what does your mate look like? What do they like to do? What do they like to eat? When do they like to get up? One like to exercise? What kind of, you know, all these kinds of things. You know, it's like you, and then you feel. finally meet someone, it's like, you like Kung Fu movies? I like Kung Fu movies. You like spicy foods? I like spicy foods. You like getting up really early in the morning. Yeah, you like reading and you like evolutionary psychology. Like, I mean, literally it is, you imagine all these different traits that line up in your really good friends and the mate that you would design if

you could. Suddenly, you meet a sibling who actually shares a lot of these preferences and these dispositions. And it's like, well, this kind of hits a bullseye. And so the fact that, you know, people might find genetic relatives without a sexual aversion present, people that they enjoy spending time with doesn't surprise me. Well, I mean, I guess it depends how annoying your brother or sister is, but a lot of people like to spend time with their brothers and sisters, not just because of the history that they've got together. And if you remove the incest aversion, if you remove the disgust response and you're of the sex that that person is attracted to, it's like, well, why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you do this? And what you're saying is basically if you weren't brother and sister, but you are. But if you weren't, what would that be like? It'd be pretty sweet because, you know, 50% of everything we are psychologically is at least in some part shaped by our, uh, behavioral genetics.

Okay, well, I mean, 50% is a lot more than a lot of relationships that have lasted for quite a while. I'm not quite sure what to say in response to that. But what you did, so I'll just say, okay. And the other thing is that what you bring up, though, is Jonathan Heights's great experiment. Are you familiar with the Mark and Julie experiment? Maybe. And moral dumbfounding. Okay.

So Jonathan Haidt did a really great study on moral dumbfounding that had to do with inbreeding avoidance. And he brought students into the lab and or participants into the lab and he gave them the following scenario. Imagine there's Julie and Mark and they're brothers and sisters, their brother and sister and they decide they want to have sex. And they decide, you know, they really want to. They're adults. They're consenting. They're going to use like five condoms. They can't get pregnant. No one's going to know. No, they're never going to do it again. You wipe their memory and they'll never even remember it.

And no one's going to experience any emotional or physical harm. It's something you really want. So it's all positive, all, you know, win-win. And so Jonathan Haidt would pose these questions to participants and say, is it wrong for them to have sex? And, you know, all the participants are like, yes. And then he's like, well, why? Well, the condom could break.

No, no, no. condom doesn't break, they're wearing five of them, and she's on birth control, like everything's fine. Someone could find out, no, no, no. And so, you know, they try to kind of find a way and a rationalization as to why it's wrong. And finally, they just give up, I don't know, it's just wrong. And so he called this moral dumbfounding. And it's really a good question as to what's going on. And are people saying that it's wrong because they're concerned about the harm that could befall Julie and Mark, and most people are saying yes, because most people still think that there could be a harm. I actually think that the reason why people say that it's wrong

is not because of Julian Mark. I don't think people care about Julian Mark. I think that people care about being in that room with Jonathan Haid and the other experimenters to be like, I think incest is okay. I think it's okay. Oh, so you think it's all just like observer effect stuff? I think it's the idea that I could be going against a societal norm that the majority is on the other side and I could be seen as a minority. I think we're very, I think we are very sensitive to sticking our necks out on issues where a majority holds one and we are going to oppose it publicly. Well, I mean, surely you could just, you could just control this by changing the way that people submit their answers, right? You could submit them in complete anonymity. You could

do it through a form. You could do it anonymously on the internet. Has this been, this If this is such an obvious potential explanation, this has to have been tested. I don't think it's obvious because I think people have been so focused as morality as cooperation. And I think that morality, I mean, you wanted to talk about this and getting back into the disgust and morality stuff. But it's very possible that people are very sensitive about moral condemnation. And anyway, I think you only get to this hypothesis if you think that people don't care about harm. to them, but harm to themselves. Okay.

