What up ladies, I'm Lisa Bilyu and this is Women of Impact and does it seem like every headline feels like a deja vu lately? Another powerful man exposed for another crime that no one thought was ever going to be possible. The sad thing is, we're not just talking about a few bad apples, we're actually talking about a whole rotten orchard of charming successful men who hide the dark truths behind their big beautiful smiles. The world loves to tell us that don't worry, he's a good guy.

And yes, that does sometimes... charming successful men who hide the dark truth behind their big beautiful smiles.

Another world loves to tell us that don't worry, he's a good guy. And yes, that does sometimes apply to someone out there. But honestly, we need to be able to know if it's actually true or not. If it's a trait that we should be drawn towards or if it's something that we actually need to be running for. And that's why I'm sitting down. Oh my god, I had so much fun on this episode because I'm sitting down with a best-selling

author, world-renowned evolutionary behavioural scientist. from. And that's why I'm sitting down, oh my god I had so much fun on this episode

because I'm sitting down with a bestselling author, world renowned evolutionary behavioural scientist and a king of no BS treat bombs dot to god sad. Now guys this guy is super freaking interesting he's funny he's no whole bard and we go deep on the hidden psychology that makes high status men so magnetic and yes I think so damn risky.

We also talk about why your instincts might be screaming run, but you're still hoping that you can actually change them. And finally we talk about the sneaky ways manipulation shows up from smooth talkers to the soft-foin fake nice traps so you can spot the real red flags. Now guys, I'm obsessed with learning about evolution. I don't know if you are, I don't know if you love it or you hate it. I treat evolution like an instruction manual if you will. So back in the day, this is why people used to behave like this. Great, now at least if I know I can take the power and I can adjust or enhance behaviors that are going to benefit me. I think learning about evolution helps me understand myself and helps me understand and see the fairest people when they're trying to deceive you. Now, if you're like me and you lean in to learning everything Dr. Gadsad has to say, by the end of this episode you'll be able to actually spot in manipulation in any situation because you'll know how fundamentally these dangerous people think. So let's get right into it right now right here on Women of Impact. I've heard you say that the most dangerous person a woman's ever going to be with on me in her life is her husband. Indeed. That's a really hard pill to swallow. Can you explain why that is true? Thank you for that question because it actually, in answering it, that's how I first was exposed to evolutionary psychology. So let me give you my evolutionary genesis story. So first semester as a doctoral student, I did my PhD at Cornell. And professor at the time His name is Dennis Regan about halfway through the course. He assigns a book called homicide written by husband and wife team pioneers of evolutionary psychology In the book what they Argue is that they are certain recurring patterns of criminality that occur in exactly the same way, whether it's 500 years ago or 500 years from now, whether it's the Yanomomo tribe in the Amazon or the Hutsal tribe in Central Africa or in downtown LA. And the reason for that is because there are certain evolutionary triggers that cause these universal patterns of criminality. And so I'll discuss two criminal behaviors, one of which speaks to what you started off with your question. First I'll do child abuse. When I walk into first day of lectures to my students, I say, what is the number one predictor of their being child abuse in a home? And so then I'll start listing all the different possible answers. If the parent had been abused, they might repeat that pattern. If there is alcoholism in the home, there might be greater abuse. If the parent had a criminal background. If the parent had a criminal background. If they live on the wrong side of tracks, maybe. So all reasonable ones. And then once I've generated 20 answers, I go, well, none of you have come up with the correct answer, which is a hundredfold more predictive of child abuse than anything you've mentioned here. So statistically speaking, it's a astoundingly powerful effect. And the answer is, if there is a step parent in the house, it's a 100-fold greater likelihood of child abuse. Now the evolutionary answer... So Cinderella. It's a Cinderella effect. And it's... Sure. So a subsequent book literally called The Cinderella Effect. And Cinderella is a universally appreciated fable because it speaks to this universal reality, this evolutionary based reality, which is that the evil stepmother was differentially evil. She was evil to the stepdaughter, but very sweet to the two biological daughters. And so what would be an