Modern Wisdom - #532 - Catherine Salmon - Do We Know What Turns Women On?

Episode Date: September 29, 2022

Catherine Salmon is an evolutionary psychology researcher, professor of Psychology at the University of Redlands and an author. Women can be a mystery, sometimes even to themselves. Modern culture is making many proclamations about what women like and why they should like it, but are these new headlines accurate, or even desirable? Expect to learn why women love erotic stories so much, whether evolutionary psychology is sexist, why Catherine did a study where people rated the attractiveness of faces which had jizz on them, why feminine men are being pushed in media but don't feature in dark romance novels, the role of commitment in female attraction and much more... Sponsors: Get the Whoop 4.0 for free and get your first month for free at http://join.whoop.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get $100 off plus an extra 15% discount on Qualia Mind at https://neurohacker.com/modernwisdom (use code MW15) Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D and Free Shipping from Athletic Greens at https://athleticgreens.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Extra Stuff: Follow Catherine on Twitter - https://twitter.com/CatherineSalmon  Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - 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

What's up, people? Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Catherine Sammon. She's an evolutionary psychology researcher, professor of psychology at the University of Redlands and an author. Women can be a mystery, sometimes, even to themselves. Mon culture is making many proclamations about what women like and why they should like it, but are these new headlines accurate or even desirable? Expect to learn why women love erotic stories so much, whether evolutionary psychology is sexist, why Catherine did a study where people rated the attractiveness of faces which had gizz on them, why feminine men are being pushed in the media but don't feature in

dark romance novels, the role of commitment in female attraction, and much more. This is quite hilarious. The study that she's done where men and women, photos of men and women were taken from porn websites, and they had to do things like control for the size of load and the attractiveness of the person and then they split it up into whether they looked happy, neutral or unhappy to have it on their face is straight up hilarious. However, I think it does reveal something very interesting actually about the way that men and women's traction systems work. The insights around erotica and dark romance novels is also really really good. So no matter who you're attracted to or whether you're a man or a woman, this is pretty fascinating. But now ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Catherine Sammon. Music

Catherine Sammon, welcome at the show. Thank you for having me. Did you recently do a study about reactions to gizz on the face porn stimuli? I did. I did do a study on that. In fact, I actually have just completed a follow-up study as well. So it's all about com shots, these days. What is?

What's all about com shots? Is your life all about com shots? Ah, my life is all about cum shots. I mean, but certainly lately, it has seemed to be the topic of conversation. If you tell somebody you're doing that, that's what they want to hear about. Okay, I want to hear about it. Please tell me everything. Sure.

I mean, part of the reason for being interested in it is because for a long time, there has been, I think, a lot of claims about the nature of pornography that it's about degrading women, that, you know, it has all these negative connotations, right? And there are a bunch of different researchers who've assessed this in different kinds of ways. But one sort of theme that has run through things is the idea that an external ejaculation that is deposited on the face is seen as being degrading or seen in a negative light. And there's a number of ways that you can actually think about that.

And a number of years ago I read a chapter in a book that made me really think about this, and the chapter had a line in it about how what makes coming on somebody's body degrading and coming inside them sacred. And that made me think, you know, like, okay, that's not necessarily a bad point. Why do we have such a focus on it as being a negative thing? And what does it really mean that it is so ubiquitous in pornography, that it's really difficult to find pornography in fact where you won't see a scene like that somewhere in the film? And so we decided to do a study where we would actually show people

We decided to do a study where we would actually show people faces that had deposits made on them and Ask them about how Arousing or how degrading they found those images to be and how much they like the pictures and We actually had subjects not our own students because Our own students can be fragile, but we recruited adults from the general population to do this. And so we have people look at faces that we varied, right? So some of them looked, well, they all looked at the same faces, but they either looked at faces that were male faces or female faces, right?

We looked at, and it's because we're also interested in the sexual orientation of people and how that might influence this. So we have them look at male faces and female faces and we also varied them in terms of their reaction. So whether the person looked happy about having a com shot on their face or whether they looked neutral about it or whether they looked very unhappy about it. And so as you might expect from, if you have sort of review that men like it when their partners are enjoying what's going on, men watching these images generally preferred the faces where the females actually looked

like they were enjoying the experience, whether they were male or female. Whether they were male or female faces that they were looking at, there definitely is also an effect of the preferred sets. So for men, straight men don't really like looking at pictures of other men with a jacket on their face. They were not so happy with those. They were their least preferred photo for them, the one with guys that had come on their face. But homosexual men actually, that was their favorite photo of them, not surprising, right? For women, it was actually interesting. The women who, so women in general didn't like the images as much, but for the women, if you looked at them across their sexual orientation,

bisexual women actually like the images a little bit more than either heterosexual or lesbian women, which is also kind of interesting, and might actually have more to say about what shapes bisexuality than anything else. Perhaps some sort of openness to experience type thing maybe. Exactly. That it might be a sort of general interest in sex and a more sort of sexual exploration kind of thing that's influencing that. And that's why they had those views. When you looked at the men, it was much more linear in terms of their relationship in terms of like, okay, so gay guys preferences were here and straight guys were like, oh my god. The women, it was actually looked like a little top hat.

So it was a little bit of a different kind of picture. So, and we were interested in other things to like whether disgust sensitivity would play a role if people are really worried about pathogens. Maybe they would be less likely to like such images. And it did have an effect, you know, in general people who are very high on pathogen avoidance are not as keen on bodily fluids, especially in other face.

And we also found a few other things that matter, including sociosexuality, which shouldn't be surprising. In general, people who are more permissive in their sexual attitudes are more interested in short term mating also enjoyed the images more. So for the most part we found the sorts of things that we were kind of hoping to find in terms of the results, at least in terms of going back to that idea about what makes it disgusting or degrading versus sacred. It seems like somebody enjoying it makes it a positive experience, right, for the person. That was the biggest effect.

