
Costly but worthless gifts facilitate courtship - bootload
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1559891/?tool=pubmed
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cduan
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).

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joe_the_user
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
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
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.

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iron_ball
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.

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insickness
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.

~~~
nostrademons
There's countersignaling at play too. A woman has very little information
about your true "value" at first blush. If you buy drinks for her, that
indicates that you think she must be a good catch, i.e. she's out of your
league. Knowing nothing about you other than that you think she's out of your
league, why should she go out with you?

So guys "play it cool" as a way of signaling that their true social value is
well above the woman's, and they don't need to play her with gifts for them to
be worth paying attention to. It's a way of saying "I'm so cool that I don't
need to buy you drinks to make you pay attention to me."

That's why dating is usually described as push/pull. You want to signal your
interest and commitment to a woman. However, if you signal _too_ hard, then
the impression she gets is that you have nothing to offer other than your
undying love (hence "coming on too strong"). But if you signal too little,
it's indistinguishable from someone who doesn't care about her at all.

~~~
bootload
_"... So guys "play it cool" as a way of signaling that their true social
value is well above the woman's, and they don't need to play her with gifts
for them to be worth paying attention to It's a way of saying "I'm so cool
that I don't need to buy you drinks to make you pay attention to me."_

Spot on observation. Obligatory reference to Feynman, _"Surely You're Joking,
Mr. Feynman!"_ cf _"You Just Ask Them?"_.

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dcx
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
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).

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brudgers
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
<http://xkcd.com/182/>

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Read_the_Genes
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/forthcomi...](http://octavia.zoology.washington.edu/publications/forthcoming/BergstromEtAl07.pdf)

This is a chapter from a book (P. Zak, ed. Moral Markets: The Critical Role of
Values in the Economy. Princeton University Press).

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firemanx
This makes me immediately thing of the 5 Love Languages:

<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.

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

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stretchwithme
The BEST Presents for GIRLS:

    
    
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ovdO1QV2Jg

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

