Dr. David Buss

And I should say that when it comes to criminal stalking, there's a huge sex difference.

About 80% of the stalkers tend to be men, about 20% women.

So there are women stalkers, but they're about a fourth the number compared to men.

So the motivation of the guys tends to be either an attempt to get back together with the woman, either sexually or in a relationship, and or to interfere with her future mating prospects.

And it works in some of the time in two senses.

One is it does interfere with her attempts to remate.

So, in fact, it scares off some guys.

So like you show up and pick up a woman at her apartment for a date and her ex is sitting out there glaring at you.

And I think that the circumstances are often a mate value discrepancy where the guy realizes correctly that he will be unable to replace her with a mate of equivalent mate value or in some cases any mate.

It's like, well, she was with me once.

Maybe I can get her back with me again.

And another thing we found, we did a study of 2,500 victims of stalking.

This is with Josh Duntley, a former student of mine who's now a professor in a criminology department.

Wow.

What we found is there were large differences between the stalker and the victim of the stalker, where the stalker tends to be much lower in mate value than the victim.

And so basically, it's typically the woman who realizes she can do a lot better on the mating market.

And the guy realizes, I am never going to be able to replace her.

with a woman of equivalent mate value.

And so I'm going to use this last ditch desperate measure to try to get her back.

And occasionally it works.