Your instances do not include politically incorrect statements (racist, sexist, or various other -ists, depending on who exactly is listening), whether factually incorrect or otherwise, which seem to be one of if not the major sources of serious offense.
A racist statement is usually one that, if accepted by the listener, will tend to lower the status of the targeted race. Same for other -ists. I’m not seeing how it doesn’t fit with the status theory.
If I ran into a church picnic and started yelling obscenities, people would get offended, even though I’m not threatening their “high” status so much as advertising my “low” status.
Of course you’re threatening their high status. You’re implying that vulgar language is appropriate in their social circle, and the only way it could be appropriate is if they have low status.
you can make incredibly offensive comments towards a close friend with no ill effect, yet a person hearing the exchange might themselves be offended
Edit: On second thought, I think what’s going on here is that once you’re a close enough friend with someone, there is no longer a significant chance that you’d want to intentionally lower their status, so an otherwise offensive comment (especially in private) becomes a signal for close friendship. You’re signaling that you believe your friendship is so close that your friend won’t think you’re intending harm, and by not taking offense, your friend then signals the same thing. This probably takes a mathematical model to make completely clear, but maybe you get the gist.
Racist statements don’t seem to automatically imply lower status for the offended group. For example, many people found this “joke” offensive, even though the only claim seems to be that black people eat lots of watermelon. Similarly, a statement like “Jews control the financial system” could easily offend Jews, even though if anything it assigns them high status.
One way to look at this is that racist stereotypes promote viewing members of the target race as an undifferentiated mass with little or no individuality. This lowers the status of that group since individuality is important for status. The watermelon joke invokes such a stereotype of blacks.
BTW, I’m afraid that having espoused the idea that offense can be explained in terms of status, and having probably increased my own status in this community as a result, I’m likely quite biased on this issue now. I bet it’s much easier now for me to find arguments for this idea than counterarguments. So, reader beware. :)
If a statement concurrently attacks and asserts status of people in different ways, it can still be offensive. “Jews control the financial system” places Jews in out-group, which lowers their status, even though at the same time the statement seems to assert their status.
Stereotypes imply lack of individuality, which is usually low-status. As does grouping them as a single entity, especially if that grouping is made with a hint of sinisterity as would often be the case when talking about financial system -controlling jews.
There may be some “treating as a non-person” involved here: people are individuals with different tastes, goals, etc., and stereotypes like the ones you mention ignore this.
In Impro, Johnstone (mentioned by jajvirta below) actual defines friendship as relationship where we can play with status more freely without retaliation, for example by joking.
He compares this to when dogs play catch, always switching pursuer and pursued roles in the middle of the play. Of course dogs can both play catch, and really pursue prey.
i have to agree with psychohistorian with respect to the church-picnic example; it seems a bit of a stretch to say that their status is lowered by other people’s obscenities.
I think that offense is dependent on the relative positions of the offender and the offended. Who would take offense of what a drunk on the street says?
I would. Especially if in female company. Alone I might well ignore it, with a male group I might engage in ‘witty’ banter. With women present I might demand an apology or take a swing.
Can you say more about how the presence of women factors into your decision?
E.g., say we’re both in a mixed-gender group, I am drunk, and I start muttering obscenities (just to be specific, say I start repeating “fuck” over and over). If I’ve understood you, you’re more likely to demand an apology from me (and back up that demand with the threat of violence) than if we’re in an all-male group. Do you have any theories as to why?
Vaguely relatedly, does your decision change if I’m female?
Can you say more about how the presence of women factors into your decision?
He could, but I wouldn’t expect the set of people who are self aware and forthright about their signalling motives in such cases to overlap to a large degree with the set of people who start unprovoked street fights to prove their dominance through faux-altruism.
It’s possible we’re talking at cross purposes. I replied “I would” to “Who would take offense of what a drunk on the street says?”.
I was imagining someone shouting insults at me. When you say “unprovoked” I wonder if you’re imagining someone swearing randomly to himself. I’d take no offence at that.
You could be right there. Primed by djcb’s comment I was more considering “offense at the degree or nature of other people’s obscenities” than “offense at deliberate attempt to insult”. In the latter case I would replace “unprovoked” with “ill-advised”. It potentially also removes the “faux-altruism”, depending on whether it was you or your party member’s who the insults were directed at.
Nor would I as a general rule, but people occasionally surprise me, especially around here. I figure it’s worth the price of a question to find out.
