evolutionarypsychology

This episode was recorded on October 26, 2021.

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Dr. David Buss and I discuss his groundbreaking work in evolutionary psychology. Our conversation forays into human mating practices & strategies, female preferences, dominance hierarchies, (fe)male aggression, emotional regulation & status, the dark triad (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy), inherent inequality, and much more.

Dr. David Buss is a professor of psychology at the University of Texas who has also taught at Harvard and the University of Michigan. He is considered the world’s leading expert on human mating strategies and is one of the founders of the field of evolutionary psychology.

His books include The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy is as Necessary as Love and Sex, The Murderer Next Door: Why the Mind Is Designed to Kill, and Why Women Have Sex.

Get Dr. Buss’ latest book, When Men Behave Badly: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment, and Assault:

https://amazon.com/When-Men-Behave-Badly-Harassment/dp/B08ZT82RH6/ref=sr_1_2?qid=1642690863&refinements=p_27%3ADavid+Buss&s=books&sr=1-2

& previous works: https://amazon.com/Books-David-Buss/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3ADavid+Buss

Follow Dr. Buss on Twitter: https://twitter.com/profdavidbuss

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Chapters

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[00:00] Intro

[02:09] Career Background

[06:50] Human Mating Strategies

[09:18] Patriarchy & Mating

[10:52] Female Preferences & Resource Acquisition

[14:54] Sexual Selection Theory: An Overview

[25:23] Patriarchy: Origins

[27:36] (Dominance) Hierarchies

[40:20] Women & the Dark Triad (Narcissism, Machiavelianism, & Psychopathy)

[57:59] Attention & (Fe)male Selection

[01:04:24] Violence

[01:07:47] Emotional Regulation & Status

[01:13:59] Disturbing Ethical Conclusions

[01:20:25] (Fe)male Aggression

[01:23:29] Monogamy & Violence

[01:28:30] Inequality

[01:33:40] Why Strategies Differ

[01:42:45] Outro

#Evolution #Hierarchies #Patriarchy #Violence #Gender #Monogamy

Today it’s a great honor to have Steven Pinker on the podcast. Dr. Pinker is an experimental psychologist who conducts research in visual cognition, psycholinguistics, and social relations. He grew up in Montreal and earned his BA from McGill and his PhD from Harvard. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, Pinker has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won numerous prizes for his research, his teaching, and his ten books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, The Sense of Style, and most recently, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. Pinker is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, and one of Foreign Policy’s “World’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals” and Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today.” He is Chair of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, and writes frequently for The New York Times, The Guardian, and other publications.

In this episode we discuss the following topics:

• The main thread that runs through all of Pinker’s work
• Does reducing economic inequality increase happiness?
• Does increased autonomy lead to increased happiness?
• How humanism is compatible with spirituality
• Why we should not confuse evolutionary adaptation (in Darwin’s sense) with human worth
• The difference between the ultimate and proximal levels of analysis
• Why Evolutionary Psychology is often so misunderstood
• Why human nature isn’t necessarily conductive to human flourishing
• How the laws of the universe don’t care about you
• Why do intellectuals hate progress so much?
• What are some indicators of human progress?
• Why should people care about human progress over the course of history?
• The myth of the suicide and loneliness “epidemics”
• Why we enjoy and care more about food and children than oxygen
• Rates of sexual assault and mental health on campus
• The increasing divisiveness and irrationality of politics
• How the recent presidential election was a “carnival of irrationality”
• Humanistic ethics
• Can we have a good without a God?
• The possibility of the unification of knowledge across the arts, humanities, and sciences
• Toward a third culture

Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-psychology-podcast/support

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Today we refer to depression as a mental illness that needs to be cured as quickly as possible. But our guest today makes the nuanced case that human beings may have evolved to be depressed and that at one time in our prehistoric past it served an adaptive purpose. The problem is that our brain isn't made for this hectic and stressful modern world that we live in. Dr. Jonathan Rottenberg is psychologist specializing in moods and today we discuss the research from his book The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic. Dr. Rottenberg's nuanced view of depression brings some much-needed balance and humanity to the discussion about depression.

Welcome back to another edition of the Art of Manliness Podcast!
In today's episode we discuss mating intelligence with the authors of a new book on the subject. Drs. Glen Geher and Scotty Barry Kaufman are pyschologists and the authors of the book Mating Intelligence Unleashed: The Role of the Mind in Sex, Dating, and Love.

Back in the 1990s, Congress effectively banned the scientific study of gun violence. Still, a handful of researchers plugged on and produced a small body of work about the effect of the presence of guns on the human psyche. Chuck and Josh look at the evidence.

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