Paul Eastwick

But we can also imbue mating with all of these important social connections to a way out of poverty.

I think there can be cases where people still engage in the same kind of motivated reasoning processes.

If she's thinking this is a way to a better life, she's probably motivated to think this guy is going to be pretty good, at least at first.

That would just be my guess, though.

I'm now like way beyond the data here.

But at least that's how I like to think about it.

There's always going to be a tendency to hope for the best, try to perceive things in ways that make interaction smooth and make things go well, at least at first.

Whether or not I want to recommend marriages like that for folks, I genuinely wouldn't want to do that.

Absolutely.

In fact, this one has shocked me a little bit, too, as we've really dug into the research on this.

So look, yes, attractive people are more appealing at first.

People agree at first about who's attractive and who's not.

But what's so interesting is that, again, this is just another one of these cultural ideas that has way too much currency is that, all right, you meet somebody and, you know, you impress them and bang, you're dating like 20 minute coffee date.

I know how I'm going to feel about you.

It's not usually how it works.

What the common thing is that people kind of grow on each other over time.

Right.

The initial like lightning bolt thing, it happens naturally.

But if you take a sample of relationships and then you rewind time and you say like, okay, how did you feel at moment one?

I don't know, like 20%.