Rob Henderson
Appearances
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
There was a really funny study a few years ago in the UK about height, that there's a sort of a small but significant correlation between height and voting for conservative political parties. I don't know if that would hold up today. This was like 2016, 2017, that period. But...
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah, yeah, I think that was that's well put. And if you look at kind of the the research on who people think deserve help, or who would benefit most from help those kinds of things, it seems to be that especially on the political left, there's this belief that, um, Historically mistreated groups, it's perfectly reasonable not to hold them responsible for their misfortunes.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
But then historically dominant groups, you know, men and white people and straight people and so on, that if they're struggling, if they're not doing as well in society, then, you know, there's something wrong with them. But if marginalized groups aren't doing well, it's something wrong with society.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And, you know, it's interesting sort of if you break this down politically, there's a really interesting book that just came out called Outraged by the psychologist Kurt Gray. And he talks about what he calls like moral dyad theory and how, you know, basically we categorize people into two different types.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Generally speaking, like not even people, but just entities in general, including people, which he calls one group of vulnerable feelers. And these are people who are sort of exquisitely sensitive to suffering and to pain and to anguish. You know, constantly put upon and beleaguered. And then he talks about what he calls thinking doers.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And this is the reverse people who are relatively unfeeling, but highly agentic, you know, capable of strategizing, forming a plan, executing and so on. And so like an example of a vulnerable feeler, you know, the sort of the extremes, a newborn infant is a vulnerable feeler. We attribute basically no agency to the baby, but we attribute a lot of vulnerability to it.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Whereas a highly successful CEO would be the reverse, highly agentic, but relatively unfeeling. We don't think of successful CEOs as exquisitely sensitive to pain and emotional suffering and those kinds of things, but they're really able to execute.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
But then when researchers apply this moral dyad framework to human groups, basically we see that political conservatives generally attribute both to most people. Regardless of your background, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, we're all kind of capable of being competent, but also sensitive and vulnerable.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And then there's interesting work around attitudes around social dominance orientation and men who are sort of sure of themselves, confident, go out into the world, achieve something. They also tend to like things like low taxes and they tend to like things like a strong military, police, all those kinds of things kind of cluster together.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Whereas on the political left, they tend to view sort of marginalized and mistreated groups as one or the other. or marginalized and mistreated groups as vulnerable feelers and historically dominant groups as thinking doers.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And so a cop and a criminal, for example, political conservatives say, well, cops and criminals alike can suffer, can feel pain, can plan, can execute, are responsible for their own actions. Whereas political liberals tend to say, you know, cops are these thinking doers, these mechanistic, highly agentic beings and criminals are these vulnerable feelers.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
you know, exploited people who are susceptible to being victimized. And I think that actually kind of explains, you know, like why we see relatively little concern for, you know, men. And then when we talk about men, I find it interesting sometimes when you see, because I spent a lot of time in academia, you know, it's not enough. Like I think left of center academics are,
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
When they talk about men in broad strokes, I think there's this fear that they may be mistaken for talking about all men, including non-white men. And so often they'll specify, they'll say, well, these white men who are complaining about being incels or these white men who are complaining about falling behind in society. And I think to myself, you know, it's not just white men.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
I was at this conference a couple of weeks ago. And this reporter for the New York Times, he was on stage and he was a very interesting guy who was very balanced in his analysis of what happened with the 2024 election. And this white guy in the audience raises his hand and he says, yeah, that's all really interesting. But again, this is a white guy and the reporter is a black man.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
So the white guy is like... Don't you think that this was basically white male toxic masculinity? You know, these guys who are talking about how bad they have it, these white guys and the black New York Times reporter shoots back and says, like, well, those guys are upset, but it's not just a white thing.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Like, if you look at the polling data in terms of who supported Trump, like it was across the board of men of all races. shifted towards the Republicans. Yeah, the only the only segment he lost in was white people. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's right.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And so so I think like a lot of people, you know, they want to isolate it and talk about the most powerful and privileged group white men, but actually, it's a little more complicated than that.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And so it would make sense, I think, that women, regardless of political orientation, even if they explicitly when you ask them about politics, they're going to say, I don't like this or that party. But then they start to list out the qualities that they enjoy. You know, those just tend to cluster more on the right side of the political spectrum.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's what was men, men, not erect women, women, most men, not erect women, most effective. Yeah, that's yeah, that yeah, that's an interesting point there that like, well, men aren't erect. But then it's, you know, again, it's it's the man's fault for being unable to achieve an erection. And that yeah, who's who's who's really vulnerable here.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
which is, yeah, it's an interesting framing there. Like you mentioned that, uh, you know, often women do feel, um, uh, you know, unhappy about this, that, that they see it as a reflection on maybe their own attractiveness. And you've probably seen some, some research going on. I saw, I saw Rolf Dagan tweet something about this.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
There was a study about how, um, women essentially feel like extremely satisfied when their male partner has an orgasm and they feel very dissatisfied when they don't like, they feel like the sense of accomplishment by bringing their male partner to
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
to completion in the bedroom, which I guess, like, you know, there's probably an evolutionary story you could tell there that, you know, historically, evolutionarily, male orgasm is required for the continuation of the species, whereas women's orgasm, you know, it's great, but also, you know, not necessary for the continuation. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
right oh right you know what i mean yeah yeah yeah so so in in this case it's um kind of uh the the complexity of your sexuality and what what brings you to be aroused and to have an orgasm it's it's much more varied for women than for men which is yeah that's at odds with uh what we usually see that's fascinating novel novel insight that's some fucking bro science for you that's really yeah dr rob henderson
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah, well, I mean, that I think that makes sense in general. You know, I saw this tweet going around the other day, got a lot of attention. It was something like, you know, I want I want a boyfriend who who looks like a Republican, but isn't one something like that.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Well, I remember seeing this study a while ago and I think like it's funny, like, you know, all of these stories about conflict in the bedroom and how, you know, I've seen articles that we need to achieve like orgasm equity, that it's unfair that men always have an orgasm. And women, you know, it's so unlikely for them.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
But then when you look at the data, as far as like, like, in what relational context women actually have orgasms. Let me see if I get these numbers right. So so when women are in a committed relationship with a male partner, so this heterosexual couples, they orgasm something like 70% of the time.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Um, but then when you look at, uh, hookups, like a, like a casual, uh, uh, partner that you see on a somewhat regular basis, it drops to something like 25%. And then for one night stand, it's like well into the single digits, it's like 7%. And so, you know, like, you know, one, one way that women might increase their odds of having an orgasm is to get into a committed relationship.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