I’m somewhat curious what the response will be myself, particularly now that I spent the price of an answer in changing his incentives. Now the most obvious (and most boring) ‘purely righteous, pro-social’ spin comes pre-emptively loaded with connotations of naivety and bullshit. I have no idea what the optimal response is now. It may even be the accurate one!
Indeed! Now torn between ‘desire to provide accurate data’, ‘desire to project correct image for future google searches’, ‘desire to look clever’ and ‘worry about advisability of confessing to anti-social personality traits in a public forum using my real name’.
I’m slightly reassured by my belief that most men would feel the same way. On the other hand if that belief’s wrong, it needs changing.
Indeed! Now torn between ‘desire to provide accurate data’, ‘desire to project correct image for future google searches’, ‘desire to look clever’ and ‘worry about advisability of confessing to anti-social personality traits in a public forum using my real name’.
Ironically any signalling of actual anti-social traits would have already taken place in the earlier declaration of potential violent tendencies. But given that you are signalling approximately normal human behavior—and behavior that tends to be respected in practice anyhow—the only negative signal you could actually give now is a weak signal that you are unable to signal smooth-hypocrisy.
I’m slightly reassured by my belief that most men would feel the same way. On the other hand if that belief’s wrong, it needs changing.
Almost universally, at least the ‘relative’ part. That is nearly all males would be more inclined to take offense and make violent dominance displays with female observers present. There is more to gain by making the move and more to lose by failing to. I am not sure whether the absolute part “I would [take offense at what a drunk stranger says]” applies to most males or not. Possibly. I know it doesn’t to myself—in general I don’t get offended by direct insults, particularly those with obscenities. Rather, I take offense at passive aggressive insults that superficially conform to polite norms. And as with djcb if the speaker is a random drunk stranger almost nothing they could say will offend me.
Incidentally, do you know of any evidence indicating that a given male’s differential likelihood of making violent dominance displays in the presence of female observers correlates, or fails to correlate, with his belief (1) that an arbitrarily selected female observer will be impressed by such displays, and/or with his desire to impress female observers?
I mean, “X is more likely to do Y in the presence of Z if and only if X believes Z will be impressed by Y and wishes to impress Z” is kind of an unnecessarily complicated way of expressing something much more general.
(1) Naturally, it would be an error to take people’s self-reports at face value about such beliefs, which makes testing such a theory tricky, but there are other ways to approach the question.
Incidentally, do you know of any evidence indicating that a given male’s differential likelihood of making violent dominance displays in the presence of female observers correlates, or fails to correlate, with his belief (1) that an arbitrarily selected female observer will be impressed by such displays, and/or with his desire to impress female observers?
An actual literal far mode belief interfering with status-and-mating related behaviors in real time? I suppose that could happen. I would confidently predict that the violent dominance displays are more likely soon after exposure to an image of a female they are attracted to than after exposure to a non-attractive visual stimulus.
Regarding knowing any citeable evidence: There are plenty of studies of “what males do after exposed to pretty girl pictures”. Whether the behaviors actually studied correspond sufficiently to the behaviors we are talking about here will depend on how your model of this kind of social behavior relates to your models human behaviors in things like ultimatum games (on either side), and altruism. ie. The studies constitute evidence for me, given that I already consider human behavior in this situation to be similar to one or both of those other contrived scenarios.
Regarding the correlation with desire to impress the selected female observers—I certainly hope there is. Observations of increased aggression with other males when a particular female is present is one of the strongest indications I use when noticing attractions between my peers. I even take it into account when organizing social events. With a couple of my close male friends in particular I know that the presence of attractive females makes it far more likely that we’ll have conflict. That being the case I’ll preferentially organize and attend social events with such combinations when I’m feeling particularly confident, patient and alert. That way I can absorb and diffuse the aggression rather than engage in tit-for-tat escalation like I may do if on “autopilot”.
Dodging your question, I doubt I’d react badly to the situation you describe. I’m British and one can hardly speak British English without saying “fuck”. Also we spend quite a lot of time drunk. If a friend got drunk and started to say “fuck” over and over again I’d probably be worried that something was wrong. I have trouble imagining why I’d be offended.
Above I meant that I’d take offence in response to a direct insult from a stranger, and my memory informs me that I’m likely to take more offence if there are others present, and even more so if there are women.
If the insulter was a woman then I imagine my reaction would be completely different. Mainly confusion and a desire to calm the situation down and get away from the crazy lady as soon as possible.
