We’re forgetting signaling. Robin would never forgive us, because he sees it in a lot of things, and I happen to agree with him that it’s far more pervasive than people think.
In fact, the Tversky example gives people two opportunities to signal: not only do they get to demonstrate higher pain tolerance [especially important for men], they also get to “demonstrate” a healthier heart. Both should be boosts in status.
The same goes for Calvinists: though, when you think about it, you truly believe in the elect, you don’t think about it most of your life [as we know, much of our day to day life is subconsciously guided] and are instead focused on signaling your elect status with a good life.
For good measure, it even works with the car: you buy a new car to signal wealth to signal health.
However, I do believe that we engage in lots of automatic self-deception [making it easier to deceive others into believing we have higher status]: thus, we may actually believe that an extra car/a good life/a higher pain tolerance would improve your life expectancy/grace/heart, but that’s merely the proximate cause. Ultimately, we’re driven by status-seeking.
This was exactly my thought, and I now wonder whether it’s possible to determine via experiment. So how do you give the information to the subjects but not have them think that the researchers know it.
A confederate who’s a subject and just happens to gossip about the thing is one way—if the researchers proceed to deny it, you might be able to split them into groups based on a low status confederate versus a high-status confederate, and a vehement denial vs a “that study hasn’t been verified” vs a “that was an urban legend.”
Or providing a status signal that it’s better to have a “bad” heart—having a high status researcher who says “sure, we may live less long, but there are all sorts of other benefits they’re not telling us about”
It’s really hard to separate the information from the humans passing on the information.
We’re forgetting signaling. Robin would never forgive us, because he sees it in a lot of things, and I happen to agree with him that it’s far more pervasive than people think.
In fact, the Tversky example gives people two opportunities to signal: not only do they get to demonstrate higher pain tolerance [especially important for men], they also get to “demonstrate” a healthier heart. Both should be boosts in status.
The same goes for Calvinists: though, when you think about it, you truly believe in the elect, you don’t think about it most of your life [as we know, much of our day to day life is subconsciously guided] and are instead focused on signaling your elect status with a good life.
For good measure, it even works with the car: you buy a new car to signal wealth to signal health.
However, I do believe that we engage in lots of automatic self-deception [making it easier to deceive others into believing we have higher status]: thus, we may actually believe that an extra car/a good life/a higher pain tolerance would improve your life expectancy/grace/heart, but that’s merely the proximate cause. Ultimately, we’re driven by status-seeking.
This was exactly my thought, and I now wonder whether it’s possible to determine via experiment. So how do you give the information to the subjects but not have them think that the researchers know it.
A confederate who’s a subject and just happens to gossip about the thing is one way—if the researchers proceed to deny it, you might be able to split them into groups based on a low status confederate versus a high-status confederate, and a vehement denial vs a “that study hasn’t been verified” vs a “that was an urban legend.”
Or providing a status signal that it’s better to have a “bad” heart—having a high status researcher who says “sure, we may live less long, but there are all sorts of other benefits they’re not telling us about”
It’s really hard to separate the information from the humans passing on the information.