These can shade into each other or be indistinguishable. Suppose you’re trying to signal that you’re smart. Is this #1 or #2, depending on how smart you are? If you think you’re smart and you really aren’t, and you’re intending #2, does that still count as #2 or is it #1 instead?
Yeah! That seems like a really good distinction. Indeed, we have quite a few variables: {actual, self perceived, other perceived}x{motivation, skill}. So if you imagine each of the six taking values from {status focus, object focus, both}x{low competence, high competence} then we have 6x6=36 possible situations. Kinda surprisingly complicated, and obviously this is still a very simplified model of peoples actual situations.
But in general, I suspect most people mostly think of themselves as playing game (2).
Most people probably have more status motivation than they realize, but this may or may not be a problem depending on whether they are also object focused.
I feel like the population is probably split between people who perceive their skill to be higher than their actual skill, and those who perceive their skill lower than it actually is. Although, I have the impression that the common conception of Dunning Kruger is incorrect, and we have found more recently that people can correctly rate themselves in comparison to other people but most people think they are closer to average than they are. Nevertheless, I think this would lead to many people who need to update towards trying more strongly to signal their worth and many others who need to update towards less strongly signalling their worth. But ideally we would have more, and better, social signalling mechanisms helping people coordinate outside of individual agents trying to signal for themselves, but that’s a whole other topic.
These can shade into each other or be indistinguishable. Suppose you’re trying to signal that you’re smart. Is this #1 or #2, depending on how smart you are? If you think you’re smart and you really aren’t, and you’re intending #2, does that still count as #2 or is it #1 instead?
Yeah! That seems like a really good distinction. Indeed, we have quite a few variables: {actual, self perceived, other perceived}x{motivation, skill}. So if you imagine each of the six taking values from {status focus, object focus, both}x{low competence, high competence} then we have 6x6=36 possible situations. Kinda surprisingly complicated, and obviously this is still a very simplified model of peoples actual situations.
But in general, I suspect most people mostly think of themselves as playing game (2).
Most people probably have more status motivation than they realize, but this may or may not be a problem depending on whether they are also object focused.
I feel like the population is probably split between people who perceive their skill to be higher than their actual skill, and those who perceive their skill lower than it actually is. Although, I have the impression that the common conception of Dunning Kruger is incorrect, and we have found more recently that people can correctly rate themselves in comparison to other people but most people think they are closer to average than they are. Nevertheless, I think this would lead to many people who need to update towards trying more strongly to signal their worth and many others who need to update towards less strongly signalling their worth. But ideally we would have more, and better, social signalling mechanisms helping people coordinate outside of individual agents trying to signal for themselves, but that’s a whole other topic.