Us guys, we see women saying that they want guys with intellectual and moral values, but then we often seeing women going for men who seem unlikely to exhibit those traits, and we get… confused.
This confuses me, because it seems to imply that men need to believe that a simple personality heuristic can be applied to all or almost all women. Why is it an unacceptable answer that some women like one thing, and some like another? Or did you mean the same group of women in both cases?
I used to hate the idea of gender dynamics in dating. But then I gave them a try, and found that some of them are actually pretty fun.
By “gender dynamics” in this case do you mean doing the things that you’re expected to do because of your gender? If so, yeah, some of them are pretty fun. And some of it is stuff we’re hardwired to like; I won’t argue with that. The trouble is just when we limit ourselves to broad heuristics about the whole population which gloss over the degree of individual variety, and then try to apply those on the individual scale.
This confuses me, because it seems to imply that men need to believe that a simple personality heuristic can be applied to all or almost all women. Why is it an unacceptable answer that some women like one thing, and some like another? Or did you mean the same group of women in both cases?
In other cases, it could be that the most common things women in your culture say they want, and the guys who are getting the most attention, don’t seem to match. Of course, there’s no necessary contradiction, like you say.
In other cases, it’s the same women saying one thing, and (seemingly) doing another.
There is a social desirability bias that will encourage women to signal preferences for positive traits like intelligence and values. In contrast, if you’re a woman who likes meatheads, you’ve less likely to talk about it. Furthermore, when people misstate their preferences, it’s more likely to be in the direction of positive traits than of negative traits.
For many white middle-class men, it’s drummed into their heads from an early age that women universally prefer intelligent men with values such as “respectfulness.” So when a guy sees evidence to the contrary, it makes him question anything he is told about what women want, even by women. Since it’s not politically correct for either women or men to talk about women going for anything other than intelligence and values in men, when he sees women going for men without those traits, he may freak out and start making hasty generalizations.
That’s not the most rational attitude, but it is understandable. The presence of some women misstating their preferences (or dating guys other than what they prefer) lowers the priors for men believing what other women say about their preferences. This is sad, but true.
And yes, it probably sucks for you when you are interacting with a guy, and his priors for how to interact with you are all screwed up by the ways that other women have trained him.
By “gender dynamics” in this case do you mean doing the things that you’re expected to do because of your gender? If so, yeah, some of them are pretty fun. And some of it is stuff we’re hardwired to like; I won’t argue with that.
Basically yeah.
The trouble is just when we limit ourselves to broad heuristics about the whole population which gloss over the degree of individual variety, and then try to apply those on the individual scale.
Sometimes, broad heuristics are all you have, at least to start with. “Women are misstating their preferences until proven otherwise” probably would be too broad and extreme. But a moderate degree of skepticism until proven otherwise might make sense.
Getting better reference classes can improve the heuristics used. For instance, you might know that some groups of women state their preferences more accurately than others. I propose that nerdy women are both more aware of their preferences, actually date guys who fulfill their preferences, and less likely to incorrectly state socially desirable preferences for signaling reasons. These women are also more likely to be into intelligent men with values, so on the question of those preferences, nerdy women’s claims about their preferences are more trustworthy.
Gangestad et al. found that 90-95% of women fit into a gender-typical taxon based on their interests and traits, while 5-10% of women are a gender-atypical taxon (which also contains most of the queer women). 90-95% of women are wired one way; 5-10% are wired another way. As a result, there actually probably are many examples where it’s reasonable to approach women with one set of heuristics by default unless you have special evidence that they are gender-atypical, which allows you to pull out some different heuristics.
It may be the case that the 5-10% of gender atypical women contain most of the nerdy women, and disproportionately state their preferences accurately.
This confuses me, because it seems to imply that men need to believe that a simple personality heuristic can be applied to all or almost all women. Why is it an unacceptable answer that some women like one thing, and some like another?
The prevalence of different personality types in the population is very relevant here and you seem to be glossing over it. If the number of women attracted to your personality type is relatively low (and especially if it is low relative to the number of other men similar to you) it will still be an obstacle you need to overcome in finding a partner even if you believe that there are women out there who would be attracted to you. Internet dating has probably helped with this a bit by making it easier to find potential matches but it can’t overcome seriously unfavourable relative numbers.
I’d compare this with employment. Every now and then, you see a media story about some company with a highly unusual internal culture that uses all sorts of unconventional practices in hiring, organization, and management. Yet unless you luckily stumble onto some such employer and happen to be an exceptionally good candidate by their standards, you would be well-advised to stick to the standard conventional advice on how to look and behave in job interviews and, subsequently, in the workplace. In fact, doing anything else would mean sabotaging your employment and career prospects, and expecting that your unconventional behavior will surely be rewarded with a dream job with an unconventional employer is a delusional pipe-dream.
The main flaw of this analogy, of course, is that the conventional wisdom on seeking and maintaining employment is largely correct, whereas the conventional wisdom on dating has fatal points of disconnect from reality. Also, while conforming to optimal workplace behavior is truly painful for many people, fixing the problems in one’s approach to dating and relationships typically doesn’t require any such painful and loathsome adjustment. (Even though people often rationalize their unwillingness to do it by convincing themselves in the opposite.)
You’re probably right but ironically I’ve ignored much of the standard advice on employment and it’s worked out just fine for me so this example doesn’t resonate very well for me. I’ve never worn a suit to a job interview for example.
Certainly! If he’d said “women who might like me tend to also like …” I’d have understood. My confusion was because there was no such qualification, or anything else limiting the population under discussion beyond “women,” but the commenter seemed to expect consistency within that population.
The prevalence of different personality types in the population is very relevant here and you seem to be glossing over it.
