Darwin after Dark: Evolution of Attraction
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In this conversation, Joe Jackowski shares some of the research on the evolution of attraction. This podcast is outlined from a paper Joe wrote of the same name in an evolutionary biology class at the University of Michigan.
If you prefer to read you can find the paper here!
Show Notes:
[00:01:32] Intro - Everything has a cost
[00:03:27] Human Attraction
[00:09:25]General Attraction for Heterosexual behavior
[00:11:05] Sexual Dimorphism
[00:15:03] Estrus and Exotic Dancers
[00:20:22] Women's attraction to men
[00:25:55] Other effects of personality traits and sexual partners
[00:27:18] A statement on generalities of what this research show about gender and sexual preference
[00:29:44] Making the unconscious, conscious
[00:31:35] Closing
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Darwin After Dark: Evolution of Attraction
[00:00:47] Joe Jackowski: Hey everybody.
[00:00:48] I'm here with Wenzel and we're on the feeding curiosity podcast. Today, I'm going to actually do a final project for a bio course that I'm in here at the university of Michigan, which requires that I do a podcast or make a web page or something of a topic that's tied into evals. Canary biology, so I chose human attraction, in part because I am in the psychology dimension of biology, right? And attraction is interesting and so I initially wrote a paper called dark after dark. That is acting as a framework for this that I will also be. posted on feeding curiosity when this comes out.
[00:01:29] Erich Wenzel: Sweet.
[00:01:32] Intro - Everything has a cost
[00:01:32] Joe Jackowski: I'll open it up. you can follow along with us. If you've read the paper kind of get we'll probably get warmed up and I'll manage to do it here. but this maple will be more accessible. So the first thing to keep in mind with anything evolutionary is that every action has a cost that everything that you do requires some amount of resources in order to do it, and that actually includes the act of choosing itself. So if I have to think through whether I would not want to do X or Y.
[00:02:01] There's a cost to that thinking the resource loss and that in the attempt to do that. Right, so what that means is that can what we've kind of like we managed to do is to try to mitigate that problem of loss of resources in the choosing process at Dell. Is too habitualized to make habits out of something. So if I do the same action every day, every day I make my bed, it'll eventually get to the point where I don't even have to think about whether or not I'm going to make my bed. I'm just going to make my bed. It's a habit now, right? Get up in the morning, make breakfast, whatever. I don't have to think through these choices that I can make. In fact, there seems to be a limit on human decision making processing power. There's some papers that something like 10, you can make 10,000 choices a day.
[00:02:46] Erich Wenzel: Yeah, I've heard of that.
[00:02:48] Joe Jackowski: Yeah your ability to make choices start to deteriorate, so if we can make onto those choices, become habits and you don't have to think of it as much frees you up.
[00:02:57] So, if you keep doing that, so you keep having habits, that happened for a long period of time. Then the habits actually become something like instincts.
[00:03:05] Now this is across generations, right? So you can actually have instincts that were once habits or wants conscious choices. You can think of an instinct, something like an unconscious choice. One of that, you know, when you have to think through at all, there's no thought involved in this process or at least how we think of thought is
[00:03:22] involved in this process, really,
[00:03:23] Erich Wenzel: Like conscious about, right? I guess it would be the.
[00:03:27] Human Attraction
[00:03:27] Joe Jackowski: Right, like you don't have to consciously choose to be hungry. Right? So hunger is forcing you to go get food in some sense, and it's making the choice to get those resources cause you need them. You don't have to think through whether or not you should go get these resources. You just now you're being kind of incentivized to just do so
[00:03:44] one of those unconscious thoughts, right? This is unconscious. instinct is , human traction, right? This is why attractions kind of mysterious.
[00:03:55] Erich Wenzel: Like the love is blind nomenclature, that kind of thing.
[00:03:59] Joe Jackowski: Kind of. Yeah, right, so like if love is blind, it's what, what does that mean? That was because you don't see it. If you don't see something about illuminating, I lightened it not evident to you, so you could say that if love is blind then yes. Then what we're talking about there in that context is unconscious. It's not apparent to you why it is that you're.