There's something cosmically unfair that like when a man has a one night stand, casual sex, committed relationship that we, you know, they usually make, make it work. Whereas for women, like there's all these other... what was that term going around a couple of years ago? It was like demisexual or something like I need to have an emotional connection.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah, well, what's really interesting. So I mean, you know, the basic summary of the show, I'm sure a lot of your listeners have have seen it about this boy, this 13 year old boy, who's, you know, kind of unpopular at school, he goes to the, you know, he's a working class kid, he goes to this, you know, rundown, chaotic school. Yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
You know, and I think that's the dream is like, you know, you have all of the qualities of a sort of prototypical Republican successful guy or whatever, but then like they somehow still support the left-wing political parties, which I guess is like that, that incentivizes, you know, this idea, I'm sure you've come across it called woke fishing of guys who conceal their political views.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
you know, one thing a mutual friend of ours pointed out, William Costello, is that like, because he's worked in schools in the UK before, and he says like, that is what a lot of these schools look like, this sort of utter chaos, teachers barely able to contain the classroom. And this boy, Jamie, is relatively unpopular. He's sort of at the center of the story.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And the show makes references to, you know, how the kid listens to Andrew Tate and how he, you know, there were a couple of times the
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
he said something about like the 80-20 rule about how 80% of women like 20% of men and so there are a lot of these kind of like red pill manosphere talking points throughout the show basically suggesting heavily that this boy got like you know sucked into this online rabbit hole and then when this girl on Instagram this girl he had a crush on in his class calls him an incel he lashes out gets mad at her and then he stabs her
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
and then the boy's arrested, and there's this kind of interesting scene of him. The whole episode, one of the episodes, consists of him speaking with this, I think she's a psychiatrist or something, and they're going back and forth about this. It was interesting as a piece of entertainment. I thought it was beautifully shot, but I don't think... There are a lot of things about this series.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
It's being treated as a documentary, but it actually doesn't really reflect what happens in real life. you know, like, like, you know, if you look at the statistics for who commits knife crimes, it's not really like white 13 year old working class boys.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
If you look at the statistics for who is most interested in watching Andrew Tate, for example, you know, there was this interesting poll going around that they broke down the respondents by race or ethnicity. And it was something like 41% of, so this was in the UK, something like 41% of black males in the UK said they were fans of Andrew Tate.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And then for, what do they call it, like South Asian or something, Asian men, it was something like 30%. And then for Weiss, it was like by far the lowest. And yet when people talk about his fans, they often say, oh, these white male incels. And then the other thing was, you know, that it was just... Yeah, the whole incel thing. He's 13. The kid looks like he's 11 and a half.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
His voice hasn't changed. Like, it was just hard for me to fully believe that, you know, some some like prepubescent kid is really feeling so stressed out about, you know, being a virgin or whatever. But William pointed out that actually what's interesting here is that it's not so much that he's upset about not getting laid. It's about being called an incel. And this term has become a slur.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And this really embarrassed the kid and so on. But, you know, overall, it was it was fine, but very much sort of it strayed a lot from from reality. And yet it's being received in a lot of the mainstream media as like, oh, it's this iconic series that accurately reflects what's going on with toxic masculinity and so on. Very unrealistic.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Usually guys who tend to be on the right, they will adopt the political beliefs of the opposing side simply to attract women and
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
and uh you know that that wouldn't be a thing unless it had some basis in reality unless uh you know somewhere in the world that that actually paid off as a strategy yeah you wrote an article about harry sisson this sneaky feminists exploiting the dating economy thing what what's the story there yeah it was interesting there was a a big sort of splashy piece in the new york post about this and a lot of people tweeting about this guy harry sisson who is uh
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting. There was that paper last year, I think, with David Buss and William Costello, where they wrote, like, why is there not more incel violence? If you look at, you know, like, if you look sort of throughout historically unstable or unstable countries, communities where...
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
growing numbers of young men are not doing well, unable to find partners, falling further and further behind. Usually this leads to increased violence, increased crime, and so on. And we're not really seeing as much as you would predict based on the sort of historical trend and pattern. And yeah, your male sedation hypothesis, I think that makes sense as a sort of an explanation. And
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah, it's it's weird that it doesn't happen that often. And then there's this fictional portrayal of it. And then that gets blown up. And that like, you know, like serious people who went to great universities and there were supposedly mature, sophisticated adults watch a Netflix show. And I just like it blows my mind that you think like, oh, that's that's how the world is.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
That's how the world works. This thing, this four episode thing you saw on Netflix, that's where you're getting your information about what's happening online. This is an accurate insight into what's going on with young men.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
You know, he was referred to in the New York Post as a rising star, rising Gen Z TikTok star for the Democratic National Committee or something like that. He's just sort of a left wing guy. But there was a sort of trend going on on TikTok of these girls saying, oh, you know, I was Harry slid into my DMs. We were talking and I was sending him nudes.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah, well, I mean, as I was watching it, you know, I thought about all the research on incels and how, you know, if you look at the mental health of incels, a lot of work from our friend William Costello here about how 67% of self-identified incels qualify for clinical diagnosis of anxiety, severe moderate anxiety. And this is like roughly twice as high among incels as non-incels.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And so then when you see this kid and he's so emotionally fragile and kind of volatile and, you know, he probably does, you know, it's a fictional character, but he probably would qualify for some threshold score above a certain threshold for depression or anxiety. And, you know, this psychiatrist lady is trying to suss this out and try to try to pinpoint, you know, what exactly went wrong.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
I did find it interesting that they chose to have this character, like you said, raised in this intact family. And so, you know, I'm trying to figure out like why that specifically it could have been a single dad. That might have been interesting if what's what's the guy's name? You mentioned Stephen something.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Graham. Yeah. So if if if this show had been, you know, he was a single father, you know, working overtime and his plumber job to make ends meet. And maybe he wasn't always able to be there for his son the way that he should have something like that. The fact that he had two parents. And and so then I thought, OK, well, maybe the message is this could happen to anyone.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
You know, he's a he's a nice boy from a nice family, but he just got sucked into the incel red pill rabbit hole and he got brainwashed. But, you know, that like we didn't really get an explanation here. Maybe that's supposed to be the idea here is that there is no explanation other than the incel, you know, online world.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah, you know, I wonder about these sort of media trends, these headlines, because often the reason why they get so much interest is because they're sort of at odds with our intuitions, right? And I know you've spoken with plenty of people about this idea of assortative mating. We tend to be attracted to people who are somewhat similar to ourselves.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
