Last fall I stopped talking about the economics of gender, and began talking about the economics of sex. It was wonderful.
So much can be discussed under the rubric of economics of sex. Take, for example, the pick-up artist phenomenon, described in books like The Game. It's like Cesar Millan's Dog Whisperer books, urging men to be alphas, take a leadership role, and ignore begging and requests for attention. The major difference as far as I can see is that pick-up artists aim to make women come to bed, rather than dogs come to heel.
One blog, Chateau Heartiste, particularly interested me, because it has a Dating Market Value Test. Twenty-six questions are used to assign men a value score from -26 to +26. What is fascinating about the test is the low weight it gives the obvious measures of desirability – good job, good income, high education, uncomplicated marital history. Any man who is reasonably fit, out-going, and risk-taking can get a high score, as long as he behaves like an "alpha".
People have a deep seated need to feel masculine or feminine; to feel that they are sexually desired and desirable. Once upon a time a man could feel like a man by getting married, having kids, buying a house and a pick-up truck. But we have been living, for some time now, in a Bruce Springsteen economy: these jobs are going boys, and they ain't coming back. So how does a man feel like a man?
A pick-up artist doesn't need money. Take, for example, this question from the men's dating value test:
20. You’re chatting up a pretty girl you just met in a bar. After a few minutes she asks you to buy her a drink. You reply:
(A) “Sure.”
(B) “I’m not an ATM.”
(C) “No, but you can buy me one.”
If you answered (A), subtract a point.
If (B), no points.
If (C), add a point.
The message: it's not about providing, it's about taking control. The message is reinforced in the women's test.
28. On a first date the check arrives for dinner and drinks. You:
Offer to split the check or even pay in full: +1 point
Smile and thank the guy when he pays for the check: 0 points
Forget to thank him after he pays for your ungrateful ass: -1 point
[The women's test is truly repugnant. If you're young or unscarred, please don't read it.] Ladies, you're expected to contribute economically – and you're lucky to get laid.
I can see that the pick-up artist movement, like Fight Club, reflects a genuine yearning to forge a new masculinity, that's not about jobs or how much money you have in the bank. It's about men giving themselves permission to be assertive. I'm sympathetic. But does masculinity have to involve being a jerk?
Competence matters. Respect matters. In my ideal world that would be earned, not by psychological mind games, but by real accomplishments – baking lemon squares, replacing a car battery, repairing a flat bicycle tire. It doesn't have to be about money or having a job or serving someone else's needs. It could be about being the best dancer or playing the meanest saxophone solos.
But we don't live in my ideal world.
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
is there any reason at all to think that these “tests” are accurate?
(male, 48 years old, phd, mild beta which is probably accurate but i’m married and don’t have to pretend to change my personality to get laid)
Anonymous – there is some evidence in support of a handful of items on the test. Risk-taking behaviour and high testosterone is correlated with having more causal sexual encounters (though is that evidence of high value or simply a willingness to come to terms?). Height is positively correlated with reproductive success up to about 6’4″, so that item is o.k.
In terms of the behavioural stuff – it’s not falsifiable. If a guy goes out and tries the pick-up artist lines and they don’t work, the problem is obviously not the lines but that he hasn’t properly mastered the pick up artist routine.
My students are often surprised to discover that married people, on average, have sex more frequently than single people (I think the data is in the CCHS). They don’t seem to realize that marriage is an institution designed precisely for the point of having sex.
I’ve been told me that I should think of these pick up artist sites as being like a male version of a trashy romance novel, just some kind of fantasy, with no more relevance to the real world than 50 Shades of Grey. I hope this is right. But I’m not convinced.
I’ve seen these economic perspectives on dating and sex before, and am curious as to how they translate to the “market” for gay men. The market is much smaller and the incentives for the involved parties may align more than they converge in the way that creates the dynamics between heterosexual men and women. Everyone’s priorities are different, but do you know of any trends or distinct properties of that market?
Well done! Nixon to China; Frances to Roissy’s blog. (I couldn’t have gotten away with it, but now I will put it on my reading list when I eventually teach that Men’s Studies course!)
“But does masculinity have to involve being a jerk?”
Roissy/Heartiste would say “yes”, because, whether we want to or not, “chicks dig jerks”.
I’m not sure this “reflects a genuine yearning to forge a new masculinity”; more like betas being mugged by reality, and realising they have to act like alphas. “Forget what women say, watch what they do.”