What was that study where you asked men to imagine tongue-kissing their sister? That was, well, there's been a few. I've done other stuff like on positive things like gratitude. No, no, no, no, no. Sorry, I'm keeping my foot on the neck of incest at the moment. Incest avoidance, please. Okay, so, yes. There, I've done a few studies. So one of the ways that we have to collect data on what people find objectionable and disgusting is to ask them to imagine, is to ask them to imagine engaging in a variety of sexual behaviors. And so how do you do this? And ethically, right? So asking subjects to imagine tongue kissing their sibling or having sex or, you know, taking a shower with them. What's interesting about that is at least a while back when I collected those data.

females were all at ceiling you couldn't like one to seven they'd be like 10 like you wouldn't they wouldn't be happy the amount of variation that I found in female responses seriously that the bars on my graph were like oh basically touching there were very very little variation all squeezed right up at ceiling um males on the other hand uh the variance structure was quite wide which I found humorous but it all got gets back to, I mean, it's not humorous. This is a very serious subject. It actually, it is. And so it gets back to some of the cost of reproduction. Females, when selecting a mate, have to consider all of, I mean, they are on the hook for, you know, nine months of 10 months of gestation, three years of lactation. And so getting a baby up and running is easily three, four years ancestrally. So any bad decision in terms of investing time and energy

into an offspring with a reduced chance of survival would have been heavily selected against. Males, the opportunity costs are far less. And so males, while they should not be pro-siblings incest, would find it slightly less horrifically objectionable as compared to females. Women also usually have a lower disgust threshold than men, right? For most things, yes, for most things.

You know, I tested this. I asked women a whole bunch of different things about how disgusting you find a variety of things. And you're absolutely right that women are far and more disgusted by a great many things. It ends up there are a couple things that flipped, which were, you know, changing diapers. Females are like, and then having sex during your period. So that also, sorry, it's gross. It's all gross. But so there you go.

So women are disgusting just specifically, in specific. situations. I think I think just the word period or tampon grosses guys out a little bit more than women. I think that's probably great. We're way less familiar with it. A quick aside, if your sleep's been off, you're taking ages to fall asleep, waking up at random times, feeling groggy in the morning. Momentus's sleep packs are here to help. They are not your typical knock you out supplement, just overloaded with melatonin. It only has the most evidence-based ingredients of perfect doses to help you fall asleep more quickly, stay asleep throughout the night, and wake up feeling more rested and revitalized in the morning. These things are an absolute game changer. I take them every single night

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slash modern wisdom, modern wisdom, a checkout. So look, I'm an only child and I've realized that I don't have the same visceral disgust response that others have about sibling incest. Like I understand logically why it's a terrible idea, but I don't get the same gut level recoil. Do you know what it's like? It's like hearing smokers say, I need a cigarette. Like, I get the concept, but I don't have the craving or whatever, or the opposite of the craving. Like, I don't have that aversion. Why, I mean, is that normal? Have you looked at people who, it is literally like, I don't have a language. I guess someone could say, well, imagine having sex with your mom. And I'm like, yeah, like, you've got the age thing that's already in there on top

of like the fact that she's my mom. So I think for most people that have siblings, it's almost like they have a language of disgust that I don't have the understanding of. Does that make sense? Oh, 100%. So I'll tell you about another study that I did that didn't get published, but it's enjoyable nonetheless. And so I, so I don't have a brother. And my co-authors don't have opposite sex siblings. So Lita Cosmites is an only child. And John, John, too, you only had brothers. And so the three of us sitting around talking about how to gross each other out with these acts, it was actually, it was very disturbing talking about these things with your advisors. I remember that conversation and being like, I'm done,

I'm out. So, but it was, we did another study, which was videotaping facial expressions. At the time I started, kin detection, knowing. and it's really started to look into the psychological aspects of it. But one of the things that we had to do was validate disgust as a possible measure. And in science, even though it's obvious, if you just ask what emotion comes to mind, if you think about tongue kissing a sibling, most people, it's really gross. And there you have your dependent measure. You have to establish that.

So I set up a lab where I recorded people's facial expressions and did a variety of things to understand what facial, what muscles were actually activated in response to a variety different act, things that we know elicited disgust, but then also the sibling incest stuff. And so there people are looking at the screen, seeing acts come up on the screen and just responding to them or just reacting to them. And most of them would have these, you know, so in addition to like eating your favorite dessert, it would be like, you know, putting your hand in a toilet and all these other things that you would see, the muscles, the nose scruncher muscle for disgust, activate. When I was matching what was on the screen to participants, because those are two different video

feeds, I remember seeing one of the matching up, seeing a guy kind of smile, like, hmm. And I was like, wait a minute, do I have the time, simply time code right? Like, am I matching it right? Because it says, like, tongue kiss a sibling. Like, what's going on here? I was like, oh, no. And so I was like, And I remember furiously going through all the survey pages to be like, please don't have a sibling, please don't have a sibling. And it ends up the guy didn't have any sisters at all. And so I found that really interesting. It kind of gets to what you're talking about, the idea that it doesn't map onto anything. And so it was like, imagine, it was basically like, imagine having sex with a girl.

