4 ms·

Costly but worthless gifts facilitate courtship

47 points by bootload 16y ago

joe_the_user 16y ago
The thing about any argument coming out of game theory is that it is going to depend fairly heavily on the tuning of the parameters you put into your model. And unless you have really powerful evidence that your particular parameters are preferable, all you have accomplished is do a really go job of filling in a hypothetical argument. That doesn't prove you're wrong. It's just a long way from showing your right.
- srean 16y ago
  Could you elaborate ? Did you have any particular parameter in mind. To me the model seemed strikingly simple with just 6 parameters. All assumptions seemed very mild, benign and sensible. Furthermore they list out the behavior and the nature of the equilibrium at different settings of those parameters. There could be different points of criticism of the work, but over-dependence or sensitivity to finely tuned parameters does not seem to be very strong to me in this particular case.
  - joe_the_user 16y ago
    I phrased my initial comment poorly. I didn't mean any specific parameters within the model they are using. I meant the quantities and framework which are looked to generate the model itself. For example, whether there is one quality "attractiveness" in a woman or say, two, "attractiveness" plus "pleasantness", etc.
iron_ball 16y ago
People will be tempted to say "good job, science, now tell me something I don't know", but honestly, taking common sense and elevating it at least to the level of hypothesis is an underrated aspect of science. Every now and then, such a "non-discovery" can help us put other facts into context.
stretchwithme 16y ago
this is just another kind of display, which is very common in courtship. no mystery
dcx 16y ago
The mechanism proposed by the authors actually explained an interesting pattern for me - why people destroy value to signal superiority. Having lots of value (possessions, money, social capital) is already a hard-to-falsify social signal. But destroying the value significantly amplifies this effect. You're demonstrating that you must have a lot of less-visible value to be able to afford to do this. And then the act of destruction removes any unwanted side effects or false incentives for other parties involved. I'm pretty sure this is a general pattern of interaction as it's been observed in tribal societies around the world - destroying or sacrificing valuable property and gifts to "service the purpose of buying peace" (Mauss). And I think the destructive aspect of this must contribute to some behaviours which are hard to explain economically - large corporate behaviour, personal conspicuous consumption, inefficient charity work.
- zipdog 16y ago
  The potlach was a tribal event where wealth was destroyed, but my reading of Mauss, etc is that it bought peace within the community by reducing the gap between what people had and didn't have. The power of envy in small communities seems to hold a great negative force, and the loss of material goods in order to reduce envy is worth it for the community in the long term (and in small communities, it's survival for all or for none).
insickness 16y ago
The assumption of this game is that women emotionally respond to men's gift giving. That would seem sensible. But it is patently false. Gifts do not facilitate courtship. Have you ever won a woman's favor by buying her a drink? Would it help if instead you bought a vacation for this woman whom you hardly know? Buying things in order to win a woman's favor is the worst strategy ever. Instead of taking a woman out to an expensive dinner on your first date, have ONE drink with her and see if you both like each other. Take away all the pressure and make it fun.
- jdp23 16y ago
  Yeah really. And what does it say about the authors that they conclude that it's better to give women expensive worthless gifts to deter 'gold-diggers'? Hold on a sec, I'm just going to check with my SO to get her perspectives on that ... UPDATE: She says her favorite gifts were my poems -- not expensive at all. And she really liked a watch I gave her: relatively expensive, and useful, and she still has it 20 years later. Shoot. I hope she's not a gold-digger.
  - rchi 16y ago
    poems are extremely expensive in terms of time. only those with the sharpest mind can afford to create them.
  - michael_dorfman 16y ago
    Or worse, a poem-digger. You don't want to be that guy who wakes up one day and realizes that she was only in it for the anapests...
    - iron_ball 16y ago
      Believe it or not, this has actually happened to me. I was going through a long literary dry spell, and my SO of the time turned to me once and said "I miss those poems you used to write." I told her, "the only thing I can write right now is soulless but amusing battleraps. I could write about how weak your rhymes are in comparison to mine, but it wouldn't be quite the same."
Read_the_Genes 16y ago
This is similar to other models of courtship behavior. Essentially, females prefer males that invest in their relationship because they are more likely to remain in the relationship. This same phenomenon can be found in all sorts of things, such as law offices (why are they so fancy?!). A great general model on this can be found here (pdf): http://octavia.zoology.washington.edu/publications/forthcoming/BergstromEtAl07.pdf http://octavia.zoology.washington.edu/publications/forthcomi... This is a chapter from a book (P. Zak, ed. Moral Markets: The Critical Role of Values in the Economy. Princeton University Press).
cduan 16y ago
From my brief reading, this paper essentially deals with solving an information asymmetry. The males don't know if the females are willing to mate, and the females don't know if the males intend to stay around. Thus, gifts are used as signals that indicate, through a game-theoretic mechanism, the unknown values. It's strange, then, that the paper doesn't look to the field of information asymmetry in economics, which is a fairly well-developed field at this point and more or less addresses all of the issues considered in this paper. Signaling is well-known as an approach to solving information asymmetries (a second approach is warranties).
stretchwithme 16y ago
The BEST Presents for GIRLS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ovdO1QV2Jg
al-king 16y ago
Of course, "costly but worthless" is just another way of saying "art".
kapauldo 16y ago
Your tax dollars at work.
brudgers 16y ago
The article represents US social science at it's worse - trying to map mental and psychological states onto purely skinnerian behaviorist model. In doing so, it ignores vast amounts of non-conforming data such as homosexuality and the courtship of post-menopausal women. To the degree one can discount women having desires, perhaps the models may apply to human mating behavior. But women select men for the purposes of sexual gratification, social status, basic companionship, and many other reasons -none of which are centered around gift giving. Despite model underlying the paper assuming a such a passive role for women in mating, it also assumes a model of courtship in which women have a far more active role than they have historically had. Even today, arranged marriage is not uncommon in many cultures and even within the United States, familial and religious obligations can effectively determine the outcome of courtship in a similar manner.
- qaexl 16y ago
  http://xkcd.com/182/ http://xkcd.com/182/
firemanx 16y ago
This makes me immediately thing of the 5 Love Languages: http://www.5lovelanguages.com/ http://www.5lovelanguages.com/ The Cliff's Notes version is that every human inately responds with various magnitudes to 5 love "languages" - ie, they have specific methods of expressing love that they respond to better than others. The 5, as defined by the author, are: 1. Physical Touch 2. Quality Time 3. Acts of Service 4. Words of Affirmation 5. Gifts I've seen this in spades in both my previous dating life and my marriage. Once learning about the 5 love languages, I was better able to understand my wife and how she best responds to affection. Whats interesting about this approach is that people often express their love / interest for others in THEIR love language, rather than that of their partner. Once they can identify the languages involved, they often find that their relationships become healthier because they are "speaking" the language their partner better understands.

