Me six years ago: Every transaction has both a buyer and a seller. Yet we hear much more about salesmen, and how to sell, than we do about buyermen and how to buy. … Why? [Since] buyers are usually more uncertain about their value than sellers are about their cost, … whether a sale happens is more clearly a signal of seller ability than of buyer ability. … We like to see and affiliate with people who have impressive abilities associated with sales. (
But we give a lot more conscious attention to the side that needs to be explained, because that is what consciousness is about – consciousness helps much less to make decisions than to explain and justify them.
My latest posting Why do we confuse belief and opinion?: A construal-level-theory analysis links (linguistic) consciousness, "opinion," and near-mode. ( http://tinyurl.com/cyhnz62 ) "Opinion" would is more related to social hypocrisy than the far-mode construct "belief."
But we give a lot more conscious attention to the side that needs to be explained, because that is what consciousness is about – consciousness helps much less to make decisions than to explain and justify them.
The conclusion is unexceptional today among evolutionary psychologists, but Robin should consider exactly how this fits his homo hypocritus model, according to which far-mode is dedicated to managing social relationships. Consciousness is mostly associated with the (analytic, sequential) near-mode, not the (intuitive, global) far-mode.
I haven't listened the mentioned podcast - but what is the data for the view " that we seem to give more attention to the signals we send, vs. interpreting the signals of others"? I'd be interested in any empirical research if you know of it.
If it is just intuition guiding you guys here - then I tend to think that my own intuitions aren't clear on it. The claim doesn't seem obviously true. After all - I've met plenty of people who will judge a person negatively with a particular trait even when they themselves possess that same trait. This to me suggests that in some contexts people certainly care more about the interpretation of others' signals over our own.
Yet - I do sense what you're getting at. I obsess way more about myself appearing unkempt in public than I care about others being unkempt.
Although the rise of consciousness in human beings may, asHanson suggests, be due to its explanatory/justificatory function in society, it also, if only secondarily, helps us to make better decisions. The work we do preparing in advance explanations and justifications of our actions must lead to *better choices* about which actions to perform, for if the most plausible explanation of a potential action would be discreditable, and the strongest justification would still be very weak, we find for a better alternative. Though our underlying concern may be with the judgment of the group—of society—this will pretty nearly be the same as the objectively correct judgment. So our concern with justifying our actions *to others* will be practically the same as that with justifying our actions *tout court*, and objectively justifiable actions will be better actions.
In short, I would not accept Hanson’s dictum that “consciousnesshelps much less to make decisions than to explain and justify them”: I think consciousness is a *big* help in making decisions.
Great observation about how much we think about our actions that could be criticized compared to what we think about other people's similar actions.
The forager link for the explanation seems far fetched.
This may be because most people are on the receiving side of other peoples judgement (one king/lord vs many subjects). So historically on average people are more critical of themselves because someone can judge them and cause them harm/punishment based off their actions. However only a relative few were in a position to actually judge others and punish/reward them.
If, when a typical accusation is made, the accused says about as much in defence as the accusers say in accusation -- which seems fairly plausible to me -- then the average amount of ancestral public speaking in self-defence would be about the same as the average amount of ancestral public speaking in other-accusation.
Two more reasons we tend to talk more about sellers' skill than buyers:1) Whether a buying decision was good depends in part on the ultimate value of the thing bought to the buyer, and this is often very difficult for 3rd parties to assess.2) Sellers tend to be full-time specialists, buyers part-time generalists.
There are exceptions where the seller, while confident about the utility of money, has more uncertainty about the exchange value of what they are selling than the buyer:
For instance, consider the founder of a startup that is contacted by an experienced investor offering to buy their company for $ 1M. Is that a good deal or is the investor trying to dupe the founder? The founder has probably more uncertainty about the value of the company than the investor.
In scenarios like this, the buyer is typically the more active party.
Trying to shoehorn every social phenomenon in a signalling explanation is an instance of the hasty generalization fallacy and confirmation bias.
Specifically in this case, sellers generally try to exert more persuasion than buyers because of an intrinsic asymmetry in the type of assets that are exchanged in typical transactions:
Money is a standardized commodity, thus the seller can independently judge the utility he would gain by the transaction. The buyer doesn't have to convince the seller that the money they are offering is good. The buyer, on the other hand, has generally more uncertainty about the utility of the good they are buying, thus the seller tries to persuade them.
The seller is seen as more dominant, the one who gives, the buyer is seen as the needy one. Maybe this stems from ancient times when people didn't "trade" with their peers, they just helped each other out. Also there's the imbalance where the buyer can be duped (the thing he's buying might be useless or overpriced and the buyer has less information on this than the seller), while the buyer gets money which is always useful because you use it to buy nearly everything.
And that reminded me of how terrified people are to speak in public. And that brought a unifying explanation to mind: we more often need to verbally justify the signals we send than how we interpret the signals of others.
You do sometimes hear people bragging about how great a deal they got on something, perhaps as a signal of buying ability. But this is limited by the signal it also sends about wealth. A billionaire might brag about the great deal they got on a yacht, but not on shoes (even expensive ones). Bragging about getting a good deal of frozen pizza certainly sends a signal that you're poor, which many would not wish to do.
