Bi-Strategic Controllers: Women?

Bastiat Blogger: Muga-Mushin, Part 2: Machiavelli's Flood, Two-Factor Theory of Emotions, Bi-Strategic Controllers, Theory of Critical Moments: Unfortunately, the situation seems to be getting much worse: average scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) screen have been steadily increasing over time (bi-strategic control tendencies are highly correlated with narcissism) and there is significant evidence that popular social networking sites can end up rewarding the core skills of the narcissist (aggressive self-promotion; tightly edited and lavishly photo journaled lifestyle descriptions designed to depict achievement, travel, wealth, popularity, and excitement; demanding a self-centered audience-performer relationship within the social network).

An equally troubling finding is that a disproportionate share of the increase in narcissism is concentrated in young girls. I am not a sociologist and tend to favor the reductionist and static view of human nature that is offered by evolutionary psychology, but I have to concede that there does appear to be a significant learned or cultural component to narcissism and that it is shaped by positive and negative feedback loops.

Findings are inconclusive and the research is very controversial, but for

argument's sake we can say this: if there is indeed a strong gender-biased

aspect to the overall trend of increasing narcissism, then this will have very

serious long-term social ramifications in regards to dating norms, divorce rates

(which will increase dramatically, thus creating an expectation of divorce among

those who are considering marriage), and rates of childbirth.

Rational men, once informed about the data, will react with misogynistic expectations:

the anticipation of narcissistic/entitlement trend tendencies among females

(which could, among other things, cause women to underestimate the probability

of divorce) could combine with the biological fact that the genders have very

different reproductive windows to create interesting, extremely cynical game

theoretical results where optimal male mating strategies are concerned.

In any case, we can safely say that having to deal with emotionally manipulative

and self-absorbed bistrategic controllers in either a childhood or adulthood

setting can lead to terrible psychological and physiological costs in the

long-run. Remember that aggression triggered by threats to status or

self-preservation is associated with a different neural circuit than is the type

of aggression triggered by predatory instincts, with the RAGE circuit (reaction

to threats) being experienced as emotionally unpleasant while the SEEKING circuits (reaction

to a hunting situation) is experienced as emotionally pleasant.

Besides being insulated

against SCARF attacks by having fall-back positions in each category, the social

operator who must navigate an emotionally treacherous world may decide to

acquire skills of offense as well as defense. The trick to dealing with certain

types of unavoidable/recurring conflict may be to be able to emotionally

reclassify the other party as a prey item rather than a threat, thus creating an

emotional landscape of pleasurable hunting and sensation-seeking rather than

competition and anger. I believe that this is best handled by what negotiation

analysts and decision theorists at Harvard have termed "BATNA dominance"

("BATNA" means "best alternative to a negotiated agreement")in several likely

conflict dimensions, but I will leave this for the next post.