The Science of Attraction, Mate Selection & Relationships

Why the market model breaks down, what actually predicts long-term satisfaction, and the one environmental shift that changes almost everything.

With Dr. Paul Eastwick

"There is nothing like the rush of having somebody tell you something that they've never told anybody else." — Dr. Paul Eastwick

Dr. Paul Eastwick, on the episode

Andrew Huberman sits down with Dr. Paul Eastwick, a professor of psychology at UC Davis who studies attraction, mate selection, and relationship formation. The popular framing of dating borrows heavily from evolutionary economics: people have fixed market values, men and women want categorically different things, and the apps are simply revealing a brutal truth. Eastwick's data say something different. The market model describes a narrow slice of human experience, mostly first impressions among strangers, and collapses the moment people spend real time together. This protocol pulls the operational findings from that conversation: why attraction works the way it actually does, what men and women genuinely respond to when they meet face to face, and the specific conditions that build and protect lasting relationships.