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SarahC comments on Love and Rationality: Less Wrongers on OKCupid - Less Wrong
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I think you've basically got it right.
I do have the impression that men who have the fundamentals right aren't good with the female hindbrain, for the most part (there are exceptions, and there are compromises.)
My own perspective: I've had experience with guys who don't have the fundamentals, and that's horrible. Someone without human decency is the worst, but someone who isn't too bright also doesn't make for a great relationship. So that sort of thing is primary. Mandatory. I don't appreciate people who argue that women are somehow not serious when they say that they care about intellectual or moral values. I'm entirely serious.
But, on a totally different metric and with a totally different mechanism, masculinity also matters a lot. (I think this is true of most women, but I might be an outlier in just how much it's true for me.) Masculinity will make a bad match look tempting; the lack of it will make a good match look unappealing. I don't think it's necessarily bad that my hindbrain works like this -- on the off chance that I have "chemistry" with a guy who's also a good match, I'll enjoy the relationship much more than if I were Ms. Spock. It adds another dimension. The downside is that there's a chance I'll be attracted to assholes and idiots -- but I believe (somewhat hopefully) that being self-aware will prevent me from making those kinds of mistakes in practice. [Note that I am saying something different from "Women just want sex with assholes."]
I think you're probably also right about behavioral selectivity. Looks matter, but in a pretty coarse-grained way; there's "unappealing," a broad swath of "meh," and a tiny minority of "incredibly good-looking." Everything else is what you do.
SarahC said:
What do you think causes the common perception that women are not serious about caring about intellectual or moral values? Are you saying that it's extremely rare for women to say this unseriously, or that you just don't like being judged as non-serious on such a claim merely because a non-trivial percentage of women may make it incorrectly? What level of variation do you think occurs in the female population in this area.
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. Since this kind of subject isn't politically correct to talk about, when a guy sees something like this happening, it will dominate his thinking and lead to hasty generalizations about what all women want (like your example of "women just want sex with assholes").
What do you think about women who are into Rhett Butler, and other "dark heroes" from romance novels? If that example is too fictional, how about, say, rappers?
Here's an interesting passage from feminist author Jackson Katz about the popularity of Eminem with women, and the message it sends to guys:
Moving on...
I think your preferences for are pretty typical for women with high intelligence: intelligent masculine guys who aren't douchebags.
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. A lot of it is simply aesthetics on both visual and behavioral levels.
Imagine how self-aware you would be with about 30 less IQ points, and how well you'd make decisions about avoiding attractive assholish guys. That's what most women are probably like.
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.
Dark heroes in romance novels generally aren't disrespectful or aggressive towards the heroine, and if they are domineering or deceptive towards the heroine, it's generally motivated by something that the hero at least believes is for the heroine's good, and often at the expense of the hero's own interests.
For example, if a fantasy-romance novel heroine gets put under a curse that makes her terribly lustful under the full moon, the heroine might lock her up to protect her... even if she secretly wants to have sex with him anyway, and he wants her as well. Or in an adventure-romance where the heroine is a trained assassin with genetic superpowers, the hero might trick her into getting left behind when he goes to kill the bad guy, to protect her... even if his powers aren't as powerful as hers, or he has no powers at all besides his secret agent training.
Even if the hero is a bad guy with a past, his actions toward the heroine never turn out to be actually evil or unprincipled, though they may be mistaken and tragic for one or both of them.
(To be fair, romance has a lot of subgenres, and my knowledge is limited to skimming the books my wife has left in the bathroom over the last 20 years or so, and a handful of conversations with her about the emotional and sexual significance of the various tropes in the genres she reads. It's possible that things are different in subgenres she doesn't read, like "contemporary"; she almost entirely prefers ones with fantasy, SF, adventure, and other "non-realistic" themes, since this lets her get two categories worth of entertainment at once. ;-) But I'd be a bit surprised if it's dramatically different.)
I think it's fair to say that a lot of romance fiction is powered by the idea of a frightening man, even if, as you say, he has a good reason. I admit that this conclusion is the result of realizing that I don't like the genre, and I think that's the reason.
The thing I don't understand in all these discussion is I know a fair number of men in long term-- and sometimes happy-- relationships. They aren't high-display of masculinity guys, and yet, somehow they've hooked up with someone. How did they manage it?
Gone with the Wind is a hard thing to argue from. It's an extraordinary book-- very popular, but never duplicated. One of the things that drives it is that Scarlett is much more motivated by survival and status than the average female lead.
I just realized-- it's actually an example of a relatively rare sort of women's fiction. Perfect guy shows up, but the woman is too busy to notice for most of the novel. The other examples I've got (Murder with Peacocks and Good in Bed), she's distracted by a bunch of things going on in her life, but not by being in love with the wrong guy. In a normal novel, she'd realize she's in love with him while he was still in love with her.
Also, it's interesting that I've never heard anyone say that it was implausible for Scarlett to be fixated on Ashley.
Part of what makes these discussions messy is that the fantasies that hook the hindbrain aren't necessarily what people want to live. There are a lot more men who like action movies than who'd like to be in violent fights.
How old are they? Most people get married eventually. Furthermore, the older people get, the more they switch over to long-term mating strategies.
If you're an average guy, eventually you're going to "get lucky" and run into a woman who is into you. As people get older, more and more women get tired of bad boys and switch over to their long-term mating strategies (and in some cases, are looking for men to support them).
So our average guy will find a mate. The question is, how many years go by while he is only dating sporadically, while women (on average) are off having fun with the more masculine and exciting guys? When he finally does find someone, how much choice does he actually have? What is her level of attractiveness (in various areas) compared to his? Is she the "one" who is "right" for him, or is she simply the one woman who has shown interest in him in the past few years?
