The myth-busts, hot takes, explainers, and tools worth keeping.
⚡Myth Buster· 4
⚡Myth Buster14:30
Why women preferred the 'before' body in the viral transformation
When a man's lean transformation went viral, men preferred the ripped 'after' and women preferred the softer 'before'. Rather than women lying, Murphy argues they read the very lean look as less healthy and less formidable, and inferred a personality signal: a body optimised for beautification cues mating-effort over paternal investment. The 'dad bod' research bears this out, less-lean men were ascribed more fatherly qualities.
Men preferred the lean after; women preferred the fuller before
Women don't lie about preferences, they do it openly for height and muscle
Extreme leanness signals effortful self-beautification and mating-effort
Dad-bod studies linked less-lean physiques to positive fatherly traits
Paternal investment and mating effort trade off against each other
“women were seeing that and saying, oh, this guy just like lost a lot of body fat, and I don't like men who are too…”
Women's preferred male body fat is higher than gym bros assume
Most men guess women prefer 9-10% body fat, but the most recent DXA-based study from Zia and colleagues put the preferred range at roughly 13-14%. That is still lean, visible upper abs, maybe some forearm veins, but well short of stage-ready. How lean 13% looks varies a lot by muscle mass and where fat is carried.
Preferred male body fat lands around 13-14%, not 9-10%
DXA imaging gives true body-fat numbers but looks unlike a real man
13-14% still shows upper abs but is not bodybuilder-dry
Appearance at a given body fat depends on muscle and fat distribution
“14% is a hard cut away. You've got a hard cut to do to get down to that.”
#body-composition#attraction#research#fitness
⚡Myth Buster47:30
For men, beauty beats chastity, and virgins get discriminated against
Across studies back to David Buss (1989), men on average weight looks over a partner's sexual purity, and in one study still chose women perceived as more attractive despite also perceiving them as more promiscuous. More surprising: in ideal-body-count research, zero past partners was rated about as unattractive as six. With contraception reducing disease and covert-pregnancy risk, body count now works mainly as a proxy for personality, and virginity past a certain age reads as atypical.
Men prioritise looks over chastity within normal variation
Ideal body count peaked at 1-3; zero was as unattractive as six
Women discriminate against male virgins even harder than men do
Contraception shifted body count into a personality proxy
Outlier cases can flip the beauty-over-chastity ranking
“men were as quote unquote put off by virginity as several past partners.”
The 'men don't care about your career' claim, checked against the data
A viral tweet claimed men will pick an Applebee's waitress over a corporate executive. The data cut against the strong version: richer men select richer women, more-educated men select more-educated women, and rich women are largely immune to declining marriage. Successful men pair with successful women, partly for shared understanding of a demanding life. Career does register as a low-to-moderate priority, so 'don't care' overshoots, but personality and looks do outrank career.
Assortative mating: status pairs with status, education with education
Rich women are largely immune to the marriage decline since the 1970s
Career is a low-to-moderate, not zero, priority in revealed preferences
The tweet's real caveat was disposition ('treat them right'), not looks
Elite men value a partner who understands a demanding life
“educated men marry educated women, richer men mar... So it's like it doesn't seem to happen very often, not as a norm.”
Bodybuilding is a status game between men, not a signal to women
Murphy argues male physique culture has overshot women's actual preferences the way fashion modelling overshoots men's. What started as competition for female attention became an intrasexual status contest judged on difficulty, more shredded is more impressive to other men. Optimising for that male status can outperform optimising for female preference, because the social standing it buys is worth more than looking marginally better to women.
Male aesthetics passed the optimum set by women's preferences
Difficulty and status, not attraction, now drive the standard
Analogous to fashion modelling overshooting men's preferences
Male pre-selection and status can beat raw physical optimisation
Foraging-ecology lesson: assume the actor knows something you don't
“it probably started out as a competition for the female gaze essentially. But then it became a competition between each other”
A relationship is one long conversation, so date in your stratosphere
Williamson reframes long-term compatibility as conversational: a relationship is essentially one continuous podcast, and the goal is a partner you can talk to for 20,000 hours without getting bored. That favours partners in a similar intellectual stratosphere, a doctor and a lawyer both understand long hours and cognitive labour, without needing the exact same niche. Murphy notes his researcher girlfriend can engage with all of his work, which he calls a huge hack.
