Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Hi Robin. Please refer to this:

http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~bau...

He argues women cluster near the middle of the distribution whereas men are evenly distributed between the left tail, middle and right tail.

In this context I denominate "success" as reproductive success, the number of kids surviving to adulthood. This is slightly flawed as many lower-income men reproduce at higher rates than middle income men, suggesting other ways to measure male attractiveness.

Female norm enforcement reaches the optimal reproductive result keeping women near the middle.

A guy has break some norms to move farther right in the distribution, but the rewards are great. A female emperor has 3 or 4 kids; a male emperor like Genghis Khan had thousands of kids.

Expand full comment
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

What I mean is that to use "showing off" in a gender homogenous setting seems nonsensical because there is no one to show off for. It seems you are saying, if I have it correctly, that when men-in-all-male settings choose NOT to punish as frequently, then they are in fact showing off for women... even though there are no women around. I just do not understand that and it seems somewhat sophistical. For example, say I were in a group and felt pressured to buy a purple shirt -- even though privately it wasn't my favorite color -- and eventually bought it. Then, I went shopping without the group and bought a pink shirt -- my favorite color. It seems from your argument that the pink-shirt-purchase is driven by peer pressure, even though there is no group to provide the pressure --- just my personal taste. I suppose that is fine, just a very unfamiliar (to me, at least) way to structure it.

I'll go along with you and say it is showing off. Now, however, it seems arbitrary, from what I think you are saying, which gender you put in which position. The title, then, could easily have been "Women Violate, Conform to, Enforce Norms To Show Off For Men”. Hence, your new title for the article would be just as biased/unjustly sexist as you think the original title is. Gender context is important, but you seem to ignore the finding that there was a gender context difference --- all-male punished less frequently than all other settings.

I'm not very good at concision, lol, so I won't try to make my own title, I just thought you were missing an important finding -- that all-male settings do not enforce norms as earnestly as other settings. I think that is important and it is a gender difference.

Expand full comment
7 more comments...