It seems that during youth, most people do some combination of short-term mating and attempted-but-aborted serial long-term relationships, until eventually they find a good match. People test-drive each other. According to the model I'm outlining, women concentrate their test driving towards men at the top, while men's test driving of women is more evenly distributed (though of course, still skewed).
As a result, men who aren't flashy rides get disproportionately overlooked or cut out of the developmental test-driving stage, until with time women's average preferences shift and they want something more dependable. I've heard men express frustration with this situation and ask, "if the kitten didn't want me, do I want the cat?"
Sex differences in attraction is also important. For men, looks are relatively more important in attraction, while for women, behavior/personality is relatively more important. If you are a guy dating people you find attractive, they can still turn out to be good long-term mates for you. But for women, the guys you find most attractive during youth may have personality traits that exclude them from making good long-term mates. Of course, there is variation in women on this trait: for some, their ideal short-term mate and ideal long-term mate are the same guy. On average, the people who young women are sexually excited about are less likely to make good long-term mates than the people young men are excited about.
Given that there are so many subgenres of romance, I suspect we are talking about different ones. In the small sample of my wife's books that I've read, the hero is never described as frightening to the heroine. Typically, he takes the form of an annoying rival who the heroine believes is overconfident or arrogant, someone whose goals are (superficially and initially) at odds with those of the heroine. (It then usually turns out that one or both characters have been operating on the basis of a mistaken impression about the other's goals or character.)
But I have never seen fear described as a heroine's reaction to anything except the villain, or her feelings for the hero. (Or more precisely, her anticipation of the problematic consequences of allowing her feelings for him to develop and be acted upon.)
Fear of the hero himself, or his actions, though? To my recollection, never happens in these genres.
Thanks for the information. I may have been over-influenced by the blurbs on paranormal romances.
And my take on "frightening" was that these are guys who any reasonable person with ordinary human abilities would find frightening, whether the heroine does or not.
From the "Perception Lab" at St Andrews:
Older women tend to prefer more feminine faces. Women in the infertile part of their fertility cycle tend to prefer more feminine faces. Women rating themselves as less attractive tend to prefer more feminine faces.
By the way, I don't mean to imply that your guy friends in particular are in stable relationships because of these tendencies - I can think of many other reasons beyond the differing attractiveness of their faces, or their demeanour.
This deserves emphasis. Our instincts are not interested in our happiness. There is no reason to presume that those we are most attracted to will be the same as those who will be the most satisfying either in the long or short term. (Although it is certainly strong evidence to be considered as well as a direct contributor to that satisfaction.)
Are these mostly older guys or more precisely guys in LTRs with older women?
The increase over the last 4 decades in female personal income has made the "beta good provider" male strategy less successful.
Also, some (e.g., the Man Who Is Thursday) say that the increase in female promiscuity has had a similar effect because (the thinking goes) once a woman has had sex with 1 or 2 extremely exciting men, she is less likely to settle for a LTR with a much less exciting one (and as long as she does not demand any sort of commitment from them, a woman using a "modern" sexual strategy will probably have sex with 1 or 2 extremely exciting men).
Although I have a relatively small circle of friends, even I have a friend of a friend, now in her 60s, who only ever had sex with one man (the father of her kids to which she is still married) and she was quite beautiful, grew up in the proverbial big city (Manhattan) and has and had no notable social handicaps.
rhollerithdotcom:
If she doesn't demand any sort of commitment from them, she can have sex with many more extremely exciting men than that, if she's at all attractive. Even less attractive women can similarly easily have lots of sex and non-serious relationships with men who are far above what they can realistically expect to get for serious commitment, even if they won't be extremely exciting by absolute standards, so the same principle applies.
There was a discussion of this issue on LW recently. If anyone's interested, these are my thoughts on the subject, and here I comment on some relevant research.
Most of my friends are around my own age, so both the men and the women are older than young.
I'm not sure what the typical age for starting the relationships was.
OK but note that my point is not that women get less choosy as they get older (though that is almost certainly true) but rather that it was easier for a man of average attractiveness to win the hand of a 30-year-old woman 30 or 40 years ago than it is today.
IIRC, a study a couple of years back that said that the male hero raped the female heroine in about half of a large sample of romance novels they looked at. Can't remember how they chose their sample.
That is disrespectful. It's asserting that the hero knows better than the heroine what's good for her, and is entitled to act on her behalf. In my mind that's a much, much more dangerous meme than outright acting maliciously.
The phrase 'dangerous meme' jumped out at me. I agree that it is disrespectful and I personally make an effort to prevent people that try from having any part of my life. I actually have to bite my tongue at times so that I don't point out to young adults "You don't have to take that. You can choose your own boundaries, with consideration of your options and likely outcomes." (That put me in a particularly interesting situation when I was a teacher!)
But going from 'undesirable behavior' to 'dangerous meme', well, strikes me as dangerous. It seems like a move from discussing behavioral preferences to considering the very fact that the behavioural pattern appeals to some people or plays a role in their literature of choice is wrong.
I find the kinds of romance novels in question decidedly unappealing. Not just because they are aimed at women but because they are aimed at a different subset of women than those with whom I most empathise with. But I do know that there people who actually appreciate or are attracted to these same behaviours that I find obnoxious. Judging the very meme just because I personally don't prefer the behaviour would seem presumptive.
I don't think I intended the phrase as strongly as you interpreted it. However, "undesireable behavior" is too weak. As noted in another fork of this thread, I think that kind of paternalism is totally out of place between any two capable adults, but invididual cases are not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about the notion that "members of group X know better than/are entitled to look after members of group Y." The particular example given happens to be sexist, but it would be offensive for any two groups of normal grown-ups. Perpetuating that idea in popular culture, e.g. via popular fiction, has negative effects on members of both groups, even if they're not directly exposed to the fiction itself.
