(May 28, 2018 12:14 AM)Secular Sanity Wrote: [ -> ] (May 27, 2018 09:48 PM)Syne Wrote: [ -> ]Well, since status has been highly correlated with wealth or power for much of our history, psychologically, they are likely difficult to differentiate...at least where female attraction is concerned, since attraction largely operates subconsciously. The appearance of status often seems sufficient.
Outside of attraction, status is a social currency that does seem to differ from physical or economic power. A funny, but otherwise weak and poor, guy can have much more social currency (among men and women) than power. Smart people can convert social capital into actual capital.
There have been studies that show that the more wealthy are less considerate or cognizant of others. I'm not sure if you could tease apart whether that is directly due to a lack in perspective taking. Successful people seem to have a very good understanding of the motives and desires of others, in the market and negotiations. So I would tend to say it's the reverse. Instead of the powerful not needing others, the consideration shown by the less wealthy is a result of their need for others. As that need diminishes, so does the behavior that encourages others to reciprocally take our own perspective.
In other words...
"Status: prestige, respect and esteem that a party has in the eyes of others ... an index of the social worth that others ascribe to an individual or a group. Status originates externally and is rooted in the evaluations of others through status-conferral processes."
Sounds good.
Quote:"Power is best conceptualized as control over critical resources — that is, outcome control."
Capability does not automatically equate to outcome control, only outcome influence.
Quote:And...
"Raw power makes people less sensitive to the wants and needs of others. Presumably, power focuses people on the resources they control rather than the people around them. In contrast, status increases people’s focus on others. Status is based on other people’s opinions. As a result, maintaining status requires paying attention to other people.[1]
No, again that's reversed. People with resources are less consumed with said resources, because they are further removed from direct survival. They may be focused on power, but that may include paying attention to others. Whereas the poor are consumed with resources, due to their relative scarcity. People and their attention value scarcity. Likewise, people with social status are actually less concerned with others, because people ingratiating themselves is in ample supply, and too much attention on others actually diminishes social capital...unless those others, themselves, already possess social capital. People do not confer status on the needy.
So it's overly simplified to say there's a direction correlation between economic/social status and focus on others. The less wealthy may have a need to encourage mutual aid, and the wealthy may have a desire for cooperation.
Quote:What was that Holly Dunsworth said? Oh, yeah…she said, "And it's as if women don't exist at all in these tales except as objects for males to fight over or to fuck but it's nice to have choice!"
As romance novels and rom-coms demonstrate, there are a good many women who enjoy such scenarios, even though they now have the same opportunities for wealth and status. A woman perceives a man to have status because he can provide things she cannot, or would prefer not to, provide herself.
Quote:But according to Coyne sexual dimorphism is driven primarily by male-male competition, competing for and protecting females.
Actually, Coyne says sexual dimorphism is primarily the result of sexual selection by females.
The ratios are greater in some primates (gorillas have values of about 84!), but if they’re greater than 1, there’s room for sexual selection, since there are more males seeking females than there are females available as mates. This itself is one bit of evidence for the operation of sexual selection in humans.
Now how the sexual selection actually operated in our ancestors is not perfectly clear. Some of it, as the data suggest, involves male-male competition: fights between males to control females, as we witness in gorillas, deer, and elephant seals. Females are more or less constrained to mate with the winning males. Or females may prefer to mate with the biggest and strongest males, for those males may protect their offspring—and hence the female’s genes—better than do smaller, weaker males. (This gives an evolutionary advantage to those females who can discern and choose the best males.)
Both of these factors can, of course, work at the same time, and there are other more arcane forms of sexual selection I won’t mention, including other signs in males of “good genes”. But any sexual-selection scenario goes along with a difference in sexual behavior, explaining why, even today, males are more promiscuous and willing to mate than are the choosier females.
- https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com...ns-part-2/
You'd have to be cherry-picking to arrive at a solely male-competition conclusion. Because if males primarily controlled females, there's no good explanation for the development of choosier female behavior.
Quote:So, which is it? Do we want physical protection or resources?
Raw power or status?
Resources usually equate to physical protection.
Power and status are not dichotomous, since each can contribute to the other.
(May 28, 2018 01:15 AM)confused2 Wrote: [ -> ]Without having thought about it very much...
In my experience male/male friendships and/or 'associations' (possibly wrong word) are easy and tend to be the result of common interests and/or common goals - expedient might cover it. SS and I have agreed (elsewhere) that marriage (to one female) means the end of a male's friendships with other females. The common interests and/or common goals in male/female friendships are unlikely to include a game of golf, car maintenance or ... I give in, I can't think of anything else ... EXCEPT SEX ... and this is the problem.
There's also a certain camaraderie between men. Since men promote the best among them (man-crush, loyalty, etc.), there's a kind of collective tacit male agreement on which gain social status. There's little evolutionary psychology for men to share such relationships with women, or vice versa, and from what I understand, that kind of thing may even be foreign between women (outside of jealousy).
That men and women have natural gender differences isn't a problem that any amount of social engineering can ever overcome. To the contrary, studies have shown that the more gender egalitarian a society the greater the expression of gender differences. I've always been doubtful about truly, mutually platonic relationships between the sexes. The closest seems to be between women and gay men.
