Why do I fantasize about being angry?
I'm breaking the rule a bit by asking about myself here.
Sometimes when I have down time and am daydreaming, especially if I'm walking somewhere or going for a run, I fantasize about someone wronging me (say with a traffic violation), then imagine myself getting angry, yelling at them, and physically beating them up. I think about knocking them down, screaming at them, challenging them to get up, and knocking them down again.
I've never acted on such a fantasy. I have no idea how to actually fight someone if I wanted to. It's very rare that I show anger, and I don't think I've ever punched someone as an adult. But I think about it pretty regularly, and the thoughts disturb me. I have no idea where they come from or why I take pleasure in these sorts of fantasies.
Is this a common thought pattern? Why do people have it?
It's called Intrusive Thoughts, and apparently most people have these:
London psychologist Stanley Rachman presented a questionnaire to healthy college students and found that virtually all said they had these thoughts from time to time, including thoughts of sexual violence, sexual punishment, "unnatural" sex acts, painful sexual practices, blasphemous or obscene images, thoughts of harming elderly people or someone close to them, violence against animals or towards children, and impulsive or abusive outbursts or utterances.[6] Such bad thoughts are universal among humans, and have "almost certainly always been a part of the human condition".[7]
When I first read this, I thought "woah, that's kinda weird and worrying". Then I realised I do something similar. I sometimes rehearse violent confrontations in my imagination.
I've been involved in a few violent confrontations as an adult, and they're nothing like you imagine them to be. People like to imagine all the badass things they would have done in those situations, but when you suddenly find yourself in a brawl, your thoughts are generally "what the hell's going on here? Is this really happening?" I've heard accounts of highly trained martial artists experiencing the same thing. Even if you're physically prepared for a fight, you're not necessarily prepared for the social situation of a fight.
I assume that when I imagine violent first-person scenarios it's some sort of long-term rehearsal process where I'm psychologically preparing myself for conflict at some point in the future. I generally try and avoid situations which have a high risk of physical conflict, though, so my sample size is so small as to be useless when trying to figure out if it does any good.
Depending on what you mean by "horrific situation" you may have a psychological condition known as "author".
Why do people have the social norm that drinking alcohol is compulsory? I've experienced a number of situations where drinking alcohol was a requirement for social interaction, to the point where people were suspicious and untrustworthy of any abstainers. Why does this happen?
Possibly relevant: I am from the northeastern United States.
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned this one, but it's often inappropriate to hang around with people while not engaging in whatever activity they're doing. Don't sit in the stands at a football game reading a book, don't watch TV while your friends are playing Dungeons and Dragons, don't have your headphones on while friends are having a conversation.
For many people, alcohol raises talkativeness and lowers inhibition, so you're more likely to say things you normally wouldn't (in vino veritas). Sharing private things is a friendship-builder (HPMOR 7), but it can also be embarrassing. Drinking is a pre-commitment to build friendship through potentially embarrassing interactions, and when you abstain, you're saying, "I'll hear your secrets, but keep mine, thank you very much," which is a suspicious and untrustworthy kind of stance.
To the extent the above is true, it's too bad, because
I think this is mostly the impression of moral superiority people get from non-drinkers. If you excuse yourself for medical reasons, or imply you're a recovering alcoholic, people will mistrust you a lot less.
I don't know, of course, but if my cohort regularly engages in a habit that leaves us at a physical and cognitive disadvantage, it really doesn't seem too surprising that we will also develop associated habits that prevent others who are not so disadvantaged from engaging with us.
Simple tradition, I expect. In many situations and cultures, consuming alcohol is simply the done thing, and not doing the done thing a surefire way of standing out. I'd also guess that people who drink in these situations expect everyone to know the social norms and agree with them (even if it's only an unconscious background assumption), and so they'll see not wanting to drink as wanting to stand out. And you know what that means.
Bonding among humans involves being vulnerable. Shared food gives them the chance to poison you. Comedy allows you to signal to each other which social norms you don't take seriously. Drinking involves loss of coordination and talkativeness about deep issues one has.
Why are some females sometimes unreasonably mean to other females? Is this even the case?
For example, I recently asked a friend why she felt the need to buy a new dress for every 'special event' (galas, dances, etc.). After some thought, she said it's most likely because she will be looked down upon by other females if she is seen wearing something that she has previously been known to wear. I asked why again, and she said that sort of judgement has probably been inculcated in the majority of females; she clarified that she only bought new dresses so as not to be thought of as low status, and has no qualms wearing the same things around family.