And he's like, hmm. And so without that natural aversion, it's, you don't have such. a strong reaction. Right. Hmm. Okay. Next topic. Yeah.

If incest disgust is so strong, why is incest porn such a huge category online? You'd expect it to barely exist and yet it's massive. Well, I mean, are they really siblings? I mean, people do anything for money. Well, I mean, first off, it's money. And so the idea. is if people are going to pay and you need money, I mean, sure, people do stuff for money and

people do gross stuff all the time. No, no, no, no, no, no. Why is there an audience for it? Oh, why is there an audience for it? Because why are people doing it? I don't think that that many brothers and sisters are being employed. That would be, that would be a very special kind of relationship. It would be a really special kind of business. Yeah. I imagine that the margins would be really bad. The amount of money you'd need to pay most people to have sex with their sibling would probably be pretty high. Yes. Why is there a big audience for it?

Why is there a big audience for it? Well, I watched Game of Thrones and the idea that, you know, these two people, what is it, John Snow and, you know, De Nairis, they ended up being related. I don't think that prevented people from watching that. I think people aren't, it's just two people who are naked having sex. And not only that, so there's that, there's that. And then the idea of kin detection is imperfect, right? So if you don't have a sibling and you're like, oh, well, this sounds kind of neat and risque.

Oh, right. You're saying, are you saying that incest porn is exclusively watched by only children? I don't, I don't, I don't, my hypothesis would be that a guy with six sisters is not the person. who's watching this. That would be so, that would be such a fucking good study. You should do this. This is your next study.

Your next study is to work out, is to work out, whether the likelihood of watching incest porn goes down based on the number of opposite sex siblings that you've got. Yes. The world needs to know. Okay.

Well, I'm really hoping someone in your audience will now undertake that. This is you. You are in my audience. What else are you doing? You have been, I mean, I'm right? writing a textbook, I'm starting a business. Come on, man, I'm busy.

Well, this can be another, you know, there's more stuff to do. Anyway, I think, I think you're right. I think people don't, it's not like, in order to watch this incest porn, you need to observe these two people grow up in the same household as you for the first 10 years of your life and then watch it and then see it. Because the fantasy, I guess, is a, I wonder whether it's a little bit of like contravening, you know, in the kind of the same way that dominatrix stuff or being insulted or whatever. It's like, oh, this is a social norm. And by breaking it, this is cheeky.

But it's done in a safe way because you don't actually have the disgust response. I mean, they're not your siblings. That's true. Yeah, this is whatever, the thingy and Julie. The Mark and Julie, yeah. It's Mark and Julie all being watched. All right. Aela, who I think you'll probably be aware of, she ran a poll and said,

if your very attractive cousin wanted to sleep with you, would you? And there was 12,000 votes, and it was almost exactly 50-50. Now, I will say her audience is perhaps non-typical, like rationalist, sex positive, slightly autistic coded. But that number still surprises me a little. It doesn't surprise me. Well, first off, cousins. Hot cousin, 50-50?

Cousins are, it's cousin marriage is still, I think, one of, the more prevalent forms of marriage worldwide. And so as soon as you start to drop off of nuclear family members, the biological, deleterious, and harmful effects of mating with close relatives drops off pretty fast. What's the comparison to parent, to sibling, to cousin? I mean, it drops off really fast. So within the nuclear family are the greatest risks, right? So you have parent, offspring, certainly mother, child, there's greater certainty,

but, you know, degree of relatedness is, you know, 0.5. Um, siblings tend to be, on average, 0.5. But as soon as you go to cousins, you get to an eighth, you go from a, you know, a half to an eighth. And so that's on average. So I would say, especially when there are norms kind of pushing all of that and you didn't live with them. And so your, your kinship structure is more, it's, your aversions aren't as strong as they would be to nuclear family members for good reason. Would you have, is there such a thing as you observing the baby of your mother's sister growing up in the same household as you, being close to them, knowing that it's not been raised by your mother, but knowing that your mother and that woman are close and that woman raised that, is there such a thing as being able to tune up the cousin a version?

