Prestige status is surprisingly useless in domestic life, and dominance status is surprisingly often held by the female side, even in traditional “patriarchal” societies.
Examples: Hu Shih, the foremost intellectual of 1920s China (Columbia PhD, professor of Peking University and later its president), being “afraid” of his illiterate, foot-bound wife and generally deferring to her. Robin Hanson’s wife vetoing his decision to sell stocks ahead of COVID, and generally not trusting him to trade on their shared assets.
Not really sure why or how to think about this, but thought I’d write down this observation… well a couple of thoughts:
Granting or recognizing someone’s prestige may be a highly strategic (albeit often subconscious) decision, not something you just do automatically.
These men could probably win more dominance status in their marriages if they tried hard, but perhaps decided their time and effort was better spent to gain prestige outside. (Reminds me of comparative advantage in international trade, except in this case you can’t actually trade the prestige for dominance.)
The Robin Hanson example doesn’t show that dominance is held by his wife, Peggy Jackson, unless you have tweets from her saying that she decided to trade a lot of stocks, he tried to veto it, and she overruled his veto and did it anyway. They could have a rule where large shared investment decisions are made with the consent of both sides. Some possibilities:
You’re surprised by the absence of male dominance, not the presence of female dominance.
You interpreted a partner-veto as partner-dominance, instead of joint decision-making.
Peggy Jackson is dominant in their relationship but you picked a less compelling example.
This from the same tweet reads as Robin Hanson getting his way in a dispute:
I stocked us up for 2 mo. crisis, though wife resisted, saying she trusted CDC who said 2 wk. is plenty.
You seem to have left out the fact that Robin Hanson is a renowned economics expert and likely has more skill in deciding when to sell stocks than his spouse.
I think modeling the social dynamics of two people in a marriage with status, a high-level abstraction typically applied for groups, doesn’t make much sense. Game theory would make more sense imo.
@Lukas Finnveden I originally heard it in a Chinese language YouTube video about Hu Shih. I tried to look up a reference before making the post, but couldn’t find anything online that was well-sourced so decided not to cite anything, but this is the best that I can find, with English translation below:
AI translated article about Hu Shih’s marriage
The Marriage of Hu Shih and Jiang Dongxiu: One of the Great Oddities of the Republican Era
“You want a divorce? Fine. Since you don’t want us anymore, I’ll kill our two sons first, then kill myself right in front of you!” Jiang Dongxiu said, full of grief and indignation.
Hu Shih looked in horror at the kitchen knife held to the neck of his 5-year-old son, Liwang, and at his 2-year-old son, Sidu, in his wife’s arms. Terrified, he fled. All thoughts of divorce could go to hell.
The woman holding the kitchen knife was Jiang Dongxiu, the arranged-marriage wife of Hu Shih, a leader of the New Culture Movement and a great literary master. Their marriage was known as one of the “Great Oddities of the Republican Era.”
The pairing of a cultural elite with an uneducated village woman was not surprising in itself; Lu Xun, Xu Zhimo, and Yu Dafu all abandoned their first wives. What seemed strange was that Hu Shih never abandoned Jiang Dongxiu.
Was Jiang Dongxiu Hu Shih’s true love? No. Hu Shih agreed to marry Jiang Dongxiu entirely to please his mother. Thus, the thirteen-year-old boy and the fourteen-year-old girl were engaged. Afterwards, Hu Shih began his thirteen-year journey of study in Shanghai and the United States, while the yet-to-be-wed Jiang Dongxiu moved into the Hu family home to care for his mother.
During his studies in America, Hu Shih met the beautiful and intelligent American woman, Edith Clifford Williams.
[“Although in the past forty-eight hours, I have already written you two letters and a postcard, I can’t resist writing another letter...”]
From excerpts of their letters, one can see the fiery passion in their relationship. During this same period, Hu Shih’s views on women’s education also changed:
The purpose of women’s education is not to prepare them to be good wives and mothers, but to cultivate free and independent women.
This shift in thinking guided his actions. Across the ocean, Jiang Dongxiu received a letter from Hu Shih asking to break off the engagement.
Hu Shih’s formidable mother said bluntly, “This is absolutely impossible, get that idea out of your head!” At the same time, she wrote a letter to Edith’s mother, informing her of the fact that Hu Shih already had a fiancée. In the end, this transnational romance was crushed by the iron will of the two matriarchs.
In 1917, the 27-year-old Hu Shih and the 28-year-old Jiang Dongxiu were finally married. Who could have known that behind this seemingly happy ending was the beginning of a nightmare.
At the wedding, the person who caught Hu Shih’s eye was not his bride, but the bridesmaid, Cao Chengying, who called him “Brother Mi.”
