Mythologies: Lenten Musings 2006

Barring some catastrophic change, I've planned a Lenten series on mythologies. I don't mean legends like Oedipus or Beowulf. Instead, by mythologies I mean cultural influences that don't make sense; either their true nature is not what most seem, or they've had a pernicious influence on culture and lifestyle. Because I'm talking about myths, I'm going to be a little looser with the arguments, more allegorical, more inventive. Don't take these pieces are fully serious. They're not. On the other hand, they're not fully satirical either.

The Myth of Kindness

I wanted to kick off this Lenten series of reflections on myths with a debate. I was having trouble finding someone to debate the point of kindness, because there are a lot of perpetuated falsehoods. I also wanted a female. Eventually it hit me. Inspired by the Colbert Report segment "Formidable Opponent", I knew who could pose a challenge: Me! Better yet, I could follow the example of Genesis, pull out a rib, and get Eve - me, yet female. That's perfect. I'll put Adam's comments in normal text, and Eve in aqua.

(Adam:) Kindness is not an attractive quality in males.

What do you mean friends, Eve?

That's just not true. Over the past year, I've been talking with women in or near my marriageable box, ladies with potential and attractiveness. There were eight chats, all women in their 20s and 30s. Here's one quote: "Deep down inside, every woman just wants to be dominated."

Another woman said, "I just want a man with a spine!" Another called decisiveness the key quality. Another noted that she evaluates men based on their accomplishments and status. Another talked about how she wanted the man to do things for her, so she could be submissive.

Do you know how many times kindness or altruism or general niceness were mentioned? Zero. None. There were several comments about "treating me right", but nothing about general gentility.

I asked for general principles, not my weaknesses. But if you don't trust my interview skills, let's look at quantitative research. To quote, "Male bravery was the biggest influence on women's choice when selecting short-term and long-term partners and even male friends. Kindness turned out to be a much less important factor. When bravery was pitted against unselfishness, the surprising result was that women put much more weight on courage than kindness - and this was despite their protestations to the contrary."

Try this: Kelly, Susan, and Robin I. M. Dunbar (2001) "Who Dares, Wins": Heroism versus Altruism in Women's Mate Choice. Human Nature 12:89-105. Also, you can try this older study: Sadalla, Edward K., Douglas T. Kenrick, and Beth Vershure (1987) Dominance and Heterosexual Attraction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52:730-738. It shows that competitiveness and dominance are considered sexy in males.

It wasn't just a winner. In one experiment, two sample tennis players won 60%, the same proportion of matches, but the one described with "All of his movements tend to communicate dominance and authority." was significantly more attractive than "Although he plays well, he prefers to play for fun rather than to win." This was true for males, but not females, where authority had no affect on attractiveness.

I wish it was, Eve. The researchers compared other words, "Domineering" and "Aggressiveness". Only "Dominant" had a positive effect. "Domineering" had a negative effect, while "Aggressiveness" was close to neutral.

No, it's just a difference in terminology. Some women say "confidence", but that can be trust and self-assuredness, inside myself, without a need to act outwardly. Someone who needs to display their confidence really isn't. For women evaluating men, this isn't the case. Women generally expect displays of control, confidence, and power. Men would call this cockiness or alpha male behavior.

Well, I focus on what happens. One woman admitted this to me, that she focuses on the accomplishments and status of a suitor. And how do women introduce potential matches? To quote an introduction I heard, "He makes $65,000 a year! He drives a BMW! He's very handsome. Oh yeah, he's nice."

That's "kind to you", not general kindness. It's a strategy; those actions show that the man will take care of you, provide for you, keep you safe. Since it easily becomes a loss of status and power, it can backfire. To take the typical example, Mr. Darcy of Pride and Prejudice does his acts for Elizabeth Bennet, not out of general altruism. (This is important enough to warrant its own page, coming soon.) "Kind to me" is not kindness.

How many men work in homeless shelters? Quite often, I'm the only male volunteer. One day, I went to the gym, then to the food pantry to help unload a delivery. I saw plenty of men in the gym. At the pantry, even with substantial advertisement, there was one other male volunteer. And he and I are both frequent gym users. If acts of goodness made one attractive, there would be huge lines. The priest would need a lottery to determine helpers. At least I got a bicep workout with the boxes and bags.