Like if you partial-dire what was the factor that had the biggest impact, was whether she liked it and what the sexual orientation was in terms of matching to the person that was the recipient. What do you think is the difference between something inside and something on the face? Well, I mean, I think there's good reasons for why in porn you put things as long, even though they started inside. Largely because it's a real visual

obvious sign, like you know for sure the guy came because it's all over her face. If he comes inside or unless you're doing a close-up shot of, you know, some of it dribbling out, you're not really getting the same, you know, proof of ejaculation, I suppose. So I think that could have some something to do with why it's so ubiquitous. I mean, why it's on the face? I think there's probably, I mean, I think there's probably a couple different things, including that men like to look at women's faces. Shocker, I know. But men do like to look at women's faces. And also, the face shows that it's an individual woman, like a different woman. And so if men are often attracted to novel women or a variety of women,

spaces convey information about different differences between different women. Right? And that may also be appealing. Like, just like think about porn and seeing lots of different women being extra arousing as compared to just one woman that you might get used to. I have. So kind of like the cool-age effect. Yes. I had Louise Perry on the show, a case against the sexual revolution, a couple of maybe a few months ago. She said in that, a lot of women she thinks sometimes misinterpret rough sex as being this, I want you so much that I will do anything to have you, 50 shades of gray style thing. I'm not sure whether that's backed up in the literature and we can go under that in a second. However, the same sort of

I will overcome my programming around being gentle around women because this is how passionate you have driven me to be by men. That seems to be at least part of a motivation that I could imagine maybe women have in the back of their minds, right? That there is something going on there. What I'm wondering with the come on the face situation is whether or not it's the kind of the same in reverse. This is something that's quite porcelain and sacred and beautiful. It's something that women take great care of and I am so turned on by you that I'm happy for you to desecrate it. Yeah, I mean, that could be part of it.

I mean, I think, I mean, when we think about the things that people do together sexually, a huge part of it is doing things that your partner likes. And hopefully you both like doing the same things, right? That's going to lead to a more satisfying sexual relationship over time. But I think that there are times when people may do things specifically because they please their partner. And if your partner really likes doing that, maybe you do that more often. I mean, there's also the question about how often people do that in their everyday sex at home versus how much they get off on watching it in pornography as well. Logistically, a more difficult way to convene the end of your evening. way to convene the end of your evening.

NMS your way, right? Like, I mean, not everybody wants... Not everyone's got time to wash their hair. No, not everyone's got time to wash their hair. Exactly. Exactly. You know, I mean, it's, I think there are just practicalities that make something's different in your everyday life that are different than important. I would agree.

I would agree. We don't all go and fight Thanos every day, either, for presumably the same reason. So I found the other day, an article by Patricia Sanchez in Cypost.org, rough sex associated with novelty seeking but not aggression. Rough sex is usually associated with aggression but new research published in Evo S Journal,

the Journal of Evolutionary Studies Consortium, found that engaging in rough sex may be more indicative of novelty seeking than aggressive tendencies. Rough sexual behaviors have been thought of as sexual aggression for decades, but recent research shows that rough sex may be more so recreational and consensual by both parties. Rough sexual behaviors have been shown to increase in situations that involve male jealousy and being separated from a sexual partner. This is in quotes, while these analyses provide clues as to what motivates or triggers rough sexual behavior,

several questions remain enhanced. Jealousy may be one motivated for men, but rough sex was reportedly desired and initiated by both sexes, so what the motivators are for both sexes or particularly for women remains unexplored. What are your thoughts on that, Catherine? Um, my thoughts on it is that? My thoughts on it, it sounds familiar.

But I think there, so in terms of the sort of unexplored, the what's driving women to initiate rough sex, or to be interested in it, I think there could be a couple different things. One of them is actually what you were alluding to before. This issue about the idea that a guy I mean want you so badly, be so passionately in love with you, that he is not as careful as he might otherwise be. And, you know, there's a long history of women finding that at least appealing in their fantasy lives. If you think about romance novels and bodice ripper romances, I mean, they're all about the guy

not being able to control himself and like, I will die if I don't have you kind of thing. And the idea that somebody could be that incredibly devoted to you, I think, is appealing to women who are often very interested in commitment, right? And the idea that you would have that kind of power over another individual in that sense, I think, is appealing. So I think that that could be part of it. There's also been this idea tossed around that it could be similar to what we see in some other animal species where females will require males to demonstrate their own sort of physical prowess.

And so my favorite example when talking about it with students is what we call the bump test. And so this is something that happens in gladiator frogs. And so gladiator frogs will approach a female frog. And she will actually be aggressive towards him. And if he runs away, she won't make with him. But if he's pushing back, then she'll actually have sex with him. So she's like selecting for aggressive and physical strength on the part of the male frog.

And so there's this idea that maybe females are doing that unconsciously in humans sometimes. And they may be initiating this because they actually are taking some sort of reward or pleasure in testing male ability to demonstrate their strength. In the same way that women might enjoy watching men compete in different kinds of physical sports, because again, it's sort of showing off prowess. That makes sense. It's the closest, I suppose, that a woman could get to experiencing a man's physical strength,

kind of all brought to bear on her. Yeah, I think it's like, if you imagine the sort of, the kinds of, some of the kinds of things that are in that assessment of rough sex, right? It would include things like wrestling, right? And sort of that kind of play fighting and overpowering kind of thing. And yeah, it is, it's typically going to be the closest thing that you would experience to that. And so it is a way of sort of trying to assess that. And in a playful

way, not really a threatening way. What about the novelty-seeking but not aggression thing? Yeah, well, so that was mostly looking at sort of motivations and the idea that just sort of trying new things, openness to experience is associated with it. So in the study, there were a bunch of different questions that asked them about what kinds of things and experiences do you find associated with your experiences of sex, whether it's a male or a female initiating it. And one of the things that popped out was this idea about trying it because it's something different, it's something new, we were bored, you know, we saw it in a movie,

you know, different things like that, being indicators, and it was correlated with a bunch of other things that are associated with novelty seeking, like having sex in public places, engaging in sex with sex toys, things like that. So it seemed to be more about novelty than about aggression in terms of like having negative feelings about the person that you're being aggressive towards. And the one sort of one that was also in there that we talked about, it's interesting because it kind of has a little bit of overlap, is this issue about sexual jealousy. That when men may be experiencing sexual jealousy, they may be more likely to engage in rough sex.