Cao Chengying loved flowers and literature. In her letters to Hu Shih’s wife, “Sister-in-law Dongxiu,” she would enclose poems for “Brother Mi” to appreciate, which Hu Shih was always delighted to do.
The affair between them began during a visit. When Hu Shih was recuperating from an illness in Hangzhou, Cao Chengying, who worked there, went to visit him. The two toured Hangzhou together for four days. As they parted, he gave her a short vernacular poem titled “West Lake.”
The West Lake I dreamed of for seventeen years, Cannot cure my illness, But instead makes it worse ... Now that I’ve returned, I only find it more lovely, And thus cannot bear to leave so soon.
A few days later, Hu Shih secretly traveled from Shanghai to the shores of West Lake in Hangzhou, rented a few rooms in a temple, and lived with Cao Chengying for three months. Afterwards, he went home and formally asked his wife for a divorce, to which Jiang Dongxiu gave her forceful response with a kitchen knife.
From then on, Hu Shih never mentioned divorce again and became the model of a henpecked husband in literary circles. He even wrote the “New Three Obediences and Four Virtues Song”:
[The Three Obediences: One must obey when the wife gives an order; one must follow along when the wife goes shopping or plays mahjong; one must blindly obey when the wife loses her temper for the wrong reason. The Four Virtues: One must be willing to spend when the wife buys things; one must be able to endure when the wife gets angry; one must remember the wife’s birthday; one must be able to wait when the wife is dressing up to go out.]
As for Cao Chengying, she could only grieve in sorrow and had to abort the child she was carrying.
Can a relationship last long based only on threats and intimidation? A kitchen knife can kill, but it can also express tenderness.
Jiang Dongxiu could use a kitchen knife to defend her marriage, but she could also cook Hu Shih’s favorite Anhui dish, “Yipin Guo.” She provided meticulous care in their daily life, an all-powerful homemaker who never let Hu Shih worry about a thing. In her interactions with her husband, she would even speak straightforward words of love:
[“Mr. Gao said you can’t live in Shanghai anymore, he said your health this time is not as good as before. Today I heard him say you are not very well, and my heart felt like it was being cut by a knife. No matter what, I beg you, as soon as you see my letter, to hurry back to Beijing. I have been sick for three days...”]
This was a letter Hu Shih received from his wife while he was ill. Although it was filled with misspelled words, it delighted him, and he even wrote a poem in response:
Sick in bed, I get a letter from my wife, Not even eight full lines of paper; Nothing of importance in it, Yet it makes me quite happy.
In this back-and-forth, sweetness was found between the lines. The village woman with bound feet, Jiang Dongxiu, used both hard and soft tactics to manage the great literary master Hu Shih, securing her own position and growing old together with him.
Some quotes from it:
A few days later, Hu Shih secretly traveled from Shanghai to the shores of West Lake in Hangzhou, rented a few rooms in a temple, and lived with Cao Chengying for three months. Afterwards, he went home and formally asked his wife for a divorce, to which Jiang Dongxiu gave her forceful response with a kitchen knife.
From then on, Hu Shih never mentioned divorce again and became the model of a henpecked husband in literary circles. He even wrote the “New Three Obediences and Four Virtues Song”:
[The Three Obediences: One must obey when the wife gives an order; one must follow along when the wife goes shopping or plays mahjong; one must blindly obey when the wife loses her temper for the wrong reason. The Four Virtues: One must be willing to spend when the wife buys things; one must be able to endure when the wife gets angry; one must remember the wife’s birthday; one must be able to wait when the wife is dressing up to go out.]
intuitively, I would expect any hard coded psychological meta-rule that allows a wife to prevent her husband from day trading significant fractions of their wealth based on facts and logic to be a massive net positive to reproductive fitness over the past 3000 years. It clearly didn’t work this time, but that doesn’t mean it was a bad idea over a population.
It is easier to impress people who know you less, because you can choose what to show them, and they don’t see the rest.
For example, a painter can show his 20 best paintings he made during the last 10 years at an exhibition. People are deeply impressed. His wife also knows about hundreds of paintings he destroyed because he thought they were ugly, and about months when he didn’t paint anything and he was just sitting depressed at home and drinking alcohol. His wife is much less impressed. She would appreciate more help at home and with kids; also the money he brings is negligible, and he spends most of it on alcohol anyway.
This is a fictional example, but the idea is that the public sees your best, while the people around you see your average.
Who knows, maybe Robin Hanson shares his contrarian ideas with his wife first, she convinces him to abandon the most absurd ones, and he publishes the rest. Maybe after hearing all the crazy ideas we didn’t hear, it made perfect sense to distrust his ideas about selling stocks. -- I am just imagining all this; I have no evidence for that.
