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RichardKennaway comments on The Social Coprocessor Model - Less Wrong
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Never. That could explain it. I don't watch romantic movies either, or any TV.
So, how does the script normally play out?
"No."?
"No, we don't know each other well enough yet?"
"snort Too poor to get your own, are you?"
Ignore or somehow deflect the request and talk about something else?
None of the above?
If I had to guess I'd go with the fourth, but I'm only guessing.
ETA: I don't mind getting the karma, but I'm curious about why I'm getting several upvotes within minutes of posting this.
Well hang on. It isn't that simple. The man buying the woman a drink is more or less the courtship norm. They haven't actually stepped that far out of line by asking for a drink so the way you respond has to be calibrated to their status. If their status isn't that high and it was something of a gutsy move to ask for one, there is nothing wrong with letting them down softly with a "Nope. It isn't anything personal, you seem cool. I just don't buy drinks for women I just met" and you can segue into a conversation about how silly the norm is if you like. If the person has really high status then something more along the lines of lightly mocking them for being a spoiled brat who won't buy their own drinks can go over fine.
Umm, only with someone with whom I was already acquainted and I think the way I phrased it sounds worse than I meant it to sound. Spoiled is a bit much, I meant it to describe the extreme end of the possible responses you were suggesting. My point was more (1) when someone asks you to buy them a drink while they are testing your status they're also putting themselves at risk for rejection. So if your status is fairly equal already, be nice about it. And (2) the greater the initial status differential between you and the other person, the more confident you need to be (which, as I understand it has been well tested, I can anecdotally testify to and which is consistent with dominance hierarchy theory.)
This was not a particularly constructive example to use in the original post, for several reasons.
There are basically two situations that lead to this: First, the other person is interested in you, but is somewhat awkward and uses this as a rather blunt test to measure your interest in them. Second, if person is not interested in you, but sees you as a means of getting a free drink.
As the latter tends to be more likely, and in the former, there are still ways you can show interest without buying them a drink, you should not buy them a drink. However, buying them a drink is not wrong insofar as no unpleasant social consequences result from it (as they might result from, for example, an unflattering comment about a person's weight or appearance). All that happens is you're out $3-10, depending on the bar.
It's also worth noting that with certain people and in certain circumstances, you may actually be seeking someone with the qualities indicated by this request. If I were a rich and not particularly attractive older man, and the subject were a much-younger and attractive woman, this comment may actually suggest we could establish a mutually beneficial relationship. Our response to the request is really a response to the person making the request, and your hypothetical assumes we should a negative response, which is generally but not invariably true. Your description of the
That doesn't cover Mallah's story. I think the free drinks explanation is largely a confabulation by girls who don't know why they do it.
It covers the story up to the point of her not taking the drink. Perhaps she just wanted to see if she could. I agree that getting him to buy the drink may be more significant than actually consuming it. Or it could simply be a way of chastising someone she didn't believe should be talking to her. Or, perhaps, she simply forgot.
For practical purposes, she's not different whether she takes the drink or not. It's still a waste of money. If she didn't forget, it's likely she simply got a kick out of ordering some guy around. Not a situation I anticipated, but certainly deserving the same response as the selfish drinker.
I believe that covers that story perfectly. he approached an attractive woman, who saw him as a sucker who'd buy her an expensive drink, which he did, whereupon she promptly ignored him. If that's not exactly what I said, I don't know what is.
This seems very odd to me. You seem to be suggesting that this is the typical way a socially successful NT responds to being asked for a drink, and that just seems truly, bizarrely wrong to me. Where did you learn this? Is it a PUA thing? I'm not necessarily saying it wouldn't work - it might, in the same way that weird PUA crap like "peacocking" might work, but it definitely isn't normal behavior, even for NTs
I'm confused why you think this is so bizarrely wrong. I mean, yes, some inexperienced guys are easily manipulated by attractive women, but I think that more successful and more experienced people would just make a joke of it, and not allow themselves to be manipulated easily.
And everyone "peacocks" every time they dress for an occasion or buy clothes because they like how they look. That's not weird or bizarre either.
Roko explicitly wrote about using a status-lowering level of teasing.
Part of the problem may be that a lot of play is inhibited attack, and it can be hard to judge just how much of a verbal attack is either intended or received.
I think that the emphasis on status here is misplaced. Here's an analogy:
Imagine that you, dear reader, are very smart, and when you get into conversations about intellectual topics, people almost always say "Wow, you're smart," based on superficial indicators, and seem impressed. Now imagine that you meet someone who reacts differently: they take it for granted that you're smart, and actually try to engage with you intellectually, rather than being awed and amazed by your intellect.
