Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI
Speaker 1: AM six forty, live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm about to fangirl again. You know, I do this
Speaker 1: every once in a while. I get somebody on the
Speaker 1: show who I'm actually a big fan of. And this
Speaker 1: week's guest is doctor Paul Eastwick. He's a professor at
Speaker 1: UC Davis. But get this, he runs a lab where
Speaker 1: he does research on all my favorite subjects, attraction relationships.
Speaker 1: But also he's cool because he's co hosting the podcast
Speaker 1: Love Factually, of.
Speaker 2: Course, available on the iHeartRadio app. Hi, doctor Paul, how
Speaker 2: are you hi?
Speaker 3: Very goodness, Thanks someone for having me on today.
Speaker 2: You didn't know that I would be fangirling on you
Speaker 2: on live radio.
Speaker 3: Yeah right right, Okay, I'm ready. I'll see if I
Speaker 3: can live up to this.
Speaker 1: Okay, So what I want to talk about we don't
Speaker 1: have a whole lot of time. But what I like
Speaker 1: to talk about is your mate evaluation theory. But before
Speaker 1: we do that, I need to know this story behind
Speaker 1: Love Factually. It is such a brilliant title for your podcast.
Speaker 1: What is the podcast Love Factually?
Speaker 3: Yes? So the basic idea behind the podcast is along
Speaker 3: with my longtime collaborator and now co host, Eli Finkle,
Speaker 3: we take the science of close relationships as we have
Speaker 3: understood it and internalized it over the years, and what
Speaker 3: we do is we talk about how various rom coms
Speaker 3: and romantic films reflect what we know in the science,
Speaker 3: either what the films are getting right or what they're
Speaker 3: kind of mangling.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm going to tell you that I have always
Speaker 1: said what they get wrong pretty much one hundred percent
Speaker 1: of them is that they.
Speaker 2: End at the beginning of a relationship.
Speaker 3: That is is a fantastic point. There's so many of
Speaker 3: those films that classically do that right. You get what
Speaker 3: you're doing. You're seeing what amounts to something like the
Speaker 3: first ten percent of the relationship, and that's part is
Speaker 3: supposed to make it feel good and like send you
Speaker 3: home feeling happy. And look, sometimes they depict that early
Speaker 3: ten percent. Well, but we got to acknowledge that there's
Speaker 3: a lot left to come when the movies ends, when
Speaker 3: the couple gets together.
Speaker 1: Right and they get past their limerins and move into
Speaker 1: intellectual commitment kind of love.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, Now, we've covered plenty of movies that do
Speaker 3: cover the whole art, and it's actually kind of tough
Speaker 3: if we want to give the movies a break, it's
Speaker 3: tough to go from beginning all the way to the end. Right,
Speaker 3: are there anything? Lala Land is one that does it
Speaker 3: really well. Yeah, I mean right there the notebook, come
Speaker 3: on the notework, Yeah, right right, that is one of
Speaker 3: the view that goes from the beginning to end. Really
Speaker 3: the end the spoiler alert, yeah, really the end literally
Speaker 3: the notebook. Yeah, but they're out there, and we like
Speaker 3: to give you know, you know, accolades to those movies
Speaker 3: that pull it off.
Speaker 1: So, moving from the podcast onto some of your research.
Speaker 1: One of your most famous studies has to do with
Speaker 1: something called mate evaluation theory, and it basically talks about
Speaker 1: how people analyze, evaluate, make selection for potential mates.
Speaker 2: And and I read the.
Speaker 1: Whole study today because what I do is I turn
Speaker 1: it into language everyone can understand. And now I'm going
Speaker 1: to have you correct me if I say it wrong.
Speaker 3: Okay, Okay, I'm ready.
Speaker 2: I'm ready.
Speaker 1: There are basically five ways that people evaluate a mate. Right, first,
Speaker 1: you talk about something called shared evolved mechanisms and cultural scripts.
Speaker 1: Is this David Buss's evolutionary stuff? I'm hearing that women
Speaker 1: like men who are tall, and men like men who
Speaker 1: are fertile and round himpt waste.
Speaker 3: Yeah, really it is. It is definitely meant to encompass that. Right.
Speaker 3: So anything that's like agreed upon whether the reason for
Speaker 3: agreement is there something evolved in the mind that this
Speaker 3: is appealing to who we are as a species on average,
Speaker 3: or because I don't know, we've decided in this culture
Speaker 3: that you know, it's appealing if you can like make
Speaker 3: really great TikTok videos like actually, right, but this is attractive.
