Public mockery is a social attack; if effective it reduces the target’s social standing.
Whether that’s “bad” or not depends on its results, but the costs are neither illusory nor purely psychological; regardless of what goes on inside my mind when I’m being successfully mocked, there are social costs.
Whether that “matters” or not is similarly difficult to answer. If I’m not invested in the resources that such attacks take away from me, or am not aware of the attacks in the first place, then I don’t experience them as losses… it doesn’t matter as far as I can tell. And if I’m never in a situation where I would have used those resources to benefit myself or others, then perhaps it doesn’t really matter to anyone.
But none of that is unique to mockery. Does it matter if someone takes my tuna sandwich? Maybe not. It depends.
But I suspect that in both cases, I’m more likely to have lost something valuable than not.
Of course, it’s easier to be unaware of social penalties than to be unaware of other resource losses. A tuna sandwich is pretty concrete; it’s easy to tell when it’s taken away. Social standing is less tangible.
Also, signaling one’s indifference to this sort of social attack can be a defense against it; indeed, sometimes the attacker loses social standing. That depends a lot on the attacker’s and defender’s initial standing, of course, but when dealing with peers a stance like you describe can be very effective, and cultivating actual indifference is one way of signaling it effectively, on demand.
Of course, when in situations where that style of defense doesn’t work (for example, when the attacker is significantly higher status), actual indifference can be very costly.
Public mockery is a social attack; if effective it reduces the target’s social standing.
Whether that’s “bad” or not depends on its results, but the costs are neither illusory nor purely psychological; regardless of what goes on inside my mind when I’m being successfully mocked, there are social costs.
Whether that “matters” or not is similarly difficult to answer. If I’m not invested in the resources that such attacks take away from me, or am not aware of the attacks in the first place, then I don’t experience them as losses… it doesn’t matter as far as I can tell. And if I’m never in a situation where I would have used those resources to benefit myself or others, then perhaps it doesn’t really matter to anyone.
But none of that is unique to mockery. Does it matter if someone takes my tuna sandwich? Maybe not. It depends.
But I suspect that in both cases, I’m more likely to have lost something valuable than not.
Of course, it’s easier to be unaware of social penalties than to be unaware of other resource losses. A tuna sandwich is pretty concrete; it’s easy to tell when it’s taken away. Social standing is less tangible.
Also, signaling one’s indifference to this sort of social attack can be a defense against it; indeed, sometimes the attacker loses social standing. That depends a lot on the attacker’s and defender’s initial standing, of course, but when dealing with peers a stance like you describe can be very effective, and cultivating actual indifference is one way of signaling it effectively, on demand.
Of course, when in situations where that style of defense doesn’t work (for example, when the attacker is significantly higher status), actual indifference can be very costly.