I’m trying to introspect on why and it’s surprisingly hard. What I’m remembering and imagining is mostly emotional (and moral in the sense of Pinker’s crazy angel), but I’m sure there is a calculation/bluffing/stake raising/status game going on as part of that. Why it seems more important not to back down when there are women present is completely beyond me, but it certainly does. I can feel an essay coming on.
(nods) The reactions you describe aren’t uncommon… and, as you intuit, often have a lot to do with status management. In my experience, learning to recognize the forces at play as they arise in real time is extremely useful.
A racist statement is usually one that, if accepted by the listener, will tend to lower the status of the targeted race. Same for other -ists. I’m not seeing how it doesn’t fit with the status theory.
Person A of race X takes offense when person B of race X makes an unduly strongly positive comment about race X. Assume no other friends of A know B, and there are no other people are around. Perhaps they’re the only two people at a bar.
There are two explanations that have been screened off; A can’t be worried about what other people will think, because there aren’t any. Similarly, A can’t be thinking that admonishing B will raise people’s perception of his social status, since only B is there to hear, and it won’t endear him to B. He could admittedly tell people a story about how he admonished B loudly after he said such an offensive statement, but such a prospect need not touch his mind for him to take offense.
So it boils down to Person A getting offended by a comment that raises person A’s status. This appears contradictory to your model. I would love to hear how it fails to be, especially if its a simple, intuitive explanation that seems to resemble how people actually think, and not a complex justification.
Your model would predict that people of race X would be supportive of such statements (even if they implicitly denigrate other races). This is, unfortunately, sometimes the case, but it is not generally the case (nor should it be) so status does not appear to be the primary operator here. If people can be offended by comments that raise their status or by comments that lower it, “ingroup status lowering / outgroup status raising” do not strike me as being accurate causes.
“Threatens social norms” explains all of these instances. It explains why some people get offended by comments about other races/genders/what-have-yous and why others don’t—they place different values on maintaining that specific part of the social order. It explains why such comments between friends are acceptable—they know they don’t mean it, so social norms aren’t threatened. I don’t think “status” covers the variety of reactions as well, and it does not seem as close to how it actually feels.
I’m not going to delve into specific examples for obvious reasons, but take a very offensive statement you can think of that goes “Race/gender X has quality M.” Then try applying M to a race/gender Z that M does not get stereotypically applied to. The statement will probably not be anywhere near as offensive. This seems confusing under the status model. It makes perfect sense under the social norms model. If M is not stereotypical of Z, no norm exists against the statement; you just sound weird or confused.
“Threatens social standards” seems to carve reality at the joints much more cleanly than “status” does, though if I’m wrong, I’d love to see counterexamples.
I think agree with you that status doesn’t quite seem to cover everything. But “threatens social standards” seems like too much of a black box to me to be a very satisfying explanation in itself. I guess if it suggests anything, it’s that offense, like social standards, have too many distinct, and not always sensible causes to be traced back to a single root.
A racist statement is usually one that, if accepted by the listener, will tend to lower the status of the targeted race. Same for other -ists. I’m not seeing how it doesn’t fit with the status theory.
Of course you’re threatening their high status. You’re implying that vulgar language is appropriate in their social circle, and the only way it could be appropriate is if they have low status.
Edit: On second thought, I think what’s going on here is that once you’re a close enough friend with someone, there is no longer a significant chance that you’d want to intentionally lower their status, so an otherwise offensive comment (especially in private) becomes a signal for close friendship. You’re signaling that you believe your friendship is so close that your friend won’t think you’re intending harm, and by not taking offense, your friend then signals the same thing. This probably takes a mathematical model to make completely clear, but maybe you get the gist.
Racist statements don’t seem to automatically imply lower status for the offended group. For example, many people found this “joke” offensive, even though the only claim seems to be that black people eat lots of watermelon. Similarly, a statement like “Jews control the financial system” could easily offend Jews, even though if anything it assigns them high status.
One way to look at this is that racist stereotypes promote viewing members of the target race as an undifferentiated mass with little or no individuality. This lowers the status of that group since individuality is important for status. The watermelon joke invokes such a stereotype of blacks.
BTW, I’m afraid that having espoused the idea that offense can be explained in terms of status, and having probably increased my own status in this community as a result, I’m likely quite biased on this issue now. I bet it’s much easier now for me to find arguments for this idea than counterarguments. So, reader beware. :)
If a statement concurrently attacks and asserts status of people in different ways, it can still be offensive. “Jews control the financial system” places Jews in out-group, which lowers their status, even though at the same time the statement seems to assert their status.
