Behavioural Psychologist: We're Not Having Enough Sex! Fat Makes You Attractive & The Poorer You Are The Friendlier You Are!

Steven Bartlett (0:00)

Do you believe the robots are going to raise our kids? Because it feels like a slippery slope.

William von Hippel (0:03)

Well, it's not too far away from us, and we never evolved to want children. Look, fertility rates are going way down. A lot of countries are going to be literally half their size by the year 2100 because they're shrinking so fast. And the list is really long about how hard it is to raise the child in today's world. So you want to make having kids to be as much of the plus as it possibly can be. And with the perfect robot, Nanny, you would never worry at all.

Steven Bartlett (0:25)

Interesting.

SPEAKER_3 (0:26)

Dr. William von Hippel is the world renowned evolutionary psychologist who has spent decades studying and finding the answers to how instincts that once helped our ancestors survive still drive us today, often in ways we don't even realize.

Steven Bartlett (0:37)

As a species, what are we getting wrong?

William von Hippel (0:39)

Well, young people are having less sex than they were 20 years ago. Marriage is steadily going down. And our lives are so much better, but we're not any happier. And part of the problem is that we're constantly choosing to do our own thing rather than connect. So here's the data. In 1850, one in 100 Americans lived alone. Now it's one in seven. In the 1970s, one in three people spent time with their neighbors. Now that's completely reversed. Now let's dive a little deeper. 50% of humanity now lives in the city. And they're about 25% wealthier than people who live in the country. And yet the data shows people in the country are happier, because cities are all about, I want to do what I want. And the problem is that we can't introduce social connection into our life willy-nilly, or we won't keep it up.

Steven Bartlett (1:15)

So what do we do about that?

William von Hippel (1:16)

Two things. One.

Steven Bartlett (1:18)

And then what does evolution tell us about how to attract the opposite sex?

William von Hippel (1:21)

We want honest signals of quality. And bizarrely, one of the clearest honest signals for men to demonstrate for women is...

Steven Bartlett (1:31)

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Dr. William von Hippel, what have you spent the last four decades of your life doing?

William von Hippel (2:24)

Mostly in the lab, trying to figure out why humans do what they do.

Steven Bartlett (2:28)

What do you mean by why we do what we do?

William von Hippel (2:31)

Well, I'm super interested in not just what we do, but what the underlying cause might be. You know, why does having a nice dinner with your friends make you happy? It just seems inherently obvious. Well, of course it does. But there's got to be a reason for that. There's got to be a reason that it's very different if it's not with your friends or if it's different kinds of foods or, you know, the list goes on. It could be anything. And so what I try to do is I look into our evolutionary history. I say, how did we get here? What were the factors that made us success? And the things that made us successful are likely, as a species, are likely to be the things that make us happy. Because happiness is one of the tools that evolution uses to guide us in the direction that it wants us to go. You know, evolution has no foresight. But evolution shapes us the way we are and the things that make us successful. Those ancestors who enjoy doing those things are going to be the ancestors who have more kids than the ancestors who enjoy doing things that were bad for them.

Steven Bartlett (3:25)

What is evolution?

William von Hippel (3:27)