[00:04:17] Factored that into digital and the reason for that. Is because there's been a bunch of specific things that you're picking up on that. Are you unconsciously choosing what have become? I've been so caught in this feedback loop in an evolutionary process that you no longer have to think about which person choose exactly what you have is Oh, rough system that indicates, which stimuli in the world are likely to be a good sexual partner or indicate a good sexual partner.
[00:04:51] Erich Wenzel: Unconscious triggers is basically like, Oh, they did this thing and that sends something to your primal brain that says, Ooh, I like that and it just keeps doing.
[00:05:00] Joe Jackowski: Exactly. If there's some stimulus out there in the world that hits your monkey brain or lizard brain and just the right way and it goes, I know what that that represents.
[00:05:11]Now I'm going to, you're going to become attracted to that thing, but you don't even if you don't recognize what it is, that person that you bet you attract. So what I'm going to lay out is try to make. We're going to try to make conscious those unconscious choices that are being made and say, why they why they have been so, perpetuated across time in our species. So the general thing to keep in mind.
[00:05:35] Is, we are going to do men and women and, and, heterosexual attraction. I didn't get into homosexual attraction though, just to give one point of contact. They found that in gay men, there was there, so this age dynamic across, male, or straight men and gay men, which is that a general you date down for men? We date younger about like four years, that remains true for longterm dating and gay men, but not in promiscuous behavior.
[00:06:02] It's actually true for straight on to that if you're not, if you're just looking for a hookup and they're age sort of doesn't matter. Or as much. so that is a commonality between being straight, where they differ is the amount of promiscuity. So gay men are more likely to have more partners than straight men. Now, I think part of that is just if you've ever had any gay friends at all one, that's not a surprise.
[00:06:28]You didn't need to do a study on that. You could have just asked somebody.
[00:06:31] Erich Wenzel: Yeah, especially cause they'll probably tell you too.
[00:06:34] Joe Jackowski: Oh, yeah, like I had a corporal in the Marine Corps that was there. It was is gay, and he used to love to tell us about his exploits and I would dare not repeat them public for your own sake, cause my god, these stories. it's just not
[00:06:47] Erich Wenzel: That guy just makes all the taboos military and gays like, wow.
[00:06:51] Joe Jackowski: Oh yeah, and he used to. We had a, this is a total tangent, but we had a gunnery Sergeant who was totally uncomfortable with it. And he used to intentionally, try and tell as many just vulgar stories to this gunny as he possibly could just.
[00:07:07] Erich Wenzel: Well, he definitely belongs in the military for that one.
[00:07:10] Joe Jackowski: I mean, the military is a really good sense of humor and it extends to everyone.
[00:07:14] Erich Wenzel: That's fantastic.
[00:07:16] Joe Jackowski: So part of what I think is that really women just regulate men's behavior.
[00:07:22] Half the reason why men straight men don't have as much sex as gay men is because our no women who are regulating, that men's behavior, right? Like half. The reason men are having sex is because of what it, which is so do you move women out of the equation and now all the game they were like, Oh, wait, we can just do what we want to do anyway.
[00:07:40] Erich Wenzel: Yeah, isn't it something with the biological repercussions of it, because if they don't have the chance of having a pregnancy, then it doesn't like they can just do like woohoo.
[00:07:50] Joe Jackowski: Yep. Yeah, and we'll get into that like there's just way more of a risk for women involved in sex and there's tremendous because a man can just leave.
[00:07:58] I mean, I'm more. I have two more examples of the military for that one. One is, I had a staff Sergeant. He was from New Orleans who was one of 40 children.
[00:08:08] He had 39 brothers and sisters from a dad who just hopped around New Orleans, I guess, and never paid child support and just it didn't matter. He just abandoned them. All right. You can do that clearly as evidenced by that case, so I get it's Indigo, but you can do that and those women are all stuck with those kids still, they can't do so women have a higher risk and that's part of why they're less likely to have or be as promiscuous as men.
[00:08:34]The other example is about, women regulating men's behavior for the military.