Yeah, I bet you there is. I mean, just like there's an ability to tune up the sibling aversion by having someone come into the house and be raised by, you know, an adopted child and so forth. And so it's, I suspect that there's, there's a lot more research that needs to be done on this. And now that we have these amazing ways to collect massive amounts of data, it'd be very interesting. You asked about a kind of imprinting period or a developmental period, a sensitive period. And the question, the answer is, you know, we don't, we don't exactly know. I mean, there could be my data, I collected data from like a couple hundred people. And so the bins that I have, like I have most people three to 18, they lived with their siblings, some four to 18, five to 18.

But imagine having the ability for every bin between zero and 18 filling that with 10,000 people to kind of understand patterns. And so that would be a really great study to answer the question definitively. I agree. Okay, you had this fantastic article on crying, which I read a few months ago. It is one of the best things that I've read in a long time. I think it's really, really great. So I want to, we've talked about incest. Now I'm going to talk about crying. Before we continue, I've been drinking AG1 every day for years now because it's the simplest way that I found to cover my bases and not overthink nutrition. And that is why I've partnered with them. One scoop gives you 75 vitamins, minerals, probiotics and whole food ingredients in a single drink. And now they've taken it even further with AG1 next gen. The same one scoop, one a day ritual, but this time backed by four clinical trials. In those trials, it was shown to fill common nutrient gaps, improve key nutrient levels in just three months, and increase healthy gut bacteria by 10 times, even in people who already eat well. They've upgraded the formula with better probiotics, more bioavailable

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a welcome kit, and that 90-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom. That's drinkag1.com slash modern. wisdom. What's the evolutionary story behind crying? Why would leaking water from your face ever be adaptive? Um, it is. Well, okay, so before we get into this, I just have to say for the record, because it's an important record. We've talked about disgust, but I've also done a lot of work on gratitude and other emotions. And so, but it's my work on gratitude that got me into tears because gratitude, and so see how I'm kind of changing, but gratitude, it's an important emotion

that's responsible for jump-starting friendships. It is an emotion that identifies when other people value you, right? So someone does something that you perceive to be a benefit, you say thank you. You are basically saying, you know, I value you for having done that act, and it would be great if you continue to do that act with the promise that potentially we can form a cooperative relationship downstream. But it all hinges on what we call kind of social value. In the article, it's called welfare tradeoff ratio. But let's not talk about that. It's really just about how I value you, how I perceive you to value me. And so because when we're strangers, I don't think you will value me or I don't value you and then use something nice. It's like, oh, how do I recognize?

How do I positively reinforce that beneficial behavior, that positive behavior? And gratitude seems to be the way that I say, hey, that was really great. Keep doing that. Like, thanks so much. And so, but it all hinges on these internal assessments of value. So how do we get people to value us? If you are, I promise this is going right straight to tears. And so if I am big and strong and formidable, I can just,

get you to be nice to me, right, under threat of penalty. Like, I can impose costs. I can beat you up. I can have other people beat you up. I have money. I can do all sorts of things. And so if I, I can use anger as one device and strategy in order to get you to value me. I can also use gratitude. We've talked about this in the literature as prestige and dominance, but I think it tracks a little deeper than that in terms of the strategies of how to get other people to value you. But here's the thing. if I'm on the other side, if I am low leveraged, if I'm in a situation in a relationship where someone's imposing costs on me or threatening me, right? How do I, what do I bring to the table? How do I negotiate? You know, what are, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what are, what, what, are asking me to, and be exploited and manipulated, um, all the way to the end.

or I can try and kind of express that you are imposing too much of a cost. You are asking me to deliver too high a benefit to you. That's going to start digging into my own interests. And Tears is one way that we use to communicate costs, or better yet, the intensity of a particular state. So tears, I'm mapping it more onto sadness. It's not necessarily just associated with sadness, but using sadness as an example, the idea that my tears communicate to you, you are starting to impose a cost on me that is threatening your value in this relationship as well. It might be

worth your while to stop. And so it's a way, it's a tool used by the lower leveraged to get other people to stop imposing costs or to start, restart the delivery of benefits. So kids cry, throw tantrums saying, you know, you're not feeding me enough or you're not feeding me the right things, you know, because they're not big and burly and they can't be like, you're going to make me that hot dog, right? They're just going to cry. I don't want Macon Cheese. So, but they're, so tears can communicate quite a bit. More generally, they communicate value. And so we associate them a lot with the negative value, things that cost us. But they can very much be associated with the positive side, too.

