Ep. #62 The Neuroscience of Sex and Sexuality with Andrea Kuszewski

[Angel Donovan] Andrea, welcome to the show. Thank you very much for coming on today.

[Andrea Kuszewski] Hello, thank you for having me.

[Angel Donovan] So, I wanted to start looking straight at the neuroscience perspective and why you feel that it's a valid look at sex and sexuality. Things like, what kind of research has been done, what kind of tools you use.

So kind of just give people a perspective of what this is about, why neuroscience is a subject related to sex and sexuality. Is it all about MRIs? What kind of research goes on?

[Andrea Kuszewski] Well first of all I wanted to talk about dopamine, because lots of people like talking about dopamine. They nickname it "the pleasure chemical" and everyone's really hooked on this, like, "Oh, you need to trigger dopamine," and that's how we receive pleasure and everything.

But there's actually some recent research that's been done on dopamine that has kind of illuminated a lot of the mysteries that we had about why dopamine is so powerful, why do we even care about it, and what is it actually doing? And I think just explaining that right off the bat will kind of illuminate all of these other facets of pleasure and attraction, and dating, and why it works the way it does. It was pretty exciting, and it was things that we had hypothesized about but didn't really know, and now it's kind of been proven. So I'd like to talk about that first.

So dopamine is this neurotransmitter in the brain, and it's related to a lot of things like focus, attention, movement, pleasure, and motivation. And we used to think it was primarily about pleasure. Everyone thought dopamine was associated with pleasure primarily, but what we've now discovered is it's actually more to do with anticipation of reward.

So it really has more to do with motivation than anything else, when we're talking about this kind of thing, in the reward center of the brain. So it's not so much pleasure as the anticipation of the pleasure.

Let me explain, just really quickly, this interesting study. The details aren't important as far as when it was published or anything, but basically when you're presented with some kind of a reward, let's say, even with relationships, you know, you feel like this good feeling? Okay, you're with someone...

[Angel Donovan] So we could give an example as, like, the first kiss with a girl who you've been interested in for a while?

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yeah, so let's say you have a kiss, right. And so after you experience that kiss, you experience pleasure. You're happy, you're like, "That was cool. I like it." So then the next time you're with this person, and let's say your brains are hooked up to these machines and you're measuring dopamine, hypothetically, you know. This is a thought experiment.

So you get this pleasure response. So then the next time you're with this girl and you see her coming towards you, that would be the cue for the kiss. Your brain interprets this cue that the reward is coming. So you actually receive this spike of dopamine before you get the kiss, not after. So right before you receive the reward, right before you receive the cue, right after the cue, right before the reward, is when you get the spike of dopamine. And so it's the anticipation.

[Angel Donovan] Right, and dopamine, is it still like a reward for us? It's something we like?

[Andrea Kuszewski] Well we like it because it motivates us to engage in behaviors to get the reward. So it kind of pushes us towards the rewarding things, and so the reward circuit in the brain is dependent on dopamine. If dopamine's not there, we're not really compelled to act in any way.

[Angel Donovan] Right, so I guess what I'm asking is, what is the order of it? So we have the kiss, right, but before the kiss comes the dopamine. Say it's the second kiss. Is there something that comes afterwards that is, like, a reward for having actually achieved what we were looking for?

[Andrea Kuszewski] No, actually it's just before. But once we experience the kiss, then you get this serotonin. You're happy. You get the oxytocin, which brings you closer to that person. You're more bonded. But the dopamine is all about getting us to take those steps in order to get it. It, like, pushes us towards things. And so why we want the dopamine is because the more dopamine we have, the more compelled we are to engage in things to get the reward, putting us in hyperdrive.

So here's the really interesting thing. If you present the cue every time, you're going to get that spike in dopamine right before the kiss every time. But what ends up happening is when scientists took the reward, and they only gave it to the person, like, fifty percent of the time, and they didn't know when it was coming, what do you think happened to the dopamine?

[Angel Donovan] It halved?

[Andrea Kuszewski] It actually spiked even higher.

[Angel Donovan] Oh wow.

[Andrea Kuszewski] Like, crazy ridiculous high. So when you introduce that element of mystery, when you know the reward could come, but we don't know exactly when, but we know we really like it... Once you introduce that element of mystery, we are even more motivated to engage in that behavior. Which sounds kind of counter-intuitive, right?

But when I first started working as a therapist, we learned these schedules of reinforcement, and when I learned that if I gave the kid an M&M every time he was going to do something good, you get this amount of behavior. But then if I only give it to him every other time, or every third time, and he doesn't know when it's coming, he's even more compelled to act in order to get that, which kind of blew me away.

But this explains it now. So when we don't know exactly when the reward is coming, but we can anticipate that it might happen, we are even more compelled to engage in that behavior. The dopamine is even higher.

So this is why things like people in Vegas, that have designed the gambling... They're like masters at building that anticipation. You think this next time, it could happen. But maybe not. But it could, but we don't know. We are even more addicted to behaving in that way in order to get the reward than if we know that every time we push a lever we're going to get some money out.

[Angel Donovan] Right, well that's interesting. I'm just thinking over all the stuff we cover, and that tends to fit with a number of things, like concepts people talk about. It tends to be people who are a bit more mysterious, or a girl you know less about for instance, is going to be more interesting.

If you think about affairs, right? All these guys having affairs, they don't know the women so well, and they can't predict what's going to happen in the relationship and so on.

[Andrea Kuszewski] Right. It's novel, it's interesting, it's that little bit of mystery. You don't know what's going to happen. It's unexpected. All of those things are really, really, really strong triggers for dopamine. Huge.

[Angel Donovan] So that kind of explains why people have to work on relationships more. Would basically the dopamine go down over the duration of a relationship, because you know what's going to happen, more, and more, and more, as you get to know the character, and personality, and so on?

[Andrea Kuszewski] There's a couple ways that dopamine gets blunted. One is that you just have the same thing over and over again, and it's just not any different. You're going to get satiated on it. And also, if you can predict when it's going to happen.

So it always makes me laugh when you have people in couples counselling, and they're like, "Well if you want to have more sex, schedule a time, like every Thursday at Six O' Clock," and I'm like, "God, that is like the worst advice ever!" I can't even... It's like, "Okay, it's time for sex now! Are you ready?" How boring is that?

But the best way to have more sex is to do unexpected things, and not schedule it, and allow for spontaneity, and that's really the best way. Because you're going to get more pleasure out of that. So this is where I think people that are trying to coach dating and things like that, this is where they've kind of taken these real phenomena that we've observed, and they've, kind of, slightly misinterpreted it, and sometimes it goes wrong.