[00:08:37] I told you this before, but you could tell which units in the military had women in them and which did now this isn't a report, so we're kind of all over the place anyway, but, or at least uniquely a brazen might be the word,
[00:08:50] Erich Wenzel: Yeah, there's something hard charging about the Marines.
[00:08:53] Joe Jackowski: Oh, yeah, it's kind of in your face. so I could tell which units were by the, how well behaved the men were in the unit. You could tell which ones had women in it. So like the guy, the units that didn't have any women were maniacs. They're all crazy people. And they would act ridiculous and they'd be meaner, kinda more in your face and just whatever, but the men that were in units with women were much more put together, more polite, all that. So it was interesting just to see that dynamic and anecdote, but it is.
[00:09:25]General Attraction for Heterosexual behavior
[00:09:25] So the, the general difference between men and women in this case, or if we're talking, we're back to, heterosexual behavior. It is that men control for its men are interested in looks and physicality. women are interested more in a resources, potential resource acquisition personality.
[00:09:46] Which is not a huge shocker, as you can conceptualize that as something like men are concerned with the physical health of the species and women are concerned with something like the psychological cultural health, the species.
[00:10:02] And so they selected those individual things to balance each other
[00:10:05] Erich Wenzel: two parts of the whole.
[00:10:07] Joe Jackowski: Right, right? They're literally compensating for each other's weaknesses.
[00:10:11] Erich Wenzel: Wow. That's a really interesting way of looking at it.
[00:10:14] Joe Jackowski: Yeah. It was so cool. so we'll start with men to women. so when you understand what reproductive value means it's so it's RV generally, I haven't, I'll probably call up RV throughout the conversation, generally age based likelihood of reproductive success. So that means basically how likely are you in this time to be able to have kids?
[00:10:36] so, that will pop up throughout this conversation. So, but one of the one of the signals that, men look for, that they find attractive to women and so attraction is something like the presence of an, Yeah, like the presence of a sexual signal something that suggests I'm thinking about the sexuality of the individual
[00:10:55] Erich Wenzel: Like suggest reproductivity in some sense.
[00:10:59] Joe Jackowski: Yeah, so I will. A couple of the things I'll bring up will specifically have to do with the ability to reproduce.
[00:11:04] Erich Wenzel: Okay. Got it.
[00:11:05] Sexual Dimorphism
[00:11:05]Joe Jackowski: The first one is sexual dimorphism, which is basically, how much do you look like your specific sex? Generally, so men looking like men and women looking like women and those two things are separate. What is sexual dimorphism is it's you look kind of one way or the other now there's ambiguity so you can have women that kinda like masculine and, men are less attracted to that in general.
[00:11:32] They like women that look feminine and he might ask what does feminine look like? Well, you can figure it out so you just take off a huge pool of women, and you say which physical features are most common amongst the second. Maybe it's 60% of all women have a slender cheekbones and they say, okay, and that that,
[00:11:52] That is not common for men, so 60% of men don't have slender cheekbones, right? That indicates something that we've called them and features.
[00:12:00] Erich Wenzel: Got it. So it's got double criteria. Found commonly in women and also is uncommon in men.
[00:12:06] Joe Jackowski: Right, right? Generally, those features are what men tend to look for, including I said, slender cheekbone specifically because I was one of those things. What's interesting is the question: why? So why do men find that more attractive? Like why should a woman look more feminine? Or one of the things is, Oh, and fuller lips that was the other one.
[00:12:32] Fuller lips and slender cheekbones? Why is it that men find that more attractive? Well, it turns out that during a certain age window for women where they're more likely or most likely to be able to be pregnant. Those specific features are something like more salient during that time period. So there are more. Those are more powerful and they are cheap.
[00:12:55] Those appear more slender in that time period. So the men were attracted to those feminine features, we're more likely to be able to reproduce because the women that had those features were fertile during that time.
[00:13:07] So it becomes a feedback loop, right? You have kids and now have those features and you perpetuate the men that are affected by those features and just spreads. Then you could just go.
