Psychology of Seduction

by Jesse James

  Inside the skull of a modern city-dweller is the brain of an ape which hasn’t changed much since we dropped from the trees. The same basic instincts – sex, competition for social status, male posturing, male and female peacocking – show up in all of our ‘high technology’ advancements in the form of television and the internet. Think: Sex in the City, American Idol, Facebook, Myspace.

  Men and women evolved differently. During the Pleistocene era, we lived in tribes of fifty to a hundred people. Warriors would fan out across the plains in small groups hunting big game; Woolly Mammoth, Rhinocerous, whatever. Competition was fierce. The best hunters – the most dominant, courageous, aggressive, cocky, alpha males – stabbed and killed their prey with reckless abandon, returning home with an abundance of meat (sometimes). No wonder women evolved a preference for dominant alpha males; they brought home the bacon, literally.

  Men and women played different roles during our ancestral environment. These roles were dictated not by the size of the brain, but the size of the muscles.

  The great gender equalizer in the history of mankind is gunpowder. Does that surprise you? The capacity to project harm at a distance with minimal physical effort makes women as dangerous as men. A woman with a gun can hunt as successfully as a man. But it wasn’t always so.

  Had gunpowder been discovered, say, one hundred thousand years ago, male and female natures might have evolved more closely. If women could have hunted in the ancestral environment, the disparity between the genders would have been minimized.

  But hunting required big muscles and the strong physique of a powerful male. Swords and spears were large, heavy physical objects which had to be rammed into the body of a wild, charging, enraged beast – usually a beast with sharp horns and teeth that wanted to eat you as badly as you wanted to eat it.

  So while men were out hunting Woolly Mammoth, women remained in the relative safety of the village, gathering berries and wild edibles while caring for the children. The seeds of gender differences sprouted during the Pleistocene era when the different muscoskeletal builds of men and women predisposed one gender towards hunting and the other gender towards gathering. Hunting easily spilled over into warfare, while berry-picking engendered social cooperation at home. The gender differences between men and women crystallized.

  Understanding how female human nature evolved is critical to interpreting the behavior of the modern woman. In many ways, gathering berries is more difficult and more important than felling big game. To kill a buffalo, you just need to be strong enough to hurl a spear, and fast enough to get away if you miss. Berry-picking requires intense observation, careful scrutiny, and precision. Picking the wrong berry is a swift ticket to genetic oblivion; you may accidentally poison your husband and your children. Small variations in color, stems and leaf shapes differentiate edible berries from poisonous look-alikes. And you wonder why women notice the little things!

  The life or death of the Pleistocene female – and her whole family – depended on her attention to detail. Women became excruciatingly observant. Has a woman ever amazed you at the movie theater by pointing out a plethora of small details you never noticed in the film? Survival once depended on female observation and attention to detail.

  Little wonder that women pay such attention to your clothes, hygiene, posture, fitness level and personal adornments. Evolution has programmed them to observe the ‘little things’ which are cues to the genetic fitness, status or overall desirability of a male.

  While warriors were off hunting, women entertained themselves in camp by telling stories, gossiping, and playing out little social dramas (sound familiar?). Socializing enabled women to ascend the tribal hierarchy just as surely as men rose by showing prowess in a hunt or on the battlefield. Women maneuvered their way to the top using subtlety, innuendo, and secret alliances to undercut their rivals, plotting behind the scenes to obtain the best man in the tribe. Little surprise that modern women prefer drama, subtlety, social networking, and innuendo over ultimate fighting championship and Nascar.

  Women were competing (unconsciously, of course) for the best genes in the village; the chance to mate with the most successful warriors, the most dominant alpha males. Beautiful women rarely get along with each other; they experience too much hardwired competition for men.

  The different roles that men and women played in the tribe explain our variation of interest. Men like sports, ultimate fighting championship, race cars, newspapers, Wired Magazine, gadgets, superhero movies. Women like Cosmopolitan magazine, People Magazine, dramas, Bethanny, soap operas, chick flicks, romance novels.

  Women are smart enough to compete with the best male auto mechanics in the world. But have you ever met a female auto-mechanic? Females simply did not evolve a preference for wallowing in dirt while fixing things. Changing the oil in a car may not be a ‘natural’ human activity, but is it really so different from gutting a buffalo?

  The difference in physical strength between men and women meant that females were relegated to virtual slavery for most of our evolutionary past. Patriarchal societies dominate human history. In a world where ‘might makes right,’ women tasted little freedom. Our monument to misogyny, Friedrich Nietzsche, was only partly jesting when he advised ‘when you go to a woman, always bring a whip.’

  For tens of thousands of years, women won little respect, authority, or independence. Females did not even have the right to vote in the United States until the early twentieth century. Men have the muscles and weapons. Men enjoy the fruits of power.

