Name: The Reasons for Female vs. Male Infidelity Explained by Evolutionary Psychologist David Buss
Uploaded: 2023-03-23T18:38:24.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Reasons for Female vs. Male Infidelity Explained by Evolutionary Psychologist David Buss' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-03-23. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Reasons for Female vs. Male Infidelity Explained by Evolutionary Psychologist David Buss' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-03-23. Transcript available.

And there have been, you know, maybe four or five leading hypotheses about why
women do it.
And this is one area where I've changed my mind on pretty dramatically.
So early on, a former student of mine, Marty Hazleton, who's now a professor at
UCLA,
and other friends and colleagues like Steve Gangestead and Randy Thornhill,
put forward this idea that the reason that women do it is that they're pursuing
a dual mating strategy.
That is, they're trying to get investment from one guy, like the good dads, but
good genes from another guy.
Oh, wow.
And so it's – and –
But is there any research done on what type of mate a woman is likely to cheat
on?
Well, that's a good question.
So there's been some, and it's not conclusive.
But basically the only way this could work – and I have to back up just a
second on that.
We know that affairs are very costly for women.
So if discovered, they result in – infidels result in violence.
Sometimes they result in killing, you know, getting to the killing.
I don't know if we want to get into that maybe later in our conversation.
Yeah, you wrote a whole book on murder.
I wrote a whole book on murder, yeah.
You know, yeah, the murderer next door.
But also women suffer more than men if an infidelity is discovered.
They suffer reputational damage.
They suffer sometimes social ostracism.
It's cataclysmic for their relationship.
So, you know, in fact, it's one of the leading causes of divorce worldwide
across cultures is if there's a female infidelity.
And so the issue is what benefit could be so great to a woman that she's
willing to risk all these costs if it's discovered.
And so the good genes dual mating strategy argument could work in principle.
And it could work if there were no costs.
And this is, you know, one of the reasons why men and women commit infidelities
in secret.
You know, it's been driven underground.
People don't go on Twitter and say, hey, I just had an affair on my partner,
you know.
It's driven underground.
People try to keep it under wraps so they don't experience the costs.
And, of course, there are costs to men as well by being discovered.
They're just not as cataclysmic as they are for women.
So the only way it would work, though, is if the – getting back to your
original question – is if there's a large discrepancy between the woman's
regular partner and her affair partner in terms of the quality of his genes.
And so what these good genes dual mating strategy theorists propose is that
there are certain markers of good genetic quality.
They hypothesized masculine features, and there's a logic behind that.
They hypothesized symmetrical features.
So we are a bilaterally symmetrical species.
So normal development, you know, we have, you know, our hands, our arms, our
legs grow, you know, more or less symmetrically.
But there are things that cause deviations from symmetry.
So mutations – so genetic mutations can cause deviations.
Diseases can cause asymmetries and environmental insults in a variety of ways.
And so what they – the good genes theorists argue is that if someone is –
if the male is very symmetrical, then that's a marker that he's not experienced
a history of disease or environmental insults or a high mutation load or has a
– what they call a developmental system that's very kind of impervious to
these insults.
So even though they've suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
they still maintain that symmetry.
Well, I think there are problems with that.
But anyway, back to – to backtrack a second why it changed my mind.
So I used to advocate this.
Well, this seems – it's logically plausible.
But I started to doubt it.
And I started to doubt it for two reasons.
One is some replication, some larger scale replications of the work started to
fail to replicate the original findings.
So what they did is – how did they test this?
What they looked at is do women change their preferences when they're ovulating?
So because it's only in that narrow window of ovulation that she's going to be
getting the good genes.
So what they looked at is women's normal mate preferences and they tracked them
over the ovulation cycle.
And do they change to prefer more masculine, more symmetrical features when
they're ovulating and then go back to their normal preferences?
And the initial studies suggested – yes, they do.
Initial studies suggested that when women have affairs, it tends to coincide
with when they're ovulating and some other things like that.
How did they gather this data?
Well, it's very difficult and time-consuming data.
But, you know, it started out with crude methods such as estimating the woman's
time of ovulation through a backward counting method.
