First, I think that the high variance and the noise are just characteristics of real life. People are different AND incoherent AND impulsive AND prone to change their mind.
Even if you manage to gather enough data to form some reasonable central estimates, the variance will remain huge.
Second, it’s not clear to me what kind of an answer do you hope to get. Technically you are asking a simple yes/no question and the answer to it is obviously “yes”, but between that and a full-blown model of human behavior in relationships I am not sure what are you looking for. Can you give an example of what an answer (not necessarily a correct one) might look like?
Uhm, technically, I’m asking a degree question, not a yes/no-question…
People are different AND incoherent AND impulsive AND prone to change their mind.
Well, especially the last conjunct is not obvious by any means. :)
Here’s an example of a possible “personal experience” answer: “In my experience of so-and-so many years, in this-and-that demographic, people tend to stick to their initial impressions. It takes a certain time or relatively persistent behavior to the contrary for them to change their initial assessment, e.g. for them to judge that you’re not as smart or confident as they initially believed you to be. Certain (comparatively rare) individuals are exceptions to this and are, as it were, on the look-out for faults in others. Individuals may be on in one or the other group only for a particular gender-mixture, in particular, they may be of the “forgiving” kind for same-gender interactions, but of the judgmental kind for cross-gender interactions. This is the most common deviation from uniform attitudes.”
I admit that I’m having a hard time figuring out what to look for in the way of scientific studies of friendship and relationships that would be relevant to this, which may explain why I didn’t find anything on a first cursory search.
So any help in precisifying the question in order to increase answerability is also welcome.
Well, I am not you, but I would consider that example answer to be entirely useless. It effectively says that people stick to initial impressions until they don’t and, oh, there are exceptions. “Certain time” can be five seconds or five years. And what would be practical implications? That first impressions matter? We already know that.
And that, of course, before considering that various groups and subcultures are likely to have different norms in this respect.
Maybe it’s worth shortcutting to a more-terminal goal? Are you looking to be liked? Do you want to control a relationship? Are you trying to forecast which relationships are likely to remain stable and which are not?
Of course the answer is exceedingly vague, but I wouldn’t expect anyone to track their experience in such a fashion as to give actual numbers. Though examples with months would of course be nice, but in any case, it would still be informative. It would tell me that the judgmental ones that immediately flip their judgments are particular exceptional individuals and that this is not normal; it would also tell me that it’s the identity of individuals that explains the variation, while individuals don’t change their behavior constantly (i.e. if you’ve seen someone be tolerant with others, you can expect them to be tolerant with you). It would tell me that you wouldn’t need to worry about isolated incidents a few weeks or months apart, especially with parties of the same gender.
What I know of first impressions is mostly how rich they are. I’m asking about their resilience. Maybe there is something well-known here that I’m simply unaware of and that you consider obvious.
And that, of course, before considering that various groups and subcultures are likely to have different norms in this respect.
Which is why the answer included “that-and-that demographic”… To be honest, though, I’m not sure that I would actually expect that much variation between groups/subcultures.
Maybe it’s worth shortcutting to a more-terminal goal? Are you looking to be liked? Do you want to control a relationship? Are you trying to forecast which relationships are likely to remain stable and which are not?
Good point. It’s essentially the last one. This feeling I have of not knowing what’s going on and what’s normal is a source of anxiety to me (not in the clinical sense of social anxiety, but it makes me worry). Right now, I have some relationships with such low signal-to-noise ratios that I can really only operate on priors about, broadly speaking, humanity in general. (Discarding these relationships in favour of less bothersome one’s isn’t an option for various reasons.)
Maybe there is something well-known here that I’m simply unaware of and that you consider obvious.
I think I’m coming from the position that once you have information about a specific person and a specific relationship, general priors are pretty much useless.
To give a simple example, women are, on the average, shorter than men and that would be my prior about the height of someone before seeing her. But once I see her, the prior is completely superseded by the concrete information that I now have.
In the same way when evaluating whether someone specific is likely to change his/her opinion of me, I will rely almost completely on my knowledge of that particular person and not on generic priors.
This feeling I have of not knowing what’s going on and what’s normal is a source of anxiety to me
Well… I wouldn’t worry too much about what’s “normal”, though I’ll point out that e.g. the mainstream picture of women paints them as very emotionally labile in sexually-charged situation.
You might also consider that you are being played games with. Might be for control (to keep you off-balance) or might be just for fun—some people like drama.
Well, maybe the only wisdom to be had here is really that if you don’t have much more than priors to go on, tough luck, nothing you can do, live with the uncertainty and hope for the best (because actively asking for evidence is too costly). It’s likely that this this doesn’t bother you as much as me because you’re just better at reading social cues; however the hell one is supposed to learn that, especially if one is an introvert and experiences a consequent poverty of stimulus.