Can you see that your reaction might be very different? You might be more likely to like and be interested in talking to this person, intrigued that they weren't so easily won over, and possibly a little motivated to prove your intelligence to them.
That's what's going on in the example with attractive girls, except with looks and sexuality rather than intelligence. It's less of a "Oh wow you have high status" reaction on the girl's part, and more of "Hey, finally someone who isn't a pushover just cause I'm hot. He might actually be fun to talk to." This is communicated all the time with little things like body language, the way you turn to look at someone, the way you stand, and how you speak. It usually isn't as direct as "Will you buy me a drink?"
Yes, I like this analogy between intellectual interaction and social (status) interaction. Both types of interaction have "I'll push you until you stop me" behavior, that would be considered offensive or attacking if it was manifested in the other form of interaction.
A common mode of interaction for intellectuals is to argue for positions that you aren't sure of in order to figure out if they believe in, or even to argue for positions that they don't believe just to play devil's advocate. These debate styles push against people, expecting them to push back, analogous to the social styles of many neurotypical extraverts.
Just as introverts on the autistic spectrum hate it when neurotypical extraverts try to turn everything into a status game, neurotypical extraverts hate it when autistic spectrum introverts try to turn everything into a debate.
In a group of neurotypical extraverts, saying something like "you're such a dork" to someone else is not necessarily considered rude or an attack. They expect the other person to handle it and fire back. Likewise, in a group of autistic spectrum introverts, saying something like "you're wrong" is not necessarily considered rude or an attack. They expect the other person to be able to handle it, and either defend or concede their position.
Both groups have different norms for showing assertiveness, and an assertiveness display in one group could be considered an attack if it was performed in the other group.
Good point about "you're wrong," which has unnerved me a few times. Also, especially on this site: "you're unethical" or "that's unethical."
In intellectual circles, it often seems to be considered acceptable to communicate intellectual disagreement in an assertive way, the assumption being that everyone knows that disagreement isn't personal. This communication style jars some intellectuals, and it enjoyed by others. Non-intellectual people universally hate this communication style.
It just runs counter to my own experience and observation. Deflecting the request with a joke would be an effective way to avoid getting played for free drinks, if you think that's what's going on, or of politely declining if you're just not interested, but it doesn't seem like a generally effective, or commonly practiced, method of actually parlaying the interaction into a "score" - not unless you happen to be dealing with the kind of person who's attracted to assholes. My impression is that these kind of PUA style techniques are geared towards successfully picking up people with low self esteem. That may work, but I think it's a mistake to draw conclusions from that about "normal" social interaction.
I am very confused by this comment. Who are you talking about as the "asshole" in this scenario? I think you may be misunderstanding it. The idea is that two people are talking and flirting, and the girl asks the guy for something (like a drink, but it could be anything: taking a picture, helping her with something) at which point the guy teases her about it. I'm not seeing anything about low self esteem here.
The guy who says "no" when, in the middle of flirting, a girl asks for a drink. This just doesn't happen IRL unless the guy is intentionally trying to shut down the interaction.
Could you explain your basis for this claim a little more?
Just my own personal experience. I guess maybe I phrased that a little strongly for something based entirely on anecdotal evidence. And I guess I should have added a caveat like "This just doesn't happen unless the guy is intentionally trying to shut down the interaction, or has studied PUA techniques, or is Richard Feynman".
I guess the kind of person who is not attracted to assholes wouldn't ask a stranger for a drink in the first place, would they?
Decline, but the conversation would never have got that far anyway, and isn't going to get any further. I'm not very good at maintaining a conversation, but when I deliberately put out the "please shut up and go away" vibes it has no chance. :-)
I'm not sure what this has to do with the original scenario, where the two people are still trying to assess each other. Or what status has to do with those examples.
The way we respond to others has a lot more to it than that. If I'm approached by someone of the wrong sexual orientation for me, then my declining their advances has nothing to do with status. The same with 15-year-old girls (the only example in the original version of your comment). My response to these people will be whatever is necessary to get them to give up on the sexual advances. This does not strike me as a useful response to someone that I would like to get together with.
Perhaps the idea you are trying to get across is that you should begin by trying to put the other person off, but (if you still want to get together with them) take care not to do so too effectively? I am familiar with the custom of ritually refusing a gift before accepting it -- is this something similar?
