the thing that we need to remember is that the process of evolution by selection didn't wire us to be happy or satisfied or or any it's like it has designed us to survive and to reproduce and part of that means that we're going to feel kind of terrible some of the time and part of women's design you know sort of the design of our psychology is such that it does it it's like a smoke detector it's tuned to picking up on even subtle cues of possible danger just because the potential cost associated with would happen
if that actually if that danger is real is much greater for women um for a lot of different reasons some of which you've touched upon I mean there's one is that women are mothers so it's like you know it's like you hear like you're eating for two you're feeling danger for two you know you're having to protect yourself and your Offspring You're more physically vulnerable because of course you're physically you know women are smaller and have less upper body strength sexual vulnerability for the reasons you talked about I mean unfortunately sexual violence has been something
that's been present as long as um we've been around and it certainly it's something we see in all species with choosy females you'll have males who want to override that choice and um and so there's a lot of reasons that women manipulation too it's not merely that women are overpowered physically it's that they're also susceptible to very devious manipulation on the part of mellian and Psychopathic men and they need to be alert to that that form of deception as a threat as well right is what and yes and and even also with with other females
and and and the reason for this is that you know when you think about the cost for a woman if she's duped so let's just talk about sexual deception right if a woman is duped she could end up pregnant there's a nine month investment there right and if you look especially at historical um you know types of populations like modern hunter gatherer groups if you have a a woman who doesn't have a father investing in the child the risk of infant mortality is like 80% right I mean it's very high and and the risk of
death during child birth even is very high so women are putting their lives at risk every time they get pregnant and then to get pregnant and have a really high-risk infant that's not getting invested in she's not getting and the reputation too yeah and the reputation I mean there's so many cost to that and the costs just aren't that you know it's not symmetrical for men the cost of those things aren't the same and so our brains are wired to be differently sensitive to those kinds of cues because the consequences are so much more dire
if you have a female body compared to if you have a male body which is do you know what is there a literature on okay one of tell me if I got this wrong okay all right so we talked about the different reproductive strategies say of mosquitoes and human beings mosquitoes have like a zero investment strategy you have a million Offspring all of them die but like one but that's okay CU that's replacement whereas human beings it's unbelievably heavy investment then you look within human beings women invest more than men then you could look within
men and you could say there are men who invest less and Men Who invest more okay so the men who invest less they're the short-term Mater types now I've been looking into the personality predictors of short-term mating strategies and they're not that positive so the personality theorists who've been investigating the so-called dark tetrad which is a group of you might say undesirable descriptors psychopathy narcissism melanism which is manipulative and sadism because they had to add that to it those traits are much more um Pro pronounced among men and women but particularly among men who who
adopt a short-term mating strategy right and so now so one of the things I'm wondering about is that's related to that so that men who adopt that short-term M mating strategy they love him and leave them right there's no let's say there's little postcoidal regret there's no guilt or shame associated with short-term mating opportunities do you know if there's a literature detailing the difference in response to short-term mating episodes between men and women are women more likely to evince regret in the aftermath of short-term mating episodes one night stance oh yeah absolutely there's a there's
a rich literature in sexual regret and exactly as you would expect when you look at what people regret sexually um women regret more these short-term mating opportunities that they um you know participated in men more often regret those that they didn't participate in so men opportun yes missed opportunities so men's sexual regret tends to sort of cluster around things that they wish they would have taken advantage of and they did not whereas women's tends to Cluster more and I really wish I wouldn't have had sex with that idiot right right now do you know is
there a personality literature that's looked at individual differences in post short-term sex regret so like are the are the women less likely to show regret also more likely to have dark tetrad personality traits like there's got to be predictors of regret right now you expect neuroticism would be one because that would just predict negative emotion in general I suspect agreeableness is another predictor is that the women who are more agreeable compassionate polite more inclined to caretake and bond so I would suspect that it's the more Fe women who are most more likely to show postcoidal
regret I suspect the same thing would be true of men I bet you the more feminine men are also more likely to manifest that pattern of regret yeah that's really interesting yeah so I I think with women a lot of it so in in the personality literature and I'm aware of that I only know that there was a dark Triad so sadism they had dad sadism that's real fun n yeah yeah positive Delight in the suffering of others yeah wow wow I wonder if he's got a brother um like that's just a terrible it's a
terrible quality that's for sure um so uh no so I'm not I'm not terrible I'm familiar with that that but when I when I think about things I tend to think about um just because personality isn't really my area more The evolutionary uh area I I tend to think about the like you know my prediction would be um from an evolutionary perspective would be that we would see women experiencing more sexual regret when the costs are higher right so like what are the costs associated with having made that decision that you made right so whether
it's reputational cost so for example a woman who has more to lose reputationally from having capitalized on that short-term mating strategy I think that she would experience stronger sexual regret I bet I bet you could predict that by looking at the relative H just imagine there's a Continuum of men with regards to the socioeconomic status markers of their potential as providers I suspect that this might seem obvious but it would be nice to see it demonstrated that the larger the gap between the woman and the man in terms of status yes the more regret yes
no I I would think so AB because she sold herself short and the risk of that is too [Music] high