Look at online personal ads. How many talk about charities? How many say they're sweet? Far, far less than the number who talk about working out, sports teams, and money. If it was important, the match.com and Yahoo personals programmers would create a category to talk about it. Women would swarm over soup kitchen volunteers. They'd set up their friends with talk of gentle acts, not money, cars, or jobs. In blunt social Darwinist terms, what gets incented gets done.

The Myth of Johnny Cash Heartbreak (March 9)

The movie Walk the Line garnered Oscar nominations for its two leading actors and singers. Reese Witherspoon won for Best Actress. In the post-Oscar questionnaire, two of the first four questions were about her dress. A more interesting question was this one:

"If you could sum up this win with a June Carter or a Johnny Cash song, which one would it be?"

(Reese:) Oh gosh. I don't know. None of their songs were celebratory enough, I don't think.

She's right. Johnny and June Carter put out a lot of songs of lost love, bad romance, and hearbreak. It's a little strange given the happiness of their marriage. I guess, as the movie showed, it took some time and some very poor choices to get there, which gave rise to material. Anyway, there are so many choices that one could develop a scale. Which I did. Level 0 is "happy", while 5 is "really, really sad". Each song choice has a representative lyric, which shows the decline. In the future, instead of describing how one feels after romantic loss, one might say level 3, or "at first, a little Cry, Cry, Cry, but I've recovered to Guess Things Happen That Way." Feel free to use it in your life.

The Myth of Mate Selection

I decided to add several tables to this piece, which made it really long, so this musing accumulated its own page. I summarize three of the many studies on mate selection, with exercises (compare yourself) and comments.

The Myth of Perception

Continuing the studies of mate selection, I found a couple of studies on perception; one's belief about self, and how seeing other potential mates affects one's other perception. Unlike the mate trait page, there are fewer cute exercises and more results.

Ms. Regan returns from the trait page and provides the first result. To quote the abstract from a 1998 Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality article: "Men's self-perceived mate value largely was unassociated with their selection standards; however, women's mate value correlated positively with their minimum criteria, across a variety of characteristics and for a short-term sex and a long-term romantic partner." To use market terminology, men try to purchase what they want, not seeing how much cash they have. Women look at their value, then try to buy on a budget. Isn't that the exact opposite of what is said about shopping?

People want to purchase different things. Although the mate study gave rankings, there is some standard deviation. Also, particularly in appearance, there are some preference differences. This is further discussed in a 2005 article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. (By the way, if you're wondering why this journal appears often, it's because I can access it free online.) Marcel Zentner of the University of Geneva defined the IMPC, Ideal Mate Personality Concept, as the personality pattern that an individual desires and seeks in a potential mate. Zentner focused on the big 5 internal personality traits - extraversion, neuroticism, openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness - not the more standardized appearance, social resources, or intelligence. He thus got greater variation. While almost all people would prefer a more attractive, smarter, and richer partner, the personality mix differs. The traits are shown below, and often abbreviated by the first letter.

1. Neuroticism: Tendency to experience negative affects.
2. Extraversion: Tendency to be social, assertive, active, and talkative.
3. Openness: Imagination, intellectual curiosity, aesthetic sensitivity, and independence of judgment.
4. Agreeableness: Tendency to be altruistic, sympathetic, and eager to help others in general.
5. Conscientiousness: Tendency to be planful, organized, strong-willed, and purposeful.

For instance, I would define myself as medium N, low E, high O, very high A, and high C. I really want high A and would prefer high O. Too much E would be a problem for me. N and C are less important, as long as they're not extreme.

Partners had some positive correlation between their trait scores, with Pearson's correlation r about +0.10. That's not huge, though. Much more important was correlation between a person's IMPC and the assessment of their partner, the congruence. One study looked at couples over 9 months. Couples that separated had significantly lower congruence at the initial assessment. Congruence was more important than personality matching. In other words, a happy couple is not completely different, but it's far more important that the partners' personality match what the other desires.