That's not a notion that was actually present in the context and nor is it one that you introduced yourself (until now). I say this not to be pedantic or to accuse you of any form of inconsistency but rather because there is an implicit assumption that I don't share. The one that allows a leap from a fictional stories where a female protagonist interacts with an objectionably dominant hero to the general claim "members of group X know better than/are entitled to look after members of group Y".
The particular example given happens to be of heroes who are sexist (or just excessively dominant) and female heroines with arguably terrible taste. If someone is offended that the heroine is attracted to the domineering hero or offended that a woman likes to read such books or empathises with the character then that is the problem of the person taking offence. Not the problem of the author, not the problem of the fictional protagonist and not the problem of literary porn fan.
While my position on what it makes sense to declare offensive may well be irreconcilably opposed to your own it may be interesting to note that my objection here is actually similar to the objection that we both would share to the heroine being overridden. It is not OK to prevent (or shame or otherwise apply moral sanction against) people having, reading or writing stories that appeal to their own emotions. It is not OK to condemn literature because the character doesn't fit an ideal.
I don't think "members of group <Relsgui> know better than/are entitled to look after members of group <romantic fiction readers>". Actually, you probably do 'know better than' but it is the 'are entitled to look after' that is in play when we consider declaring things offensive.
Yes, this particular example is of individuals in just a few works of fiction. But the pattern does happen to exist in many more. And it does happen to be a pretty common idea in our culture. I'm not deriving that from the few examples given; I'm deriving that from living in the culture. I'm not looking out for readers-of-that-fiction, I'm looking out for me, who has to live with them, and with the people who learn values from them.
I'm also withdrawing from this conversation, because the amount of mental effort it's taking to participate is exceeding the payoff significantly.
In all sincerity the my goal in this conversation was not primarily to maximise the immediate enjoyment of the participants, for all that I do not like draining the mental energies of either others or myself. The role of morality has been discussed elsewhere recently and within that role declarations of things that things should be considered offensive or shamed serves as a powerful power play. It even more powerful when the assumption that something is sexist, prejudiced or otherwise normatively wrong is passed off implicitly without question. It takes very little for such beliefs or injunctions to become unquestionable and once in place can be a significant inhibitor of personal freedom.
The task of minimising personal offence while at the same time acting to make a social move too expensive for it to be worth their while to try frequently is one that is quite difficult.
You're leaving out the part where I said that the hero's actions could be mistaken and/or tragic: i.e., in actual romance novels it's quite often the case that the hero only thinks he knows better than the heroine, that she fights his actions every step of the way, and/or the actions lead to bad results.
I'm also a bit confused as to how you can say that either of the specific examples I gave qualify as "disrespectful". If somebody throws themselves in front of a bullet for you, is that being disrespectful because they think they know what's better for you?
I don't see either of these as analogous to throwing himself in front of a bullet. In both cases he's making a choice for her which she is capable of making herself--he's taking care of her instead of letting her take care of herself. Even in the first case, there's precedent in werewolf fiction for the lycanthrope to be voluntarily restrained to minimize damage. In the second case he's also mislelading her so as to actually prevent her from making the choice to, say, protect him with her superior abilities.
It would be equally messed up if you switched the gender roles--saying "I'm going to do what I've decided is good for you instead of letting you make your own choices" always is, between two capable grownups. This just happens to be the direction which conforms to the popular trope about who is supposed to take care of whom.
This particular aspect may be unique to the romance genres my wife reads, but ISTM that the female leads in these novels are just as likely to make the same sort of imposingly-yet-self-sacrificing decisions for the male leads -- i.e., both parties doing it in the same novel, prior to reaching a saner equilibrium. The contextual implication I draw from the few ones that I read myself, is that:
1) The signal "I will do what it takes to protect you, even if you disagree" is covertly found attractive by the heroine, even when her rational/overt reaction is that it's stupid, unnecessary, condescending, chauvinistic etc. (This distinction is usually reflected in the heroine's inner and outer dialogs),
2) While the signal is valued, the actual behavior and effects are not -- by the time they reach "happily ever after", the hero grudgingly agrees to limit his heroic impulses to merely vigorously arguing and protesting against courses of action he deems too dangerous, rather than outright sabotage or quasi-suicidal pre-emptions.
Hypothesis: once the hero has established the credibility of his signaled concern by actually putting himself at risk, the heroine can simply enjoy the now-credible verbal signals, without having the ongoing cost of excessive risk to him, or the annoyance of being treated somewhat condescendingly.
I think women want guys with values, in principle, and are tempted by guys without values, in practice, because they like "masculine" or "alpha" behavior. It doesn't mean that the desire to date a good person isn't a real desire. If someone desires to get work done, but also procrastinates, would you say she doesn't "really" want to get work done?
I think women would prefer a good person who hits the right masculinity/dominance buttons than a bad person. (Read or watch Gone With The Wind again -- Rhett is actually the male character with the most integrity and smarts.)
I think you're entirely right that men who are pretty awful people can be very attractive to women. But I think that's because they have certain social skills that they've developed and relied on. And anyone can learn social skills. There's not a one-to-one relationship between horribleness and attractiveness to women -- you never hear about women being hot for Jeffrey Dahmer. Rappers swagger, make it obvious that women can't resist them, and they're typically in great shape. They're popular for completely predictable reasons.