Prestige status is surprisingly useless in domestic life, and dominance status is surprisingly often held by the female side, even in traditional “patriarchal” societies.
Examples: Hu Shih, the foremost intellectual of 1920s China (Columbia PhD, professor of Peking University and later its president), being “afraid” of his illiterate, foot-bound wife and generally deferring to her. Robin Hanson’s wife vetoing his decision to sell stocks ahead of COVID, and generally not trusting him to trade on their shared assets.
Not really sure why or how to think about this, but thought I’d write down this observation… well a couple of thoughts:
Granting or recognizing someone’s prestige may be a highly strategic (albeit often subconscious) decision, not something you just do automatically.
These men could probably win more dominance status in their marriages if they tried hard, but perhaps decided their time and effort was better spent to gain prestige outside. (Reminds me of comparative advantage in international trade, except in this case you can’t actually trade the prestige for dominance.)
The Robin Hanson example doesn’t show that dominance is held by his wife, Peggy Jackson, unless you have tweets from her saying that she decided to trade a lot of stocks, he tried to veto it, and she overruled his veto and did it anyway. They could have a rule where large shared investment decisions are made with the consent of both sides. Some possibilities:
You’re surprised by the absence of male dominance, not the presence of female dominance.
You interpreted a partner-veto as partner-dominance, instead of joint decision-making.
Peggy Jackson is dominant in their relationship but you picked a less compelling example.
This from the same tweet reads as Robin Hanson getting his way in a dispute:
You seem to have left out the fact that Robin Hanson is a renowned economics expert and likely has more skill in deciding when to sell stocks than his spouse.
I think modeling the social dynamics of two people in a marriage with status, a high-level abstraction typically applied for groups, doesn’t make much sense. Game theory would make more sense imo.
@Lukas Finnveden I originally heard it in a Chinese language YouTube video about Hu Shih. I tried to look up a reference before making the post, but couldn’t find anything online that was well-sourced so decided not to cite anything, but this is the best that I can find, with English translation below:
AI translated article about Hu Shih’s marriage
The Marriage of Hu Shih and Jiang Dongxiu: One of the Great Oddities of the Republican Era
“You want a divorce? Fine. Since you don’t want us anymore, I’ll kill our two sons first, then kill myself right in front of you!” Jiang Dongxiu said, full of grief and indignation.
Hu Shih looked in horror at the kitchen knife held to the neck of his 5-year-old son, Liwang, and at his 2-year-old son, Sidu, in his wife’s arms. Terrified, he fled. All thoughts of divorce could go to hell.
The woman holding the kitchen knife was Jiang Dongxiu, the arranged-marriage wife of Hu Shih, a leader of the New Culture Movement and a great literary master. Their marriage was known as one of the “Great Oddities of the Republican Era.”
The pairing of a cultural elite with an uneducated village woman was not surprising in itself; Lu Xun, Xu Zhimo, and Yu Dafu all abandoned their first wives. What seemed strange was that Hu Shih never abandoned Jiang Dongxiu.
Was Jiang Dongxiu Hu Shih’s true love? No. Hu Shih agreed to marry Jiang Dongxiu entirely to please his mother. Thus, the thirteen-year-old boy and the fourteen-year-old girl were engaged. Afterwards, Hu Shih began his thirteen-year journey of study in Shanghai and the United States, while the yet-to-be-wed Jiang Dongxiu moved into the Hu family home to care for his mother.
During his studies in America, Hu Shih met the beautiful and intelligent American woman, Edith Clifford Williams.
[“Although in the past forty-eight hours, I have already written you two letters and a postcard, I can’t resist writing another letter...”]
From excerpts of their letters, one can see the fiery passion in their relationship. During this same period, Hu Shih’s views on women’s education also changed:
The purpose of women’s education is not to prepare them to be good wives and mothers, but to cultivate free and independent women.
This shift in thinking guided his actions. Across the ocean, Jiang Dongxiu received a letter from Hu Shih asking to break off the engagement.
Hu Shih’s formidable mother said bluntly, “This is absolutely impossible, get that idea out of your head!” At the same time, she wrote a letter to Edith’s mother, informing her of the fact that Hu Shih already had a fiancée. In the end, this transnational romance was crushed by the iron will of the two matriarchs.
In 1917, the 27-year-old Hu Shih and the 28-year-old Jiang Dongxiu were finally married. Who could have known that behind this seemingly happy ending was the beginning of a nightmare.
At the wedding, the person who caught Hu Shih’s eye was not his bride, but the bridesmaid, Cao Chengying, who called him “Brother Mi.”
Cao Chengying loved flowers and literature. In her letters to Hu Shih’s wife, “Sister-in-law Dongxiu,” she would enclose poems for “Brother Mi” to appreciate, which Hu Shih was always delighted to do.
