I’ve followed Diana Fleischman’s work for many months. She’s smart and funny, but takes her evolutionary psychology seriously every step of the way. Diana has started writing a column on Psychology Today titled, “How to Train Your Boyfriend.” Here an excerpt from her opening post:

You have two grandmothers, four great grandmothers, 512 great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers and millions of grandmas further in your past, before the word grandma even existed. These grandmas that scraped by, suffered, and survived long enough to reproduce, are only a fraction of all the women that existed. One important characteristic that set grandmas apart from the millions of non-grandmas was their ability to shape the behavior of others, especially children and grandpas. You probably have grandmas who lived on farms trying to get multiple children to cooperate with (and not kill) one another and in villages where they had to manage their reputations for the good of their families. But you definitely have grandmas who convinced men to take care of them and their children. Without any one of them, and their abilities you wouldn’t exist to read this blog. We evolved to be able to get other people to do what we want.

But, how do people get other people to do what they want?