Long-term compatibility is largely conversational generativity
Aim for a partner you can talk to for 20,000 hours without boredom
Similar 'stratosphere' beats identical niche (doctor and lawyer both fit)
A partner who understands your work removes ongoing translation labour
What you select for in your 20s often isn't what serves you in your 30s
“a relationship is essentially one long podcast... You want to be able to speak to someone for 20,000 hours without getting bored.”
#relationships#compatibility#long-term-mating
◆Hot Take1:54:00
The 'tall girl problem': successful women must adapt or not pair up
Murphy frames the elite-woman dilemma as the 'tall girl problem', like women who prefer very tall men but rarely date them. Status-reversed pairings show worse outcomes in some European data, including higher domestic-violence associations, suggesting a painful cultural transition. Since no one will cap women's economic gains, the strategic reality is stark: either adapt preferences or increasingly don't pair up. He's cautiously optimistic humans will adapt over a longer horizon.
The 'tall girl problem': ideal preferences outrun reachable partners
Status-reversed pairings show worse outcomes in some data
No plausible future caps women's economic gains
Choice reduces to adapting preferences or not pairing up
Cross-cultural cases suggest long-run adaptability is possible
“the option is the option that it has been for us and all of our... ancestors for time immemorial adapt or die.”
What women actually prefer in penis size, per the 3D-model study
The strongest data on the question comes from Prause and colleagues, who had women choose from unlabelled 3D models rather than answer a survey, sidestepping the fact that people misjudge inches. Preferences landed around 6.3-6.4 inches in length and 4.8-5 inches in circumference. Because men overestimate their own size by roughly 20%, the preferred length sits near the 95th percentile of actual erect size.
Unlabelled 3D models beat surveys because people cannot accurately picture an inch
Why 'ideal' mate preferences mislead and bare-minimum ones reveal
Ideal mate preferences are fanciful and often internally contradictory, women's ideal penis size and ideal partner height were both bigger than they had ever encountered. Because ideals overshoot, the more informative signal is the bare-minimum preference, where actual rejection and deal-breakers show up. Only 27% of women reported ever ending a relationship partly over size, and almost always because the partner was too small.
Ideal preferences can exceed anything a person has experienced
Ideals often conflict when stacked (e.g. low BMI plus large bust)
Bare-minimum preferences reveal real cut-offs and rejection
Only ~27% ever broke up partly over size; usually for being too small
Why metal guitar is a male status game and acoustic covers court women
Some displays attract women directly; others settle male hierarchies out of view. Playing Wonderwall at a party reads to men as try-hard but can attract women, an interexual advertisement. Heavy-metal virtuosity, played to 90%-male crowds, functions like a proxy for violence: a status contest among men that women don't directly find attractive, so it's a high-risk strategy that pays only if you become elite.
Displays split into courting women vs competing with men
Acoustic crowd-pleasers can attract women despite annoying men
Metal virtuosity plays to male-dominated crowds as a status contest
Like animal fights, the contest itself repels females; winning confers status
Elite payoff is high, but mediocre performers 'double lose'
“it's a massive status competition between the males out of view.”
Higher body count predicts more infidelity and worse relationship outcomes
Across outcome measures, people with higher-than-expected-for-age counts are more likely to divorce, be dissatisfied and cheat, with no consistent sex difference. In one IFS analysis, the above-five group had roughly double the infidelity rate of the below-five group. The mechanism is intuitive: an affair is a form of casual sex, so a track record of casual sex predicts future casual sex. Whether abstaining causally reduces later cheating can't be ethically tested.
Higher body count predicts divorce, dissatisfaction and cheating
IFS-style split: above-five infidelity rate ~double the below-five group
Effects hold for both sexes, sometimes larger in men
Past behaviour predicts future behaviour; an affair is casual sex
'Getting it out of your system' lacks causal support and can't be tested ethically
“the infidelity of the above five group was double that of the below five group.”
