   
Securing Sexuality is the podcast and conference promoting sex positive, science based, and secure interpersonal relationships. We give people tips for safer sex in a digital age. We help sextech innovators and toy designers produce safer products. And we educate mental health and medical professionals on these topics so they can better advise their clients. Securing Sexuality provides sex therapists with continuing education (CEs) for AASECT, SSTAR, and SASH around cyber sexuality and social media, and more.
Links from this week's episode: 
The Intersection of Ghosting, Psychopathy, and Safe Dating PracticesIn today's digital landscape, where intimacy and information security intersect, understanding the phenomenon of ghosting and its underlying psychological factors has become increasingly crucial. Welcome to an exploration of ghosting, psychopathy, and how to navigate safe dating practices in the digital age. The Mystery of Ghosting Ghosting, the act of suddenly cutting off all communication without explanation, has puzzled many. Wolf Goerlich, a hacker, and Stefani Goerlich, a sex therapist, delve into this topic in their podcast "Securing Sexuality." They reveal that ghosting can be both an unintentional oversight and a deliberate avoidance strategy. While everyone might have ghosted someone unintentionally, the serial ghosters present a more complex issue. Understanding the Dark Triad Peter Jonason, an expert in dark triad traits, explains that individuals high in psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism are more prone to ghosting. This behavior is often linked to a low-risk method of mate switching, driven by the illusion of unlimited options provided by dating apps like Tinder and social media platforms like Instagram. Jonason highlights that dating apps create a superstimuli environment, leading to unrealistic expectations and addictive behaviors. This digital abundance of potential partners diminishes investment in any single relationship, making ghosting an easy, conflict-avoidant exit strategy. The Role of Evolutionary Psychology The conversation extends to evolutionary psychology, where the digital age's impact on dating and relationships is examined. The internet, akin to a global city, inflates the perceived value of individuals in the dating market, often leading to psychopathy and other dark triad traits. Gender Differences and Safety Stefani Goerlich points out that women often ghost for safety reasons, such as avoiding overtly sexual or threatening interactions. Jonason concurs, noting that while ghosting is a modern term, the behavior of ending relationships abruptly has always existed, now just manifesting through text rather than phone calls or in-person interactions. The Impact on Relationship Commitment Dating apps have revolutionized how people meet but at the cost of relationship commitment. Jonason discusses how these platforms undermine monogamy, delay reproduction, and increase the age at which people get married. The ease of accessing multiple partners with minimal effort leads to a culture of fast relationships, much like the concept of fast fashion. Tips for Navigating Online Dating
In conclusion, the digital age has transformed dating, bringing both opportunities and challenges. By understanding the psychological factors behind ghosting and adopting mindful dating practices, individuals can navigate the digital dating landscape more safely and authentically. Stay tuned to "Securing Sexuality" for more insights into the intersection of intimacy and information security. Key Concepts:
Hello, and welcome to Securing Sexuality, the podcast where we discuss the intersection of intimacy-
-and information security. I'm Wolf Goerlich. He's a hacker. And I'm Stefani Goerlich. She's a sex therapist. And together, we're going to discuss what safe sex looks like in a digital age. And as so often happens, we've had so many questions on this show. And one question I've had for you, Stephanie, again and again and again, and you've given me different answers, but I've never really been satisfied with the answer. That's not on you. But I've always, like, why do people ghost? I never understood ghosting. It makes no sense to me. And you've tried to get this into my head, but this has always been something I struggle with. Well, I think the why, there are different reasons, right? Different people do it for different reasons. There is no one unified why. Although, you know, I'm working with you on the Securing Sexuality book, and I was talking to one of our interview subjects the other day, and she pointed out something I'd never really thought of before, which is probably anybody who's ever dated has ghosted someone. No way. Probably not intentionally in the most part, but there's always going to be that one conversation that just kind of like drops off your radar and you don't realize. And so the other person is left feeling hurt and abandoned and confused, and they don't even exist in your brain anymore. So that's an answer I don't think I've ever given you before. The idea that we all have, we just don't know that we have. But I think what you're really talking about is why do people do it on purpose? Why does this become a pattern in somebody's sort of courtship profile, right? The serial ghosters. Serial ghosters. And honestly, I don't know. But we have