"I spent a long time imagining that I’m talking to somebody who is single and struggling, because they’re not meeting people or not clicking with anybody,” Arts & 鶹Ƶ alum Paul Eastwick ’01 says of writing his new book, "."
“There’s this frustration that everybody out there on the apps is terrible, and people don’t want to settle. And I get it: online dating reinforces a hierarchy that suits some people well—and others not at all.”
The book, subtitled The New Science of Love and Connection, parses psychology research for a general audience, with some self-help lessons woven in. Part of Eastwick’s mission is to challenge decades-old findings in the field of evolutionary psych that cast heterosexual dating and mating in a rather—well—Darwinian light: that men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and romance is a zero-sum game.
Such notions aren’t just unproductive, Eastwick argues—they have been hijacked by an incel culture and a “manosphere” that promotes misogyny and even violence.
“It’s tempting to think that dating and relationships are about competition and where you fit within a pecking order—that you’d better hope you’re a nine, and God help you if you’re a six, but at least you’re not a two,” says Eastwick, a at the University of California, Davis.
“By taking people through the science, I hope I can get them to think about dating in a way that’s a little less mercenary, and a little less personal: if you’ve been rejected, don’t take it as a sign of how good you are.”
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