I wonder if women experience stronger survivor’s guilt than than men. Testosterone supposedly makes one more selfish. Women are known for altruistic acts (many of which are pathological, like the phenomenon where women will often stay with an abusive partner trying to love him into changing), possibly because of some differences with oxytocin. I bet there’s a connection here between hormonal differences and survivor’s guilt that might explain the extra difficulty in convincing women.
Seeing that survivor’s guilt didn’t seem rational, I became curious about it and introspected for a moment. It seems to be resolved. I documented my thinking process:
I have thought of a question to ask myself that may get rid of it:
“Imagine that there are three people who I really want to see live. By random chance, something happens outside their control and two of them die but one of them lives. Do I feel happy that the one person lived? Or do I feel like they should die?”
My feeling is that they definitely should not die.
Now, I also feel compelled to try this:
“Imagine three people I don’t like, but who I don’t think deserve to die. Same scenario, one lives.”
My feeling is that I prefer they do not die.
Now I’m asking “If it was more fair to the other two, would I have had them die along with them?”
No, I’d have tried to save them, and if the other two wanted to see the person die for “fairness” that’s just crazy.
Okay, so now I’m asking myself:
If I was in that situation where two of the same people died but I survived by chance, would I feel it was crazy to think it was unfair for me to survive?
Yes, that is laughable now.
Something in me feels compelled to ask: “Were you better than those two other people?”
My answer is: “Who chose whether they died?”
Ah! Now this is separated. I have separated myself from the cause of their death. I had to see that I was not at fault for this.
The obvious question then is “What is the cause of most people dying except me who got cryo?”
Answer: All the causes. I cant stop them all. But I can tell more people about cryo and I can try to stop my own death, and this is good. That’s the best that I can do.
Now, I have this warm feeling like my guilt is alleviated, like saving my own life isn’t an affront to them, but something they would think was good—just as I thought it was good that one person survived when two died.
Okay, I think I figured out how to hack survivor’s guilt, at least, as it applies to me. I will update here if the guilty feeling returns.
That men feel expendable is an interesting idea, but that sounds like more of a cultural pressure having to do with the military or women being capable of pregnancy than an instinct. The hormonal differences, on the other hand, are unavoidable and internal. I wonder which is stronger and whether anyone has done research on whether women are more self-sacrificing. (Not seeing anything from my searches.)
It’s reinforced by a lot of talk. Historically, men do not save women in shipwreck situations. This is information that would be pretty surprising based on your previous beliefs. Shouldn’t it change your mind?
It’s somewhat surprising, but then, men can still be significantly more prone than women to consider themselves expendable, and still outsurvive women in shipwrecks if both genders tend to be non-self-sacrificing enough for the situations to devolve to “every man for himself.” For purely physical reasons, men are more likely to make it out of a panicked crowd alive. I’m a bit surprised that the Titanic scenario was as exceptional as it was, but I would not necessarily have predicted that relative rates of self sacrifice would dominate survival rates.
If a reliable study were to find that women are as or more likely to risk or sacrifice their lives to save non-progeny compared to men, it would certainly be sufficient to change my mind.
I’d say the shipwreck data reinforces it: in the circumstances where heroism is least observable and where death is most likely (reducing the potential reward and increasing the incurred risk), we see less peacocking. If the relationship ran the inverse direction—the more the reward and the less the risk, the less risk-taking—that’d be pretty strange and hard to reconcile with the Baumeister paradigm.
Survivor’s guilt (resolved objection):
Viliam Bur suggested survivor’s guilt, and I realized that I was experiencing survivor’s guilt while imagining getting cryo.
I wonder if women experience stronger survivor’s guilt than than men. Testosterone supposedly makes one more selfish. Women are known for altruistic acts (many of which are pathological, like the phenomenon where women will often stay with an abusive partner trying to love him into changing), possibly because of some differences with oxytocin. I bet there’s a connection here between hormonal differences and survivor’s guilt that might explain the extra difficulty in convincing women.
Seeing that survivor’s guilt didn’t seem rational, I became curious about it and introspected for a moment. It seems to be resolved. I documented my thinking process:
I have thought of a question to ask myself that may get rid of it:
“Imagine that there are three people who I really want to see live. By random chance, something happens outside their control and two of them die but one of them lives. Do I feel happy that the one person lived? Or do I feel like they should die?”
My feeling is that they definitely should not die.
Now, I also feel compelled to try this:
“Imagine three people I don’t like, but who I don’t think deserve to die. Same scenario, one lives.”
My feeling is that I prefer they do not die.
Now I’m asking “If it was more fair to the other two, would I have had them die along with them?”
No, I’d have tried to save them, and if the other two wanted to see the person die for “fairness” that’s just crazy.
Okay, so now I’m asking myself:
If I was in that situation where two of the same people died but I survived by chance, would I feel it was crazy to think it was unfair for me to survive?
Yes, that is laughable now.
Something in me feels compelled to ask: “Were you better than those two other people?”
My answer is: “Who chose whether they died?”
Ah! Now this is separated. I have separated myself from the cause of their death. I had to see that I was not at fault for this.
The obvious question then is “What is the cause of most people dying except me who got cryo?”
Answer: All the causes. I cant stop them all. But I can tell more people about cryo and I can try to stop my own death, and this is good. That’s the best that I can do.
Now, I have this warm feeling like my guilt is alleviated, like saving my own life isn’t an affront to them, but something they would think was good—just as I thought it was good that one person survived when two died.
Okay, I think I figured out how to hack survivor’s guilt, at least, as it applies to me. I will update here if the guilty feeling returns.
Now onto my other objections… (:
If I were to make a prediction for an experiment, I would guess no, because men are conditioned to see themselves as more expendable. I’m guessing that the same norms which led to more women in steerage class making it off the Titanic alive than men in first class would lead to men having stronger survivor’s guilt than women.
The Titanic was an exception. Slate.com had a link to the study itself (I think).
That men feel expendable is an interesting idea, but that sounds like more of a cultural pressure having to do with the military or women being capable of pregnancy than an instinct. The hormonal differences, on the other hand, are unavoidable and internal. I wonder which is stronger and whether anyone has done research on whether women are more self-sacrificing. (Not seeing anything from my searches.)
It may or may not be instinctual, but then, there are probably some rather strong selective forces which have encouraged men to be more cavalier with their lives than women. Even if it’s cultural, it’s a cultural value that’s reinforced quite consistently.
It’s reinforced by a lot of talk. Historically, men do not save women in shipwreck situations. This is information that would be pretty surprising based on your previous beliefs. Shouldn’t it change your mind?
It’s somewhat surprising, but then, men can still be significantly more prone than women to consider themselves expendable, and still outsurvive women in shipwrecks if both genders tend to be non-self-sacrificing enough for the situations to devolve to “every man for himself.” For purely physical reasons, men are more likely to make it out of a panicked crowd alive. I’m a bit surprised that the Titanic scenario was as exceptional as it was, but I would not necessarily have predicted that relative rates of self sacrifice would dominate survival rates.
If a reliable study were to find that women are as or more likely to risk or sacrifice their lives to save non-progeny compared to men, it would certainly be sufficient to change my mind.
I’d say the shipwreck data reinforces it: in the circumstances where heroism is least observable and where death is most likely (reducing the potential reward and increasing the incurred risk), we see less peacocking. If the relationship ran the inverse direction—the more the reward and the less the risk, the less risk-taking—that’d be pretty strange and hard to reconcile with the Baumeister paradigm.