somebody who does, so I'm excited to have somebody not me give you an answer to this question. Peter Jonason, thank you for joining us. Now, Peter, you are an expert in the dark triad traits, mate choice, psychometrics, sex differences. I see here you won the Ignoble Award in psychology in 2014, and you run a virtual lab called Personality Relationships and Evolutionary Psychology with members like all over the world who are contributing to this research. So thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me. So why do people ghost? No, I know it's a much bigger question, but... When I was listening to you, to be honest, the word why is a tricky word because the word why can be about for what reason, but it can also be what is the function in a deeper level, right? So you might ask simply kind of surface level questions about why people ghost, right? They give the reasons like, I didn't really like this person too much, or they were, you know, they were over the top, and I just wanted to get out quickly. And you could ask it other ways and say, what are the kinds of people who are likely to do it? So we know from, for example, my research, I mean, I think this paper is horrible, but people seem to like it for some reason. And that people high in the dark triad are more likely to ghost and of course, more likely to ghost casual sex partners than long term partners. You might think about a deeper function of ghosting is that it's a low risk way of mate switching. So mate switching is a common behavior that people do. It's more common probably now than ever because of the apparent availability of options, right? So things like Tinder, and Instagram, I mean, Instagram is really the largest dating app that exists. And it gives the illusion of an unlimited supply of partners. And so our relative investment in any one partner is diminished by the presence, or at least the appearance of alternatives. And so it's just, it's an easy, passive aggressive, avoiding conflict kind of way out. And the reason why it might happen in the manner that it does may also tie back to hormones, in the sense that we are kind of addicted to our phones. And so the people are damaged by it, because they're, they're addicted to this conversation. It's not like an in person interaction, there's a cell phones have a, they create this, what is this called? Over super, super stimuli, right? It's a super stimuli. So it gives you the level of feedback, this level of dopamine, if you will, as well, that you just don't get in real life. And so it's an addiction, like everything else, you get hooked on it, because it's, it's like McDonald's, right? It's a really cheap way of getting the thing that you want. And so attention, for example, is one of the things that people want. And so in particular, women tend to feed more on attention than men do. So Instagram, for example, just gives attention, attention, attention, attention. So it gives the appearance that I can have anyone in the world, men from Dubai are hitting me up, Habibi, come to Dubai, these kinds of things. So it's, it's just like, why invest? Why even care at all to this virtual person? No, I'm out. You pull the ripcord, move on to the next person. So this global community that's created gives the appearance of more options. And with more options, I think probably increases psychopathy. And so there's some mixed review on this. But people behind the dark triad tend to prefer to live in cities, live in places that have more people, like demographically, in terms of zip code, they would, if you ask them, where would they like to live, they say cities, where do they live cities, and this is compared to say, rural areas. And so basically, the internet creates a city for all of us, even if you're living in a little tiny town in Kentucky, you're you're you have access to the world. And that information sets your barometer, it sets how the kinds of partners or how many partners or what your what you think your value is in the market. And sometimes that can be inflated. And so you may ghost is another reason you because you might think you're better than this person, that they don't deserve your nice treatment. Because you if you get your ego stroked, you know, if you you know, like, I know girlfriends of mine, for example, who will you get on Tinder, and within a day, they have 100 matches, right? Because it's just like, it's this ego fest. It's like, I'm amazing. I have 100 matches, all these men, you know, offering to this and that. And men don't really experience this, except for like the super attractive men, of course. So I'm not one of those men. So I don't experience this. And but we know this to be the case. And so this information, while it's untrustworthy, it miscalibrates people towards psychopathy. Because it's people's are seen as kind of disposable, I have 100 options. As we say, as they say, in Italy, but then it So, first of all, as the sex therapist and social worker, I do need to go on record and officially say please, listeners, if somebody on a dating app invites you to Dubai, don't go. That's how you end up with a Liam Neeson coming to get you back. Nothing good comes of somebody inviting you overseas on Tinder. Don't do it bad. Now that I've made our safety disclaimer, you know, Peter, one of the things that I find fascinating as a clinician, is the