But then you would expect, like you said, you would expect more of this kind of violence because if even boys from good homes could, you know, become a criminal like this, then you should see way more boys doing this and you don't.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
But then he turned out to or he would say things like, you know, I'm interested in women more for their bodies. I like their minds. He also said something like, I don't I have no roster. or something. I don't have a roster.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah, that's a pretty good heuristic there. And then suddenly these women all discover each other and then come together and start posting these videos about how Harry is kind of a duplicitous two-timing guy or whatever. And I thought there was something very Gen Z about all of this because from what I understand, he didn't sleep with any of these women.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Right. Yeah. There's that kind of outgroup homogeneity effect of like any man who comments on relationships or talks or talks about women in a stereotypical way. They're all part of that same Andrew Tate, Red Pill, Manosphere. That's all the same sort of collapse into the same group.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
But, yeah, I think that's right that like even even sort of politically, you know, the those findings about how generally if you if you measure the political attitudes of insults, they tend to lean center left. They probably don't really have sophisticated politics in general. They're just kind of upset. They're falling behind in terms of status, in terms of income.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
They don't view themselves as particularly desirable or attractive. And, you know, their politics are probably like completely orthogonal, unrelated to however they're feeling about themselves in relationships. But it's just easy to sort of vaguely collapse Tate and Trump and everything that you don't like into, you know, they're all just these domineering evil men.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And also incels are in there too, somehow, even though Andrew Tate and Donald Trump are like kind of the like literal opposite of incels and like every kind of way in terms of income, in terms of success, in terms of women and everything else. So yeah, it's, you know, the show was, and then like, you know, I think the show, honestly, it could have been braver if they had an uglier kid.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
The kid is like, he was a perfectly nice looking 12, 13 year old boy or whatever. And if they had had an uglier kid, I think you would have felt like, I think maybe it would have been dangerously close to making him too sympathetic. You know, like, like, you know, it's like, Oh, if he's like, if he's a good looking kid, what does he have to complain about?
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
But if you had an ugly kid, you might actually feel like, yeah, it does kind of suck being physically unattractive. And then you might leap to, well, you know, he wasn't justified, but like, if you're an ugly kid and you're being made fun of and, and, and then, um,
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
They felt betrayed or duped or something because they sent him some nudes and maybe some videos or something. But he, to my knowledge, it's not been reported that he slept with any of these women. And so, you know, it's like they're feeling burned, but he didn't really cheat. They were never official. You know, he wasn't in a relationship or committed to any of these women.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Oh yeah. Yeah. That's that's it. Yeah. Well, there was that scene with him and the psychiatrist where he like asked, like, do you think I'm ugly? And I guess that that is like an incel trope of like, you know, you're, you're every, you know, you're all ugly. If you're not in the top 20% or top 10%, then you're just ugly. You're invisible to women.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And he was trying to get this weird sense of validation from, from this woman, the psychiatrist. Um, asking her to give her assessment of him. And he mentioned something about, oh, you're pretty. And I think it would have meant something to this boy to have a pretty woman say, oh, actually you're not ugly. But I think she asked him back. Her, her response was, well, do you think you're ugly?
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Cause she's interested in what he thinks. But yeah, I think, um, yeah, that would have been an interesting route to go because there was nothing, there was nothing like he didn't have a lisp, you know, he wasn't overweight. Like there could have been something, something that added a little bit more legitimacy to his character. Um, Yeah, but you're right.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
I think there were, yeah, maybe spare IQ points for the producers here. But, you know, they cast like a very normal, very nice looking kid with nothing apparently wrong with him.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And so then, you know, which I guess maybe there is a kind of a left wing sort of social constructionist idea here where we're all good looking, we're all above average, we're all on the right hand side of the bell curve, unless somehow you receive this ugly messaging from society, from the internet, from you know, evil peddlers of incel ideology or red pill ideology online.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And if we could just sort of get rid of those people, maybe silence those people, remove those accounts from the internet, then we would all finally accept that actually we're all beautiful and we, you know, there's no need to be so upset.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
You know, he did explicitly lie to them, you know, assuming all these allegations are true. But it's not like you know, he violated any kind of law. I mean, it's kind of gray area morally, I think. I think that sort of the outrage doesn't necessarily match the transgression.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah, well, if you're streaming it in the schools, I mean... Yeah. If the portrayal of schools in adolescence looks like that, like, you know, good luck. Like, those kids aren't going to be watching it anyway. They're all going to be on their phones. And, you know, you play a movie in class. I know those kids are actually going to be watching it. So, I mean, who's that for exactly?
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
So, yeah, I mean, I guess it makes people feel good about themselves. You know, they're sort of the more... quasi-conspiratorial corners of Twitter where they were like, you know, one point of this whole series is to essentially help to crystallize a consensus that we need to increase the level of censorship online.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
You know, if the belief among sort of policymakers and tastemakers and cultural influencers is, oh, like, you know, these accounts, this ideology is leading boys to stab girls, then we need to start shutting down accounts, start, you know, patrolling the limits of, you know, acceptable speech online.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And, you know, I don't know if that was, you know, the intent behind, like, let's make this show so that we can silence voices or something like that. But I do think that there are people who work in a lot of mainstream media outlets who don't like, you know, certain influencers, certain social media platforms or what have you.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And if they can shine a light on this show and get it to become a thing and help to contribute to this consensus, then, you know, they're, they're basically, it's not, it wasn't the original intent, but you know, it's a, it's a, it's a happy sort of by-product of the show being around and, being in a position to amplify its message and get people to watch it.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah, well, one of the things that I point out right away in that piece, how to choose a romantic partner is, you know, study after study finds, you know, you look at research on happiness, on well-being, on life satisfaction, that the two biggest factors are what you do for work and your your marriage and family life, you know, your choice of spouse. And that makes sense.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
I mean, if nothing else, mathematically, it makes sense because you're going to spend most of your life on the job, whatever job you work, your career and then with your family. And that takes up the bulk of your time.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And so one thing that occurred to me as I was writing that piece is just how much information there is out there about, you know, how to become educationally and occupationally successful. Here are the steps you need to go to college. Here are the steps you need to take to master a job interview. You know, here's the pathway to become a successful doctor, lawyer, what have you.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And everywhere you turn, there's no shortage of advice. And it's perfectly kind of acceptable in the broader discourse to, you know, like, what are you doing? Oh, I'm watching this YouTube series on how to how to improve my career. That's fine. But if you were to say, you know, you're watching it and I'm saying, what are you watching?
