The Cancelled Professor: Husbands Are More Dangerous Than You Think! Men Are Hardwired To Cheat! Science Proves Monogamy Isn't Real! - Gad Saad

Gad Saad (0:00)

Do you know, Steven, who is the most dangerous individual that a woman will ever meet in her life? Her husband. And the overwhelming number one reason is because of Dr. Gad Saad is an evolutionary psychologist renowned for his thought-provoking and challenging insights into the underlining principles that shape decision-making, relationships, and societal trends. If you think that there is some knowledge that should not be pursued because it doesn't support your ideology, that's a grotesquely dangerous principle. So, for example, the idea that monogamy is natural is not true. Men are much more likely to want more sexual partners. That's what's been found in many studies across many cultures. But the fact that I explained why it might make evolutionary sense to cheat doesn't mean I'm justifying it. But now here's the interesting part. Women, too, have evolved a very strong desire for sexual variety. You know, when a woman is most likely to cheat, it's when they...

Steven Bartlett (0:55)

In your book, you talk about a mate desirability score.

Gad Saad (0:57)

Yes. So usually we end up assorting on our mating time, which is taking all of our attributes and then saying, what are your scores? So for example, the number one attribute that women seek is anything that's related to social status. Now, it wouldn't be good for an 87 to go with a 36 That's going to put a huge stressor on our relationship. But here's the good news. There are effective strategies that could improve my score. And let's break them down very simply.

Steven Bartlett (1:23)

First, Dr. Gad, what are the ideas that you've shared that have got you in the most trouble?

Gad Saad (1:29)

I'm going to get paid man for this. Buckle up.

Steven Bartlett (1:37)

Dr. Gad Saad, what have you devoted your life to?

Gad Saad (1:42)

The pursuit of truth and the defense of freedoms.

Steven Bartlett (1:46)

And what does that mean?

Gad Saad (1:49)

So truth is what we hopefully can achieve through the scientific method. Of course, truth is provisional in that whatever we might have thought was true 300 years ago, we have the epistemological humility to say, oh, we were wrong, there's a new truth. But I do wake up every morning thinking that there are wonderful things to discover about human nature, given that I'm an evolutionary behavioral scientist. And so truth in that sense. Liberty and freedom in that there should be nothing that is off limits for people to do research on, to speak out on. So for example, you now hear a growing intrusion of the concept of forbidden knowledge, the idea that there's some research that because it might offend someone, it might marginalize a group, it shouldn't be pursued. I don't believe in that. So there is no research that is off limits as long as the research that you're doing is pursued in an unbiased manner, pursuant to the scientific method. So example, one of the ways that you can end your career very quickly as a social scientist, if you do any research looking at group differences, certainly racial differences, don't you dare do any research on that. Even sex differences is not a good idea. So if you do research on sex differences and it demonstrates that women are superior to men on some task, go ahead, you're a hero, publish it. But if you do research that shows that men are superior to women on a task, you better file that in the drawer and keep your mouth shut forevermore because we don't want to be promulgating sexist patriarchal stereotypes.

And so as someone who is an evolutionary psychologist who understands that humans are made up of two phenotypes called male and female, it is expected that there are many things on which men and women are the same, some things that men do better than women, some things that women do better than men. It's called evolution. It's called biology. Well, one of the things where I first began seeing how idiotic, otherwise very intelligent people can be called professors is in the negation of what I said right now, which is just admitting that there are innate and evolved sex differences is a dreadful thing to say in the social sciences. And so that's how I first had a kind of eureka moment. Houston, we have a problem. How could it be that these educated, sophisticated professors could negate something that on average a three-day-old newborn pigeon should be able to recognize? And so that's what sent me on my journey to eventually write The Parasitic Mind 30-plus years ago.

Steven Bartlett (4:32)

So what is an evolutionary behavior scientist?

Gad Saad (4:35)

Right. Great question. So you can study behavior in many ways. So for example, behaviorism, which was something that was developed in the 1930s, argued that everything that we do is as a result of stimulus and response. So for example, Pavlovian conditioning is a form of behaviorism, right? You associate an unconditioned response, something that you already innately have. The dog salivates when he sees food, and now you condition him to, if they hear the bell, to associate that with the food. And now when I just ring the bell, he will salivate. And so the behaviorists of 70, 80, 100 years ago, argued that all learning was due to behaviorism. So there are many different schools of thought when it comes to, what is the best framework for studying human behavior? An evolutionary behavioral scientist argues that you can't study human behavior if you don't root the framework of how you're going to tackle this and an understanding of how evolution would have shaped the human mind. Now this should sound as blatantly obvious, but again for social scientists, that's Nazi talk, because social scientists believe that evolution applies to every single species on earth, except one called human beings. Or if they believe that evolution applies to humans, it applies to explain why we have opposable thumbs. It applies to explain why we've evolved the respiratory system that we have. But don't you dare explain something above the neck called the human mind using evolution. I'm speaking now as those folks. They argue that we are cultural animals. We transcend our biology. So all that an evolutionary behavior of scientists does is, whatever he or she is studying, they try to look for the ultimate Darwinian signatures. I'm going to give you two examples. This is from a book called Homicide by Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, a husband and wife team who are two of the pioneers of evolutionary psychology. I first read that book as a first-semester doctoral student at Cornell, where it was an advanced social psychology course. About halfway through the semester, the professor, his name was Professor Dennis Regan, assigned this book to us. What they did in the book is apply an evolutionary framework to study patterns of criminality. In a second now, I'll unpack what that means. So there are certain patterns of crime that happen in exactly the same way for the exact same reasons, irrespective of which culture it happens in, and irrespective of time period. So it certainly can't be due to cultural factors. It can't be to era factors because it transcends all those things. So let me give you two examples from the book. That was actually my eureka moment where I decided, I will now take this evolutionary framework and apply it to consumer psychology, to psychology of decision-making, which eventually is the field that I founded.