This article was taken from the May 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.
Scientists engaged with the media quickly learn that they can't control how their research is used. A few years ago I was astonished to find that many members of the "seduction community" had read my book The Mating Mind, about how sexual choices shaped our evolution. In their acronym-heavy quest for sexual self-transformation by becoming "pick-up artists" (PUAs), these men had become avid consumers of my field, evolutionary psychology (EP).
Neil Strauss's 2005 book The Game listed a few ways in which EP was influencing PUAs, by framing male/female dynamics in a Darwinian context. David DeAngelo, a dating specialist, told me that: "Richard Dawkins'
The Selfish Gene and Matt Ridley's The Red Queen were the 'gateway drugs' to EP for me. It became clear that animals go through mating rituals, and that humans have one as well. This led to unlocking some of the reasons why men who were successful at attracting women were able to do it with such counterintuitive approaches."
These counterintuitive tactics include not worrying so much about one's status, wealth or looks, but focusing on one's "inner game" (self-confidence, playfulness, risk taking) and "outer game" (physical fitness, "peacocking" with eye-catching clothes). The seduction community hybridised a Darwinian fatalism about motives (men are hard-wired to seek casual sex, women are hard-wired to be choosy) with a self-help optimism about improving one's sexual charisma. Baba Brinkman, a rapper and playwright, explained: "PUAs are only interesting if they begin as conspicuously low mate value and turn their status around using the tactics. The subtext seems to be about Machiavellian intelligence as a tool for subverting the usual pecking order."
The seduction community has become a vanguard of applied Darwinism. PUAs refine tactics modelled on the latest EP findings and trade "field reports" on which ones succeed or fail, through online "seduction lairs". EP enthusiasm has spread beyond PUAs into mainstream male culture. Tucker Max, author of four bestsellers about his sexual adventures, told me: "EP greatly influenced me... I read as much as I could of Richard Dawkins, David Buss and Leda Cosmides. It gave me a way to see the world that made sense, and fit all the facts I saw."
Women, meanwhile, are appropriating EP for their own goals. Cosmopolitan and Psychology Today bloggers report EP findings and their implications for understanding men. Women are also becoming more savvy about PUA tactics and more sceptical about their scientific basis. Amanda Denes, assistant professor at the University of Connecticut's communication faculty, explained: "PUAs seem to draw on an evolutionary framework as a way of validating their problematic approaches to seducing women. They tend to depict all women as being essentially the same, and women's sexuality as a passive response to men's actions." Some EP confirms sexual stereotypes and goes viral among PUAs, but other EP overturns stereotypes and is championed by feminists.
The results are morally tricky.
Today's dating scene has become an experiment in competing strategies. Science-minded singles have new levels of self-consciousness -- not just as people, but as fitness displayers, mate choosers, gene replicators and social primates.
People are locked in an arms race of male sexual-escalation tactics versus female commitment-escalation tactics.
Neither sex can afford for their "game" -- their EP-based seduction insights and skills -- to stagnate. As David DeAngelo told me: "PUAs run the risk of becoming dependent on the techniques and shortcuts that, on average, tend to increase dating success. Many of them are like a person who wants to learn a new language, so they learn 100 words then stop and use only those 100 words forever." To master this language of love, men and women are supercharging their sexual instincts with the conscious lessons of EP. With such high stakes, we EP researchers had better get the science right.
Geoffrey Miller is an evolutionary psychologist at NYU Stern Business School and University of New Mexico
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