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
You're like, oh, I'm watching this YouTube series on how to be a better romantic partner and attract someone. Somehow that is like, you know, weirdly stigmatized. We would think of someone like that is like, well, what's wrong with you that you can't just find one? We expect people to just enter the world knowing how to be an attractive partner and to find a compatible partner for yourself.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
But we accept that actually it's perfectly fine to sort of seek out information and knowledge and mentors and so on to succeed in career. Why do you think that is? I don't know. I mean, I think part of it is...
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
there could be this thing where if you are, if you require explicit advice on romance, that this in itself is an indicator of low mate value or that you're unattractive, that if you naturally know what to do and naturally know how to succeed as a person in the romantic sort of dating market, then that in itself is an indicator that you're a worthy romantic partner.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
But if you need to seek out information and that suggests, oh, actually, like maybe you shouldn't even be dating in the first place. Whereas, yeah, for career less so. I mean, I still think that we if someone effortlessly succeeds like in in in their career, we do give them a bit of extra credit, but we're perfectly fine with, you know,
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
People who are trying to improve themselves, we are willing to confer special praise to those people too. So yeah, it's an interesting one. And I think it's more so for men specifically. I also wonder if...
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
because of the women are wonderful effect and the sort of accompanying effect of we tend to be a bit more suspicious of men, that if you hear that a man is learning how to improve their prospects on the dating market, our mind immediately leads to worst case scenario of, oh, you're going to learn how to manipulate women. You're going to learn how to- Harry Sisson all over again.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so we don't think, oh, this is just a guy who's really falling behind and wants to learn how to have a good first date and find a girlfriend. We think, oh, he's trying to hook up with as many women as possible and dupe all of them or something.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
But this piece was, you know, basically about, you know, assuming that you want to find a good partner, you know, what are you actually looking for? And earlier we talked about, we touched briefly on assortative mating, and that does seem to be the case that if you look at measures of political orientation or
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
religiosity, socioeconomic status, earnings, educational attainment, that we tend to pair with people who are relatively similar to ourselves. There was an interesting statistic. So this study was from 2005, which found that if your highest level of education is a high school diploma, then your likelihood of marrying someone with a college degree is 9%.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
But if your highest level of education is a college degree, then your likelihood of marrying a college graduate is 65%. I'd imagine that's actually higher today. It seems like assortative mating is sort of tilting even further and further in that direction. But what's interesting there is that...
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
The similarity, even though that that's sort of descriptively true, that is just the case that we tend to pair with people who are similar to ourselves. When you measure level of levels of similarity within romantic partners, similarity doesn't seem to predict relationship success.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And I was reading that paper and my interpretation of this is probably that similarity is necessary, but not sufficient for a long term committed relationship.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah. And there's that issue of range restriction where if you're only looking at couples, then by definition, most of them are already pretty similar. And so does that extra similarity help? Probably not. There's probably that threshold that's sort of necessary.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah. Well, well, the personality thing is interesting in that, um, one thing that shocked me when I was looking at the personality research and similarities in couples is that the correlations are remarkably small. They vary around sort of 0.1, 0.2, statistically significant that if you're open, your partner that you tend to pair with will be a little bit more open than average.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah. So so I guess the idea is it's out of character. You know, he portrays himself as very much a supporter of the Democrats. He's a left wing guy. He cares about women and women's rights. And then meanwhile, behind the scenes, he's. lying to women to get naked pictures of them. And I guess that is kind of the factor here.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Same with these other personality traits. Uh, one that's a bit higher than the others that I saw was for neuroticism, which is about 0.2, 0.22, somewhere in that, in that realm. Um,
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And this is consistent with other work that people who are emotionally volatile tend to be attracted to one another or find something interesting about one another, whereas people who are more emotionally stable tend to seek out partners who are stable. There was a really interesting essay a couple of years ago from our mutual friend Scott Barry Kaufman, and he wrote about...
