From: Leith 22/08/99 16:25:39
Subject: Women's Emotions post id: 32119
I'am presently in a foreign country.And have witnessed young ladies obsessed with Astrology and Fortune Telling.Sounds like back home?Which got me wondering why this is such a female trait?Those vocations are definitely emotional based.
I have a pet theory that everything with people is survival based.Either defence,Offence,overall survival.And thought where does women's emotions fit in?I feel it's in the defence category.That they need an emotional bond with the male.So the male is certain to return to her nest with food and protection for her and her children.Otherwise if the relationship was sexual based,the male would quickly get bored with the same "dish" every night.And I feel through Fortune Telling,and Astrology they can use as a tool to grapple with reading and searching one's and anothers emotions.Women wanting to believe their future will be secure with an emotionally secure bonded man for overall security.
I noticed almost all witches are female.Where religious Puritan's centuries before burn't such enlightened women at the stake.
Our brains are definitely mostly emotionally based,a small percentage is used for cognitive thinking.That's why the ABC doesn't rate as well as commercial TV.That's why Oprah Winfrey became the richest women in America.through tugging on the emotional theme of :HOPE in her shows(watched mainly by housewives and single mums)
Or the elderly peroxide blonde interviewer:Barbera Walters(who is the highest paid in the millions annually interviewer in the world)Who sucessfully got Monica Lewinsky crying in her "interview".
Yet both women in the cognitive sense of their style are very simple.(They sucessfully made millions exploiting women's emotions)
Another part of women's emotions are to do with child rearing (Sorry Feminists)
I'am not sure about my pet theories in general.Especially about women's love of Astrology,Fortune Telling and the like.
I'am sure others have their views??
From: Dr. Ed G (Avatar) 23/08/99 0:20:14
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32158
I wouldn't try and take that sort of analysis too seriously. It is often suggested that those working in the fields of say sociology, ethology, and psychology, go completely bezerk in their attempts to fit human beings into clear cut reductionist models, due to some form of physics envy... Maybe.

However, regardless of the personal urge/motivation to do so, the principle problems with trying to apply strictly reductionist models to systems as complex as individuals, groups, or societies, are:

(i) an objective account of such systems is almost fundamentally impossible because we are talking about us. Human subjectivity is going to affect any and all a priori assumptions, investigative procedures, logical reasonings, and conclusions that are made, more than they are in any other field of human intellectual endeavour. As such strong skepticism and an ever vigiliant critical self-analysis must be excercised when looking as any resultant theories or conclusions.

(ii) humans are vastly more complex than even the most obscure of subatomic physical systems... and as a result their behaviour simply doesn't yield to simple reductionist thinking, or reductionist models.

(iii) human societies are fluid and constantly changing. If we weren't adapted to this change we as a species would not have been so succesful in the light of such change. As a result it is almost completely meaningless to hypothesise some sort of natural primitive "jungle condition" in which the basic form of human psychology has adapted to to survive. We have both created, and adapted to complex changing human social relationships. Social relationships that are entirely not static, so to assume some sort of intrinsic human behaviour has evolved to adapt to some imaginary static situation is patently absurd.

(iv) in order to cope with a rapidly changing environmental, and more importantly, social environment, perhaps the most crucial human adaption is not strict behavioural modes of "womanhood" and "manhood", but the complete opposite - a huge variation in behaviours and traits between individuals of a given group (say women), which makes any differences in the average between groups (even if there were discernable intrinsic differences - which have to this day never been categorically shown, even though they might exist) virtually irrelevant.

People exists in a rich and wonderful tapestry of diverse forms and behaviours. If they did not, human societies would be much less able to adapt to their changing circumstances. I would be much happier if researchers would stop trying to pigeonhole everyone into a few meaningless categories, and instead look more closely at the rich variation of life strategies that exist within human societies.

Women are NOT from Mars! Men are NOT from Venus!

If you want to find a way of making your personal/social interactions richer and more fulfilling, treat people as valueable and important individuals, not as (dime-a-dozen) stereotypes! (and expect them to do things differently to you!)

Soupie twist,
Ed G.
target=_top>
From: Dr. Ed G (Avatar) 23/08/99 0:24:16
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32159
... and of course Men are NOT from Mars, and Women are NOT from Venus, either!

Soupie twist,
Ed G.

From: Daryn Voss (Avatar) 23/08/99 11:04:38
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32188
Certain things make me think that the poor emotional expression in men may be culturally determined. In southern Europe for instance, there is generally a greater tendency among men to give visible expression to emotions that in England or Australia.
From: Leith 23/08/99 15:43:03
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32261
Believe it or not,I have not read that book.If I do.I"ll proberly read it and not take it literally.I'd only ponder a few things and see where it fits into our survival instinct scheme of things which this is fact.Because as I stated before every thing about us is survival based even adapting to our environment(s)So definitely women's emotional traits come within that category.How within that category is up to speculation which I admittedly stated that I had a Pet Theory
Admittedly I read a silly similar book.Called:Why Men Don't Listen,And Why Women Can't Read Maps.Even though the Salesman that wrote it,wrote it as if it was fact.I only treated it as certain noticable traits between men and women that somehow fit into our survival instinctsThe book only gave a silly "fact" why women like Astrology.Fortune Telling etc.that they can read others emotions.I only used this as a point to ponder and incorporated it into our survival instinctual facts.which I admitted was a Pet Theory to discuss.Not be like those silly books written by Salesmen who wrote "facts".
From: leith 23/08/99 19:03:34
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32277
I can definitely put any general behavioural trait in the survival instinct basket.And categorise as thus.
An improved version on why women like the Astrology and the like Bullshit.Is that it is a security blanket and imitation Guardian Angel.Women tend to grasp something for security.It gives them that.Women feel that they are being guided when they are not.(A Claytons Guardian Angel).They get overall security from this bullshit.Because Astrologers and the like almost invariably give good news.Otherwise they go broke.Females want to believe their future is secure.Because they have less physical attributes to defend themselves.One person thinks that females tend to smoke under stress and the like more.Because the cigarette is something to grasp onto(A deadly friend) through nicotine.
IT'S DEFINITELY PART OF OUR SURVIVAL INSTINCT(S) AND CAN BE CATEGORISED AS THUS.But in this category.How? Is definitely up to speculation.
From: Dr. Ed G (Avatar) 23/08/99 20:06:22
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32289
Sorry, I didn't want to be so vigorous in my response, so please accept my apologies if you felt I was dressing you down in any way.

