Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying are former professors of Evolutionary Biology at Evergreen State College. Watch more of Bret’s work at http://patreon.com/bretweinstein and read Heather’s writing at http://heatherheying.com.
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It is a known fact that women in the Secret Service doing ANY type of interview have a strict dress code.
No makeup
Flat shoes
Hair up
Black or blue slacks/no skirts at all
No perfume
No nail polish or extensions
The government has a lot of this stuff already figured out along time ago. Why do police all wear the same uniform?
If corporations don’t want to deal with man/woman sexuality at work provide uniforms.
They did it in the military and Star Trek too.
Just to through a little humor on the subject.
Ps men and women need to make the same
Money for the same job.
26:45 “Cloner of a lonely heart”
I'm more than a little late, but I would like to posit a hypothesis on the catcalling thing by drawing on two other psychological traits we know to be true. Namely, that of taking the wrong turn in a car, and of the anonymity of a loud, Hawaiian t-shirt.
The thing in the car, is you get to a fork in the road you always seem to take the wrong turn at. You don't really remember anything about one path, but you sorta vaguely remember something important about the other but you don't really recall what it is. So… you go down the path that stands out as memorable. Aaaand it turns out the reason why you remember it is it's the wrong choice, and you wind up having to go back again, but the issue is the memory of it being the wrong choice doesn't show up until 5 minutes later when you notice all the wrong scenery again so the memory of the turn is divorced from the memory of taking the wrong turn.
Now, pair this with the idea of having a crowd of people going through an airport. They're loud, brazen, dressed in overly bright clothing (like the Hawaiian t-shirt =P ) and having this overly enthusiastic discussion about their vacation. …Now try picking one of those individuals out in a police lineup. You almost guaranteed can't do it, because you probably averted your gaze from them intentionally because it's embarrassing. You're uncomfortable in that situation, and you remember the situation, but you never get a good look at the people's facial features.
With these two things combined, what the catcalling may very well pose is the idea that a male who doesn't draw attention to himself by being polite will be ignored and an unknown, and if he encounters the woman again, she'll have no reaction to him at all. If, however, he catcalls her and he does bump into her again, the chances are exceedingly low that she'll remember he was the one to catcall her, but there's a reasonable chance that, because he did make an impression (even a bad one) and stood out, that she'll remember "something" about him and the optimism bias will imply that maybe it was something good since you don't tend to remember people who aren't interesting. She then potentially strikes up a conversation with him at that later date, essentially mirroring the effect of taking the wrong turn in the car, and in that more personal setting, he's probably not going to behave the same way, so she may never know her mistake.
In short, you'll never make a shot you never take.
Also note that the attractiveness of the guy is important. A very good looking man who catcalls women, is rude to them, or just downright horrible, will tend to get positive reactions anyway because they want him to see them. An ugly man will be viewed as creepy. The action itself isn't what's creepy, it's whether you're getting attention from someone you want to get attention from, or someone you don't want attention from. This has been tested with dating websites a number of times with consistent results – have a good looking profile picture and a guy can be a terrible person but will get positive attention, but have an average or substandard picture and polite, respectful behaviour will get no attention at all, or negative attention.
As such, yes, catcalling does have potential situations it can work in, even if they couldn't think of any at the time.
It still doesn't make it particularly nice of a thing to do, but they were struggling to think of any situation it'd actually produce a positive situation in for the guy to potentially reproduce with someone, and that's my guess on such, even if it's only a guess.
Loved the conversation, but at times Bret and Heather pushed very deep into the adaptationist programme, could be worth re-reading Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm
I really really loved this episode. It’s very interesting to get a scientific unbiased take on love, sex, gender identity and human relationships !! Great one JR