[00:13:15]And also interesting enough. It has to do it. She used to have to do with health one study. It was a masculine features and women were actually positive positively correlated with respiratory disease so it could also be a mitigation for it's going to be like something like disease control to not just as they're an attractive to the.
[00:13:35] Feminine features, but lack of attractive the masculine features. The lack of attraction helps control for potential disease.
[00:13:44] Which is interesting.
[00:13:45] Now this is all unconscious for the people involved generally, that's interesting and that talks about that's again, that talks about RV, right? The value again because, Those people, the women that have those features or more likely to reproduce so they have higher reproductive value. So the next next thing is a waist to hip ratio. so that's cross-cultural. They even did it with women in small groups in the Amazon that had no exposure like secluded groups. I had no exposure to Western beauty standards.
[00:14:17] So you couldn't blame us on something like culture.
[00:14:21] Because across all these different cultures, it still can. Maintained. And that seems to be the result of fecundity or fertility, that if you have wide hips or likely to be able to give birth, but in some ways it's success, something like, physical health. Generally so healthy plus able to reduce successfully and there's another. There's one study where they looked at where women with large breasts and small, always separate shows were found to be more fertile and those measure with like progesterone's much stuff.
[00:14:52] So there's physical evidence to suggest that too, which is really cool. That's another reproductive value thing, right wide it means likely to repeat able to reproduce successfully.
[00:15:03] Estrus and Exotic Dancers
[00:15:03] And perhaps my favorite study and this entire. This is this all thing and maybe that was my favorite that I've ever heard. It's so great. Has to do with exotic dancers.
[00:15:13] Erich Wenzel: Of course, Joe.
[00:15:14] Joe Jackowski: It's so funny. I love that they did this. Okay, but so there's this idea of estrus too, which is in most mammals, it's really common amongst mammals and primate s a is estrus or heat being in heat, so there's periods of time where the female is more.
[00:15:30] Erich Wenzel: If anyone has had a cat they know it.
[00:15:31] Joe Jackowski: Yeah, right. I like a cat right is where just like they are more interested in having sex, send out signals saying like suggesting that, they said that it's kind of made that the prevailing theory has been. It was lost or hidden, so human evolution because there isn't an obvious period of time where that really happens with us.
[00:15:50] Erich Wenzel: Yeah.
[00:15:52] Joe Jackowski: But this is what a study comes in. So, this has ended up being evidence to the contrary. So what the researchers did is they took, let's see what are the numbers cause this is great. They had 18 exotic dancers, over the course of 60 days, 296 shifts shifts and 5,300 lap dances. They recorded the tips that these women got, and then they also recorded their ovulatory cycle. What they found is that there's a period of time where they're most fertile right before our population where these women continuously got higher tips. So the more fertile the woman was the more likely they were to get paid.
[00:16:37] Erich Wenzel: That's interesting.
[00:16:39] Joe Jackowski: Right. That is interesting.
[00:16:40] Erich Wenzel: Because it's not known or it's like pheromones or something, you know, if you're thinking about lizards or something.
[00:16:48] Something you're doing. That's invisible that does somehow make it easier for you to get paid.
[00:16:52] Joe Jackowski: Yep. And so what they found is so once that happens and the evidence that they talk about also in that paper is that women during that point in there, that's their cycle are found to be more attractive to males either sent or they have greater facial attractiveness incr. Soft tissue body symmetry, decreased waist to hip ratio and higher verbal creativity and fluency during that time period. So it's like all these signals come at once and go bang, I'm fertile have sex with me like that's the signal that's being sent. This is nothing about the conscious thoughts of a woman. She might not want that.
[00:17:28] Right. Since we're conscious agents, we can play against her biology.
[00:17:31]I think that as a result of that, they ended up tipping more, not really consciously aware that they're doing it. It's almost like they're receiving all these signals that suggest this and one of the means for them to get to answer that signal to respond to it is to tip more.
[00:17:46] So there seems to be also this alley there might be in estrus or heat period that also occurs in women human with them, which is so fascinating.