Stereotypes imply lack of individuality, which is usually low-status. As does grouping them as a single entity, especially if that grouping is made with a hint of sinisterity as would often be the case when talking about financial system -controlling jews.
There may be some “treating as a non-person” involved here: people are individuals with different tastes, goals, etc., and stereotypes like the ones you mention ignore this.
In Impro, Johnstone (mentioned by jajvirta below) actual defines friendship as relationship where we can play with status more freely without retaliation, for example by joking.
He compares this to when dogs play catch, always switching pursuer and pursued roles in the middle of the play. Of course dogs can both play catch, and really pursue prey.
i have to agree with psychohistorian with respect to the church-picnic example; it seems a bit of a stretch to say that their status is lowered by other people’s obscenities.
I think that offense is dependent on the relative positions of the offender and the offended. Who would take offense of what a drunk on the street says?
I would. Especially if in female company. Alone I might well ignore it, with a male group I might engage in ‘witty’ banter. With women present I might demand an apology or take a swing.
Can you say more about how the presence of women factors into your decision?
E.g., say we’re both in a mixed-gender group, I am drunk, and I start muttering obscenities (just to be specific, say I start repeating “fuck” over and over). If I’ve understood you, you’re more likely to demand an apology from me (and back up that demand with the threat of violence) than if we’re in an all-male group. Do you have any theories as to why?
Vaguely relatedly, does your decision change if I’m female?
He could, but I wouldn’t expect the set of people who are self aware and forthright about their signalling motives in such cases to overlap to a large degree with the set of people who start unprovoked street fights to prove their dominance through faux-altruism.
It’s possible we’re talking at cross purposes. I replied “I would” to “Who would take offense of what a drunk on the street says?”.
I was imagining someone shouting insults at me. When you say “unprovoked” I wonder if you’re imagining someone swearing randomly to himself. I’d take no offence at that.
You could be right there. Primed by djcb’s comment I was more considering “offense at the degree or nature of other people’s obscenities” than “offense at deliberate attempt to insult”. In the latter case I would replace “unprovoked” with “ill-advised”. It potentially also removes the “faux-altruism”, depending on whether it was you or your party member’s who the insults were directed at.
Nor would I as a general rule, but people occasionally surprise me, especially around here. I figure it’s worth the price of a question to find out.
I’m somewhat curious what the response will be myself, particularly now that I spent the price of an answer in changing his incentives. Now the most obvious (and most boring) ‘purely righteous, pro-social’ spin comes pre-emptively loaded with connotations of naivety and bullshit. I have no idea what the optimal response is now. It may even be the accurate one!
Indeed! Now torn between ‘desire to provide accurate data’, ‘desire to project correct image for future google searches’, ‘desire to look clever’ and ‘worry about advisability of confessing to anti-social personality traits in a public forum using my real name’.
I’m slightly reassured by my belief that most men would feel the same way. On the other hand if that belief’s wrong, it needs changing.
Ironically any signalling of actual anti-social traits would have already taken place in the earlier declaration of potential violent tendencies. But given that you are signalling approximately normal human behavior—and behavior that tends to be respected in practice anyhow—the only negative signal you could actually give now is a weak signal that you are unable to signal smooth-hypocrisy.
Almost universally, at least the ‘relative’ part. That is nearly all males would be more inclined to take offense and make violent dominance displays with female observers present. There is more to gain by making the move and more to lose by failing to. I am not sure whether the absolute part “I would [take offense at what a drunk stranger says]” applies to most males or not. Possibly. I know it doesn’t to myself—in general I don’t get offended by direct insults, particularly those with obscenities. Rather, I take offense at passive aggressive insults that superficially conform to polite norms. And as with djcb if the speaker is a random drunk stranger almost nothing they could say will offend me.
Incidentally, do you know of any evidence indicating that a given male’s differential likelihood of making violent dominance displays in the presence of female observers correlates, or fails to correlate, with his belief (1) that an arbitrarily selected female observer will be impressed by such displays, and/or with his desire to impress female observers?
I mean, “X is more likely to do Y in the presence of Z if and only if X believes Z will be impressed by Y and wishes to impress Z” is kind of an unnecessarily complicated way of expressing something much more general.
(1) Naturally, it would be an error to take people’s self-reports at face value about such beliefs, which makes testing such a theory tricky, but there are other ways to approach the question.
An actual literal far mode belief interfering with status-and-mating related behaviors in real time? I suppose that could happen. I would confidently predict that the violent dominance displays are more likely soon after exposure to an image of a female they are attracted to than after exposure to a non-attractive visual stimulus.