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah, which which I think like, you know, if you're if yeah, so people who are sort of relatively narcissistic find other narcissistic people interesting and attractive and those kinds of things. One thing that was interesting related to the personality point is is authenticity.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
that this really interesting paper found that people who score highly on measures of authenticity within their relationship. And so these were basically the extent to which participants agreed with statements like, I'll usually tell my partner things that are on my mind, even if there's a chance he or she may not understand me.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And when people are more likely to agree with those statements, they also tend to correlate highly with levels of relationship satisfaction. And interestingly, the reverse was the case, too, that people who are low authenticity also tend to pair with people who are also more deceptive or less authentic.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And so there really is that sort of assortative mating there going on, too, which I guess like one potential inference here is that if you want an authentic partner, if you want someone who tells you the truth, you have to be a bit transparent. You have to be open yourself in order to establish that trust.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, the best, you know, that's why we call them honest signals, right? Is that, you know, only someone who's truly authentic and truly whatever that, you know, you're going to be the most likely to attract a partner with those kinds of traits as well.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
They felt lied to, and then the image he projects into the public versus who he really is, there's a mismatch there.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
as opposed to uh keeping some stuff just for your journal and the therapist room interesting yeah i i think generally well it depends on what what the um the conversation is about um you know if you have your sort of most wild extreme thoughts like i don't know maybe those don't always have to be aired well like i'm gonna punch a baby and put it into the road or yeah yeah yeah
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah, well, but but I think like when it comes to issues around the relationship itself, that maybe there's a way I think like it's better to generally over communicate rather than to let things slide and let resentments build up.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And then it potentially explodes later into a serious argument that I mean, there's a way I think to over communicate and a kind of diplomatic, respectful way of just like, why do you do that? That upsets me. Stop doing that. You know, that's probably not the best way to go about it. But if you see something and you point it out in a gentle way.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And I think that is probably a better approach than just letting it all build up over time.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah, yeah, that's an interesting one. Yeah, our mutual friend David Buss on this one was a fascinating paper here about how, you know, there's this idea, you know, basically, what are people looking for in a partner? Is it someone who just meets their relationship needs, you know, oh, like, here are my 10 list of demands for my partner. Oh, you meet nine out of the 10.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And this person meets 10 out of the 10. And so I'm going to go with a 10 out of 10, that kind of thing. you know, as if we're grading on some objective rubric. But that paper suggested that actually we more so grade potential partners on a curve where we are kind of putting together multiple things in our environment.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
First, you know, the person that you're with, how do they stack up compared to partners that you could reasonably attract in your social environment? And what they found is that if you're
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
partner is basically you know better quality than the alternatives realistic alternatives around you then people tend to be happy if the person is kind of less attractive than a potential realistic alternatives around you people tend to be less satisfied and that was especially true for people who evaluated themselves as being more attractive than their own partner and so i think that's that that may be the most sort of dangerous situation here is if um
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
you know, if you're with someone who views themselves as much more attractive than you, and also thinks, Oh, well, I could also do better. And I see all these other people around you, that this could could lead to a potential unstable relationship dynamic.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And so for a lot of guys, I think what they do ask them what they want, especially young guys, like under 25, they just, you know, I want the hottest possible girl, you know, physically perfect 10 out of 10, I want a dime. But then, you know, if you point out to them, well, you know, if you're
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
pretty average guy, and you do happen to land a date with some supermodel who, you know, maybe in another, you know, some other day of the week is going out with Leonardo DiCaprio on his yacht, that, you know, that's probably not going to work out for you.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And that may be another reason why we tend to mate assortatively is gradually over time, people kind of figure out where their level is and find someone who's roughly the same level of attractiveness as themselves. But yeah, there is that point there that, you know, what predicts relationship dissolution?
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And it does seem to be, you know, people thinking to themselves, well, you know, is this really the best I could do? And this, I think, also has something to do with what we're seeing with the dating apps. Although I think this is sort of tapering off, but for the last...
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
basically since 2012 with the rise of Tinder, I think that probably contributed to kind of relationship instability is more and more people thinking that they could do better because of the apps. And then a lot of people realizing, actually, that's not the case.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah, yeah. So so if he were, yeah, like you said, an Andrew Tate character, or just someone who openly said, like, I'm kind of a hedonistic, pleasure seeking guy. And then he's doing all of this, I think, yeah, it wouldn't be a story. But it's the fact that he says one thing, but then does another, there's the hypocrisy element that
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
less uh insecurity less mate guarding needed less jealousy less all of that stuff uh so yeah that's the that's a good way to go about it yeah yeah yeah i think that's yeah you can kind of like money ball your way into a relationship by going for people who are attractive maybe uniquely to you but that maybe others are overlooking in some way like that is yeah that's interesting i mean on the personality point i mean it is the case that
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Similarity and personality is relatively low. I mean, statistically significant, but small correlations. But then what does seem to predict satisfaction is regardless of your own level of, say, conscientiousness, your partner's level of conscientiousness does seem to predict longer relationship duration. Interestingly, it also tends to predict your own level of career success.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
So you and many of your listeners are familiar with the fact that, you know, obviously intelligence IQ that predicts career success, but then also conscientiousness of the big five personality traits. Conscientiousness has the strongest predictive power for how successful someone's going to be in their career.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
But what was interesting is in one paper found that even when you control for the participants own level of conscientiousness, Their romantic partner's conscientiousness predicts their own career success, which suggests that if you have a partner who's hardworking, diligent, focused, and so on, that that also somehow benefits you in your own life.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Even small things like making appointments, following up on emails, all of those kinds of things, you know, that compounds over time having someone who's very switched on like that. And then, yeah, other traits as well. I mean... for, for relationship satisfaction. Agreeableness is one, uh, low levels of neuroticism and, um, and then, yeah, high, high intelligence is, is another.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
bothered a lot of people and it kind of reminded me of uh you know the whole like sneaky fucker idea in uh evolutionary biology um you know the the formal the more scientific term is kleptogamy of men who or males species who adopt the appearance of more sort of feminine traits and then thereby uh sort of disguise themselves and this is sort of acts as a shield against more sort of dominant uh competitive rival males they think oh he's just a soft
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Um, and so it's interesting that even though the similarities aren't especially high, uh, within couples, if you want a relationship to last, it's good to have sort of more rather than less of, of many of these traits.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah, I mean, all of those, you know, there's sort of volatility clusters around neuroticism or low emotional stability. And it's interesting, I'm reading this, this person, it's called The Person, A New Introduction to Personality Psychology, new textbook, sort of covering the latest in that whole field.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And one of the things they point out is, you know, people who are highly neurotic, you know, high on neuroticism, they'll
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
often you know complain about bad things happening to them and there used to be this question of well you know are they basically um uh overstating the their own level of suffering people who are neurotic are they going through the same thing as everyone else but because of that personality trait they are exaggerating the extent of their own mistreatment
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
But actually, there is a bit of that going on. But additionally, when you look at objectively what happens to people at high neuroticism, they have more interpersonal conflicts, more issues with their friends, more arguments with their romantic partners, just generally more difficulty in their lives.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And so, yes, they may overstate what they're going through, but they are objectively going through worse sort of interpersonal disputes than the average person. And so, you know, if you want to avoid that, you know, you got to kind of avoid sort of the aggression, the flightiness and all those kinds of things. The openness point is interesting.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
I would imagine there is research indicating that tattoos correlate with openness to experience. I would imagine the same goes for, you know, unusual piercings and those kinds of things. And so, yeah, if you, you know, there was this study about this, about promiscuity in tattoos that basically the more people if you have a tattoo, you tend to be sort of more open. What's the phrase?
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Sociosexual orientation, basically more interested in promiscuous sex. Those things correlate together. And then the more tattoos you have, the more open you are to having open sex with, you know, unfamiliar people, which lines up with the other research on tattoos as well, that it's correlates with, you know, low impulse control and those kinds of things. And so, yeah, I mean, it's funny. We...
