Joe Rogan | Are Alpha Males and Beta Males Real? w/Adam Conover

Another one people got really mad about. This is weirdly the one we got the biggest reaction to. And to the extent that I'm a little hesitant talking about it because it always starts to shit storm every time I do. Vaccines? No, actually we've not done a whole one on vaccines, but we really should because it's coming back. I used to think that vaccines was like kind of done as a topic and like we've gone through it. It is really back and it is big. But no, we did one on alpha males. We did an episode about dating. And we did one on how the idea of the alpha male doesn't exist in humans. Like if you talk to any anthropologist, any biologist, any sociologist, right? And be like, are humans organized in a social relationship where there's alphas and betas? They'll be like, no, what are you talking about? This is an unscientific idea, right? And we just did something laying that out in the context of like people who are, oh my type is I like alphas, right? Well, there's no such thing actually. Humans are some of your dominant. Some situations not in others, right? It's an overly simplistic way of looking at human relationships. And I thought that was a pretty simple, straightforward thing. I was like, this is just a bit of pseudoscience that you hear people tossing out. And people went ballistic on the internet because people have sort of like built a edifice of ideology in their minds about like, there's alphas, there's betas, I'm an alpha. This is what an alpha is like. This is what a beta is like, you know. Well, let's take away the words. They're clearly men who are more aggressive and athletic and dominant and more confident. And then men who are introverted and shy and more nervous and anxious. And there's a scale. In some situations, you know. Social situations. Yeah. And that's what we're talking about, right? In social, well, yeah, but your social situation could change based on what situation you're in. You know what I mean? They could, but like an athletic confident male is always going to be an athletic confident male and an introverted, anxious male who has problems with social anxiety is going to be the same. That's who that person is. I don't think so necessarily. But so when we're talking about alphas, when we're talking about alphas, right? In animals, what is that? It's a social hierarchy, right? In animals. So let's take away that word. I mean, but what people are using to describe when they're saying alphas and betas, they're saying like confident, strong, secure people and people that are anxious and not confident. So if you're trying to say, hey, like it's good to be confident, it's not so great to be anxious. Like that's fine, right? But when people talk about alpha males and beta males, right, they're specifically bringing in the language of like evolution of biology, of zoology, of evolutionary psychology, you know? And they'll start saying stuff like, well, there's alphas and there's betas and women are hardwired to be attracted to the alpha, you know, because that's what it's like in nature. Like they'll be using that language, right? And so what we're pointing out is that's not scientific, right, it's not scientific. It's not scientific, but it is true that women are hardwired to be attracted to confident athletic men. I don't know, well, I don't know if I agree with that, but yeah. Really? You don't think that women look at like pro athletes and like big, strong athletic men, and you don't think they're drawn to that for evolutionary reasons? No, I don't actually. I think that'd be- Okay, do you think that men are drawn to women with small waists and big hips and large breasts for evolutionary reasons? You know, I think that's an easy, I think what that is is that's an easy intuition to come to if you're like looking at the way people behave, right? But one of the things about evolutionary psychology is it's the most common mistake to look at the way that people do behave and say, the reason we behave that way is because evolution says that's the best way, right? That's their argument, for instance, I'll give you an example, that's the argument that was, arguments like that were used, for instance, to justify slavery, right? That like, oh, because, you know, whites and blacks have this hierarchical relationship in American society, that's the way it was intended. That's how nature intended it to be, right? But we can't- But that's a giant leap. We can't make that leap. But we're just talking about like the shapes of bodies. Yeah. Like men universally are attracted to a certain shape of bodies. There's men that are attracted to different ones. Yeah, I don't think men are universally attracted to the same body. People vary, but that hourglass shape has been throughout time something that men are attracted to. I think that hourglass shape is something throughout our recent cultural memory that we tell each other that men are attracted to, right? That's when we're, that's what we're told from an early age to this is the sort of women that men are attracted to. And so a lot of men end up adopting that, right? But I don't think that deep down that's how men naturally are, you