Articles Tagged ‘signalling’ - Less Wrong Discussion

Meetup Feedback: Topic selection and precommittments

Mon, 07 May 2012 02:14:30 +1000

Submitted by Jonathan_Lee • 11 votes • 5 comments

This post is part of the Cambridge LW meetup group's attempt to publish what works for us, and try to make good meetups easier.

Breaking the ice and topic selection

A consistent problem has been starting discussion, and more generally breaking the ice. Last week, an Execute by Default style hack was used to reduce social inhibitions (everyone danced for 30 seconds), which was highly successful, though awkward. It was proposed again this week, and there was sufficient collective laughter at the recollection to effectively break the ice. This may also have been helped by a change in room, which replaced chairs with couches.

A new algorithm for selecting a topic was used: One person proposed a (deliberately easy-to-beat) topic, and running around the group, each person proposed a alternate topic or passed. This was followed by multiple passes for people to affiliate with any proposed topic. Amongst 7 people, the first pass produced a 5-2 split, and the group of two merged into the main topic.

The topic chosen was involuntary signalling. The others are here so as to keep them salient for future meetups.

Signalling by Dress

It was observed that most people seem to react to dress, and that as a group (largely mathematicians or similarly inclined) there is a tendency not to optimise the reactions we generate. Several people asked what might work better, and checked to see whether the social status of others in the social group of mathematicians correlated with their appearance or dress. It appeared that if it did, we are insufficiently good at observing our cognitive processes to notice. As a corollary, it wasn't clear that feedback from other members of the group was likely to contain much signal.

A concrete mechanism to extract information on how other people perceive dress was made: Generate multiple photos in various styles, and then use OKCupid's "MyBestFace" or similar services to get some information back

Signalling for Access

There was some discussion of how one might present in interview; this was confounded by a lack of access to interviewers. Discussion was more productive when moved to aspects of social engineering. Specific examples raised were accessing a hospital outside of visiting hours, entering a college without being challenged by porters, or avoiding inconvenience in airports. A combination of speed, posture (head level, back straight, shoulders back) and contextual dress was the extent of noted tricks.

Signalling by Posture

Considerable time was spent discussing how posture signals. Some people went around the group, saying what they would draw from other people's body language. Some postural changes were noted as very saliently causing a change in perception of the correctness of statements made at the same time (in particular, straightening the back and lifting the head). Extant scholarship was not discussed, but extensive experimentation occurred targeting specific received signals and querying specific postures. The dynamics of norm violation were also discussed, in the context of taking the communal coffee table as a footrest.

Specific suggestions to use a mirror or camera to analyse oneself or attempt to analyse other people in general were made.

Pre-commitments

All of the public commitments made last week were done, which seemed to be a cheap win. We reran the procedure:

Jonathan: Post meetup feedback etc. by midnight
Adam: Get last two years of past papers done by next Sunday
Adam: Email parents by Wednesday midnight
Ben: Finish list of definitions by next Sunday
Ben: Continue Diary until next Sunday

List of proposed and unused topics:

Concoct childish example of Bayes' Theorem (to motivate better alternatives)
Self-sabotage, noticing and avoiding.
Fermi estimate game
Examine week 1 of Ben's diary to try to help in debiasing.
Non-real valued utility functions

5 comments

Social status hacks from The Improv Wiki

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 13:56:56 +1100

Submitted by lsparrish • 40 votes • 39 comments

I can't remember how I found this, just that I was amazed at how rational and near-mode it is on a topic where most of the information one usually encounters is hopelessly far.

LessWrong wiki link on the same topic: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Status

The Improv Wiki

Status

Status is pecking order. The person who is lower in status defers to the person who is higher in status.

Status is party established by social position--e.g. boss and employee--but mainly by the way you interact. If you interact in a way that says you are not to be trifled with, the other person must adjust to you, then you are establishing high status. If you interact in a way that says you are willing to go along, you don't want responsibility, that's low status. A boss can play low status or high status. An employee can play low status or high status.

Status is established in every line and gesture, and changes continuously. Status is something that one character plays to another at a particular moment. If you convey that the other person must not cross you on what you're saying now, then you are playing high status to that person in that line. Your very next line might come out low status, as you suggest willingness to defer about something else.