Really powerful men’s status is uncontested. They can be gracious if they want.The best jerkiness is not needing to be jerk. You don’t shoot at ambulances because you are the survivor.
Really attractive women don’t need women’s magazines advices.
These sites attract those who don’t haver game and never will. That’s why they look so creepy. Like a cosmetic counter where most of the customers will not increase their attractiveness, merely look tarted-up.
The pick-up artist are alpha only in their world. “Au royaume des aveugles, les borgnes sont rois” goes the proverb. How many bank presidents pick up the kind of chick that hang out in the kind of bar where this kind of guy pick up that kind of chick?
It is said of a famous Montréal bar-restaurant that it is where half-educated sons of used-car dealers pretending to be movie producers try to pick up half-witted waitresses pretending to be actresses.
My God…what a world we’ve created.
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.”
(And, on behalf of William Butler Yeats, I must add: no pun intended.)
Physical attraction is primal. I’ve heard the argument that we are attracted to someone based on how well their genes would combine with ours, not based on whether we would be happy spending the rest of our life with them in a domestic partnership. You are not picking your partner by discounting flows of happiness over many periods.
From psychology today: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/all-about-sex/201001/womens-rape-fantasies-how-common-what-do-they-mean
“From 1973 through 2008, nine surveys of women’s rape fantasies have been published. They show that about four in 10 women admit having them (31 to 57 percent) with a median frequency of about once a month. Actual prevalence of rape fantasies is probably higher because women may not feel comfortable admitting them […]
Sixty-two percent said they’d had at least one such fantasy. But responses varied depending on the terminology used. When asked about being “overpowered by a man,” 52 percent said they’d had that fantasy, the situation most typically depicted in women’s romance fiction. But when the term was “rape,” only 32 percent said they’d had the fantasy. These findings are in the same ballpark as previous reports.”
In the wild, almost all reproduction occurs as rape. The notion of giving “permission” to have sex is unusual. We can create social institutions such as religious organizations, education, and other government initiatives to try suppress some of our preferences and augment them with preferences that promote a society in which a person is more than just a gene carrier but has their own non-reproductive goals, but underneath the surface, there is a lot of biology urging us to act in self-destructive ways, from the point of view of lifetime happiness.
Frances: “Once upon a time a man could feel like a man by getting married, having kids, buying a house and a pick-up truck. But we have been living, for some time now, in a Bruce Springsteen economy: these jobs are going boys, and they ain’t coming back.”
Dalrock gives an alternate perspective on “Why aren’t men responding to economic signals?”. Short version: “they are, but it’s the signals from the marriage market, not the labour market”.
rsj: “In the wild, almost all reproduction occurs as rape.”
No. Female sexual selection is important in lots of species, and there are a good number of monogamous species out there. “Almost all” is way too strong.
Chris “and am curious as to how they translate to the “market” for gay men”
Lee Badgett’s work on this is terrific, and Kit Carpenter has done some very good work too. The cliche of the gay male dating market is that there is a big premium on youth and hotness – i.e. it looks more like the women’s list. But at the same time, that doesn’t really seem to be the world that my gay male friends live in.
Nick: “more like betas being mugged by reality”
No, I’m with anonymous in the first comment. I’d be willing to get that there’s a lot of betas out there getting plenty of low effort, high quality quality nookie while the alphas are running around dtrying to hook up with Ms Goodbar.
Jacques Rene: “How many bank presidents pick up the kind of chick that hang out in the kind of bar where this kind of guy pick up that kind of chick? ”
Yes, precisely.
rsj: “I’ve heard the argument that we are attracted to someone based on how well their genes would combine with ours”
If it’s a matter of physical attraction, pure and simple, all of this PUA stuff is utterly immaterial.
Nick, on your last comment – my post on springbok should have been called “The end of men is caused by men.” What we’re seeing in our economy is corporate harems, where a few men – company CEOS and senior managers – are extracting the value created by female labour – value that used to be extracted by husbands or fathers.
I do frequently wonder whether pick-up artists are having lots of sex with the same group of women, who have lots of sex with pick-up artists. What does the network graph look like?
(I bet that somewhere there’s a venereal disease epidemiologist who has that charted out somewhere, actually…)
“What we’re seeing in our economy is corporate harems, where a few men – company CEOS and senior managers – are extracting the value created by female labour – value that used to be extracted by husbands or fathers.”