I suspect you have perceived a real greater appreciation/need for astrology among women as it is practiced today (although I'd like to see the numbers if they've ever been collected), but how to interpret this is the tricky bit.

It's interesting to note how modern astrology reads. It very much stresses things like trusting one's heart, and following intuition, and so on, as you say, in terms that are very much associated with "the way women think" (stressing that this is a public perception, and not neccessarily an intrinsic fact).

This is in stark contrast to the basic historical ideology of astrology which is that the fates are determined in the stars... a concretely reductionist and determinst philosophy that has more to do with the "the ways in which men think" (it has often been one of the predictive tools [and continues to be, behind the scenes] of male leaders). Which indicates the historical shift in the use of astrology. It's only recently that is has been recast for almost exclusive use in "women's magazines". In the past it has principally been practiced and patronised by men. So it isn't the basic foundation of balderdash that make astrology a "men's thing" or a "women's thing", but the literary mode in which its communicated.

Finally, I think the main point I'd like to make, is that something can be a fact without being unchangeable. Just because it's mostly women who read astrology columns (whether it is or not I don't actually know) today, doesn't mean this was the case last century or will continue to be the case next century, and so basing any conclusions about the intrinsic adaption of the female brain based on current cultural behaviours, and then extending that to some imagined native state in the past, is dodgy at best.

I'm not trying to say that men and women are the same, just that their differences are just as much (if not more) based on recent historical contingencies and circumstances which are fluid and changing, as they are based on the social/ecological environment of hundreds of millenia ago.

Soupie twist,
Ed G.
>
From: helen 24/08/99 14:59:58
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32378

beautifully put Dr Ed, but -

It is often suggested that those working in the fields of say sociology, ethology, and psychology, go completely bezerk in their attempts to fit human beings into clear cut reductionist models, due to some form of physics envy... Maybe.

suggested by whom? Physicists perhaps ;-) ?

I think if you go for a wander through the hallowed halls of a social or behavioural science faculty just about anywhere in the world, you'll find people going quietly berserk in their attempts to know anything at all about human beings and the way we think, feel and behave. In fact, social constructionism and postmodern discourse are a good bit more popular than reductionism, just going by the numbers I've run across, although that may not be representative. Myself, I suspect it's mostly a lost cause, but then I just can't seem to leave it to the John Grays and the Daniel Golemans to get away with spouting the crapola they do - we may never be able to do people-science really well, but at least we can do better than that.

The grand attempt to fit people into neat boxes belongs largely to the social science of earlier in the century, to the current realm of paperback pulp, and to miscellaneous misinformed academics with a political barrow to push, like that odious little man Rushton and his "race realism" rubbish. Most of these people are not nearly as well informed about the constructs they rabbit on about ("intelligence", "race", "gender", "personality") as they should be. Those that are, are merely malicious or just plain greedy.

Unfortunately for mainstream psych (I can't speak for the others), what really grabs people is a nice neat categorisation, which is why Gray's "Men are mars..." sold a couple of million copies, while something like Carol Tavris' "The mismeasure of woman" sold a couple of thousand.

If you want to go looking for the source of our obsession with putting people into categories, I don't think you need to lay it at the door of one field of study or another - you only need to look at how we think. What we're really exceptionally good at is sorting information into piles. This is hugely good for us in general, because otherwise it would be impossible to cope with the amount of information we do. Unfortunately it gets carried over into areas where it's just not appropriate. While I think we can blame earlier social and behavioural science traditions for some of our categorisations (esp. those related to intelligence), I think we also need to thank some more recent ones for debunking some our stereotypical myths.

:-)helen (saying sweetly, lay off my field, alright!)
From: helen 24/08/99 15:40:18
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32385

Hi Leith,

In some senses here you're correct - emotions and their expression have quite a strong evolutionary basis: the structures in our brain which control emotional reactions are "older" in an evolutionary sense, than the bits we do our thinking with, to put it simply. It's of greater survival value to have, for example, your fear/running away "circuits" functioning than all the formal logic or debating technique you like, and that will continue to be the case as long as we have anything at all in our environment to cope with.

However, I think you're suggesting that women are biologically "more emotional" than men, which I don't think is the case: men and women are taught to feel and express emotions quite differently from each other, especially in our culture, as Daryn's suggesting. If there is a biological/evolutionary component to this, I think it's probably quite tiny in comparison to how we're brought up.


Those vocations are definitely emotional based.

I'm not sure what you mean here; be wary of making the mistake that "emotional" means the opposite of rational/logical/scientific. Sure, astrology and so on can be manipulative of people's hopes and fears, but I don't think that distinguishes astrology from a lot of other areas.

:-)helen
From: Andrew 24/08/99 15:41:36
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32386

Hi Helen,

I think it's vaguely ironic that you complain about people buying populist "crappola" rather than serious psych. It seems like any serious psych person would already know that they won't have as wide an audience as the pedler's of psuedo-science clap trap.


From: helen 24/08/99 15:43:56
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32387

absolutely - why do you think I'm inflicting myself on the lovely people here, rather than over at www.mars.venus.com ;-)?


From: helen 24/08/99 15:47:35
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32388

actually, I should add that I'm not complaining about people buying this stuff, I'm just offering one explanation of why they do, and of why it's so hard for reasonably "scientific" approaches to compete


From: Andrew 24/08/99 15:55:03
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32390
Ok, it must have been projection when I thought I noticed a slight hint of pique at the human race :-) Thanks for the mars URL I'll have to head on over and find the solution to all my troubles.
From: helen 24/08/99 15:59:04
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32393

:-) no, just my usual ranting style. And some resignation that I will never write a bestselling nonfiction work. Oh well.

oh, and if you find that mars address, come back and share ;-) If they're handing out free solutions, I'm in!