In other words, she thinks other females constantly judge each other based upon their wardrobe; she said the same judgement does not apply to men. I have heard that some females play relatively cruel psychological games with each other when compared to male culture. Is this true? Why do some do it?
I've always assumed it's due to mere insecurity, in the same way some males often put each other down in order to be thought of as higher status.
For example, I recently asked a friend why she felt the need to buy a new dress for every 'special event' (galas, dances, etc.). After some thought, she said it's most likely because she will be looked down upon by other females if she is seen wearing something that she has previously been known to wear. I asked why again, and she said that sort of judgement has probably been inculcated in the majority of females; she clarified that she only bought new dresses so as not to be thought of as low status, and has no qualms wearing the same things around family.
Men have comparable status competitions and nastiness, it just isn't about clothes.
Men have comparable status competitions and nastiness it just isn't about clothes.
Part of Zaine's question is whether this is actually the case. There's an aphorism: "Men insult each other and don't mean it. Women compliment each other and don't mean it." Do groups of men who are friends engage zero-sum status games? What do those look like?
I don't believe athletic competition is zero-sum. The status gain of the winners isn't offset by a status loss of the losers. In fact, the losers often come out with a gain in status, assuming they play well.
Another way to see that it's positive-sum is as follows: A close-fought game results in more status for both sides than does a rout. If the game were zero-sum, that status had to come from somewhere. But in fact, if the losers play better, both sides come out better than if the losers lost, badly.
Conclusion: athletics and similar competition is positive-sum, and the size of the total status gain depends on the talent being displayed.
Probably.
A friend of mine was once given a physical beating in a context and manner so stressful that it fractured his skull. The silent treatment with the same effect would have had to be extraordinary.
It's not clear to me what follows from either of those comparisons, beyond the relatively obvious observation that different forms of harm have different types of symptoms.
In my understanding, few men would notice if I wore the same dress twice. Out-competing other women for men only makes sense if the men notice. The level of attention to dress that will impress most men is lower than the level that will impress most other women. So to the extent that women are dressing carefully to impress men, it's largely mediated through other women. Women may snark to men, or to other women in men's hearing, about other women in order to jockey for status. (I realize this isn't an Austen crowd, but think Miss Bingley snarking to Mr. Darcy about Elizabeth Bennet.)
Well, yes, but lots of human emotional responses are about mediating the perception and signalling of status. Insecurity is (more or less) second-guessing one's self-perceived status, regardless of the reality of the situation. We might imagine this becoming more useful (and more frequent) in environments where there's a lot of status competition.
So what happens in an environment where you have a cadre of ridiculously high-status superstimulatory celebrities, with media channels dedicated to demonstrating their high-status qualities and disseminating gossip about them?
Bloody hell. I think I've turned into a feminist.
Disclaimer: these are only the reasons I go to bars. In no particular order.
They don't but some people are self-conscious about standing in front of a crowd and performing. Alcohol fixes that.
I don't drink, don't like trying to hold a conversation over loud music, and don't like starting conversations with strangers if I don't think we'll have anything in common. Why the hell do I go to bars?
1) Everyone else is there. It's a Schelling Point for non-specific social activity.
2) It's public. There are a whole host of complicated hospitality / power dynamic / pragmatic considerations that come with inviting people to your home, or being invited to someone else's. Bars take responsibility for all the trappings of hospitality.
3) It's a ubiquitous venue. In an urban area you'll always be able to find a bar in walking distance, whereas you can't say the same for a park or a museum.
4) It's a designated area for social interaction. If I did want to talk to a stranger, this is permitted in bars, whereas it's prohibited in most other venues. (Your mileage may vary here; The UK is a lot more staid about these things than the rest of Europe and North America.)
4) It's a designated area for social interaction. If I did want to talk to a stranger, this is permitted in bars, whereas it's prohibited in most other venues. (Your mileage may vary here; The UK is a lot more staid about these things than the rest of Europe and North America.)
To the point where I sometimes wonder whether the UK has "bars" at all, of the sort being talked about. Go into any pub in the UK, and it will be mostly full of people in small groups who already know each other and went there to talk to each other. In a few specialised environments (e.g. a university campus during the first few weeks of a new year) it may be more common for strangers to strike up new acquaintances in "bars", but I'm not aware of anywhere where it's a general custom. Perhaps in "nightclubs", which I've never been in, but from observation of the queues outside such places, nobody goes to such a place alone, whatever they then do inside.
So my actual question is:
Many times I've known people and they have simply stopped talking to me and returning my calls/texts/IMs. I am given to understand that this means they don't want to talk to me, and that this is a generally effective strategy.