Moving on, accuracy of perception is important; one would expect romantic partners to perceive more accurately than friends, acquaintances, or strangers. The intimacy effect is fairly small, though. Acquaintance does tend to increase accuracy, but most of that increase occurs very early in the process; the difference between good acquaintance, friend, and lover is small. Partners are often over-confident when describing their mate (as shown in Swann and Gill, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1997), 73: 747-757.) The closeness of the relationship makes it difficult to take advantage of the knowledge of others, for good or bad. For example, a woman dating a man might evaluate kindness on how courteously she treats him, the easy to see parts. How he treats coworkers or taxi drivers is ignored; the opinion of family and friends is discounted, or (particularly in adolescents) rebelled against. Finally, there is the bias of assumed similarity. We saw above that partners' personalities are not necessarily similar, but people think they are. In a 2001 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology paper, David Kenny and Linda Acitelli find evidence of both assumed similarity bias and improved accuracy. Interestingly, assuming similarity makes certain predictions better, particuarly in family relations.

Finally, one hypothesis (from the Buss study) is that seeing very attractive people colors perceptions and raises standards. Plenty of research confirms this. One such study is by Douglas Kendrick, Neuberg, Zierk, and Krones of Arizona State, and appears in a 1994 issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. They looked at combinations of physical attractiveness and social dominance (power and authority, NOT hostility, arrogance, or domineering behavior). College men, as shown elsewhere, rated their own relationships lower after seeing pictures of hot girls. Women were not affected by looks. However, after reading descriptions of people high on the "Dominance/Ascendance scale", women rated their relationships more poorly than when the text was identical, except that the male scored low (obedient, yielding, and submissive). Reading about an unyielding man caused women to question their own partner.

Kindness: Why don't more men volunteer at homeless shelters?

Women often say that they want a "kind man". It's one of the top requests, sometimes coming above physical attractiveness. My dictionary says that kindness is the act of being friendly, generous, and considerate. Synonyms for kindness include unselfish, altruistic, and benevolent. I would classify working at a homeless shelter or food pantry as a kind act, maybe one of the highest classes of kindness. Herein lies a problem. There are lots and lots of men at the gym, but not many men volunteering. When I go, it's mostly women. Many times, I'm the only male working. This makes no rational sense. If women want kind men, and kind men volunteer, why don't men volunteer? Why aren't they full of men?

We might hypothesize that men generally don't know about this desire. But men go to great lengths at the gym, remove chest hair, practice pickup lines, and take dance lessons, all to increase their standing with women. Additionally, I would consider the founders of match.com knowledgeable in the desires of dating singles. A profile on match.com has the astrological sign, and lots of turn-ons and turn-offs, but no area set aside for volunteer work or charity. They didn't consider it necessary, because people haven't asked for it. Alterntively, having no area would make sense if it was useful, but male volunteers found desirable women quickly, so they wouldn't need to use Internet dating. From my anecdotal experience, and that of people I know, this does not seem to be the case. Besides, word would get around; other men would notice the volunteers with attractive wives and inquire about things. Then they would become volunteers, abandoning the dance classes and gyms. Imagine what would happen if the time and money spent on male chest hair removal was instead given to literacy programs. Interesting, eh?

Also anecdotally, I have talked to a decent number of intelligent, attractive women about their husband desires. Several described "treating me right" or "being considerate to me" or "making me special". That falls under kindness for sure, as consideration. But it's always defined in terms of "kind to me", not generally or universally.

The conclusion I therefore draw, perhaps the most painful of this process, is that altruistic kindness is not an highly attractive quality. I've believed universal benevolence was a virtue, and something that would be rewarded in the marriage market. It doesn't look that way. At least for women, "kindness" is defined on a less universal scale. Primarily, it's consideration and friendliness towards her. It's not chivalry.