And in particular, the rough sex was actually just being rougher during the sex act, thrusting harder, penetrating further. What was interesting about that is that the women reported experiencing a shorter duration to orgasm when they engaged in that kind of sex. So I mean it could be rewarding for the women because it's actually maybe extra arousing, maybe providing better stimulation. How did you study that? We asked people, we didn't have them into the lab and tell them, we want you to have sex like you really... You've got another half an inch out of it there,

you've done very well. Yeah, we did not do that, although it would be fabulous if somebody did do that, a point of study, but no, we did not. We were asking undergraduates, so we did not have them come in and engage in activities. Glad that you didn't have to go through that. So why is it that there are so many varied niches for porn and what turn people on? Why are humans sexually not more simple? I actually think that we're not really as concave as we think we are. I think there's two things,

there's two ways of looking at it. In some ways, yes, there are lots of different genres, but there are also tremendous similarity between genres. Like if you think about the bodies of people in foreign, the majority of them are quite similar, right? What we find attractive in men and women is actually, in that sense, not that variable. I think where you see the variation is in what I would call like individual differences in people's foreign preferences,

where people may find, and people's foreign preferences, where people may find, particular aspects of individuals exciting or exotic, they may find different positions, exciting and exotic, and there are also differences in people, and again, we don't necessarily know that much about what shapes them, but in preferences for things like, say, for example, BDSM, right, so that you have categories that are designed to contain activities that will appeal particularly to people that are interested in that.

And I mean, point of is a great example of that when they, you know, allow you to choose from all of these different types of terms. Do you want to watch three Sims? Do you want to watch, you know, Solo's, you know, ones, do you want to watch, you know, solo ones? Do you want to watch B2SAM? Do you want to watch GAY? Do you want to watch straight? Do you want to watch orgies?

Like what is your flavor of the month? And they give you that kind of opportunity to try that variation. And I think some people have tried to make some little inroads into figuring out what kinds of factors shape some of these preferences. A number of years ago, Mary Ann Fisher and Becky Birch and I published a study where we were looking at how people's socio-sexuality, as well as their inclination towards infidelity might shape their porn preferences and looking at whether or not they were more likely to prefer threesomes or different kinds of orgy scenarios.

And we did find small but significant differences where people who had actually scored higher on a measure of inclination towards it in infidelity, as well as people who actually cheated on a partner, were more likely to like group sex scenes in their porn. They watched those kinds of movies more often. Interesting. What about women, like with porn, that seems to be just a big mystery as far as I can see. What porn do women watch?

The watch porn? They don't watch as much porn as men do, right? And again, I think there's an interesting question about whether there are differences between women who prefer their porn, erotica, whatever you wanna call it. There's sexually-solicent material to be visual versus they wanna read it, right? Because there's tons of everything from romance novels to 50

shades of gray to all sorts of different kinds of erotica, to slash fiction online. I mean, all of this stuff is all largely directed, you know, towards women. Some of it is very sexually explicit, but it's not visual in the same way. So I think the interesting question in some ways, one of the interesting questions for me about women is what makes some women more visually oriented and some women more

interested in reading about their porn. And it might be as simple as like, you know, pre-navel testosterone exposure or adult circulating testosterone. It might be that women that are slightly masculinized in that way are more visually oriented. And so it would prefer to watch it rather than read about it. But it's very clear that lots of women are interested in it. And it just sort of tends to break out

into this difference between visual versus written. And a number of years ago, I think I reported in a study that was looking at just top erotic sites that men and women were going to online. And so of course, for men, it was all visual, right? The top five sites, they had millions of viewers, all visual. For women, none of the top ones were visual.

They were all either romance novel authors, websites, Harlequin's website, and then Archive of Our Own, all either romance novel authors, websites, Harlequin's website, and then Archive of Our Own, which is the big fan fiction website. And so they're reading their porn, I think more of them anyways are reading their porn than watching it. For the last six years or so, five or six years, I, apart from during COVID,

I have gone to a dark romance book, convention in America. I spent a number of years on the front cover of a bunch of these books. I've been flown out by authors, and a few other bits and pieces. So my exposure to this world is deeper than you might expect. And given that, one of the questions I've always had

in the back of my mind is in a world that is being dominated by TikTok and YouTube and video consumption, what are women getting out of erotica that they can't get out of video. I think, well, so I don't know that it's necessarily that they can't get it out of video, except that for the most part we're not producing as much, maybe, that appeals to them for various reasons. But I think that they, I don't think it's that they could not, right? I mean, if you think about movies that were erotic

or romantic in various ways that women like broke back mountain was a great example of a movie. You women like broke back mountain? Women loved broke mountain, but it was a romance and it had two hot guys and so you know there were a lot of women that like that movie and so I think and women who wrote fan fiction about that movie and so I think you can get it out of the visual but part of the problem is again I think for women a lot of what seems to go into, and this is one

thing that books can do better, I think sometimes than visual media can, is because so many women, and this is not all women, this is not all women all the time, but because so many of them, part of what's interesting to them about erotic and romance and all those kind of stuff, and sexual relationships is the long-term commitment aspect of things with their ideal guy, right? There's a lot more than the visual that's important to that, right? There's all this information about who he is

and who they imagine he might be. And so, yes, you can do that in a movie if you have a five-hour movie or you can, you know, watch one of the rings and imagine your context for one of the guys or Marvel or whatever. But when you read a novel, you get all of that information. So if you think about erotic or romantic novels for women, they're partially a story about finding long-term mates that are women's fantasy partner. I think that that's a lot easier to do in a book that will appeal broadly because you

get the story appeals to most women. The features of the individual men and women in it, or men and men, or women and women, depending on your interests, might be very unique to different women. Like maybe you find a particular actor, attractive, or you don't, right? And so the movie might not work for you if you just happen to not like maybe you're somebody

who doesn't like Brad Pitt. So watching him in a movie isn't gonna work for you. But maybe Zac Efron will, or whoever, right? Like there's gonna be that variability. So I think there's more challenges with the films than there would be with stories. Although it's interesting to take that and then say, well, why is fanfiction so popular?

