I want to ask, why are people mean in the first place? I think before we try to “fix” some behavior we should make sure we understand it first. Otherwise we might be like the social reformers who try to fix “broken” institutions without understanding their reasons for existing.
To a first approximation, meanness seems to be the deliberate cause of offense. (Although I wonder if I’m suffering from the man-with-a-hammer syndrome here.) Anyone have other ideas?
I second the question. In the ancestral environment, there was some individually fit balance between meanness and niceness. If niceness is supposed to pay off individually and selfishly, what changed between now and then? Why is our factory-default impulse toward niceness too weak, if niceness is such an advantage? The question is not meant to be unanswerable, but it ought to be answered.
It may not be too weak. In the ancestral environment, everybody you could consider being mean to was probably in the room with you at the time. They could hurt you, and if you were frequently mean, the other people in the vicinity would back them up. All we need to explain why people are mean, on the Internet and in civilized societies where assault is fairly uncommon, is a mechanism that ties the disposition to be nice to the power of the other person to do you harm.
This hypothesis makes good predictions in general, although I think it’s a subconscious phenomenon and therefore subject to cues and priming as well as the other’s actual power to retaliate.
I can’t find it now, but I read a study where some form of antisocial behavior (perhaps it was keeping everything in a one-shot trustee game) became less common when the victims could see the perpetrator, even when no retaliation was in fact possible (and the perp knew it). So joining a faceless and pseudonymous community should be a perfect recipe for disregard of niceness and other cooperative instincts.
Like I said, the hypothesis makes good predictions.
I can’t find it now, but I read a study where some form of antisocial behavior [...] became less common when the victims could see the perpetrator [...]. So joining a faceless and pseudonymous community should be a perfect recipe for disregard of niceness and other cooperative instincts.
I think they’d be visually distracting; LW isn’t otherwise full of pictures. Additionally, a lot of people using avatars on the internet apart from Facebook do not use their own faces, or even real faces that don’t belong to them; if I attached a little picture of a unicorn to my name, would that have the same effect?
I imagine they’d be visually distracting and take up page space, but if it’s considered that the civility benefits of having available faces attached to names are significant, there’s ways to mitigate that- have a user’s avatar or profile picture appear when rolling over a user’s name, for example, instead of being displayed on every comment whether you want to see it or not. Or some similar solution for making them immediately available but unobtrusive.
Indeed, and is hardly a novel observation. For instance, a well-regarded—though slightly more informal—presentation of the hypothesis was published here (Holkins & Krahulik, 2004).
It’s a signal that you aren’t scared of being retaliated against. Which can be a pretty powerful signal. It means you’re too valuable to lose and don’t think you’ll be attacked, or that you’re very good at defending yourself and can afford to get into an altercation.
If niceness is supposed to pay off individually and selfishly, what changed between now and then?
The way that you wrote seems to confuse reproductively fit with fit for getting me what I would want on reflection. Nothing needs to have changed since the ancestral environment. We just don’t necessarily care that much about maximizing the number of our offspring.
Sounds right. Of all practical purposes that I can casually think of, niceness seems bad only for getting sex (as a man) and for leadership of large groups, especially direct leadership of groups of more than a dozen extreme social inferiors.
Niceness really is compatible with, and indeed conducive to, getting lots of sex with lots of people. It is sex-negativity that makes the two incompatible.
I have to strongly disagree with this. First, you seem to be conflating “reproducing” with “getting sex”. Maximizing the number of your offspring has less to do with having sex and more to do with obtaining resources to raise your offspring to maturity. If you give away too many of your resources, you won’t have enough to raise your offspring.
Second, there are several different notions of niceness here. The one this post discusses has to do with phrasing communication, a form of social skills. This is different than giving away resources or not looking out for your own interests. Niceness in the sense of possessing social skills, maintaining allies and friends, and not being “miserable company” is exactly what helps get sex and lead large groups.