You're probably right that some women gravitate to assholish men because they're just not thinking (just like some men gravitate to women who have nothing going for them but their beauty.) But it's unfair for a man to assume that every woman is going to do that, and I'd find it sad if a man compromised his more serious principles just to pick up the less self-aware women. You can make yourself more attractive without becoming a person you'd hate.
I think this hypothesis makes a lot of sense: masculinity is the main cause of attraction, and bad values just tag on along for the ride. This hypothesis is entirely plausible to me, but I have to wonder whether it's the whole story. For some the nastier forms, I'm not sure that masculinity and bad values are always separable; they are intertwined.
There could be several different paths by which different types of women are attracted to assholes; you've certainly named one of them.
Not necessarily, but it could be the case.
It's one specific scene that I'm thinking of: the quasi-rape scene.
You might be surprised! Famous serial killers are very popular with women and have groupies. Female serial killers don't have male groupies. Now, women with these preferences are probably pretty rare; women attracted to shy nerds are probably more common (2% of women are into shyness), but there are a lot more shy nerds than women into them, whereas serial killers are a scarce resource for women who are into them.
More hilariously, I have an article on my hard drive about Western women attracted to Osama bin Laden written after 9/11 (I'll write it up sometime, but it's behind a paywall.)
This behavior might initially seem like some sort of weird fluke, but looking at female attraction to Eminem, who raps about doing some of the things that serial killers are in for, these preferences could be conceptualized along the same continuum: serial killers are hypermasculine ultra-assholes.
See also the Draco In Leather Pants (TVTropes) phenomenon, where fangirls turn villains into objects of desire (there are some hilarious example pages at the bottom).
Fantasy is different from reality, of course. These women may have different desires in real life. Even if they have similar desires, they know better than to try to act them out, consistent with your model. The point is that such psychology seems like a watered-down, fantasy-only version of the psychology of serial killer groupies, who act out these same sorts of desires in reality.
Although there are categorical distinctions between women who lust after Eminem or dress Draco Malfoy up in leather pants, and women who go for serial killers, all these women may be the same continuum on other variables. Serial killer groupies are just at the far right of the bell curve of women attracted to assholes.
They swagger, but I'm not sure their swagger is always distinguishable from their misogyny. I hypothesize that being misogynistic in the context of swagger reads as attractive masculinity to some women in some subcultures. I guess the question is what sorts of female fans these rappers would gain or lose if they weren't so misogynistic. I do think your hypothesis explains many or even most cases of female attraction to these guys; I just don't think it's the whole story. There are swaggering masculine guys who aren't misogynistic; why no go for them instead?
Agreed.
That's the conclusion of my experience. Though part of the way that I do this is by trying to have the same mystique or bad boys and aesthetic appeal, just without actually being an asshole. For instance, the way I dress is partly inspired by villains in movies... though I've stopped short of wearing leather pants.
I've had some success while dressed as Darth Sideous... but I've got my suspicions that was despite not because. ;)
Can you give some examples of the sort of villains you are considering here?
It's very odd that a lot of women find Snape attractive. Where does he fit into the theory?
Masculinity + authority + sarcasm + disagreeableness is an attractive combination for a reasonable subset of women. Alan Rickman's looks and voice may help.
See also House, M.D. for another attractive character close by in the same region of guyspace.
I would go with villain-type + played by Alan Rickman in the movies
The thing is, he's a medium-status villain. He's a teacher and not in charge of more than his classroom. He's not good-looking or well-dressed.
I believe he was the subject of a lot of fan fiction before the movies came out.
Harry treated him as though he was a major villain though. He and Ron spend pretty much the whole series blaming him every time anything goes wrong. I'm guessing that simultaneously raised his villain-status and his misunderstood-guy-in-need-of-love status.
He is a lot higher status in the movies, purely due to the way he is acted. He exuded power.
I'll also note that Snape is in charge of a house and could reasonably be considered the third most powerful in Hogwarts. Given the role Hogwarts has in Magical Britain his status would seem to be rather high.
And he looks and talks like Alan Rickman!
Also, the theory of female attraction to status is not so much about global status, but about local status in interactional contexts. That's part of why members of small-time crappy bands can do so well with women (that, plus good genes from being a musician). Global status in men is great, but local status is good enough, and it's more attainable.
I'll agree here. I didn't like him at all in the books, but after the movies...
Oddly, after reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for the first time, long before any of the movies came out, I too found Snape to be oddly charismatic... sure, he seemed to hate Harry for no apparent reason and go out of his way to be mean to him, but he seemed interesting in a way that many of the other characters weren't. A hero who is consistently heroic is often a Flat Character and therefore boring.
For me, bullies children = utterly revolting.
I'm surprised this isn't widely shared, but I seem to be an odd person in many respects.
Your perspective is that of an adult, of course; but the Harry Potter books are children's literature, and thus (I presume) take a child's point of view on the world. Children often perceive adult authority figures as "mean" even when they are well within the bounds of what (adult) society considers to be acceptable behavior. Such "meanness", while unpleasant, is not something children are necessarily shocked by; they expect it in more or less the same way that adults expect "outrageous" actions from the government .
Snape doesn't even beat the children does he? That puts him ahead of what has often been considered acceptable behaviour to direct towards children.
He mentally beats them - between the implied Legilimency and verbal humiliation, I think a lot of his students would have preferred the occasional physical slap or kick.
Is your point that Harry isn't shocked by Snape's behavior, so that a good many readers aren't, either? I don't remember if Harry had a general opinion about Snape's viciousness.
The women who find Snape attractive aren't children themselves-- I don't know what the typical lower age limit for liking Snape is.
IIRC, Rowling hated the way Snape taught. She could have presented his nastiness as part of a useful toughening process, but she didn't.
Of course, as the books went on, not only did he eventually redeem himself, but (earlier) Umbridge made him look like a relatively less awful teacher.