evolutionary explanation for that? Let's look at another animal species. I always like to use the lion one. So within the feline world, only lions are a social species. All the other ones are solitary animals. They only get together for mating and then they're off. But lions run in prides. So usually there are a couple of resident dominant males who will kick out all of the young bucks because they want to only have sexual access to the line as is. And then all of these really frustrated young males are roaming around the savanna trying to get access to some females. Eventually, father time catches up to you and the new males that come in to take over your pride will sort of give you two choices. We either fight to the death and you're likely to lose because you're slowing down or you're banished. Now the first thing that the new dominant incoming males do is they kill off all the cubs. Why? Because they couldn't have been sired by me. I do invest very heavily in my cubs because we are a social species. I don't want to spend my time investing in another male's cubs. Therefore the best way to solve that problem is to kill them off. Now here's the paradoxical, if not ironic, if not cruel part. Once you kill off the cubs, the females go into estrus. They become sex, so I joke with my students. In the human context, you have to play very white music to get the ladies in their mood. In lion societies, you kill off her babies for her to be sexually receptor. The bigger lesson here is that nature doesn't care about being kind. It wants to solve evolutionarily relevant problems. And so at times, it could seem really nasty and brutish, but that's how evolution solves it. So coming back to the human context, when you have either a stepmother or a stepfather in the home, the type of abuse will be different. So for example, sexual abuse is much more likely to happen if it's a stepfather, but other forms of abuse are likely to happen if there's a stepmother. For example, differential neglect, that will be one of the ways by which the stepmother will be nasty and brutish to the stepchild. So that's one. But to your question, the second thing that I remember from the book that had sort of stopped me in my track, the number one most dangerous person in a woman's life in every culture that's ever been studied is her long-term partner, her husband. And the number one reason why he goes into a homo-sidal rage is the exact same reason in every culture that's ever been studied, and that is either realized or suspected in fidelity. So sometimes it might not even be the case jealousy. So then the next question then becomes, so why have men evolved the behavioral, emotional and cognitive patterns to be so unforgiving of infidelity? Now usually when I ask this in class, all because men are jerks, because men are insecure, now those might all be true, but they're not the ultimate Darwinian why, what's called the ultimate explanation. The ultimate explanation is that we are a biparental species, meaning that across mammalian species, human dads are actually super dads. We may not invest as much as women, but we are heavily invested. So your ancestors in mind, Lisa, it's certainly the male ones, would not have been the types of males who say, please sexy gardener, Greek gardener, have added with my wife, and don't worry about it, I'll be happy to raise spirals on your behalf, right? Therefore, I evolved the behavioral system, the cognitive system, the emotional system, to try to thwart the biggest threat that I face, which is paternity uncertainty. Why? And therefore, you cheat on me. I'm coming after you. Now, a lot of times, sorry to say, imbisels, will hit back and say, this is why I hate evolution and psychology, because professors said you are justifying these things. And that's like saying that an oncologist who offers an explanation, in many cases, an evolutionary explanation for cancer, he is justifying cancer, he is pro cancer. You're not justifying anything. You're saying, if you wish to truly understand a behavior, you need to understand its ultimate causation. I'm not four child abuse. I'm not four domestic violence. But to the extent that it regrettably happens, here is the reason why it does. Yeah. Thank you for saying that I am definitely the person who wants to understand why. My entire life changed. I went from a stay-at-home wife that didn't feel like I had the voice to tell my husband I was unhappy. To then, speaking up, changing my life and being where I am now.

And it all came from personal ownership. The personal ownership started when I started, like, where do I do that? Like, I see this behavior in me. It doesn't help me. Why? Once I go to evolution, I don't judge myself for it. I go, oh, now I understand,

how am I going to use this information to then be able

to go towards my goals and live my life.

So just so that you know,

I don't feel like this is an excuse.

It's an explanation.

And I desperately want my communities to hear what?

So that they can then go, okay, now I understand it.