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
So then when you have this splashy headline, you know, right wing men want the left wing art ho, the left wing art hoes want the Republican MAGA bro or something. You know, it's a little edgy. It's a little catches us off guard.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
You know, I had this tweet put out a while ago with something like, you know, people put a great deal of effort into designing. The phrase is don't judge a book by its cover. And people and yet people put a great deal of effort into designing book covers. This tweet is not about book covers.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
In other words, we spend so much time adorning ourselves, the way we dress, our haircuts, the piercings, the tattoos, everything else. And they are sending signals about who they are.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
You know, there's there's a really great paper from a few years ago with something like personality is revealed on the weekends and the paper covered, you know, basically can cover frequency of going to the movies, going out, how many social nights you have, you know, what your bedroom looks like correlates with your personality. So many things about you reveal this.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And so, yeah, all of that, you mentioned aggression, flightiness and everything else. Yeah. but yeah, but so you want someone with, with relatively low neuroticism and then, yeah, with, with education, with, with intelligence, those things as well. That, um, what's interesting about the intelligence one is that when you ask people, um,
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And these are sort of hypothetical scenarios, sort of roughly what's the ideal level of intelligence for your partner? People tend to choose around 120 IQ, which is roughly the 90th percentile of intelligence.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And so people want someone who's like obviously smart, visibly intelligent, but they don't want some super genius, maybe because of stereotypes about genius as being, you know, kind of kind of quirky or personality wise being a little off.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
you know kind of a weak guy he's sort of a submissive feminine guy and they uh therefore feel less uh less bothered if you see this weak guy hanging out with the women and then the woman then the guy the sort of sneaky fucker guy that gets to gets to have his pick of the women here and i think like a lot of a lot of guys are kind of adopting this of this um you know
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
But when you look at the correlation coefficients, sort of how similar spouses are to one another within marriages, there is a similarity in that their IQs tend to correlate with one another. But there's still about a 10 point IQ difference between spouses on average. Um, which is smaller than it is for say, um, two siblings.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
So this is all from Robert Plowman's work that, um, two siblings within a family on average tend to have 12 point IQ difference from one another, which is smaller than if you were to choose two random people in the population, the difference there would be about 17 points. And so spouses 10 points. I mean, that's even more similar than two siblings would be. Um,
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
But one thing I've tried to track down is whether it's more likely that the... Like in heterosexual couples, is it the man who's more likely to have the higher IQ or the woman? I think, you know, based on what we know about hypergamy and everything else, the prediction would be probably the male has higher intelligence.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
I remember I posted this poll on Twitter a couple of years ago where I asked... people to imagine that they were a contestant on who wants to be a millionaire and you have to choose who's going to be your lifeline for the phone a friend option. You don't know what the question is going to be. And you can either choose who's going to pick up the phone.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
You don't know what the question is going to be. They don't know what the question is going to be. You can choose your mom or your dad and something like 80% of respondents chose their dad. And so I think like, you know, I think that people probably have this intuition that within couples, men have, you know, a bit more sort of varied knowledge and those kinds of things.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's that. Yeah. That was one of the most important kind of findings as far as what to avoid for for a red flag. You know, David Buss says one of the things you want to look for is are they able to or how quickly do they return to their emotional baseline?
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
All of us, regardless of our personality traits and our temperaments, you know, we have a we were capable of getting angry or upset or irritated. But some of us are able to sort of take a step back, take a couple of breaths and sort of detach and think about the situation rationally and kind of calm ourselves down.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
But other people, they kind of spiral out like they get angry and then they keep they look for more reasons to get angry. And then suddenly they're off on a on a different path.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And so you want someone who's able to control their own emotions, who doesn't mean not be emotional, but just able to sort of understand that this is what I'm going through, that they're able to identify and label their emotions. This was an interesting finding from, I think the guy's name is Lawrence Ian Reid. He's a professor at NYU. He talks about how...
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
people with borderline personality disorder, which generally afflicts on average women more so than men, one of the hallmarks of borderline personality disorder is the inability to understand and articulate and verbalize what you're feeling.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
So these people, they're kind of like, I'm feeling this thing and very clearly it's negative, but I can't tell the difference between ordinary anger or rage or irritation or just sort of being mildly or moderately upset that it's sort of all or none.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
They generally know they're feeling good or bad, but then when it comes to sort of isolating, well, this is what I'm feeling and this is how you're making me feel and here's how it came about, it's difficult for them. Yeah. And, you know, it's sort of a spectrum, you know, it's you got to be careful, you know, basically finding people who are unable to do that.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And then and then, yeah, one of the green flags is, you know, someone who's stable, someone who's able to control themselves, who's able to communicate. And one point I try to make in that piece is. Communication is even more important during a period of emotional tension and dispute and hostility of someone does something that upsets someone else.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
You can if it's the case that women want, you know, the the handsome guy, but then also sort of a politically left wing. And this is just going to incentivize a lot of camouflage, I think.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
That's when communication becomes even more important than it otherwise would be.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
you know, the other person's personality and learn about that person during those low times is basically to give it some time, give it some space, allow their relationship to develop. Because, you know, when you're first dating someone that you like, you're on your best behavior. You're showing the best parts of yourself, the most interesting, witty, dynamic, everything.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
You're trying to impress this person. You want them to like you. And they're doing the same to you as well. You're showing each other the best versions of yourself. But one thing that the psychologist Sean T. Smith points out, he wrote a book about commitment, is that generally speaking...