If you analyze your most successful scenes, it's likely they involved several status changes between the players. Therefore, one path to great scenes is to intentionally change status. You can raise or lower your own status, or the status of the other player. The more subtly you can do this, the better the scene.

High-status behaviors

When walking, assuming that other people will get out of your path.

Making eye contact while speaking.

Not checking the other person's eyes for a reaction to what you said.

Having no visible reaction to what the other person said. (Imagine saying something to a typical Clint Eastwood character. You say something expecting a reaction, and you get--nothing.)

Speaking in complete sentences.

Interrupting before you know what you are going to say.

Spreading out your body to full comfort. Taking up a lot of space with your body.

Looking at the other person with your eyes somewhat down (head tilted back a bit to make this work), creating the feeling that you are a parent talking to a child.

Talking matter-of-factly about things that the other person finds displeasing or offensive.

Letting your body be vulnerable, exposing your neck and torso to the other person.

Moving comfortably and gracefully.

Keeping your hands away from your face.

Speaking authoritatively, with certainty.

Making decisions for a group; taking responsibility.

Giving or withholding permission.

Evaluating other people's work.

Speaking cryptically, not adjusting your speech to be easily understood by the other person (except that mumbling does not count). E.g. saying, "Chomper not right" with no explanation of what you mean or what you want the other person to do.

Being surrounded by an entourage, especially of people who are physically smaller than you.

A "high-status specialist" conveys in every word and gesture, "Don't come near me, I bite."

Low-status behaviors

When walking, moving out of other people's path.

Looking away from the other person's eyes.

Briefly checking the other person's eyes to see if they reacted positively to what you said.

Speaking in halting, incomplete sentences. Trailing off, editing your sentences as you got.

Sitting or standing uncomfortably in order to adjust to the other person and give them space. Pulling inward to give the other person more room. If you're tall, you might need to scrunch down a bit to indicate that you're not going to use your height against the other person.

Looking up toward the other person (head tilted forward a bit to make this work), creating the feeling that you are a child talking to a parent.

Dancing around your words (beating around the bush) when talking about something that will displease the other person.

Shouting as an attempt to intimidate the other person. This is low status because it suggests that you expect resistance.

Crouching your body as if to ward off a blow; protecting your face, neck, and torso.

Moving awkwardly or jerkily, with unnecessary movements.

Touching your face or head.

Avoiding making decisions for the group; avoiding responsibility.

Needing permission before you can act.

Adjusting the way you say something to help the other person understand; meeting the other person on their (cognitive) ground; explaining yourself. E.g. "Could you please adjust the chomper? That's the gadget on the kitchen counter immediately to the left of the toaster. If you just give it a slight rap on the top, that should adjust it."

A "low-status specialist" conveys in every word and gesture, "Please don't bite me, I'm not worth the trouble."

Raising another person's status

To raise another person's status is to establish them as high in the pecking order in your group (possibly just the two of you).

• Ask their permission to do something.

• Ask their opinion about something.

• Ask them for advice or help.

• Express gratitude for something they did.

• Apologize to them for something you did.

• Agree that they are right and you were wrong.

• Defer to their judgement without requiring proof.

• Address them with a fancy title or honorific (even "Mr." or "Sir" works very well).

• Downplay your own achievement or attribute in comparison to theirs. "Your wedding cake is so much whiter than mine."

• Do something incompetent in front of them and then apologize for it or act sheepish about it.

• Mention a failure or shortcoming of your own. "I was supposed to go to an audition today, but I was late. They said I was wrong for the part anyway."

• Compliment them in a way that suggests appreciation, not judgement. "Wow, what a beautiful cat you have!"

• Obey them unquestioningly.

• Back down in a conflict.

• Move out of their way, bow to them, lower yourself before them.

• Tip your hat to them.

• Lose to them at something competitive, like a game (or any comparison).

• Wait for them.

• Serve them; do manual labor for them.

Tip: Whenever you bring an audience member on stage, always raise their status, never lower it.

Lowering another person's status

To lower another person's status is to attack or discredit their right to be high in the pecking order. Another word for "lowering someone's status" is "humiliating them."

• Criticize something they did.

• Contradict them. Tell them they are wrong. Prove it with facts and logic.

• Correct them.