Really? Supposing I understand the claim, I’m not sure I agree. CEOs and senior managers are extracting value created by labour. It just happens to be increasingly female (pick your reasons). Maybe men are just getting sick of being screwed by a completely corrupt corporate governance structure and are choosing what seems to them fairer but less lucrative jobs/work arrangements. Having your wife join a corporate harem in return for taking on some some light duty chores like cleaning, doing laundry, and cooking (which many like doing anyway) might be a life improving choice if it means being rid of your a__hole boss.
And on the claim that men no longer have the incentive to produce a big surplus to support the family … Another way to look at it is that they now have the choice to let the females do it (while working for the exploitive harem), so they’re dropping out. Hey, woman asked for it. Let them have it 😉
Now if you’l excuse me, I have a toilet to clean.
david: “What does the network graph look like?”
Susan Walsh on Hooking Up Smart had a chart which showed what she thinks it used to look like and now looks like. I can’t find it, but it used to look like this:
Men Women
A—-A
B—-B
C—-C
D—-D
(The highest DMV man hooked up with (or married) the highest DMV woman; the second highest man hooked up with the second highest woman, etc.)
Now, she says, it looks more like (I can’t draw it, but imagine a lot of lines connecting man A to women ABCD, with no lines connecting men BCD. The alpha men have a (rotating or not) harem of women, while the beta/gamma men get none. (And while Roissy can be seen as trying to teach beta males to act like alpha cads, to even up the odds, Susan can be seen as advising beta girls to hook up with and marry decent beta-provider boys.)
One problem with Susan’s chart is that it’s a static picture of a dynamic market, because DMV rank changes as you age.
(Roissy claims to be amoral, but if he really were amoral he wouldn’t be spending so much time writing his blog, which both costs him time and increases his own competition.)
David, Nick,
Hopefully David you’ve followed my advice and not looked at the woman’s test, so I’ll reproduce the women’s and men’s IQ questions here. Here’s the IQ scoring for women:
3. What is your IQ? (This relates tangentially to your ability to connect emotionally with a man.)
Under 85: -1 point
85 to 100: 0 points
101 to 120: +1 point
121 to 145: 0 points
Over 145: -1 point
Here’s the IQ scoring for men:
15. What is your IQ?
Under 85: -1 point
85 to 110: 0 points
110 to 130: +1 point
130 to 145: 0 points
over 145: -1 point
Notice now the ranges are different? So 130 IQ man hooks up with 120 IQ woman, and 130 IQ woman is on her own.
Notice, also, that the guy who scores in the 96th percentile on his LSATSs and goes on to be a tax partner at a law firm is probably just another beta as far as Roissy is concerned – his IQ is too high. This scheme is a way of redefining success for men.
These so-called alphas sure aren’t the kind of guys who turn me on. But then, as you quite rightly point out David, this whole DMV stuff is about the bar scene. The sexy smart charming funny person who you’d like as a future partner probably isn’t going near the place.
Really Patrick. If I understand your claim many men enjoy doing laundry and consider cleaning light duty.
This slightly off-topic (but maybe only slightly).
Question: how would you in fact measure DMV for men and women from market data?
For goods like used cars that exchange for money, it’s easy. You use market price as a measure of car market value. And you can use data on prices of cars by age and hp etc to construct a hedonic price index (or blue book).
But if you had a barter market, where heterogenous cars were swapped one-for-one with heterogenous (say) computers (the rules are that one car is always swapped for one computer, and each car seller tries to get the best computer in exchange and each computer seller tries to get the best car in exchange), and if you only had data on the ages and hp etc. of cars that were swapped against the ages and hp etc. of computers, how would you use that data to construct a DMV for cars and a DMV for computers?
There must be an answer to this question. Somebody must have thought about this before me.
Does anyone see what I’m trying to ask?
To (partially) answer my own question:
Suppose that bigger cars were always swapped for bigger computers (the biggest car is swapped for the biggest computer, the second biggest car is swapped for the second biggest computer, etc., all the way down).
That market data would be consistent with two totally different hypotheses:
1. people prefer bigger cars and bigger computers.
2. people prefer smaller cars and smaller computers.
Monetary exchange is like polygamy. A high DMV car is one that can marry a big harem of dollars, because we assume sellers of cars prefer to marry more money than less, and sellers of dollars prefer to get a bigger share of one car than a smaller share. We can’t measure DMV under strict monogamy, without using surveys to ask people. (Or maybe watching who is in excess demand or supply??)
