Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, explains in the NYT:
A growing body of recent research shows that people with the most social power pay scant attention to those with little such power. This tuning out has been observed, for instance, with strangers in a mere five-minute get-acquainted session, where the more powerful person shows fewer signals of paying attention, like nodding or laughing. Higher-status people are also more likely to express disregard, through facial expressions, and are more likely to take over the conversation and interrupt or look past the other speaker. ...
This has profound implications for societal behavior and government policy.
I didn't quite follow Goleman's logic all the way to the end, but it has something to do with Republicans being Bad.
As a follow-up, they should investigate the burning problem that beautiful women tend to pay scant attention to homely, cheaply dressed guys who hit on them in bars and supermarket checkout lines.
As a follow-up, they should investigate the burning problem that beautiful women tend to pay scant attention to homely, cheaply dressed guys who hit on them in bars and supermarket checkout lines.
Wait, is this article from the NYT or from the Onion?
ReplyDeletePeople who think they're all that don't like those who they don't think much of and this required an official scientific study?
Really? Seriously?
Slow news day, huh.
Much more interesting would be how low-status individuals behave when suddenly given attention by high-status individuals. Would they attempt to bring in fellow low-status folks into their new elevated situation in an act of class solidarity, or tend to protect their newly-acquired turf and try to exclude them from participation ? I'm guessing the latter.
ReplyDeleteYet another snarky, petty missive from Sailer HQ. It's like a textual version of Jon Stewart's Daily Show except with a the-liberal-media-are-so-dumb angle.
ReplyDeleteIn other news, tomorrow is Tuesday.
ReplyDeleteThis required a scientific study? Hell, I could have told them that. Since when do the cool kids sit with the nerds?
ReplyDeleteAnd all this time I thought Bloomberg had tea with Mexican laborers during lunch break.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny.
ReplyDeleteAll the old truths are being restated as if rediscovered as new facts.
It's long been thought that high culture was good for you. But then, the cultural revolution in the 60s attacked high culture.
But now, libs are saying serious literature opens minds more than Danille Steele novels. Gee, I mean who knew that?
It's long been known that rich and powerful are into the rich and powerful. Bluebloods for instance.
But the rise of Jews in the 60s pushed the narrative that the new boomers elites are so progressive and care about the People in the name of equality.
But in fact, the rich in Hollywood, NY, SF, and DC really care about other rich and powerful and affluent folks.
The funny thing is it isn't even true - the kind of behavior described generally characterizes socially aspirant people, i.e people who are still insecure about their social position and wish to raise it. People of genuine high status are often - maybe even generally - polite and considerate to those under them, sometimes exaggeratedly so.
ReplyDeleteThe kind of behavior mentioned seems like what someone with no actual social status imagines how someone with high status might behave, not understanding that actual status - status security - has a deeply ameliorative affect on how you treat others.
Does anyone else get the impression that so much of the literature on how high status people act, from the supposedly rigorous research papers to amateurs like Roissy/Heartiste, is just the fantasizing of low status people who don't understand the psychological effects of actually possessing status, or even the revenge fantasies of low status people?
"Does anyone else get the impression that so much of the literature on how high status people act, from the supposedly rigorous research papers to amateurs like Roissy/Heartiste, is just the fantasizing of low status people who don't understand the psychological effects of actually possessing status, or even the revenge fantasies of low status people?"
ReplyDeleteI suspect a lot of American entertainment is actually something like this.
Did you see that Alien prequel "Prometheus"? It was Proles in Space. Those retarded douches wouldn't be let within a mile of an actual spaceship.
Your comment about Roissy is the only time I've seen someone else even *hint* at something I've long observed: of all the women I've ever met I've found it easiest to get along with the most beautiful of them. No one ever believes me on this though. The reasoning you mentioned, that they are secure in their status, is what I assumed was going on too. I first put it together because I noticed they had a similar attitude with the smartest men and women I ever met. The people who are scary smart were usually never arrogant about it because again they were secure in their status.