It's indicating the kinds of things that I benefit, you know, that I find quite beneficial. So, you know, someone delivers an hugely unexpected gift to you. It's, you know, you could be moved to tears, right? Someone does something and, and donates a kidney or does something, you know, life-saving. The idea that you could be moved to tears by such, by such behaviors, it's showing and illustrating, it's illustrating high value. So it's very much like the scream, but it's. used by the lower leveraged in an interaction.

What does lower leveraged mean? Means the person who is less likely to get their way in an interaction. So it could be the less physically formidable, the lower socioeconomic status, the less attractive, the, you know, smaller. Wow. Okay. Okay. I get it.

So women cry more than men, kids cry more than adults. Have you looked at trying to control this stuff? So, for instance, let's say that you had a woman in a relationship, but she was socioeconomically more successful than her partner. She was the primary breadwinner. Or you had a mate value discrepancy where the woman was higher mate value, more famous, more statusful, you know, trying to rebalance these scales. Do we tend to see that change? I would say you probably absolutely do. Wow. And then, but there's always the fun crocodile tears, right? So those are the fun ones where it is people who use tears because they know what they do. And so, you know, psychopaths, dark triad people will pull out crocodile tears in order to get you to think that they care. And so that's always an interesting feature. But there's a, you can tell.

I came up with one way to tell. this has not been studied or at least I don't think that this has been studied and I'd love to study this so if you've ever cried like if you're like me even in a movie a dark movie theater if I like start crying I like I like start to stare so it's like dry up dry up don't let anyone see you're crying you know it's like you kind of like you you hide and you don't want anyone to see you you don't want anyone to see you it's kind of like I don't want to be perceived as weak or low leveraged or someone who you can now take advantage of an exploit or anything like like that, right? So I don't want to have lost any ground in any type of leverage, you know,

in any relationship. Again, it's not explicit, but it's just like we tend to hide these things. But people who are trying to use their tears for more manipulative purposes will cry and be like, don't you see my tears? These are tears because I care. And so I think people who use crocodile tears need them to be on display. Oh, that's so great. Yeah, allow me to put a billboard up so that my tears can run down the front of it but isn't it isn't it strange the people who are crying and they've got you know if this theory holds true and at least a good bit of the time i think it does people are i'm trying to tell you i value you or the thing that you just did or you were imposing costs on me and i would really like you to stop yeah i need you

to see this but also i'm ashamed of the fact that my body and my face and my eyes and the water has betrayed me. So I'm going to hide, but I'm going to hide, but I'm going to show you, but I'm going to hide, like, there's a tension going on here. There is. It's a, I don't want you to, I'm not giving up too much ground in this relationship, but just for this one instance, you should know that you've gone too far. So an interesting thing is that in what has been studied are tears and anger at the same

time because women tend to, when they get angry, also tend to tear up. So if you are in a, if you're in a situation where you are, you're out leveraged. So you're in a group situation and you're not being valued and people are pissing you off, right? And so, and you say something, right? You're angry. You're like, if you had, you know, if you had muscle behind you, you'd be in good shape. But if you find that you're the only one making a case for something, so women in these situations, they tend to get angry but also tear up. It's like, but again, it's that tension.

It's like, if I could, I would, but I can't, so I won't. But if I could. Yeah, that's so great. And I don't think I haven't seen guys get, do the angry cry thing in quite the same. their rage is able to sort of burst through it a little bit more. I think in most situations, yeah, no, I don't think that's a tactic for males who don't, so listen, I mean, there is a big difference in, there are huge sex differences when it comes to formidability, walking around the world where, you know, around, in modern times,

I mean, I love modern times. Like, I can walk around without really under threat of being like, you know, hurt. And so, but that's relatively recent in human evolution. history like there were you know you go somewhere foreign and suddenly you realize like maybe I shouldn't be walking around alone like this is this is I'm going to hire someone you know tomorrow and so the idea that females are less formidable and they are at risk of being you know I mean you walk around and it's here's what I was told I don't know if this is true tell me if this is true that when guys go into a room a new room new people at a party wherever it is bar the the first thing

they do or one of the things they do naturally is they kind of sweep the room, like who else is there, what other guys are there and kind of take a kind of back of the nap, make a back of the naping calculation about who's bigger, who's more formidable, like who can I take, who's dangerous, who should I be wary of and who don't I have to worry about, kind of thing. Is that, is that something men do when they walk in a room? I don't know whether it's that conscious, but. I don't think it's conscious. There's certainly stuff that happens that's kind of interesting. Like, if you're in a room, this is a cool way to look at it. If it's a mostly guy's room, ideally in all guys' rooms, as soon as you

