Michael Crichton once said, “Considering that we live in an era of evolutionary everything…. it was surprising how rarely people thought in evolutionary terms. It was a human blind spot. We look at the world around us as a snapshot when it was really a movie, constantly changing.” Crichton, a famous author and film director, was a forward thinker, well ahead of his contemporaries. Despite the supposed wool over the masses’ eyes, much of the modern media can be explained by evolutionary psychology. How I Met Your Mother, an American sitcom strongly influenced by the hit show Friends and Cheers, is laden with evolutionary psychology. Characters with such contrasting and polarizing personalities and pursuits explore evolutionary concepts such as altruism, mate pursuit and behavior, rivals, game theory, and gender attraction. The characters show how psychological extremes play out in society, for better or worse, and how it impacts friendships, relationships, and each one’s place in society.
How I Met Your Mother, follows a central character named Ted Mosby, and his motley crew of friends that congregate at the same bar ad nauseam. Ted Mosby, a young aspiring architect in New York City, is a hopeless romantic in pursuit of the perfect woman. One of his best friends, Barney Stinson, is anything but romantic, and uses deceit, status, and many other ploys, to mate with as many females as possible. Marshall Eriksen is Mosby’s best friend from college, a gentle giant. His wife, and former longtime girlfriend Lily, is a firecracker with some undesirable yet redeemable character traits. Together they often judge all their friends for their lusty pursuits and moral dilemmas. Lastly, Robin Scherbatsky is an attractive on and off again love interest of Mosby and Stinson (Spada,2015). The show follows their journey into adulthood, with crises aplenty. The group often explores those conflicts, and the characters choose either the “right choice, or wrong choice”.
According to research by Science Direct, evolutionary mating strategies changing from short term to long term, can be influenced by key moments in life. A change in social status or an event such as a breakup may be a reason for this shift (Thomas,2017). Ted Mosby’s wholly encompassing focus in the show is his long-term mating strategy, and how every event in his life leads him closer to “The One”. This pickiness makes sense from an evolutionary psychology perspective, because a mate of desirable traits and higher reproductive value, would grant greater fitness to his future offspring. Beyond that, his friends often provide a barrier to suitors, as a pseudo-kin altruistic alliance in mate selection. They rationalize it so that Ted finds a mate who will fit well into their group. Contrary to these obsessions, there are times when he gives in to momentary passion. Typically, these swoons are due to job loss, where his mate value is lower. In addition, he may pursue a short-term mating strategy while serving as a wingman to his friend Barney Stinson, or when an attractive female is around, shifting his strategy to spontaneous and opportune (Thomas,2017). Despite Ted’s regret afterward, on an evolutionary level, empirical studies aggregated by the University of Texas have shown that men are open to casual sex with less emotional connection than females are. From Trivers’ parental investment theory, this makes sense as well, as the less involved parent will seek more sexual opportunities, as their resources and energy aren’t as tied up to their offspring’s fitness (Schmitt, Shackelford, & Buss, 2001)
One of the best explanations of mating behavior in evolutionary terms is shown through Barney Stinson’s transformation to his current self in Season 1 Episode 15. In the episode, he has a steady girlfriend whom he is madly in love with. They are both in subsistence jobs at a coffee shop and are both headed to the peace corps together to solve humanitarian issues. When he is about to leave, his girlfriend leaves him a dear John letter. It turns out an older man who is rich and powerful, succeeds in stealing her away. Though the situation causes him extraordinary pain, it is the epiphany that pushes Barney to become powerful and successful. As he attains it, he begins to pursue younger and more attractive women and desires to mate with as many women as possible. Caroline Uggla, an anthropology professor from the University College of London supports this stance that when “an individual with higher resource access has higher status and is more attractive to the opposite sex, he or she will have higher bargaining power on the mating market. Barney wears fancy suits and accessories and often flaunts his fancy apartment and job to women. His bargaining power is exhibited when he lists personal ads and receives many responses to them. He also acknowledges his higher mating value on the surface, by constantly stating widely accepted stringent standards of attractiveness. This typically includes youth, waist-to-hip ratio, and no previous childbearing (Uggla & Mace, 2017).