Speaker 1: I mean, I will say I'm a woman of a
Speaker 1: certain age, and I've watched female body shape change over
Speaker 1: the years, and in the nineteen eighties it was the
Speaker 1: advent of the boob job, and it was very exciting
Speaker 1: to suddenly see breasts on everybody. And now it's all
Speaker 1: about but right, Yeah, So that's one example of a
Speaker 1: cultural script.
Speaker 2: All right, Moving on number two.
Speaker 1: Individual differences that affect how a perceiver. That's somebody who's
Speaker 1: attracted somebody views all potential mates. So is this like
Speaker 1: somebody's deal breaker list, Like this is my checklist, these
Speaker 1: are things I'm looking for.
Speaker 3: I would think of this one as like this is
Speaker 3: like people's own personality. So some people are happy people,
Speaker 3: and honestly, they're going to be happy in whatever relationship
Speaker 3: you put them in, and some people not so much,
Speaker 3: and they're going to be kind of miserable in whatever
Speaker 3: relationship you put them in. So that's that's this component.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like just your lens that you take
Speaker 3: to the whole world and it doesn't matter who you're with.
Speaker 1: Interesting because my new husband, Julio, he is a giggly
Speaker 1: Dominican and he's the happiest person.
Speaker 2: I've ever met in my life.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 1: Then I'm met his whole family in Dominican Republic and
Speaker 1: they all giggle. I was like, wow, it's a cultural thing.
Speaker 2: This is cool.
Speaker 3: Yep, And they happy with anybody, even me. There you
Speaker 3: go and like, look, don't feel bad. It's a really
Speaker 3: good good thing to be to have a little bit
Speaker 3: of some rose colored glasses as you view the boys.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, I have to reel him back in all
Speaker 1: the time. Is his optimism is a little too high?
Speaker 2: Okay, moving out of the third one.
Speaker 1: Individual differences that affect how a perceiver views some targets
Speaker 1: depending on the target's features.
Speaker 2: So let me take a crack at this. Yep, So
Speaker 2: would this be correct?
Speaker 1: Maybe somebody with an anxious attachment style might look at
Speaker 1: a partner's emotional passion and intensity as being really attractive.
Speaker 1: But if that person looking is avoidant, they might feel smothered.
Speaker 3: That's a great example. Yeah, I mean this also would
Speaker 3: encompass the deal breaker list you mentioned earlier, the idea
Speaker 3: that I, like, I can't stand people who you know,
Speaker 3: like going to fancy seven course meal restaurants, Like I
Speaker 3: just can't be with somebody like that, Like that is,
Speaker 3: you know, too high falutin for me. If you have
Speaker 3: that kind of deal breaker, that's this third one that
Speaker 3: you're talking about.
Speaker 1: No, yourself, do not invite Paul to dinner out, Okay, gotcha?
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: My guest is University of California, Davis Professor, doctor Paul Eastwick.
Speaker 1: He is also a researcher in attraction, relationships, interpersonal love, sex,
Speaker 1: the whole shabang. He has the numbers and the data
Speaker 1: on it. Okay, doctor Paul. Your mate evaluation theory, how
Speaker 1: people evaluate mates to be a potential mate. You say,
Speaker 1: narratives about idiosyncratic reactions to one particular target. Now, I
Speaker 1: just got to admonish you on that is some psychobabble there. Okay,
Speaker 1: I had to think about that for a minute.
Speaker 3: Okay, what we do?
Speaker 1: So I would say this is like I think this
Speaker 1: is the exciting part because this is does this mean
Speaker 1: that if you have the sense that there's great meaning
Speaker 1: to this relationship to you in particular, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like there's something about this person that makes you go, oh,
Speaker 1: it's meant to be.
Speaker 2: It feels magical.
Speaker 3: Yes. And it's also about the things that you construct
Speaker 3: along the way. And this is the one that I
Speaker 3: think is if you ask the average person what is
Speaker 3: important in your relationship, they're gonna ultimately gravitate towards these
Speaker 3: kinds of things. The special rituals we have, the pet
Speaker 3: names we have for each other, the customs that we built,
Speaker 3: the values that we've created over time, and this stuff
Speaker 3: is huge.
Speaker 1: So this is as a couple creating, or what an
Speaker 1: individual creates in their life and then says, wow, this
Speaker 1: person fits that.
Speaker 3: It is really supposed to be what you are creating.
