The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Behavioural Psychologist: We're Not Having Enough Sex! Fat Makes You Attractive & The Poorer You Are The Friendlier You Are!
Mon, 17 Feb 2025
Are we fighting against our own biology? Dr Bill von Hippel reveals how evolutionary psychology impacts love, success, and happiness. Dr Bill von Hippel is a renowned social psychologist, evolutionary specialist, and Professor of Psychology at the University of Queensland. He is the author of books such as, ‘The Social Leap: The New Evolutionary Science of Who We Are, Where We Come From, and What Makes Us Happy’. In this conversation, Dr Bill and Steven discuss topics such as, why high-achieving women struggle to find love, the top trait that makes you more attractive, the link between your wealth and social skills, and the future impact of falling birth rates. 00:00 Intro 02:21 What Does Dr. Von Hippel Do? 05:35 What Are We Getting Wrong as a Species? 09:01 Were Our Ancestors Happier Than Us? 12:45 Are We Forgetting to Be Grateful? 15:10 What Is the Price We Pay for Living in Cities? 17:07 Does Money Make You Happy? 18:03 What Is the Perfect Combination to Achieve Happiness? 20:56 How to Be Attractive 23:08 Why Is Humor an Attractive Trait? 24:11 Do Nice Guys Finish Last? 24:55 What Makes a Woman Attractive? 26:10 Is Attraction an Evolutionary or Social Construct? 27:22 Do Men Care If Women Are Rich? 29:09 Evolution and Homosexuality 31:40 The Economic Mismatch in Finding a Partner 34:52 What Tinder Tells Us About Matchmaking 37:06 What Are Dating Apps Like for Women? 39:59 What Is Pornography Doing to Us? 43:19 Are Populations Declining? 46:24 Are We at Risk of Extinction Due to Lack of Sex? 46:56 How Bill Would Encourage People to Have Children Again 49:11 Robots Raising Our Kids 52:44 Robot Experiments on Monkeys 53:27 Marriage and Happiness 56:33 Ads 57:28 Is There an Evolutionary Basis for ADHD and Neurodivergence? 59:57 Will There Be Less Neurodivergence With AI Development? 1:00:17 Will We Merge With Technology? 1:01:19 What Is the Evolutionary Basis for Depression and Anxiety? 1:02:53 Religion and Its Effect on Happiness 1:05:56 Why Do We Want to Believe in Something? 1:06:58 What Is the Meaning of Life? 1:10:07 How We Band Together in Tough Times Against Others 1:11:54 What Bill Knows About Power in Evolutionary Terms 1:12:53 What Is Powerful Body Language? 1:14:29 What Designer Brands Say About You 1:15:18 What Bill Learned About the Hadza Tribe and Living a Happy Life 1:17:06 Who Needs Each Other More, Men or Women? 1:19:06 Are We Meant to Be Monogamous? 1:20:22 Is Cheating Natural? 1:26:12 Ads 1:28:12 What's the Problem With Money? 1:30:53 The Benefits of Doing These 5 Things 1:34:04 What Is the Cost? 1:38:38 New Findings on Exercise and Unhealthy Habits 1:43:45 Do We All Need the Same Amount of Sleep? 1:48:44 Coffee's Impact on Our Bodies 1:49:12 How Can We Be More Social? 1:51:43 How Would You Save Humanity? Follow Dr Bill: Instagram - https://g2ul0.app.link/aLJcqJMR0Qb Twitter - https://x.com/BillvonHippel Research document: https://stevenbartlett.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/DOAC-Bill-Von-Hippel-Independent-research-further-reading.pdf You can pre-order Dr Bill’s book, ‘The Social Paradox: Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness’, here: https://g2ul0.app.link/pRZgxqRR0Qb Watch the episodes on Youtube - https://g2ul0.app.link/DOACEpisodes My new book! 'The 33 Laws Of Business & Life' is out now - https://g2ul0.app.link/DOACBook You can purchase the The Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards: Second Edition, here: https://g2ul0.app.link/f31dsUttKKb Follow me: https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb Sponsors: Shopify - https://shopify.com/bartlett WHOOP - https://JOIN.WHOOP.COM/CEO PerfectTed - https://www.perfectted.com with code DIARY40 for 40% off Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are the key issues facing our species today?