know? Really? Yeah. I read this- But that doesn't make any sense to me. That's so non-intuitive. Because- Well, I'm all about things that are non-intuitive. Where do you think it started? Where do you think this narrative of men being attracted to the woman with large breasts and a small waist and a big ass, where do you think that started? Because this is like evolutionary biology has pretty much settled on the idea that the reason why the large hips would indicate that the woman would be easier to give birth, having large breasts and a large ass would indicate that she has, she's fertile and then she has ample fat storage in the right places if she's going to be pregnant and carry children. There's all these evolutionary biology reasons why people are attracted to certain things. Why a woman would be attracted to a tall, muscular, handsome man, good genetics, very strong and confident, can take care of her. All these things are based on evolutionary biology. So I don't understand why you think these are learned sort of cultural artifacts or something like that. My question is, this is an assumption that we the public make about how evolutionary biology works, right? It's more of a thing that we sort of agree on. Well, we as the, like there's an idea among the public that this is true. I don't know if it's a scientific idea. That's my point. I've had conversations with evolutionary biologists who explain the reason why men are attracted to certain shapes and why women are attracted to certain shapes. This is sort of, I mean, this is science in a way. The reason why they're attracted to tall men that are muscular and confident is because that is what's always saved you throughout history. I mean, it only makes sense, doesn't it? Well, just because it makes the point of our show, right? Is that just because something makes intuitive sense doesn't mean that it's necessarily true, right? But don't you think that in this case that this is a varied argument? Like, I don't think that's something that you can dismiss. I don't dismiss it, but I don't assume the truth of it simply because that's what everybody agrees upon, right? But if you ask girls, like, what are you into? And you say, are you into tall, muscular, confident men who are also nice to you? Jesus Christ, it's gonna be off the charts. It's gonna be like most of them. I'm really not sure that's the case. Really? You think you had like a survey of women, and if the men were equally kind and equally intelligent and friendly, you don't think that more women would be sexually attracted to these tall, handsome men with great bodies? I mean, look, I'm not gonna say that, like, first of all, you're positing like a value judgment in it that the bodies are great, right? So like, are women attracted to attractive bodies? If that's the question, then I would say, of course. Dad bods are more attractive to women's study times. Some fucking guy with a dad bod made that. Here's something that I was really influenced by. What do you think of that? What I just said, though, that doesn't make sense to you, that women would be attracted to someone who's fit? Look, I mean, it's a hypothetical, right? Like, certainly athleticism, right, is something that is attractive, right? That's something that many people find attractive, right? Not everybody finds that attractive. And I don't think that we can necessarily reason backwards to like a specific evolutionary relationship, right? Because the truth of what those evolutionary relationships are is like often a lot more complicated than our immediate intuition about it. And what we're specifically pushing back against in that segment is like the really sort of unscientific, you know, Use of alpha and beta. Yeah, exactly. Where it's like, you know, you've got people just on internet forums, like sort of doing amateur pseudoscience, right? Saying like, this is how the relationships between men and women are designed evolutionarily. And we were just pointing out on a very, very simple level, like the alpha and beta social hierarchy theory, right? That like humans are organized in a social hierarchy and alphas are above betas. Not true, right? Even someone who is the person who you posited, right? The person who is athletic and confident, right? The, you know, the high school football quarterback, right? Versus the high school football nerd, right? Well, take those two people and then put them in a different situation, right? If those two people are like in gym class together, right? Of course the high school quarterback is like on the top of that social interaction, right? Looking at the sort of, you know, classic Wolfpack model, they're the one who's sort of running the show, right? And the other guy's like hanging out in the bleachers, talking to his friends, right? Or talking to nobody, because he's a beta in that situation, right? If you then take that kid and then you, you know, send that kid to like nationals, right? Or whatever, you know, and that kid, sorry, take the quarterback character. And, you know, he's suddenly like, you know, from the little podunk town, right? He's not from the big school. He's like way down in the totem pole, right? That person is no longer gonna