Right, but, I mean, how do they get people to even become a part of a study
where they admit that they have cheated on their husbands?
Oh, well, so that's a different question.
These studies just looked at changes in mate preferences.
Right, but you're talking about affairs.
It's not just changes in mate preferences.
It's a decision to have intercourse with someone other than your husband.
Right.
How do you run a study like that?
Right, and they haven't run studies like that.
So they haven't said –
They haven't?
No, no.
So how do they know?
They don't.
It's just do the mate preferences change at ovulation in the ways predicted by
the theory?
Okay, so how would they find that out?
How would they find out if a woman's mate strategies changed and if her
preference has changed based on ovulation?
So they basically get women and then they track them throughout the cycle and
so – and they can do this.
Now they can do it through hormonal assays.
So there are, you know, ovulation kits that they can assess.
So what do they have, like a survey they fill out?
Like who are you attracted to today?
Harry Styles.
What about tomorrow?
Something like that.
Jason Momoa, I must be ovulating.
Right, right.
Or basically they show photographic images and so women just rate, oh, how
attractive is this guy?
And so what they – and then independently they can assess masculinity like
Jason – what do you pronounce the name?
Momoa.
Momoa.
Aquaman.
Yeah, he's like super masculine.
Because I remember him – I don't think I saw Aquaman, but I remember him from
Game of Thrones.
Yeah.
And yeah, women –
Conan the Barbarian too.
Yeah.
So yeah, he would be a perfect example.
Yeah.
Highly masculine features, you know, the square jaw, heavy brow ridges, you
know, a good shoulder to hip ratio.
So, you know, typically masculine features.
And so they would look at do women rate the photos of these masculine and
symmetrical guys more attractive when they're ovulating than when they're not
ovulating.
That's basically what they did.
And the bottom line – so there's some conceptual problems with that of, you
know, does symmetry and masculinity – why are these the sole features that
mark good genes?
Because there are also a lot of things that have moderate heritability.
It's one of the things we know from the heritability studies.
A zillion things show moderate heritability.
But here's the – here's what really convinced me.
So one is the failures to replicate those studies.
So the larger scale studies failed to find those preference shifts at ovulation.
But when you started to – when I started to look at the literature about
women who were having affairs and the reasons that they're having affairs and
the nature of the affairs, there are things that cropped up like this.
And one study found 79% of women fell in love with or became emotionally
involved with her affair partner.
And to me, this is exactly the opposite of what you'd want if you're trying to
pursue that dual mating strategy idea.
You want to get the good genes and then forget about the guy so as not to
jeopardize your investment from the regular partner.
And so it's really – it's a design feature that's counter to that notion.
Can I stop you here?
But it seems to me that you're pursuing this like as if it's a logical endeavor
that's based on trying to achieve an outcome.
And I think it's far more likely you're dealing with mental illness, alcohol,
emotional imbalance, extreme desire for attention, narcissism, which leads
people to seek out exorbitant amounts of attention from other people.
Like you have to take that into account, don't you?
Yeah, okay, so it's a fair point.
And those things aren't necessarily inconsistent if you ask like who has
affairs and what are their personality characteristics.
Okay, but affairs happen in all cultures or virtually all cultures unless the
women are extremely cloistered as they are in some cultures where they're like
they cannot leave the home without a male bodyguard.
Right.
But affairs happen in all cultures and so –
Would you like some coffee?
Sure, I'd love some.
All right.
Thank you.
No problem.
So affairs happen in all cultures.
Yeah, affairs happen in all cultures.
So a competing hypothesis about why – and this is the one I'm currently
putting my money on if there's a horse race – is what I call the mate-switching
hypothesis.
And this is the notion that women who are in relationships who are – where
the relationship is going south, perhaps the partner starts out looking
promising but has failed to live up to his promise.
Perhaps he becomes an alcoholic or a drug addict or loses his job or starts abusing
her, starts beating her up.
That women use affairs as a mate-switching device either to divest herself of
her regular partner and or to trade up in the mating market to someone who's
more desirable or to make it easier to transition back into the mating market
on the notion, on the assumption that she'll be able to find someone more
desirable out there.