Now that's completely reversed. Now, let's dive a little deeper. 50% of humanity now lives in the city. And they're about 25% wealthier than people who live in the country. And yet the data shows people in the country are happier because cities are all about I want to do what I want. And the problem is that we can't introduce social connection into our life willy-nilly or we won't keep it up.
So what do we do about that? Two things. One...
And then what does evolution tell us about how to attract the opposite sex?
You want honest signals of quality. And bizarrely, one of the clearest honest signals for men to demonstrate for women is...
Chapter 2: Were our ancestors happier than us?
I have been forced into a bet with my team. We're about to hit 10 million subscribers on YouTube, which is our biggest milestone ever. Thanks to all of you. And we want to have a massive party for the people that have worked on this show for years behind the scenes. So they said to me, Steve, for every new subscriber we get in the next 30 days, can one dollar be given to our celebration fund?
for the entire team, and I've agreed to the bet. So if you want to say thank you to the team behind the scenes at Diary of a CEO, all you've got to do is hit the subscribe button. So actually, this is the first time I'm going to tell you not to subscribe because it might end up costing me an awful- Dr. William Von Hippel. What have you spent the last four decades of your life doing?
Oh, mostly in the lab trying to figure out why humans do what they do. What do you mean by why we do what we do? Well, I'm super interested in not just what we do, but what the underlying cause might be. Why does having a nice dinner with your friends make you happy? It just seems inherently obvious. Well, of course it does. But there's got to be a reason for that.
And there's got to be a reason that it's very different if it's not with your friends or if it's different kinds of foods or the list goes on. It could be anything. And so what I try to do is I look into our evolutionary history. I say, how did we get here? What were the factors that made us success?
And the things that made us successful are likely to, as a species, are likely to be the things that make us happy. Because happiness is one of the tools that evolution uses to guide us in the direction that it wants us to go. You know, evolution has no foresight. But evolution shapes us the way we are.
And the things that make us successful, those ancestors who enjoy doing those things are going to be the ancestors who have more kids than the ancestors who enjoyed doing things that were bad for them. Yeah. What is evolution? So evolution is this mindless process.
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Chapter 3: How does living in cities affect happiness?
And all it is, is if it's the case that not everybody has the exact same number of kids, and if it's the case that not everybody's kids survive at the exact same rates, now we have room for evolution. Because there's variability. Something about me caused me to have lots of children that survived in the next generation. And something about this other guy caused him not to have any, maybe.
And so whatever there is about me that's heritable will be well represented in the next generation. And about him, poor guy, even if he's wonderful, those traits are gone. And so evolution just works with whatever's there.
And the things that make you a success, either because they're just useful in that environment or they're a new mutation that turns out to have great value, they become overrepresented in the gene pool. And so evolution can create things that are species typical. All of our species have that. We all have two eyes. You know, that's just part and parcel of being human.
And then it can make variability within humans. And there's tons of variability in our size, our stature, all sorts of things about us.
And why should we look at evolution for answers on human happiness and success and as a sort of a guiding compass for what we should be doing with our lives? Why is evolution a place to look?
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Chapter 4: What makes someone attractive according to evolutionary psychology?
There's lots of tiny answers to that question, but they don't necessarily link together very well. So people say, you've probably heard, oh, express gratitude. That'll make you happy if you express gratitude. Why? Why should that make you happy? If there's a good reason for it, then it makes sense that we should do it and it should have some kind of a lasting effect.
And so every single thing that people tell you, this will make you happy, there has to have been a reason. It must have done something for our ancestors. Or it's what my colleague Robert Trivers calls a phenotypic indulgence, which means it mimics something that was good for our ancestors. So, for example, you know, video games are popular. pretty novel, right?
They may mimic things that were super important for our ancestors and give us the same endorphin rush or whatever, even though they're not actually necessarily good for us anymore. Junk food is the same. It's loaded with fat, salt, sugar. Those are the kinds of things that our ancestors sought all the time. We don't need them anymore, but they were super important back then.