way that people use the internet as like a self diagnostic tool. And one of the most popular things that people like to call themselves now is a psychopath. Like they did an online checklist, they found some website somewhere, they have the dark triad qualities, and they're a psychopath. And it's turning into almost like this edgy statement of I'm so cool, I'm so different from everybody. And I'm curious if you can kind of give us an overview for the folks that aren't as like, forensic site nerdy as I am. What do you mean when you talk about the dark triad? And how prevalent are these personality types of these traits, actually? Well, let's let's start, let's go backwards. The first problem is, is that everybody is obsessed with prevalence, because they're obsessed with what I call the three D's, which is deterring, detecting and destroying people who they perceive as cheaters in I don't mean romantic cheaters, I mean, cheaters in the social system. And so people are more agentic people who are selfish people who are self interested, aggressive, antagonistic, all these kinds of things. So the issue of, of, of prevalence is a tricky one, because genuine criminal, like super, super problematic, let's say narcissism is extremely rare, extremely rare, like, you'd be you'd be lucky to meet one, so to speak. But there's lots of corporate psychopaths, and professor psychopaths, and girlfriend psychopaths that are, you know, they score relatively high on some measure that calculates the continuous distribution of people's scores. So most research nowadays on what's called the dark triad, and it's for the for the not the up the readers who don't know it listeners who don't know what it is, it's the confluence of studying the psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism altogether, you might add sadism as well, for example, but people score below the midpoint on a kind of Likert scale, like a, you know, one to five, you know, disagree to strongly disagree, most people aren't high on these traits, the average person is rather low in sadism, we're rarely going to find them. And so to call your boyfriend, a psychopath, or to call yourself a psychopath, is a little bit of a stretch. And it's a little bit being, I think, intentionally provocative. I'm a psychopath, I'm proud of it. And it's true that these traits are egocentric. But there's this coolness that has come with the dark triad a little bit where it's like, it's cool to say you're a narcissist. I mean, we have people who are rampant narcissists, like say, like Kanye West. And we might say, Oh, yeah, see, look, it's, it's great to be a narcissist. Well, I don't know about that. Like, I'm not really sure. Like he was in such debt when he married Kim Kardashian. Right? We just didn't know this. But she paid off his debt. Why? Because she was in love. And so that's what you do when you're in love. And so no, I think if we're talking about the psychopath that people think of from from all the podcasts, and the true crime, and all this kind of stuff, this is incredibly rare. Now, unfortunately, shows like true crime shows, and, and movies, and all these things, they, they give you a false impression that these things are common, because you could just watch 50 movies on your on your Netflix, right? You could just stream episode after episode after episode about a psychopath. But these kinds of levels of psychopathy are incredibly rare in the actual population. What's more accurate is that we all the two of you, me, probably my dog who's over here behind the screen, chewing on a bone, has some degree of narcissism, some degree of Machiavellianism, some degree of psychopathy. And more importantly, that these things can be activated in predict because of predictable stimuli in the world. And so whether that stimuli is from childhood, whether it's stimuli is from adult circumstances, there might be good cause to score higher in a particular context. So my favorite example is a mother whose baby gets kidnapped. Right? Well, part of being not psychopathic and being a mom is being highly empathetic, which means that caring about hurting other people, for example, but a mother who can't D downregulate her empathy, to go and punch the crap out of that person loses her baby. So in that sense, psychopathy, right, not clinical psychopathy, but psychopathy scores in this particular context, will be downregulated potentially in this person, because they have to they have to prioritize their, their baby, and maybe themselves, right, as well. And so to act like these traits are all bad is this baby in the bathwater problem. And so the traditional approach from psychology, psychiatry, is that traits that are bad for the group are therefore inherently bad, period, no question, we can't have any more conversation about it. And the evolution of psychologists, among us, me included, say, wait, right, being bad is not necessarily bad for the individual. It could be good to be selfish, especially if it's context dependent. Right. So one of the reasons that men make more money than women do, and it's not a lot of a lot more money. But one of the reasons is, men are more likely to ask for promotions. Well, what is enabled, what enables that narcissism, right, the sense of I am worth something and the boldness to say, hey, boss, give me some more money. Maybe the boss