Regarding knowing any citeable evidence: There are plenty of studies of “what males do after exposed to pretty girl pictures”. Whether the behaviors actually studied correspond sufficiently to the behaviors we are talking about here will depend on how your model of this kind of social behavior relates to your models human behaviors in things like ultimatum games (on either side), and altruism. ie. The studies constitute evidence for me, given that I already consider human behavior in this situation to be similar to one or both of those other contrived scenarios.
Regarding the correlation with desire to impress the selected female observers—I certainly hope there is. Observations of increased aggression with other males when a particular female is present is one of the strongest indications I use when noticing attractions between my peers. I even take it into account when organizing social events. With a couple of my close male friends in particular I know that the presence of attractive females makes it far more likely that we’ll have conflict. That being the case I’ll preferentially organize and attend social events with such combinations when I’m feeling particularly confident, patient and alert. That way I can absorb and diffuse the aggression rather than engage in tit-for-tat escalation like I may do if on “autopilot”.
Dodging your question, I doubt I’d react badly to the situation you describe. I’m British and one can hardly speak British English without saying “fuck”. Also we spend quite a lot of time drunk. If a friend got drunk and started to say “fuck” over and over again I’d probably be worried that something was wrong. I have trouble imagining why I’d be offended.
Above I meant that I’d take offence in response to a direct insult from a stranger, and my memory informs me that I’m likely to take more offence if there are others present, and even more so if there are women.
If the insulter was a woman then I imagine my reaction would be completely different. Mainly confusion and a desire to calm the situation down and get away from the crazy lady as soon as possible.
I’m trying to introspect on why and it’s surprisingly hard. What I’m remembering and imagining is mostly emotional (and moral in the sense of Pinker’s crazy angel), but I’m sure there is a calculation/bluffing/stake raising/status game going on as part of that. Why it seems more important not to back down when there are women present is completely beyond me, but it certainly does. I can feel an essay coming on.
(nods) The reactions you describe aren’t uncommon… and, as you intuit, often have a lot to do with status management. In my experience, learning to recognize the forces at play as they arise in real time is extremely useful.
He believes females are more likely to be offended by that than males?
No, definitely not. It would be about me and how I am seen and see myself.
That’s certainly one possibility.
Person A of race X takes offense when person B of race X makes an unduly strongly positive comment about race X. Assume no other friends of A know B, and there are no other people are around. Perhaps they’re the only two people at a bar.
There are two explanations that have been screened off; A can’t be worried about what other people will think, because there aren’t any. Similarly, A can’t be thinking that admonishing B will raise people’s perception of his social status, since only B is there to hear, and it won’t endear him to B. He could admittedly tell people a story about how he admonished B loudly after he said such an offensive statement, but such a prospect need not touch his mind for him to take offense.
So it boils down to Person A getting offended by a comment that raises person A’s status. This appears contradictory to your model. I would love to hear how it fails to be, especially if its a simple, intuitive explanation that seems to resemble how people actually think, and not a complex justification.
Your model would predict that people of race X would be supportive of such statements (even if they implicitly denigrate other races). This is, unfortunately, sometimes the case, but it is not generally the case (nor should it be) so status does not appear to be the primary operator here. If people can be offended by comments that raise their status or by comments that lower it, “ingroup status lowering / outgroup status raising” do not strike me as being accurate causes.
“Threatens social norms” explains all of these instances. It explains why some people get offended by comments about other races/genders/what-have-yous and why others don’t—they place different values on maintaining that specific part of the social order. It explains why such comments between friends are acceptable—they know they don’t mean it, so social norms aren’t threatened. I don’t think “status” covers the variety of reactions as well, and it does not seem as close to how it actually feels.
I’m not going to delve into specific examples for obvious reasons, but take a very offensive statement you can think of that goes “Race/gender X has quality M.” Then try applying M to a race/gender Z that M does not get stereotypically applied to. The statement will probably not be anywhere near as offensive. This seems confusing under the status model. It makes perfect sense under the social norms model. If M is not stereotypical of Z, no norm exists against the statement; you just sound weird or confused.
“Threatens social standards” seems to carve reality at the joints much more cleanly than “status” does, though if I’m wrong, I’d love to see counterexamples.
I think agree with you that status doesn’t quite seem to cover everything. But “threatens social standards” seems like too much of a black box to me to be a very satisfying explanation in itself. I guess if it suggests anything, it’s that offense, like social standards, have too many distinct, and not always sensible causes to be traced back to a single root.