Dr Paul Eastwick

Like, that's the nature of motivated reasoning, right?

So a lot of that has to do with how we defend against alternatives as well.

So people seem to be able to defend against those kinds of threats, the things you're describing, regardless of the level of mate value mismatch.

I get it.

Like if somebody's an eight and they're paired with a five, it seems like they've probably got more people coming up to them, more people thinking that they might be eager to trade up.

But I've never seen any data to suggest that that poses a unique problem, right?

Everybody's got to deal with threats.

Everybody's got to deal with temptations.

Right.

Well, no, but just just the idea that that a mismatch might have more of those like interloper threats.

I have not seen that data.

But what we do see time and time again is that if people have those biases activated, if they think their partner is more wonderful than everybody else, regardless of what everybody else thinks, those are the relationships that are more likely to last.

I think there is some limited amount of that that's a good idea, right?

There's like some really basic stuff, right?

I mean, working out's a really good idea.

Eating healthy is a really good idea, not just because it's gonna make you desirable, but because it's gonna make you happier about yourself, your life in general.

So these things are a good idea.

I just think we get locked into those solutions, locked into these self-improvement solutions, as opposed to,

the social network related solutions that maybe what would be good for me is like, okay, yes, I should go to the gym more.

Yes, it would help if I stopped eating dominoes at 11 p.m.