Because they have the image. But of course, they select for guys that they find attractive and then read fanfiction that is about those characters that look the way they want them to look and then they can fantasize about those kinds of relationships. But I'd be curious actually in some ways to know about your experience of interacting with women at that kind of a convention, having been the cover model because they often have quite significant fantasies about those characters.

And that must have been interesting. It's been interesting all how have five or six times that I've been and then I'm on another bunch of covers and then I go back and I'm on different books and a different story and a different character and different women come up and say hello. It's very, very interesting. I have to say my mum, my mum asked whether she could get a copy of one of the books and I refused, I refused to give it to her because I don't think she quite knew what she was getting herself in for and given the fact that I was on the cover, I felt

uncomfortable to say the least about passing that on. That being said, the the women that write, because I'm more experienced around the authors than I'm around the readers, although most of the authors are also fans of other people's work, they take the story writing stuff very seriously. And I mean, these books are their best sellers across the USA today, best sellers and all sorts of stuff. One thing that I thought, as you were talking there about why it is that women prefer erotica, I'm going to guess that there are relatively few stories in which the male protagonist gets switched out multiple times, because that would reflect women's lower desire for sexual variety. So what that suggests is that it isn't

about the erotica bit of erotica. It's about the commitment of a presumably high-value, high status, powerful man who is able to girdle the world around him and break down doors and do the things in order to get the woman that he wants. But if it was simply about the erotica thing without the investment, without the long-term mate-value stuff, why wouldn't each chapter just just be it was David and Matthew and Jonathan and like why wouldn't she just Precisely for this reason that it is that investment. Yeah, I mean, I think that you know when people say that women's erotic is more often focused around that long-term Mating strategy. I think that that is to a certain extent the case and it is also why there's a challenge with pornography Now that doesn't mean that all women are always interested in long term mating and only reading about that, right?

So there are certainly women who are gonna enjoy pornography and they may be women who score higher in socioeconomic reality, right? They may be more interested in short term mating. They may be in a life phase when they're more interested in short term mating. And that might be something that influences it. I mean, the other thing that would be interesting,

and I haven't seen anything where somebody's looked at this, would be to look at, if you look at Portamium's data, it suggests that there are actually differences in the percentage of women that consume pornography across countries. And it would be interesting to know if that is about cultural acceptance or whether it is actually about differences in mating strategies interesting to know if that is about cultural acceptance or whether it is actually about, you know,

differences in mating strategies in different kinds of populations. Was it Indonesia or somewhere that had a surprise? Philippines. Philippines, that was it. Yeah. Had it surprisingly, have you looked at Seth Stevens-Devidovitz's work on this? He did everybody lies. So he's a data scientist. He's a data scientist. You should absolutely check it out. He's fascinating. And he found out that there is the highest proportion of breastfeeding porn in the world is in India. And it is insane how much more there is. It's like a factor of 20 or something. Yeah, that's not that common in like American porn consumption at all. So I mean, I think

that is really interesting because again, you always like to wonder, okay, why does it that shapes it because I mean, there's, there's, well, there's, I mean, maybe, well, I don't know, I don't even want to speculate about that. I mean, I've also seen interesting stories about women in India breastfeeding animals, too. It's much more common there to see that if a small animal is orphaned, I'm seeing not in their porn, just in general, right? I mean, that they will breastfeed, you know, calves that, you know, are rejected by the mother or lose the mother Which is also interesting, right that you would but I mean many people in India actually sort of, you know Have sacred views about cows so that almost they're almost human perhaps

Interesting there's something going on with the breasts in India. Here's another thing Here's another thing that I've considered more, especially given my deep experience with the Dark Romance genre. The characteristics that I see on, and I, these events, there's been thousands of fans, right, in hundreds of altered stalls. And I walk around and I have a look at the stands and a lot of the time they've got those pull-up banners and the book covers and the photographers are there that have taken them and every single one of the guys that comes out that I'll seem some from Philadelphia and some from Miami and whatever whatever. Everyone's built the same, right? Yes. Everyone is strong jaw, everybody's lean, everybody goes to the gym. Now there's different, you know, this dude with

long hair, there's a guy with a beard, There's a guy that's more like a lumberjack. There's one that's whatever, whatever, right? At the moment, it seems like a lot of women are applauding significantly more feminine men in popular culture. One's that are much more agreeable, one's that are much more submissive. You had Harry Styles being a sex icon,

wearing a dress not long ago on the front cover of a magazine. Why aren't those sorts of guys? There's also just a add on that. There's another element, the Gen Z TikTok sort of almost androgynous, not quite androgynous look, but super fam guy at 18. In fact, I think I saw a study very recently that you may have seen as well on Twitter that had the two highest rated men on Tinder in the world. One of them looked like the front cover of a dark romance guy and the other one looked like Harry Styles

on the front of that thing. What is it that's causing erotica to not have? Is it short short term mating cues? That doesn't seem right because we've got this long term investment. Why is it that publicly we're getting pushed a much more submissive, much more agreeable, much more feminine man? And yet it seems in a rotica like revealed preferences, stated preferences. Why do they seem to be diverging? Yeah, I mean, I think that in a sense you kind of captured it with the pushing aspect of it, right? Like that there's, there is a, you know, there can be a social agenda and not maybe wanting men or at least not wanting some men to be more aggressive. And we often see sort of like, at least recently, sort of like negative view of masculinity in general, right? Like this idea that will masculinity is toxic or that, you know, men need to be different, which also doesn't really jive well with the view that some people have that men and women

are not different. It's like, well, it's not different than why you worried about this. Aren't you worried about toxic femininity? I mean, it is an interesting question. But I think that, you know, as you point out, if the point of that kind of erotica is to fulfill the fantasies of women, the fantasies of women are not about generally men that they can push around.

