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wedrifid comments on How I Ended Up Non-Ambitious - Less Wrong
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Note that it's possible to approve of a person while still disapproving of a specific behavior - "that's disgusting" vs. "people who do that are disgusting". The latter lacks utility outside of a context where your signaling will actually affect the behavior.
Note that failing to disapprove actually equals ignoring the behavior, not reinforcing it. Also note that disapproval (especially of the personal, all-or-nothing variety) is punishment, not negative reinforcement. Punishment is not a reliable way to extinguish a behavior, unless there are always punishers around.
Unfortunately, we are biased towards believing our punishment is important, and so we'll rationalize it on the basis that if we don't, then everything will fall apart and chaos will reign. In truth, this is just our instinct to punish non-punishers talking. (i.e., he who speaks in favor of leniency towards those caught doing X must want to do X himself... Get him!)
To be more precise it lacks utility outside of a context where your signal will actually affect the behavior or the behavior or perception of any other person including yourself.
I probably should've said "net utility", as I meant "useful on balance given the cost of biasing yourself, including the costs of feeling bad and being unable to enact the relevant personal changes".
I totally agree. It's almost always a terrible idea.
How do you rate it as a direct means of influence? (I tend to resist letting it work on me but it does have an effect on some. Do you think that is worth using in some cases and on average?)
My general impression is that the only people who are affected in a useful way by disapproval are those who on some level agree with your disapproval, in that they learned either that the specific thing was worthy of disapproval, or that they were generally worthy of disapproval.
For example, a sales person who believes salespeople are pushy and therefore worthy of disapproval will likely be very sensitive to people disapproving of their pushiness. Likewise, a salesperson who grew up being (implicitly) taught that they themselves are generally unworthy, without any specific relation to sales, will also be sensitive to people disapproving of them.
In contrast, people who grew up learning that "pushy" behaviors are actually called "friendly", will probably not respond to disapproval in the same way. They will probably conclude that the objecting person must really need a friend, if they are being so grouchy as to disapprove of them being friendly. ;-)
A person who learns, on the other hand, that being pushy is how you get ahead in life, will probably react with disapproval of their own to any criticism of their behavior. They'll perceive someone disapproving of their pushiness as being someone who's trying to put them out of work.
In short, disapproval only usefully affects people who have been socialized to believe in sufficiently-overlapping targets of disapproval. And even then, it first and foremost motivates signalling behaviors like guilt and remorse. I think disapproval (like the chances of criminals being caught) has to be virtually omnipresent and certain in order to actually affect behaviors other than increased compliance signalling and enhanced stealth. ;-)