Speaker 3: I'll say like this, well, you're creating them in a
Speaker 3: context with this particular person. And the real idea with
Speaker 3: this one is the idea that like, I can't just
Speaker 3: take somebody else who like looks a lot like your
Speaker 3: partner and substitute them in. Like, the point is that
Speaker 3: this person was there along the way for the creation
Speaker 3: of these things, Like you have memories with this person,
Speaker 3: and that's that's what it's really about.
Speaker 1: And I always say relationships are a living thing. They're
Speaker 1: like growing a gardener together. And having been prior to
Speaker 1: meeting my now husband, I was a single mom for
Speaker 1: twenty years with two little girls, and I did not
Speaker 1: want to risk exposing my kids to a poor romantic
Speaker 1: choice that I might make. But I knew that if
Speaker 1: I kept studying this stuff, by the time they got
Speaker 1: of age and old enough, I would find a person.
Speaker 1: But there is something now that I'm in a secure
Speaker 1: attachment where I really.
Speaker 2: Feel like there's a living thing.
Speaker 1: Like we're co thinkers, we're cod emotional you know. He
Speaker 1: does half the thinking, you know, and I do half
Speaker 1: the intellectual work. I mean, a great example, here's a simple,
Speaker 1: simple example, and I'm sure many couples do this. One
Speaker 1: of us will be working on an email and we
Speaker 1: will read it aloud to the other person. It might
Speaker 1: be an important and he will add more business language
Speaker 1: or analytic language to mine, and I will add more
Speaker 1: emotional language to yep.
Speaker 3: So we become get a couple of emojis in there
Speaker 3: at an exclamation point exactly, and.
Speaker 2: Now we're a team. We're thinking like one brain exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, right, And it's this thing that people build
Speaker 3: together that you know, what we try to point out
Speaker 3: in this paper is we all kind of intuitively get
Speaker 3: that this that's really important, and we as researchers are
Speaker 3: actually not great at capturing it. And that's for a
Speaker 3: bunch of methodological reasons that aren't especially fascinating. But the
Speaker 3: bottom line is what we think the lion's share of
Speaker 3: compatibility is how well you create a culture to your
Speaker 3: relationship and hip well, we actually just haven't. You know,
Speaker 3: there's a lot out there about that that still needs
Speaker 3: to be explored and understood, and just so.
Speaker 1: That people understand what you just said, one of the
Speaker 1: problems with doing relationship research is a lot of it
Speaker 1: is self reporting. You can't like put people in MRI
Speaker 1: machines and just say, oh, there's love, although some attachment
Speaker 1: researchers are doing.
Speaker 3: That right right.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's go to what made evaluation theory can
Speaker 1: teach us about dating. Now that we know these points, what,
Speaker 1: how does that help us make better decisions?
Speaker 3: Well, I think where it can really help people is
Speaker 3: to recognize that there's some amount of curiosity that is
Speaker 3: important when it comes to being in a relationship with somebody.
Speaker 3: It's curiosity about how did we get to this point
Speaker 3: and are the patterns we set up early in our
Speaker 3: relationship still serving us well? You know, one of the
Speaker 3: challenges that often happen is that, you know, couples do
Speaker 3: things because they work right, and they keep those things
Speaker 3: going because they were affected at one time. But it
Speaker 3: can be very easy for one or both couple members
Speaker 3: to lose track of what their needs are as they
Speaker 3: change over time, and to realize that the patterns they've
Speaker 3: set up might actually now be getting in the way,
Speaker 3: might easily even be stifling one of them. And so,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm a big believer that you know that
Speaker 3: many couples can make it work, but it does require
Speaker 3: some amount of curiosity about what the other person is
Speaker 3: experiencing and how did we get here? Do we need
Speaker 3: to mix things up or not right?
Speaker 2: I call it rewriting the relationship contract from time to time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1: And also when it comes to choosing a mate, looking
Speaker 1: at some of these cultural scripts is a good idea
Speaker 1: for us to become aware of them and realize how
Speaker 1: they could be limiting us.
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean, I'm a big believer in the idea
Speaker 3: that actually the narratives that you co create with somebody
Speaker 3: really begin from the first moment. Like a lot of times,
Speaker 3: what we think we're trying to do is assess things
Speaker 3: like how how good are you know this person's traits?
Speaker 3: Are they attractive, are they intelligent? Are they funny? But
Speaker 3: what we're really doing is trying to figure out are
Speaker 3: they funny with me? Right? Do they seem smart with me?
Speaker 3: Do they make me feel smart? Like it's relational from
Speaker 3: the very first few minutes. I mean, we even see
Speaker 3: this if you look at you know, first impression research,
Speaker 3: and we've collected a lot of data on first impressions.