throw women in the mix, it becomes messy. But if you've got a table, you'll see what is the angle of the chair, what are the angles of the chairs mostly pointed toward? And you will see that there is a head of the table, even if there isn't ahead of the table. Another way that this happens is when somebody starts speaking, when a guy starts speaking in a room, what is the likelihood that some or all people shut up. But I've been in rooms, I've been in rooms with some guys, like real, real statusful guys,

that if they fart, everyone will decide to be quiet. And you can really tell an awful lot about where the hierarchy falls by who's nearby proximity to that person, whether they will keep talking, whether they're happy, whether they look regulated,

or whether they sort of seem a bit more sycophantic, appeasing um so it's all that i mean that's me getting that's actually me getting a little bit feminine i suppose with it as opposed to the more like brusque shoulders back type way that's more like status game playing like relational stuff but there's still even the formidableity i think will play a big part of that too i think if you've got some big fucking dude in the room and he starts speaking i think your let's say formidability status status and resource cues something like that like how big are you who are you and what do you have something like that if you had these buckets and there is this invisible score that is above

everybody's head which is some sort of aggregate of all of those things put together so like the really formidable guy who nobody really knows that much and the really statusful guy who might not be quite so formidable that that would be an interesting but like who do we oh well actually I'm physically a little bit weaker so maybe I'll be more scared of the formidable guy but statusfully I'm a little bit stronger so I don't mind the you know what I mean like how where am I in the pecking order all of that is done in a not very long when you sit down in a room, I imagine, at the back of my mind. Yeah. No, I think that stuff, I think the nonverbal, nonverbal behavior is really interesting.

Someone that I've read and listened to in terms of the podcast is Joe Navarro, who's done a lot of this work on nonverbals. And so that's, it's fascinating stuff if you haven't had him on. Yeah, he's great. In other news, you've probably heard me talk about Element before, and that's because I am frankly dependent on it, and it's how I've started my day every single morning. This is the best tasting hydration drink on the market. You might think, why do I need to be more hydrated? Because proper hydration is not just about drinking enough water.

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Oh, because I think that we have dramas played out in our head all the time. You know, like, very easy to imagine a whole bunch of stuff. Typically, it's not just, you know, nothing sparks us. Usually there's a thought or some type of sequence of... Of course, but who are we crying to? Oh, I think it's simulating. I think there's simulations all the time. It's just like, you know, haven't you ever, you know, laughed?

Like, I work, you know, in my place on my own. And if anyone were ever to watch, like, they'd be like, she's crazy because she's laughing all the time. Just by thinking about some of these things, you know, it's hard to not to try. chuckle and so but what's that all about it's like me thinking about stuff you know and so i think that when we think about things we can absolutely simulate what would be my what would be my reaction in this particular situation so that kind of playing with uh possible events that could play out to be prepared for them and so forth okay i i think most people and me too i think that sounds a bit surprising because i not that it's not true but i'm like i'm not gaming this out

I don't want to be fucking in a ball of tears on the floor at the moment having just watched this dog come home to, or this soldier come home to his dog after, you know, three years away and now the dog faints and now the daughter's there and, you know, but I'm not, is it, am I confusing the fact that I've seen that those people are here with me? Is it the fact that my whatever system, crying system, is unable to detect the fact that that's virtual or not? Is it the fact that it's unable to detect the mental imaging that we've given versus a real situation? Is it the fact that our mental situations are just so powerful that it doesn't matter if there's other people around, that we experience them as if it was happening in front of us? I think you have empathy with score one for not being a psychopath. I wish I'd wish I'd cry less. I wish I was less of a pussy.

My crying threshold is, you know the disgust threshold thing we said before? My crying threshold is embarrassingly low. It fucking blows. That's our, listen, empathy is not overrated. And so I would say, you know, I think that, first off, TV and story, we evolved with storytelling. We evolved with people in front of us telling stories about people and about, you know, um, you know, our ancestors and so forth.