They're about men that are useful if the world comes to an end. It's the things that historically and ancestrally women valued in men. Is he going to be a good provider? Is he a good protector? Is he going to take care of my kids? Is he going to give my kids good genes that are going to make them strong. What would you say? All of the things that the ideal of the cover? What would you say to the women that are saying to you, well, Catherine, you know, those are, that's a old antiquated view of what women want from men. Have we not transcended that now in the new world?

You know, I don't, I'm perfectly happy if my boyfriend decides to paint his nails and wear poles and put a dress on. This is, this is something now where I don't think that you're up with the times here. Sure. I mean, I would say that, you know, whatever floats your boat, right? Like I mean, if it works for you, for your partner to be like that, that's also perfectly fine. There may be variation between women and that. But years ago, they really tried to push the softer, gentler kinder view of guys in romance novels and they didn't sell well. And my guess is they didn't sell well because even in your daily life, it might be easier to have a

guy that would do whatever you wanted, no matter what, that might not be what you fantasize about. If we think about what is really appealing to us, in the same sense that, of course, men may fantasize about women that they would never get in real life. If you think about the reality of things, if you're an unattractive male who is older and doesn't have any resources. You're not going to get the average porn star, but that doesn't mean that that's not what floats your boat.

So it is almost a kind of not short term mating strategy thing, but it is an objective sexual desire that may not match up with what you would want as a long term partner. There may be some differences there that women have. Well, it might be what you might want, but also might not be what you can get, right? As well. I think that that's part of it, because I think that every girl who goes to a romance novel convention would be happy to have one of the copper models go home with her and stay there. have one of the copper models go home with her and stay there. Like, you know, there are also, you know, there are pros and cons to highly masculine men,

right? I mean, and there's often been this debate about, you know, when you look at, at even the hero in the romance novel, I mean, he's very manly guy, but there is that, that issue, is he a cat or is he a dad? And even when he starts out as a cat, he usually ends up as a dad. That's not always the way it is in real life, if you find that guy, right? So there's always going to be that compromise of what are the features that you would ideally like in your day-to-day life. And some of it may be that, some of it also may be just what's happening

in the population, right? There's always been this discussion about whether testosterone levels have decreased and that men actually are somewhat less masculine than they used to be in some ways. And some of it may be just like, okay, well, this is what we have and this is what we're gonna work with as well, right?

So I think there's a number of things. I actually have to say, I've never, I'd never been a huge fan of the men with their nails painted thing. I don't know why. It just never seemed like something I was particularly interested in. But I saw a guy who was an MMA fighter

and he had his nails painted. He was still hot, even though his nails are painted. If you're an MMA fighter, no one's allowed to tell you that you're not hot in any case. Exactly. Here's the other thing, right? Two worlds that fascinate me. First off, erotica and why it's not just all on video

or whatever. Second one, true crime. But women, why are they obsessed with learning about murderers? I would love to see it. I know that true crime, I think, is the single biggest podcast category that exists. It's the number one. Society and culture, which is what this show is in,

is the most competitive in terms of shows, volume of shows, but in terms of plays, true crime. Think about the first one that ever came out that really broke the entire world with this, was serial, you've had up and vanished, you've had all of, you know, an endless list of them. And then all of the true crime documentaries that you get to get served you on Netflix, so forth. What is a woman's obsession, or woman's obsession with crime and murderous stories? So that's an interesting question. And

it's actually been one that I've been kind of interested in. In particular, I'm kind of interested in why women, because I'm interested in how pop culture can be used to study human behavior and sort of our evolved psychology. I'm particularly interested in why women are so fast-known with serial killers, right, in particular. And you think about the popularity of shows like Dexter and the number of women that like really liked Dexter, it's like, that's interesting because in general, we think of women as being very crime averse, very crime avoid, try to avoid people who are really violent. And so there may be a number of things going on.

I mean, I think there may be some truth to the idea that people are fascinated with crime because they want to learn how to avoid being victims, right? That that can certainly be part of it. I think that for some women, there may also be a fascination with the idea of some men being like the apex predator, right? That if you are in a dangerous environment, what better man to have by your side than the apex predator, right? That if you are in a dangerous environment, what better man to have by your side

than the apex predator, right? Because nobody else is going to threaten him or the things that belong to him. I also think it's kind of interesting because of course, if you really imagined Dexter as a serial killer, he's not a very traditional serial killer psychopath because of course he has emotional attachments

and things like that. And but maybe that's why he is so extra appealing for women because they want the predator but he still has to be devoted to her. And those two things often don't really go together but there might be something very appealing about imagining that they could. So, I mean, I think there may be dual functions.

Like part of it, maybe the functionality of trying to understand the phenomenon so well that you are never the victim of it. And some of it may be that if you live in the jungle, you want the predator to be with you. And there is some data that suggests that women that live in more dangerous environments do prefer more aggressive men like they had their mate preferences shift a little bit.

I'm trying to remember might have been Dave Navaret and some of his colleagues that did a study that that looked at this so that women, for example, who lived in more dangerous parts of inner cities, valued, if they were asked to value different traits, valued physical prowess and aggressiveness more in males. But it may be more useful to them in that environment. Which again, can also bring us back to that issue about the masculinity of males, right?

If you live in a really benign world, maybe you don't need some of those really aggressive masculine traits as much as we might have living on the Africa savanna or early on during human history. They may be less relevant today. And so I guess in that sense, when we think about made preferences, I mean, it's not that they're fixed in stone forever, evolution continues, right?