So if we know that people that are boring, or people that are doing expected things, are not as exciting as the unexpected, the novel. So what ends up happening is, like, "Oh, girls don't like nice guys because they're too predictable." That's how they interpret that.

And, true, if someone is falling over themselves to do everything for me, and whatever I want they're going to do, I'm not going to be as excited by that person. It kind of turns me off, because I'm, like, "Too boring," right? But then there's someone that is more spontaneous, and does unexpected things, but maybe they're not hanging on my every word. But they challenge me a little bit, and I like that. It's more exciting.

But I think some people misinterpret that as, "If I treat a girl like crap, and I say negative things to her, which is unexpected and different, and novel, she'll like me more than if I'm a nice guy," and that's actually wrong. That's a misinterpretation of that. So you can be unexpected, and surprising, and novel, and clever, and funny. Those are all good things.

[Angel Donovan] And you can still be nice.

[Andrea Kuszewski] And you can still be nice.

[Angel Donovan] Which is pretty cool.

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yes! Yes.

[Angel Donovan] So, is dopamine the only thing that motivates our behaviors? So for example, is a girl only going to be attracted based on dopamine, or is it a lot more complicated than that? Are guys only going to be interested in a girl based on dopamine, or do you think there's other things that play a role in the realm of neuroscience?

[Andrea Kuszewski] Dopamine's pretty critical, but dopamine is triggered in different ways by every person. So whatever things are personally rewarding to me, if I can anticipate that that person's going to give me that, I'm going to be more attracted to that person.

It's not so much that if I walk up to anyone and someone gives me a shot of dopamine... Which isn't possible, by the way! It's not real... That then I'm going to be drawn to that person. But there are certain situations that will make you more inclined to want to keep being with that person.

[Angel Donovan] So when you said that, I was thinking, "It sounds like it's kind of related to belief, as well."

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yes.

[Angel Donovan] So say I don't have any belief in my ability to meet women, then I'm not going to get any shot of dopamine, potentially? When I'm talking to them, I'm like, "No, this never works out for me, so it's not even on the cards."

[Andrea Kuszewski] Right.

[Angel Donovan] So am I not getting any shot of dopamine there to kind of incite me to try and do something about it?

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yeah. When you have these really low expectations, and you don't engage in certain situations, you don't put yourself in the path of good things happening because you don't believe they will happen. Guess what? It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. It won't ever happen.

You have to believe that you have the ability to do these things, and attract certain women, but don't misapply that and say, "I'm going to be an over-confident douchebag to girls because if I just believe it it'll happen." You have to be realistic, and pay attention to how people are responding to you. But know that there are people... There is someone out there for everybody.

I've seen some really unlikely couples in my time, but they're happy together. But if they never would have pursued that, it never would have happened. So I really do think one of the most attractive things, really to all women, and to all men I think on some level, is just confidence in yourself. Just being comfortable with who you are. And I don't mean over-confident, like being an arrogant jerk. I mean just confident that you have something to offer someone.

[Angel Donovan] Yeah, we often talk about this, because you're just putting yourself out there. You're putting more out there. I'm not sure what the neurological basis is for this, but, for instance, a girl's learning a lot more about you because you're saying more, you're talking more, you're being more charismatic, because you're putting yourself out there. Is there a neurological basis, from her perspective, why this works better than someone who's a bit more withdrawn, and he's not putting so much out there of himself, and not so much energy?

[Andrea Kuszewski] Well if we like things that are interesting, if someone is talking to us and they're being genuine, they're really revealing things about themselves that she didn't know, or that are not like the average guy, you know, things that are interesting. They're going to be more attracted to that, generally, based on individual differences.

But let me give you an example. This is actually how I met my boyfriend. No one ever thought that this would happen, but it did. So I had been a science writer for several years, and speaking at conferences and whatnot. And he had been a follower of mine on Twitter, but we had never met in person.

So then we ended up at the same science conference a couple of years ago, and I was at an after party for the conference, and of course, you know, everyone's wanting to talk to me. He decided he was going to go up and start talking to me, and he's a programmer.

So here I am: cognitive neuroscientist, public speaker, really popular on social media, all this stuff. And he's this programmer, and no one would have ever thought that, if they had said, "Oh, approach this girl in this way," no one would have believed him. But what I liked about him was that we started talking about technology, and he showed me an app that he built that was really clever, and it involved science and tech and all this really cool stuff. And I was, like, blown away and really impressed by this app that he'd built.

And he kind of won me over in that way, because he was being genuine. He was showing me stuff that he was excited about, and of course I was interested in technology as well, and science obviously.

But he got really excited about his field, and he was talking to me about it in a really genuine way, and he was being himself, and he really kind of won me over that day. So we like to joke that every dating book probably tells tech guys, "Don't ever show a girl your app! That'll never win her over," but with me it totally did, because that's something that I'm interested in, and I liked that he was being himself.

He wasn't throwing lines at me. He wasn't, like, "Hey!" He wasn't being creepy, or douchey, or anything. He was just being himself, and that was the most attractive thing ever to me. So that's a message out there for guys that think that just because they're nerdy programmers... Doesn't mean they can't get girls!

[Angel Donovan] So what's going on there? Because you get invested in a conversation because you're interested in it, so I guess you're getting some dopamine because of that? This whole dopamine thing, is it like it's acting, and injecting, different doses of dopamine all the time? You're not often getting a cocaine dopamine high, unless it's a really extreme situation I guess. But a lot of the time it's, like, bubbling up and down, and is this what's motivating us all the time?

So for instance, in this situation, you say the IT guy, he came across well to you because it was a subject you were interested in. So are you getting a little bit of a dopamine rush when he brings up this interesting app? He's talking about it, and it sounds cool and everything. That gets you more invested in the conversation, and you get to know him, and it kind of flows onwards. What I'm trying to get at is, why is it that we stick in that conversation afterwards? And with that person? Are we getting some kind of... I understand that oxytocin is kind of like a bonding, so if we're having more conversation with someone...

[Andrea Kuszewski] There's a few things, but first with the oxytocin. The longer you interface with something or someone, the more bonded you will be to them. That's just a fact. And this is why, like, after you have sex with someone, you're more likely to feel bonded to them, even if you don't really like them that much, you still feel compelled to be with them.

So Helen Fisher is this biological anthropologist, and she gave this lecture and she was, like, "You know, be careful. If you don't want to fall in love with someone, don't have sex with them, because it just might happen!" And it's true. So you have a one night stand and you're like, "Oh I'm not going to be attracted to this person, I'm just going to sleep with them," and then you find yourself wanting to be with them more. Well, that's a side-effect! That could happen.