• Insult them.

• Give them unsolicited advice.

• Approve or disapprove of something they did or some attribute of theirs. "Your cat has both nose and ear points. That is acceptable." Anything that sets you up as the judge lowers their status, even "Nice work on the Milligan account, Joe."

• Shout at them.

• Tell them what to do.

• Ignore what they said and talk about something else, especially when they've said something that requires an answer. E.g. "Have you seen my socks?" "The train leaves in five minutes."

• One-up them. E.g. have a worse problem than the one they described, have a greater past achievement than theirs, have met a more famous celebrity, earn more money, do better than them at something they're good at, etc.

• Win: beat them at something competitive, like a game (or any comparison).

• Announce something good about yourself or something you did. "I went to an audition today, and I got the part!"

• Disregard their opinion. E.g. "You'd better not smoke while pumping gas, it's a fire hazard." Flick, light, puff, puff, pump, pump.

• Talk sarcastically to them.

• Make them wait for you.

• When they've fallen behind you, don't wait for them to catch up, just push on and get further out of sync.

• Disobey them.

• Violate their space.

• Beat them up. Beating them up verbally, not physically as in martial arts or how you learned UFC fighting in an gym, in front of other people, especially their wife, girlfriend, and/or children, is particularly status-lowering.

• In a conflict, make them back down.

• Taunt them. Tease them.

The basic status-lowering act

Laugh at them. (Not with them.)

The basic status-raising act

Be laughed at by them.

Second to that is laughing with them at someone else.

(Notice that those are primarily what comedians do.)

Note that behaviors that raise another person's status are not necessarily low-status behaviors, and behaviors that lower another person's status are not necessarily high-status behaviors. People at any status level raise and lower each other all the time. They can do so in ways that convey high or low status.

For example, shouting at someone lowers their status but is itself a low-status behavior.

Objects and environments also have high or low status, although this is seldom explored. So explore it. Make something cheap and inconsequential high status. (This fingernail clipping came from Graceland!) Or bring down the status of a high status item. (Casually toss a 2 carat diamond ring on your jewelry pile.)

Source: http://greenlightwiki.com/improv/Status
Retrieved 20 March 2012

39 comments

Social status & testosterone

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 01:05:44 +1100

Submitted by gwern • 25 votes • 36 comments

We’ve discussed signaling and status endlessly on LW; I think this is right up our vein: a 2011 review of research on the connections between famous male hormone testosterone and various forms of social interaction and especially social status, Eisenegger et al’s “The role of testosterone in social interaction”. (I grabbed this PDF in the short time Elsevier left full-text available, but only now, with some modafinil-powered spare time, have gotten around to excerpting it for you guys.)

1 Abstract

Although animal researchers established the role of testosterone as a ‘social hormone’ decades ago, the investigation of its causal influence on human social behaviors has only recently begun. Here, we review and discuss recent studies showing the causal effects of testosterone on social interactions in animals and humans, and outline the basic neurobiological mechanisms that might underlie these effects. Based on these recent findings, we argue that the role of testosterone in human social behavior might be best understood in terms of the search for, and maintenance of, social status.

2 Excerpts

Is testosterone simply aggression promoting (a sort of ‘roid rage’)?

Early evidence for the role of testosterone in social behavior suggested that it facilitates overt physical aggression (see Glossary) in social contexts. For instance, castrated rodents, which have little, if any, testosterone circulating in their blood, show a near-complete absence of physical fights; however, fights can be fully restored by providing testosterone supplementation to these animals [03]…high testosterone levels in male prisoners have been linked to having a history of rape, murder and armed robbery, and relatively lower levels to a history of theft and drug abuse [08]. A similar pattern was observed in a study of female prison inmates [9]. However, the causality in these studies remains unclear

Probably not:

the existing evidence for a link between aggression and testosterone in humans is relatively weak, but positive [12]. Even if one accepts the fact that reactive aggression can be measured in a controlled laboratory environment, results are similarly inconclusive: recent studies found a positive relationship between baseline testosterone levels and laboratory measures of reactive aggression (reviewed in [11]), but others also reported null findings (in larger samples) [13]. Most importantly, however, a causal role for testosterone in forms of reactive aggression could not be confirmed, as neither long-term nor acute administration of testosterone had an effect [13,14].

