Quote:
Originally Posted by Clerkenwell
...or choice between beauty in various forms. The trouble is that those possessing the ticket price sufficient to exercise that choice are unlikely to get jobs as Clark Gable lookalikes. The transaction distorts the judgement.
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Actually, more successful men (and women) tend to be better looking.
Studies on compensation indicate that for men with equal objective merit, the taller one is paid more. Similar studies on women indicate that for two women of equal objective merit, the prettier one is paid more and perceived to be more intelligent and capable, even though she is the same.
But here is where the ticket price distorts judgment. I'm going to look at this from an evolutionary psychology perspective.
Let me give one example, not aimed at anyone particularly. If anything I'm indicting myself a bit here as I purchase time with some HDHs.
The P-test is a test administered by the FBI to ascertain one's level of psychopathy. As a point of reference, the scale goes from 0 to 40. The average person on the street scores 3. The BTK killer scored 30.
And those who have the greatest levels of success in the upper reaches of corporations? On average, they score 22.
(Please see "Is your Boss a Psychopath?" and the folks referenced therein.)
When the fellows who were convicted of deliberately lying about the potential for addiction of Oxycontin were fined; their fines amounted to only 1/10th of the money they made.
According to a great deal of research, not just in the U.S. but in Europe as well, the more successfully you negotiate the corporate ladder, the higher you score on the p-scale on average.
Not in all cases, of course. But if I am looking for a guy with an IQ higher than 115 and with psychopathic tendencies, I am more likely to find him as the CEO, COO, CIO, CFO, etc. etc. than as the bagger at the grocery store by a huge margin.
(There is also a tie-in between psychopathy and odds of being in jail. But if you look at the difference in IQ between the standard inhabitant of jail and the standard inhabitant of the boardroom; it is clear that the greater ability to foresee adverse consequences serves the denizen of the boardroom in good stead.)
Given the differential in compensation between a COO and the supervisor of the call center; it is the COO who is far more likely to book an HDH.
HDH rates tend to skew the sorts of men who are able to afford those rates toward the COO -- who is likely to be substantively more psychopathic than the call center supervisor.
This may not be an issue for the ladies involved; but I am going to theorize that this is a result of a maladaptive application of the underlying evolutionary motivations of female hypergamy.
Female hypergamy is a woman's tendency to want the very best possible man. If she is psychologically healthy, every woman believes she deserves the best in terms of men. Obviously, explicit processing and rational evaluation will lead women to choose lesser men than the very best when they realize the best is not practically accessible. Nevertheless, cases of cuckoldry (10% of children born to married couples are not the biological offspring of hubby) typically are the result of mating with males of higher status than the husband.
Human beings have evolutionarily diverged from our primate cousins for 2.5 million years. For the overwhelming preponderance of our evolutionary history, the best man -- the man with the greatest resources for supporting offspring -- corresponded to the strongest, healthiest and smartest man. In fact, Cro Magnon -- with 200 cc greater brain capacity than modern man -- is believed by scholars not in denial to have had greater raw intellectual horsepower than all but the brightest of modern men. In our hunter-gatherer past, traits such as strength, health and intelligence corresponded to offspring having the greatest chance of survival.
So throughout most of our evolutionary history, the female hypergamous impulse selected for men who were strong, smart and healthy as the most desirable mates. Such men controlled the most resources.
Think, then, of control of resources as a proxy trait. That is, through most of our evolutionary history control of resources was a very easy way of ascertaining the existence of other traits such as health, strength and intelligence. This is similar to the way in which men find certain waist/hip ratios attractive as a proxy for health and capacity to successfully give birth to live young; the way in which men find symmetry attractive as a proxy for good genes and youth attractive as a proxy for fertility.
Starting with the advent of agriculture, however -- in all cultures around the world -- our brains started shrinking. In fact, the brain and strength of homo sapiens has been consistently shrinking now for thousands of years. Evolutionary anthropologists posit this to be the result of communities based upon agriculture having surpluses to allow for specialization and social safety nets and thus for people to be able to survive and breed who would not have been able to do so in pre-agricultural days.
Likewise, the advent of agriculturally based cultures started to create a break between the correspondence between health/strength/intelligence and control of resources. In the modern era, this break is almost complete with the average engineer having an IQ of 130 and an income under 100k and the average CEO having an IQ of 115 and considerably greater income.
Thus, in the modern era, while there is not a complete break between control of resources and the traits of strength, health and intelligence for which it originally proxies; there is an increasing correspondence between control of resources and psychopathic traits.
Thus, when women use control of resources as a primary selection factor for mates in the modern era; they are often working at cross purposes with the original evolutionary purpose of the proxy. In other words, they are in love with the cover rather than the actual book.
And the linkage of this proxy has become so strong, due IMO to cultural factors, that some studies indicate that women are more orgasmic with men they believe to be more wealthy. No joke -- look it up. Notice I said "believe to be more wealthy." It is the perception rather than the reality that increases the orgasmic response.
IMHO, this is seriously maladaptive and some authorities have noted that "evolutionarily speaking, it doesn't end well."
There are other respects in which this is seriously maladaptive.
For one thing, up until retirement anyway, a man's control of resources tends to increase with age. When women prioritize control of resources over other factors in mate choice, they tend to end up with relatively older fathers for their offspring.
Notwithstanding all of the debates over vaccinations; the rise in the occurrence in autism in our culture is almost completely attributable to the fact that the older the father, the higher the risk of fathering children with autism. Couples are having children (when they have them at all) at older ages overall than in the past; and women in love with the proxy of resource control rather than the underlying traits it represented in our evolutionary history tend to marry older men.
So I agree and disagree. I disagree that the men who can afford an HDH are necessarily bad looking. On the contrary, they are likely better looking than average for men of their age. However, I agree that there is a little "gotcha" in the box, to the extent that men with higher levels of psychopathic traits will be disproportionately represented in the selection pool.
HDHs who want to exclude psychopathically inclined men have their work cut out for them; especially as such men are quite skilled at manipulation and appearing as being other than they are -- which is one reason for their success.
But now that I've looked at this from one angle; a couple of notes from the other.
Men's preferences for proxy traits in women are becoming just as useless and maladaptive; and giving rise to increasing numbers of Down's Syndrome babies. By prioritizing appearance over character in women; although often pretty women are very fine women; men often disproportionately reward women with traits they'd rather not see in their offspring.
Disclaimer: If you read carefully, you will note that I said nothing specific about anyone particularly. What I stated were ODDS. It is entirely possible that any given HDH only books modern equivalents of Gandhi and Jesus (unless she books me, whereby she books a former mercenary); and similarly possible that guys who choose women only on the basis of looks wind up with women of entirely wholesome character. I am speaking of odds based upon research. Just odds. Nothing more. This should all be taken as speculative thought rather than pertaining to anyone personally.