[Angel Donovan] Out there, my experience is that sleeping with someone does make a huge difference. And I don't know if you know anything about it, but sleeping without a condom would make a bigger difference, potentially. Because I've heard people talk about that as well, like, I don't know, more chemical transfer.

So it'd be interesting to get your perspective, because I see not using a condom... First of all, it's risky because of the STDs, but second of all it's risky if you're not interested in a really strong bond which hasn't been thought through properly. I don't know if there's any biological basis for that at all, it's just an idea.

[Andrea Kuszewski] Well that's actually what I was going to say, is that when you think about... Let's look at the psychology of that, not even the neurochemistry, just the psychology. So if we know that dopamine is triggered by mystery and uncertainty, and things like that, and now you're having sex without a condom, what are you entering into that picture? It's kind of dangerous. A little bit risky. You could get pregnant, maybe.

Maybe he has an STD, maybe not. That's probably not on your mind, but it's a risky behavior, and when you engage in risky behaviors, and if you're the kind of person that enjoys risky things more... So that's another point, individual differences.

Some people are bigger dopamine junkies, some people aren't. But if you're the kind of person... You're more of a thrill seeker, that kind of thing. If you're engaging in risky sex, damn, that's way more exciting than the security of a condom or something like that.

And I think that really plays into... It's not so much, like, "Oh it feels better without a condom," yeah, sure, okay, that probably factors in. But the real thing is that it's more of a risky behavior, and you don't even realize that that's why you like it, but it is.

[Angel Donovan] So there's a lot of guys who seem to be... Basically they're addicted to the no-condom thing, even if they're having one night stands a lot, right? And I've always been like, "Wow, that's very rash."

So I've always been curious about what would be the basis for it, and it sounds like it's an addiction to dopamine from the risky behavior, which, like, you do it a few times, you really like that, and you don't realize it's because it's a little bit risky or whatever.

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yeah, the risk taking. And that's where a lot of the stuff... People say they're addicted to sex, they're addicted to porn, they're addicted to not using a condom. Those are not things you can have an addiction to. It's impossible. Addiction doesn't work that way. But what you're addicted to is probably the dopamine response. You're addicted to anticipation of reward. That's the more likely, the more plausible explanation.

Some people have a higher need for dopamine. Some people have a higher need for novelty. Some people are adrenaline junkies. And that's just all individually determined. And so when you take someone that, they claim they have a sex addiction... It's actually more that they are probably the addictive type of personality, where they generally like riskier sex, they probably enjoy riskier sports, things like that. Thrill-seeking kinds of things in other areas of their life. Other kinds of addictive-type behaviors. They're more prone to those kinds of things in general.

It's not so much that, "Everything else in my life is vanilla and boring, except I'm addicted to sex, and I can't help it. It's an addiction." Well, no, that's just poor self-control, because you have this need for the novelty, and the risk, and all these other things.

[Angel Donovan] Which is just either genetic, or it's something that you've geared yourself to, over time? You're being addicted to this dopamine response, is that what you're saying? Behind all of these things, what we call addictions?

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yeah it is genetically pre-determined, but that's not saying you have no control, because you do. You can change a lot of things in your life just by changing your behaviors. And you can find substitutes for the unhealthy behavior that you seem to be addicted to, and replace it with something else that's also exciting, and novel, and different. That will give you a dopamine response, but it's something that's healthy.

So for me, I'm one of those people that, I have a very high need for dopamine. Which is why, when my boyfriend was telling me about this technology that he'd been building... The reason why I was so interested in that conversation... Yeah, I'm interested in technology, but it was that he was teaching me something that I didn't know. I was learning something new.

And so he's in a different field, but it's a field I'm interested in, so I'm always learning something new from him, and that is very addictive to me. I love that. I'm addicted to learning new things. That's why science is so awesome, because we'll never know all of it. There's always something new to learn. Especially the brain, it's such a huge mystery.

So for me, I could probably easily fall into really risky, unhealthy behaviors, and keep getting that reward response in my brain from that, and stay on that path. And you get stuck in this really unhealthy pattern of behavior. But for me, I'm actually happy with the healthier types of dopamine rewarding activities, like research, and learning, and doing new things, learning new skills.

I've been to art school. I went to art school between psychology degrees just because I've always been an artist. So I have that need for novelty all the time, but that's dopamine driven. So I've a very high need for dopamine. So to someone else maybe, that is claiming to be a sex addict, so you replace it with something else, and whatever the rewarding activities are... You need to kind of experiment around and find those, but there's always healthy versions of things to substitute in for unhealthy behaviors.

[Angel Donovan] Right, and you're saying that's perfectly.. That that will work for everyone? Substituting some other kind of dopamine-generating... Because one of the things I did want to cover was sex addiction: real or not? And one of the things I understand is that there a lot of people who go to Alcoholics Anonymous, for instance, who also go to Sex Addicts Anonymous. There's a lot of interplay between the different recovery centers. And so that makes complete sense, from you basically saying, "Well, it's all about dopamine, really, and the way you handle your dopamine."

I always thought I had an addictive personality, because when I was a kid it was alcohol, then it was caffeine, or chocolate. You know, it's just like whatever it is, I'm like, "Yeah, I'll have tons of that." And I have friends which are the same way. And then I went through this period when it was women for a while.

It was actually really difficult to get out of that kind of mindset, and now associate it with longer-term relationships. Although now, that seems to be a lot more extreme. I really run away from multiple relationships, because I see at as destructive for my life. So I don't know what chemical change could take place there, but now, basically, that I'm driven away from that type of behavior because I see it's negative.

So what have I done, chemically? Obviously now I have long-term relationships, I have bigger dopamine spikes. Somehow, I've managed to replace that. Is there some kind of negative chemical that's associated with some other experiences that I no longer have issues with addiction with?

[Andrea Kuszewski] Well what happens with the dopamine, let's think of how I can explain this... This is a question that comes up a lot, especially with, like, pornography. Porn addiction. I actually just gave a talk only on porn addiction, that was the topic of the talk. And we had this big debate about, "Is it real? Is it an actual addiction? What is it?" And it's not an actual addiction.

Cocaine is a drug. Porn is not a drug. No matter how you feel about cocaine, like it or not, if someone walks up to you and injects you by force, you're going to have that response in your brain. Your brain is going to have the chemical response to cocaine.

However, we decide what kind of a reward we assign to porn. We decide how rewarding a certain person is, or a certain behavior is. When it comes to behavioral stuff, it's just a cue for stimulus, is what it is. And we assign value to that.