:-)h
From: Andrew 24/08/99 16:14:14
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32396
Helen, come over to the dark side where all oranges are ...ok enough silliness from me, back to the Astral travel thread.
From: Daryn Voss (Avatar) 24/08/99 16:33:48
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32402
Can I take this opportunity to expose my stubborn ignorance here?

I have not studied psychology, but I gather that psychology and the social sciences in general have "hardened" somewhat over the last few decades. I only know this from living with people doing psychology courses, and from trying to teach them the rudiments of experimental design and statistics that they needed to pass. However, I can't avoid the impression that there is still a lot of the looser gear floating about. This is perhaps because the only psychology that I read is "popular", in newspapers and magazines and such. I guess 100 psychology papers could be produced on a given topic, and only the one that editor of the Courier mail likes will get any space.

Example 1: a full-page in the newspaper from someone who set up an experiment in which six good-looking men and six good-looking women asked members of the opposite sex on campus to (a) have dinner with them (b) have sex with them. Unsurprisingly, many more men agreed to have sex with a stranger than did women. The researcher stated [not exact words]"The only possible conclusion is quite politically incorrect, but unavoidable. Evolution has made women biologically more wary than men", followed by more details of his model. Now for all I know, this assertion is quite true, but my point is that this researcher has been so unable to remove his own personal prejudices from the case, that he has eliminated without cause many other explanations, most notable among them that there are social pressures and effects that determine this kind of thing.

Example 2: A report by a psychology postgrad printed in the University paper. She has been recording the private conversations of people in public places, and notes that men and women have completely different modes of conversation. Men tend to be competitive and women cooperative in their communication. Question: how was the researcher able to remove her own beliefs from the situation when deciding whether a converser was being competitive rather than cooperative? If she and I were listening to a conversation, for instance, between new mothers about their children, I might consider competitive what she considered cooperative. There would be no way that I could remove myself from the equation. She also notes that women are more likely to interrupt each other than men (this, at least, is ennumerable), and she states that women were creating a tapestry of thought together. I might hear it and say the women were being rude. My view would be entirely subjective, and I would thus consider it unpublishable. How is it that she did not consider her so?

In short: if you want to know all about microbiology, you don't ask a bacterium. The human mind and soul are not ideal devices for studying psychology. Unless you can say that anyone, from any culture (even non-humans) would draw the same conclusions as you when given the same data, how could you ever get up the gall to publish?

Possibly all of the above is the result of a poor understanding of the subject matter. If so, you will do me a great favour by correcting me. 8^)
From: Andrew 24/08/99 16:47:04
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32408
Hi Daryn,

You're getting into deep philosophical waters here. Is science the quest for some objective truth or is it about building models for the world ? If it's about models then surely the predictive power of the model determines its usefulness.
From: helen 24/08/99 17:16:02
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32415

Hi Daryn,

I don't know if this is ignorance so much as a fairly accurate representation of what's popularly sold as psychology. I'm not familiar with either of the studies you're talking about, but I think you're absolutely right - we're not well designed to study ourselves, and subjectivity will always be an issue, in some fields of psych more than others (unless Chris' aliens had a change of heart and came back for a look. But then, I wonder if we'd be receptive to what they had to say?).

As far as the general issue of why bother goes, I think that if we're going to try to understand anything at all about people and what goes on with them, then applying the scientific method is one of many good ways to go about it - the only way if we want to predict anything. I don't think it's the only way to study people, but it's particularly good where we have things that we can measure really reliably, like word recognition, frequency and/or duration of specific behaviours, performance on reasoning puzzles, etc. This may be what you're referring to as "hard" - there's little or no room for subjectivity in the measures, although there may be in what's made of them. Even where we don't have particularly reliable measures, though, I still think the attempt is worthwhile, if only to question some of our anecdote/experience-based assumptions.

If the papers you're talking about were actually published in a peer-reviewed journal, I'd suggest the authors were able to be a bit more convincing about their arguments for evolutionary bases for "wariness", and about their definitions of "competitive" and "co-operative", respectively. I'd guess in the latter case, behaviours/speech acts which were a priori argued to be co-operative or competitive would have to have been stated as part of the intro/hypotheses, for the paper to be at all credible - probably based on a past, usually contentious, research. However, the phrase "tapestry of thought" makes me suspect that the researcher may have been doing something less science- and more discourse-oriented.

This is part of why replication and the horrible meta-analysis are so important in psych. Unfortunately what doesn't come across in these reports of one-off studies is all the people who disagree, often on just the grounds that you're stating. This is why I made the comment about despairing of ever really knowing anything much at all - none of it will be clear for a good few more decades, if then. In the meantime, findings continue to be reported by the mass media as though they're established facts, rather than very small blocks in a very big wall.

As for the evolutionary side of things, it's popping up everywhere and should be regarded with great suspicion wrt behaviour, but that's just my opinion. I think if anything, evolutionary psychologists suffer biology-envy - ah, the irony ;-).

:-)h
From: Andrew 24/08/99 17:48:40
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32421
Helen, is subjectivity such a big issue if the theories or models produced have strong predictive value ?
From: Dr. Ed G (Avatar) 24/08/99 21:43:33
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32438
Helen, sorry about the sweeping broadside implied towards all social and behavioural sciences. You're absolutely right, I think, that the basis for the urge to reduce and categorise everything in the natural world comes from somewhere inside the human psyche and not through a desire of practitioners of one discipline to try and emulate the perceived success of other disciplines. And you're correct that my reaction is one to the outpourings of more pop-writers than those in the recognised research literature.