[00:17:55] Erich Wenzel: What that reminds me are the things that make me think of is that we can control or women can control, you know, the shapes of their body, right? Like what you're saying. you know about things we were because of technology in quotation marks, you know, heels or dresses or whatever. The features of the physical body that other animals have used biology to already do, but I'm thinking like the peacocks are different birds that do displays.
[00:18:20]we just wind up doing that in other ways or even red lipstick. I think we've talked about that before Stu. To like blush like the reason it's called a blush is it's supposed to do exactly that.
[00:18:31] Joe Jackowski: I can totally. Okay so I can follow up on that. So, we have these biological markers like I'm laying out and these are something like signals for fertility. there's other signals that can happen that we can actually hijack to make somebody more attractive. Right? Because our, our dumb monkey brains to see now and they go, Ooh.
[00:18:48] That's a sexual readiness or whatever that's tracking. Okay. We can because we can mimic that signal without having the actual underlying biological condition. We can hijack the system, present attractiveness that would otherwise not be there. One of those things is blush so that type of makeup, right? So you put blush on why does blush look good? Well, what do, what do we even mean by look good.
[00:19:12] Look attractive, well attractive. What? What do we mean? What's the end goal attracted. It's sexually attractive. Looking good is looking sexually attractive for sex for the purpose of sex, right? Like by definition that's what that means. So we've put on blush to look good. Why does blush look good? Why is blessed sexually attractive? Well, when somebody is sexually aroused, they naturally blush that blood rushes or facials and shows blush, right?
[00:19:40]What was the biological signal was here's someone who is sexually aroused with whom I could potentially have sex with, and that's why they're attractive, but now we can remove the being sexually aroused element and just how the end product, which is blushing and put that on and that hijacks our brain system and makes us think that they're attractive.
[00:20:01] So that's super cool. We do that all the
[00:20:02] time. That seems to be like, I've heard that. That's what high heels do too because it accentuates legs and, makes it so there's our posture is in lordosis, which is basically curving of, the lower back and it's making sexual position essentially.
[00:20:15] Erich Wenzel: Yeah, we can have a link to the show notes for that one.
[00:20:19]Joe Jackowski: This paper will have everything cited on the bottom except people can read it.
[00:20:22] Women's attraction to men
[00:20:22]We can switch directions now and go to a women and men or women being attracted to men,
[00:20:28] so this is a little more difficult because it's personality based, right? So there's not, there's not these specific sexual signals as much in women. has, there are these obvious ones men, right? Because we can just refer to the body of sin. That's what men are looking at, and attempt this concrete thing, the personalities a little bit.
[00:20:44] More fluid and, and that's harder to pin down inside, so I'll try to do my best to lay it out, but I'll start with one specific physical. I think that women seem to look for that.
[00:21:00] Choose one thing or not. Clear dividing lines, and then just, are interested in physicality, but when are just interested in personality or resource acquisition like this predation and he's probably occurred to some degree in both sides and all that.
[00:21:14] So, and women, They found that the waist to shoulder ratio predicted a desire for a one time equal partner, but personality also played a role. So it's like, how wide are your shoulders compared to your waist?
[00:21:29] Erich Wenzel: That's so wild. I went to bodybuilding immediately. Wow, that's ironic.
[00:21:34] Joe Jackowski: Yeah, right. That's the idea, it's in bodybuilding in some sense, they're trying to make the most attractive body. Right? So what we mean again by attractive sexually attractive are the things that are the criteria for that or something like unconscious sexual markers.
[00:21:50] Joe Jackowski: And that shoulder to waist ratio is one of them. They also found in that same study.
[00:21:57] I think his personality, intelligence and career choice. Were things that women targeted, in men and more and more so than men.
[00:22:08] So they're hitting on a whole bunch of different things, and I think that a lot of that has to do with a career choice intelligence personality. I would almost put it on. Hm. Personality overlaps with a couple of things, but I would say that one is it's it's resource acquisition and maintenance because while she's pregnant, she can't be running around. Traditionally, couldn't be running around even traditionally doesn't really nail it. It's more like in our evolutionary past, so even deeper than I don't wanna say tradition because it applies to culture. So it's deeper than that, like when we were just primates right before humans, if the woman was pregnant, given how long human pregnancy is, then acquiring resources.