And so it makes us happy when we eat those things.
As an evolutionary psychologist and someone who understands where we've come from and therefore our sort of innate behaviours and needs and desires and so on, what are the things that we're getting wrong as a species at the moment from your view?
So the big thing that I think we're getting wrong is the balance that we maintain between autonomy and connection. And we can talk about why this is, but the big thing that we've got wrong right now is doing what I want to do right now rather than connecting. Autonomy is all about self-governance. What do I feel like doing right now? And everybody's going off in their own direction.
And this is not good for us. It's not good for our happiness. It's not good for us in a host of different ways. That mistake is particularly problematic if you live in the West, if you're well-educated, and if you live in cities, and if you're wealthy. So if you're Western, wealthy, urbanite, well-educated, you've got that problem in spades.
And by autonomy, you mean the sort of individualism where I don't need anybody anymore. It's about me. It's about my gratification, what I want now versus others and a community, a tribe.
That's right. And it doesn't even need to feel like a big thing. It's just, let's say you and I are buddies and we're going to go to a movie and you say, I really want to hit a rom-com. And I'm like, I really want to see an action movie. We go, okay, I'll see you at the movies over. We just go our own ways. And so it can be trivial little things, but it's across our lives.
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Chapter 5: How do economic factors influence dating and relationships?
So there's a number of them. You can look at the propensity of Americans to live alone. We've got good data in the States, but the picture is the same in every industrialized country. In 1850, 1% of Americans lived alone. So 1 in 100. Now it's 1 in 7. So, you know, here we are 170 years later, 175 years later, and it used to be crazy rare. And now it's one in seven is pretty darn common.
If you look in the 1970s, when I was a kid, about 30% of people saw their neighbors, got together with their neighbors, not visually seeing them, but got together with their neighbors at least a few times a week. and only one in five pretty much never saw their neighbors at all. Now that's completely reversed. Now only one in five are seeing their neighbors regularly.
It used to be one in three, and now one in three never get together with their neighbors at all. So we're moving away from each other in a host of different ways. Even married couples are spending less time together It's weird. We don't understand what they're doing.
But what I suspect is happening is that, let's say that you both want to exercise and she kind of likes to jog and you kind of like to lift weights. We used to sort of do those together, offer a jog and then a little weightlifting. But now with 10 zillion options, you go to your gym and she goes to hers and you just don't see each other as much as you used to.
So across our lives, we're spending far more time alone. And if you look at marriage and cohabitation, In some parts of the world, they haven't changed at all. But in the wealthy parts, United States, Western Europe, they're steadily going down. So it's not just, well, people aren't getting married because they're living together outside of marriage.
If you lump all those together, they're steadily going down over the last 50 years. And why does that matter? Well, the question is, first on the one hand, it's not a problem at all. You vote with your feet, do what you want, of course, right? But on the other hand, what if it's making you unhappy?
What if you think you're doing this because it's going to make you happy, but in fact, you're wrong, and you keep making decisions over and over again that make you increasingly less happy? And that's what I think is happening here. I think every one of those decisions is an error.
And are there any stats or data that proves that we're getting this wrong in terms of happiness? Are there other tribes or communities or people in history that were doing it differently and had higher rates of happiness?
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Chapter 6: What impact does pornography have on society?
So the best example in my mind is if you look at hunter-gatherers. And so there's a team that went to the Hadza, people who live outside, would live in Kenya and Tanzania. They're as close as we know to what our ancestors would look like. And in my mind, they're perfect because they're also where it all happened. The Hadza still lived where humanity evolved.
So of course it could have been different a quarter million years ago. But it could have been exactly like they live today. And so when you look at the Hadza, this particular team asked them, over the last week, have you been happy? Sometimes happy and sometimes sad? Sad. Over 90% of the Hadza said happy. That was their answer.
When you ask Westerners that same question, you get about 50% will say happy over the last week. And so the data suggests the Hadza are literally happier than we are. Now, they bury almost half their children. They live a life where they've got no savings whatsoever. They've got nothing in the bank. They don't know what tomorrow's going to bring.
