Episode 154: Steve Stewart-Williams - How Evolution Shaped Male And Female Minds
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How did Steve Stewart‑Williams first fall in love with evolutionary psychology?
The main difference there is that men are more interested on average in casual sex and sexual variety than women are. They are less choosy about sexual partners in the context of low-commitment relationships than women are. So women are considerably more choosy. On average, women place more weight on a long-term partner's resources, ability to acquire resources, and on their social status. Where you find that a a man's status and resources predict his likelihood of getting married. at all, getting married again, a number of affairs even that he has. Whereas for women, sometimes it goes in the opposite direction. There were the sort of high flying women, high status women, maybe more so in the past than today, but they actually had were less likely to get married, less likely to get remarried if they got divorced, less likely to have kids.
You start your new book by talking about falling in love. And I thought that might be a good place to start, specifically with one book I think you said in the nineteen nineties. I'd love to take the listeners in the audience to that moment and have you tell the story of what really seems to have changed your life.
Uh yeah. Well so I was on I was on my honeymoon at the time. So I started the book by saying that yes, I in uh 1998 uh I fell in love and that it was a little bit awkward because I was on my honeymoon at the time when I fell in
love.
Um and so yeah, I on my honeymoon and I just picked up a book just pretty much at random, really, a book called Uh The Moral Animal by Robert Wright. And um it was an introduction to evolutionary psychology. And I was just very, very I was blown away by it, basically. I just thought it was I thought it was just great. And uh what I fell in love with to some extent it was is evolutionary psychology in general that I fell in love with uh on my on my uh on my honeymoon. So not not another woman. Um But uh but more specifically, it was the evolutionary explanation for sex differences in our species and in other species as well. Um I just thought that the explanation made perfect sense. It gave me the same sense that I had when I was a little kid.
And when I first understood how the phases of the moon work, I remember think just everything kind of slotting into place and it made perfect sense. And I suddenly and instantly felt like I understood it. uh the phases of the moon. And it just had that that deep sense of intellectual satisfaction. I got exactly that again with uh the evolutionary explanation for for sex differences. Um except that I in a way, it was a deeper um experience this time because it wasn't just some abstract thing. Uh it was it was part of uh human life, an important part of human life. Something that we all kind of notice, just that men and women on average are not identical to each other. And yeah, just suddenly I I felt like I had a
A much deeper insight into why that was the case.
What was the framework, the framework that that book provided that really had the pieces fall together to you that clicked and create this aha moment for you?
Uh I guess there are two main elements. So the first one is just the the evolu the evolutionary approach to psychology in general really clicked with me. And the basic idea there um is that Uh basically you take the same kind of explanatory framework that you use to explain anatomical features in in other animals and and in ourselves, and you apply that to the human mind and human behavior. Um that's that's a really abstract way of putting it. I know I so I've been asked over the years, I've been asked by a lot of people, um What is evolutionary psychology? And I would I would often I would say something like that, and I would be met by blank stares because it's just kind of too too abstract. Um so I thought of a way, I remember sitting around with one one one group of people and just thinking, I've got to figure out a better way to uh explain this so that that it clicks with people.
And the way I came up with was to think of some specific examples, start with other animals, start with anatomical features.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How did Steve Stewart‑Williams first fall in love with evolutionary psychology?
0:00–9:27
2
Why do men, on average, show more interest in casual sex and sexual variety than women?
9:27–18:55
3
What evolutionary pressures cause women to prioritize a partner’s resources and status?
18:55–28:18
4
How do cross‑cultural and cross‑species studies support sex‑difference findings?
28:18–37:21
5
What are the main differences in aggression between men and women across the lifespan?
37:21–45:43
6
Why does the “gender‑equality paradox” show larger sex differences in more egalitarian societies?
45:43–54:28
7
What are the harms of exaggerating versus minimizing sex differences (alpha, beta, gamma, delta biases)?
54:28–1:03:35
8
What does a healthy, informed society do with the knowledge of evolutionary sex differences?
1:03:35–1:13:35