In fact my main gripe is against socio-biologists of the likes of Wilson and ethologists of the likes of Dawkins, who draw very long and tenous analogies between various animal behaviours and human behaviours in a neat, easily digestible, and wrong manner that does little more than to sell books. To be fair, Dawkins has defended this position in "The Extended Phenotype" by arguing that he's been misunderstood and that obviously human biology is more complex, variable, and changeable, than people have inferred from his writings, but then arrogantly goes on to say that such misunderstandings are the fault of the reader and not his.

Finally, I don't wish to imply (although I probably did) that constructing models to try and describe basic modes of human behaviour is a pointless pursuit destined to failure because of the vast complexity of the human mind. That a problem is challenging is all th more reason to try and solve it. But the danger as I see it is that premature and incorrect conclusions may be jumped to, with potentially disasterous social implications when they land in the wrong hands (which they will do regardless of a researchers best intentions - history has shown us this with nauseating regularity - the use of appalingly bad IQ data being used to set immigration policy for almost the entirety of this century in the U.S. being but one example), without constant vigiliance to ensure that everyone is aware of the very real shortcomings of any such models.

An analogy can perhaps be drawn to nuclear physics. Just because "the bomb" is the principle tangible result of nuclear physics doesn't mean we should close our eyes to the potential of nuclear research (bothin terms of technology and raw human knowledge), but it does mean that we should be ever questioning not only the ethics, but the scientific validity, of all applications to which such research is put.

Soupie twist,
Ed G.


p.s. I really enjoyed reading your response.
From: Grant 24/08/99 21:58:26
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32439

DR. Ed G, is it just me, or has your Soupie twist server gone AWOL?
From: Dr. Ed G (Avatar) 24/08/99 22:07:14
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32440
It looks like it's gone down temporarily (I hope).

Soupie twist,
Ed G.

From: Mike 24/08/99 23:38:18
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32452
Helen,

I think most of us have at least some interest in human psychology as it is difficult to avoid interacting with others ... thus the popularity of pop psychology, horoscopes etc.

As a layman I find Goleman's work very interesting as he seems to address the human being and not concentrate on gender differences as Grey does, visa a vie Men are from Mars ..., with what appears to an amateur like me to be absolute tripe ... Pulp NON-Fiction.

In the pop-psych genre how does Goleman's work stand up? as I believe ("Emotional Intelligence" etc.) could address a lot of the commonality of humanity that Leith appears to be missing out on, as Dr Ed very eloquently pointed out (although it is very difficult to put an old head on young shoulders -- psych (biology?) lesson #1).
From: Dr. Ed G (Avatar) 25/08/99 4:31:25
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32468
p.s. I really enjoyed reading your response.

Jeez, I just read my postscript and on reflection it sounds really patronising... bum... what I meant was please don't get fed up with us (as other valuable contributers have) and go away, I genuinely like what you write.

Soupie twist,
Ed G.

From: helen 25/08/99 15:14:55
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32551

Hi Andrew,

Helen, is subjectivity such a big issue if the theories or models produced have strong predictive value ?

I think we may be talking about 2 kinds of subjectivity here. In measurement terms, the problem with subjectivity is not so much that it's subjective (sometimes a subjective approach is quite valuable in trying to get an understanding of how we relate to each other), but that it tends to mess up your reliability, which I think is the point Daryn was making. Any model that claims to have predictive power must involve reliable measures, both for the predictor and the criterion, otherwise you're going to have a lot of trouble showing any relationship at all between the things you're examining. Subjective measures can be made more reliable, though - by specifying objective indicators, by involving a number of judges in the process and requiring a high level of agreement among them, etc.

In general, "I wonder if..." terms, subjectivity/personal experience is exactly what does generate some of the models and theories in psychology. You just have to be very wary of it when you're testing them ;-)


Hi Dr Ed

no problem, and I totally agree - if you want to point fingers at mainstream psych for something (goodness knows I'd like to do more than that sometimes!), I think it should probably be for not doing enough to combat this kind of misappropriation and misapplication of findings (or just plain invention from stereotype...). It's just another battle in the science/pseudoscience war, but an especially insidious one - too often it's people with apparently reasonable qualifications which promote the worst stuff (Brand, Rushton, that nasty little economist at U New Orleans). It's only when you look a bit behind the scenes that you find, for example, that "Dr" John Gray got his degree from a correspondence school in California which operates under a kind of fee-paying endorsement from a county in Nevada (nice supplement to gambling income - perhaps Victoria would like to take that one up?). I'd love to know what he wrote about in his thesis ;-).

Hey, and I took the postscript at face value, so thanks! I like reading your posts too :-).


Hi Mike,

As a layman I find Goleman's work very interesting as he seems to address the human being and not concentrate on gender differences as Grey does, visa a vie Men are from Mars ..., with what appears to an amateur like me to be absolute tripe ... Pulp NON-Fiction.

In the pop-psych genre how does Goleman's work stand up? as I believe ("Emotional Intelligence" etc.) could address a lot of the commonality of humanity that Leith appears to be missing out on, as Dr Ed very eloquently pointed out (although it is very difficult to put an old head on young shoulders -- psych (biology?) lesson #1).

I think you're right in pointing out the difference between Goleman's stuff and Gray's - there's actually something quite vauable at the heart of what Goleman's trying to do, but I think he hasn't gone about investigating it as thoroughly as it should have been before selling it as a finished product (so very, very successfully ;-) ).

The concept of emotional intelligence was first suggested by a couple of Yale (educational?) psychologists, Salovey and Mayer, in about 1989. From memory, they were trying to account for the variation in students' success at school/uni, over and above what can be predicted from the dreaded standardised tests (I could be wrong here). The idea itself is a great one, and fits neatly into the tradition of multiple intelligences (social, mathematical, verbal etc.) which sprang up as an alternative point of view to the earlier concept of g, the general intelligence factor.

