May 21 • 1HR 24M

Evo Psy & Incels | William Costello

Bo and William discuss whether evolutionary psychology removes the magic from reality.

 
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William Costello is a Ph.D. student of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is part of Dr. David Buss’ lab. In 2021 William graduated with distinction with an MSc in Psychology, Culture and Evolution from Brunel University London. William’s Master’s dissertation was some of the world’s first empirical research investigating the psychology of incels (involuntary celibates). The first paper from this research is published in the journal Evolutionary Psychological Science, and the second paper is currently under review.

William is currently leading the world’s biggest study of incels to date. Incels can choose to get paid to participate or alternatively have their participation fee donated to men’s mental health charity Movember. Learn more about this project, including the research team’s mission statement and a link to participate in the research here.

William is also working on a collaborative research project investigating Cross Sex Mind Reading.

Follow William on Twitter here.

Timestamps:

0:00 Intro

1:51 How William got into evo psy

4:05 What evo psy offers us

10:15 Is evo psy still controversial?

13:35 Does learning evo psy remove the magic of life?

22:45 Incels aren’t novel

26:58 Incels 2.0

31:08 Why does it hurt to be rejected?

33:30 Why would you define yourself as an incel?

42:00 The value of socially enforced monogamy

46:22 Being the second wife of a high-value man

50:40 Polyamory and polygyny 

59:05 Feminism and femcels

1:05:25 The future of the mating market

1:21:10 The flexibility of norms

1:22:27 Bonus questions preview

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