So we can be watching porn and we get this big dopamine spike, or we could be turned off from it. Let's say someone tells you, "Oh that porn you just watched, that was a child that was forced into the sex trade at age six, and that's what you're watching." Well now suddenly you're not attracted to that anymore, and now you have this big turn-off response, to the same exact stimulus. So what is that telling me? You're assigning value to that, so that's not actually a drug.

But what happens with dopamine... So when you're playing dopamine on sex and you're kind of interplaying these different things. So for one thing, you have the novelty. So you have one stimulus, and you get turned on by it. And then the next time you get a spike of dopamine, you watch it, and then, you know, pleasure. But over time you get satiated. So the dopamine response gets blunted over time.

So what do you have to do to get that up? Well then you have to bump up the novelty, okay? So now you've got to try something different, and you keep bumping it up, bumping it up, bumping it up, because you're trying to get the same dopamine response from the same stimulus, and it's not going to happen. So you have to keep getting more, and more, and more crazy, and novel, and unexpected, and do it more and more often, because you're trying to get this high dopamine response.

But now we know that if you get the same reward every single time, it's not as exciting as getting it only sometimes. So the thing with pornography is that you've kind of taken out that element of uncertainty. You just removed that altogether. So now you've just cheated yourself out of this really high dopamine spike that you would get with natural relationships, because you're not dating a robot where you say, "It's time for sex," you push a button, and she does everything you want.

There is that human element of, "She has control, somewhat, and it may or may not happen," it may not happen the way you want, or the way you expect. But we like that. That's what we like about human relationships. So with pornography, it's this same exact... You know you're going to get it, when you get it, and it is predictable. So the only way you can bump up the dopamine is by really dialing up the novelty.

[Angel Donovan] Yeah. This is interesting. We had... I don't know if you know a guy called Gary Wilson, who did a TEDx expose on the whole internet porn... He has a website that helps people to recover.

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yeah I've watched that.

[Angel Donovan] So we had him on the Podcast a while back, and basically a couple of his assumptions were, he sees this as an addiction, and he's got this whole recovery process for people. And the two things he was saying was, "High speed internet porn... The video stimulates your brain, which is the problem, not the masturbation," that fits with what you're saying. Our link to dopamine is the brain.

And he also says a couple of other things... I don't know what you think about these... He thinks it impacts your behavior. Like, if you get into this process where you're using porn, and you're using the video stimulation, which if you think about, the video stimulation is always different women.

So in one aspect it's novelty, and as I understand it, there's also always, nearly always, a progression. Like, guys will start watching vanilla sex kind of porn, and slowly, over time, they'll need something a bit different, and a bit funkier, and a bit more fetish, and so on. And that's how they get, eventually, into some crazy, crazy... That's how the porn industry has progressed into more and more fetish, and so on, online. It's got bigger and more diverse, basically.

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yeah that's the only variable you have control over, is the novelty. Because now you've taken out uncertainty. Now that's not giving you more dopamine, which it does in real life. So the only thing you have to control, the only variable, is the novelty. So yeah, you have to keep ramping it up even more than you would maybe in real life, because you have to, in order to get that response.

[Angel Donovan] A couple of other things he said is that it increases your promiscuity, and it reduces your use of condoms. Have you got any perspective on that?

[Andrea Kuszewski] I don't know direct evidence of that, so I can't say, "Yes, it does it by this percentage," but it would make sense to me that that would be a result, because you are trying to get that same exciting kind of behavior, or that response from behavior going on.

So, engaging in riskier sex is more exciting. Engaging in more kinky sex is more exciting. Different people. So, the other thing that porn does... So you have, one, the dopamine response. But then also, you start thinking this becomes normalized to you. You start thinking that this crazy, kinky, really wild fetish sex, is normal. That becomes your normal.

So then you go into a situation with an actual girl, you know, real-life girl, and she's not doing circus acts and doing all kinds of stuff to turn you on, and now you're like, "Oh, that's not as exciting."

[Angel Donovan] You're not getting that dopamine rush, because you're used to... Well, one, you're used to a different girl every single time, because it's porn. And two, you're used to funkier stuff, because you've been watching it for a while, and you got bored and you moved on. So you're actually reducing your dopamine response to women in real life, through that use of porn.

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yeah, and that's a real result. But the thing that's different with that from addiction is that if you stop watching porn for a number of months, you just abstain from all that, you let all your dopamine receptors reset themselves. You just let everything go back to normal levels, and then when you start interacting with real women, now you have a natural sex response.

[Angel Donovan] Okay, so how long does it take? Really is it just a few months? And, like, anyone? Say they were doing it for five years? Because we could also apply this to different areas of your relationships and so on. If you took a break from a relationship and came back to it, would you be more interested in it?

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yeah, you might feel differently about it then, because it's not the same thing every single day. And then you take a break from it, well now you're without that person completely, well now when you get back together with them, now you're kind of looking at it with a new pair of eyes. Like for the first time, type of thing.

[Angel Donovan] This could also, I was just thinking, explain how some people... Say you're in a relationship for a while, and then you finish with that. Maybe you finish it because it's not working for you anymore, and you date. And you start dating for a while, but you get bored of that. Dating singles. And then you get into a relationship for a period again, and the relationship's more interesting to you again. Whereas it was the reason you, maybe... Half of the reason you left in the first place. Because you're changing up, it's just novelty, in terms of a different dating life, basically. Dating lifestyle.

[Andrea Kuszewski] Right. Well here's the two two sides of this whole issue. When it comes to sex and relationships, it's not just the dopamine and the novelty. It's not just that. We also have this human need for bonding. We have this need to pair with people, and really the older you get, the more you are driven towards that. So yeah, when you're younger, having lots of novel sex is super exciting, but you do hit a point where you just want to feel the comfort of another human being.

You do want intimacy, and intimacy is a huge factor in relationships that really has nothing to do with the sex, honestly. Really good sex can help with intimacy, sure. They overlap. It's like when you have a Venn diagram, there is a significant overlap. But they aren't the same thing, and so if you only have novelty without the intimacy, you're still going to feel some kind of emptiness from that.

So you can't just replace it all with internet sex. You can't replace all of your relationship and intimacy needs with random sex with strangers. You're going to still be left feeling empty, which is going to make you seek out even more, and more, and more novel things, hoping to fill that need. But you're never going to quite feel satisfied.

[Angel Donovan] Is that because you're missing the oxytocin? What is actually going on there?

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yeah, you're missing that intimacy. Yeah, so oxytocin... A myth about oxytocin, it's not actually the "cuddle hormone," everyone loves to call it that. I always say when somebody calls it a cuddle hormone, a psychology student kills themself, because it's not actually what it is! What it does is it's a bonding chemical.