They don't know if tomorrow's hunt's going to be successful. They have so many cultural rules that they have to abide by that requires them to be constantly connected with each other because they rely on each other like an insurance policy. And yet... They look a lot happier than we are. Now, we can see those same stats in different modern contexts.
Chapter 7: Are declining birth rates a threat to human existence?
But in my mind, that's a stat that blows me away.
And why do you think they are happier than us? You think it's because they're living in tribes and groups or is it something else?
Well, I think it's the balance that they've struck. And I think it's that balance between connection and autonomy. And so that's really the focus of this, of my second book is, so I'll tell you how I got there. How's that? So I'm visiting a friend of mine, also named Steven, and he struck it rich. And he invites me over. I'm like, this is going to be cool. I'm going to see how the super rich live.
And it was over the top, you know, this monumentally huge apartment, beautiful view, cooks over there, maids over there, et cetera. And so I turned to him, I'm like, Steve, man, your life is over the top. And he's like, yeah, it seems that way, but it's just not. And I'm like, seriously? And he goes, yeah, I'm no happier than I used to be.
And he starts listing off all the problems that he's facing. And I'm like, how could this person not appreciate these amazing benefits that he has? How is it even possible that a person could have so much and not just feel happy about it every day? And I have to admit, I felt this sense of superiority. I thought to myself, if I were crazy rich like you were, I'd be happy every day.
I would appreciate this lifestyle that I had earned rather than just taking it for granted. So then, fast forward a few years. This is a decade or so ago. Fast forward a few years, and I'm reading Frank Marlowe's wonderful book on the Hadza. And I'm reading about their lives and how content they are. And I'm like, holy cow, I'm just like my friend Steve. Compared to them, I'm a multimillionaire.
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Chapter 8: What role could robots play in parenting?
When my kids get sick, I'm off to the doctor immediately. I don't have this horrible life where I bury my own children. I have savings. I don't have to worry about tomorrow. I get up and get something out of the fridge. I'm comfortable when it's hot. I'm comfortable when it's cold. The list goes on. Compared to them, I'm a zillionaire. And yet they're probably happier than we are.
And so I realized it's not just Steve, it's all of us. You know, we're failing to appreciate this amazing modern world we live in. And, you know, even if we look back 100 years, 100 years ago, a quarter of the children died by, 150 years ago, a quarter of the children died by the time they turned five. You know, you got the flu or you got, you know, typhus.
There was a zillion diseases that just killed us when we were young. Women died in childbirth at rates way skyrocketing compared to today. So it's not just looking back at our togethers, but even looking back recently, our lives are so much better, but we're not any happier. If anything, I think we're maybe a little less happy.
And is that just because we don't take a moment to be grateful? Or is there something fundamental about the way we're pursuing happiness?
Look, I think it's multi-causal. Whenever you get a big effect like that, like if you take those data seriously that I told you about the Hadza, they're basically twice as happy as we are. Now, that's such a big effect. It has to be multi-cause. There has to be a lot going on there. And, of course, these changes happen over generations. They don't happen overnight.
If they happened overnight, I think it would be super obvious to us what had gone wrong. But I think what it returns us to is this problem that we were talking about before, about autonomy and connection. And so let's take city living as a for example. Remember earlier I said that cities are about 5,000 years old. So human beings have been moving to cities for 5,000 years.
By 1960, you had one people out of every three living in cities in the world. And by 2007 was the year we crossed over. 50% of humanity now lives in the city. So people have been voting with their feet for a long time, but by long time I mean a hundred and so years, en masse moving to cities. Now, there's lots of reasons for it. We can talk about it. But one of the costs is happiness.
If you look at happiness and you divide people up by where they live in cities, communities over a quarter million, or in the country, communities less than 2,500 people, they're happier in the country than they are in the city. which is a remarkable fact, in part because they're also poorer in the country.
People who live in cities in the United States, for example, are about 25% wealthier than people who live in the country. Some of that gets burned on expensive city living, but far from all of it. And so you're literally poorer in the country, but happier.
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