So niceness has individual hedonic benefits but results in fewer offspring?
That seems plausible to me. I find it easy to imagine that being nicer than the reproductive optimum could make one happier, even in the ancestral environment. Of course, there are stupid ways to be nice that wouldn’t make one happier. And I’m sure that one can be too nice. But why would we expect that the hedonic and reproductive optima were ever the same?
Niceness can also have individual benefits, if you need other people’s voluntary cooperation. But in our society the role of voluntary cooperation is getting smaller, because it is replaced by institutions and financial transactions. Also the strangers you interact with online are unlikely to provide you any specific help in real life. (Speaking in general, because in your specific case their donations are welcome.)
Furthermore, in a small society where everyone knows everyone, your niceness or rudeness might also influence how people treat your relatives. Which in turn would provide your relatives an incentive to fix your behavior.
This and this suggest to me that one purpose (meta-purpose?) of meanness is cheap signaling—if you already have a reputation (deserved or not) as an authority figure, you can use it to quickly designate something as ‘bad’ without having to spend time and energy justifying yourself.
One hypothesis is, they feel offended in the first place, and are reciprocating. There is good evolutionary justification for Tit-For-Tat.
Other than that, I’m uncomfortable discussing the topic purely in abstract. My inclination would be to analyze actual online exchanges where someone is presumed to be “mean”, and study the pragmatics, context, and outcomes.
Actually, an even better starting point would be to start with a single-blind test where we pick one such exchange and verify that more than one person, in a group of non-involveds, agrees on who is being mean.
(There is one person in particular who stands out in my memory as a smart meanie who I extensively engaged with, on my home turf as it were, who may provide good material for analysis; but since I was personally involved I’m loath to use that.)
The hard question is, what is the intended purpose of the presumed meanie ? It’s hard to think of a way to ascertain that—what independent source of information would we have ?
There are cases were the context provides this information: if you analyze the transcript of a teacher’s class, you can work from the assumption that the teacher intends to convey some knowledge. If you run into instances of “mean” (I’m sure this would turn up for some teachers) it is empirically testable whether these behaviours make appropriate contributions to the teacher’s intent.
A big issue with most Internet exchanges is that people don’t, most of the time, declare a well-defined intent. They’re just passing the time, or so it appears. Possibly “mean” behavior is adaptive with respect to that intent, possibly not, it’s hard to tell. Perhaps this lack of definite purpose is in fact a contributing cause of “mean” behavior.
My extended exchanges with the person I refer to above came to an end when, after a lot of back-and-forth, I asked them point-blank: “What is your purpose in having these discussions ? How well are they working out for you ?” That was the last I heard of them.
To a first approximation, meanness seems to be the deliberate cause of offense.
I think that that definition captures a lot of meanness. And it probably nails the root cause of meanness.
But, if we’re using “meanness” to mean something like “egregious not-niceness”, your definition misses something, I think.
If niceness were just the opposite of meanness as I understand your definition, then niceness would be something like “the deliberate implication that someone has or should have high status.” But I don’t think that that is what Alicorn is talking about.
Here’s my attempt to define niceness. I am nice to you if I show that I care about and empathize with your happiness or unhappiness. Furthermore, I must show this in a way that wouldn’t normally cause you distress. (This caveat is to rule out things like “tough love”, or stalkers who think that their attention makes their stalkees happy.)
That seems to me to be the kind of niceness that greases the wheels of social interaction.
Furthermore, I must show this in a way that wouldn’t normally cause you distress. (This caveat is to rule out things like “tough love”, or stalkers who think that their attention makes their stalkees happy.)
Those are instances of caring about other things (most likely either how much utility the person will have in the future or social norms in the first case, the stalker’s (delusional) idea of how the future will be in the second case) more than the target’s happiness. I’m sure that we also want to have certain things (like truth and accuracy) valued above individuals’ happiness here. We may want to discuss those as part of discussing what the norm should be here.