And so there's at least a fair amount of circumstantial evidence that supports
the mate-switching hypothesis, like the one I just mentioned.
Women – with 79 percent of women becoming emotionally involved or falling in
love with their partner, this suggests – you know, it's not just, oh, I'm
seeking transient attention, as you mentioned.
Even though some women might do it for that, of course, but it suggests that
they're forming a long-term attachment to this other guy rather than their
regular partner.
So here's another one, and this may seem like super, super obvious, is that
women who are unhappy with their regular relationship, either sexually unhappy
or generally unhappy with their overall relationship, they're more likely to
have affairs.
Now, this seems like the most obvious thing in the world, right?
Well, yeah, sure, tell me something I don't – your grandmother couldn't tell
you.
You're unhappy in the relationship.
You're more likely to have an affair.
But it turns out the same is not true for men.
That is, there are at least some studies that show that if you compare men who
have affairs with men who don't, there's no difference in how happy they are
with the relationship.
And that's why you can have men, and just to bring up, I don't know, movie star
examples, like – this is an older one, but Hugh Grant was involved with
Elizabeth Hurley.
I don't know if you remember that one.
And he's like having sex with a prostitute in L.A.
Why is he cheating with Elizabeth Hurley?
Kind of crazy.
Now, in his case, in that case, the male motivation for affairs differs on
average substantially from the female motivation.
And that is that men are – have this tremendous desire for sexual variety,
meaning a variety of sex partners.
Men tend to have a higher sex drive in general on average, and so they try to
satisfy.
So even men who are involved with – are married to classically beautiful,
beautiful women sometimes have affairs, or people are very puzzled by this.
But that desire for sexual variety is what drives most men into affairs.
And so there's a dramatic sex difference in why men have affairs with desire
for sexual variety pushing most men into it.
You know, it's like – I think it was Chris Rock said, you know, men are only
as faithful as their opportunity.
You get a low-cost opportunity, a lot of men act on it.
You know, if you're like an academic, you're away at a conference, you're in a
different town, you know, some fall into bed with someone else.
One night stand, a brief affair, and that's that.
But women, it's really different.
Of course, some women do it just for sexual variety, too.
But that's a minority.
If you ask the question, why do most women have an affair, I think that's the
mate-switching notion.

The Reasons for Female vs. Male Infidelity Explained by Evolutionary Psychologist David Buss

And there have been, you know, maybe four or five leading hypotheses about why
women do it.
And this is one area where I've changed my mind on pretty dramatically.
So early on, a former student of mine, Marty Hazleton, who's now a professor at
UCLA,
and other friends and colleagues like Steve Gangestead and Randy Thornhill,
put forward this idea that the reason that women do it is that they're pursuing
a dual mating strategy.
That is, they're trying to get investment from one guy, like the good dads, but
good genes from another guy.
Oh, wow.
And so it's – and –
But is there any research done on what type of mate a woman is likely to cheat
on?
Well, that's a good question.
So there's been some, and it's not conclusive.
But basically the only way this could work – and I have to back up just a
second on that.
We know that affairs are very costly for women.
So if discovered, they result in – infidels result in violence.
Sometimes they result in killing, you know, getting to the killing.
I don't know if we want to get into that maybe later in our conversation.
Yeah, you wrote a whole book on murder.
I wrote a whole book on murder, yeah.
You know, yeah, the murderer next door.
But also women suffer more than men if an infidelity is discovered.
They suffer reputational damage.
They suffer sometimes social ostracism.
It's cataclysmic for their relationship.
So, you know, in fact, it's one of the leading causes of divorce worldwide
across cultures is if there's a female infidelity.
And so the issue is what benefit could be so great to a woman that she's
willing to risk all these costs if it's discovered.
And so the good genes dual mating strategy argument could work in principle.
And it could work if there were no costs.
And this is, you know, one of the reasons why men and women commit infidelities
in secret.
You know, it's been driven underground.