[00:22:49] During that time and when the child has been born in a super dependent, it would be difficult. So the male had to be the one that acquired those resources in order for her and her child to survive. So looking for men who are capable of doing that was positively beneficial.
[00:23:05] And so personality overlaps in that because, there are dimensions of personality like industriousness.
[00:23:12] Which is a facet of conscientiousness, which conscientiousness? yeah, I think it was conscientiousness. Here we go, study of 20,000 couples, agreeableness and conscientiousness were found to be predictors of their satisfaction conscious just as includes industriousness, which is like a willingness to work in some sense. We're actually something more like a feeling of guilt if you're not working. And so the more you work more, resources, you acquire, the more likely it is that. Give those resources to the baby and dog when they're most vulnerable. That's why they were selected for
[00:23:44] Erich Wenzel: And this is the big five for people who are not aware.
[00:23:48] Joe Jackowski: Yeah, big five personality. It's kinda like the standard, most tried and true model of personality that personality psychologists use so that having two, three source acquisitions would be great. Agreeableness has a lot to do with the cooperation between people to make sense that that would have to do as marital satisfaction right? Cause if you're just stubborn all the time.
[00:24:07] And they also found out. Other than intelligence and career choice, both of those have to do with, I mean, intelligence has a lot of helpful things that help with that. Resource acquisition is amongst them.
[00:24:20] Erich Wenzel: Yeah, it sounds to me that it's almost like women biologically speaking are selecting for a partner who's going to not only be able to provide for the children. Like if the assumption that children will be happening and then. And then it's also that person that have the ability to provide for that children are those children, and then will they be passing on the best genes too, those children.
[00:24:46] Joe Jackowski: Yeah.
[00:24:48] Erich Wenzel: At least that's what I would sum it up too.
[00:24:50] Joe Jackowski: And I would say that the men generally tend to be more focused on the passing on of specific physical genes where the women are are looking at temperamental genes,
[00:25:01] Erich Wenzel: Yeah, like personality traits and how you
[00:25:03] Joe Jackowski: yeah, and personality is heritable right. It's like four or something 0.4, which means there's some. 40% of your personality. You can attribute to genetics, so clearly there's leeway here, but
[00:25:17] Erich Wenzel: Out the box, you have a preset.
[00:25:20] Joe Jackowski: and that's just obvious like I can just go right back to the food and water like for example, the fact that you don't have to think about whether or not you should be going and getting food now. Suggests that you come preset with the desire for food that's not controversial. It'd be stupid to think otherwise.
[00:25:37] Erich Wenzel: Right.
[00:25:40] Joe Jackowski: So put that includes certain sexual, I guess conferences are really the white, the right herd since it already has a meaning outside of this, but desire for certain traits is part of what you come prepackaged with.
[00:25:55] Other effects of personality traits and sexual partners
[00:25:55]what else? personality trait, agreeableness predicted, desire for dating in long term relationships in both men and women, but greater effect and women. Again, so there's also this kind of difference, but it had and that's the paper had less to do with a remote. Illness had less of a predictive ability or ability to predict one time sexual partners, so when women are looking for. Just a fling, right? One time, federal partner. Then that person mattered much because especially with agreeableness because you don't need them to cooperate with well raising this child. It doesn't matter. You're not going to stick with raising a kid with this guy, so who cares? Right. It's in the long term.
[00:26:49] It starts to really appear. So with women, the big things are, physically, waist to shoulder ratio. Then there's general resource equity, just acquisition stuff, so, but which includes personality. Under which is, agreeableness and conscientiousness. And then all those things kind of work together to act as the template for women's attraction to men.
[00:27:18] A statement on generalities of what this research show about gender and sexual preference
[00:27:18] No, I shouldn't say because I can already see this. First. Isn't coming is that you're going to have the odd person. That's going to hear this. They're gonna say, well, I'm a man and run a woman, and I care more about this thing that you said that women care about her Medicare. Right. I think about this thing that you said that the other people care about.