But we give a lot more conscious attention to the side that needs to be explained, because that is what consciousness is about – consciousness helps much less to make decisions than to explain and justify them.
My latest posting Why do we confuse belief and opinion?: A construal-level-theory analysis links (linguistic) consciousness, "opinion," and near-mode. ( http://tinyurl.com/cyhnz62 ) "Opinion" would is more related to social hypocrisy than the far-mode construct "belief."
But we give a lot more conscious attention to the side that needs to be explained, because that is what consciousness is about – consciousness helps much less to make decisions than to explain and justify them.
The conclusion is unexceptional today among evolutionary psychologists, but Robin should consider exactly how this fits his homo hypocritus model, according to which far-mode is dedicated to managing social relationships. Consciousness is mostly associated with the (analytic, sequential) near-mode, not the (intuitive, global) far-mode.
I haven't listened the mentioned podcast - but what is the data for the view " that we seem to give more attention to the signals we send, vs. interpreting the signals of others"? I'd be interested in any empirical research if you know of it.
If it is just intuition guiding you guys here - then I tend to think that my own intuitions aren't clear on it. The claim doesn't seem obviously true. After all - I've met plenty of people who will judge a person negatively with a particular trait even when they themselves possess that same trait. This to me suggests that in some contexts people certainly care more about the interpretation of others' signals over our own.
Yet - I do sense what you're getting at. I obsess way more about myself appearing unkempt in public than I care about others being unkempt.
Although the rise of consciousness in human beings may, asHanson suggests, be due to its explanatory/justificatory function in society, it also, if only secondarily, helps us to make better decisions. The work we do preparing in advance explanations and justifications of our actions must lead to *better choices* about which actions to perform, for if the most plausible explanation of a potential action would be discreditable, and the strongest justification would still be very weak, we find for a better alternative. Though our underlying concern may be with the judgment of the group—of society—this will pretty nearly be the same as the objectively correct judgment. So our concern with justifying our actions *to others* will be practically the same as that with justifying our actions *tout court*, and objectively justifiable actions will be better actions.
In short, I would not accept Hanson’s dictum that “consciousnesshelps much less to make decisions than to explain and justify them”: I think consciousness is a *big* help in making decisions.
The connection between the words 'consciousness' and 'conscionable' seems a whole lot more causal now.
Great observation about how much we think about our actions that could be criticized compared to what we think about other people's similar actions.
The forager link for the explanation seems far fetched.
This may be because most people are on the receiving side of other peoples judgement (one king/lord vs many subjects). So historically on average people are more critical of themselves because someone can judge them and cause them harm/punishment based off their actions. However only a relative few were in a position to actually judge others and punish/reward them.
If, when a typical accusation is made, the accused says about as much in defence as the accusers say in accusation -- which seems fairly plausible to me -- then the average amount of ancestral public speaking in self-defence would be about the same as the average amount of ancestral public speaking in other-accusation.
Two more reasons we tend to talk more about sellers' skill than buyers:1) Whether a buying decision was good depends in part on the ultimate value of the thing bought to the buyer, and this is often very difficult for 3rd parties to assess.2) Sellers tend to be full-time specialists, buyers part-time generalists.
I like how we came up with exactly the same argument independently from each other.
To expand:
There are exceptions where the seller, while confident about the utility of money, has more uncertainty about the exchange value of what they are selling than the buyer:
For instance, consider the founder of a startup that is contacted by an experienced investor offering to buy their company for $ 1M. Is that a good deal or is the investor trying to dupe the founder? The founder has probably more uncertainty about the value of the company than the investor.
In scenarios like this, the buyer is typically the more active party.
Trying to shoehorn every social phenomenon in a signalling explanation is an instance of the hasty generalization fallacy and confirmation bias.
Specifically in this case, sellers generally try to exert more persuasion than buyers because of an intrinsic asymmetry in the type of assets that are exchanged in typical transactions:
Money is a standardized commodity, thus the seller can independently judge the utility he would gain by the transaction. The buyer doesn't have to convince the seller that the money they are offering is good. The buyer, on the other hand, has generally more uncertainty about the utility of the good they are buying, thus the seller tries to persuade them.
The seller is seen as more dominant, the one who gives, the buyer is seen as the needy one. Maybe this stems from ancient times when people didn't "trade" with their peers, they just helped each other out. Also there's the imbalance where the buyer can be duped (the thing he's buying might be useless or overpriced and the buyer has less information on this than the seller), while the buyer gets money which is always useful because you use it to buy nearly everything.
And that reminded me of how terrified people are to speak in public. And that brought a unifying explanation to mind: we more often need to verbally justify the signals we send than how we interpret the signals of others.
Excellent inference.
You do sometimes hear people bragging about how great a deal they got on something, perhaps as a signal of buying ability. But this is limited by the signal it also sends about wealth. A billionaire might brag about the great deal they got on a yacht, but not on shoes (even expensive ones). Bragging about getting a good deal of frozen pizza certainly sends a signal that you're poor, which many would not wish to do.