Evolutionary psychologist Debra Lieberman explains how “disgust” and other built-in mental programs shape attraction, kinship, morality, and even law—while modern technology and social media scramble the cues those systems evolved to track.
Guest bio:
Dr. Debra Lieberman is a professor of psychology at the University of Miami and an evolutionary psychologist who studies how evolved “mental apps” shape social life—kinship, cooperation, morality, sexuality, and emotions. She’s the co-author of Objection: Disgust, Morality, and the Law.
Topics discussed:
- What makes someone “hot”: symmetry, hormonal cues, and universal vs learned templates
- Male vs female mate preferences (fertility cues; resource/provisioning cues; kindness/safety)
- Disgust as an evolved system for pathogen avoidance (food, touch/contact, sex)
- Incest avoidance, the Westermarck effect, kibbutzim and “minor marriages” evidence
- Sexual reproduction, pathogens, and why “mixing the gene pool” matters
- How disgust bleeds into moral judgment and law; coalitions and social leverage
- Why modernity/tech changes the payoff of ancient intuitions
- Gratitude as a “sleeper” universal emotion that jumpstarts friendship
- Her evolutionary psychology textbook + MediaByte project
Main points:
- Attraction isn’t “simple”—it’s output. Your brain runs hidden machinery that converts cues into a gut-level “hot/not.”
- Symmetry functions like a health certificate. It’s hard to build a symmetric body; disruption from disease/mutations makes symmetry informative.
- Men’s and women’s preferences differ on average, but share a template. Men track fertility-linked cues; women track resource acquisition/investment cues—plus kindness/safety as a major predictor.
- Disgust is a multi-purpose regulator. It steers eating, contact, sex, and social avoidance by tracking contamination risk and other fitness costs.
- Incest avoidance relies on cues, not DNA tests. Early co-residence can trigger “this is kin” psychology even when people aren’t related (Westermarck effect).
- Modern abundance doesn’t erase ancient wiring. People calibrate to local “baselines” and still compete relative to that baseline.
- Moral disgust can be weaponized. Disgust language can rally coalitions (“those people are disgusting/bad”) and support punishment, including via law.
- Gratitude is an underappreciated social engine. It flags “this person values me more than expected,” helping form alliances beyond kin.
Top quotes:
- “Beauty is in the adaptation of the beholder.”
- “We’re not frogs… we have a very specific human operating system that guides us toward certain features and away from others.”
- “Symmetry is hard to build—it can act like a kind of health certificate.”
- “Women track resource acquisition… but one of the most critical traits is kindness—it signals safety.”
- “You smell something off and you don’t eat it—you’re not thinking ‘pathogens’… you’re thinking ‘ew’.”
- “There’s no one-size-fits-all disgust; it depends on what you were calibrated to as ‘normal.’”
- “If morality were just cooperation… why wouldn’t heterosexual men celebrate gay men for reducing competition?”
- “Gratitude is triggered when someone shows they value you more than you expected—it jumpstarts friendship.”
🎙 The Pod is hosted by Jesse Wright
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