So when they've given people oxytocin, they've also noticed an increase in stereotypical behaviors. In-group, out-group kind of behaviors. Hatred against a group, that's even strengthened with oxytocin. So whatever's going on there, it tends to strengthen that bond, with whatever feeling there is. So if you are in an intimate act, it's going to make you more bonded with that person in an intimate fashion. But oxytocin... There's that darker side that isn't as much talked about, that it can strengthen stereotypical behaviors that you don't want. So I just wanted to put that out there.

[Angel Donovan] Right, it deepens whatever...

[Andrea Kuszewski] Whatever feelings are there, yeah.

[Angel Donovan] Right, whatever feelings. That's a good way to put it. It deepens those feelings. Okay. well just before we move on from the porn thing, another thing that Gary Wilson talks about is how it shrinks your frontal cortex, thus lowering your willpower and motivation. Is that anything you can relate to?

[Andrea Kuszewski] I don't have any direct evidence that I've seen on that particular thing. I'm not denying that that's not a phenomenon that happens. But the brain is very plastic. It changes all the time. So your brain is probably different right now than it was when we first started talking, and that's just how the brain is.

So any time you have one area of the brain that's over-active, and another area that's under-active, you're going to notice some growth changes. Some parts are going to shrink, some parts are going to grow.

But that doesn't mean that it's not reversible. It just means that whatever behavior you've been engaging in, this is now how your brain is. But it doesn't mean that it won't change back once you engage in different activity. So the fact that the frontal cortex shrinks, maybe because you're not spending a lot of time... If you're spending all your time looking at porn, you're probably not reading physics! And you're not reading other kinds of scientific information, you know, things that would grow your frontal cortex. You're not engaging in those.

So whenever you don't use a part of your brain, it's probably going to shrink a little bit. You're going to notice a loss in gray matter. But that doesn't mean that once you start abstaining from porn, and you start engaging in other activities that are more intellectually stimulating, that that wouldn't come back to normal.

[Angel Donovan] Right, right. Great. So, another aspect of porn is masturbation, and there can often be negative feelings associated with that, like guilt and so on. And depending on what type of porn, I guess your guilt could get accentuated, the more weird the type of porn gets. You could be feeling more guilt and negative emotions around that.

In terms of the neurology of it, is the impact of porn on your sexual life going to be much lower if you feel good about it? Like, if you're okay with using porn, if you're okay with masturbation, you have no guilt. You're really very open-minded, and you consider it a normal behavior, then is that going to be better for you than if you're looking at it negatively, "This is something negative in my life, it's something I feel guilty about and I shouldn't be doing."

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yeah absolutely. Everyone has different preferences for what they like and what they need, and pornography in and of itself is not a bad thing. I want to make that clear. I don't want to come across as anti-porn. Actually, one of my good friends has a porn startup here in San Francisco. So I'm not anti-porn.

The use of porn is causing other problems in your life if you're feeling guilt and shame, and you're depressed, and you have ED, and you don't have any fulfilling relationships, you're pushing away your spouse or whatever. Well that's problematic.

But a lot of couples look at porn together, or they look at it separately and they're both okay with that. Maybe it gives you new ideas on things you can try with your partner, or it just makes you feel more sexually alive. And those are all good things. Those are all good things.

But when it starts becoming problematic to the point where other places in your life are suffering because of that, well then it's a problem. So porn in and of itself is not bad.

[Angel Donovan] Right. I've also read one of your articles, and you've argued that virtual reality sex could be better than real sex. As I understand it, you say basically that sex and orgasms... Most of the kick we get out of it is in the mind, rather than the physical touch, and you call it the tactile aspect of it. It's really mostly in the mind.

Could you talk a bit more about that? Is it because it's just linked to these chemicals, and that really is all it is about, and is it like eighty-percent of the sexual experience is going to be based on our perspective? Like the way we're looking at the sexual act? So you were talking about, if we see it as more risky, for instance.

So in a way we can really influence the experience, and what we get out of it, by the way we're thinking about it. So what we're reading, the inputs we choose to take in really affects the quality of our sexual life basically.

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yeah, absolutely. So the mind is really critical to sexual pleasure. If it was just about stimulation, and you just had a little button where you push a button in your brain and you experience an orgasm, well that wouldn't be much fun after a while.

That physiological response, who cares? But what we really enjoy is that anticipation. The dopamine is what really motivates us. So, how we perceive things, and our expectations of things, has a really profound impact on our ability to feel pleasure.

So if we are visualizing things, if we have really great fantasies, you're building up that dopamine. That's why fantasies are so powerful, is that we can draw it out as long as we want, and as unique as we want, and just draw out that dopamine, just draw out that anticipation forever.

That's why erotic images are so powerful, versus just medical, naked images. Is it just about looking at someone naked, or is it about the anticipation of something that's going to happen, but we don't quite know what? It's a story that's not quite finished, and then we just have to know how it ends. We're just drawn to that, because we don't know. There's that little bit of mystery.

Even in classical paintings of reclining nudes, when the female is completely nude, yes, it was erotic, but when she had on just, like... When she was completely nude, but a pair of heels. Or just a pearl necklace, or something like that... That was seen as highly more erotic than the completely nude female.

Just because there's that little bit of, "The story's not quite done." There's that little bit of anticipation of, "That has to come off, or should come off, or why isn't it off yet?" that kind of thing. It's highly more enticing than just the plain nude female. And so that's really kind of all in our minds, our expectations of that.

[Angel Donovan] Which I guess explains all the things like kinky costumes, and lingerie, and all of these kind of things which... They're basically more complicated, more stimulating. There's more to them.

In terms of an orgasm, what does that look like? Because if you think about, coming again from this perspective that it's mostly the mind that causes our sexuality and orgasm. And of course, people have wet dreams. Both men and women can have a wet dream which has nothing to do with any type of physical stimulation. It's all in the head.

So what does neuroscience... When we look at the orgasm through the neuroscience lens, what's going on there?

[Andrea Kuszewski] Well, from a physiological perspective, you do feel pleasure from the orgasm, and the serotonin and oxytocin. And then the dopamine is associated with the anticipation of getting that. So the orgasm itself is pleasurable, but it's really the anticipation of the orgasm.

So as far as, like, an evolutionary perspective... You would want to anticipate engaging in that because it makes you want to have sex in order to procreate, or whatnot. Just from the purely biological perspective. But obviously we engage in sex not just to procreate, but because we like it.

As far as the orgasm itself... Yes, it's pleasurable, but for a lot of people, the leading up to the orgasm is actually the most pleasurable part. However, we associate the end result with the entire pleasure response.