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
About a six month mark, the rule of thumb is after about six months, you do start to learn about that person and basically reveal their true selves to you and how they're really like and how they handle pressure and what they're like when they're sleep deprived, what they're like when they're jet lagged, what they're like when they're having a bad day at work.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
and you know for the first couple of months if you have a bad day at work you still you're so excited to see the person you like that the bad day doesn't even bother you but after six months after you sort of uh become accustomed to the relationship then you are more likely to to expose those other sides of yourself so i think that's important too is that i think a lot of people they jump into a relationship it seems so exciting and then they don't realize that um
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
you know people are different at different stages of the relationship you got to give it time you got to allow them to sort of reveal themselves to you um and then i think it also helps i can't remember who said this might have been on your podcast someone pointed out that a good way to see what another person is like in a relationship is to go on a trip with that that was rogan that was rogan oh yeah on my episode that i did with him the other week where he's like you gotta go on a long trip you gotta go on a long trip and you gotta go somewhere stressful and you gotta go on a long journey
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jet lag, you know, yeah, yeah. Maybe travel coach, you know, like like put it like put as much sort of like stress test the relationship. Maybe seal hell week. Yeah, there we go. And then you'll see, you know, like, oh, that's what this person is like under unpredictable circumstances out of the sort of rosy glow of everyday predictable life.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess, yeah, if you look at the opposite, so you're being unclear and uninquisitive, uncurious about the other person. But yeah, the green flag is, yeah, to be transparent, to say what you mean, to be clear about what your intentions are, what you'd like.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And then, yeah, inquisitive of if you are uncertain, if there's an ambiguity in the relationship, you don't know what the other person is thinking or feeling. that you ask the person about it, and then the other person, you know, ideally, they're not going to be upset with you.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
You know, that was one of the other red flags is, you know, basically forcing you to play the guessing game of, well, if you really cared about me, you should know how I'm feeling. And if you really were paying attention, you would already know why I'm upset. But, you know... a more healthy relationship style would be, you know, to just say like, this is what I'm feeling.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
This is what's upsetting me and, and, um, go from there. And yeah, it's just, um, you know, all of these things, like it's, it's interesting. There's like a, such a, a wealth of information about assortative mating, mating psychology, what to look for, what are the predictors of a happy and healthy relationship? And, and, And yet there's such little guidance on this point.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And then whenever anyone tries to point this out, especially if you try to promote anything resembling sort of conventional committed relationships, people start to get wary. You know, the slings and arrows come out. There was that story more than 10 years ago now. The Princeton mom letter. You familiar with this? No, there was this. So she was a Princeton alumna whose daughter attended Princeton.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah, I think all of the above, you know, you're signaling that you're a reliable person, you're compassionate, you're kind. You know, our mutual friend David Buss, his classic study found that the number one trait that people search for, male or female, the number one trait that they search for in a romantic partner is kindness.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
I think this was 2013, 2014. But this woman who I think was in her 40s, Susan Patton, I want to say she wrote this letter.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
uh op-ed in the princeton student newspaper basically imploring the young women at this college like hey you're surrounded by very smart ambitious bright young boys you should start thinking about marriage like you should start searching for a husband now and then in response she got all of these criticisms from like big name mainstream media outlets calling her anti-feminist and calling her a traitor to the movement and all these kinds of things and what she said was perfectly reasonable that you know she had a couple of interesting lines in there one was um
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
You're never going to be surrounded by so many men who are worthy of you. And then the other line was something like, if you are with a man who's less intelligent than you, you're never really going to be fully satisfied. And she was kind of pointing out- Generally, that's true. Women do tend to want men who are bright and ambitious and intelligent and all those kinds of things.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And your mating prospects change dramatically after college. I mean, I've had so many conversations now, and I'm sure you have too, with young people in their early mid-20s, and they're like, I didn't know how good I had it when I was at college, when I was at university.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And it's like, you know, especially if you're a man and 60% of the campus is women and they're all, you know, young and bright and ambitious and interesting and whatever. And then you enter the workforce and it's like all your coworkers are older than you and they're married and they have their own separate adult lives.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And it's just, you know, your mating prospects transform and become generally less promising. And no one tells young people about this.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And, you know, if you talk about equality and all those kinds of things, then, yeah, you're signaling that you're a kind and caring, compassionate guy.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah, I've seen this this kind of framework. I think it was called, you know, two approaches to a marriage. One is the startup marriage and the other is the capstone marriage.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And so the startup marriage is you're sort of entering together to build this thing, this life together that, you know, if you're in your early mid 20s or something, you're young, you're just starting out, but you find someone that you care about and that you love and you get married and you're sort of. building the life together.
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And then the capstone marriage is, well, I've succeeded in my education and my career and my income and everything else. And now the final milestone is, you know, now I'm going to get married and, and bring this person in. Um, and I think, I think both of those can work in different ways, but that's, that's an, I like the analogy from, from Louise there that, um,
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
yeah i you get sort of older you get set in your ways you find it harder to you know introduce someone into your life when you're young you're just more flexible and you're probably more willing to relocate you're probably more willing to maybe change up careers there's so many other things you can do when you're young that becomes harder when you're old um or older anyway but on the other hand i could imagine the argument going going the the opposite way where
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#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
you know, when you look at there was there was this interesting thing from the Institute for Family Studies about sort of the optimal age for marriage to reduce likelihood of divorce, that it was the case that if you get married very young, divorce rates are higher than average, maybe because you're immature, because maybe financially strapped, those kinds of things.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
But then at a certain point, it starts to sort of this what is it sort of a U shaped curve here where around
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
But I think social media, it's kind of it's difficult to sort through the actual signal versus the noise around it, because if you're a high profile guy with millions of followers and you're talking about equality and women's rights and all of these things, and then you as an observer are seeing those comments receive lots of likes and shares and retweets.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
30 or 31 that was kind of the ideal as far as like the lowest likelihood of getting divorced and then once you sort of reach your mid late 30s it starts to creep up again and so i do wonder yeah what's what's um it could also be the case though that like for most people if you haven't found a partner by your mid late 30s that um you know maybe there's something going on with you um that uh that makes it difficult to to find a partner
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is this all for that kind of thing? Like, you know, eventually, you're going to want family, you're going to want kids and grandkids and all those kinds of things. And yeah, I think it's, I wonder if like the reason for that for Gen Z, like, where are they looking to as far as sort of role models and guidance?
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And this guy's getting so much attention and accolades. And you're thinking, well, he's saying this and people are applauding him. And I think this strengthens the belief that what he's saying is actually what he believes. That's actually what he supports and how he lives his own life.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And, you know, you mentioned sort of you and me, like, I think that You know, this sort of path of, you know, prioritizing, if you have a kind of an unusual career that requires a lot of time and a lot of commitment, a lot of hours, and you also derive a lot of meaning and satisfaction for it, then that's great. That can work for a lot of people, but that's not going to work for everyone.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Jordan Peterson points this out, that for most people, living a conventional life is actually your best shot at happiness. That for most people, getting married, settling down, having kids, having a family, all those kinds of things, that for most people is a good path. Unless there's some extraordinary reason why that isn't the right path.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Maybe you have some extremely lucrative or unusual ability or talent or skill set or something else. But we get these interesting messages because those people who tend to...
