8 ms·

Your Spidey sense should tingle whenever you read about a psychology result in a popular medium. Especially if that result flatters you in some way.

CosmicShadow 2y ago
Yep, pretty much just need to see (inc.com) and then ignore it.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
throwaway48476 2y ago
In order to empathize it requires a mental model of how someone else thinks/feels.
- GrantMoyer 2y ago
  Probably most social species have this capability.
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    That is not the case at all. There's a guy on yt with a 'pet' coyote and it's fascinating how different it behaves to his dogs and how they interact.
    - svnt 2y ago
      Further to being a social species dogs are domesticated, which introduces more layers.
      - throwaway48476 2y ago
        Coyotes are a social species.
        svnt 2y ago
        Yes, but not a domesticated species, and so any comparisons with dogs are limited.
        tourmalinetaco 2y ago
        Being a “social species” does not mean you are social with every other social species, just that you follow a social system within your species.
    - GrantMoyer 2y ago
      What do you suppose compels social animals to cooperate socially? I can imagine a few possibilities: 1. Maximizing self interest using an understanding of social contract theory 2. A complex system of instincts that depends on others behavior, but doesn't manifest as intuition about the reasons for those behaviors 3. Like 2, but it manifests as an intuitive undestanding of how others may feel I admit, 1 seems unlikely, even for humans. 2 and 3 sound more plausible, but 3 seems like the simpler explanation to me. We have an example case of it in humans (of course humans may additionally reason about others intent), and I'd expect similar tendencies to have similar mechanisms. Plus, grouping behaviors into intents reduces the number of rules needed for the observed behavior -> response mapping at the cost of some pattern recognition ability. It's possible there's another explanation, including why similar tendencies aren't explained by similar mechanisms, despite the availability of similar "hardware". If there is, I'm not clever enough to have thought of it.
- svnt 2y ago
  It is typically called theory of mind.
  - I_complete_me 2y ago
    Just yesterday I came across this site [1] with lots of articles around ToM. Very well written IMHO. [1] https://neurolaunch.com/theory-of-mind-and-empathy/ https://neurolaunch.com/theory-of-mind-and-empathy/
- andoando 2y ago
  Same is true with being manipulative though.
  - Sammi 2y ago
    Yes, but being manipulative will be discovered and punished in the long term. It's not a stable strategy, as it get riskier and riskier the more you do it. So you are naturally disincentivized from being manipulative. On the other hand, being generous will be recognized and rewarded in the long term. In the short term you carry some risk if you are generous with people you don't know. This is where having good social skills to develop relationships comes in. It's also the difference between playing zero-sum and positive-sum games. Manipulation is zero-sum. Positive-sum games have more reward all-in-all in the long term.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - dartos 2y ago
      Or you’re so smart that your manipulation is disguised as altruism until long after you die.
svnt 2y ago
I did a quick investigation into the three papers linked in the article. In the first, the correlation is between either spouse having donated “$500 or more to a religious or other non-profit” so it potentially loses a lot of smaller donors, but the biggest issue is their definition of a measure of cognitive ability is probably not what you think: > cognitive ability was measured in a variety of ways (Ofstedal et al., 2001). These measurements included immediate word recall, delayed word recall, serial 7’s, recog- nition tasks, backwards counting tasks, and a 35-point scale combining each of the previous elements. None of those are what I would consider difficult (serial 7s is starting at 100 and subtracting 7 over and over). It is entirely possible that given the methodology (survey) that what they are actually measuring is altruism (effort put into helping the surveyor) and that there is also some selection bias because someone who was intelligent but not giving probably would decline/avoid the survey in the first place. In the second, the hypothesis is that altruism is a “costly signal” of intelligence and the study was done in a hunter-gatherer community where members were providing food for a feast. The third link sends the reader to a tweet that cites these two and two additional studies, but the further two are studies linking general intelligence to negotiation ability, which seems at best indirectly related to being generous and kind to me. If there is a potential truth here, I think it might be that being more intelligent could be linked with a greater understanding of the benefits of altruism and a tendency to behave that way, or that being altruistic leads to higher intelligence through vicarious learning, but neither of these hypotheses are being evaluated in these papers.
- withinboredom 2y ago
  > None of those are what I would consider difficult (serial 7s is starting at 100 and subtracting 7 over and over). I worked with a guy who used to brag about having an IQ of 60. Dude wasn't much smarter than a rock, but he could follow directions really well. Pretty sure he could pass these tests too.
  - dartos 2y ago
    So an IQ of 100 is the average IQ. “Passing” the test would probably mean you’re within a standard deviation of that (or above, ofc) Most everyone can pass an IQ test.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
you read about a psychology result.