Jealousy is a very heightened thing that can become extremely dangerous. Therefore, I need to find someone who isn't triggered by jealousy. Like, I would just then start to use that information to be able to then guide my life. All right, guys, we're gonna take a quick break. Don't go anywhere. All right, guys, we're back. Let's get right into it.

Okay, so thinking about jealousy on a spectrum, because there are some people like in full transfer, I'm not jealous at all. If my husband cheats on me, then he doesn't deserve me. Like I have built that type of confidence. So when you think of a spectrum, there are people like me that aren't jealous at all, and there are people that are freaking hyper jealous. to the point where let's say a waitress walks past you

and I'm like, why did you look at her?

Right, like that type of jealousy.

So what type of traits maybe is maybe the right word? That you can look out for where a man is either not jealous at all or so hyper jealous that they can become one of these stats where they end up sadly healing their wives. So there is the feature that you're talking about which is, can we pick up the particular cues and traits in a man? But the other part of that tangle is does a person induce jealousy in me? Oh, right. So for example, I don't think I'm a particularly jealous person, but luckily I picked a woman who has never triggered that to me. So for example, some women really, if I may say, get off on testing the investment in their partner by trying to invoke jealousy in them. I don't know if it's deliberate and I'd love to hear it. But sometimes it's because if you feel insecure and you don't feel like your partner loves you, if you're able to trick a jealousy in that instant, that shows that he's invested in me. Yes, like, okay, this feeling that I had that he wasn't into me, he just showed that he cares. So to answer your question, I think men will become progressively more controlling in a relationship if they are dispositionally jealous. So at first I didn't mind that you went out with your girlfriends, but now I get really upset if you go out with them. Now I try to isolate you from the rest of your family. So I literally take ownership over you, right? It really is a very predictable patterns of behavior that you see in pathologically jealous men. And so to our earlier point, if you see those red flags, maybe run the other way. Because those traits, if they're dispossitional, right? One of the things that we talk about in psychology is whether a phenomenon is a situational one or a dispositional one. Situational means it's the situation at hand. You sat there being very flirty with the sky that in this one situation, and he happened to be gorgeous and so on, that I felt jealous. But dispositionally, my disposition is, I'm not a jealous person. So it's very important when we're describing causality to things in our lives to establish whether they're due to the situation or to the disposition, right? And by the way, there's literally a psychological bias called the fundamental attribution error, which speaks to that whereby you attribute, for example, situational causation to something when it should have been this positional. So this guy that I'm starting to date is exhibiting a lot of jealousy traits because I like him and I don't want this to serve as a red flag, I will attribute it to a situational factor. Oh, it's probably because I was dressed very sexually and I was dancing, whereas the reality is I should have actually attributed to his disposition and it doesn't matter what I wear and how I act. This guy is always going to be pathologically controlling. And when you only see the disposition over time, If your eyes are open, you should be able to pick up those cues. But as we said earlier, oftentimes we put on those rose colored prism glasses because we don't want to see those flags. So yeah, that's so true. And to your point of how you may trigger jealousy in someone deliberately to feel better about yourself, I also find that when one partner is jealous, the other person may escalate their jealousy to match. And that's actually what happened with me. I wasn't a jealous person. My ex-boyfriend was always jealous of me. And so I became jealous almost because he was. Well, interesting. Well, this is not quite what you just said, but there is something in actually mating literature that talks about assortative mating. There are two ways that we can pick our partners, opposites attract, or birds of a feather flock together. And the literature, and I think this is going to appeal to your community, the literature is overwhelmingly and unequivocally clear, that for increasing the likelihood of the long- term success of your union, birds of a feather flock together is much more the relevant predictor. Now for short term mating, having opposites attract maximum can work, right? I might be sexually restrained, you might be sexually outgoing, that complementarity actually brings the best out of both of us. But for long-term stability, you want someone who shares your values. And so you really want birds of a feather to flock together. There is actually one physical trait that also applies to a sort of mating. And that's that men should be always taller than women. So there was a study that was done with 720 actual couples, guess how many of the 720 violated that rule? It's like, probably like what one? Exactly, that's exactly right. I was like, this is gonna be really freaking loud. That's why whenever we're walking because my children have me as their dad, we could be walking somewhere.