While Ted, Barney, and Marshall usually agree on attractive standards for women, Ted’s mating behavior is more reserved. His bargaining ability is impeded by his non-masculine attributes, as he calls himself “linguine”. His job instability impacts his status at times with women. At one point he even goes speed dating and is not attractive to many of the women. With his standard for the perfect woman unachievable for most of the show, Ted often settles for mates below his value as well. At one point he dates a woman much older than him, who already has kids. At that point, his career is struggling, and he subconsciously dates an older, more established female doctor named Stella. This stark contrast to Barney provides a rational explanation of how status and standards of attractiveness affect mating behavior and value.
To coax his friends into going out, Barney Stinson once said, “Settling down is for losers and kids who never go out anymore”. Throughout the show, Barney Stinson is obsessed with games aimed toward bedding women, or asserting his dominance over his friends. He even created a book of laws governing them, known as the Bro- code. While the show jokingly dates its inception back to the Declaration of Independence meetings in Philadelphia in 1776, game theory has been an integral part of evolutionary psychology. The game theory focuses on an objective that includes decisions amongst a group. Multiple participants will need to perform altruistic actions in interactive decisions, for an agreed-upon benefit or outcome (Coleman & Krockow, 2018). In the show, there are many instances where the characters have altruistic alliances against a common foe. For example, Barney Stinson is in a feud with a Business rival named Clark Butterfield, within a window view of his office. They pull harsh pranks against each other that impede their daily working life. When the pranks go too far, he draws his friend and co-worker Marshall Eriksen into the feud, and they effectively out-prank Butterfield to end the games. On a more extensive level, however; is Barney’s continual pursuit of bedding young attractive women. He often employs Mosby, and sometimes Eriksen in his elaborate schemes. A memorable episode involving this was when Barney's efforts to hit on women were continually thwarted by an unknown woman (Britney Spears playing a desperate office secretary). Barney recruits his friends to track down the saboteur, while offering them pizza, and alcohol and promises to stop being so obnoxious. They all set up a march madness bracket with females he suspected could be the saboteur. Amidst the hilarity, all parties cooperate and benefit in this version of social game theory. In many episodes Mosby and Eriksen cooperate, until they realize that Barney lied about their benefit or payoff, and they defect. In many instances, Stinson will have to defect as well, ultimately losing out on a mating opportunity. Despite this common defection, even Marshall Eriksen, a well-experienced attorney, says that the game theory propagation “Bro-Code” is an ironclad contract. Barney’s extensive knowledge and greater knowledge of game theory manipulation, leads to him having his altruistic friends pulling more than their own weight for his interests, maximizing his return on investment.
How I Met Your Mother, peers into our evolutionary psyche, and strings it out in hilarious plots. Ted Mosby, and his friend Barney Stinson, are constantly involved in short- and long-term mating behavior. They also frequently debate the attractiveness and mate value of an individual female. The dilemmas all the characters are involved in as well go to show how game theory can often turn out when one party takes advantage of the rules or unsuspecting partners. Without a doubt, How I Met Your Mother is a modern-day subconscious reflection of how evolutionary psychology can explain characters' psyche, relationships, and behavior in a variety of circumstances.
References
Schmitt, D. P., Shackelford, T. K., & Buss, D. M. (2001). Are men more ‘oriented’ toward short-term mating than women? A critical review of theory and research [Abstract]. Psychology, Evolution, and Gender, 211-239. Retrieved December 9, 2018, from https://labs.la.utexas.edu/buss/files/2015/09/are-men-oriented-toward-ST-mating-PEG-2001.pdf.
Spada, M. (2015, December 01). Social Psychology in the World. Retrieved December 6, 2018, from http://socialpsychhc.blogspot.com/2015/12/love-as-demonstrated-by-how-i-met-your.html
Thomas, A. G. (2017, October 20). Mating strategy flexibility in the laboratory: Preferences for long- and short-term mating change in response to evolutionarily relevant variables. Retrieved December 06, 2018, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S109051381730017X
Uggla, C., & Mace, R. (2017, September 19). Adult sex ratio and social status predict mating and parenting strategies in Northern Ireland. Retrieved December 9, 2018, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5540860/
Coleman, A. M., & Krockow, E. M. (2018, November 20). Game Theory and Psychology. Retrieved December 9, 2018, from http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199828340/obo-9780199828340-0192.xml