What Goleman's done is seen the main chance and run with it: the scales he publishes are reworked personality questionnaires, largely measuring psychoticism. That is, if you score well on his EQ measure, you know the "rules" of emotional engagements with other people (in western cultures, it should be noted), and you care to follow them: not very strong evidence for a kind of "intelligence", nor of anything particularly new. Apart from tidying up his operationalisation, to be really credible, he also needs to have established several kinds of validity for EQ, most particularly predictive validity: does high EQ (as he suggests measuring it or otherwise) predict anything, any behaviour at all, reliably? I don't know of anyone who's published results on this, but I'm looking forward to seeing them.

I also don't think he's dealt sufficiently with the emotions literature, but that's a pet bee in my bonnet - he's latched onto an increasing interest in the study of emotions, waved the word around a bit, and then avoided really getting into anything substantive about them, hiding behind related areas like group processes, w
From: helen 25/08/99 15:26:41
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32559

oops - continued:

... which I find disappointing and a bit deceptive.

I don't mean to imply that his books are totally without value, though, nor that they have no potential to help people. The mere fact that he's brought into the public domain the idea that there may be kinds of ability apart from mathematical and verbal deserves applause. I just think it's worth noting that they're not representative of how psych is usually done, and that they could have been vastly improved (in terms of contribution to knowledge, if not sales) if they'd been a bit more vigorous in the science department. But that's just my bias - I imagine Mr Goleman's pretty happy with his product ;-).

:-)helen
From: MikeE 25/08/99 15:29:01
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32565
Helen,

Can you fill me in on this new (alternate?) psychology -- something along the lines of self interest vs duty whereby they argue that most of what we do is in a sense of duty vs self gratification -- especially in regard to some more junky pop psych (Michael Robbins?) viz "The POWER to (Whatever?)".
From: MikeE 25/08/99 15:37:11
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32574
Helen,

As a layman I found Goleman's work a bit like Steven Hawking's in that he gives an educated person a glimpse into the realm of his particular branch of speciality, whereas Grey seems to just muddy the waters and add to the stereotype debate (1950s model of society).
From: helen 25/08/99 16:04:53
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 32605

Hi MikeE,

I'm not at all familiar with the "power to be... " book/s, although I've seen ads for it on the bus. My general recommendation would be to treat it with skepticism; if it looks interesting, pay your $12 or whatever for the book, take out what's useful and leave the rest. I'm really not trying to give people a hard time for checking this stuff out, just trying to point out some of the reasons why it's not a good standard by which to judge psychology as a science.


As a layman I found Goleman's work a bit like Steven Hawking's in that he gives an educated person a glimpse into the realm of his particular branch of speciality, whereas Grey seems to just muddy the waters and add to the stereotype debate (1950s model of society).

Absolutely - but one difference between Goleman and Hawkings (among presumably rather a lot) is that Hawkings writes about fairly well-established areas in the field of physics/cosmology which have been extensively studied by lots of people for a relatively long time (I think - or have I completely misunderstood Hawkings' popularising?). Where physicists "just don't know", it's not through lack of trying, whereas where Goleman & co "just don't know", it's often because they haven't even begun yet (and often they're not admitting it, anyway ;-)). I genuinely don't think you can regard Goleman on the same footing as Hawkings, or even Dawkins or Gould for that matter.

Of course, there's also the small point that an entire industry has sprung up around EQ, which I think is an ethical side issue that cosmology is unlikely to have to deal with in quite the same way ;-)

:-)helen
From: MikeE 30/08/99 14:51:33
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 33758
Helen,

Can you fill me in on this new (alternate?) psychology -- something along the lines of self interest vs duty, whereby they argue that most of what we do is in a sense of duty vs self gratification?
From: helen 30/08/99 15:36:10
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 33770

Hi MikeE,

I'm not sure I can - can you give me some more info? It does sound very similar to any number of traditions in psych/sociology/anthropology: for example, duty to others could refer to Freud's superego, to cultural traditions which emphasise the place of the individual within his/her social group, to socialisation of norms and beliefs, or to a biological or cultural basis for our desire to fit in with our social group. Conversely, self-gratification may refer to Freud's id, to cultural traditions which emphasise individual identity and achievement, etc. The two sets of motivations for behaviour are often seen to be in conflict, but not always; take Paul's nice example of getting a buzz out of his partner's reaction when he brings her flowers - sometimes fulfilling our "duty to others" can also be self gratifying.

But none of this is new or alternative, which is why I suspect you may mean something I haven't run into. Could you expand a little, and I'll see what I can dig up?

:-)helen
From: MikeE 30/08/99 16:47:09
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 33788
Hi Helen,

I've heard that there is something along the lines of "Alternate" (or some synonym) Psychology which looks at co-dependence systems e.g. an alternative in the biological world to "survival of the fittest" e.g. anti - competition, more along the lines of co-operation, which extrapolates to human Psychology of interactivity and co-dependence to the level of "duty" to others/society (e.g. where the emotion guilt comes in).

E.g. ecosystems depending on predators for population control -- no predators, population gets out-of-hand, consumes all resources, etc. emphasizes the co-dependence (e.g. parasite/host scenarios).

Regards,
MikeE.

P.S.
I am not an avid reader of pop-psych except for what I used to catch in the 'Digest years ago .... but a close friend devours the stuff non-stop and I am concerned at the possible impact of some of the guff (she) reads .... especially with the emphasis on the self and not others.
We had a discussion recently on the self/duty issue recently brought up by this self empowerment stuff -- this Anthony Robbins guy puts forward the argument you outlined -- doing a (good) deed so that ultimately YOU will benefit personally -- I believe as someone (Psychologist) on Radio National stated recently that if we tallied it up we would do more out of duty than self-interest.
From: helen 30/08/99 17:18:26
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 33798

hmmm - still not ringing any loud bells, I'm afraid. I'm a bit confused about the usefulness of dividing behaviour up into "things I do for myself" and "things I do for others". Humans if nothing else are social animals - we survive and flourish only in contact with other humans. Surely most of the things we do will have an element of both kinds of motivation in them? I think we can be self-interested without being self-centred: part of coping well with our environment (including our social environment) is negotiating the satisfaction of our own needs while taking into account the needs of others. Making broad statements about whether humans are fundamentally selfish or fundamentally altruistic misses the point that we can be both.