Mike, Puzzle Pirate,
ReplyDeleteI read Roissy too. The guy is informative but wierd, as long as you understand where is is coming from he is worth reading. Smart but not wise.
When I was a kid I read a fairy story about a knight who rescues a beautiful princess who has been transformed into an ape. The woman is returned to her family, offered in marriage to the knight and while they are alone together is restored to her former beauty.
The knight has two options: he can squire around the hottest looking woman in the kingdom by day and be the object of envy by every man and bed a beast by night, or be the object of universal sympathy for being a decent knight by day and have sex with the beautiful princess at night.
Roissy would choose the first option.
AKAHorace
Puzzle Pirate, what you say is very true, but you have little chance of persuading anyone who hasn't experienced it - it's incredibly counter-intuitive. Someone needs to have experienced firsthand the condition of being high status or have a rare degree of security in himself or be unusually psychologically astute to understand the dynamics of how high status people relate to those below them. The kind of thing you read in Roisy is psychologically crude to the 10th degree, but probably represents the thinking of mainstream society very well - hence his poularity. The truth can never be truly popular. Roissy also wallows in revenge fantasies - something else that is probably very popular with most average people.
ReplyDeleteHorace, you are right that Roissy would choose the first option. So would most average people. But that doesn't make him worth reading, except as a case study - in which case he illustrates many facets of the psychology of the average man.
Roissy/Heartiste basically advises men to act like a bitchy woman, and thus they will harvest an ocean of poon. Not.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen you update us in awhile on the progress of World War T, but I do have a field report for you, Mr. Sailer. At Oregon's AFL-CIO convention, there was a cross-dressing dude there who hogged all the open-mike time (he spoke more than any other delegate) to focus on "me, me, me", and there was a major emphasis throughout the entire convention on LGBTQ, with extra special emphasis on the T. Most speakers at some point made good and damn sure to mention how transgender folks need to be welcomed and embraced in the labor movement, and there was a resolution voted on to support putting in an "other" gender-neutral restroom at every union workplace and facility for folks like the cross-dressing dude at the convention. The funny part is that almost everyone there looked like down-home family folk, so I'm pretty sure they weren't thrilled about having to hear so much gay at the convention. But who can object, right, even if it completely grosses you out?
You are a prophet, Mr. Sailer. God speed.
Mike,
ReplyDeleteMost people ? Are you sure ?
"This has profound implications for societal behavior and government policy."
ReplyDeleteBut first you'll have to get the bigshots in society and government to pay attention to you.
"Mike said...
ReplyDeleteThe funny thing is it isn't even true - the kind of behavior described generally characterizes socially aspirant people, i.e people who are still insecure about their social position and wish to raise it. People of genuine high status are often - maybe even generally - polite and considerate to those under them, sometimes exaggeratedly so. "
This is true (the Earl of Mull once stopped his car to give my family a lift to his castle! We were just tourists on his island), but I can imagine that there are probably a lot more socially-aspirant recent-high-status people than there are genuine upper class people, especially in the USA. So I wouldn't be surprised if the survey & results were genuine.
Mike - "People of genuine high status are often - maybe even generally - polite and considerate to those under them, sometimes exaggeratedly so."
ReplyDeleteIsn't that the old, noblesse oblige types who are so awful and racist and should be replaced? I think our current sharp-elbowed global elite might be different.
Unbelievably wealthy Saudi sheikhs have been known to beat and torture their domestic servants. Not for them the tied cottage when they get too old to serve.
I wonder how many lifts Carlos Slim, Bob Diamond or Steve Allen give?
That's a good point, Simon. It's long been noted that the psychology of the parvenu and the social aspirant is very different from that of the genuine aristocrat, and characterized more by anxious cruelty than the relaxed poise and generosity that comes from being supremely sure of oneself. The contrast has often been drawn by supporters of a genuine aristocracy.