I agree; Snape ought to have been revolting. I don't know why he wasn't.
SarahC:
Not a one-to-one relationship, to be sure, but stories like this strongly suggest some positive statistical relation: "No shortage of women who dream of snaring a husband on Death Row: experts ponder why deadliest criminals get so many proposals." The article references an academic book that dedicates a chapter to the phenomenon.
Jeffrey Dahmer might have been a bit too creepy even for the serial killer groupie population, but I wouldn't be surprised if he got an occasional love letter too.
Dammit, V_M, you ninja'd me by posting that article before I could post my analysis.
I think there's a bit more to it than just women overlooking a lack of values because of other attractive factors like confidence. There's some evidence that men with the 'dark triad' personality traits are more successful with women.
mattnewport:
Here's the research paper on which the article you link was based:
http://www.mysmu.edu/faculty/normanli/JonasonLiWebsterSchmitt2009.pdf
I had to google him, I also googled his name and sexy and found this. :(
He gets 28,800 hits for jeffrey dahmer sexy. Out of 275000 hits. So a sexy ratio of 0.1. I'm not sure if this is high or low for a public male figure, a lot of it will be incidental mentions.
Steve Buscemi gets a ratio of 0.03, brad pitt get 0.13. Harold shipman (another serial killer but not so handsome or gruesome) gets 0.06.
I'm not sure of my methodology, I suspect that I might do better looking for the phrase in quotes.
Dead elephant gets a ratio of 0.59.
Ah thanks. Quotes it is, although it will under report.
"Dead elephant is sexy" gets none, as does Harrold Shipman.
Steve buscemi does better this time. 60/935000 = 6*10^-4
Jeffrey Dahmer gets 4/264000 = 1.5*10^-4
Jay Leno gets 112/4.7million = 2*10^-4
Brad pitt gets 14700/17.1 million = 8 * 10^-3
While not falling foul to the dead elephant problem, I'm still not happy with it methodologically. This is probably the best information we can get without searching for all the variants of "X is hot".
Hmm, this might make a good small web app, a more advanced version of google fight that looked for relative popularity of adjectives.
Not quite the same, but Googlism is sort of a simple version of that. Also, I suspect a trolling element in the Jeffrey Dahmer page you linked, although that could be optimism at work.
A lot of parents find it sad when their kids find out that santa claus isn't real.
I wonder how much this is due to the American Jock vs Geek mentality. Geeks see masculine behaviour as out group so eschew it? The conflict isn't so bad in Europe (it doesn't carry on into University in the same way). That is not to say that European geeks are naturally intensely masculine, simply that it might be easier for them to adopt masculine behaviours, because they aren't having to act like the enemy.
This dichotomy doesn't seem prevalent in all American culture, entrepreneurs seem quite happy with to straddle the line. How much of your experience is with people inside academia?
My experience is either inside academia or way the hell outside (people who didn't go to college.) I never met an entrepreneur.
My experience with meeting Europeans is that smart people do have less of a geeky self-image than they do in the US (I've known Italian women mathematicians who look and carry themselves like movie stars) but that just about everyone in Europe is less into gorilla-type masculinity than men in the US. So I think your point is probably more relevant on the female end -- European female geeks are more conventionally feminine because they don't see a dichotomy. (I've also noticed that about Asian female geeks -- that is, raised in Asian countries, not Asian-American.)
SarahC:
That is true, for the most part. Where I come from, the electrical engineering students' club at the local university is a popular location for nightlife and rock concerts that attracts masses of people as a party hangout. Something like that is practically unimaginable in North America, but it's not at all unusual in Europe.
That's a mighty strong assertion to make about an entire contient that contains countries as different as, say, Canada and Nicaragua, or Alabama and San Francisco.
OK, that was an imprecise statement -- by "North America," I meant the U.S. and Canada, not the standard usage of the term.
When it comes to the U.S. and Canada, however, I stand behind my assertion. There are indeed significant cultural differences between, say, Alabama and Northern California, but not when it comes to this question.
Whoa.
I've also heard that in China, self-effacing and conscientious students can be the most popular. For the US, that's unimaginable.
These pieces of data suggest that the polarization of men towards "geek / nice guy" and "masculine bad boy" in the US is at least partly cultural, and it could be fought by other cultural forces.
That is the argument that David Anderegg makes in Nerds. While I disagree with Anderegg in some cases (e.g. dismissing the notion of Asperger's Syndrome), he has some excellent literary analysis of some of the tropes in American literature that influence how we think about masculinity.
Anderegg argues that in the 19th century, a dichotomy developed between "men of action" and "men of reflection" in American thought. This dualism presented the man of action as positive and masculine, while the "man of reflection" was the "effete intellectual" or clergyman, associated with femininity and homosexuality. He argues that our modern concept of "nerd" is the descendant of the "man of reflection" and "effete intellectual" stereotypes. Read that entire chapter I linked to. Here are some of Anderegg's examples:
Ichabod Crane in Washington Irving's story was a classic example of "nerd vs jock," where the nerd is portrayed in many negative and stereotypical ways
Superman becoming incognito and undatable to Lois merely by being mild-mannered and wearing glasses
He argues that ancient Greeks didn't have such a dichotomy between brain vs. brawn/looks: heroes were typically intelligent, good-looking, and capable, while villains tended to be both ugly and stupid.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's notion of the American scholar
Emerson's speech is fascinating and complex, but it definitely sets up the dichotomy between men of action and men of reflection. Here are some troubling excerpts (emphases mine):
[...]
[...]
[...]