I want to ask, why are people mean in the first place? I think before we try to “fix” some behavior we should make sure we understand it first. Otherwise we might be like the social reformers who try to fix “broken” institutions without understanding their reasons for existing.
To a first approximation, meanness seems to be the deliberate cause of offense. (Although I wonder if I’m suffering from the man-with-a-hammer syndrome here.) Anyone have other ideas?
I second the question. In the ancestral environment, there was some individually fit balance between meanness and niceness. If niceness is supposed to pay off individually and selfishly, what changed between now and then? Why is our factory-default impulse toward niceness too weak, if niceness is such an advantage? The question is not meant to be unanswerable, but it ought to be answered.
It may not be too weak. In the ancestral environment, everybody you could consider being mean to was probably in the room with you at the time. They could hurt you, and if you were frequently mean, the other people in the vicinity would back them up. All we need to explain why people are mean, on the Internet and in civilized societies where assault is fairly uncommon, is a mechanism that ties the disposition to be nice to the power of the other person to do you harm.
This hypothesis makes good predictions in general, although I think it’s a subconscious phenomenon and therefore subject to cues and priming as well as the other’s actual power to retaliate.
I can’t find it now, but I read a study where some form of antisocial behavior (perhaps it was keeping everything in a one-shot trustee game) became less common when the victims could see the perpetrator, even when no retaliation was in fact possible (and the perp knew it). So joining a faceless and pseudonymous community should be a perfect recipe for disregard of niceness and other cooperative instincts.
Like I said, the hypothesis makes good predictions.
So should we add avatars to LW?
I think they’d be visually distracting; LW isn’t otherwise full of pictures. Additionally, a lot of people using avatars on the internet apart from Facebook do not use their own faces, or even real faces that don’t belong to them; if I attached a little picture of a unicorn to my name, would that have the same effect?
Please, please, no!
I imagine they’d be visually distracting and take up page space, but if it’s considered that the civility benefits of having available faces attached to names are significant, there’s ways to mitigate that- have a user’s avatar or profile picture appear when rolling over a user’s name, for example, instead of being displayed on every comment whether you want to see it or not. Or some similar solution for making them immediately available but unobtrusive.
Absolutely. At least support Gravatar.
Indeed, and is hardly a novel observation. For instance, a well-regarded—though slightly more informal—presentation of the hypothesis was published here (Holkins & Krahulik, 2004).
I think to be complete we need a more detailed exposition of the payoffs of meanness.
It’s a signal that you aren’t scared of being retaliated against. Which can be a pretty powerful signal. It means you’re too valuable to lose and don’t think you’ll be attacked, or that you’re very good at defending yourself and can afford to get into an altercation.
The way that you wrote seems to confuse reproductively fit with fit for getting me what I would want on reflection. Nothing needs to have changed since the ancestral environment. We just don’t necessarily care that much about maximizing the number of our offspring.
Sounds right. Of all practical purposes that I can casually think of, niceness seems bad only for getting sex (as a man) and for leadership of large groups, especially direct leadership of groups of more than a dozen extreme social inferiors.
Niceness really is compatible with, and indeed conducive to, getting lots of sex with lots of people. It is sex-negativity that makes the two incompatible.
I have to strongly disagree with this. First, you seem to be conflating “reproducing” with “getting sex”. Maximizing the number of your offspring has less to do with having sex and more to do with obtaining resources to raise your offspring to maturity. If you give away too many of your resources, you won’t have enough to raise your offspring.
Second, there are several different notions of niceness here. The one this post discusses has to do with phrasing communication, a form of social skills. This is different than giving away resources or not looking out for your own interests. Niceness in the sense of possessing social skills, maintaining allies and friends, and not being “miserable company” is exactly what helps get sex and lead large groups.
So niceness has individual hedonic benefits but results in fewer offspring?