A male friend sent me an interesting essay about honor. The thesis was that women cannot understand male honor, the idea of universal regard, the respect and dignity granted to friends, strangers, and even enemies. Women defined honor only in terms of their relationship, and maybe their community. Talking about this, another male even suggested general chivalry was a negative quality, because a woman might suspect that attention meant not kindness, but attraction. I won't go as far as negativity, but my learnings about kindness - the individual versus the general - support the essay thesis. Altruistic kindness does not appear to be a highly desired quality. If you disagree, you have to solve the homeless shelter puzzle. In summary, it helps to read "right-treatment of me" for "kindness" as females see it.

Social Personality: What is it about Bad Boys?

For me, a confusing point here was when women used the word "confidence". I grew up understanding confidence to be inward. One never had to project ability; a saying I adopted from my parents was "The guy who proclaims he's great at something really isn't." I wanted to be quiet and diligent, letting results speak in the end. Confidence is trust and conviction and self-assurance.

Undoubtedly, I've had problems with even this definition. But I have discovered I was wrong about the word, at least as applied to dating. When I've asked women, they have responded more commonly with other synonyms: assertiveness, self-possession, courage, and nerve, more outward traits. I was once called confident because I spoke well at an orientation event, told people where to go and answered their questions. That confused me, because to me that was skill I just applied. I wasn't any more or less assured.

In the alternate version, "Confidence" is a lack of doubt, neediness, and deference. It's the stereotype of the proverbial teenage movie Bad Boy. He doesn't listen to what the establishment tells him to do. He's not generally respectful or chivalrous. Young women swoon for this personality type, to the point of destructive behavior. They bend to him, again and again and again. He looks like a good commander because he isn't a follower.

The Bad Boy has cockiness and arrogance, which look like leadership but really aren't. He ignores the needs of his potential followers, treating them as poorly as he treats the potential instructors. Nothing gets done; this society without direction is anarchy. A great leader, a fully confident woman or man, has followers; people acknowledge his abilities and trust him enough to grant him power. That means not always having the outward-facing role, and knowing all projects require tasks that are mundane. There are times to be aggressive and possessed, but not always.

Given enough time, people will determine the difference between a Bad Boy and a fully confident leader. The problem is that the current American dating system generally doesn't provide that time. There aren't months of formal balls and parties, or the deliberate rituals of 1950s colleges. At least in large cities, communities aren't stable enough to provide character witnesses, or enough time to be granted respect and authority. Internet and bar decisions are made quickly on short impressions. In these situations, grasping power through assertive aggression is the better strategy.

The Big Finish: The Myth of Economic Selection

To close out the studies, I guess it's time to propose my theory. Here, I'm following the ideas of economics. Don't consider this exactly what I think of the matter. It's an academic theory. It has some holes. But it's interesting. It has seven points.

1. There is no single "the one". There are billions of women in the world; how could I ever find her? And if I didn't, wouldn't I just be settling for someone less? There are women that would be loving partners for me, and women for which I would be a loving partner. If I'm lucky, there's overlap.
2. Some people are more desirable than others. I haven't conducted a survey, but I suspect that most American women would prefer George Clooney to Saddam Hussein. Most men would prefer Heidi Klum over Roseanne Barr.
3. At least within a culture, there are a fairly standardized set of traits that constitute desirability. This is suggested by the mate selection studies. I'll propose the following six traits: Physical Appearance, Intelligence, Economic Resources/Potential, Internal Personality, Kindness, Interpersonal Personality. The first three are pretty easy to rank, and fairly standardized. Internal Personality is described in the perception musing (neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness); people look for different things here. By Interpersonal Personality, I mean the skills used when interacting in groups. This includes rhetoric, humor, confidence, and so forth. By Kindness, I mean generosity and consideration of others. The last two points are more complex. I wrote a kindness sidebar, "Why don't more men volunteer at homeless shelters?", and a a personality sidebar, "What is it about bad boys?"
4. People have minimum standards for each trait. In some cases, these might be unrealistic. A woman might declare she will only marry a millionaire, but only a small number of women can do so, and so she will need to be fairly high on the traits. Other people may have very low standards, or standards that change based on circumstances, like men and beer goggles. Yet they have standards.
5. Above the minimum standards, people weigh the traits somewhat differently. In general, men weight looks more heavily than women, while women focus more on resources. We could think of a scorecard. As a statistician, I really like the concept, but there's no way to build a general model; there isn't enough data for each person. Only the easily evaluated traits of looks, intelligence, and resources can get scores. We have to assume others to complete the hypothetical model, which is serving as an approximation for the brain process.
6. Given a choice, a person will pick the highest scoring available individual. If nobody available meets the minimum standards, the person will make no choice, waiting for other possibilities. This is rationality at work. We know there are weak spots here, but it's a better decision mechanism than anything else. Besides, any problems can just get blamed on the model.
7. Men make offers that women accept. Yes, this is a simplification, but American men are expected to make the vast majority of offers. Women tend to be the pickers in #6. Because every offer involves a cost, both in time and potential humiliation, men propose to women at least reasonably likely to accept.