Nick, I think I understand.
In some ways it’s more like housing, though, in that the purchase price doesn’t represent the current value of the asset – some appreciate over time, some depreciate. You don’t marry a colonel; you marry a sergent and spend 20 years as an army spouse. Also, some houses are owner occupied, with the same owners for years and years, some are rented on long-term contracts, and some are used as bed and breakfasts. The DMV is looking at the bed and breakfast market, not the owner-occupied housing market.
Also, as I noted earlier, the idea that DMV can be raised by making the right moves is pretty difficult to test empirically – if people follow the rules and fail to attract a mate we don’t know why – is it that there’s adverse selection (people who read the rules are the less desirable people to begin with), or are the rules not being followed, or….
Plus there’s the problem of lemons – someone who’s older and single for reasons that are plausibly exogenous e.g. widows and widowers has a much higher DMV.
Nick, I’d only read your first comment when I replied. Do you think we can work canoes in here somehow, so you can write about your three favourite subjects simultaneously?
The other issue is that there is search going on, and it’s not clear precisely what we’re measuring. Is someone who finds a partner very quickly someone who is highly desirable in the marriage market, or are they someone who figures the benefits of continued search are low.
Thanks Frances. It definitely should have been canoes rather than computers!
On thinking about it in the shower (after doing the laundry and cleaning the house 😉 ) I think the problem is solvable.
For example, one could simply use brute force:
Construct 100 different ways of measuring DMV for men, and another 100 different ways of measuring DMV for women. Then, for each of the 10,000 pairs of the two DMVs, calculate the sum squared residuals over all men i and women j who hook up of DMVmen(i)-DMVwomen(j)=residual(i,j).
Then choose that one pair of all 10,000 pairs of ways of measuring DMV that minimises Sum Squared Residuals.
The econometrics would presumably be harder than the simple hedonic price equation for cars: price = a = bAge + cHP, where OLS would work fine. Because it’s a two-sided estimation of two hedonic price equations simultaneously.
If you found a pair of DMV equations that minimised SSR, then the negative of both DMVs would work equally well (as would any monotonic transformation, of course), as in my 8:25 comment, but that is perhaps a trivial problem, akin to saying it’s possible that all goods are really bads.
But yes, search, lemons, enforceability of long term contracts, would make measuring (and even defining?) DMV much harder.
Nick, in this way of doing it, one hook-up = one match. What if we say instead that one act of sexual intercourse = one match? Then Anonymous in comment 1, who probably uses pick-up lines like “Daily Show’s on re-runs this week, how about we go to bed early?” is probably outscoring all of the PUAs (pick up artists).
Frances: “Also, as I noted earlier, the idea that DMV can be raised by making the right moves is pretty difficult to test empirically …”
Dunno. The PUA guys are very much (low-level) empiricists. Not exactly white lab coat stuff, but they do try different things and watch what works.
Frances @ 9.34. But there’s quality as well as quantity to consider. One alpha = how many betas? Plus, there’s the “taste for variety” (or sameness) question.
Nick, but the strategies are entirely positional, i.e. they allow Male A to displace Male B. If everyone uses them, they cease to have any value. Except to the extent that they are successful in persuading women to increase the number of sexual partners they have, be less selective in the choice of partner, or decrease the age at which they start having sex.
Which I sure as heck wouldn’t see as being a good outcome for the young women who I know and care about.
BTW: there’s a fair chance this post will be noticed and linked and a large number of PUA/manosphere commenters will descend, a bit like MMTers on steroids. Don’t sweat it if/when it happens.
@Nick Rowe
But that network graph would imply that the women report having remarkably few partners each, plus that male A has sex with remarkably low-status women like female D. The former tends to contradict conventional wisdom in sexually-transmitted disease: e.g.
taken from http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v411/n6840/fig_tab/411907a0_F2.html
(note that, given heterosexual pairing, the averages must necessarily be the same. Females tend to under-report: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224490309552164 )
whereas the latter contradicts a significant undercurrent of PUA writing, namely the notion that it attracts high-status women. My suspicion, again, is rather that there are significant subsets of both men and women who are, to put it vulgarly, horny and having lots of sex with multiple partners who are themselves having lots of sex with multiple partners. PUA is a guide for into self-selecting into this group. But males are encouraged to boast about their number of partners, whereas females are not.