But I think that when we see them on TV, it's a little confusing to our ancestral brains, that's for sure. But hearing about these things and putting yourself in a situation and simulating, I think, is, or being, you know, showing empathy and putting yourself in the shoes of other people and what you would experience. Because there are people who don't have that ability, right? So you have people who, you know, people who, psychopaths, for instance, who do not have a capacity for empathy and would not cry. what about when grief because let's say somebody's passed away who are you crying to they're gone what are the tears for well i think you're showing other people your need state um that's one one thing

but i think a lot of things are going on at that point in time so being upset and depressed and grieving the idea that it's it's a that it's a loss um And typically we would have been around, I mean, there's no such thing as privacy to, you know, a hunter-gatherer. So, you know, something happens and you would have been around other people and kind of this automatic response of I am in a neat state would have potentially been quite beneficial. I, you know, I haven't done. So I, I, I, a lot of this is speculation. So the, so just to stay on, you know, terra firma here, I, the paper really was about. I was very curious, researchers who had been studying tears showing that you show subjects

emotions, faces displaying various emotions. And if you add tears to some of those emotions, they're easier to recognize. And when I was, so I'm the editor of the Fields Journal, evolution and human behavior. And so I had one of these papers in front of me, and it struck me, like, there's a lot of research on tears that it hasn't been hooked up with the cognitive side of thing, what's going on internally and what this signal value is and it had struck me that no one really thought about is tiering and adaptation like what's going on here. And so thinking about when we tear and what might be going on, it seemed to be very much tied to social value. Right. So being around people who value us and we are going to try to get them to stop imposing costs or try to elicit

more benefits from them. Obviously, I talk science speak, but you know, we don't. We don't don't talk that's not consciously available to us we just we just cry and it has the effects that it does on the people around us okay so positive events the reason that we cry at positive events is like this is good do more of it like an encouraging thing this is a value to me and and uh i wouldn't do this ridiculous thing if it wasn't yeah reliable signal of receptiveness? Yeah. You're marking this is of high value to be. I perceive the events and what's going on now to be registering in my brain as high value. Okay. Why not make our whole body shake? Why not raise our hand in the air and wave it? Why? Because crying presumably wasn't, crying is here to

lubricate our eyes. That's why crying. That's why the tear duct exists, primarily. why has our emotional system repurposed that? Why don't we shit ourselves? Like, why don't we, why don't we just yell? Well, maybe you do. I don't know. Why tears? What is it about the water coming out of the face that is particularly useful for this? It's front and center. And so it is something that is readily available. It's a really good question. And so this was obviously one of the main questions that our reviewers had is like this, why this, why now? And so one possibility is that it was built off of, so if you have an onion and you hold it close to your eyes and the acids kind of interact and you start to tear. And so the idea is that this is a negative, a negative stimulus. So it's

already kind of being associated with. There's something negative in the environment that is affecting me. And so that very much could have been the bootstrapping way that another more negative stuff could then have been registered by other people. So to the extent that, I mean, to the extent that that was possible, that would have been one possible lineage for how this came online. Okay. I, I seem to. You're buying that?

To a degree, to a degree, I do. I don't, the answer is I don't know. But another part of it, another part of it is, okay, yeah, front and center, right? here it is um it's very hard to ignore uh it is for most people i think it would take a bit of even me with my wimpy cry threshold takes a bit of work for me to get it going so usually for most people apart from the psychopaths a pretty reliable signal of authenticity so it's uh not it's not cheap it's not that cheap um another thing has to be you really need your eyes like you really really need your eyes to see. And if you choose to have water pour out of them, you have temporarily

incapacitated yourself. And if you, again, another sort of reliability. A costly signal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That all makes good sense. I think, I mean, look, this paper was just written. It kind of throws out a whole bunch of ideas. And now it's time to say put it through its paces, test it, and, you know, see where it goes. I think that, you know, on the positive emotion and negative emotion, so things like gratitude, but also depression and sadness and pain, I think that there's a lot, there's a lot of work to be done. That's a good, that's a good point. Why do people cry during, I remember the last time I cried due to pain, physical pain, and I was, I think 13, and it was one of my first adult cricket matches.

I don't cry due to pain anymore, physical pain. I don't think that there is an amount of physical pain that I would be put in. It would have to get toward the emotional pain. It would have to be an emotional element of this. Is it just that as you grow up from child to adult, you are able to better understand your capacity to deal with pain and the fact that it doesn't necessarily have an emotional component to it? Like, why is it that kids cry when they bruise their knee, but I don't?