47 points by bootload 16y ago

The thing about any argument coming out of game theory is that it is going to depend fairly heavily on the tuning of the parameters you put into your model. And unless you have really powerful evidence that your particular parameters are preferable, all you have accomplished is do a really go job of filling in a hypothetical argument. That doesn't prove you're wrong. It's just a long way from showing your right.

srean 16y ago
Could you elaborate ? Did you have any particular parameter in mind. To me the model seemed strikingly simple with just 6 parameters. All assumptions seemed very mild, benign and sensible. Furthermore they list out the behavior and the nature of the equilibrium at different settings of those parameters. There could be different points of criticism of the work, but over-dependence or sensitivity to finely tuned parameters does not seem to be very strong to me in this particular case.
- joe_the_user 16y ago
  I phrased my initial comment poorly. I didn't mean any specific parameters within the model they are using. I meant the quantities and framework which are looked to generate the model itself. For example, whether there is one quality "attractiveness" in a woman or say, two, "attractiveness" plus "pleasantness", etc.

iron_ball 16y ago

People will be tempted to say "good job, science, now tell me something I don't know", but honestly, taking common sense and elevating it at least to the level of hypothesis is an underrated aspect of science. Every now and then, such a "non-discovery" can help us put other facts into context.

stretchwithme 16y ago

this is just another kind of display, which is very common in courtship. no mystery

dcx 16y ago

The mechanism proposed by the authors actually explained an interesting pattern for me - why people destroy value to signal superiority. Having lots of value (possessions, money, social capital) is already a hard-to-falsify social signal. But destroying the value significantly amplifies this effect. You're demonstrating that you must have a lot of less-visible value to be able to afford to do this. And then the act of destruction removes any unwanted side effects or false incentives for other parties involved. I'm pretty sure this is a general pattern of interaction as it's been observed in tribal societies around the world - destroying or sacrificing valuable property and gifts to "service the purpose of buying peace" (Mauss). And I think the destructive aspect of this must contribute to some behaviours which are hard to explain economically - large corporate behaviour, personal conspicuous consumption, inefficient charity work.