That seems plausible to me. I find it easy to imagine that being nicer than the reproductive optimum could make one happier, even in the ancestral environment. Of course, there are stupid ways to be nice that wouldn’t make one happier. And I’m sure that one can be too nice. But why would we expect that the hedonic and reproductive optima were ever the same?
Niceness can also have individual benefits, if you need other people’s voluntary cooperation. But in our society the role of voluntary cooperation is getting smaller, because it is replaced by institutions and financial transactions. Also the strangers you interact with online are unlikely to provide you any specific help in real life. (Speaking in general, because in your specific case their donations are welcome.)
Furthermore, in a small society where everyone knows everyone, your niceness or rudeness might also influence how people treat your relatives. Which in turn would provide your relatives an incentive to fix your behavior.
Some hypotheses (I suspect actual cases of meanness are more complex than any of these):
It signals power and a lack of fear of repercussions (both to the person one is being mean to and to witnesses).
It is efficient at achieving certain results, like making people for whom the interaction is optional go away.
It can serve aesthetic or intellectual purposes, especially in the form of things like sarcasm.
It is sometimes employed as a defense mechanism to prevent unwanted closeness with others.
This and this suggest to me that one purpose (meta-purpose?) of meanness is cheap signaling—if you already have a reputation (deserved or not) as an authority figure, you can use it to quickly designate something as ‘bad’ without having to spend time and energy justifying yourself.
One hypothesis is, they feel offended in the first place, and are reciprocating. There is good evolutionary justification for Tit-For-Tat.
Other than that, I’m uncomfortable discussing the topic purely in abstract. My inclination would be to analyze actual online exchanges where someone is presumed to be “mean”, and study the pragmatics, context, and outcomes.
Actually, an even better starting point would be to start with a single-blind test where we pick one such exchange and verify that more than one person, in a group of non-involveds, agrees on who is being mean.
(There is one person in particular who stands out in my memory as a smart meanie who I extensively engaged with, on my home turf as it were, who may provide good material for analysis; but since I was personally involved I’m loath to use that.)
The hard question is, what is the intended purpose of the presumed meanie ? It’s hard to think of a way to ascertain that—what independent source of information would we have ?
There are cases were the context provides this information: if you analyze the transcript of a teacher’s class, you can work from the assumption that the teacher intends to convey some knowledge. If you run into instances of “mean” (I’m sure this would turn up for some teachers) it is empirically testable whether these behaviours make appropriate contributions to the teacher’s intent.
A big issue with most Internet exchanges is that people don’t, most of the time, declare a well-defined intent. They’re just passing the time, or so it appears. Possibly “mean” behavior is adaptive with respect to that intent, possibly not, it’s hard to tell. Perhaps this lack of definite purpose is in fact a contributing cause of “mean” behavior.
My extended exchanges with the person I refer to above came to an end when, after a lot of back-and-forth, I asked them point-blank: “What is your purpose in having these discussions ? How well are they working out for you ?” That was the last I heard of them.
I think that that definition captures a lot of meanness. And it probably nails the root cause of meanness.
But, if we’re using “meanness” to mean something like “egregious not-niceness”, your definition misses something, I think.
If niceness were just the opposite of meanness as I understand your definition, then niceness would be something like “the deliberate implication that someone has or should have high status.” But I don’t think that that is what Alicorn is talking about.
Here’s my attempt to define niceness. I am nice to you if I show that I care about and empathize with your happiness or unhappiness. Furthermore, I must show this in a way that wouldn’t normally cause you distress. (This caveat is to rule out things like “tough love”, or stalkers who think that their attention makes their stalkees happy.)
That seems to me to be the kind of niceness that greases the wheels of social interaction.
Those are instances of caring about other things (most likely either how much utility the person will have in the future or social norms in the first case, the stalker’s (delusional) idea of how the future will be in the second case) more than the target’s happiness. I’m sure that we also want to have certain things (like truth and accuracy) valued above individuals’ happiness here. We may want to discuss those as part of discussing what the norm should be here.