The Evolving Science of Why Women Cheat

Join Malcolm and Simone Collins as they dive deep into the controversial topic of infidelity, exploring the evolutionary psychology behind why people cheat. This thought-provoking discussion covers:

* Various evolutionary theories on why women cheat

* Surprising statistics on infidelity rates across different demographics

* The impact of age, business travel, and previous relationships on cheating behavior

* How modern technology and dating apps influence infidelity

* The difference between male and female cheating patterns

* Cultural and biological factors influencing fidelity

* The concept of "mate-switching" and its evolutionary basis

* How postmenopausal sexuality might differ from premenopausal sexuality

* The role of emotional vs. physical affairs in different genders

Whether you're interested in evolutionary psychology, relationship dynamics, or simply curious about human behavior, this video offers fascinating insights into one of society's most taboo subjects.

[00:00:00] Hello, Simone. I am excited to be here with you today Today we are going to discuss the topic of why women cheat

Simone Collins: Ooh la la, have I done something?

No, I was watching a Chris Williams episode and he was interviewing a psychologist about this and the psychologist, honestly, I, I thought I didn't really agree with his interpretation of this particular question, but it got me thinking about the question from an angle.

That I hadn't thought about it before. Oh,

Simone Collins: interesting.

Which is not, why do specific women cheat? Okay. Why do women cheat at all, period? Like what, why is the, the, in, in human beings across cultures, you see cheating as a behavior pattern. Why do you see it cross culturally in humans? And isn't it

Simone Collins: pretty high?

I feel like Ayla did numbers on this at one point, and I was actually shocked by the proportion of both men and women that cheat.

We're going to go into the numbers. We're going to go into the numbers. We're going to go into how they differ [00:01:00] by ethnicity. We're going to go into how they differ by culture.

We're going to go into, Oh, you're going to get so much. But the point I'm making here is not all monogamous animals cheat. Um, So some animals that are mostly monogamous. Basically almost never cheat. Do swans almost never cheat? Well, I'll give you some that almost never cheat. Black vultures. Will the black

Simone Collins: vultures faithful?

Extra pair of fertilization in black vultures. California mice. DNA analysts suggest wild California mice have extremely low rate of extra pair of fertility. And I didn't know there was such a thing as

Simone Collins: California mice. Eurasian beavers. Okay. Geographically specific. It's just Californian mice.

I'm naming species here and by species, you're going to get different patterns.

Here's an interesting one. This is, this one's not going to be as funny for you because it's not the coyotes. Coyotes have a study of urban coyotes have found 100 percent monogamy over a six year period with no evidence [00:02:00] of any cheating. They're urban,

Simone Collins: so you'd expect them to be more

polyamorous. They're very urban, right?

You'd expect them to be polyamorous by now, right?

Simone Collins: Bizarre.

Macaroni penguins? And

Simone Collins: Atlantic puffins? Do they have, do they have top hats, Howard? What? Are macaroni penguins? Anyway, I need a picture of this. Those crazy looking penguins. The things. Oh, yeah, the ones with the little feather crowns.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Simone Collins: Okay, okay. They aren't, so they do wear hats.

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: Okay,

so historically, the most believed hypothesis, and it's the one that we argued for in our book, for the predominant reason women cheat, is to get better genes. This is the Beta, Bucks, Alpha, Fs strategy. This is the, I have a provider. Who I know is going to raise my Children, [00:03:00] but frankly, I can't secure a high value male who will invest in me, but most high value men, at least in a historic context, this is before child support.

And we often talk about the genetic effects of child support, not super positive. But before child support With a risk, historically, a man, and we'll get into the stats of how often this happened historically in a bit would just sleep with other women. Right. You know, so I, I, I, as a woman might only be able to get some fairly average looking, some fairly average competence man, but in terms of, you know, what I actually want, I want the powerful Lords kids.

I want the, or the person who has shown themselves to be You know, an amazing night and who is buff and who is fit and everything like that. But he's never going to settle down with a woman like me, but he, screw me. Right. You know, well, it didn't,

Simone Collins: aren't there some, there was a study at some point that found that women who were ovulating were more attracted to men who looked more Chad.

Yeah. So that's, that

was a part of this story is that that study has kind of [00:04:00] been debunked and that was a core scene as a core piece of evidence supporting this, but I, I want to go to you here. And say, you were telling me earlier about how, like all of these female romance books, it's always like, they don't talk about the personality, it's just how much power the guy has.

Simone Collins: Yes. Can

you talk about that?

Simone Collins: Yes. Yeah. A really weird thing that I realized after talking with Malcolm about sort of a common characteristic I've noticed of women in erotic material is, you know, it's, it's Really their sentiment, their enthusiasm, their, their, their kind of their personality to a great extent is a selling point.

Whereas in all of these romance novels, and I've gone through so many, I like reading romance novel reviews more than I like reading romance novels, which is really interesting. And also seeing how they're tagged. And. It does not matter if they are good people or bad people. It does not matter if they are kind or mean.

What matters is that they are dominant, especially high class as [00:05:00] perceived by society. So that could be that they're a mob boss. It could be that they're a billionaire. It could be that they are a fairy Prince, but they are high in the hierarchy and they have chosen for whatever reason. The female protagonist who typically is extremely annoying, but they had no, there's like no person.

There's very little exposition into their personality. There's not really a lot of description of it. Maybe they're a little cold, you know, like the only the only elements of their personality seem to have to do. With their dominance and status. So there's nothing beyond that. There's nothing like, Oh, he's like, he is really into knitting or, you know, he, he laughs whenever he sees dogs vomit.

I don't know, but like, I don't, I don't know how to describe people's personalities, obviously.

But it is interesting that women are actually quite superficial in what arouses them. And we talk about this in the pragmatist guide to sexuality, which is people are like, Oh, women are like, Not that sexual and men are really sexual like they look at porn consumption rates in men and the amount of time when you look at the

Simone Collins: romance novel industry, you discover that, oh my gosh, women are [00:06:00] very,

yeah, if you include erotic fan fiction and romance novels, porn consumption am