(this matters in STD transmission because hub-males and spoke-females imply a much higher degree of vulnerability to STD spread, for a given amount of reported sexual contact. A single female that has sex with two hub males will have a much larger number of female second-degree contacts. But if hub-males only have sex with other hub-females, then STDs get trapped within hubs)
Let me point out that my hub-to-hub suspicion is just that: a suspicion. The distribution shown above is still consistent with arguing for alpha males who have sex with a great many loyal females, who themselves have only that one partner each.
But then there must also be males who have somewhat fewer sexual partners, albeit partners who have increasingly many partners themselves, until the inverse female with a great very many loyal male partners is reached (to achieve the nearly-parallel distributions above). The distribution is consistent with multiple kinds of sexual pairing networks.
It’s just that a hub-to-hub explanation seems most obvious to me. If you’re a female exploring a bar for casual sex, are you going to be seeking males who seek long-term pair-bonding, or looking for males that are looking for casual sex? If you’re looking for casual sex, do you invest in long-term or short-term appeal as a mate?
Rachel, nope that’s not the claim. Ignore me. It’s just my warped sense of humour.
david: agreed that average total lifetime (till death) partners must arithmetically be the same for men and women (assuming equal numbers of hetero mean and women in each cohort and constant cohort size over time). Only the variance and skews of the distributions can be different. But looking at the right hand graph (b) you posted does seem to suggest the male distribution has a higher variance and is skewed right. But only suggests, because we know that women must be under-reporting or men over-reporting (or both), and the reported distributions would shift from the true distributions depending on who lied how much.
What I think we do know is that, across cultures and across across centuries, (and across species) more men than women fail to find any partner at all. What varies is the extent of the difference in variance/skew.
The other thing we need to keep in mind (and I’m not quite sure how this would affect the results) is that if we survey men and women at a given age, rather than on their deathbeds, and they tell us honestly how many partners they have had, the results would be affected by: women tending to date older men; women’s DMV having a steeper peak with age if some men gain status as they age. That’s the static/dynamic thing I was talking about earlier. Both men and women cycle up and down the DMV scale as they age. The hypothesis I’ve seen is that young women “ride the alpha c**k carousel” (and so have more partners on average than young men), but then try to marry a beta provider when they get older, and so have fewer partners than older men.
I can’t quite get my head around it fully. But while I’m sure that there’s a lot of hub-hub in the overall picture, we might see young women being relatively a hub, alpha males of all ages being relatively a hub, and everyone else being a spoke (or not connected to the grid at all).
I’m not seeing that the graphs show that the variance and skews are different; the trends are nearly parallel. They suggest that the means are different, but that can’t be right.
The hypothesis I’ve seen is that young women “ride the alpha c**k carousel” (and so have more partners on average than young men), but then try to marry a beta provider when they get older, and so have fewer partners than older men.
Sure, but then who are the older men having sex with?
Frances: “Nick, but the strategies are entirely positional, i.e. they allow Male A to displace Male B.”
Agreed. But (I think) (say) Susan Walsh’s position would be that it’s better for a girl to have a 50% chance of either one alpha or one beta who sticks with her for 2 periods than to have a 50% chance of one alpha for one period in each period. (Not sure I’ve said that right.)
david: that’s a log scale on the horizontal axis, I think? Suppose (to keep it simple) we assume women halve their numbers of reported sexual partners (or men double). That would shift the women’s curve by an equal log amount to the right (I think), so it would be parallel to the original curve, but it would now cross the men’s curve.
Older alpha males are having sex with younger females, as well as with a smaller number of older alpha females.
I don’t know, that assumption seems a little suspicious. Something has gone wrong when zero women have exactly one sexual partner. Eyeballing the graph shows that the crossing would have to occur at x=5 at most, probably 3 or 4, exactly where small-number effects would dominate and naive multiplication by a factor would be dubious.
(to be clear: my earlier remarks refer to graph A; our discussion has now shifted to graph B)
Sorry if I’m missing something in the litany of above comments, but as someone who had never been in a relationship until age 26 and third year of econ grad school, I owe both my loss of virginity and my first girlfriend to pickup strategies, which I started attempting to take seriously at 25 out of desperation. It works. And for the criticism that it only provides hookups instead of relationships – well, there’s never going to be a relationship if you act nice/proper/boring and never get a chance. Act ‘alpha’, get your foot in the door, and go from there. Economics has told me to react to the market – there’s no point in standing, watching, and complaining when nobody walks in the door of your business.
Oops – “there’s no point in standing, watching, and complaining when nobody walks in the door of your business.”