This may come as a surprise:

Folk wisdom holds that testosterone causes antisocial, egoistic, or even aggressive behaviors in humans. However, the correlational studies discussed above already suggest that this simple folk view probably requires revision [34,56]. A recent placebo-controlled testosterone administration study found support for the idea that the testosterone-aggression link might be based upon ‘folk’ views: individuals given placebo who believed they had been given testosterone showed less fair bargaining offers compared with those who believed that they had received placebo, thus confirming people’s stereotypes about the behavioral effects of testosterone.

The null findings may be due to a possible confounding effect of homeostasis, but that wouldn’t cover the null on acute administration:

The first study to use a causal testosterone administration procedure in an experimental economic setting did not find any effects on several economic social interactions [14]. Because the study used long-term administration of testosterone, this null finding might be due to secondary feedback effects on the neuroendocrine axis (i.e. suppression of endogenous testosterone production owing to chronic administration). In general, acute administration shows greater reliability in the production of both behavioral and neurophysiological effects (reviewed in [55]).

‘Dominant’ looks like a better perspective than ‘aggressive’:

rhesus monkeys with high testosterone levels use stares, threats and displacements, rather than overtly aggressive interactions, to ascertain high social status [16]…[saliva] measurements of testosterone at a single time-point correlate positively with high dominance in both adolescents [19,20] and adults [21,22]. In addition, salivary testosterone levels correlate with implicit measures of power motivation [23] and increased vigilance for status threats [24,25]. As a result of these relationships, and the moderate stability of testosterone levels over time, some have suggested that baseline testosterone levels reflect a personality trait [26]

men show a larger increase in testosterone when exposed to the scent of an ovulating woman compared with that of a non-ovulating woman or a control [27]. Apart from sexual social stimuli, which are reliable inductors of a testosterone response [28,29], social interactions outside a direct reproductive context have also been shown to induce a testosterone response [01]. In particular, testosterone levels rise within minutes in anticipation of both physical and non-physical competitive situations; for example, dyadic food competition in chimpanzees [30], or tennis, chess or domino tournaments in humans (reviewed in [31]). Testosterone also reacts to contest outcomes [32], and not just to anticipation: for instance, stock traders show higher testosterone levels if their daily profits are above average, and winners of soccer matches show higher testosterone levels than do the losers [33]….causal manipulation of social context (e.g. rigged contests) confirms a causal effect of winning situations on testosterone levels (e.g. [34–38]). These effects can be large; for example, merely watching oneself win a competitive interaction on video produces a 40% testosterone surge from baseline [37].

This interest in dominance leads to mental changes (I am reminded of self-deception):

individuals who generally have higher scores on self-reported dominance and higher basal levels of testosterone show vigilant responses to angry facial expressions (reviewed in [42]). Furthermore, exogenous administration of testosterone increases the sympathetic heart-rate response to angry, but not to happy facial expressions [43] (Figure 2). Although this could theoretically also reflect autonomic arousal as part of a fear response, testosterone has been shown to reduce fear [44], suggesting that dominant people perceive an angry face as a challenge….a recent testosterone administration study has shown that facial mimicry [“a precursor of empathy-related processes occurring automatically”] in response to emotional facial expressions is relatively suppressed after a single dose of testosterone [48]…a single administration of testosterone to young females leads to a significant impairment in the ability to infer emotions, intentions and feelings from the eye region of the face [49]. In addition, the same study established that subjects’ second-to-fourth digit ratio, which is thought to be a marker of prenatal testosterone exposure, is largely able to predict this effect…In line with this are findings of decreased trustworthiness ratings of facial photographs in subjects who received a single dose of testosterone [51]. Crucially, this effect was driven most strongly by those who trusted easily, suggesting that testosterone adaptively increases social vigilance in these trusting individuals to better prepare them for competition over status and valued resources

(The jokes about women and men almost make themselves.)