But, you've had good and bad sex, right? So you've probably had sex where, it was not that great, but you still had an orgasm. And you've probably had sex where it was just absolutely fantastic, and yes you had an orgasm too. Are those both equal because you had an orgasm in both situations? Or do you rate one of them as a lot more pleasurable than the other?

[Angel Donovan] Qualitatively, both men and women have longer orgasms, and in terms of women, they can have multiple orgasms, right? That's a lot more. Men can do it with some kind of hacks, but physiologically you basically have to hack it, you can't just do that.

But qualitatively... And I know you've talked about the prolonged neurological orgasm. I'm wondering if that is a longer orgasm. Because, based on my experience, depending on the mindset, the relationship for example... When you're in an intimate relationship, which is going very well, then you've got a very deep intimacy, you can have a different type of sex. I'll have a much longer orgasm then, than, say, if I had a one night stand.

A few years back, I didn't really know the girl that well, and I'm not likely to have that prolonged... Kind of like a minute, or whatever it feels like, of orgasm. It's a completely different kind of physical response. That's the way it feels, as well as the mind response to it.

So I know you've talked a bit about the prolonged neurological orgasm. Could you talk a bit about the mechanism behind that too? Are there ways to improve the quality, like the length, and the quality, of orgasms, for both men and women?

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yeah, so that's really relating to that prolonged anticipation that a whole entire sequence of... The cue for a response, and then the higher spike of dopamine, and the mystery, and all that anticipation. And then, leading up to the orgasm.

So that's why we say that foreplay helps us have better sex. Well that's part of it, it's because you're drawing out that whole entire process. You're lengthening the story, and you're adding all these little elements to it that are interesting and fun, and they almost lead to the orgasm, but then they don't. And then you do something else that almost gets you there, but then you don't. And that kind of behavior is really addictive, and we really like that a lot.

So you're going to get a higher pleasure response from that, just because you're drawing out that anticipation so long. It's like you're hacking the dopamine. You're playing around with it as long as possible, teasing and whatnot.

It's a lot more pleasurable than just a one night stand that lasts five minutes. You know, sometimes that is exciting. If you're in a long-term relationship and you have a five minute quickie, yeah, that's exciting, because that's novel. So now that's a different way though that's creating a pleasure response.

[Angel Donovan] Right, in a way you're hacking it in a different way.

[Andrea Kuszewski] Right. Yeah, so if you know all the variables, and you know about dopamine and what it does, and you know about oxytocin, and you know about novelty, and all these different variables that you can tweak. If you really understand why and how they work, you can take any relationship and make it better.

As far as the long, drawn-out neurological orgasm... That's really playing with that anticipation. And when you do that, you're going to have a longer pleasure response because there was so much buildup.

[Angel Donovan] Right. So is that both dopamine and oxytocin are going to spike higher and longer in your brain stream? Is that what's going on?

[Andrea Kuszewski] I'm not sure about higher spiking of oxytocin. It will be there, but that's not something where I can...

[Angel Donovan] Because often I feel like, both women and men... If you have a big orgasm, that's something that's going to bond you more to the person. It could be just, I guess it could be the novelty, because it doesn't happen so often, right? Scarcity?

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yeah.

[Angel Donovan] Or it could be actually, like I was just saying, oxytocin... If there's a bigger and longer spike of that, potentially you're getting more bonded to that person.

[Andrea Kuszewski] When you feel this huge pleasure response, and you're just happy, and you're like, "Wow, that was really great," and you're just lying there, You do feel more drawn to that. You're more bonded with that person, and that in turn is going to make you anticipate the next time with them even more. And so it's like they interplay off each other.

And so that's why I call it the neurochemical love potion, because it really is! And it could be dangerous, because you could end up getting in a relationship with someone that's not good for you, but because it is so exciting, and you end up getting so attracted to them, and attached to them, that it's kind of hard to quit. Because you get addicted to that feeling of, just, everything is awesome whenever you're with them.

[Angel Donovan] And so, is this different from a male and a female perspective? So, often we have this, I guess, stereotype, that women are going to be more interested in having a relationship with someone, especially after sex. I know that definitely in the dating industry, that's something that's said a lot: if you sleep with a girl, she's far more likely to have a relationship with you.

From your perspective, what are the differences, or are there any, between men and women, in these kind of motivations?

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yeah, so, people like to point out the differences between males and females in the way that their brains respond to different things. And yes, male and female brains are different. They are not the same. But, I don't think that's as critical when we're talking about sex and dating, and things like that. It's not as critical as people like to think.

We like to say, "Oh, men and women are different," that's why, you know, men are from Mars, women are from Venus. That's why these things don't work. But really, when we draw those kinds of conclusions, and we use those as a fallback. It's not really helping us.

So, yes, male brains are more responsive to visual images. Females are more responsive to smells, for example. Females are more sensitive to smells than men. That's just a biological fact. There's probably some kind of evolutionary reason for that, who knows. But it's not really that important when we're talking about dating.

And when we're taking about relationships, and upon first meeting a female, or a guy meeting a girl, a girl meeting a guy... It's more important that you understand about what does that person find interesting? What do they like, personally?

Because some women... I have friends that are females that prefer a lot of sexual partners. The poly scene in San Francisco here is pretty big. So if someone does have a proclivity to go toward, you know, they want poly-relationships? Move to San Francisco, because there's plenty, and it's very widely accepted, so move here if you're interested in that... But not everyone is. Not every male is interested in that. I know some guys that really want relationships, and they just don't get into one night stands. Some females do.

So to make those kinds of stereotypical conclusions I think is wrong. I think it's a bad idea. So you shouldn’t just assume that every girl you meet is going to want to get in a long-term relationship with you right away, because what ends up happening is you have these expectations of people, and then you expect... Everything that they do then is fulfilling that expectation. "She said, "Call me," Oh God, that means she wants to get married next month!" You know, that doesn't necessarily mean that. Maybe that means she wants to hang out with you again, because she really enjoyed the time with you.

So, just assuming that you have to be standoffish because a girl's going to want to be in a long-term relationship after having sex... You might actually be missing out on a great opportunity, just to get to know someone better, because you're pushing everyone away before they even do anything. It's like you're punishing them for behavior that you think they're going to do before you even do it. Which is kind of unfair.

[Angel Donovan] Yeah, so it's a very stereotypical thing, the whole commitment-phobic guy.

One of the things I saw in one of your articles was conditioning and paired association learning, and I was wondering how that played. We've been talking around, basically a whole bunch of sexual behaviors and lifestyles, and I was wondering to what extent you can hack your interest in terms of, like, "I'm attracted to African women, or Asian women, or Caucasian women. Or one night stand, casual sex lifestyle versus deep relationships, or maybe swinging," or whatever it is.