And sexual selection continues and it may be that at some point, live in such a benign world that that you know some of the masculine traits that we've often admired that the women who go to boxing and MMA clearly admire. That those traits aren't as essential in women's made preferences, but I suspect that the world probably isn't going to get the night because it does seem to be sort of shifting around a lot right now. That's spicy every so often, yes. Exactly, exactly. This is the interesting thing about the proselytizing around how feminine men that are most submissive and agreeable would be exactly the sort of man that I want to be with.

It's that revealed versus stated preferences thing again. The woman that, do you remember when Tom Holland and Zendaya announced that they were in a relationship and she's maybe four inches taller than him? And it was a bunch of articles that said, it's now time for men to get over their fear of tall women. Yeah, I mean, come on now. Come on now, press.

Come on now. Come on now. It's easy if you're Tom Holland too, because I mean, he's got lots of resources. My point being that the people that wrote those articles that said it's time for men to get over them will data man that's taller than them on average, almost all of them will be. And the evidence seems to suggest, women want to date a man that's 21 centimeters taller than them and men want to date a woman that's 16 centimeters shorter than they are. So everyone's got to compromise, right? You can't have exactly what you want. My point being that there is a,

especially when it comes to mate choice here, because men tend to be the sexual protagonists, but women are the gatekeepers, sometimes that gets flipped and it gets put on men about what it is that they're doing with regards to their mate choice. It's like, none of the short men are not dating Zendaya. They, she hasn't been turned down by reams of short men up until she managed to find the one that was prepared to get with her that happens to be Tom Holland. So yeah, I think it's just interesting to see as we have a mating crisis,

kind of basically on our doorstep, every increasing achievement, employment, status for women, lessso for men, hypergamy, kind of shifting around and doing all of this stuff. What is being pushed in the press and then what are those journalists? Who are you dating? Are you dating the homeless guy on the street? Are you dating someone that's six inches shorter than you? And I think just continuing to point out that hypocrisy is really important because sexual desires and what we think we want get mediated and filtered through the culture, right, gets pushed through like that. And if the culture ends up being a lap,

if what you think is culture isn't, because you only see the smoke screen in front of you, your own sexual preferences can end up being messed up, which has even further downstream consequences. I think, yeah, if men look at an article that says, women really want a feminine guy's Harry Styles is the way to go, and then find very little success in the dating market. I don't even know how a feminine Harry Styles is in real life. Homeboy might be an absolute stallion as soon as he gets away from the camera.

Right. Right. Right. Yeah, you don't know, right? You don't do it at all. And so I mean, I agree with you. I think, and this is why, you know, I think in general, we should always be concerned with what is being pushed as the main narrative in general, right? Whether it's a narrative in terms of sexual behavior and what people are doing or what people want

or what people should want, because I think that's part of it as well, right? They're saying, well, you should, this is what you should want, that this is a better thing to want. I was like, well, why? Like I mean, it's like almost like you're saying it's somebody's moral obligation to date someone

that may or may not be what they find particularly attractive. And I agree, I mean, it's problematic if you're giving people advice that's going to be detrimental to them in finding what they really want. And I think it's relevant in that sense to the larger issues around dating, but it's also relevant to the in-sell issue, you know, that William Tassel talks about,

you know, how do people know what the best strategies are? I mean, to me, I think that people need to think a little bit about, you know, it's not. So I mean, as an evolutionary psychologist, I talk a lot about our evolved strategies, what was successful in the past, what is shaped the way we are now? That isn't to say that what shaped us in the past has to be what shapes us 100,000 years from now.

There could be reasons for things to change, but I don't know that we have evidence that shifting things in any particular direction is beneficial or not. You know, it would be like saying, well, we should have more masculine women. Men should date more masculine women. You know, why would that be a good or bad thing? I mean, in general, it's good to find a partner. So maybe don't be so picky that you price yourself out

of the market across the board. But people are attracted to what they're attracted to. And saying that, well, you should find this attractive, that that isn't gonna make them find that attractive unfortunately in those cases, right? They're attracted to what they're attracted to. The market and sexual desire are two things that are very difficult to cheat. So in my experience, this is the revealed and stated preferences thing all over again. Every year when Love Island, which is this big reality TV show in the UK, comes on, there is

which is this big reality TV show in the UK comes on. There is body positivity and sexual orientation and disability, disability awareness. All a bunch of different groups say that we don't have enough representation on this show. And you think, well, that's maybe that's a fair point. There is this many people in the country and this many people and that's a percentage and whatever, whatever.

We go, well, look, at the end of the day, this is the show that the designers of this show have considered will be the most effective. If another one started up that had different sorts of subcultures within it and it did better than fantastic, the presumption is that it won't. So if that's the case, if you really cared about this then vote with your eyes and go somewhere else and watch something else. The same thing goes for which partner you're going to choose, which type of person it is that you're going to be with. You can say all you want in your columns that you should date your guys, but if you don't go out and do that, what does it tell you about your theory around whether or not guys should get over their fear of tall women, or rich women, or status for women or whatever,

right? Like women aren't dating younger men. For that, there's another example of that in terms of trying to open the dating pool up. So what I think kind of an undertone that you can see here is that evolutionary psychology could be rather unpopular with quite a lot of people. I had Paige Harden on the show about a year ago, she wrote the genetic lottery. Paige is interesting because she comes from a left leaning background, but works in behavioral genetics, which is, I mean, that's chalk and cheese for you there.

And she, I see, as she speaks, that she's battling with some of these challenges. Talk to me about evolutionary psychology as it relates to feminism. Is evolutionary psychology sexist? Can it be complementary of feminism in any way, do you think? I mean, to me, part of the problem, and part of why this feels, I mean, you have people that argue that you can have, you know, a feminist evolutionary psychology. There are lots of people who argue that it is sexist.