I know another economist whose dating strategy was to sit at home and wait until someone called him and, no, it’s not really a sound strategy. There is value in lots of these things that teach good relationship strategies, whether it’s How to Win Friends and Influence People or The Dog Whisperer. But, really, something that urges you to value women almost entirely in terms of youth and physical attractiveness, with a little bit weight given to caring/nuturing/enthusiasm for anal? Do the women’s test and see how many points your partner gets, and ask yourself if that’s a good measure of her attractiveness?
Nick: “Susan Walsh’s position would be that it’s better for a girl to have a 50% chance of either one alpha or one beta who sticks with her for 2 periods than to have a 50% chance of one alpha for one period in each period. (Not sure I’ve said that right.)”
So she figures that betas are better than alphas? Or that it’s better to have a guy who sticks around, regardless of whether he’s an alpha or a beta?
What really disgusts me about this whole thing is the labelling of men as alphas or betas on the basis of their assertiveness/dominance behaviour.
In Africa, it’s the biggest, strongest and healthiest elephant who gets laid (with some adjustment for tusk size). Alphaness is about intrinsic competence, not about a bunch of bs psychological tricks.
“In Africa, it’s the biggest, strongest and healthiest elephant who gets laid (with some adjustment for tusk size).”
Being able to remain reasonably composed when confronted by a mouse probably also helps.
david – on the difference between the number of sexual partners reported by men and women – think about what happens if there’s a growing population, and men date women younger than they are? (see my previous post on son preference/missing women).
Giovanni – or when confronted with a vast image out of spiritus mundi 😉
Or some rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem. Which brings us back to the alpha male pickup artist…
(Alright, enough of that…poor Yeats must be revolving in his grave like a lathe at this point.)
“What really disgusts me about this whole thing is the labelling of men as alphas or betas on the basis of their assertiveness/dominance behaviour. ”
It’s a lousy proxy for actual success. I wonder if in Norway, where tax returns are public information, these dominance mind games are less successful because women can just flip open their iPhone and check the guy’s income.
Patrick,
No, income is a proxy for “success”, which is itself a proxy for being a protector/provider, not the other way around.
Frances,
Do you seriously believe that women are attracted only to men who appear to be dominant and aggressive, but do not behave this way? Really? It just sight and no other sense or experience that is affected?
This is some weird theory of evolution, where the whoever looks fittest survives.
No, it is much more than just appearance but also the way you carry yourself and behave that plays an important role here. While there is a great deal of heterogeneity, it is puritanical wishful thinking that women only want someone who looks tough and aggressive, but are turned away when they discover the person is tough and aggressive. I’ve had several women tell me that they are attracted to arrogant men and more that they are attracted to dominant men. You cannot superimpose what you think people should be attracted to with what you think they are attracted to.
Moreover, saying that you are “disgusted” that some women are attracted to arrogant and/or domineering behavior, or that those seeking women exhibit the behavior expected of them is not an appropriate attitude when discussing sexuality or partner selection. Human nature is not obligated to fulfill anyone’s liberal ideals, and it is best to leave your sense of disgust at home before trying to have an informative discussion of relationships or sexuality.
I think we cannot really conclude unless we see a trend within a similar group of females. There are lot of “initial condition” diversities which are difficult to account for. As an instance, the bias towards alpha-behaviour can be purely because of psychological reasons stemming from upbringing and childhood conditions.
However, I agree with you that males tend to display brashness as if it would attract females. Whether or not females are really attracted is different question. Males do believe so. In the process males forget that chivalry and bravery are required to exist side-by-side. Mostly, males sacrifice chivalry for brashness.
For as long as I can remember, women have held a near-monopoly on the “relationship advice” business. And boys have been advised to study hard, work hard at a good job, then buy her flowers, drinks, meals, then “man up” and go down on their knees and offer her a ring, don’t be “shallow” and complain if she lets herself go, sleep on the couch unless she wants you to share “her” bed, work hard to support her if she wants to stay home, or else share in the housework if she wants to have a career, have kids if she wants them, and none if she doesn’t, then get divorced, move out of “her” home, and work even harder to pay for her and “her” kids, and not be a “deadbeat dad”, and then die quietly, like a good man.