I mean, I still cry when I hurt myself. Like, I mean, I think, yes, and I don't tell anyone. And so, it's a really good question. Listen, as a kid, I think the idea that I need help, you know, like, help me. I'm in pain and this and or, you know, stop this, stop this, unattached this bristle. I think that it definitely is a signal. I'm trying to actually think about it now. Because, you know, I've cut myself with a knife and have I cried?

I think I've cursed more than I've cried. Isn't that strange? And it's strange because it's not, you know. But I guess, look, the same or similar stimulus can cause different responses. Some breakups may cause somebody to shout and scream in someone's face because the specifics, the flavor of that one was cantankerous. aggressive, it was adversarial, and then another may be loving and painful and, um, uh, you know, like, um, melancholy. And those two would have very different responses. In one,

somebody may not cry and in another they may. So I want to throw, I want to give you a hairbrain idea that I had. And I, I don't think it's going to pay out, but I, but here's what I was thinking. So, you know, after a breakup and you just, you cry. And like, you cry uncontrollably. And I was thinking, so while I was crying, I was like, why am I crying? This is like, I got to stop crying. This is like, I want to stop crying. Like, this is done. Let's be done with this. And so, but then I was wondering the function of it, is it like a data dump in the sense of someone that you held such high value for and then you realize and you simulate and you realize they don't value you anymore and that cost and that kind of ratcheting down of someone valuing you right because you have

to literally have that time to have that realization that they do not care about you at all right so um and so but the idea that potentially crying might be a way that you know it just it's a it's a so yes our social value is ratcheting down, but it's all chemically mediated. So the question is, are you also ridding yourself of that? So I was, if I had like a well-funded lab, you know, I would think like if you could possibly capture people's tears as they are going through a breakup to see whether or not, you know, the pre-the-pre kind of level of, I don't know, oxytocin, whatever it is that kind of governs social value and attachment and closeness, but is it kind of being dumped out through the tears

to kind of help kind of reestablish. So good. I think that's great. I think that's really cool. I think that's really cool. And I think that someone needs to give you a million dollars so you can go and do it. What it makes me think about is how much of crying is about changing other people's behavior and how much is about recalibrating our own emotional state. I think there could be multiple things going on. I think there's probably because I think that just like shouting can be done in most emotional states, like different types of shouting could be used to help express anger as in joy or gratitude or shame. Like, you know, you find that the volume and amplitude of our voice can definitely do that. So why? And those are different types of emotions.

Some are internal calibrating. Some of them are other calibrating. So my anger and gratitude is to calibrate you, right? So, but my shame and my pride is calibrating me, potentially. So the, in any case, I think that you just put your finger on a really interesting thing, that there's probably multiple things going on. So cool. So cool. Deb Lieberman, ladies and gentlemen, you're fantastic.

You're part of this weird, like, council, Masonic, like, group of, cool women doing evolutionary psychology and everybody needs to follow you and I think your works I think it works wonderful and I enjoyed speaking with you at H-Bess and I think that you need to keep doing more stuff so why should people go if they want to check out all of your fun cool work about incest um well actually on the center for evolutionary psychology is a whole list of a great set of paper is not only on kinship inbreeding avoidance altruism but also morality and anger and cooperation and coalitional psychology. So Center for Evolutionary Psychology is

where I would direct everyone. And also you can read about it in the textbook that is hopefully forthcoming at the end of 26, beginning at 27. And if you will permit me just to say one thing as an academic and the frustration that I often hear a lot of people who want to get access to these things is that they're hit with these paywalls. And so So my business venture with a partner, the problem we're solving is allowing people to get access to articles, not only news, but journal articles that are currently held behind paywalls for subscription, but allowing people to get just the one article they want when they want it. So that's what I'm up to. When's that available? Can I get that now?

Check an app store soon. Media byte. We are on it. Okay. When do you think it'll be launched? When it'll be launched? Hopefully late 26. Okay. Well, hurry up because I need that. Deb, you're great. Keep doing your thing. Thank you. You too. Be well. This is great. If you're wanting to read more, you probably want some good books to read that are going to be easy and enjoyable and not bore you and make you feel despondent at the fact that you can only get through half a page without bowing out. And that is why I made the Modern Wisdom Reading List, a list of 100 of the best books, the most interesting, impactful and entertaining that I've ever found. and nonfiction, and there's real life stories, and there's a description about why I like it,

and there's links to go and buy it, and it's completely free. You can get it right now by going to chriswillex.com slash books. That's chriswillex.com slash books.