I would certainly agree that much of the (American) self-help pulp focuses on self-gratification to such an extent that it contradicts itself: the way to "happiness" (or fulfilment, or whatever) is not by chasing happiness as an end in itself. It all strikes me as being quite similar to the dieting industry - none of this stuff works, but because it doesn't, for many people it sets up the next purchase of the next great hope, which I think is sad and dangerous.

:-)h
From: Chris (Avatar) 30/08/99 17:55:26
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 33801

Helen, perhaps it's a continuum rather than a division. While I agree that in the most part there are varying degrees of both hedonism and altruism in motivations, there can also be extrema in which only one is present.

I would find it interesting to compare the extent to which altruism is a factor for humans with (a) other social animals/insects and (b) non-social animals. I'm plumbing for high societal conditioning...

:o)
From: Leith 31/08/99 3:21:56
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 33902
Hi helen
I tend to believe along the lines of Dr Carmel or Carmen Lawrence's thinking.That men and women are naturally different in many senses but society comes along and reinforces it.
Men definitely suppress their emotions to a degree and women in many cases are given carte blanche with some emotions by society.But I'am a person who believes in taking every thing back to nature as a proverbial canvas and then attempt to fill in the 'foreground with information(s) presented.I do know that males are designed to be out in the elements(.Hence a beard. ) and their emotions are more elemental.More of a killer instinct,colder in the caring sense since not designed so much in child rearing.etc.And it doesn't matter how much in the future you try to equalise things these true colours unfortunately will remain under the surface the only thing you can do is provide laws that help in part to keep them under wraps.Human nature is at the root of every thing in our society,and are also the differences between males and females(no matter how big or small) I would not say the innate evolved differences are miniscule I'd say that they are at the root.As is human nature in our society(s)
From: Leith 31/08/99 3:55:50
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 33903
Astrology and others along the similar lines are emotionally based.I was stating this in the security blanket realm.A Guardian Angel to grasp onto.A reassurance that your future will be secure if you take the right steps.I was stating that this may be an important female emotion that may be innate But stated I'am not sure.
I've travelled around the world in mainly third world countries,which is most of the worlds population.And the women's lifestyle is not that much different than how we've evolved It's only been in the last few generation in the first world when women have been venturing more out into the working 'elemental"environment and focussing on other faculties and forsaking the focus of motherhood.Their lives ironically have gotten more tough with two jobs.
I feel these female emotions are generally wired in females brains but have been more suppressed in our changed society.Suppressed either by females deigning upon evolved emotions Or in most cases women having to suppress emotions in a different world.
From: Dr. Ed G (Avatar) 31/08/99 4:39:45
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 33904
But human nature in which society??? There's no such thing as a "null" society that we can probe to work out what the "natural" instincts of men and women are. And until you provide me with such a model all you can ever say is pure conjecture and wishful thinking.

I think the only thing I personally would bet any money on is the statement that we are fundamentally and intrinsically gregarious/social animals. As a result as children we are effectively social sponges. And it utterly impossible to extricate the effect of such early responsiveness of the individual to social conditioning. And any factual basis that claims of the intrinsic nature of men, women, causasians, aborigines, homosexuals, coal miners, etc. have can be nothing more than pure coincidence,. and certainly cannot be effectively substantiated with raw data, because we have no raw data.

I'm reminded of a report I heard on the BBC World Service earlier this year when I was still in Sydney. They were talking about studies into the different behaviours exhibited among very young boys and girls in an attempt to extricate socially imposed differences. Firstly they made no mention or concession to the fact that from the moment we pop out of the womb we are absorbing and processing data from the world around us, and that that data can never, and is never, gender neutral. If you take a nanny, any nanny, and introduce them to a child (of whatever sex) who is dressed in pink, they will relate and interact with that child differently than if that child were dressed in blue. Nothing to do with genetalia. Nothing to do with facial hair. Nothing to do with Y chromosomes. Nothing to do with hormones.

Anyway, back to the story. They noted that very subtle differences in the modes of the boys and girls play (again, how you extricate a biased observer, I don't know) were observed. Where they were able to employ some sort of early childhood psychometric (a quantitative tool to attempt to measure behaviour on some unilinear scale) the average for girls and boys was indeed different. Okay, let's assume for the sake of argument that the established influence of social environment on even the very young was excluding by such measurements. Not once did they quote or make any reference to the statistic distribution of individuals on their psychometric scale. They didn't quote standard deviations, or even by how much, relative to their absolute scale, the averages were actually different by. There as a strong assumption that there should be very great differences, on the part of the researchers, and so potentially the subtlest of differences was given as evidence for worlds of difference. Very dodgy indeed!

The only concession that was made, in one single sentence at the very end of a 20 minute story, was that there was indeed a significant spead in the results. That there were a great many girls exhibiting "boyish" behaviour, and a great many boys exhibiting "girlish" behaviour. But for me, that's the whole point of the social reform that has occured over the past 300 years in the West. Even if there is a difference of, let's say 5 units, on a normal distribution, between the averages of the two groups, if there is a standard deviation of say 10, then a significant fraction of those from one group should, by all accounts, be categorised as belonging to the other group, and vice versa. The ludicrousness of such an exercise when conclusions are drawn to be applied to human potential in the real world is obvious.

The whole point of equality of access and opportunity is not so that everyone can become the same, or (as Germaine Greer eloquently points out) that women should become more like men, or that men should become more like women. The point is that society should be flexible enough to cater for the entire spectrum of human behaviour. Society should be able to exploit the very best potentials of every single individual within it, regardless of the preconceived notions of what pop-sociologists say their genitalia should limit them to. And if society fails to do that, it is not only those individuals that fail fit the average that will suffer, but the whole society in failling to realise the full potential of these individuals will suffer.

Universal equality is not about society engineering individuals to behave against their will and against their innate natures, but the diametric opposit - to adapt (in the most Darwinian sense of the word) society's institutions to allow all individuals to achieve the very best that they as unique individuals (not defined by the average) can achieve without the artificial barriers of race, gender, sexuality, creed, or class expectations.