Although sometimes it’s not even about observing clues. For example, one might know that it’s likely that one will at some point behave in some way that the other person would view unfavorably; and you want to estimate how much you should invest in this relationship. Then the only relevant evidence you can get is how this person behaves in dealing with other people.
Two reactions to this.
First, I think that the high variance and the noise are just characteristics of real life. People are different AND incoherent AND impulsive AND prone to change their mind.
Even if you manage to gather enough data to form some reasonable central estimates, the variance will remain huge.
Second, it’s not clear to me what kind of an answer do you hope to get. Technically you are asking a simple yes/no question and the answer to it is obviously “yes”, but between that and a full-blown model of human behavior in relationships I am not sure what are you looking for. Can you give an example of what an answer (not necessarily a correct one) might look like?
Uhm, technically, I’m asking a degree question, not a yes/no-question…
Well, especially the last conjunct is not obvious by any means. :)
Here’s an example of a possible “personal experience” answer: “In my experience of so-and-so many years, in this-and-that demographic, people tend to stick to their initial impressions. It takes a certain time or relatively persistent behavior to the contrary for them to change their initial assessment, e.g. for them to judge that you’re not as smart or confident as they initially believed you to be. Certain (comparatively rare) individuals are exceptions to this and are, as it were, on the look-out for faults in others. Individuals may be on in one or the other group only for a particular gender-mixture, in particular, they may be of the “forgiving” kind for same-gender interactions, but of the judgmental kind for cross-gender interactions. This is the most common deviation from uniform attitudes.”
I admit that I’m having a hard time figuring out what to look for in the way of scientific studies of friendship and relationships that would be relevant to this, which may explain why I didn’t find anything on a first cursory search.
So any help in precisifying the question in order to increase answerability is also welcome.
Well, I am not you, but I would consider that example answer to be entirely useless. It effectively says that people stick to initial impressions until they don’t and, oh, there are exceptions. “Certain time” can be five seconds or five years. And what would be practical implications? That first impressions matter? We already know that.
And that, of course, before considering that various groups and subcultures are likely to have different norms in this respect.
Maybe it’s worth shortcutting to a more-terminal goal? Are you looking to be liked? Do you want to control a relationship? Are you trying to forecast which relationships are likely to remain stable and which are not?
Of course the answer is exceedingly vague, but I wouldn’t expect anyone to track their experience in such a fashion as to give actual numbers. Though examples with months would of course be nice, but in any case, it would still be informative. It would tell me that the judgmental ones that immediately flip their judgments are particular exceptional individuals and that this is not normal; it would also tell me that it’s the identity of individuals that explains the variation, while individuals don’t change their behavior constantly (i.e. if you’ve seen someone be tolerant with others, you can expect them to be tolerant with you). It would tell me that you wouldn’t need to worry about isolated incidents a few weeks or months apart, especially with parties of the same gender.
What I know of first impressions is mostly how rich they are. I’m asking about their resilience. Maybe there is something well-known here that I’m simply unaware of and that you consider obvious.
Which is why the answer included “that-and-that demographic”… To be honest, though, I’m not sure that I would actually expect that much variation between groups/subcultures.
Good point. It’s essentially the last one. This feeling I have of not knowing what’s going on and what’s normal is a source of anxiety to me (not in the clinical sense of social anxiety, but it makes me worry). Right now, I have some relationships with such low signal-to-noise ratios that I can really only operate on priors about, broadly speaking, humanity in general. (Discarding these relationships in favour of less bothersome one’s isn’t an option for various reasons.)
I think I’m coming from the position that once you have information about a specific person and a specific relationship, general priors are pretty much useless.
To give a simple example, women are, on the average, shorter than men and that would be my prior about the height of someone before seeing her. But once I see her, the prior is completely superseded by the concrete information that I now have.
In the same way when evaluating whether someone specific is likely to change his/her opinion of me, I will rely almost completely on my knowledge of that particular person and not on generic priors.
Well… I wouldn’t worry too much about what’s “normal”, though I’ll point out that e.g. the mainstream picture of women paints them as very emotionally labile in sexually-charged situation.
You might also consider that you are being played games with. Might be for control (to keep you off-balance) or might be just for fun—some people like drama.
Well, maybe the only wisdom to be had here is really that if you don’t have much more than priors to go on, tough luck, nothing you can do, live with the uncertainty and hope for the best (because actively asking for evidence is too costly). It’s likely that this this doesn’t bother you as much as me because you’re just better at reading social cues; however the hell one is supposed to learn that, especially if one is an introvert and experiences a consequent poverty of stimulus.
Although sometimes it’s not even about observing clues. For example, one might know that it’s likely that one will at some point behave in some way that the other person would view unfavorably; and you want to estimate how much you should invest in this relationship. Then the only relevant evidence you can get is how this person behaves in dealing with other people.