I came across a study that showed that when women are given a romantic prime, they publicly volunteer more. I’m wondering if this explains what I see in my swing dance community, where the people who volunteer are mostly women (e.g. possibility of meeting and entering a romance with a high status dancer = more volunteering?). Has this study been replicated?
I found a slightly related study, where when women are romantically primed, they choose more “helpful” careers like those in the humanities and shy away from STEM fields.
As a one-to-one comparison, being a student working towards an English major or possessing an English major gives higher odds of satisfying romance than working towards or posessing a STEM major.
I believe that’s the claim that was made. I don’t have any evidence for or against it myself, but my priors would put it as more than 1:1 likely.
Good point. I was blurring the line between how it is perceived as helping by the subject and how much it actually helps towards that goal statistically. The impact of money and skills and other second-order effects cannot be discounted if we’re talking about actual outcomes.
The “helpful” is meant in relation to the studied women’s goals of achieving romantic success; it is more “helpful” to be stylish, fashionable and other English-Major-promoted traits towards being a desirable woman who easily achieves romantic satisfaction than it is “helpful” to be tech-savvy, intelligent and other STEM-promoted traits towards being a desirable woman who achieves romantic satisfation --
...given the context that most women do not find geeks and other individuals attracted to tech-savvyness and geeky girls to be attractive, and thus will skew statistics in this direction
I’m tempted to edge my estimates towards the idea that if we restricted the studied population only to women who are attracted to geeks and scientists (or whatever other groups would tend to be attracted by geeky women), the data may find itself reverted and the subjects appear more motivated to solve hard equations when primed with pictures of a couple playing Strip Scrabble or having a fine lightsaber-illuminated evening over a game of Zendo.
Than I think you are missing the point of the original question. In the article which it’s cites “helpful” means: “publicly visible prosocial behavior”.
I can see how studying medicine to become a doctor to safe ill patients is “publicly visible prosocial behavior”. On the other hand I don’t see how being an English major is “publicly visible prosocial behavior” and studying chemistry isn’t.
If you try to stretch the meaning of words to broad, that’s not useful.
My initial thought was what I replied above. Then when I re-read, I thought I was wrong and had misinterpreted, so I started writing a reply echoing your question: “What makes those things more ‘helpful’?”
But in the second article, it’s about those careers being more useful towards romance. The paragraph break seems to indicate a slight change of context, so I assume now that that’s what this helpful referred to.
So I think a proper decomposition of this gives us:
English majors are more useful towards achieving romance.
STEM careers are, generally speaking at least as helpful (probably more, but that’s not the point) towards benefiting society.
Humanities are perceived more as blatantly benevolent.
STEM careers are often perceived as a useless waste of time.
Medicine is a glaring exception to the above; Medicine is seen as very benevolent as an abstract, or as students, but in tangibles the nurses and MDs are often seen as cold and “just doing their job”. Their overall impact and benefits for society varies, but the contributions of a single nurse are arguably much lesser than the contributions of one researcher developing new drugs.
I’m not sure usefulness has anything to do with the results of romantic priming. The simplest explanation seems to be that STEM careers are associated in our culture with unsexy attitudes and groups: aesthetically uninspiring, analytical as opposed to emotional, attractive to socially clumsy people, etc. If you’ve got romance on your mind, you’re likely to find those associations at least mildly aversive without needing to go into cost/benefit analysis—and indeed I predict that the results of a cost/benefit analysis, even limited to romantic opportunities, would be a lot less favorable to the humanities.
If you’ve got romance on your mind, you’re likely to find those associations at least mildly aversive without needing to go into cost/benefit analysis --
This happens as a cost-benefit-like calculation anyway, somewhere in some part of the human brain not selection-pruned to be used for this at all.
After this, it becomes a struggle of definitions and lines drawn in the air to delimit one Thingspace cluster from another. Is it a cost-benefit analysis if it’s run by the “Instinct” sub-processes in the brain? Is it a good cost-benefit analysis if it takes this parameter into account instead of that one? What if it ignores this other parameter? We know we won’t get all of the parameters, not enough cycles for that. And we don’t actually know which parameters are relevant and to what extent, let alone being able to calculate second- and n-order effects.
In function and practice, I agree. It’s about their sexy vs unsexy appeal in some biased way, and good analysis would probably favor things the other way around.
I started writing a reply echoing your question: “What makes those things more ‘helpful’?”
I don’t think you missed the first part of my question “If that’s the claim”.
I can certainly think up a vague definition of helpful that applies, but what to I gain by using that label? I can surely better label than helpful if I want to speak about behavior that society generally associates with femininity.
But in the second article, it’s about those careers being more useful towards romance. The paragraph break seems to indicate a slight change of context, so I assume now that that’s what this helpful referred to.
The issue is basically that you either agree that the first post is wrong and non-STEM careers get picked for a different reason than being perceived as being helpful or that there a way to see non-STEM subjects as more “publicly visible prosocial behavior”.