Not all of these changes are what one would naively expect (see previously about the ‘folk theory’ of testosterone):

one acute dose of testosterone in women increased the fairness of proposers’ bargaining offers in an ultimatum game [13] (Figure 3). An important motive driving proposer behavior is to avoid the rejection of the offer. Thus, if testosterone increases the concern for status, subjects who received testosterone might have perceived a rejection as more aversive, inducing them to make fairer offers…Another study [57] found that testosterone administration prior to an ultimatum game resulted in decreased generosity in a sample of healthy males if repeated measures were not controlled for. The results are insignificant, however, if the fact that the same subject participated in the ultimatum game several time is correctly controlled for statistically. Moreover, a recent study suggests that a low second-to-fourth digit ratio (high prenatal testosterone exposure) is associated with unfair proposer offers if subjects had previously received an unfair offer when in the responder role [58]. Many possible spill-over effects can thus occur in a within-subject design such as that used in [57], where subjects repeatedly play as a proposer and a responder, rendering the interpretation of the results difficult.

I found interesting the material starting page 267, “Neurobiological mechanisms underlying the role of testosterone in social status hierarchies” (due to my own musings about the possible effects of masturbation went that it might be misinterpreted as reproductive ‘success’ which reduces risk-taking or activity in general):

Maintaining a high status position requires an increased sensitivity for aversive events and impending social threats, particularly those that challenge the high social status of an individual. As we show below, testosterone appears to be able to influence such processes; in particular, it appears to confer high motivational drive, low fearfulness and high stress-resilience, either directly or via interactions with other hormones and neurotransmitter systems.

Fear & stress:

Among healthy young men, the blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) response in the amygdala to fearful and angry faces co-varies positively with individual differences in serum testosterone concentrations ([63,64], but see [65]). Exogenous testosterone has been shown to activate the amygdala in young women viewing angry facial expressions [66] (Figure 4). A mechanism underlying these observations might be that testosterone induces a functional decoupling between OFC and amygdala activity [67,68]…In humans, single acute doses of testosterone have been shown to reduce subconscious fear (Figure 5) and fear-potentiated startle [44,89].

…In face-to-face interactions, individuals are assumed to compete for status in fairly well-defined contests, each trying to ‘outstress’ the other with verbal and facial cues, and the fact that low-ranked members show more stress symptoms than higher-ranked members during mutual interaction is a common feature of status hierarchies [40]. Stress probably also plays an important role in anonymous competition. Hence, stress resilience might enable an individual to cope with a challenge adaptively. Studies in animals have confirmed that testosterone downregulates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal stress response [90]. It has also been shown to attenuate the sympathetically mediated stress response to aversive stimuli in humans [91].

Motivation & learning:

Reward-based reinforcement effects in animals have been observed within short time periods (30 min) after systemic administration of testosterone [79], suggesting that a testosterone surge following a status-relevant social stimulus might reinforces any behavior that led to that testosterone response in the first place. In humans, patients who are hypogonadal (testosterone levels too low) show apathy and lack of motivation [80], whereas testosterone administration in healthy subjects induces motivation to act [81] and upregulates activity in the ventral striatum [82]

Summary of foregoing:

Testosterone administration studies confirm that the hormone also has fear-reducing properties in humans. A further important function of testosterone is its role in motivation; animal models have shown a tight link with the dopaminergic system within striatal areas. Thus, together with the ability to reduce fear and buffer stress responses, testosterone might have a pivotal role in promoting upward movement in a status hierarchy by facilitating the engagement in a competition for status. By contrast, testosterone can promote threat vigilance, which enables an individual to not only detect potential status challenges, but also, as a consequence of, and facilitated through the mechanisms detailed above, act accordingly to defend its high status position. These effects might be mediated by the amygdala

3 References

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08: Dabbs, J.M. et al. (1995) Testosterone, crime, and misbehavior among 692 male prison-inmates. Pers. Indiv. Differ. 18, 627–633
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13: Eisenegger, C. et al. (2010) Prejudice and truth about the effect of testosterone on human bargaining behaviour. Nature 463, 356–359
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36 comments

[LINK] Clothing as status signalling, logos and co-operation

Sun, 03 Apr 2011 02:41:39 +1100

Submitted by Barry_Cotter • 9 votes • 9 comments

http://www.economist.com/node/18483423?story_id=18483423&CFID=160796263&CFTOKEN=71303356

After reading this, I'm seriously considering finding someplace online that sells those little Lacoste crocodiles and sewing them onto all my shirts. The power of logos appears to be ridiculous for the trivial outlay.

9 comments