People don't go on Twitter and say, hey, I just had an affair on my partner,
you know.
It's driven underground.
People try to keep it under wraps so they don't experience the costs.
And, of course, there are costs to men as well by being discovered.
They're just not as cataclysmic as they are for women.
So the only way it would work, though, is if the – getting back to your
original question – is if there's a large discrepancy between the woman's
regular partner and her affair partner in terms of the quality of his genes.
And so what these good genes dual mating strategy theorists propose is that
there are certain markers of good genetic quality.
They hypothesized masculine features, and there's a logic behind that.
They hypothesized symmetrical features.
So we are a bilaterally symmetrical species.
So normal development, you know, we have, you know, our hands, our arms, our
legs grow, you know, more or less symmetrically.
But there are things that cause deviations from symmetry.
So mutations – so genetic mutations can cause deviations.
Diseases can cause asymmetries and environmental insults in a variety of ways.
And so what they – the good genes theorists argue is that if someone is –
if the male is very symmetrical, then that's a marker that he's not experienced
a history of disease or environmental insults or a high mutation load or has a
– what they call a developmental system that's very kind of impervious to
these insults.
So even though they've suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
they still maintain that symmetry.
Well, I think there are problems with that.
But anyway, back to – to backtrack a second why it changed my mind.
So I used to advocate this.
Well, this seems – it's logically plausible.
But I started to doubt it.
And I started to doubt it for two reasons.
One is some replication, some larger scale replications of the work started to
fail to replicate the original findings.
So what they did is – how did they test this?
What they looked at is do women change their preferences when they're ovulating?
So because it's only in that narrow window of ovulation that she's going to be
getting the good genes.
So what they looked at is women's normal mate preferences and they tracked them
over the ovulation cycle.
And do they change to prefer more masculine, more symmetrical features when
they're ovulating and then go back to their normal preferences?
And the initial studies suggested – yes, they do.
Initial studies suggested that when women have affairs, it tends to coincide
with when they're ovulating and some other things like that.
How did they gather this data?
Well, it's very difficult and time-consuming data.
But, you know, it started out with crude methods such as estimating the woman's
time of ovulation through a backward counting method.
Right, but, I mean, how do they get people to even become a part of a study
where they admit that they have cheated on their husbands?
Oh, well, so that's a different question.
These studies just looked at changes in mate preferences.
Right, but you're talking about affairs.
It's not just changes in mate preferences.
It's a decision to have intercourse with someone other than your husband.
Right.
How do you run a study like that?
Right, and they haven't run studies like that.
So they haven't said –
They haven't?
No, no.
So how do they know?
They don't.
It's just do the mate preferences change at ovulation in the ways predicted by
the theory?
Okay, so how would they find that out?
How would they find out if a woman's mate strategies changed and if her
preference has changed based on ovulation?
So they basically get women and then they track them throughout the cycle and
so – and they can do this.
Now they can do it through hormonal assays.
So there are, you know, ovulation kits that they can assess.
So what do they have, like a survey they fill out?
Like who are you attracted to today?
Harry Styles.
What about tomorrow?
Something like that.
Jason Momoa, I must be ovulating.
Right, right.
Or basically they show photographic images and so women just rate, oh, how
attractive is this guy?
And so what they – and then independently they can assess masculinity like
Jason – what do you pronounce the name?
Momoa.
Momoa.
Aquaman.
Yeah, he's like super masculine.
Because I remember him – I don't think I saw Aquaman, but I remember him from
Game of Thrones.
Yeah.
And yeah, women –
Conan the Barbarian too.
Yeah.
So yeah, he would be a perfect example.
Yeah.
Highly masculine features, you know, the square jaw, heavy brow ridges, you
know, a good shoulder to hip ratio.
So, you know, typically masculine features.
And so they would look at do women rate the photos of these masculine and
symmetrical guys more attractive when they're ovulating than when they're not
ovulating.
That's basically what they did.
And the bottom line – so there's some conceptual problems with that of, you
know, does symmetry and masculinity – why are these the sole features that
mark good genes?
Because there are also a lot of things that have moderate heritability.