The affair between them began during a visit. When Hu Shih was recuperating from an illness in Hangzhou, Cao Chengying, who worked there, went to visit him. The two toured Hangzhou together for four days. As they parted, he gave her a short vernacular poem titled “West Lake.”
The West Lake I dreamed of for seventeen years,
Cannot cure my illness,
But instead makes it worse
...
Now that I’ve returned,
I only find it more lovely,
And thus cannot bear to leave so soon.
A few days later, Hu Shih secretly traveled from Shanghai to the shores of West Lake in Hangzhou, rented a few rooms in a temple, and lived with Cao Chengying for three months. Afterwards, he went home and formally asked his wife for a divorce, to which Jiang Dongxiu gave her forceful response with a kitchen knife.
From then on, Hu Shih never mentioned divorce again and became the model of a henpecked husband in literary circles. He even wrote the “New Three Obediences and Four Virtues Song”:
[The Three Obediences: One must obey when the wife gives an order; one must follow along when the wife goes shopping or plays mahjong; one must blindly obey when the wife loses her temper for the wrong reason. The Four Virtues: One must be willing to spend when the wife buys things; one must be able to endure when the wife gets angry; one must remember the wife’s birthday; one must be able to wait when the wife is dressing up to go out.]
As for Cao Chengying, she could only grieve in sorrow and had to abort the child she was carrying.
Can a relationship last long based only on threats and intimidation? A kitchen knife can kill, but it can also express tenderness.
Jiang Dongxiu could use a kitchen knife to defend her marriage, but she could also cook Hu Shih’s favorite Anhui dish, “Yipin Guo.” She provided meticulous care in their daily life, an all-powerful homemaker who never let Hu Shih worry about a thing. In her interactions with her husband, she would even speak straightforward words of love:
[“Mr. Gao said you can’t live in Shanghai anymore, he said your health this time is not as good as before. Today I heard him say you are not very well, and my heart felt like it was being cut by a knife. No matter what, I beg you, as soon as you see my letter, to hurry back to Beijing. I have been sick for three days...”]
This was a letter Hu Shih received from his wife while he was ill. Although it was filled with misspelled words, it delighted him, and he even wrote a poem in response:
Sick in bed, I get a letter from my wife,
Not even eight full lines of paper;
Nothing of importance in it,
Yet it makes me quite happy.
In this back-and-forth, sweetness was found between the lines. The village woman with bound feet, Jiang Dongxiu, used both hard and soft tactics to manage the great literary master Hu Shih, securing her own position and growing old together with him.
Some quotes from it:
A few days later, Hu Shih secretly traveled from Shanghai to the shores of West Lake in Hangzhou, rented a few rooms in a temple, and lived with Cao Chengying for three months. Afterwards, he went home and formally asked his wife for a divorce, to which Jiang Dongxiu gave her forceful response with a kitchen knife.
From then on, Hu Shih never mentioned divorce again and became the model of a henpecked husband in literary circles. He even wrote the “New Three Obediences and Four Virtues Song”:
[The Three Obediences: One must obey when the wife gives an order; one must follow along when the wife goes shopping or plays mahjong; one must blindly obey when the wife loses her temper for the wrong reason. The Four Virtues: One must be willing to spend when the wife buys things; one must be able to endure when the wife gets angry; one must remember the wife’s birthday; one must be able to wait when the wife is dressing up to go out.]
Thanks!
intuitively, I would expect any hard coded psychological meta-rule that allows a wife to prevent her husband from day trading significant fractions of their wealth based on facts and logic to be a massive net positive to reproductive fitness over the past 3000 years. It clearly didn’t work this time, but that doesn’t mean it was a bad idea over a population.
It is easier to impress people who know you less, because you can choose what to show them, and they don’t see the rest.
For example, a painter can show his 20 best paintings he made during the last 10 years at an exhibition. People are deeply impressed. His wife also knows about hundreds of paintings he destroyed because he thought they were ugly, and about months when he didn’t paint anything and he was just sitting depressed at home and drinking alcohol. His wife is much less impressed. She would appreciate more help at home and with kids; also the money he brings is negligible, and he spends most of it on alcohol anyway.
This is a fictional example, but the idea is that the public sees your best, while the people around you see your average.
Who knows, maybe Robin Hanson shares his contrarian ideas with his wife first, she convinces him to abandon the most absurd ones, and he publishes the rest. Maybe after hearing all the crazy ideas we didn’t hear, it made perfect sense to distrust his ideas about selling stocks. -- I am just imagining all this; I have no evidence for that.
What about some examples from your real life? Asking because we don’t really know many details behind the 2 given examples.