Speaker 3: But what people are trying to do is just find
Speaker 3: something where they both have a little bit of knowledge
Speaker 3: in common and they can kind of try to start
Speaker 3: scaffolding something together, something that they have in common, something
Speaker 3: that they can sort of bond over a little bit,
Speaker 3: and then you sort of build up from there. So
Speaker 3: you know, everything is a construction, and it really happens
Speaker 3: from the very beginning.
Speaker 1: So when I met my husband during COVID, during quarantine
Speaker 1: and lockdown, my rule was they had to meet me
Speaker 1: on a windy pier wearing a mask. Okay, And if
Speaker 1: they couldn't do that, then if they want to protect
Speaker 1: my health's not going to happen. And then when we
Speaker 1: sat down, for I only do coffee days, so it
Speaker 1: was only twenty minutes they got.
Speaker 2: You got to leave them wanting more, you know.
Speaker 1: And then I said, when we sat down, I said, look,
Speaker 1: you know, we could sit here and brag about the
Speaker 1: masks were off at this point because we were more
Speaker 1: than six feet apart and the wind was going. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I said, we could sit here and brag about
Speaker 1: how great we are and how datable we are. But
Speaker 1: could we begin actually by each of us telling a
Speaker 1: story of why we think we're completely undateable.
Speaker 3: Oh that's wonderful.
Speaker 1: He said, Okay, you'll go first, and he had a
Speaker 1: much much more tragic story than I did. But it
Speaker 1: developed intimacy from the get go.
Speaker 3: Yep, right, yep, it was that's great. Yeah, it's spot
Speaker 3: on I love to plug art Aaron, and you know
Speaker 3: the grade thirty six questions. Oh, yes, study love. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean right exactly. But really, what you're doing in
Speaker 3: that sixty and ninety minute period is you are getting
Speaker 3: comfortable and then talking about things that are interesting and
Speaker 3: deep and meaningful. And people can do this in short
Speaker 3: periods of time.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And within ten minutes of our coffee coming,
Speaker 1: both of us had our eyes welling up with tears
Speaker 1: over our stories.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and dealing with.
Speaker 1: The shame of having to tell the story too, right, yeah, So,
Speaker 1: and so I wanted to ask you one more question
Speaker 1: before time is so tight in radio.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: The last question has to do when it comes to
Speaker 1: this study with these sort of these models we have
Speaker 1: in our heads for what we're talking specifically heter rich
Speaker 1: sexual relationship. Here, for my example, an opposite gender parents
Speaker 1: role is in our model of love. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: with my husband, we will be out shopping somewhere and
Speaker 1: he'll be in the next aisle over and he will
Speaker 1: clear his throat and one hundred percent it is my dad.
Speaker 1: Everything about the sound, the tone, everything, And I almost
Speaker 1: get startled when I hear it. Did I unconsciously choose
Speaker 1: him partly because of that.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know. I mean, there is a little
Speaker 3: bit of work showing that, yeah, that people can be
Speaker 3: unconsciously primed with images of parents, and you know, they
Speaker 3: feel a little bit more safe. And so maybe if
Speaker 3: that you know, is coming from somebody of your you know,
Speaker 3: preferred age and gender, that you just find yourself a
Speaker 3: little bit more attractive with that person for that reason.
Speaker 3: But this stuff is going to be really really subtle.
Speaker 3: These oh yeah, any unconscious effects are going to be
Speaker 3: very very small on the whole. But it's possible that
Speaker 3: you know, things like what you mentioned there, sort of
Speaker 3: the way that he clears his throughout her might be
Speaker 3: a small thing that carried over from those unconscious leaning.
Speaker 1: Which might have been important to me and my trauma
Speaker 1: is that my parents both died of cancer in the
Speaker 1: same year when I was young, and so interesting enough,
Speaker 1: his mother, who's eighty six years old, I love.
Speaker 2: So I got a dad and a mom back with
Speaker 2: this marriage.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, right, I'm quite sure. Paul.
Speaker 1: It is a delight to have you on the Doctor
Speaker 1: Wendywall Show here on KFI. We are going to have
Speaker 1: your co host Eli Finkel next week, I believe, so
Speaker 1: we'll make sure that we cover love factually as much
Speaker 1: as we can. Thanks so much for being with us.
Speaker 1: My guest is doctor Paul Eastwick, a professor at the
Speaker 1: University of California Davis. You've been listening to the Dr
Speaker 1: Wendywall Show on KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app Newsroom