ReplyDeleteI suspect there is for many people who achieve high status in a democracy - rather than inherit it- a transition period, where they settle down after a bit, so a study like this probably only applies to one stage - and that the most sensitive - in the progress of the socially aspirant.
There is also the kind of status alluded to by Puzzle Pirate, that is inherited not achieved even in a democracy - that of beauty, brains, and talent. This is often the raw material out of which social status is made in a democracy, but it is also a kind of status in itself and has a deeply ameliorative, calming effect on those who possess it, as Pirate Puzzle mentions with his example of really beautiful women (about whom he is correct, in my experience as well).
One can say, then, that Roissy's description of high status behavior describes the psychology of a particularly insecure social aspirant, who has yet to achieve any real status, and who harbors deep doubts over whether he possesses the needed attributes. I am sure signalling that such is your condition is deeply attractive to women, and one can "heartily recommend Roissy to anyone".
"Much more interesting would be how low-status individuals behave when suddenly given attention by high-status individuals. Would they attempt to bring in fellow low-status folks into their new elevated situation in an act of class solidarity, or tend to protect their newly-acquired turf and try to exclude them from participation ? I'm guessing the latter."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDXc5FTHje8
"In his research, he found that even in areas where ethnic groups were in conflict and viewed one another through lenses of negative stereotypes, individuals who had close friends within the other group exhibited little or no such prejudice."
ReplyDeleteso, it IS a ward against racism to have black friends?
... the kind of behavior described generally characterizes socially aspirant people, i.e people who are still insecure about their social position and wish to raise it. People of genuine high status are often - maybe even generally - polite and considerate to those under them, sometimes exaggeratedly so.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, the genuine Upper Class and Upper Middle Class are light years away from the cruelty and (often unconscious) covert fascism of the Lower Middle Class.
It's long been noted that the psychology of the parvenu and the social aspirant is very different from that of the genuine aristocrat, and characterized more by anxious cruelty than the relaxed poise and generosity that comes from being supremely sure of oneself.
Archie Bunker, Joe Curran, and the real-life hardhats were supreme examples of LMC anxious cruelty. Puritan, Victorian, and 1950s values are essentially LMC ones - given that those eras were marked by a huge expansion of the middle class, particularly its lower stratum.
The 1960s were a consolidation of the Middle Class: with the children of a certain LMC cohort having more MMC attitudes. By 1960s I mean the whole decade/era, Camelot as well as Hippie.
The contrast has often been drawn by supporters of a genuine aristocracy.
Or people who have actually met real aristocrats (as in Britain and Europe) and their untitled Upper Class equivalents in America. It can be a real surprise to discover they really are noble in character.
Cato the elder was so middle class. Oh wait no that's not right. Also what the heck are Puritan, Victorian values. America's native aristocracy is almost entirely Puritan and Dutch Calvinist. Nothing is more prole/ low status in America than ranting about middle class values. This is like thinking you are cool because you make fun of how unhip your parents. Honestly what makes it so hilarious is that this virgin proles whining about petit bourgeois morality confine their immorality to weird porn and weed. This isn't les liaisons dangereuse type nobles scoffing at Christian morality but right hand rub burners lashing at at porn blockers on their basement computers.
ReplyDelete"In other words, the genuine Upper Class and Upper Middle Class are light years away from the cruelty and (often unconscious) covert fascism of the Lower Middle Class."
ReplyDeleteOMG YOU JUST EXPLAINED MY CHILDHOOD.
But seriously, you just explained my childhood. I grew up in the LMC, but was one of the bright kids who didn't feel insecure and couldn't understand why everyone else around me were so selfish, petty, vain and foolish.
Please keep typing and explain more of my childhood to me. K thx! :-)
ther are no real "class" distinctions in America. There is money.
ReplyDeleteYou can be the lowest ghetto piece of shit - but if you have a lot of money because of successful run as a rapper - the Leftist press will put you in the obituaries when you get shot at 3am over a parking spot in the ghetto.