says no. But you have the ability to say to stand up and say, be brave, or maybe delusional, either one is fine. And say, hey, give me some more money. And you see what happens, right. And so this is one of the personality predictors, for example, of that accounts for the, you know, the, the, the, the, the so called gender pay gap, right? It's narcissism, in particular in men, seems to enable them to make more money. So jumping back just a little bit this, this weekend, I was digging into evolutionary mismatches, because the weekend is always a very fun time in the Goerlich household. And I was looking at from a cybersecurity lens, but I have a question for you, which is, you know, the idea here is, is, of course, that there is something that made a lot of sense while we are developing as a species, going after something that's sweet, go, you know, maximizing the use of a resource, whatever it may be, that in the modern times, is, is creating maladaptive behaviors. So my, my question to you is, in a way, is that what we're talking about when we think about dating apps and dating platforms? And perhaps by extension, does that mean that these platforms or the internet is, is leading us towards, when we think about maladaptive behaviors, leading us towards a higher prevalence of psychopathy? Okay, so many things. Okay, so the the mismatch is quite compelling, because the, the context of the environments under which, quote, unquote, adaptations will have evolved, don't have to exist anymore. But it doesn't mean the mechanisms that have evolved go away. Right. And so this is a good example. The best example is the fat sugar salt problem, right? So these are things that were extremely rare. Now, they're rampant. And so now the obesity epidemic is an is in part a function of an evolutionary mismatch that our adaptations for food seeking behaviors evolved in a time of scarcity. This is similar with mating. I'm not sure if dating apps are going to make us more psychopathic, they might instead diminish, which I think they probably already doing relationship commitment, they're probably undermining the probability of monogamy, they're probably, you know, decreasing the, or increasing the age at which people get married, decreasing the amount of children. So we know in more, let's call them gender egalitarian, more competitive economic markets, more modern places like Singapore, Japan, the birth rate is going down in America as well, in Canada as well. And part of this is that the the the delay in reproduction is enabled, in part by the appearance of a billion options. And there's this weird, morbid fascination with the internet. It's always like, oh, it's on the internet, people are people everywhere, to go back to the mismatch that, right. So people's evolutionary adaptations are behaving on the on social media, whether it's Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, grinder, whatever it is, and they're playing out to their hyper extreme, because there's no, there's no guardrails anymore, right? So people can be extra jerky, because there's no one going to punch them in the face. But when we were when when us, I suspect you're similar, we are similar in age, but when we were in high school, and we said something jerky, right, there was someone there to stop us. Not just and maybe not just our father as well. I'm thinking of boys here in this case, but you know, older, older boys, right. So if I'm a freshman, and I'm being obnoxious, well, the seniors are there to, you know, take me down a couple pegs. But with the internet, there's no guardrails. So whether it's aggression, whether it's sex, and so it's like these basic instincts to use the you know, Sharon Stone and slash Freudian kind of thing, sex and aggression, just get ratcheted up and ratcheted up and ratchet it up. And so it's online porn, right, whatever your kink is, it exacerbates that. And then that plays out in real life, because now this is all I this is, this is all I want. Right? So before this, the sexual script was a little more flexible, a little, maybe a little less porn inspired. But now it's like, Nope, this is what I need. You need to say these things, you need to do these things, you need to wear this thing, because you've been hyper specified. And so in this way, this isn't creating psychopathy. But the internet can create unrealistic expectations of everything. Your point there about, it's just people being people also reminds me, it's not only just people being people, it's mammals being mammals. We were with a zoological society, we're touring this, this, it's not called a tribe of elephants, but whatever it may be, we're doing this tribe of elephants. And Stephanie will add in the right word, because she always knows the right word. But what was fascinating was they're talking about herds of elephants, we'll go with herds. What they're talking about if the male young male elephants don't have mentors, like there isn't a senior male elephant to keep them in line. And if they don't have mates, they they were running roughshod, like they're terrorizing local villages, they're getting in sort of trouble. And so the the way that they had to do conservation had to shift to make sure they had an older male that could like whip them into shape. It really is something very intrinsic with being on this planet in the way we've