To what extent do you think that's learned conditioning, or basically you've kind of anchored your sexuality to that for the time being, it's very malleable. Versus, it's a more ingrained preference, and something that's more fixed for you.

[Andrea Kuszewski] Well here's the thing, it's actually both. So nothing is simple, everything is complicated, and it's kind of very nuanced.

So when you're talking about paired associations, it's one of the reasons why fetishes develop, and why pornography can get so addictive for some people. Because I'm engaging in this activity, and I'm experiencing an orgasm, and pleasure. And so now, whenever I engage in that activity, that's going to be exciting for me.

And so there are going to be good and bad ways that can work. Good ways is, you engage in activities that you like, and they turn you on, and maybe you can develop healthy fetishes. That's cool, that's totally fine. Or sometimes, you can develop a fetish for things that you shouldn’t, because they've been paired with sex so many times that now you're inducing that pleasure response from something that you really shouldn't. Like, I don't know, maybe child pornography, or something like that.

[Angel Donovan] Is that specifically... One of the pieces of advice that often circulates around, like having an orgasm in association with that. So, is it actually that because you get the biggest spike at the time of orgasm, so if you're looking at that image when that happens...

For instance, I'll give you a very specific example here. When people are talking about anal sex, and people getting used to it, they'll often say one of the best ways, a smoother way to do it... Because for most people it's quite a jarring difference from standard sex, moving to anal sex for most people.

If you're interested and you want to introduce it to yourself, the easiest way is to have standard sex and then insert something in the ass while you're doing that, like specifically having an orgasm, and that's going to build your comfort with it, and your interest in it, and motivate you to go more towards that. So, does that make sense to you at all? Is it a big deal: the orgasm, and associating it with things?

[Andrea Kuszewski] Maybe, but not so much the orgasm in that situation. But it does make sense from a behavioral perspective, of, if you're in a situation that you're enjoying, regular sex, and it's very pleasurable, maybe just had an orgasm, maybe you're about to, but you are enjoying it. That would be the time to introduce something like that, because you will then associate it with something that is enjoyable.

You're more likely to want to do it, because the whole entire act that you're doing is fun and enjoyable. So, "We're going to add one more element. Oh, it's a little novel," but you're more likely to associate that with something pleasurable, as opposed to, maybe you're a little bit scared of doing it, and it's kind of forced upon you out of the blue. You're more likely to be a little bit more timid and scared about that. It's not going have as positive a reaction.

But yeah, so pairing something with something that is pleasurable is a good way to do that. So yeah, if someone asked me for advice, that would be exactly what I would say.

[Angel Donovan] And so, if there's something like, going back to hacking, something practical. Say there's something I don't like about my sexual preferences, for instance, I'm always going for blonde girls, and maybe it's been ten years and I'm not sure why I'm always interested in blonde girls or whatever. But there's something in my sexual preferences I want to hack, can we consciously hack this and open ourselves up, for instance, to redheads, or, you know, just hack these sexual preferences which seem to be ingrained?

[Andrea Kuszewski] Well yeah, absolutely. There are preferences that are somewhat predetermined or ingrained. You know, I have preferences for guys with dark hair. I think I've dated like one guy with blonde hair. It's not that I don't like guys with blonde hair, I just seem to always be drawn towards the darker kind of dark-haired, dark guys, that kind of thing. That's just my personal preference.

But let's say that I decide, "Okay, I don't want to go for these guys anymore..." It's not that I don't find blonde guys attractive, I do, but then it's like you have to look for the other elements. So if I'm always after guys with dark hair, I'm always drawn to those, there are other things about their personalities that I also enjoy. I don't go after every guy with dark hair. You know, it's certain personalities I'm drawn towards.

So if you wanted to change... Like, if you're always dating blondes, maybe there’s girls with red hair that I'm interested in. You need to focus on What other personality traits, or the other body features that you enjoy, and to focus on those that are with someone with red hair. I am actually a redhead! I'm not trying to...

[Angel Donovan] Okay! I guess, to give probably a better example... I'll give you my situation many years ago. I'd grown up in a bit of a conservative family, if you like. Conservative values. And I felt I'd been a bit socially programmed, and maybe my genetics were also driving me towards one type. And then, one day I met a Japanese girl, many years later, but I wasn't attracted to her in any way, because she was basically Asian and I had no... It just didn't register, because I wasn't attracted to Asians at all, for whatever reason. But I pushed myself to get to know her better, and one thing led to another, and then that basically opened me up to Asian women in general. And all of a sudden, there were lots of attractive Asian women which I would have completely ignored, and not noticed before.

Afterwards I did that with other areas of that as well. Like, it was African women, and all these other aspects of my life which I seemed to be closed off to, due to either genetics or social programming, I managed to open up. And now I feel like, okay, I see the whole world, rather than kind of being blind to it. And it seems like it's been through this process of association, conditioning basically, over time, which has gone over the original programming which said, "All of that stuff isn't interesting to you."

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yes, we are socially programmed in a lot of ways, and I think that happens in a lot of cases. I actually grew up in a very strict Catholic household, so my experiences were very limited when I was younger. But then when I, of course, when I got to college, it was like I was seeing the world for the first time, because I was then in control of what I sought out, and what I spent time with, and who I spent time with, and different experiences.

And, of course, I found that the more I exposed myself to new things, the more things I realized about myself. I never realized that I was interested in A, B, C and D, because I had just never been exposed to them. But then once you are, maybe you find out that you like those things even more than the things that you previously liked, just because that was your whole world of experience. You just never know.

Some people actually do have a theory of homosexuality, for instance, that the people that tend to seek out new experiences, the people that are more of the novelty-seekers, are the people that are more likely to be bisexual. Just because the nature of... If you limit your experiences, and you're like, "This is how I am, and I'm only attracted to females, or only attracted to males," and that's just all you experience, you'll probably be pretty happy. You're fine.

But if you experiment around, maybe you find out that being with women and men is way more exciting than you even imagined, just because you never experienced it. So you just never know.

So, I would say, in your example of the blondes versus other types of women, just even asking a different woman out on a date, or getting to know them, you may find out that you're now more attracted to different women because you're experiencing them, whereas you were more mentally closed off from even conceptualizing them in that way.

[Angel Donovan] I felt that once I'd had the relationship, and I'd had sex with an Asian girl, that really changed everything. All of a sudden, I was seeing these things everywhere. Obviously I've experienced it in other areas before. I felt like it was the pairing explanation fit that quite well. So thanks for that.