However I have never been in a position (a) where I didn't want to talk to someone ever again, or (b) in which I wouldn't just tell them that I wasn't really interested in talking at the time for [Reason].
Whenever I think about this overmuch I feel like I should ask these people why they aren't responding to me at all... but they only ever respond by (a) not talking to me or (b) getting very upset, so I have stopped asking.
Has anyone here ever purposefully stopped talking to or responding to someone they know? Can you describe the the thought process behind it?
EDIT: In particular I'm interested in why one would stop talking to a person without some kind of explanation or at least statement. For example (Warning fuzzy details) I once went on a date with someone, and we made plans for another date (there was back and forth), then never heard from the person again, even after a few prompts. While I understand what this means, I don't understand why one wouldn't say "I'm not interested in seeing you any more." Or at least some common stand-in like "Sorry I can't make it I'm busy." My leading hypothesis is that I have an abnormal desire for closure.
I have frequently stopped responding to people because I failed to respond immediately, and then forgot that the conversation existed. I have no idea how common this is.
I do the same thing. With the added effect that if I do notice the conversation after a while, I still fail to respond. The reason is that at that point, if I were to reply I would have to start with an apology like "Sorry it took so long to respond, I forgot / I don't think this conversation is that important / I am a lazy bastard". I don't want to do that, so it's best not to respond at all.
Yes, I know this is a stupid bias. Maybe I should try to fix myself. Any suggestions?
It's been my experience that people who want a reason for disengagement primarily want that reason so they can argue it is incorrect or can be overcome.
To answer this more generally, instead of in example form people often have anxiety around social interactions particularly those they anticipate to be uncomfortable, conflict-ridden or dramatic. In a dating context (which is usually when this sort of thing happens, in my experience, but maybe you have something different in mind) it is usually a way to cease dating or flirting with someone without having to explain to them that you aren't interested. It avoids the tension involved in waiting for the person to react, the drama of any fallout and the awkwardness of spending any time interacting with them after you've dumped them.
I guess I'm volunteering to answer these things, heh. Well, other people need to answer these things too, right?
Well, so I did stop talking to my most recent ex-boyfriend. The thing was that after our relationship ended many of my friends confided in me that he and I were of vastly different social statuses, and that our relationship had lowered their opinion of my status.
Then, some months later, he returned some of the things he had of mine, and during that meeting he was exceptionally creepy. I realized that talking to him further would only increase the creepiness, and so I stopped talking to him altogether. Most recently, he replied to a throwaway tweet of mine, and I intend not to respond to it because it's still clear that he's still seeking a relationship I'm no longer interested in.
Why do people boo performers? Example: I was at Geek Bowl 2012, which was this huge team trivia event in an auditorium, and toward the end of the night they invited participants to come on-stage and dance in teams for 45 seconds per team. Only 4 of the 200 teams volunteered, and while they danced, the crowd noisily jeered them. Now, the dancing wasn't great, but...
It's fun to boo. Expressing public displeasure with someone in a totally safe and one-sided fashion Is something people love to do: See forums.
Doing the same thing as the crowd around you is very thrilling. If some people start booing other people are likely to join in.
People actually DO get angry at performers. People tend to have strong senses of entitlement in these kind of situations and if they're disappointed they will be upset. Not everyone is crass enough to boo but surely you've felt ripped off in the past by a performance that was worse than what you expected?
Not particularly referring to your experience, but instead drawing from a few dozen rock festivals I've been to in the past decade.
You gain nothing from booing them, except possibly you signal...what? Being loud and opinionated? Being in a position of judgement and therefore high-status?
This is the main reason, for what I saw. Booing an act puts you on a higher level than the people who like it, and have therefore bad taste. In addition, it could also signal the membership to a different fan group.
Even assuming there's a signaling explanation, I cannot figure out the thought process that leads to booing. Like, they somehow get angry at the performers? Or is it morbid curiosity, and they wonder if it'll get even worse if the dancers get flustered?
A classic festival example that I personally witnessed. A few years ago I was at an heavy metal festival, with many groups performing the same day. There were a few extreme metal groups (Obituary, Slayer and Stormlord IIRC), and a very noisy group of extreme metal fans. Unfortunately, sandwiched between those acts, the organizers inserted Lacuna Coil (a roughly gothic metal group, much softer, with a wider fanbase outside of the me...
I'm guilty of booing sometimes, and to me the thought process seems to be:
1) The bad performance makes me feel bad.
2) The crowd is similar to me, and is my in-group in the situation.