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
have the spotlight um who did sort of delay marriage and career and so on often they will attempt to justify their own lives and say well it worked for me this is a great life you should prioritize your career this is how you get to where i am that kind of thing and most people aren't like that though you know like by definition if you do have a platform and you do have an audience and those kinds of things you're you're very atypical you're an unusual weird person so you're selecting for the advice of people who are weird like most people exactly
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah, yeah. Because if you're an ordinary person who's achieved happiness and success, chances are you don't have this huge megaphone and you don't have a large following. You're raising your kids and you're raising your family and you're that's where you're getting your life satisfaction and your meaning from. And I'm not even saying like one way of life is better than the other.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
But for most people, you know, the type of life that would lead to happiness, those messages aren't as salient. because of the very fact that those people aren't sort of out in the world, the way that, um, you know, peculiar, psychologically atypical people are.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Rob Henderson's newsletter. It's I'm on sub stack, uh, Rob K Henderson on Twitter. Uh, you can buy my book. It's out in paperback troubled by Rob Henderson. And, uh, Yeah, Rob K. Henderson. Look that up and I'm everywhere.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
But, you know, there's often a mismatch, right, between what gets attention and what, you know, how people actually live. So, yeah, I think a lot of guys are wrestling with this. Interestingly, I don't think this guy actually, Harry Sisson, he doesn't seem to have actually paid any real penalty.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
But I think there's, you know, to the extent that it might be true, you know, if you think about what are the qualities that women find attractive in men, sort of self-sufficiency, ambition, income, you know, all the kinds of qualities that are associated with sort of a masculine guy.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
I saw some people online joking that this is just going to increase his notoriety and perhaps even get him more attention. That one I'm less certain about, but so far he doesn't actually seem to have suffered in any real way.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
That's right. Yeah, yeah. So the logic here is, you know, the other example I pointed out was with Leonardo DiCaprio, where every six months it's like, oh, another flare-up online of, oh, Leonardo DiCaprio has another 19-year-old supermodel girlfriend. He cycled out someone who just turned 25. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, he resets back, you know, rewinds the clock.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And then, you know, there's all this discourse online where, you know, Speaking very roughly, women seem to be more upset and men are like, hey, this is kind of evolutionary science. This is biology. You know, a super high status, successful guy. You can't really be that surprised that he'd search for women who are young and youthful and all those kinds of things. And then...
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And then women in response are trying to shame him and stigmatize this kind of behavior. And there's an evolutionary reason for both of those things, right? Like there is an evolutionary explanation for why men would enjoy being partnered with an attractive young woman, because on average, attractive young women tend to be more fertile.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And so if you average that out through the course of evolutionary history, men who are more attracted to those types of women tend to have more kids. And then it's interesting if you look at research on the ages that men tend to find women the most attractive, it all clusters around 23, 24 years old, regardless of the male participant who's being asked.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
So even 13 year old boys, they say 23 year old women are the most attractive. They're not saying other 13 year old And then, you know, you go all the way up to 70 plus years old and men tend to say, oh, women physically are at their peak in their early mid 20s. Whereas for women, it's a bit more sort of matched with their own age. And there's an evolutionary reason for that.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
But then for women who shame men for. you know, as they increasingly grow older and continue to date young women, there's the logic here is that, you know, you want to stigmatize this kind of behavior. You want to shame it. You don't want other men to do the same thing. You're basically trying to kind of police and confine men to be a bit more committed as a caregiver.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And then you look at sort of the voting patterns of men and you find that the predictors of voting for the conservative parties also tend to be the traits that women tend to find attractive. So if you look at self-identified, Uh, if you ask men, you know, how, how masculine do you feel versus how feminine do you feel?
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And then when you have a super high profile person like Leonardo DiCaprio, You know, you don't want that to become sort of normalized where every successful guy who women tend to be highly attracted to every single one of those types of guys are following the Leonardo DiCaprio model. And this reduces women's chances of commitment from one of these prominent guys. Yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah, well, I don't think like, you know, these women logically in their rational, conscious mind, they're probably not thinking someday I'm going to date Leonardo DiCaprio and I'm going to get him to commit to me. But it could be more so like I would like to date a high status man in general. And your odds are still low.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Interesting. Well, so the idea here is like, as women surpass men, and in one of the pieces that I sent you that I wrote, it was something like, in a lot of major metropolitan cities in the US now, Washington, DC, Boston, Los Angeles, New York City, Americans under 30, women are performing as well or even better than men in terms of earnings and income.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
And so if women are outperforming men, then yeah, you're going to create these, you know, soft harem dynamics of women, you know, basically being willing to date guys who may be dating other women. And even if they don't explicitly know this or desire this, this is just sort of a natural outcome. Yeah, I think like... Ideally, everyone wants commitment. Everyone wants someone.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
But then I always think of this famous or this very nice line in Steven Pinker's famous book, How the Mind Works. And it's something like most women would rather share John F. Kennedy than have Bobo the Clown all to themselves. And, you know, the book was written in the 90s, so the references are a bit dated.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
The higher men rate themselves as masculine, the more likely they are to support a conservative political candidate, uh, and the more, uh, or the less masculine they feel, the more likely they are to support a left-wing candidate. And then, um, And you can ask other questions about income.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
But the idea here is most women would rather, you know, maybe share Leonardo DiCaprio than have you know, some guy who's barely scraping by for their sole husband. And I do wonder sometimes because like over the last five or 10 years, there's been this discussion around polycules, poly relationships, open marriages, all these kinds of things. And maybe this is kind of the
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
inevitable outcome of the deregulation of the sexual marketplace of men falling more and more behind and, you know, people seemingly unwilling or uninterested in sort of figuring out what's going on there and prove men's prospects and thereby that would actually improve monogamy.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's, yeah, that's, you know, whenever you see men falling behind, you know, often the headlines and the articles are framed as, well, women are suffering because, you know, they're unable to find a desirable male partner.
Modern Wisdom
#929 - Rob Henderson - The Psychology Of What Women Want
But, you know, the logic is let's concentrate on the woman who's suffering when actually, you know, the reason why she can't find desirable male partners because the men are the ones who are like floundering and falling further and further behind. Yeah.