There's lots of people who argue. Otherwise, to me, those terms and those definitions have become so politicized. To me, they're almost completely devoid from looking at the reality of people's actual behavior. I mean, I don't even know what it means to say that somebody is sexist, other than that somehow they recognize

that there are differences between the sexes now. Like, that's become sexist. That men and women are different. And yet, clearly they are. Otherwise, all the women would watch porn and all the men would watch. Well, the men would be at the erotic festival, yeah. Yeah, and they'd be, you know, reading romance novels.

And again, even if you say, well, you know, maybe the people who go to the romance conventions are just interested in looking at men. So of course, straight men aren't gonna do that. Well, the gay guys could all be going and hanging out and reading the romance novels. They're not doing that either. No, okay, so like I mean, I think at some very basic level,

there were differences between men and women. They were shaped by our evolutionary history. It doesn't mean that we're alien species, but it means that the problems that we face that were different, we evolved different solutions to. To me, there are people who will say that sexist. To me, it's reality. I don't think that's good or bad. It's just the way it is. I guess that's the problem. In a sense, I'm dodging. I mean, I see what's the question because I don't know.

That would be the super recent within the last half decade to decade view of what sexism means. But I think that you could take a broader view maybe over the last 30 to 40 years around feminism and around preconceptions, around women, their role in society, what it is that they want sensitive prescription, then being the ravished and needing a ravisher, stuff like that. How do you blend those two together?

Are they mutually incompatible? Well, I mean, I think some of the sexual stereotypes that are involved in that sort of thing, like the idea that women are always submissive. I mean, people who bought into that clearly didn't interact that much with women because even when women are submissive, they're often running the show. So it doesn't really translate, again, very much into the concreteness of things. But to the extent that so here's my take on some of that

with the stereotypes, stereotypes come from somewhere. They weren't just created by the culture. I mean, these are things that were very common amongst groups of people. People make generalizations about them. They're not true of every individual, We're just created by the culture. I mean, these are things that we're very common amongst groups of people. People make generalizations about them. They're not true of every individual, but they're true of many individuals. And so, you know, I think that, to the extent that evolutionary psychology explores those

things and is interested in what makes or shapes people, yeah, some of that data is going to support things like that and some of it's not. The submissive one has always been weird because it just seems like women, women and men do different things and they may be interested in different things and people interpret that to mean sometimes

that women are this and men are that. That doesn't necessarily you know imply submissiveness or dominance and there are women who want their man to be I suppose submissive to them but not anybody else well that's precisely yeah that's the and I think So you're very precisely, yeah, that's the, and I think increasingly, you're going to see the, the reversal of what you see publicly in terms of the polarity of the bedroom is a lot of the times what people feel turns them on. I think you may see a lot more race play in the bedroom given because it's exactly the sort of thing

that you're not allowed to do when you're in the real world. It's the high-powered boss bitch lawyer that wants to be tied up at home, right? That's the reversal of what you're used to. If you ever watched suits, and there was one of the guys in that, and he used to have this real rough sex thing, and I remember there was this scene, and the lady came up to him, and she said, what's the safe word that you've chosen for today?

And he said, safe words are for pussies. And the point being, he's this high powered guy, he's got all of this control. And in the bedroom, what does he do? He completely loses control. Yeah, he completely passes that off. But I think you're going to see some really weird quirks and kinks come through now because of what is no longer permitted.

Stuff like race play, I would not surprise me in the slightest if you're going to see more stuff like that in the bedroom. Yeah, well I mean it would be interesting to see, I mean, not that we get to see everything from the bedroom. I mean, you can ask people and hope that they... Go to China, they'll tell you everything. Well, I don't know. I never trust what they tell you though.

It's always so disturbing. But I do think that it might be interesting if you see that reflected in pornography, because it used to be that so much of pornography was controlled by the big companies that made films. Now is so much of it just being distributed online and all the amateur stuff. And maybe we will see an uptick in like, Now is so much of it just being distributed online and all the amateur stuff and maybe

we will see an uptick in like interracial stuff and in particular types of scenarios within those combinations that you could imagine would have been seen as taboo. But I mean again, if it's on the internet and it's pornography, you can get away with a lot of those taboos, right? Another thing that I looked at was the differences in the chemicals emitted from baby's heads, making man-moded, docile, and women more aggressive. Have you looked at that? But I vaguely, I saw something about that. I did not read the actual source of where it came from, but I read a story that was

talking about that, which I thought was weird, unless, you know, part of it is about maybe women, if, you know, if they have babies need to be more aggressive in the protection and defense of their own, and maybe sometimes they're aggressive towards other people's, right, if you think about it as female competition, right,

there's like in other animals species, sometimes females are not very nice to other females off-screen. But you also have the aloe parenting thing, right, as well, so it might cause women to... But it might, right, to become, like, to become more protective in the defense of their children and other children within the same group. Yes, yes, yes. Or as for men, it should just make them all squishy. So they're all dads and so that. Please do not hit the child.

Yeah, do not damage it. Don't try and swing it around, in like, stopping such an idiot with it. Yeah, that makes sense. There was another thing I learned about Will Costella told me this the other night when we were out for dinner. It's called like aggressive cuteness or something where women are like, it's so cute.

I just want to squish it. Like that kind of energy is actually. Yes, yes, it's like, it's a really strange compulsion. Think about what that is when it's this sort of overbearing aggression, but in a sort of a cutesy way. What is it that's causing the way that this neotanous little blob to make people do that? It's such a weird thing. I agree with you that that's a weird thing because I've never quite understood.

Like, I mean, I understand thinking things are really cute and wanting to pick them up and cuddle them, but the idea of like, you're so cute, I'm just going to like grab you. Like, that just seems to me to be disturbing in a weird creepy way. And so yeah, I don't know what is, I mean, I suppose some of it could just be like intensity of reaction and not having another outlet for it. I mean, we're not all-

Finching the cheeks of the child, right? Yeah, I mean, they also shriek a lot sometimes too, right? Oh, my God. Sorry, did you see that study that just came out about why women scream when they see the Beatles and bands and stuff like that? No, I didn't see that. Right, no, fans. Yeah.