Are you speaking from personal experience or is this something you have only worked out on paper?
On a very narrow and self-selecting sample, i.e. people who show up at bars and clubs with the express intention of getting "picked up"
I think a lot of people, when they first turn 21 (or whatever the legal drinking age is in their jurisdiction) go through a phase of going to meat-markety type places, but eventually become disillusioned with that 'scene' and grow out of it.
I would call that simply value. If their status matters to me, it is part of their value to me; if it does not, it is irrelevant.
Tested by you? Ok, maybe that's too personal a question, but I'm aware in general terms of the PUA stuff, and I have only a limited interest in soup of the soup.
On the first day, you have a delicious chicken. The next day you make soup with the bones and leftovers. On the third day you make soup from the leftover soup.
In other words, an exposition only indirectly connected with the source, unrefreshed by contact with real life.
Sorry, what is "NT"? I read this blog often enough that I feel like I should know, but I don't.
"Neurotypical" - in context, not being significantly autistic.
Thank you.
I completely understand the general idea here, I just think the drink-buying thing is a bad example. In my experience, refusal to buy a drink for someone who's flirting with you doesn't send the signal "you're X statusvalue lower than me", it sends the signal "I'm not interested in playing this game at all"
I think you're misunderstanding the "refusal." It's not a "No, go away," it's more like "you buy me one first, I'm cuter" said playfully.
I've never understood why people think that's effective.
What good does it do to act like you're higher status if you're not? You can't change your face or your income by signaling. Is everybody really so gullible?
And also -- I've not spent a huge amount of time in bars, but I've never seen anyone ask a stranger for a drink.
Income and looks are only one component of status. Other components are determined by signaling and other forms of implicit communication in actual interactions. So, merely acting like you are high status will go a long way to convince people that you are, as long as you aren't giving off contradictory low status signals also.
One of the reason that people play status games (of which "buy me a drink" often is), is because there is a margin of error in status perception, and poking the other person with a status ploy is a way to confirm or disconfirm your initial impression of their status. If you believe that you are higher status that someone, and you attempt a successful status grab that they submit to, then it confirms that you are higher status.
As I've hypothesized, the way normal people tend to interact (or at least, a typical mode for certain types of extraverts to interact) is to constantly bump up against each other socially in mini-dominance battles and figure out the pecking order by seeing who can away with what against who.
This form of interaction used to be rather alien to me, and I would interpret it as an affront (which is how RichardKennaway seems to interpret it), but Ben Kovitz's weird psychology wiki gave me some ideas to help understand it.
From an article on negotiation:
From another negotation article:
Status is partly a process of empirical discovery. It is decided through negotiation. People with different phenotypes approach this negotiation in different ways. Some people negotiate by acting lower in status to everyone. Some people negotiate by acting equal in status to everyone. Some people (such as neurotypical extraverts) negotiate by acting higher in status to everyone. Non-neurotypicals are simply unaware of this negotiation.
To people like us, neurotypical socially-dominant extraverts will seem annoying with their constant status grabs. But they aren't necessarily trying to be jerks, they are just interacting the only way they know how. They are attempting to negotiate with you, they just begin the negotiation by driving a hard bargain. They may assume that you are like them, and expect you to stand up for yourself and give them a counter-offer back of a different status relationship, where instead of them being on top, you two are equals, or you are on top. They may even want you prove that you are higher status, and their test is an opportunity for you to do so. They will expect you to negotiate yourself, by either submitting, or attempting to fight back; what they won't be able to understand is someone who doesn't even participate in this sort of negotiation in the first place.
I've heard this before, but framed as 'Ask Culture meets Guess Culture'.
Even guess cultures have that distinction; look up the etymology of otaku sometime.
Yep. And depending on the way you opt out of the negotiation, you may be perceived as either very low self-esteem, or as an arrogant bastard.
The latter category (which I personally have been categorized as a lot) tends to happen when you assume that all people are supposed to be equal, dammit, and refuse to give ground to anything that isn't Right with a capital R. This results in the problem of causing others to have to lose face when you win... and people don't like it.
(Later in life, I've realized that it generally works better to arrange things so that other people can receive status strokes by siding with you, and they then tend to return the strokes.)
Status isn't something you have, it's something you do.
As long as we're piling on anecdotes, I've asked folks for drinks on numerous occasions. And the bartender at a club I frequented back in the day used to give me my drinks for free.
I voted you up because I wanted to attract attention to your comment, because I also wanted the questions contained within answered as well.