Nor would I as a general rule, but people occasionally surprise me, especially around here. I figure it’s worth the price of a question to find out.
I’m somewhat curious what the response will be myself, particularly now that I spent the price of an answer in changing his incentives. Now the most obvious (and most boring) ‘purely righteous, pro-social’ spin comes pre-emptively loaded with connotations of naivety and bullshit. I have no idea what the optimal response is now. It may even be the accurate one!
Indeed! Now torn between ‘desire to provide accurate data’, ‘desire to project correct image for future google searches’, ‘desire to look clever’ and ‘worry about advisability of confessing to anti-social personality traits in a public forum using my real name’.
I’m slightly reassured by my belief that most men would feel the same way. On the other hand if that belief’s wrong, it needs changing.
Indeed! Now torn between ‘desire to provide accurate data’, ‘desire to project correct image for future google searches’, ‘desire to look clever’ and ‘worry about advisability of confessing to anti-social personality traits in a public forum using my real name’.
Ironically any signalling of actual anti-social traits would have already taken place in the earlier declaration of potential violent tendencies. But given that you are signalling approximately normal human behavior—and behavior that tends to be respected in practice anyhow—the only negative signal you could actually give now is a weak signal that you are unable to signal smooth-hypocrisy.
I’m slightly reassured by my belief that most men would feel the same way. On the other hand if that belief’s wrong, it needs changing.
Almost universally, at least the ‘relative’ part. That is nearly all males would be more inclined to take offense and make violent dominance displays with female observers present. There is more to gain by making the move and more to lose by failing to. I am not sure whether the absolute part “I would [take offense at what a drunk stranger says]” applies to most males or not. Possibly. I know it doesn’t to myself—in general I don’t get offended by direct insults, particularly those with obscenities. Rather, I take offense at passive aggressive insults that superficially conform to polite norms. And as with djcb if the speaker is a random drunk stranger almost nothing they could say will offend me.
Incidentally, do you know of any evidence indicating that a given male’s differential likelihood of making violent dominance displays in the presence of female observers correlates, or fails to correlate, with his belief (1) that an arbitrarily selected female observer will be impressed by such displays, and/or with his desire to impress female observers?
I mean, “X is more likely to do Y in the presence of Z if and only if X believes Z will be impressed by Y and wishes to impress Z” is kind of an unnecessarily complicated way of expressing something much more general.
(1) Naturally, it would be an error to take people’s self-reports at face value about such beliefs, which makes testing such a theory tricky, but there are other ways to approach the question.
Incidentally, do you know of any evidence indicating that a given male’s differential likelihood of making violent dominance displays in the presence of female observers correlates, or fails to correlate, with his belief (1) that an arbitrarily selected female observer will be impressed by such displays, and/or with his desire to impress female observers?
An actual literal far mode belief interfering with status-and-mating related behaviors in real time? I suppose that could happen. I would confidently predict that the violent dominance displays are more likely soon after exposure to an image of a female they are attracted to than after exposure to a non-attractive visual stimulus.
Regarding knowing any citeable evidence: There are plenty of studies of “what males do after exposed to pretty girl pictures”. Whether the behaviors actually studied correspond sufficiently to the behaviors we are talking about here will depend on how your model of this kind of social behavior relates to your models human behaviors in things like ultimatum games (on either side), and altruism. ie. The studies constitute evidence for me, given that I already consider human behavior in this situation to be similar to one or both of those other contrived scenarios.
Regarding the correlation with desire to impress the selected female observers—I certainly hope there is. Observations of increased aggression with other males when a particular female is present is one of the strongest indications I use when noticing attractions between my peers. I even take it into account when organizing social events. With a couple of my close male friends in particular I know that the presence of attractive females makes it far more likely that we’ll have conflict. That being the case I’ll preferentially organize and attend social events with such combinations when I’m feeling particularly confident, patient and alert. That way I can absorb and diffuse the aggression rather than engage in tit-for-tat escalation like I may do if on “autopilot”.
I’m somewhat curious what the response will be myself, particularly now that I spent the price of an answer in changing his incentives. Now the most obvious (and most boring) ‘purely righteous, pro-social’ spin comes pre-emptively loaded with connotations of naivety and bullshit. I have no idea what the optimal response is now. It may even be the accurate one!
Indeed! Now torn between ‘desire to provide accurate data’, ‘desire to project correct image for future google searches’, ‘desire to look clever’ and ‘worry about advisability of confessing to anti-social personality traits in a public forum using my real name’.
I’m slightly reassured by my belief that most men would feel the same way. On the other hand if that belief’s wrong, it needs changing.
Ironically any signalling of actual anti-social traits would have already taken place in the earlier declaration of potential violent tendencies. But given that you are signalling approximately normal human behavior—and behavior that tends to be respected in practice anyhow—the only negative signal you could actually give now is a weak signal that you are unable to signal smooth-hypocrisy.
Almost universally, at least the ‘relative’ part. That is nearly all males would be more inclined to take offense and make violent dominance displays with female observers present. There is more to gain by making the move and more to lose by failing to. I am not sure whether the absolute part “I would [take offense at what a drunk stranger says]” applies to most males or not. Possibly. I know it doesn’t to myself—in general I don’t get offended by direct insults, particularly those with obscenities. Rather, I take offense at passive aggressive insults that superficially conform to polite norms. And as with djcb if the speaker is a random drunk stranger almost nothing they could say will offend me.
Incidentally, do you know of any evidence indicating that a given male’s differential likelihood of making violent dominance displays in the presence of female observers correlates, or fails to correlate, with his belief (1) that an arbitrarily selected female observer will be impressed by such displays, and/or with his desire to impress female observers?
I mean, “X is more likely to do Y in the presence of Z if and only if X believes Z will be impressed by Y and wishes to impress Z” is kind of an unnecessarily complicated way of expressing something much more general.
(1) Naturally, it would be an error to take people’s self-reports at face value about such beliefs, which makes testing such a theory tricky, but there are other ways to approach the question.
An actual literal far mode belief interfering with status-and-mating related behaviors in real time? I suppose that could happen. I would confidently predict that the violent dominance displays are more likely soon after exposure to an image of a female they are attracted to than after exposure to a non-attractive visual stimulus.
Regarding knowing any citeable evidence: There are plenty of studies of “what males do after exposed to pretty girl pictures”. Whether the behaviors actually studied correspond sufficiently to the behaviors we are talking about here will depend on how your model of this kind of social behavior relates to your models human behaviors in things like ultimatum games (on either side), and altruism. ie. The studies constitute evidence for me, given that I already consider human behavior in this situation to be similar to one or both of those other contrived scenarios.
Regarding the correlation with desire to impress the selected female observers—I certainly hope there is. Observations of increased aggression with other males when a particular female is present is one of the strongest indications I use when noticing attractions between my peers. I even take it into account when organizing social events. With a couple of my close male friends in particular I know that the presence of attractive females makes it far more likely that we’ll have conflict. That being the case I’ll preferentially organize and attend social events with such combinations when I’m feeling particularly confident, patient and alert. That way I can absorb and diffuse the aggression rather than engage in tit-for-tat escalation like I may do if on “autopilot”.