we've evolved as a species, which I don't know, maybe elephants never goes because they never forget. Well, I don't know about elephant ghosting, there's not enough of them to ghost and their hoops probably don't work well with phones. But the elephant bit I love this finding, I use it in my talks is tremendous, because it really has two implications. One, it has an implication of, we need dads, we need dad, like we don't need we don't need jerk dads, right? But we need dads, because dads orient differently to their children, right? Dads stand as a kind of quasi threat to their sons to act right. Like, but if there's no bigger dominant males around, then as you said, the young males just go crazy. Females of most species prefer older males, because older males have proven themselves, for example, they're bigger, they have they have gray hair, like silverback gorillas, for example, as I said, you know, and so the younger, younger males are always frustrated. And that frustration needs to be, like constrained by older males. So it's interesting to me that you bring up gender differences. Because one of the conversations that Wolf and I have had a lot over the years is the what can be perceived as the prevalence of female ghosting of women, just dropping communication. And often, in my experience, that has been a safety response. It's been the person I was talking to said something overtly sexual that made me uncomfortable, or they said something threatening, or I didn't even want to give him my number at all. But I didn't have a polite way of extricating myself. So now I'm not going to respond. And I'm curious where those sort of ghosting as safety action plays into this research. So I'm of the mind that there really are only two basic evolutionary forces. And one is the seeking of safety, stability, security, that's like one thing. And then there's the sexy one, right, the status and mating and all of that. And they're, they're often at odds. And but certainly, ghosting can be motivated by mating oriented approaches, like I'm just going to trade transition to someone else, or I'm going to put you on the back burner. Right? And both sexes can, of course do that. But there is a safety element to Yeah, sure, why not. But the ghosting, the problem with the word ghosting is, is it gives the sense that this is a new phenomenon. But we have to put ghosting in context. ghosting is just one method of ending a relationship. And we just call this ghosting. When we were young, we used to talk on the phone for hours, we just stopped calling the person back. For example, it was ghosting, we just didn't call it ghosting, you want this relationship to be over? Okay, I don't want to talk anymore. Right? I'm not sure if ghosting is new, other than the fact that it tends to occur over text, because most of our relationships now are via text. And so one of the things that we tried to highlight in our study is, because on its surface, just studying ghosting is trivial. We tried to say that ghosting is one of the things that people haven't studied in relation to the dark triad, because most research, admittedly, inspired by me, and often by me, is about the mate selection element, it's the beginning of the relationship, but the how relationships end, there's all communication researchers that have a list of ways in which relationships end relationship disillusion. People aren't really studying this, they haven't studied it. Another reason is from our work on Tinder, is that people on Tinder tend to be higher on psychopathy and narcissism than people who aren't on Tinder. And this is particularly men. But in women, it's the opposite. The women who are most likely to be on Tinder seem to be women who are vulnerable in terms of attachment. And even though the most common way that people are meeting people overwhelmingly is apps. But what apps do, I don't, I can talk to many people at a time, I can sit on my couch and swipe endlessly, I don't have to deal with that physical scariness of having to walk up to a woman, for example, like what Tinder does is it gives you really low investment. It's like, I don't have to try very hard. And if you start not having to try very hard, it sets the tone badly in relationships, right? So our grandparents, the courtship of our grandparents was another world compared to our courtship. We've talked about this before on the show that Stephanie and I met on Tinder. And one of the things that we're preparing for this episode, so maybe that makes it sound like I'm higher in the dark triad. But one of the things I was mentioning to her, I was probably talking to, I don't know, maybe five people at the time when we started dating. And after our first couple dates, I circled back to those people and said, Hey, lovely chatting with you. And one person, I actually had a date that I canceled on a lovely chatting with you, but found someone having a good time. Best of luck in your search. And I think perhaps that's maybe because I was raised by my grandmother in part, maybe that's because I've got sort of that Gen X mentality. It never occurred to me just to like, delete them. Yeah, yeah, well, it sounds like you have what they would call relationship authenticity. And I think older people like us, let's say approach these apps a little bit differently. And younger people have the illusion of time. And