Emerson makes a lot of good points, such as about avoiding past orthodoxies. But as Anderegg points out, his attitude is very close to "throw away books from the past, and write your own," which is anti-intellectual and fails to reflect how thinkers can stand on the shoulders of giants. There is no dichotomy between studying works of the past, and original thinking.
He displays a great ambivalence towards scholars of his time. He romanticizes "Man Thinking," but links scholars to Europe, femininity, homosexuality (via the word "mincing"), religion, unoriginality, laziness, timidity, and disease (e.g. "infected with Hamlet's unhappiness"). No doubt there were and are many scholars who deserve those labels, but his dichotomy is much too stark:
That's a very interesting reference, I'll try to check it out when I find some time. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with Emerson's work, so I can't tell if Anderegg is representing his views fairly. But in any case, I've always found the American phenomenon of equating intellectual interests with "nerdiness" alien and weird, and its exact historical origins are still a mystery to me, so I'll be interested in checking out the book and seeing if it sheds some light on it.
Another funny example of the nerd stereotype: Georges St. Pierre (aka GSP), the current UFC Welterweight Champion and one of the greatest mixed martial artists in the world, thinks of himself as a nerd because he is into paleontology.
If GSP is a nerd, does the term make any sense?
Yes, it still means that people with intellectual interests aren't quite socially acceptable.
Admittedly, there's a paradox-- he's saying something that he "doesn't tell people very much" in an ESPN interview-- we've not talking about a gigantic stigma. Still, I don't think he'd talk about a fondness for NASCAR racing in the same way.
The funny thing is that car racing is also a technical subject. As Anderegg points out in the "Nerds" book, it's strange that some intellectual and technical pursuits get a "pass" on being "nerdy" because they are associated with masculinity, such as playing fantasy football or being a car mechanic.
I wonder how much anti-intellectualism is separate motivation, and how much it's an effort to enforce gender roles.
"I'm a nerd" is a pet peeve of mine.
I also recall Michelle Bachmann describing herself as a "nerd" because she watches science programs on TV. Look -- occasionally going to museums or reading books or watching educational TV shows should be normal. It's not a distinguishing characteristic.
I don't describe myself as a "nerd" on OkCupid because it just seems like a meaningless term by now. If you're looking for someone who's interested in ideas, well, I'm in academia, so that should tell you all you need to know. If you're looking for someone a little shy and silly, that'll come across too.
It is not normal for humans to occasionally go to musea or watch education TV shows, so it is indeed non-trivially informative to learn this about a human. It also clusters with other dispositional characteristics and therefore is useful for low-cost classifiers.
Because humans don't know much about the natural sciences, and certainly not in terms of predictive models, I have difficulty communicating with most of them about paperclip engineering topics. For example, when I start talking about endurance limits, I lose over 99% of the audience. It would be understandable if they could grasp the concept but weren't familiar with that particular term (it just means the stress -- load per unit area -- that a mechanical component could endure in tension for an arbitrary long period when applied cyclically i.e. on/off).
But that's not the situtation here. Their only knowledge of metallurgy and materials science is brief regurgitation of text that doesn't even map to a prediction as far as they're aware. So stuff is made out of atoms? Great, what predictions can you make with that? (That's on the better end of the human clippiness spectrum!!!)
If we simply recognize that it has two meanings which are often assumed to overlap but in fact do not always overlap, the puzzle is resolved. One meaning concerns a person's interests. The other meaning concerns a person's social skills. GSP calls himself a nerd because of his interests. After calling himself a nerd, he makes a half-baked attempt at presenting himself as socially inept ("I have a hard time finding a girlfriend"), but we don't have to believe him.
As you imply by your rhetorical question, GSP in fact is not socially inept. And he applied the word "nerd" to himself. What this means, assuming he was speaking current American English and assuming he is not deluded, is that the two meanings of the word "nerd" have in fact started to separate in English.
If "nerd" once meant something like: a socially inept person with a keen interest in an unusual topic, now it evidently can mean either "socially inept person" or "person with a keen interest in an unusual topic", without necessarily meaning both. Want proof? Here's proof: GSP is a nerd. He is keenly interested in an unusual topic, and he is not socially inept. QED (at least for one half of the claim).
If all this is correct, then the word "nerd" is in fact evolving away from the concept that rolled the two ideas into one, i.e., the idea of keen interest in an unusual topic and the idea of social ineptness.
Constant:
The real puzzle is not about the current meaning of the term, but why the former is normally taken to imply the latter. The existence of a widely used term that covers both meanings is just evidence that this connection is widely made, not an explanation of why it exists.
[Edit: the rest of this comment is based on an incorrect reading. See the replies below.]
I think your analysis is wrong. GSP (or at least the public persona he's presenting) is clearly an example that defies the stereotype. Yet because he fulfills one element of the stereotype, GSP seems unable to conceive of the possibility that he might be an exception to the other ones (or, alternatively, believes that claiming to be such would be absurd), and feels obliged to present himself as someone who indeed conforms to it wholly.
This is evidence of the tremendous strength of the stereotype: since GSP displays "nerdy" intellectual interests, then despite the extreme appearance to the contrary, somehow he still must have a nerdy essence that makes him unattractive to women and ostracized by the cool and popular social circles.
(I should add that the word "stereotype" is nowadays often used with strong moralistic meaning, but I'm using it as a neutral technical term for heuristics for categorizing people based on statistical discrimination.)
Actually, he doesn't believe that being a nerd means his social skills are so poor he can't attract a woman. He believes (perhaps accurately) that he's only interested in the relatively rare women who share his nerd interests.
What's interesting is that he associates being a nerd with having difficulty finding partners, even though the connection isn't by way of poor social skills.
You may be right but let me add to my argument.