[00:27:39] I'm not. That's what they care about. I care about that. Okay. They're generalities.
[00:27:47] Erich Wenzel: Maybe generally probably.
[00:27:50] Joe Jackowski: You can think of it. It's like the average. The typical male follows the male, templates, and I'm laying in the typical female. I was the typical flow, this is the female template that I'm laying out, but there's a huge amount of overlap, right?
[00:28:08] Erich Wenzel: It's a two hilled median, I guess
[00:28:14] Joe Jackowski: You can picture two bell curves, right? That are extra each other and then like 60% of it overlaps that. So you have this huge section in the middle where it's common amongst men and women at night. Exactly. So you just gotta think of it as a general template . There's a cultural element as we talked, mostly biology here. There's this. Cultural element there. Maybe certain things that people are attracted to you would never consider the biological. Exactly. Maybe contained within a biology or influenced by biology, but not exactly like you would say that let's say, how do I say this? Let's say somebody has a fetish.
[00:28:52] This is a typical sexual segment that makes them that they're really attracted to for some reason this thing just clicks for them, right? Well you wouldn't say that they, that the biology created that fetish, right? Because maybe the conditions for that fetish just didn't exist. In the past, right? Maybe it's. I don't know. Maybe you have a thing for lamps. Maybe every time it's like, it's like the Christmas story, right? That leg lamp but I imagine a normal lamp. So does it go like a lamp? And for some reason, I don't know Eric kid like something happened and then there's a lamp and it works for you. I don't know.
[00:29:29] Well, lamps didn't exist in our evolutionary history, so there's no reason whatsoever why you would ever take a lamp that way would be that trigger, right? It's some imprinting from experience and so there's definitely influence from the culture.
[00:29:44] Making the unconscious, conscious
[00:29:44] And there's also the conscious element, right? So it's like, just because we have a biology, doesn't necessarily mean that it determines everything that we do because we can actually reflect on what we're doing and so part of what making this conscious, a lot of people to do is maybe before they were like, Oh, I was totally, I was totally, looking for women with, Wider hips or whatever. And maybe that was actually a problem and that these people, this woman that you really get along with and it doesn't have that, and then you were like unconsciously, not wanting to date her because of that or something. Now that you're conscious of it, you can in some sense overcoming it can make a conscious choice to ignore or do something else.
[00:30:27] Erich Wenzel: Yeah. You can pull the subconscious to the conscious level of reflection so that you can make it. There's some sort of agency rather than just being pulled along by whatever.
[00:30:38] Joe Jackowski: Whatever this could just be biological strings happened, be it. Have you wired up, which is part of why I think that becoming more conscious of things is so important because imagine somebody. Somebody has stolen your credit card information. You don't know it, but they're spending all your money. Now, if you're ignorant to the fact, if you're unconscious of the fact that somebody has your credit card in order to get the money, you are powerless to do anything about it. Like, they'll just keep doing it. That's something the bank doesn't involve all that.
[00:31:08] The only you know, moment, is you've made that conscious. Now you can ask about it. So part of what's interesting about learning about these things is that we may have maladaptive sexual attractions or pen, biologically instantiated tendencies and went to constant. Then maybe we can do something about that.
[00:31:33] Just something to chew on.
[00:31:35] Closing
[00:31:35] Erich Wenzel: Yeah, I think that's a really good note to close on just because you know, just because it is a biological cause like you're kind of touched on where people are going to have objections. just because it is biological doesn't mean that we can't be active agents in those things. I mean, we're still animals at the end of the day, but we are conscious of our actions more so than any other animal planet
[00:31:56] Joe Jackowski: Not even necessarily. I don't want to suggest either that it's bad that we had these attractions. I mean, clearly there's reasons why they exist. And some of them were like, why would you want to get rid of it or whatever? Right? It's like who cares?
[00:32:08] Just enjoy it to enjoy it, I suppose, but. But that's all I got. So I hope that that was a nice general layout for people to understand. Hopefully that's what they get out of it or enjoy it a little bit about, human biology, evolution, and human attraction.
[00:32:23] Erich Wenzel: Cool. Sweet deal.