And now the internet has made it possible for men to break into the relationship advice business, because they can’t be shamed into silence or pretending to believe what they don’t believe or pretending to want what they don’t want. And men are asking what men want out of a relationship, and what actually works so they can get what they want out of a relationship. And what men want isn’t always the same as what men have been told they ought to want. And men are learning what works for them, and learning that a lot of the advice they have previously been given is a lie. And there are many out there like Oops, who realise they have wasted many years of their lives listening to that bad advice. Many of them are angry. Lots more are just cynical.
God only knows where it will all end. Women are very much off the pedestal for these guys, and there aren’t many white knights left around. Giovanni/Yeats might be right. What have “we” created? But on the other hand, if someone like Roissy (who Tyler Cowen thinks is “evil”) can give men and boys good advice on what really works in getting and maintaining a relationship, he just might end up doing a lot more good than all of us macroeconomists!
The “manipulation”/”psychological tricks” charge comes up frequently on PUA sites, and it gets answered. Individual women try to make themselves attractive to men (the main topic of many women’s magazines); and individual men try to make themselves attractive to women (PUA sites). Which is “manipulation”? Make-up, and plastic surgery, are at least as manipulative as PUA pick-up lines, and more deceptive.
They aren’t “urging” men to evaluate women according to the DMV formula. They are trying to construct a formula to reflect how men actually evaluate women. How accurate is it? I don’t know. But probably a lot more accurate than any formula that tells men how someone else thinks they ought to evaluate women.
There’s some fudging/ambiguity on PUA sites about the meaning of the word “alpha”. Sometimes “alpha” simply means “whatever attracts women”. Sometimes it means “assertive/dominance etc. traits, which as a matter of empirical fact, seem to attract women”.
“So she [Susan Walsh] figures that betas are better than alphas? Or that it’s better to have a guy who sticks around, regardless of whether he’s an alpha or a beta?”
A bit of both, I think. I haven’t read her thoroughly enough to know for sure.
BTW: anonymous mh (very first comment above): it is not correct that married men do not need “game”. I would say that married men need game even more, because much worse things can happen to you than simply not getting laid. There is a sub-genre of game for those in Long Term Relationships. It’s not just about picking up chicks in bars. That’s how it started out, and most of it is still about that.
The spam filter didn’t like my comment!
Nick – “women have held a near-monopoly on the “relationship advice” business”
The advice was out there. How to Win Friends and Influence People was a mega-sensation. It had sections on how to be a leader, how to get your own way, and even in the original edition, how to have a happy home life. His rules:
Seven Rules For Making Your Home Life Happier.
Don’t nag.
Don’t try to make your partner over.
Don’t criticize.
Give honest appreciation.
Pay little attentions.
Be courteous.
Read a good book on the sexual side of marriage.
I don’t know how those rules strike you, Nick, but I think someone who followed them would be pleasant and easy to live with. Interestingly, those rules were left out of the 1981 edition of the book.
Then there’s the Joy of Sex and that whole genre.
And the earnest teen relationship advice genre.
If we go back in time far enough, inspired by Rahul above, there are other guides to behaviour, like the medieval ideal of chivalry.
” And what men want isn’t always the same as what men have been told they ought to want.”
This sounds like a case for behavioural economics! Seriously. I suspect this is one of these situations where our primitive this-is-what-I-want-now brain and our planner brain this-is-what’s-in-my-long-term-best-interests brain are seriously at odds. E.g. when the this is what I want now brain is urging you to make a move on some student you’re supervising, and the long term best interests brain is saying nope, bad idea.
rsj: “saying that you are “disgusted””
I’m disgusted by a lot of this PUA stuff for much the reason that I’m disgusted by casinos and junk food.
Yes, a bit of dominant behaviour can definitely be a turn-on – think the number of women who’ve bought 50 Shades of Grey. And casinos are exciting and junk food tastes good – I haven’t had a Big Mac for months if not years, but I can still imagine its mouth watering deliciousness.
The problem is when others prey on our weaknesses and vulnerabilities to get us to do things we don’t want to do, or that are not in our long term best interests.
rsj – If you have a daughter, imagine her as a PUA’s target. Do you feel a little bit of disgust now?
One thing I forgot to add but really should add: Some on the PUA blogs (eg Dalrock and Roissy, IIRC) say that, once the anger and cynicism pass, they actually come to a deeper appreciation of women, once the pretty lies have gone.
BTW, I really don’t spend all my time reading PUA sites! The order is: economics, cars, maybe canoes in Summer, random stuff like genetics, and then PUA. Think of it as the male equivalent of reading womens mags.