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Agreed. Actually the question does still hold interest IMO because it forces her to acknowledge to herself that she may have a price. You say: In reality, mos

by ErrantX 16y ago

Agreed. Actually the question does still hold interest IMO because it forces her to acknowledge to herself that she may have a price. You say: In reality, most people have made that choice long ago and we know that they have their consequentialist price. And I agree; however I wonder how many people consciously know what their "price" decision they have made. I once actually conducted this experiment with a group of [volunteer] fellow students (both male and female) with interesting results. I pitched the question exactly as outlined here (a girlfriend asked the male members). The aim was to force this self-realisation of their "price" and subsequently we "bartered" for the real price they would accept. I realised a couple of things; firstly in realistic terms 1 million pounds is generally a lot lower than the "realistic price". When I followed up with the question "would you really sleep with me for a million" the answer was usually "no". The reason the girl says "maybe" in the initial instance is because she doesn't believe that I have a million pounds to offer. When I substituted £100,000 for a million the response rate tipped much harder towards "unlikely". To further test this theory I asked one of my more well of friends (who looked stereotypically rich) to conduct a similar survey - but this time to show them a cheque made of for £1 Million at the same time. Again the responses tended towards "unlikely" (and there was, actually, a larger amount of disgust at the idea). Once I got past this stage we bartered on what the "price" might be; invariably money was quickly removed from the table. Favours were preferred; for example attending as a date to a wedding was one price. When I forced conversations back to money the price went a lot higher. £10 Million was the minimum (this is possibly because 1 Million is not considered so much any more, I don't know). My well off friend had even more dramatic rises; one girl requested £5 Million a year for the next three years. More sex was generally offered in return for more complex rewards; for example in the above example (£5,000,0000/yr for 3 yrs) it was hashed out that a number of sexual encounters and "weekend breaks" were on the cards. For the men things were a lot simpler; they balked at any ides of being paid full stop. Almost to the man they refused payment and offered to sleep with the girl anyway. Out of interest I got a much plainer girl to ask the same question; there was still a general refusal to take money (although one or two "accepted" £100, preferring it to 1 Million) but also several outright refusals. With the plainer girl men offered to sleep with her (for no money), for my more attractive friend they offered to sleep with her and take her out to dinner. In fact dinner featured a lot in negotiations; there was actually a general aversion amongst the men (particularly, for some interesting reason, among the "jock" types) to simply having sex, a big majority preferred to offer a more complete "package". I have a partial theory that some were sidestepping the issue of money by proposing that the girl paid for dinner (or whatever date was agreed). This was conducted on a group of about 100 people I randomly grabbed outside our student union over a couple of afternoons :) there isn't a lot of structure to what we did, we just followed our noses. But I think there was some interesting stuff we discovered.

drewcrawford 16y ago
I'd love to see a paper presented on this.
- ErrantX 16y ago
  I'd consider writing an informal paper about it - but unfortunately it was a bit hacky and basically just followed our thoughts. So there is no way it would stand up to peer review properly. I have the notes somewhere so I will try and dig them out and write something up (this was all done from memory plus a short type up I did at the time)
araneae 16y ago
That actually doesn't surprise me, given the work of Dan Ariely. He's done similar experiments (but not with sex; with people doing some silly task on the computer) and found that people would do better on the task if their reward was a gift, like chocolate, then if there was a comparative dollar amount. The difference disappeared if he referred to it as "$5 worth of chocolate" versus "$5." We think about getting paid with money differently than we think about getting paid with gifts, for some reason.
arthurdent 16y ago
I find this fascinating -- your reply and the parent to your reply (@Confusion) actually gave a lot of clarity to what I think on the matter. I'm 5 years out of college and I think my position has changed significantly since then. Until probably a year out of college I only thought very abstractly about questions like this and believed there was a large class of problems for which there is no price. Until a year or so after I graduated, I think I believed that most people (hookers excluded) wouldn't offer sex at any cash price. I always thought those transactions generally HAD to occur masked as "I'll buy you some beers/some dinners/we'll date/any time or cash value exchange in return for sex" My more recent experience with regards to your experiment is almost the exact opposite of your findings. I'm consistently shocked by how LOW a price people are willing accept for all manner of tasks, including sex. Not to sound way too shady, but I've since found that the cash price point for sex for most women is not only "no price", but in fact far lower than I would have imagined. Or maybe I've just met way sluttier girls since graduating. The price for most men is basically zero. I'll also say there's likely some sort of phase transition here where the answer to "what kind of girl she is" is dependent on some socioeconomic indicator. Hypothesis: Money and status buy people a LOT of self importance and stricter adherence to a moral code. People don't have to bend their espoused morals unless faced with tough questions. Re your experiment: - saying and doing are different, especially since the question seems to have been explicitly phrased as an exchange of sex for money. there are all sorts of ways to phrase the question where sex is understood but without actually saying it. - £1MM is doesn't even feel like a real number to most students. hypothetical questions get hypothetical answers. Like @Confusion, I now generally believe there's a price for everything. If it can be measured in dollars, thats an easy question to answer. The hard questions are those that are measured in things money can't buy.

by ErrantX 16y ago

drewcrawford 16y ago

I'd love to see a paper presented on this.

ErrantX 16y ago
I'd consider writing an informal paper about it - but unfortunately it was a bit hacky and basically just followed our thoughts. So there is no way it would stand up to peer review properly. I have the notes somewhere so I will try and dig them out and write something up (this was all done from memory plus a short type up I did at the time)

araneae 16y ago

That actually doesn't surprise me, given the work of Dan Ariely. He's done similar experiments (but not with sex; with people doing some silly task on the computer) and found that people would do better on the task if their reward was a gift, like chocolate, then if there was a comparative dollar amount. The difference disappeared if he referred to it as "$5 worth of chocolate" versus "$5." We think about getting paid with money differently than we think about getting paid with gifts, for some reason.

arthurdent 16y ago

I find this fascinating -- your reply and the parent to your reply (@Confusion) actually gave a lot of clarity to what I think on the matter. I'm 5 years out of college and I think my position has changed significantly since then. Until probably a year out of college I only thought very abstractly about questions like this and believed there was a large class of problems for which there is no price. Until a year or so after I graduated, I think I believed that most people (hookers excluded) wouldn't offer sex at any cash price. I always thought those transactions generally HAD to occur masked as "I'll buy you some beers/some dinners/we'll date/any time or cash value exchange in return for sex" My more recent experience with regards to your experiment is almost the exact opposite of your findings. I'm consistently shocked by how LOW a price people are willing accept for all manner of tasks, including sex. Not to sound way too shady, but I've since found that the cash price point for sex for most women is not only "no price", but in fact far lower than I would have imagined. Or maybe I've just met way sluttier girls since graduating. The price for most men is basically zero. I'll also say there's likely some sort of phase transition here where the answer to "what kind of girl she is" is dependent on some socioeconomic indicator. Hypothesis: Money and status buy people a LOT of self importance and stricter adherence to a moral code. People don't have to bend their espoused morals unless faced with tough questions. Re your experiment: - saying and doing are different, especially since the question seems to have been explicitly phrased as an exchange of sex for money. there are all sorts of ways to phrase the question where sex is understood but without actually saying it. - £1MM is doesn't even feel like a real number to most students. hypothetical questions get hypothetical answers. Like @Confusion, I now generally believe there's a price for everything. If it can be measured in dollars, thats an easy question to answer. The hard questions are those that are measured in things money can't buy.