army1987 comments on Rational Romantic Relationships, Part 1: Relationship Styles and Attraction Basics - Less Wrong

48 Post author: lukeprog 05 November 2011 11:06AM

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Comment author: hairyfigment 04 November 2011 05:31:30PM 1 point [-]

I agree as far as this goes. But remember that we don't chiefly want to prevent people calling women ugly. We chiefly want to prevent this, because we think it increases actual rape. (The cited research does not establish this with any clarity, but it does establish that you left out another potential distorting factor.)

Would you actually feel surprised if you found out the belief that women only date jerks causally increases talk of rape fantasies, and that this increases rape? What about the belief that a simple and general method will allow guys to have sex with the women they desire?

Comment author: [deleted] 04 November 2011 09:01:58PM 18 points [-]

I think the causation may be going the other way: it's that men who are willing to rape are more likely to enjoy rape jokes, not that men who read rape jokes thereby become more willing to rape.

Comment author: Oligopsony 04 November 2011 10:54:28PM 11 points [-]

Another theory I've heard (although not one relevant to this particular study, except maybe in an ecological sense) is that rape jokes signal to predators that non-predatory men aren't going to socially punish them.

Comment author: Emile 05 November 2011 12:51:18PM 4 points [-]

Very plausible, similar things could be said of racist jokes.

I can't think of a negative interpretation of blonde jokes though.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 05 November 2011 02:02:48PM 8 points [-]

Do you mean negative interpretations in general, or that particular sort of negative interpretation?

I would think ill of someone who told blonde jokes, especially if they told a bunch of them. To my mind, anyone who gives a lot of time to blonde jokes is probably making themselves less able to see intelligence in blonde women. I haven't tested this belief, I'm just going on plausibility.

Comment author: hairyfigment 10 November 2011 08:23:41AM -1 points [-]

Late response: I tend to believe in causation of the sort that Oligopsony mentions, because of Altemeyer's research on Social Dominance Orientation and the oddly named Right-Wing Authoritarian scale. Though the conclusion involves two inferences that I personally haven't seen anyone test.