The evidence I see is of two competing meanings, an old one and a new one. The new one (obscure interest only) motivated the initial labeling, and the old one (obscure interest plus social ineptitude) motivated the subsequent rationalization.
People have limited self knowledge and are constantly rationalizing what they just did or just said. Their self explanations are not definitive.
I believe your argument requires that he has in fact mislabeled himself on the basis of an imperfect match between himself and the word. "nerd", and that he followed up by confabulating to make himself a better fit for the definition.
In contrast, I argue that the word is in flux (as is the related stereotype), that he is correctly applying a new meaning, but that he misunderstands his own statement. I think self-misunderstanding is commonplace, so I find thus to be a natural, unforced possibility, rather than a contrivance. I think that the meaning of the word "nerd" has in fact changed due to the mind-boggling success of the likes of Bill Gates among others.
Added: I propose ostensive definition as the key mechanism of change.
Step 1: "a nerd is a socially inept person with special interests...".
Step 2: ..."like Bill Gates."
Step 3: "a nerd is a person like Bill Gates..."
Step 4: "...who is famous for becoming fantastically wealthy through his special interests."
From Step 1 to step 2, examples are generated. From step 3 to step 4, the examples yield a changed definition because what was most conspicuous about the examples has changed.
Yes, it's things like these that I find bizarre.
In the meantime, I read the chapters of Anderegg's book you cited above. I find his thesis very interesting, but as always in the history of ideas, it's hard to estimate the relative significance of particular cultural tropes, especially since I know little about all the other factors that could have influenced the development of this characteristic modern American stereotype. I've put his book on my reading list, so I'll probably have more comments when I get to reading it.
The link to Emerson's speech is in my post.
You can read the relevant chapter in Google Books. The link I gave should take you to the history chapter starting with Ichabod Crane.
In general it's a good book, but it has some wrong assumptions and moralizing.
This is important, not just for the specifics, but to remember that some pattern of behavior which seems absolutely innate may actually be culturally localized.
So, are there geeky people in Europe? If so, what are they doing instead of science and engineering?
NancyLebovitz:
I don't see why these specific patterns of behavior would seem "absolutely innate" even looking only at the U.S. There are lots of non-nerdy people with high intelligence, and I don't see any reason why they wouldn't excel in "nerdy" professions if they chose to enter them in large numbers. In my opinion, the main reason why non-nerdy smart people go mainly into non-technical professions is that in the American society, technical professions, on the whole, offer relatively low status considering the demands they impose.
Where I lived in Europe (various places in ex-Yugoslavia), we've never really had anything comparable to the American notion of "geeks" and "nerds." It's hard to find even an approximate translation for these words which would have all the connotations of high intelligence combined with social ineptness, lack of masculinity, and obsessive interest in obscure and unpopular things.
We do have words that denote these qualities separately, or for people who put excessive effort into success in school while lacking real-life skills and smarts, or who achieve high grades thanks to cramming rather than smarts and talent, etc., etc., and various terms of this sort are used to translate "nerd/geek" in different contexts. But there is no accurate translation, simply because there is no striking correlation between all these attributes. (That said, in recent years some of the American "geek" culture has been making inroads, but even what exists of it is still not comparable, since there is both less social nerdiness involved and much less correlation with interest, let alone high achievement, in science and engineering.)
Partly this is because technical professions have higher relative status, so they attract plenty of intelligent people who are not at all deficient in social skills. The other reason is a very different youth culture and education system. As far as I see, these different circumstances usually tend to attenuate people's innate lack of sociability, rather than, as happens in the U.S., exacerbate it and force intelligent introverts to seek company and respect in "geeky" social circles and activities, since they can't find them anywhere else.
All that said, this situation still does not mean that success in courting women is more evenly distributed among men. On the contrary: the attention of attractive women, and the overwhelming part of casual sex that takes place, is still restricted to the minority of men who are attractive by pretty much the same criteria as anywhere else. It's just that you'll find many more such men (as well as less attractive, but still far from nerdy men) among people doing technical professions and having various intellectual interests that are stereotyped as "geeky" in the U.S.
Vladimir M asserts that in Europe, "technical professions have higher relative status".
That agrees with my experience. My mom used to say that my engineer father would have higher status if he lived in the old country. Also, when letters from Europe arrived for my dad, his name was sometimes prefaced with the honorific "Ing." which is short for "Ingenieur", which means "Engineer".
How is the educational system different?
As you may know, there's been a lot of interest lately in the US about how to lessen or eliminate bullying in schools-- there've been a number of suicides lately resulting from years of severe bullying.
The only structural cause I've seen suggested (as distinct from recommendations of active anti-bullying programs) is the high emphasis on competitive athletics, and in particular, athletic competitions between schools.
The other question is whether there's a process of bullying/ostracism in European schools which is aimed at other sorts of people.
NancyLebovitz:
I don't have anything resembling a complete theory of these differences. It's certainly not about some clearly identifiable and straightforward organizational aspects that could be reformed in a planned way, and there are definitely deep cultural differences involved.
One organizational difference that seems significant, though, is that I went through a system that had tracking done in such a way that smart kids of all sorts ended up separated from the not so bright ones, but largely mixed together, without being allowed to segregate by electing different coursework. (You had a choice of high schools with different curriculums, but everyone within the same high school had to learn the same, usually eclectic mix of things.) This did seem to create an optimal environment for introverted smart kids to grow up without being exposed to bullying (which was unheard of in the high school I went to), and giving them less inclination and opportunity to self-segregate into "nerdy" cliques.
There is bullying/ostracism however it isn't as formalised.
I would be tempted to blame the sports. Simply it creates an in group of people that are considered higher status. There are pep rallies to them, with beautiful girls cheering them on, that has to create an inflated sense of worth/superiority/difference.