#infidelity#sexual-history#relationships#research
✶Explainer1:46:00
Hypergamy to hyperandry: the bottom 40% of men and top 20% of women
As women's economic and social gains have equalised the sexes, the mating market has rebalanced. IFS data on ~1.4 million people show the bottom two income quintiles of men, on average, marry up, while the top income quintile of women, on average, out-earn their partners, a reversal of the historical norm that Murphy's supervisor Rob Brooks termed hyperandry. It's unclear how much of this is behavioural adjustment versus a shift in underlying preferences.
Women's gains equalised economic productivity and status
Bottom 40% of men, on average, now marry up in income
Top 20% of women, on average, out-earn their partners
Rob Brooks coined 'hyperandry' for the reversed pattern
Open question: adjusted behaviour vs adjusted preferences
“we are pivoting from a culture where male provisioning is the norm to a culture where biparental provisioning is the norm”
#hypergamy#mating-market#economics#research
✶Explainer2:07:30
Attractiveness is nearly all upside, with two real costs
For mating outcomes, being attractive is win after win: more mates, more desirable mates, and more committed partners. Rarity also makes very attractive people the more-attractive party in most pairings, a protective factor against infidelity. But two costs appear: optionality distress (constant awareness you could trade up) and heavier mate-guarding, since large attractiveness gaps push partners toward cost-inflicting strategies like negging and, in extremes, violence.
Attractiveness brings more and more-desirable, more-committed mates
People pursue the best-looking person who reciprocates, not their 'league'
Rarity makes the very attractive the protected party against infidelity
Cost 1: optionality distress and slightly lower satisfaction
Cost 2: heavier mate-guarding as attractiveness gaps widen
“it's not that people are attracted to people who are their league. It's that they're attracted to the best looking person that reciprocates their interest.”
#attraction#relationships#mate-guarding#research
✶Explainer2:17:00
The non-monogamy asymmetry: bigger benefits and bigger costs, both borne by men
Williamson's insight is that non-monogamy is lopsided: men gain more (higher socioexuality, more desire for variety) but also suffer more from a partner's sexual infidelity. At the ultimate level, a man can father many pregnancies at once while risking cuckoldry, whereas a woman can't be cuckolded, which buttresses the proximate feelings, men fear a partner's sexual infidelity more, women a partner's emotional infidelity. The worst position is a mismatch in desire and jealousy between partners.
Men gain more from non-monogamy but pay higher emotional costs
Higher male socioexuality is among psychology's most replicable findings
Ultimate cause: multiple simultaneous pregnancies vs cuckoldry risk
Men fear sexual infidelity most; women fear emotional infidelity most
Mismatched desire and jealousy between partners is the worst setup
“there are greater benefits but there are greater costs and both are paid by the man.”
The 'rich gay uncle' hypothesis for why homosexuality persists
Heritable homosexuality poses a puzzle: how does it persist if it reduces direct reproduction? The kin-selection idea is that gay men invest in siblings' children, passing genes indirectly. In the West the hypothesis hasn't borne out, but among the fa'afafine of independent Samoa, a recognised third gender, they do invest more avuncularly than straight uncles. Murphy's honest verdict: probably not the general explanation, and he doesn't know what is.
Heritable homosexuality is hard to explain given reduced reproduction
Kin selection: invest in siblings' children to pass genes indirectly
The hypothesis fails in Western samples
Supported among Samoa's fa'afafine, who invest more as uncles
The older-brother birth-order effect appears immune-mediated
“the rich gay uncle hypothesis is probably not true... but this is a pretty cool explanation.”
Read body count in context: age, recency, and relationship type
Because the number mainly proxies socioexuality and social adjustment, the raw figure means little without context. Recent research from Thomas and Stuart-Williams found people are sensitive to recency, ten partners years ago reads very differently from ten in the last month. A count of five means opposite things for a 19-year-old versus a 35-year-old, and five long relationships can even be a green flag.
Body count is a proxy for socioexuality and normal social adjustment
People are sensitive to recency, not just the total number
The same number reads differently by age and life stage
Five long relationships can be a green flag; five one-offs a red one
Avoid the caveman 'high bad, low good' heuristic
“what's the context of that number? Like, is this a person... who has had five long-term relationships?”