310: Do women dangle sex? Maintaining friends when income becomes disparate, Are Modern-day office jobs feminized? Does society prefer sons?

In today’s episode, Dr. Lisle & Howk discuss: 

  1. You talk about Tears, Anger, Force, Fraud and Free Trade RA strategies. Why did you exclude sex from this list? And in particular, women dangling sex to get men to do stuff. I guess we can ideally put this in the FREE TRADE category, but sex can be gotten by using any of these other RA strategies too I suppose. Anything more to add here?
  2. Do the doctors have any thoughts on the ability of people in different socioeconomic situations to be friends, or maintaining friendships when socioeconomic situations that were similar become disparate? I am in my 40s and have remained close with a group of four other women from college. We all come from upper middle class backgrounds and are professionals doing pretty well. However, one of my friends has become wealthy. I feel that this causes some resentment and awkwardness between her a couple of other women who become irritated with her and don’t seem to believe that she could possibly have any problems. My friend who is wealthy is pretty humble and neither brags about nor conceals her circumstances, but this happens nonetheless. This has me wondering generally about how important similar socioeconomics are to friendships and why. When problems arises due to this difference, it there a way to beat our genes in order to preserve friendships?
  3. Can Dr Lisle discuss if he has any views on the feminisation of modern desk based/ office jobs. To me the majority of knowledge work in the corporate world feels better suited to gathering oriented nervous systems as opposed to hunter oriented nervous systems, especially when you look at the nature of the recognition culture in corporations. It seems like it is very much suited to align with the types of reward structures women would seek out. How might this impact the feelings of excitement, boredom or fulfilment for people who are not inclined in this way?
  4. I was trying to think about patriarchy/son preference through the lens of evolutionary psychology. Here’s what I came up with: As far as I can tell, this tendency tends to be stronger in traditional societies with a strong emphasis on marriage. Males are willing sleep down under casual mating strategy but want to sleep up with a fancier females if pursuing long-term mating strategy. In a marriage-type situation the male’s offspring will probably be fancier/more desirable than he is. If that male has a son who, in turn, pair bonds with an even more attractive female, his grandkids will be fancier still. But if he has a daughter, she might have to marry “down” to secure resources for her future offspring, in which case the original male’s grandkids won’t be as “desirable”. Could a son preference basically just boil down to the hope that, by “marrying up” generation after generation, the original male’s genes will eventually out compete all his competitors and either take over the world or be all 10s?
  5. What is unique about teen brains that make them so commonly giddy, laughing and joyous when hanging out with their friends?  What’s so funny?  I’m so old I don’t remember!

    Copyright Beat Your Genes Podcast

    Host: Nathan Gershfeld                              

    Interviewee: Doug Lisle, Ph.D. and Jen Howk, Ph.D.

    Podcast website:  http://www.BeatYourGenes.org

    True to Life seminars with Dr. Lisle and Dr. Howk : http://www.TrueToLife.us

     

    Intro & outro song: City of Happy Ones · Ferenc Hegedus