3) Therefore, the bad performance is making everyone else in the crowd feel bad.
4) I empathise with the crowd more than the performers, since the crowd is a constant in-group I can identify with through the entire event, while the performers are fleeting and on average neutral.
5) Therefore to signal my anger on behalf of the crowd's suffering, I boo at the bad performer, who has slid from neutral to Enemy.
I spent most of my life absolutely not understanding why a person would ask questions out loud in a classroom setting, with extra lack-of-understanding for people who disrupt classes with objections to the teacher's content or style.
Eventually I was able to understand, through a lengthy conversation with different individuals having different points of view on the topic, that I have an unusually sensitive fear of public punishment and aversion to authority, probably ingrained in me by some specific classroom events of my childhood.
I am paying to learn about something from someone who knows more about it than me. If I need something clarified I'm going to ask.
It depends. There is a difference between disruption with a goal to get more information, and a disruption for the sake of disruption. Some people disrupt classes because they don't pay for them (state or parents pay), because they don't care about the lesson, and disrupting a lesson is a method of signalling high status and reducing the amount of transferred knowledge.
Disrupting someone's lesson shows your high status against them (attacking someone with impunity) and against your classmates (you had the courage to do it first). This is why having one disruptive student per classroom is often manageable (they assert their status, and are happy with it), but having two or three is a disaster (it becomes a competition between them).
Reducing transferred knowledge makes sense if you can later bargain that you shouldn't be examined for knowledge you did not receive during the lesson (thus by disrupting you reduce your necessary learning for exams); and it also reduces your competitive disadvantage against classmates who try to pay attention during the lesson (this last motive was explicitly explained to me by a few extra rude students).
I did private teaching, teaching at public schools, and teaching employees. The behavior depends on whether the person comes to the lesson willingly, whether they are interested in topic, and whether they are in the age interval 13-17 (when they get most status from their peers for destructive behavior).
I'm a high school student. I ask a lot of questions in classes, especially math and discussion-based classes like "Science and Religion". In math, this is an unwillingness to miss something and to back to it later--if I fail to understand one part of a lesson, it makes understanding the other parts hard. In "science and religion", I ask loaded questions that disrupt the class by turning it into a complicated debate between me and the teacher. This is because I have little respect for the (boring) subject matter, believe I'm smarter than the teacher, and would rather entertain myself and my classmates by defeating the teacher in battles of wits than sit with a book and listen to the teacher explain that god's existence is inherently un-investigatable.
TLDR: I ask questions to improve my understanding; I disrupt class because I'm arrogant and competitive.
In a classroom setting I sometimes have the opposite problem. I sometimes forget I am in a social situation entirely and think no more of stating something in a huge room of students than simply thinking it within my own mind.
So there's one answer for you, obliviousness and impulsivety.
Why do people not punish useless status-seeking behavior? People rightly respond warmly to productive status-enhancing behavior, such as including people in conversation, fishing out common interests, and telling entertaining stories. But people also frequently reward outright bragging, cocky attitudes, and social aggressiveness - which to me are obviously done with status in mind, have no value to anyone else, and are pretty uncorrelated with the productive kinds of status behavior.
Since status is zero sum, why aren't other people more proactive in no...
Why do people not punish useless status-seeking behavior?
They do, whenever such behavior seems like it's bound to fail. However, when it looks like it will succeed (and thus bring high status to whoever is practicing it), an attempt to punish would mean a declaration of war against someone of high status, which is usually not a smart move.
Do they assume that swaggerers might have social clout to match their personalities and are afraid of having them as enemies?
Often yes, as explained above, but it's usually not done consciously. Most status-related behaviors are instinctive, and the conscious mind only invents rationalizations for them (which can be of many different kinds).
Because, believe it or not, it's often hard to tell the difference, especially if you know about mind projection fallacy. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt.
Plus most people avoid creating a confrontation because that also could put them in a negative light. (Not only do you have to think what the other person is doing is bad, but the majority of other people have to think that as well, for you to get any value out of the confrontation.)
I agree, and that would imply that today's environment favors acting high status. And in fact I have a pet theory that the increase in urbanization and mobility in, say, the 1900s have led to a shift to more socially aggressive short-term status posturing behaviors (vs. carefully cultivating a reputation long-term.) This accounts, among other things, for the rise of the "self-esteem" movement as well as the recent rise of pickup artistry, which in its initial forms was nothing more than a way to rachet up your apparent status, unsustainably, for the short term, and was therefore dependent on urban anonymity. Susan Cain agrees with the timeline: http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/9439
So this explains why people are playing high status these days. It doesn't explain why other people often don't react badly to status plays.