Okay, so I understand that there's also some mental performance impact that comes from your sexuality. One of the studies I was looking at was, like, "If you have more sex, then it helps you to develop your brain better." But it also looked at the types of sex. So casual sex, like one night stand kind of sex, versus longer relationships, where you're having sex every few days with the same person. Have you looked into that at all?

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yeah, there was a study several years ago about how having sex makes you smarter. I think I actually wrote a piece about that. And then I was wondering, like, "Well, can virtual sex do the same thing?" Because if you're just talking about chemicals, and things like that...

And so, yeah, what they found was that... It was mice that engaged in either one night stands, or sex with the same partner, so-to-speak. And they found that the mice that were having sex with the unique partners actually had more neurogenesis. The mice that had sex with more partners, they had more neurogenesis than fewer.

And so what it's doing is, you're stimulating your brain in all kinds of different ways when you have sex, and it's not just a chemical response. You are actually stimulating neurogenesis, but it's not that just growing new neurons, or priming your brain for learning, is not going to make you smarter. You actually have to then, once it's primed, engage in the behaviors that are then going to make you smarter, if that makes any sense.

[Angel Donovan] Okay, studying and what have you?

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yeah. So when people talk about taking nootropics and things, because I talk a lot about how to increase your intelligence. Which is possible. But taking a pill isn't going to do it.

What the pills do, is they prime your brain for the most optimal learning state possible. And it's, like, ready to go. Now you've made it ready to go, you've given it the best possible tools and equipment, and drugs and everything. It's all read to go, but you still have to feed it the knowledge. You still have to engage in the really difficult behaviors of learning new things, and then you will learn them better. And you're going to retain more of it. And then your brain, in turn, will grow more.

So things like engaging in sex making you have greater mental performance... I think it's more of a priming your brain for things. And so you can take advantage of that. When you talk about hacking your own mental health in that way, knowing that that kind of thing primes your brain, then you set forward to engage in activities that are going to be healthy for your brain, because it's all primed and ready to go.

[Angel Donovan] Right, right. Well it's interesting. There's a stereotype that people involved in the polyamory community, swinging and stuff like that, are more intelligent in general. That's the stereotype, I don't know if you'd think that would potentially be a link, based on what you study or not?

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yeah, that is a stereotype, and I do study intelligence. And the thing with intelligence... It bothers me that so many people fall into this belief about intelligence. They look at IQ scores, and they try to determine all these things that are correlated with IQ. But when you talk about IQ, this is a normalized, standardized, distribution of scores, of ability.

This is over entire populations, so in that population is included people that have mental retardation, people that are cognitively delayed, people that have had injury, you know... So when you're looking at a distribution, the very low ends are also included in that.

So when we're talking about comparing IQ scores, like high intelligence, and mostly people are talking about 120 and above, 115 and above. The correlations between overall intelligence and individual things actually breaks apart at about 115. So these things no longer truly correlate, if that makes sense. Because what the IQ score does is it distinguishes between people of really low ability, and other people. That's what it's really good at defining.

So when you're looking at... Overall, the people who are engaging in poly-relationships are smarter than the average population, well, people that have severe cognitive delays are probably not engaging in sex with a whole lot of people. So maybe those people won't be included. So it's almost like a self-selected sample.

[Angel Donovan] So you're saying it could be biased?

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yeah, I think that's a sampling bias. But also, not to totally hate on that, because there may be a small effect, because people that are poly are probably more novelty-seeking in general. And people that tend to be more novelty-seeking also tend to seek out other kinds of behaviors that are novel, and good for your brain, like learning new skills, learning musical instruments, science and art.

[Angel Donovan] Right, curiosity basically?

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yes, and that is one of the factors of personality that is correlated with higher intelligence, is that novelty-seeking. And so, if you think a lot of people that are poly are probably also novelty-seeking, well yes, then I can see how that would correlate.

But, that doesn't mean that engaging in poly behaviors makes you smarter, if that makes sense. So it's not a flip-reversal. I think those people are self-selecting into that group because that's their nature in general. But it's not that you can take someone who has a low IQ and if you just have sex with a lot of people you're going to get smarter. That's not really how it works, if that makes sense.

[Angel Donovan] Yeah, we shouldn't be telling everyone to run around and have one night stands everywhere just to get intelligent!

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yeah! That's the problem with correlations. You notice an effect, like, there is a high correlation here, but that doesn't mean it causes it. A lot of it is self-selection in these categories based on other things.

[Angel Donovan] So, rounding off, is there anyone besides yourself that you would recommend for advice and insights into this area of life - so dating, sex and relationships - in the scientific community? Anyone you've come across? Anyone you've read their stuff, and you learned stuff from it, or anything like that?

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yeah, actually a really good friend of mine. He's also a cognitive scientist. His name is Scott Barry Kaufman. He co-wrote a book called Mating Intelligence, and he covers evolutionary psychology and biology, and all of these things that relate to mating behavior. And it's kind of like the anti-Game, if that makes any sense?

[Angel Donovan] That's The Game, by Neil Strauss?

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yeah, and he was actually on... I forget which talk show he was on. They kind of posed him as the like anti... They had, like, "Here's one way of looking at relationships, and then here's the other."

And he cites a lot of research in that book, studies looking at how guys walk up to girls in bars, what kinds of things work, what kinds of things don't. They found that humor actually is the best way to attract a woman. Being clever and funny.

[Angel Donovan] Yeah. That makes total sense to me, from my experience. Humor is huge.

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yeah, so I would recommend that book, and him in general. He writes a lot about that kind of stuff.

[Angel Donovan] Great, thank you very much for that. What would be your top three recommendations to help men get better results, better quality in this aspect of their life as fast as possible?

[Andrea Kuszewski] I guess for one thing, getting really comfortable with yourself. So, being really honest about what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are, building up your self-confidence. And then taking that and using that as a way to entice women. So instead of trying to be someone that you're not, instead of trying to put on a persona of someone that you emulate, really being comfortable with yourself, and embracing the gifts that you do have, and presenting that forward, I think is going to be a lot more effective for people. So I would say that.

And also just putting yourself out there more. If you never approach a girl at a party and show her your app, you're never going to know if she'll go out with you! So just not closing yourself off to opportunities because you think you can't succeed. I think that's probably a bad idea. So just even putting yourself out there, and making an attempt, because you never know.

[Angel Donovan] Yeah, the more tries, the more times it's going to work out. Okay, great. Thank you very much Andrea, it's been great. Thank you for your perspective from the academic world, and the scientific world. It's really good to get this kind of contrast to all the other guests we have on, so thank you very much for your time today.

[Andrea Kuszewski] Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate you asking me, and this has been a nice time.

[Angel Donovan] Thank you.