So they persecute the out group, the geeks, to signal their in-group ness and preserve their sense of superiority. I suppose it is similar to the stanford prison experiment. Raise one group above another and that group seems to persecute the other.
It's definitely not the sports that do it. You may be right about all the rest of the stuff that is associated with sport over there. Cheerleaders? That's not just in the teen movies right, you actually have them?
Does being a nerd and a good athlete seem out of place in that culture? Come to think of it there is a separate group for 'band nerds' too if my consumption of low grade entertainment is anything to go by. I wouldn't know where to put myself!
Yeah by sports I meant the importance given to it. In comparison we don't have such things as sports scholarships (irrespective of academic talent, which I think is called an entrance scholarship) for prestigious universities. Does Australia?
I'm a Pom, so my exposure to American culture is mainly fictional in nature as well. I've seen a number of documentaries as well though. The BBC loves analysing the US.
High school cheerleaders at a game.
This was actually a little harder to find than cheerleading competitions. It's morphed into its own sport.
Athletes don't do all the bullying-- not even most of it, I think.
It's possible that the high emphasis on sports poisons the whole atmosphere.
NancyLebovitz:
That's not a necessary implication of whpearson's theory. Once the athleete/nerd stratification has been established, it may create bullying incentives for those who are physically stronger than the nerds, but not part of the elite athlete circle. Such individuals will want to assert superiority to the nerds to at least confirm their middle-rank status if they can't achieve the top one, and bullying seems like a straightforward strategy.
I didn't go myself through the American school system, though, so I have no idea how well this hypothesis holds water.
Define what you mean by geeky...
If you mean people that don't like to party, then from my experience they are doing science and engineering and probably some humanities as well. They also generally co-exist quite happily with the party-ers, at least at University level.
I've just realised how much we have a cultural one way mirror. I've seen fictional depictions of fraternities, keg standing, hazing etc, however you probably haven't seen what a European rock concert is like. Which is generally non-violent, unless you get in the mosh pit.
I say European, but in some ways I have less idea of what mainland European social life is like than American.
Vladimir_M's "high intelligence combined with social ineptness, lack of masculinity, and obsessive interest in obscure and unpopular things" is good enough except that I'd add lack of femininity to the list.
One horrifying feature of American culture in the 50s was that intelligence was considered not masculine and not feminine, and since everyone was supposed to be one or the other, being visibly intelligent had a social cost. In my opinion, a major (but incomplete) change in this happened when it was clear that people could make money in IT. I'm inclined to think the Flynn effect is also taking hold.
From a science fiction convention: A women mentions that sometimes she feels she's just got to do something different with her hair, and fannish women are apt to look at her as though she's crazy.
Historical note: I think that identifying interest in dressing up with being effeminate is a modern weirdness. The only culture I can think of where men and women who could afford to didn't get about equally elaborate and showy was colonial America, and in that case, the men were dressier.
Afaik, American rock concerts are mostly non-violent, but this is very much second hand. Anyone have more information?
Every mainstream rock concert I've ever been to in the US has been entirely non-violent, modulo the occasional and mostly unrelated edge cases that arise when you get a thousand drunk people together. Even metal and punk concerts aren't violent outside of the mosh pit, and I'm not sure that properly counts as violence, being consensual and generally not aimed at causing injury.
Sounds a lot like the European case, in other words.
I love this phrase. It reminds me of this exchange, which happened out loud:
"You drive like a guerilla." "... what?" "Not the ape. The kind with a beret."
This is true. Gorilla-type masculinity is not what I had in mind when talking about masculinity (being European and all). I was thinking about being into sports/cars/heavy metal (going back to your nice/anti-nice dichotomy) or just generally being confident and self-assured.
If that is what you want, then I can see why it conflicts with some of the fundamentals (kindness, competence). Gorilla masculinity seems to be about getting what you want through physical intimidation. If that is the hammer that you have used the most through your life, then everything will look like a nail.
If you typically try to convince people with competent argument or being kind, then you are less likely to reach for the physical intimidation toolkit of gorilla masculinity.
ETA: I wonder why there is a difference in masculinity in Europe. I'd make up some just-so-story about the more physically aggressive men having been killed in the two world wars, unless it is purely memetic.
I consider competent argument to be far more representative of gorilla masculinity than whatever the other category is. Viewing conversations in certain communities (for example, MENSA mailing lists) I've seen patterns that look remarkably like what I would expect from gorrilas - guys trying to dominate each other with verbal sparring while girls are competing via asserting moral control and creating social alliances with other women and undermining the status of targets. Depending on your physical self confidence the physical forms of intimidation can seem gentle and benign in comparison.
I think there is more than two categories here. Gorilla's don't talk much in general...
There is plenty of that in Europe.... so I'm not sure if it contributes to what activates SarahC's hindbrain. As gorilla masculinity's top hit in google is SarahC's comment, it is up to her to say what it means. To me it had hints of a pure physicality (rather than verbal) to it which she may not have meant to impart.
Right, there's something to that.
And I don't like people who intimidate people by force. If there's a direct conflict, I'm going to go with the person who's kind and competent.
(Also, I'm starting to hate my "nice/anti-nice" dichotomy -- in retrospect that post made no sense.)
SarahC:
That's a mighty strong assertion to make about an entire continent that contains countries as different as, say, Sweden and Albania, or Moldova and Switzerland. Also, I'm certain that the sample of Europeans you've seen is unrepresentative in all sorts of relevant ways even of their own countries, let alone the entire continent.
Of course, if by this you mean the specific patterns of behavior characteristic of certain sorts of American men, then the claim is trivially true.