so to them, it's just like, yep, whatever. Right? I don't really know what I want. I'm still finding myself I'm going to go do a yoga retreat for a year, you know, whatever. But purposeful dating is what is what you're referring to. But most people don't purposeful date because purposeful dating is is is not dating for fun. Right? It's dating to find someone. And it's dating with authenticity in that, like, respect, right? So we say, Look, I've enjoyed our time together, but it's not working out. Or I've enjoyed our time together, but I found somebody else. That's a different kind of dating than what is met being manifest in people say under 35. Yeah, everyone is disposable. I mean, I'm very much into fashion. So what am I have very few hobbies left in my life and fashion is one of them. And one of fashion's pet peeves is fast fashion. And like Zara and places like that, yeah, H&M. And that's how people's attitude towards mating and dating also is it's, it's fast, right? And so we we see this person for a little bit, then we move on to the next person, we move on to the next person. And then we do it's called the the monkey theory, right? You you're grabbing on to the next branch before you've let go of the next one, right? And you're just transitioning from partner to partner and partner. Like comedian Aziz Ansari has a book about this called Modern Romance. And he says, or one of the things he says, is that our grandparents and probably us as well, we were we were satisficers, right? We found someone who was good enough, right? They weren't no one was perfect. No one is perfect, right? But someone I could work with someone who was sufficiently attractive, someone who was sufficiently smart, someone who was sufficiently whatever, right? And now it's like, it's never enough. People are not they're, they're relatively neutral to long term relationships. But they are very positive on short term one. It's funny that you talked about both elephants and monkeys, because in my world, what what you're describing, we would call monkey bar monogamy, where you're in a committed relationship for the one until you find the next and then you grab on to the next partner, and you're committed until you find the next and you grab on to the next partner. And there does seem to be a certain, you know, evolutionary humor in that. Yeah, evolutionary biologists call it hypergamy, right? So it's this, the effort to wrap to make up. So thinking about bad investments, and elephants and monkeys and everything else that we've drawn in for inspiration from today. What would your what would your evolutionary dating tips be as a psychologist? How like, should people even be online if there were two or three things that people could use to channel science and human nature for their own partnership success? What would you tell them to do? Having a good sense of your value, not only will enable your mating success, but it will actually make other people's mating success and their lives better. Because we will if we if we have an accurate sense of our value, then we will treat other people better. Right? We won't look down on them, we won't ghost them, we won't, we won't treat them as disposable, because it'd be like, no other people have value in the world. The speed to which people go to sex, after meeting off of an app, is actually statistically faster than they go to sex if they meet in person, right? I mean, there's exceptions, of course. I mean, you know, there's there's many a man who is a woman who have met me, you know, now, and be having sex in the next, you know, five hours or something. But as a population, as a statistically, people go to bed faster. And why is that? It's because there's a false sense of intimacy that's created with these apps. And so you have to be pump the brakes, right? Be slow, right? Take in information, right? Some colleagues of mine, they coined this term called functional projection. And functional projection is when you don't know something about someone, you inject pieces of yourself, you fill in the gaps with you. And so what does this do? It gives the sense that this person is more like you than they are. And so then you meet and you're like, you're nothing like me. But you didn't know that because you were in love or lost with the illusion, the dream, the fantasy of that person. Go slow on dating apps in a way that is like you go slower when you meet in person. You're building. Peter, thank you so much for joining us today and helping unravel how relationships come together, but more importantly, how they come apart and the role that ghosting plays and all this. Really appreciate your insights. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. And thank you for tuning in to Securing Sexuality, your source of information you need to protect yourself and your relationships. Securing Sexuality is brought to you by the Bound Together Foundation, a 501c3 non-profit. From the bedroom to the cloud, we're here to help you navigate safe sex in a digital age. Be sure to check out our website, securingsexuality.com, for links to more information about the topics we discussed here today, as well as our live events. And join us again for more fascinating conversations about the intersection of sexuality and technology. Have a great week! 
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