You imply that we should all accept the innate urges, drives, and potentials, of some nebulous "innate" average. Indeed, why?

Soupie twist,
Ed G.

From: Dr. Ed G (Avatar) 31/08/99 6:28:33
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 33907
I feel these female emotions are generally wired in females brains but have been more suppressed in our changed society.

I guess my main point is, why do we need to know whether or not they are innate or not? Women might on average have different innate emotional behaviours. But the average never dictates the behaviour of the individual (except in as much as it applies pressure for the individual to conform).

I absolutely agree that what is categorised as "women's emotions" are indeed undervalued as a general rule in society (although I very much disagree that this is a phenomenon of the 20th century, or even of the second half of the second millenium). But this is not just to the detriment of women as a group, but men as a group as well, not to mention to society as a whole, as I mentioned in my last post. I agree, why should women be expected to conform to the machismo balderdash of the modern world? But I would extend that principle to why should MEN be expected to conform to the machismo balderdash of the modern world. For example I couldn't even begin to describe how much it shits me to TEARS, when I'm told by the popular media that I'm innately afraid of emotional commitment, or that I'm intrinsically unable to express myself emotionally to other men or women, for the simple empirical fact that I have a penis. Neither of these generalisations describes my emotional world even vaguely. And I don't think anyone would characterise me as particularly "effeminate" by any stretch of the imagination. So what utility can such generalisations, even if they were true for some narrowly defined "average", have for me, or indeed any individual.

So, yes, I absolutely agree that we should not be trying to force women into conforming to a "male" ideal in order to succeed in whatever field of human pursuit. Indeed, any and every human pursuit can only be enriched by a diversity of human experience and approach. But the potential benefits of such an approach are liable to benefit men just as much as women.

Soupie twist,
Ed G.

From: Dr. Ed G (Avatar) 31/08/99 6:33:19
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 33909
Sorry, to clarify, that last sentence should have read,

"But the potential results of challenging such an approach (of pigeon-holeing people on the basis of their sex) are liable to benefit men just as much as women."

Soupie twist,
Ed G.

From: MikeE 31/08/99 8:59:47
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 33912
Leith,


We can't deny gender differences, but I view these as SLIGHTLY different flavours of the same thing -- a human being.

Perhaps with age (which begets wisdom -- a BIG difference to intelligence) you will see this.

Perhaps at your age the differences are emphasized -- try observing how elderly couples/people relate -- your parents/grandparents etc., and I'm sure you will find the commonality emphasized.
From: Leith 31/08/99 16:17:49
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 34050
Environments suppresses some factors of our nature and draw out others.At the same time individual environments can teach you an expected mode or behaviour like praying every morning or superstitions.
You must remember females have been mothers and the emotions associated with it .Even before they were human beings So some hard wiring has definitely occurred.It has only been recent in our evolution when our rational faculties of the brain have been developed But its still only a small part of our brain.Males are mere "glorified females" complete with teats and a destructive testostone to maybe shortens life expectancy,definitely hair loss,and destruction of our planet and fauna including people
From: helen 31/08/99 17:35:47
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 34072

perhaps it's a continuum rather than a division. While I agree that in the most part there are varying degrees of both hedonism and altruism in motivations, there can also be extrema in which only one is present.

I certainly didn't mean to imply that there were equal parts of each in every behaviour, and I would agree with your suggestion of a continuum in preference to a dichotomy (you never would have guessed, right ;-) ). However, in this case I think the extrema may be more theoretical than practical considerations, as far as averages go: I think we're so bound up in our social environments that most "normal" behaviour probably contains more or less of both. You could almost define abnormal (socially proscribed, or at least out-of-the-ordinary) behaviour by the absence of one or the other - e.g.: killing another person to obtain food at one end, giving up your life to save a stranger's at the other. I should add that I'm just thinking aloud here, so feel free to point out the confounds in my thought experiment ;-).


I would find it interesting to compare the extent to which altruism is a factor for humans with (a) other social animals/insects and (b) non-social animals. I'm plumbing for high societal conditioning...

I'd agree... but why did such conditioning develop? Just playing devil's advocate :-)

:-)h
From: Dr. Ed G (Avatar) 1/09/99 2:07:56
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 34122
It can very convincingly argued that altruism developed/evolved because it is the most effective and stable means of sucess in even the most competitive of environments. Contrary to popular opinion, in gaming theory in which there is,

(i) a high chance of recurring interaction (when there is a high probability that when dealing with another individual or group of individuals you will have to do so may times in a lifetime), and
(ii) a higher gain for mutual cooperation than for mutual non-cooperation,

even if there is a higher gain still if one party doesn't cooperate and the other does (in which case the the non-cooperative party gains the most), cooperative strategies such as "tit-for-tat" (A simple strategy in which you cooperate with someone who just recently cooperated with you, and you don't cooperate with someone who just recently didn't cooperate with you, but in which a single subsequent act of cooperation (on the part of other party) regains cooperative behaviour on your part) are the most successful strategies.

I highly recommend the book "The Evolution of Cooperation" by Robert Axelrod who shows that most of the conditions in which a "prisoners dilema" (in which non-cooperation against a cooperating opponent gain the highest reward, cooperation with a cooperating opponent gets the next highest reward, non-cooperation with a non-cooperating opponent then next, and cooperation with a non-cooperating opponent gains the least reward) exist in the real world, the most successful and stable strategy is a cooperative tit-for-tat strategy. It explains the theoretical basis of such conclusions (the results of which suprised even the author), and describes instances in the real world in which such cooperation spontaneously evolved between groups that were trying to kill each other (the English and the Germans) in trench warfare (or in this case a grass roots mutually agreed stalemate) during world war one.

Read it. You will be astounded! (and, I suspect, very pleasantly suprised)

Soupie twist,
Ed G.