I assumed he was saying something like “the majority of women prefer a man more ‘masculine’ than the median man”. By analogy, if it is true that “the majority of men prefer a woman who is slimmer than the median woman” it should be obvious that being overweight will make it harder for a woman to find a match even if there are men who prefer less slim women. Saying “men prefer slim women” is a slightly sloppy generalization but not an unreasonable one in this example.
We might be looking at different parts of the comment under discussion, because I’ve completely lost the correlation between what we’re talking about and what I actually read. At this point I’d rather just drop it.
This confuses me, because it seems to imply that men need to believe that a simple personality heuristic can be applied to all or almost all women. Why is it an unacceptable answer that some women like one thing, and some like another? Or did you mean the same group of women in both cases?
By “gender dynamics” in this case do you mean doing the things that you’re expected to do because of your gender? If so, yeah, some of them are pretty fun. And some of it is stuff we’re hardwired to like; I won’t argue with that. The trouble is just when we limit ourselves to broad heuristics about the whole population which gloss over the degree of individual variety, and then try to apply those on the individual scale.
In other cases, it could be that the most common things women in your culture say they want, and the guys who are getting the most attention, don’t seem to match. Of course, there’s no necessary contradiction, like you say.
In other cases, it’s the same women saying one thing, and (seemingly) doing another.
There is a social desirability bias that will encourage women to signal preferences for positive traits like intelligence and values. In contrast, if you’re a woman who likes meatheads, you’ve less likely to talk about it. Furthermore, when people misstate their preferences, it’s more likely to be in the direction of positive traits than of negative traits.
For many white middle-class men, it’s drummed into their heads from an early age that women universally prefer intelligent men with values such as “respectfulness.” So when a guy sees evidence to the contrary, it makes him question anything he is told about what women want, even by women. Since it’s not politically correct for either women or men to talk about women going for anything other than intelligence and values in men, when he sees women going for men without those traits, he may freak out and start making hasty generalizations.
That’s not the most rational attitude, but it is understandable. The presence of some women misstating their preferences (or dating guys other than what they prefer) lowers the priors for men believing what other women say about their preferences. This is sad, but true.
And yes, it probably sucks for you when you are interacting with a guy, and his priors for how to interact with you are all screwed up by the ways that other women have trained him.
Basically yeah.
Sometimes, broad heuristics are all you have, at least to start with. “Women are misstating their preferences until proven otherwise” probably would be too broad and extreme. But a moderate degree of skepticism until proven otherwise might make sense.
Getting better reference classes can improve the heuristics used. For instance, you might know that some groups of women state their preferences more accurately than others. I propose that nerdy women are both more aware of their preferences, actually date guys who fulfill their preferences, and less likely to incorrectly state socially desirable preferences for signaling reasons. These women are also more likely to be into intelligent men with values, so on the question of those preferences, nerdy women’s claims about their preferences are more trustworthy.
Gangestad et al. found that 90-95% of women fit into a gender-typical taxon based on their interests and traits, while 5-10% of women are a gender-atypical taxon (which also contains most of the queer women). 90-95% of women are wired one way; 5-10% are wired another way. As a result, there actually probably are many examples where it’s reasonable to approach women with one set of heuristics by default unless you have special evidence that they are gender-atypical, which allows you to pull out some different heuristics.
It may be the case that the 5-10% of gender atypical women contain most of the nerdy women, and disproportionately state their preferences accurately.
The prevalence of different personality types in the population is very relevant here and you seem to be glossing over it. If the number of women attracted to your personality type is relatively low (and especially if it is low relative to the number of other men similar to you) it will still be an obstacle you need to overcome in finding a partner even if you believe that there are women out there who would be attracted to you. Internet dating has probably helped with this a bit by making it easier to find potential matches but it can’t overcome seriously unfavourable relative numbers.
I’d compare this with employment. Every now and then, you see a media story about some company with a highly unusual internal culture that uses all sorts of unconventional practices in hiring, organization, and management. Yet unless you luckily stumble onto some such employer and happen to be an exceptionally good candidate by their standards, you would be well-advised to stick to the standard conventional advice on how to look and behave in job interviews and, subsequently, in the workplace. In fact, doing anything else would mean sabotaging your employment and career prospects, and expecting that your unconventional behavior will surely be rewarded with a dream job with an unconventional employer is a delusional pipe-dream.
The main flaw of this analogy, of course, is that the conventional wisdom on seeking and maintaining employment is largely correct, whereas the conventional wisdom on dating has fatal points of disconnect from reality. Also, while conforming to optimal workplace behavior is truly painful for many people, fixing the problems in one’s approach to dating and relationships typically doesn’t require any such painful and loathsome adjustment. (Even though people often rationalize their unwillingness to do it by convincing themselves in the opposite.)
You’re probably right but ironically I’ve ignored much of the standard advice on employment and it’s worked out just fine for me so this example doesn’t resonate very well for me. I’ve never worn a suit to a job interview for example.
Certainly! If he’d said “women who might like me tend to also like …” I’d have understood. My confusion was because there was no such qualification, or anything else limiting the population under discussion beyond “women,” but the commenter seemed to expect consistency within that population.
This is what I thought I was saying. :)
I assumed he was saying something like “the majority of women prefer a man more ‘masculine’ than the median man”. By analogy, if it is true that “the majority of men prefer a woman who is slimmer than the median woman” it should be obvious that being overweight will make it harder for a woman to find a match even if there are men who prefer less slim women. Saying “men prefer slim women” is a slightly sloppy generalization but not an unreasonable one in this example.
We might be looking at different parts of the comment under discussion, because I’ve completely lost the correlation between what we’re talking about and what I actually read. At this point I’d rather just drop it.