First see this.
From James Q. Wilson & Richard Herrnstein’s “Crime and Human Nature”: Sheldon himself notes that the mesomorphic, nonectomorphic physique often predominates, not just among criminals, but among other occupational groups, such as salesmen and politicians.
June 25, 2010 at 9:52 pm
I’d like to see a model of behavior that incorporates behavioral genetic findings and what I think are experimental psychology findings that “subpopulation x is more likely to behave in y manner” influences the behavior of subpopulation x.
I feel there a bit of a pageant there where for example Dr. Murray of “The Bell Curve” doesn’t seem to acknowledge how social epistemology may itself be a battleground because how it affects outcomes in a space where he himself is part of various trait subpopulations (thus possibly corrupting his participation) and conversely Prof. Ariely of Predictably Irrational seems to stay away from “repugnant” epistemological spaces that Dr. Murray will venture into, such as links between phenotypical/ancestral trait populations and behaviors that may be mostly genetic in origin.
June 25, 2010 at 10:47 pm
Charles Murray did not contribute to this book. His late co-author, Richard Herrnstein, was the Harvard psychology professor. James Q. Wilson, like Murray, has a degree in political science but unlike him worked in academia rather than a think-tank.
Your comment is something of a tough slog. Are you referring to things like “stereotype threat“?
June 26, 2010 at 5:42 am
“Your comment is something of a tough slog.”
hehe, I’m sure folks have said the same about your blog and comments (or would if its venue wasn’t so niche.
Good link for “stereotype threat”. The research is framed in a way that’s dissappointingly subordinated to black/white and male/female conflict pageantry.
I think this should be a productive space for behavioral game theorists.
June 26, 2010 at 9:47 am
I’d suggest that some academic do research on these other forms of stereotypes, but unfortunately students are less familiar with categories like “mesomorph” than “female” or “white”.
This blog isn’t unpopular, it’s just very selective! It’s a Boutique Blog.
June 26, 2010 at 4:27 pm
Or how about “male” and “white” and “asian” yadda. How about playing with all of the parameters (population proportions and absolute sizes of the microsocial majorities and minorities, cross-cultural comparisons, amplitude of stereotyping, introduction of counternarratives, etc.) and looking at how stereotyping might strategically arise “naturally” in microsocial competitive environments.
As a phenomenon it seems pretty interesting, I think its ridiculous for it to be quickly suborned into the tired playspace “blacks and women, are they oppressed by white men, are they coddled by elites, and are they genetically less able than white men”.
June 26, 2010 at 4:28 pm
“stereotyping” by this I mean stereotype threat tactics.
June 26, 2010 at 9:29 pm
I actually deliberately chose “female” and “white” to have a mix of perceived subordinate & dominant, race & gender, and so they in turn could stand in for all others of that type.
I had a debate a little while back with Paul Hewitt on stereotypes. He linked to this paper giving a theoretical model of how inaccurate stereotypes might persist among employers.
Also, stereotype threat is normally considered to be like a cognitive bias that afflicts people rather than a tactic.
June 27, 2010 at 12:01 am
“I actually deliberately chose “female” and “white” to have a mix of perceived subordinate & dominant, race & gender, and so they in turn could stand in for all others of that type.”
Whoops I missed that.
“Also, stereotype threat is normally considered to be like a cognitive bias that afflicts people rather than a tactic.”
So what? Seems to be right in the wheelhouse of behavioral/coordination game theory. Same with the larger class of exploitable cognitive biases.
June 27, 2010 at 8:51 pm
I think I’m more prone to see coordination as hard, and you’re more open to conspiracy theories.
June 28, 2010 at 4:04 am
I disagree. I don’t see coordination as “easy” or “hard” (what isn’t hard that’s a social science phenomenon? We’re talking about stuff that seems to occur almost nowhere in the universe.) I see coordination as something that occurs.
As for conspiracies, they’re also something real that occurs. Conspiracy studies tends to be another anti-knowledge play space. Although I think it’s a bit hack for you to conflate conspiracies and coordinations. Most large population identities seem to me to be coordinations without conspiracies.
June 28, 2010 at 7:57 pm
Harking back to my discussion of Ostrom & Ellickson, I see coordination as most likely to occur in small tight-knit groups or through formal hierarchical structures. Gintis & Bowles have a new paper with a model of how it (or at least cooperation rather than free-riding/shirking) could arise in some other situations, which Razib & some other bloggers discuss in a podcast here. I tend toward the Dawkins type view in which opportunities to defect are common and taken, and even organizations designed to mitigate them are rife with agency problems.
I suppose I did leap too quickly from inexplicit coordination to hidden coordination when you seem to be thinking of a non-explicit but open form of coordination. Guess I was primed to think of explicit coordination as necessary, even if it is not explicit to those outside.