From: helen 1/09/99 9:20:10
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 34132

:-) - you might also try:

Ridley's Origins of Virtue
Arnhart's Darwinian Natural Right
de Waal's Good Natured: The origins of right and wrong in humans and other animals
Wright's the Moral Animal

Incidentally, Darwin, Westermarck and Wilson have all argued for an evolutionary basis for co-operation and altruism, and Dawkins includes quite an extensive summary of Axelrod's work in the 1989 edition of the Selfish Gene (titled "Nice guys finish first"), including a treatment of how a small population of "tit-fot-tats" might slowly take over a larger population of "cheats" (or other "selfish" strategists). Go the ESS!

However, doesn't Axelrod's model suggest that a small population of cheats will probably persist in a large population of co-operators (or alternatively, a population of co-operators who cheat a small percentage of the time), since they can get away with cheating serially by trying to avoid running into the entities they've cheated in the past?

:-)h

From: sam 1/09/99 9:28:47
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 34134
Isn't there a problem? - while we can see it would be beneficial for us all, if _everyone_ behaved in an altruistic manner, it would be hard to find a personal reason, why _I_ would want to behave in that way. Surely what we would want is that everyone else behaved altruistically, and I leeched off them? It's starting to sound like psychological egoism now... :)
From: helen 1/09/99 10:20:29
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 34137

I think that's the purest form of the selfish gene = selfish behaviour argument, but as Axelrod's mathematical modelling suggests, and a quick look at human behaviour also suggests, it probably isn't that simple.

Bear in mind now, I'm not arguing biological determinism for behaviour, just checking out the possibilities ;-).

To paraphrase Axelrod: Let's take any random group of entities, and for convenience assign them a fairly limited set of behaviours: co-operating or cheating. We also need to give them an environment in which there are potential losses and gains: the gains for both entities in a pair co-operating are fairly good, the losses for both trying to cheat fairly bad, the gain for cheating when the other entity tries to co-operate is really good, and the loss for getting cheated is really bad ( = "the Prisoners' dilemma"). Obviously the temptation to cheat is going to be high, but if both entities cheat, they lose.

Now also for convenience we'll pick a couple of simple behavioural strategies, and call those entities that always try to cheat each other "cheaters", those that always co-operate regardless of how they've been treated "suckers", and those that change their behaviour in response to how they've been treated by a given entity in the past, but whose starting move is to co-operate, "tit-for-tats", (i.e.: if the other entity co-operated, they co-operate; if it cheated, they cheat).

When you pair off every possible combination of these entities and feed them into a computer programme designed to play one against the other in an iterated prisoners' dilemma (each gets the opportunity to make a choice over several turns of the game, 25 I think in Axelrod's original paper), you find that the suckers do very badly, the cheaters a little better, and the tit-for-tats remarkably well. Note that when a tit-for-tat plays another tit-for-tat, since the starting move is to co-operate, the only behaviour is co-operating, so they look a lot like suckers.

Now let's make it a little more lifelike: entities that incur too many losses die; entities that do well are able to reproduce and look after their offspring (who of course behave in the exact same way, since we're assuming behaviour can be inherited here). When you iterate the game on these rules, from memory you end up with a large population of tit-for-tats with a very small population of cheaters in it (Dr Ed?). Since the population reaches a stable set of characteristics (further iterations produce no change in these proportions), the remaining behavioural strategies are said to be evolutionarily stable strategies (ESSs), since they persist in the population over time.

OK, so that's way too simple a model to account for human behaviour in its complex entirety, but it does provide a good reason to think that co-operation/altruism at least could have evolved by natural selection. It sheds some light on Trivers' biological concept of reciprocal altruism, and there are observations from psychology which fit in with it quite nicely. For example, in cross-cultural work on emotions, one of the so-called universals is disgust: people from anywhere in the world can recognise an expression of disgust on another person's face, regardless of where the second person comes from. One of the key things which provokes disgust across cultures (other than food that's gone off, or other rank smells/tastes) is an interpretation of another person's behaviour as being immoral. Also across cultures, the behavioural tendency which comes with disgust is rejection or withdrawal. Anger is similarly implicated cross-culturally in reactions to moral/immoral events, but the key behavioural feature is a desire to reverse the event, and/or to exact retribution from the person responsible.

So perhaps we're all tit-for-tats, on the eternal look-out for cheats: maybe we have hard-wired behaviours for dealing with cheaters, which are especially linked with our limbic (emotional) system. I'm reluctant to take the account too far, but I do think it's a nice alternative to this ceaseless "selfish gene" guff. Dawkins was sloppy - "selfish" was a rather poor choice of words, I think. Behaviour can be altruistic whilst still being successful in an evolutionary sense.

:-)h
From: Martin B 1/09/99 10:21:33
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 34138
Sure you can do better by not acting altruistically... until you run into someone else like yourself.

As I remember Axelrod...

A cheat can do better than Tit-for-Tat... but only barely.

Two cheats however get locked into a cycle of mutual self-destruction when interacting.

So as soon as the number of cheats in a population gets sufficiently large that they have a chance of interacting with another cheat, rather than with cooperators, they start to do quite badly.

Thus the stable number of cheats in a population of tit-for-tat is very low.
From: MikeE 1/09/99 15:54:47
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 34256
Re:

"You must remember females have been mothers and the emotions associated with it ."

Ever been a father?

... Or is this forum like talking to people who have taken driving lessons by correspondence course?
From: Dr. Ed G (Avatar) 2/09/99 21:55:26
Subject: re: Women's Emotions post id: 34784
Yes, there will always be "cheats", but it doesn't follow necessarily that the cheats will be the most successful except in a marginal way (the more successful a cheating strategy works, the more cheats there will be, the less successful that strategy will be, and so success by cheating is self-limiting within a population).

I just wanted to point out that there are absolute benefits to cooperation, and than such cooperation can be the dominant strategy even without conscious human morality.

Soupie twist,
Ed G.

This forum is un-moderated. The views and opinions expressed are those of the individual poster and not the ABC. The ABC reserves the right to remove offensive or inappropriate messages.