And if that rule is violated, they say, oh, look, that is amazing. They like nudging. That's a violation of the evolutionary principle. Yeah. I don't know if you had the story. So back to the future, when it was made, I don't know if you know, but before they shot it with Michael J. Fox, they actually filmed half the film with a different actor. And halfway through they realized the act was right.

So the direct to just went to the studio and was like, we have to replace and we have to replace and we have to do all like the whole thing again. Then they're like, well, do we have to replace the girlfriend as well? And because Michael J. Fox was shorter, the girlfriend that was already cast was actually taller than Michael J. Fox. So they're like, I don't know, do we do we replace it or not? So the story goes that they went around the whole studio of all the crew that was working there and they said to all the women, would you rather see Michael J. Fox with someone shorter or taller, what's more likely and unanimously it was shorter? There you go. So they actually end up replacing the actress as well. And so by the great story, I don't know that. So a made choice is it what I call a compensatory process. And let me explain what I mean by that. If it were the case that women said, I will never date a guy who's under six feet. That would be non-compensatory. Why? Because that means if I'm shorter than six feet, I can never compensate for not meeting that requirement. Luckily, for both sexes, made choice is compensatory, meaning that we do choose people as a result of a bundle of attributes. And I always joke, if it were that it's only six foot guys, then I would have had a very frustrated life of celibacy. But because I could compensate for not being six foot by having other traits that women desire, then it all works out. And so for all of the men and women out there, this should be good news. That's so true. Growing up in, I was born in 179, So growing up in the 80s and 90s, it was big boobs and I didn't have the boobs and I was like well I guess I've got to make up for it somewhere else because I've had the boobs. There you go. So for the same height thing. I'd like to go back to something you were saying about like the lions. So when I think about alphas, like alpha lions, I think of them as being rather protective of their their their their days though, when I think about the alphas, like unfortunately Epstein and people that were named, it feels like it's the opposite. What is it about power and the psychology of men that makes them not just successful but utterly dangerous? So one of the best ways for men to get access to tons of women is to become very high status, right? If you ask women in disparate cultures, what is the number one trait that you most desire in a man? It will be some cue related to social status. Now each culture might measure social status differently, but there is no culture that's ever been uncovered where women say, give me an apathetic, whiny loser who is pear-shaped with a feminine voice, that really drives me into sexual frenzy. So all women desire someone who is either high status or has the capacity to become high status. So many of those men that you're talking about by virtue of them becoming high status men now have access to as many women as they can hope to have. And it becomes very easy to fall into the allure of that trap. And regrettably, I think a lot of women, I'm speculating here, they might actually pick up those micro cues of deception, but they're willing to shut them off because the promise of landing this high status gorgeous guy is simply too alluring. And therefore they don't listen to their gut. And in retrospect, later on they say, you know, there were 17 red flags, but I was willing to shut them off because he just had such a smooth way about them. I believe you call it the ostrich parasolio thing. Well, I use it in a slightly different time. We do, but I kind of believe it's here. So ostrich parasitic syndrome, the ostrich doesn't literally bury its head in the sand, but it's become a metaphor for someone who goes, la la la, I don't want to hear it, right? And so what oftentimes will happen in those male female dynamics is that the one who is being deceived really in the back of their minds are well aware that there is manipulative intent. But I shut off that. I bury my head in the sand because, you know, what if he is really a great guy? By the way, I have a, there's someone that I know who is very close to your friend of mine. At one point prior to getting married, he's now divorced from this woman. He uncovered something about her that was so astoundingly duplicitous that it should have been the biggest red flag. The red flag is bigger than this place that we're sitting in right now. And yet he decided to shut off that signal.

Later on him and I were chatting and I said, how come you didn't hear it? He goes, well, you know, I was just trying to come in and start my life well. And so he shut off that signal. So it's not only women who are manipulated by, you know, the blessedest men it can go either way. Yeah, for sure. Thank you for explaining that analogy. I love it so much. Okay, so now let's just take Epstein

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