  Throughout history and still today, men treat women as a sexual resource to be exploited and protected. In a famous article titled ‘The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Chattel,’ evolutionary psychologists Margo Wilson and Martin Daly observe that ‘men lay claim to particular women as songbirds lay claim to territories, as lions lay claim to a kill, or as people of both sexes lay claim to valuable . … Proprietariness has the further implication, possibly peculiar to the human case, of a sense of right or entitlement.’43 In other words, a husband feels like he owns his wife’s vagina.

  What Is It Like To Be a Woman?

  Thomas Nagel, in his much-cited essay ‘What is it like to be a bat?’, explains that we can spend a lifetime studying bats without knowing what it is really like to be one. Scientists understand how bats see the world through echolocation; they know how bats communicate; they understand the principles of aviation driving bat flight. But no matter how much information a bat expert knows about the animal, he can never, ever, understand what it is like to actually be a bat.44

  Although women are much closer to the male experience than bats, men can never know precisely what it is like to be a woman. Sex hormones affect the male and female mind in very different ways beginning at puberty. No matter how much one studies evolutionary psychology, the experience of being female will forever remain elusive to men, like smoke from a distant ship just over the horizon.

  But experience differs from understanding. Although we can never subjectively experience ‘femaleness’ without being female, we can certainly learn a tremendous amount about how women think and feel. Using evolutionary psychology and the principles of sexual selection, we can reverse-engineer the female mind. Effective seduction begins with understanding the mind of a woman.

  In advertising, the big, professional ad agencies incessantly struggle against their clients’ myopia. Nike makes shoes. But their engineers, on a bad day, might produce a new model of runners which are extremely durable and rugged. Problem is, they aren’t lightweight enough for running. The engineers made the classic mistake of thinking too much about shoes from the engineering perspective rather than the customers’ perspective. In the Wizard of Ads, marketing guru Roy Williams advises his readers to ‘see your customers real.’ In other words, understand the mind of your customer, and you will produce a better product, with improved marketing directed at the customer’s specific hopes, desires, or fears. Do not confuse your customer’s needs, wants and d
esires with your own.

  Likewise, I want you to ‘see women real.’ The female psyche differs completely from the male psyche. See that girl at the bus stop? She is not like you. She does not think like you. She does not share your same wants, desires, and fears. As far as you’re concerned, she might as well be from another planet. One of the most catastrophic mistakes men make in seduction is assuming that women are similar to men. They are not.

  Men are from Mars and women are from venus outer space. The average man is about as complex as an amoeba; he wants sex right now, pretty please with a cherry on top. Yet the average woman remains shrouded in mystery. Her mind is an enigma, impenetrable and cavernous. The female psyche is like a Russian matrioshka doll; you strip away layer after layer, yet the core proves elusive.

  Unconvinced? Browse the craigslist ‘women for men’ and ‘men for women’ listings, compare male and female profiles on PlentyofFish.com, or watch a ‘rom-com’ with Jennifer Aniston followed by a shoot-‘em-up with Sylvester Stallone. Incidentally, you should do all of these things anyway as part of your daily training routine. You will gain invaluable insight into female thought processes by studying dating site profiles, craigslist personals and viewing romantic comedies. Interpret such data through the filter of evolutionary psychology you learn in the following pages.

  Lessons Learned on an Israeli Kibbutz

  Coming from a Jewish family, I spent many years in Tel Aviv teaching and living. One of my friends in the city – let’s call him Sasha – grew up on an Israeli Kibbutz. A kibbutz was a highly egalitarian commune, isolated from the rest of society, which attempted to androgenize children. The premise of the kibbutz system was that males and females possessed the same human nature; there were no differences between the sexes. A form of postmodern social constructionism, the kibbutz ended in dismal failure, as the inherent nature of boys and girls emerged despite the social constructs designed to keep them in check.

  In fact, the kibbutz system totally failed to make a dent in human nature, giving die-hard genetic determinists plenty of ammo in the age-old ‘nature vs. nurture’ debate. Sasha described how the administrators of his kibbutz encouraged (pressured) the teenagers of the commune to pair-bond within the kibbutz. They were strongly discouraged from dating ‘outsiders.’ Sasha himself snuck out every other night to rendezvous with a girl in a nearby village. Indeed, pair-bonding within the kibbutz simply did not occur, despite the encouragement of the leaders. Having grown up together, the adolescent males and females in the commune did not find each other attractive. This is actually a well-known phenomenon called the ‘Westermarck Effect,’ in which males and females who grow up together do not find each other sexually desirable. Scientists theorize the Westermarck Effect provides a biological check against inbreeding, explaining why brothers and sisters almost never mate. The kibbutz system could not overcome this ingrained feature of human nature. Take that, Nurture!

  My friend Sasha described how boys and girls in the kibbutz segregated themselves into gender groups, played different games and acted differently, with boys pursuing competitive, aggressive games while women preferred games which were less violent and more socially cooperative. Sasha told me how gender differences evolved despite the best efforts of kibbutz leaders to enforce gender egalitarianism on the commune. It just didn’t work.

  Imposing human thoughts and emotions on a non-human animal (like a dog) or an inanimate object (like a rock) is called anthropomorphism. I have not yet encountered a flashy scientific term for imposing male thoughts and feelings on the female mind, but the principle is the same. One of the most egregious mistakes men make in seduction is projecting their own feelings and thoughts onto women.