Problems with the Model: Choice, Measurement, and Love

All sounds logical. There are three problems here, love, measurement, and the choice mechanism. Let's do choice first. There are occasional times that are classic as I describe, where the choices come basically at once. A desirable woman with a new Yahoo Personals profile might get 100 date requests in a week. In general, though, offers are sequential. They get evaluated on expectations. Given my minimums, does this man appear good enough for a date? Or is he terrible, or should I wait? Then, after one date, how about another? Is she as appealing after dinner as she was before? That's sequential evaluation. This continues until one party decides it's not worth it and breaks, or both parties agree that things are excellent enough for a long-term commitment. This is not a fault of the scorecard, just a complication in the application.

"They're never going to get to know you if they're not first attracted to you."

The quote above comes from How Do I Look? on the Style Network, spoken from one sorority girl to another. It's very illustrative. The scorecard is not balanced. Some of the traits are easier to examine than others. Decisions made right after meeting someone, on first impressions, use a different weighting scheme than those later.

From my list of traits, Physical Attractiveness is scorable almost immediately. Economic Resources takes a little questioning, as does Intelligence, by holding a conversation. Parts of Interpersonal Personality appear quickly (though as I say in the sidebar, the short-term strategy is not the same as the long-term). Kindness and Internal Personality take more time to evaluate.

As an example, let's follow match.com, one of the leading sites. There are screening criteria such as age and location, which lead to a picture. In one option, results are a screen of head shots and user names, almost 100% physical. The other choice adds a short title and three lines of the profile, which is very short-term Interpersonal. If I click on a profile, I get more screening information, like religion and kids. I also get income and job, the primary Economic data. I get educational history to judge Intelligence. The profile is a few hundred words, giving me an idea about rhetoric and humor. Internal traits can only be briefly discussed, as can Kindness. To make my decision to send an initial email, I have a good idea about looks, and solid information on resources and intelligence. I have some idea about social personality, and am likely close to blind on kindness and internal traits.

This is a Hurdle. To get a response to the first email, or the coffee date, external characteristics matter much more than what's inside. It's very physical. Because human life used to be more physical, this makes sense. I am frustrated, but there's not much one person can do. The X-Files comes to mind, because the subtitle of the theatrical movie was Fight the Future, from a line in the film from the Well-Manicured Man to Mulder - "That you would stop it. That you would fight the future." Despite name similarity, I'm no Mulder. I can't overthrow the system; I can't fight the present. I can't fully reduce the overemphasis on physicality; I can't fight the past. Sigh.

Finally, what Americans call "love" can mean lots of things, in both short-term and long-term sense. Often it's short-term lust. Maybe it's short-term infatuation over some aspect of personality, like how he talks about his kids, or her witty remarks about Cheney. Those things are just temporary scorecard modifications.

This model still has long-term love, an excellent thing. It's realizing that your significant other in your eyes is beautiful enough to make a long-term commitment. It's seeing transcendence and wonder. I might describe a "score" to summarize the brain processes and emotions, but that doesn't make it not magical. True love happens and grows, and like all growth processes we can use our words to at least partially describe the gift.

The entire purpose of this series was to learn and explain how to get better marriages and partners, more good feelings and love. And I still want to express those feelings like a romantic, OK?

Written Lent 2006. Well, mostly. I started some of the work in February. Writing six real pieces is tough.