CosmicShadow 2y ago

Yep, pretty much just need to see (inc.com) and then ignore it.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

throwaway48476 2y ago

In order to empathize it requires a mental model of how someone else thinks/feels.

GrantMoyer 2y ago
Probably most social species have this capability.
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  That is not the case at all. There's a guy on yt with a 'pet' coyote and it's fascinating how different it behaves to his dogs and how they interact.
  - svnt 2y ago
    Further to being a social species dogs are domesticated, which introduces more layers.
    - throwaway48476 2y ago
      Coyotes are a social species.
      - svnt 2y ago
        Yes, but not a domesticated species, and so any comparisons with dogs are limited.
      - tourmalinetaco 2y ago
        Being a “social species” does not mean you are social with every other social species, just that you follow a social system within your species.
  - GrantMoyer 2y ago
    What do you suppose compels social animals to cooperate socially? I can imagine a few possibilities: 1. Maximizing self interest using an understanding of social contract theory 2. A complex system of instincts that depends on others behavior, but doesn't manifest as intuition about the reasons for those behaviors 3. Like 2, but it manifests as an intuitive undestanding of how others may feel I admit, 1 seems unlikely, even for humans. 2 and 3 sound more plausible, but 3 seems like the simpler explanation to me. We have an example case of it in humans (of course humans may additionally reason about others intent), and I'd expect similar tendencies to have similar mechanisms. Plus, grouping behaviors into intents reduces the number of rules needed for the observed behavior -> response mapping at the cost of some pattern recognition ability. It's possible there's another explanation, including why similar tendencies aren't explained by similar mechanisms, despite the availability of similar "hardware". If there is, I'm not clever enough to have thought of it.
svnt 2y ago
It is typically called theory of mind.
- I_complete_me 2y ago
  Just yesterday I came across this site [1] with lots of articles around ToM. Very well written IMHO. [1] https://neurolaunch.com/theory-of-mind-and-empathy/ https://neurolaunch.com/theory-of-mind-and-empathy/
andoando 2y ago
Same is true with being manipulative though.
- Sammi 2y ago
  Yes, but being manipulative will be discovered and punished in the long term. It's not a stable strategy, as it get riskier and riskier the more you do it. So you are naturally disincentivized from being manipulative. On the other hand, being generous will be recognized and rewarded in the long term. In the short term you carry some risk if you are generous with people you don't know. This is where having good social skills to develop relationships comes in. It's also the difference between playing zero-sum and positive-sum games. Manipulation is zero-sum. Positive-sum games have more reward all-in-all in the long term.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - dartos 2y ago
    Or you’re so smart that your manipulation is disguised as altruism until long after you die.

svnt 2y ago

I did a quick investigation into the three papers linked in the article. In the first, the correlation is between either spouse having donated “$500 or more to a religious or other non-profit” so it potentially loses a lot of smaller donors, but the biggest issue is their definition of a measure of cognitive ability is probably not what you think: > cognitive ability was measured in a variety of ways (Ofstedal et al., 2001). These measurements included immediate word recall, delayed word recall, serial 7’s, recog- nition tasks, backwards counting tasks, and a 35-point scale combining each of the previous elements. None of those are what I would consider difficult (serial 7s is starting at 100 and subtracting 7 over and over). It is entirely possible that given the methodology (survey) that what they are actually measuring is altruism (effort put into helping the surveyor) and that there is also some selection bias because someone who was intelligent but not giving probably would decline/avoid the survey in the first place. In the second, the hypothesis is that altruism is a “costly signal” of intelligence and the study was done in a hunter-gatherer community where members were providing food for a feast. The third link sends the reader to a tweet that cites these two and two additional studies, but the further two are studies linking general intelligence to negotiation ability, which seems at best indirectly related to being generous and kind to me. If there is a potential truth here, I think it might be that being more intelligent could be linked with a greater understanding of the benefits of altruism and a tendency to behave that way, or that being altruistic leads to higher intelligence through vicarious learning, but neither of these hypotheses are being evaluated in these papers.

withinboredom 2y ago
> None of those are what I would consider difficult (serial 7s is starting at 100 and subtracting 7 over and over). I worked with a guy who used to brag about having an IQ of 60. Dude wasn't much smarter than a rock, but he could follow directions really well. Pretty sure he could pass these tests too.
- dartos 2y ago
  So an IQ of 100 is the average IQ. “Passing” the test would probably mean you’re within a standard deviation of that (or above, ofc) Most everyone can pass an IQ test.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago

you read about a psychology result.