Thanks for good pushback! Thinking about it more, I want to propose a 2-step model, where first, there are social dynamics arising from non-social causes, and then second, those social dynamics themselves become part of the environment in which they operate. (I’ve suggested similar 2-step models in Social status part 1 vs part 2, or Theory of Laughter §4.2.4.)
Step 1: social dynamics from non-social causes: Things can seem good or bad for lots of non-social reasons. Let’s say, Alice prefers the taste of pizza, her sister Beth prefers sushi, and their parents have to pick just one.
Here, Beth’s preference for sushi is directly making Alice’s life worse—Beth’s advocacy is increasing the chance that Alice will have an less-pleasant night.
Thanks to [some mechanism that I haven’t worked through in detail], if Beth is directly making Alice’s life worse, Alice’s brain moves Beth away from “friend” and towards “enemy” in terms of the “innate friend (+) vs enemy (–) parameter” in Alice’s brain. In the limit, Alice will start relating to Beth with visible anger, reflective of “schadenfreude reward” and “provocation reward”, as opposed to “sympathy reward” or “approval reward”. And punishing Beth naturally comes out of that.
Step 2: those social dynamics themselves become part of the terrain:Everyone looks around and notices the following:
There’s a class of behaviors like “Alice is treating Beth as an enemy”, including anger and schadenfreude and provocation and punishment, and this behavior is reliably correlated with “Beth is doing something that Alice sees as bad”.
We all get used to that pattern, and use it as a signal to draw inferences about people.
OK, new scene. Carol deeply admires Doris. And Doris really likes X for whatever reason (where X = honesty, loyalty, baggy jeans, who knows). If Carol does X, then Carol is creating an association in Doris’s mind between herself and X. And this seems good to Carol—it makes her feel Approval Reward.
But also, if Ella is doing not-X, and Carol gets angry at Ella (starts treating her as an enemy, which includes schadenfreude and provocation and thus punishment), then Carol is slotting herself into that very common social pattern I described above. So if Doris sees this behavior, Doris’s mind will naturally infer that Carol is very pro-X. And Carol in turn fully expects Doris to make this inference. And this seems good to Carol—it makes her feel Approval Reward. So in sum, from Carol’s perspective, the idea of getting angry at Ella seems good.
Then the last step is motivated reasoning etc., by which Carol might wield attention-control to actually summon up anger towards Ella in her own mind. But maybe that last step is optional? I think Carol may sometimes feel like the right thing to do is to do the kinds of things that she would do if she were angry at Ella, even if she doesn’t really feel much actual anger towards Ella in the moment.
Thanks for good pushback! Thinking about it more, I want to propose a 2-step model, where first, there are social dynamics arising from non-social causes, and then second, those social dynamics themselves become part of the environment in which they operate. (I’ve suggested similar 2-step models in Social status part 1 vs part 2, or Theory of Laughter §4.2.4.)
Step 1: social dynamics from non-social causes: Things can seem good or bad for lots of non-social reasons. Let’s say, Alice prefers the taste of pizza, her sister Beth prefers sushi, and their parents have to pick just one.
Here, Beth’s preference for sushi is directly making Alice’s life worse—Beth’s advocacy is increasing the chance that Alice will have an less-pleasant night.
Thanks to [some mechanism that I haven’t worked through in detail], if Beth is directly making Alice’s life worse, Alice’s brain moves Beth away from “friend” and towards “enemy” in terms of the “innate friend (+) vs enemy (–) parameter” in Alice’s brain. In the limit, Alice will start relating to Beth with visible anger, reflective of “schadenfreude reward” and “provocation reward”, as opposed to “sympathy reward” or “approval reward”. And punishing Beth naturally comes out of that.
Step 2: those social dynamics themselves become part of the terrain: Everyone looks around and notices the following:
There’s a class of behaviors like “Alice is treating Beth as an enemy”, including anger and schadenfreude and provocation and punishment, and this behavior is reliably correlated with “Beth is doing something that Alice sees as bad”.
We all get used to that pattern, and use it as a signal to draw inferences about people.
OK, new scene. Carol deeply admires Doris. And Doris really likes X for whatever reason (where X = honesty, loyalty, baggy jeans, who knows). If Carol does X, then Carol is creating an association in Doris’s mind between herself and X. And this seems good to Carol—it makes her feel Approval Reward.
But also, if Ella is doing not-X, and Carol gets angry at Ella (starts treating her as an enemy, which includes schadenfreude and provocation and thus punishment), then Carol is slotting herself into that very common social pattern I described above. So if Doris sees this behavior, Doris’s mind will naturally infer that Carol is very pro-X. And Carol in turn fully expects Doris to make this inference. And this seems good to Carol—it makes her feel Approval Reward. So in sum, from Carol’s perspective, the idea of getting angry at Ella seems good.
Then the last step is motivated reasoning etc., by which Carol might wield attention-control to actually summon up anger towards Ella in her own mind. But maybe that last step is optional? I think Carol may sometimes feel like the right thing to do is to do the kinds of things that she would do if she were angry at Ella, even if she doesn’t really feel much actual anger towards Ella in the moment.
Yeah, that model sounds plausible to me (pending elaboration on how the friend-or-enemy parameter is updated). Thanks.