  Men see the big picture but ignore the details, while women pay attention to details while often ignoring the big picture. When I attend a movie with my girlfriend, she has trouble following the plot, but pays special attention to the social interactions of the characters, picking up the details that I constantly miss. She always notices wedding rings on the men. Women enjoy shows like ‘Bethanny,’ ‘Ellen’ and ‘Oprah’ because they focus on social dynamics. Men prefer ‘24’ and ‘Homeland,’ which offer intricate plots but focus less on social interaction. Women like romantic comedies and men watch action movies. Of course.

  Men and women have different goals and ambitions. In one study, psychologists asked males and females from six different cultures about their goals. Men replied that they wanted to be ‘practical, shrewd, assertive, dominating, competitive, critical and self-controlled.’ Above all, they sought power and independence. Women from the same cultures aspired to be ‘loving, affectionate, impulsive, sympathetic and generous.’ More than anything, they wanted to serve society, hardly mentioning power and independence.45

  Men and women conversate differently. Males enjoy public conversation but they clam up at home. Women tend towards private conversation, becoming quiet in big groups. Male conversation tends to be ‘domineering, competitive, status-obsessed, attention-seeking, factual and designed to reveal knowledge and skill’ while female conversation is ‘cooperative, rapport-establishing, reassuring, empathetic, egalitarian and meandering.’46 I love that word ‘meandering’ because it’s so apropros. Men talk to raise their status, while women talk to build social cohesion.

  If you find yourself impossibly bored with your dinner companion’s ‘meandering’ tale of romance between a friend of a friend, try your best to appear interested. She can’t help it; she’s programmed that way.

  Cockerels Don’t Need Viagra

  President Calvin Coolidge, the 30th President of the United States, seems an unlikely starting point for understanding the female mind. But Mr. Coolidge can tell us something about men and women.

  One day President Coolidge and his wife, Grace, were touring a little farm. Learning that a cockerel could have sex dozens of times a day, Mrs. Coolidge said: ‘Oh my! Please tell that to the president.’ On being told, Mr. Coolidge asked whether it was with the same hen every time. ‘Oh, no, Mr. President. A different one each time.’ The President advised: ‘Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge.’

  The fundamental difference between male and female reproductive strategies is that men seek quantity of mates while women seek quality of mates. It’s easy to understand why. Women are born with all the eggs they will ever produce in a lifetime, roughly one or two million immature eggs, called follicles.

  Throughout the woman’s life, most follicles will die through a process known as atresia, which begins at birth and continues throughout the course of the female’s reproductive life. Only about 400,000 follicles remain at puberty. With each menstrual cycle, the woman will lose a thousand follicles and only one lucky winner will actually mature into an ovum (egg), which is released into the fallopian tube, starting ovulation. Out of the initial one or two million follicles she is born with, therefore, only about 400 will ever mature. Due to the nine-month gestational period, followed by at least one year of nursing, a woman can reasonably hope to produce at most twenty or thirty children in her lifetime.

  Although the record for most children born to a single mother is apparently sixty-eight, such fecundity is incredibly rare. Even among civilizations where number of offspring translates to economic benefits for the female, seldom do women produce more than ten children. The reason is obvious; making babies entails real costs to the female, such as time, energy, and nutrients. And pregnancy, of course, hardly has a positive effect on the female figure. What woman looks better in a bathing suit after giving birth than before conceiving?

  No wonder the hymen developed to protect female chastity and ensure choosiness; sex was not something to be indulged in lightly.

  Contrast the above scenario with the male reproductive system. Men produce an unlimited number of sperm for almost their entire lives. Sperm are cheap, too; it costs almost nothing to produce the little buggers.

  Matt Ridley notes that ‘For a man casual sex with a stranger carried only a small risk �
� infection, discovery by the wife – and a potentially enormous reward: a cheap addition of an extra child to his genetic legacy. Men who seized such opportunities certainly left behind more descendants than men who did not. Therefore, since we are by definition descended from prolific ancestors rather than barren ones, it is a fair bet that modern men possess a streak of sexual opportunism.’47 A fair bet, indeed.

  Women invest the most in creating and raising the young; the woman’s unequal contribution begins immediately with the investment of a rare and valuable mature egg compared to the man’s cheap and bountiful sperm. The investment continues through nine months of pregnancy, which creates physical hardships such as nausea and gestational diabetes. The woman assumes all the dangers of childbirth, which is even riskier than bungee jumping or skydiving. As of 2003, childbirth claimed the lives of 12 mothers for every 100,000 children born.48 In the days before modern medicine, nearly 1 in 100 women died during or shortly after labor, making childbirth one of the most dangerous activities on the planet. Of course, the woman’s job does not end with the severing of the umbilical cord. The new mother faces more than a decade of intense work and responsibility to raise a child capable of surviving – even thriving – in the highly competitive human arena. And the man? After five minutes of fun, his job is done.