The issue is basically that you either agree that the first post is wrong and non-STEM careers get picked for a different reason than being perceived as being helpful or that there a way to see non-STEM subjects as more “publicly visible prosocial behavior”.
I came across a study that showed that when women are given a romantic prime, they publicly volunteer more. I’m wondering if this explains what I see in my swing dance community, where the people who volunteer are mostly women (e.g. possibility of meeting and entering a romance with a high status dancer = more volunteering?). Has this study been replicated?
I found a slightly related study, where when women are romantically primed, they choose more “helpful” careers like those in the humanities and shy away from STEM fields.
I don’t see how being a English major is more “helpful” than studying chemistry.
As a one-to-one comparison, being a student working towards an English major or possessing an English major gives higher odds of satisfying romance than working towards or posessing a STEM major.
I believe that’s the claim that was made. I don’t have any evidence for or against it myself, but my priors would put it as more than 1:1 likely.
I’d agree about “working towards” but not so sure about “possessing”—which ones do you think make more money in average? ;-)
Good point. I was blurring the line between how it is perceived as helping by the subject and how much it actually helps towards that goal statistically. The impact of money and skills and other second-order effects cannot be discounted if we’re talking about actual outcomes.
If that’s the claim, then why use the word “helpful”?
The “helpful” is meant in relation to the studied women’s goals of achieving romantic success; it is more “helpful” to be stylish, fashionable and other English-Major-promoted traits towards being a desirable woman who easily achieves romantic satisfaction than it is “helpful” to be tech-savvy, intelligent and other STEM-promoted traits towards being a desirable woman who achieves romantic satisfation --
...given the context that most women do not find geeks and other individuals attracted to tech-savvyness and geeky girls to be attractive, and thus will skew statistics in this direction
I’m tempted to edge my estimates towards the idea that if we restricted the studied population only to women who are attracted to geeks and scientists (or whatever other groups would tend to be attracted by geeky women), the data may find itself reverted and the subjects appear more motivated to solve hard equations when primed with pictures of a couple playing Strip Scrabble or having a fine lightsaber-illuminated evening over a game of Zendo.
Than I think you are missing the point of the original question. In the article which it’s cites “helpful” means: “publicly visible prosocial behavior”.
I can see how studying medicine to become a doctor to safe ill patients is “publicly visible prosocial behavior”. On the other hand I don’t see how being an English major is “publicly visible prosocial behavior” and studying chemistry isn’t.
If you try to stretch the meaning of words to broad, that’s not useful.
My initial thought was what I replied above. Then when I re-read, I thought I was wrong and had misinterpreted, so I started writing a reply echoing your question: “What makes those things more ‘helpful’?”
But in the second article, it’s about those careers being more useful towards romance. The paragraph break seems to indicate a slight change of context, so I assume now that that’s what this helpful referred to.
So I think a proper decomposition of this gives us:
English majors are more useful towards achieving romance.
STEM careers are, generally speaking at least as helpful (probably more, but that’s not the point) towards benefiting society.
Humanities are perceived more as blatantly benevolent.
STEM careers are often perceived as a useless waste of time.
Medicine is a glaring exception to the above; Medicine is seen as very benevolent as an abstract, or as students, but in tangibles the nurses and MDs are often seen as cold and “just doing their job”. Their overall impact and benefits for society varies, but the contributions of a single nurse are arguably much lesser than the contributions of one researcher developing new drugs.
I’m not sure usefulness has anything to do with the results of romantic priming. The simplest explanation seems to be that STEM careers are associated in our culture with unsexy attitudes and groups: aesthetically uninspiring, analytical as opposed to emotional, attractive to socially clumsy people, etc. If you’ve got romance on your mind, you’re likely to find those associations at least mildly aversive without needing to go into cost/benefit analysis—and indeed I predict that the results of a cost/benefit analysis, even limited to romantic opportunities, would be a lot less favorable to the humanities.
This happens as a cost-benefit-like calculation anyway, somewhere in some part of the human brain not selection-pruned to be used for this at all.
After this, it becomes a struggle of definitions and lines drawn in the air to delimit one Thingspace cluster from another. Is it a cost-benefit analysis if it’s run by the “Instinct” sub-processes in the brain? Is it a good cost-benefit analysis if it takes this parameter into account instead of that one? What if it ignores this other parameter? We know we won’t get all of the parameters, not enough cycles for that. And we don’t actually know which parameters are relevant and to what extent, let alone being able to calculate second- and n-order effects.
In function and practice, I agree. It’s about their sexy vs unsexy appeal in some biased way, and good analysis would probably favor things the other way around.
I don’t think you missed the first part of my question “If that’s the claim”. I can certainly think up a vague definition of helpful that applies, but what to I gain by using that label? I can surely better label than helpful if I want to speak about behavior that society generally associates with femininity.
The issue is basically that you either agree that the first post is wrong and non-STEM careers get picked for a different reason than being perceived as being helpful or that there a way to see non-STEM subjects as more “publicly visible prosocial behavior”.
It’s bad to try to be to vague to be wrong.
Yes.