Why is malice addictive?
I'm talking about malice which goes way beyond anything which could be expected to raise status or improve the odds of reproductive success.
For example, some people put huge numbers of hours into trolling, and while some people are in troll sub-cultures so there's local status to be gained, I don't get the impression that's a large fraction of trolling.
There are more than a few parents who engage in emotionally and physically abusing their children, and it's a long campaign of causing misery. Some of it can be reasonably interprete...
Why do people take the time to develop "aquired tastes". "That was an unpleasant experience", somehow becomes "I will keep doing it until I like it."
My guess is social conditioning, but then how did it become popular enough for that to be a factor?
I do it because I love variety and thus value having more possible pleasant experiences to have.
I don't understand why people work ridiculously long and hard hours in Wall Street or the City for more money than they could ever use. Observably they do it, but I don't understand why. (I have friends who work in the City because they find this stuff fascinating - that I can understand better - but most of them don't.) Reasons when asked include "it's a job", "it's ehh okay if I have to work" but somehow that doesn't seem to explain it to me (so perhaps it's just me).
"More money than they could ever use" seems like the wrong part there. I have uses for arbitrarily large amounts of money - feel free to refer me if they need tips.
For example, for several billion dollars you could surely get another season of Firefly.
People consistently choose more money over increased leisure. So it's not unique to this situation. I think the assumption is that the option for leisure will always be there but the option to make lots of money won't be. This is colloquially known as "get while the getting's good." Though I'm sure there are other reasons as well.
You may also be poorly calibrated on how much money one can use.
Here's a partial explanation - a contributing element.
Do they have an option for working shorter hours at the same hourly rate? I suspect not (employers will much prefer those willing to put in long hours once the tradition is in place). So people who want to make a lot of money have to work hard now and plan to switch to a lower paid job once they've saved enough. But switching to a lower paid job (or stopping working for profit if you're rich enough) is psychologically unpleasant and culturally discouraged, and people will keep putting it off. Or it may be hard psychologically to live modestly while making a lot of money.
I have a colleague who worked in the City for a few years (programming, not finance). The money was great, but eventually he looked around at the people he worked with, saw exactly what you've seen, and got out.
They have commitments to their families, a million a year feels like poverty after you're used to living on two million, and every day they add another thread to the ropes holding them in place.
If it's a highly sought-after high-status job, there may be oodles of takers for every getter. The sheer amount of competition may force their hand, and the "it's a job" may be simply a case of this.
Another possibility is the sunk cost fallacy. If the job requirements are strict enough and the people who eventually get the job have had to sacrifice enough getting there, that alone may be enough to get them to stick with it. Add some social pressure for spice as desired. Stir with self-deception and serve with verbal rationalizations.
Once in a while, I wonder why someone behaves in a certain way in a certain situation, and then a couple of weeks later I find myself in the same situation and it becomes obvious to me.
Sports is fun to watch for the same reason watching any other form of skilled competition can be fun.
Identifying with a far removed team is a way to join a tribe, and get all the fun results thereof. It doesn't matter that much that you're identifying with a bunch of players who are hired by an organization that is nominally affiliated with a location far away from you. People subscribe to really tenuous group membership all the time: they feel affiliated with faraway centers of government, ideologies that have no geographic location, etc. What does matter is being able to find people, preferably nearby and in person, you can signal your group affiliation to.
People "do that" because a part of social behaviour is, for various reasons, imitated. They may or may not understand completly why their behaviour is the appropriate response but they desire social exceptence and believe the response is appropriate from observation of peers or others in their environment. Thus some behaviour evolves out of a need for exceptance and to be understood.
I would be fascinated (for what that's worth) if petitioners on this post could also provide a guess or working model of the solution to their problems.
The other day, someone did something I didn't expect. It was something many people have done before; something that I thought of as very normal, but that I in no way understood and had not predicted.
As I said, this had happened many time before, so I wrote it off as "me not understanding people" or "people are weird" for a second, like I usually do, before realizing that "bad at" really means "lacking basic knowledge", which I had never realized before.
And then I thought "I should ask someone who is different from me why people do that, and eventually someone will have an answer."
But many people will have many more questions like this. So, what have you observed people doing time and time again, but never understood? Or something that you only understood after a long time or asking someone about it?
And can Less Wrong tell us, not necessarily why (I for one can make up evolutionary psychology fairy tales all day if I want) but what conscious thought process occurs behind these events?