4 ms·
It doesn't seem to me like you're familiar with any reserved, risk-averse people. No guy who is actually interested in a woman will pick option 2. In fact, it'
by sofal 17y ago
It doesn't seem to me like you're familiar with any reserved, risk-averse people.
No guy who is actually interested in a woman will pick option 2. In fact, it's a non-option.
Picking option 2 is a "bah, she's out of my league" decision. It may not be a smart choice, but it's a choice that a whole lot of men make.
No guy who will "feel miserable for a week" over some random chick turning him down for a date.
A lot of men have a fear of failure in this game, however irrational it may seem. Being rejected by a woman can make a man self-conscious about his own attractiveness. A typical pessimistic guy would not take it very well and will try to avoid a situation like that. This is probably why the author uses 0 as the reward for outcome 3.
- khafra 17y ago"Fear of failure" oversimplifies it, I think. As an anecdotal example, the other day, I was at a rock climbing gym and saw an extremely attractive girl climbing. I didn't approach her, because 1) I was new there, unfamiliar with the social mores, and didn't want to earn an undesirable reputation 2) She was with a group of friends, any one of which she could've been involved with--and, indeed, did embrace one of the guys about an hour later 3) She was intent on what she was doing; I wasn't at my most impressive; I'd likely have a repeated chance, and a failed intial approach would negatively bias later chances 4) Likely other more or less subconscious, more or less rational reasons as well.
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- jacoblyles 17y agoIf a guy talks to >>1 girl per week, almost any guy will get over rejection pretty quickly. The a priori fear of failure is much worse than the actual thing.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- orangecat 17y agoPicking option 2 is a "bah, she's out of my league" decision. It may not be a smart choice, but it's a choice that a whole lot of men make. The best explanation I've heard for this is that it's an evolutionary adaptation. If you're in a tribe of mammals with a strict social hierarchy, trying to mate with the alpha male's partner is an excellent way to get expelled from the tribe if you're lucky or killed if you're not. So we developed a survival instinct to not approach females that we see as above us socially. This could be another evolutionary psychology just-so story, but it fits exactly with my experience. If I seriously consider approaching an attractive woman I get an immediate physical reaction very much like vertigo, which I believe is the primitive part of my brain frantically trying to signal danger. Of course this is actively harmful in our current environment, but our genes don't know that; we're adaptation executers, not fitness maximizers (see http://lesswrong.com/lw/l0/adaptationexecuters_not_fitnessmaximizers/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/l0/adaptationexecuters_not_fitnessma...).