be in that high social hierarchy, right? And if you take that nerd and you put that, you know, take that kid, maybe he's the dungeon master of his, you know, Dungeons and Dragons group, right? That kid is gonna be the alpha in that situation, right? That's how humans work. You know, humans aren't organized in sort of like little pods that stay together for life and there's one person who's dominant the whole time, right? And that's the simple point that we were making in that piece, right? And people got upset. Yeah, people got upset because there are so many people who, we talked about this later on the show, there's this idea called the backfire effect, right? Where when people are told something that they don't agree with, that when they, someone has told somebody a fact, when somebody has told a fact that contradicts like a really deeply held belief, it can often cause them to disbelieve it even when it's true, right? And fight back even harder. One of the reasons that happens is because of an idea called identity protective cognition. It's if the fact that is being debunked is literally part of your identity, like if it's something that you believe really, really deeply, it's incredibly hard for you to disbelieve it, right? The classic example of this is like, you know, Sean Hannity doesn't believe in climate change, right? Really? Well, you know what? I actually don't know that specifically what Sean Hannity thinks about climate change. So let's just say somebody who's made their whole career on climate change doesn't exist, right? All their friends are in the anti-climate change community, right? They met their wife at an anti-climate change fundraiser. You know what I mean? They make their money. They make their anti-climate change book every year, right? Now, climate change is real, right? There's no evidence I could present that person with that is going to make them take the social risk of ending all their relationships, changing their whole life, right? Because if they were to say, okay, you know what? Actually, I'm convinced climate change is real. They would lose all their friends. Their wife would leave them. They would lose their revenue stream. They can't possibly come to that conclusion, right? And so they fight back so super hard, right? And so that's what ended up happening with that segment. There's a whole group of people who have built their whole lives on the idea there's alphas and betas. I'm an alpha. I'm not going to be a beta, right? And so, and maybe that meant something positive to them. You know, maybe they were in a bad place in their life. And through this model of alpha versus beta, they started working out or they started, you know, improving themselves a little bit, right? And maybe they started acting a little bit more confidently and now they're in a relationship, right? All those things can be true with the idea of alphas and betas and humans not being scientific, right? But so when I tell them that, they fight back really hard. They're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, this is real. This is real, you know? And so that video, which again, I had no idea that it'd be controversial. I got the most YouTube response videos, got the most, you know, furious things from it. And the weirdest thing was people started to say, this is political. Like, why is Adam Rooney's everything getting political? I'm like, I don't know what the hell they're talking about. This is, I have no idea. I have no idea how it's political. Alphas and betas are now political. I mean, that's what people were saying. I guess, you know, for some people it's become that, but because they've seen it as part of like, I don't know, whatever argument they're in their head they're having about feminism or something like that. But to me, I'm just like, guys, in dating, right? In life, like this is not a real concept. If you wanna say, I'm gonna be confident tomorrow, I'm not gonna tell you that's not gonna help you out, you know? And, you know, I am a little bit reticent to make like a broad conclusion about evolutionary psychology, right? But I can tell you, again, go talk to any anthropologist, any biologist, any, you know, sociologist. Is there such a thing as alpha males in humans? In the strictest scientific sense of the word, no. In the strict, yeah, exactly. And I think they're looking at it in terms of like, winners and losers, pushovers and people who get the job done, you know, confident people versus people who are not confident. But I think you're correct, and I think obviously humans operate on a giant spectrum. And if you start going around saying alpha and beta, and the idea that all alphas are the same, or all betas are the same, it's just as ridiculous as the idea of saying all Democrats are the same, or all Republicans, it becomes an ideology. It's a pro-male ideology. Which, I have the biggest problem with like, overconfident men's rights guys. Because I'm like, listen, we have all the rights. Like, it fucking settled down. Just like, I had a whole bit about it. It was like, it's like divorce laws, and that's it. Everything else is stacked in our favor. Just fucking chill out, you're making us look better. Ooh,EXIS LuxANK