So it was just that, like, is is was it focusing on excitement or? Yes, I'm going to say I got it sent by Rob Henderson early run today. Here it is. Why do female fans scream for the Beatles and other mega stars? Girls often scream for pop stars, but why we still have a lot to learn? Beetlemania, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, come on. Why scream for the Beatles and other mega stars? This phenomenon has attracted attention and analysis from popular press, but relatively little scientific focus. Come on. What? I mean, how long does this, there it is. If you've read some of my posts in our natural history, you know that

screams both animal and human are one of my research-interest humans, share screams with many other animals and these vocalizations are quite conserved acoustically across even very disparate species. Blah blah blah. One distinctive and common context for human screens is pleasurable excitement as any parent or a young child can attest to. Children at swimming pools, playgrounds, school bus stops, and just about anywhere they gather freely engage with one another will scream. This has not been had much scientific research done on wide children's scream like this,

and so whether this tendency is truly species typical and serves communicative, perhaps even adaptive functions is not well established. There is lots of evidence, though, from mental health experts, despite the lack of scientific understanding, on the internet for parents concerning embarrassing such behaviors, why they keep on screaming, why do they do it for the Beatles? Although there is a lot of individual variation with respects to Richard's post sites author Rachel Simmons who contends that society's expectation to politeness and modesty for young women create pent-up energy for breaking out of the constraining imposed rules and concerts represents such an opportunity. No doubt society's rules about conformity were fast stricter in

1964 than they were today and, fans of Justin Bieber screamed today in much the same way that the fans of the Beatles did then. Side point, I have a friend that was a rowdy at some sort of Justin Bieber-y type thing. And he said that the sound at one of these is absolutely deafening, like 30,000 screaming teenagers. And they've got these industrial strength e-approxies. That you use if you've got a jackhat, if you're one of those guys that works eight hours a day on a jackhammer. Screams attract attention and likely contagious. Screaming like this, however, is not restricted to popular music icons.

There's a much darker example illustrates. Wern a push 1913 to 1988 was a German politician in the social democratic party who as a young man observed in a number of Nazi rallies pride to the start of World War II. He was interviewed and provides accounts of the events for the still remarkable 1973 documentary series the World at War blah blah blah Basically, it was propaganda tools. They were struck by the reaction of many of the young women in attendance When Hitler arrived at the festival he described how the atmosphere grew more and more hysterical He was interrupted after nearly every phrase by bigger plores and women began screaming

It was like a mass religious ceremony at first glance It is difficult to find any similarities between a beloved music act and a monstros dictator Why would both elicit a similar response? Perhaps the answer lies, in the nature of the venue which focuses the attention of large crowds on individual figures that are popular and influential within these crowds, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has certainly elicited shrieks and screams from young female fans. The frantic and frenetic screaming at concerts appears almost contagious. Emotional contagion occurs in humans and at least in some animals too, represents one

dimension, an explanation for this sort of screaming. Is there anything else in here? Emotional contagion is likely only part of the explanation. Fans at sports events cheer loudly but don't scream. A completely speculative hypothesis, let's go. Derives from some of my research on screams and the literature on the evolution of these vocalizations. First and foremost, screams attract attention. This is true across the various species that

scream. That attention might be from an ally, such as a close relative, when a monkey or ape screams in a fight or in other species. The scream might draw attention and attract others when the caller is a rabbit or other prey in the jaws of a predator. Ba-ba-ba-ba. Rachel Simmons, who also views france screaming as competitive, but more in the sense that young women are signaling to one another their allegiance and passion for the band. She suggests it's a group bonding phenomenon, but that does not explain why the fans don't tend to show such exuberance with highly popular female performers, oh dear, or why they don't simply cheer loudly. So that leaves us with the hypothesis that competitive screams are functioning in an arena

governed by sexual selection But shaped by the particular cultural context of mass gatherings concerts and the presence of a superstar look at me is the message just as it is the message of attention Getting screams of children the phenomenon shows the complexity of screams as a mode of human communication and how much more we still have to learn about them. Yeah, that makes me think of girls at concerts, you know, or other kinds of events, but in particular concerts screaming and then lifting up their shirts. Right, it very much is the look at me It very much is the look at me aspect of it, right? I mean, I think that is part of it. It's like, you know, it's somebody they find ideal

in whatever way. I'm over here. I'm over here. You can hear me, you can see me. You can see me, yeah, exactly. You know, I never really, I mean, it definitely, I mean, the idea that it's attention getting, I mean, it clearly functions that way across species. But the idea that one does it to draw attention to you yourself when it's somebody that you

find sexually appealing also seems to make a lot of sense. And I don't think it's just exclusive to things like that. I remember going to pro wrestling events back in like the 90s, the 80s and 90s. And in particular in that late 90s attitude era, I remember one, they used to show a lot more stuff on television back then too, because you know, then the censors got really fussy about things again. There were a lot of women who would pull their shirts up and have written on their breasts, the like logo or the nickname or the initials of the guy that they liked that was the wrestler and they'd be they're

like screaming with their hands above their head and they're sure like half covering their face in some cases. There was a simpler time. It was a simpler time wasn't it? Yeah. We could get you, we could get you breasts out on television and no one would say otherwise. And nobody thought it was weird. Well, I don't know, probably some people thought it was weird, but it was definitely a different time. Catherine Simon, ladies and gentlemen, if people want to keep up to date with the things that you do, where should they go? Oh, well, they could go to my university website, universityofRudlands.edu, and find me there. And I also, if they're inclined to hunt down academic papers, research gate is the best way.

They can also email me at CatherineUnderscoreSammon.redlan, or at redlanes.edu, and I'm happy to respond to interested questions. Katherine, I appreciate you. Thank you. Thanks very much. you