zipdog 16y ago
The potlach was a tribal event where wealth was destroyed, but my reading of Mauss, etc is that it bought peace within the community by reducing the gap between what people had and didn't have. The power of envy in small communities seems to hold a great negative force, and the loss of material goods in order to reduce envy is worth it for the community in the long term (and in small communities, it's survival for all or for none).

insickness 16y ago

The assumption of this game is that women emotionally respond to men's gift giving. That would seem sensible. But it is patently false. Gifts do not facilitate courtship. Have you ever won a woman's favor by buying her a drink? Would it help if instead you bought a vacation for this woman whom you hardly know? Buying things in order to win a woman's favor is the worst strategy ever. Instead of taking a woman out to an expensive dinner on your first date, have ONE drink with her and see if you both like each other. Take away all the pressure and make it fun.

jdp23 16y ago
Yeah really. And what does it say about the authors that they conclude that it's better to give women expensive worthless gifts to deter 'gold-diggers'? Hold on a sec, I'm just going to check with my SO to get her perspectives on that ... UPDATE: She says her favorite gifts were my poems -- not expensive at all. And she really liked a watch I gave her: relatively expensive, and useful, and she still has it 20 years later. Shoot. I hope she's not a gold-digger.
- rchi 16y ago
  poems are extremely expensive in terms of time. only those with the sharpest mind can afford to create them.
- michael_dorfman 16y ago
  Or worse, a poem-digger. You don't want to be that guy who wakes up one day and realizes that she was only in it for the anapests...
  - iron_ball 16y ago
    Believe it or not, this has actually happened to me. I was going through a long literary dry spell, and my SO of the time turned to me once and said "I miss those poems you used to write." I told her, "the only thing I can write right now is soulless but amusing battleraps. I could write about how weak your rhymes are in comparison to mine, but it wouldn't be quite the same."

Read_the_Genes 16y ago

This is similar to other models of courtship behavior. Essentially, females prefer males that invest in their relationship because they are more likely to remain in the relationship. This same phenomenon can be found in all sorts of things, such as law offices (why are they so fancy?!). A great general model on this can be found here (pdf): http://octavia.zoology.washington.edu/publications/forthcoming/BergstromEtAl07.pdf http://octavia.zoology.washington.edu/publications/forthcomi... This is a chapter from a book (P. Zak, ed. Moral Markets: The Critical Role of Values in the Economy. Princeton University Press).

cduan 16y ago

From my brief reading, this paper essentially deals with solving an information asymmetry. The males don't know if the females are willing to mate, and the females don't know if the males intend to stay around. Thus, gifts are used as signals that indicate, through a game-theoretic mechanism, the unknown values. It's strange, then, that the paper doesn't look to the field of information asymmetry in economics, which is a fairly well-developed field at this point and more or less addresses all of the issues considered in this paper. Signaling is well-known as an approach to solving information asymmetries (a second approach is warranties).

stretchwithme 16y ago

The BEST Presents for GIRLS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ovdO1QV2Jg

al-king 16y ago

Of course, "costly but worthless" is just another way of saying "art".

kapauldo 16y ago

Your tax dollars at work.

brudgers 16y ago

The article represents US social science at it's worse - trying to map mental and psychological states onto purely skinnerian behaviorist model. In doing so, it ignores vast amounts of non-conforming data such as homosexuality and the courtship of post-menopausal women. To the degree one can discount women having desires, perhaps the models may apply to human mating behavior. But women select men for the purposes of sexual gratification, social status, basic companionship, and many other reasons -none of which are centered around gift giving. Despite model underlying the paper assuming a such a passive role for women in mating, it also assumes a model of courtship in which women have a far more active role than they have historically had. Even today, arranged marriage is not uncommon in many cultures and even within the United States, familial and religious obligations can effectively determine the outcome of courtship in a similar manner.

qaexl 16y ago
http://xkcd.com/182/ http://xkcd.com/182/

firemanx 16y ago

This makes me immediately thing of the 5 Love Languages: http://www.5lovelanguages.com/ http://www.5lovelanguages.com/ The Cliff's Notes version is that every human inately responds with various magnitudes to 5 love "languages" - ie, they have specific methods of expressing love that they respond to better than others. The 5, as defined by the author, are: 1. Physical Touch 2. Quality Time 3. Acts of Service 4. Words of Affirmation 5. Gifts I've seen this in spades in both my previous dating life and my marriage. Once learning about the 5 love languages, I was better able to understand my wife and how she best responds to affection. Whats interesting about this approach is that people often express their love / interest for others in THEIR love language, rather than that of their partner. Once they can identify the languages involved, they often find that their relationships become healthier because they are "speaking" the language their partner better understands.