It's one of the things we know from the heritability studies.
A zillion things show moderate heritability.
But here's the – here's what really convinced me.
So one is the failures to replicate those studies.
So the larger scale studies failed to find those preference shifts at ovulation.
But when you started to – when I started to look at the literature about
women who were having affairs and the reasons that they're having affairs and
the nature of the affairs, there are things that cropped up like this.
And one study found 79% of women fell in love with or became emotionally
involved with her affair partner.
And to me, this is exactly the opposite of what you'd want if you're trying to
pursue that dual mating strategy idea.
You want to get the good genes and then forget about the guy so as not to
jeopardize your investment from the regular partner.
And so it's really – it's a design feature that's counter to that notion.
Can I stop you here?
But it seems to me that you're pursuing this like as if it's a logical endeavor
that's based on trying to achieve an outcome.
And I think it's far more likely you're dealing with mental illness, alcohol,
emotional imbalance, extreme desire for attention, narcissism, which leads
people to seek out exorbitant amounts of attention from other people.
Like you have to take that into account, don't you?
Yeah, okay, so it's a fair point.
And those things aren't necessarily inconsistent if you ask like who has
affairs and what are their personality characteristics.
Okay, but affairs happen in all cultures or virtually all cultures unless the
women are extremely cloistered as they are in some cultures where they're like
they cannot leave the home without a male bodyguard.
Right.
But affairs happen in all cultures and so –
Would you like some coffee?
Sure, I'd love some.
All right.
Thank you.
No problem.
So affairs happen in all cultures.
Yeah, affairs happen in all cultures.
So a competing hypothesis about why – and this is the one I'm currently
putting my money on if there's a horse race – is what I call the mate-switching
hypothesis.
And this is the notion that women who are in relationships who are – where
the relationship is going south, perhaps the partner starts out looking
promising but has failed to live up to his promise.
Perhaps he becomes an alcoholic or a drug addict or loses his job or starts abusing
her, starts beating her up.
That women use affairs as a mate-switching device either to divest herself of
her regular partner and or to trade up in the mating market to someone who's
more desirable or to make it easier to transition back into the mating market
on the notion, on the assumption that she'll be able to find someone more
desirable out there.
And so there's at least a fair amount of circumstantial evidence that supports
the mate-switching hypothesis, like the one I just mentioned.
Women – with 79 percent of women becoming emotionally involved or falling in
love with their partner, this suggests – you know, it's not just, oh, I'm
seeking transient attention, as you mentioned.
Even though some women might do it for that, of course, but it suggests that
they're forming a long-term attachment to this other guy rather than their
regular partner.
So here's another one, and this may seem like super, super obvious, is that
women who are unhappy with their regular relationship, either sexually unhappy
or generally unhappy with their overall relationship, they're more likely to
have affairs.
Now, this seems like the most obvious thing in the world, right?
Well, yeah, sure, tell me something I don't – your grandmother couldn't tell
you.
You're unhappy in the relationship.
You're more likely to have an affair.
But it turns out the same is not true for men.
That is, there are at least some studies that show that if you compare men who
have affairs with men who don't, there's no difference in how happy they are
with the relationship.
And that's why you can have men, and just to bring up, I don't know, movie star
examples, like – this is an older one, but Hugh Grant was involved with
Elizabeth Hurley.
I don't know if you remember that one.
And he's like having sex with a prostitute in L.A.
Why is he cheating with Elizabeth Hurley?
Kind of crazy.
Now, in his case, in that case, the male motivation for affairs differs on
average substantially from the female motivation.
And that is that men are – have this tremendous desire for sexual variety,
meaning a variety of sex partners.
Men tend to have a higher sex drive in general on average, and so they try to
satisfy.
So even men who are involved with – are married to classically beautiful,
beautiful women sometimes have affairs, or people are very puzzled by this.
But that desire for sexual variety is what drives most men into affairs.
And so there's a dramatic sex difference in why men have affairs with desire
for sexual variety pushing most men into it.
You know, it's like – I think it was Chris Rock said, you know, men are only
as faithful as their opportunity.
You g