In class, we’ve discussed many examples of signals that are given unintentionally. For example, the size of the black spot on the necks and breasts of house sparrows is correlated with the dominance of the birds. Unintentional signals such as these are also sent and responded to by humans. In the article “Taller men are less sensitive to cues of dominance in other men,” Watkins et. al discusses visual signals that indicate dominance in men and the responses of other men to theses signals.
The authors of this paper altered voice recordings and pictures of men’s faces to be “more masculine” and “more feminine.” Each voice recording was raised and lowered in pitch and the pictures of the faces were changed in ways that have previously been shown to be perceived as more masculine or more feminine. Then, a group of males was asked to choose which of the altered recordings or photographs seemed “more dominant.” Generally, the masculinized faces and voices were perceived as more dominant than the feminized versions. However, it was also found that there was a negative correlation between the height of males and their ability to distinguish between more dominant and less dominant voices and faces. Shorter males were, in general, more accurate than taller males. In other experiments, height has been shown to be an indicator of dominance in human males. The paper proposed that shorter (and therefore less dominant) males are have a higher ability to distinguish between more and less dominant males because this is a more necessary ability in less dominant individuals. It is, therefore, more adaptive for less dominant males to have this ability.
This paper raised a lot of interesting questions, especially because its subject was communication signals in humans. Is it really true that physical characteristics beyond a person’s control such as height or voice pitch can indicate personality traits such as dominance? Another interesting point made by the paper was that self-reported dominance of men did not correlate with their ability to distinguish between more dominant and less dominant males while a more concrete physical indication of dominance such as height did correlate. As people, how often do we send and receive signals that we are not even aware of?
-Lauren Lynch
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It's surprising that the shorter males would be more accurate than the taller males, but the explanation given seems to make sense. It doesn't surprise me that generally taller, more masculine men would be more dominant. Was there any more detail in regards to the self-reported dominance in males? I think the contrast between the self-assessment and the judgment of others would be very interesting.
ReplyDelete- Dana Mirsky
Very interesting, and the reasoning sounds good. What was the strength of the correlation though? Were there a lot of tall men used in the experiment or only a few compared to shorter males. Do you think this is genetically based or more socially predisposed? Would a son of tall parents, show the same trend or would this trend show only if that kid was tall himself?
ReplyDeletePosted by Daniel Solomon
I believe that there was a pretty even height distribution. I would think that there's a combination of genetic and social factors although I don't know about the proportions. The paper didn't talk about the heights of any relatives but it would be interesting to find out.
ReplyDelete-Lauren Lynch