Are Taller People Better Off?
https://twitter.com/robkhenderson/status/1388177093176041473
"it wasn't how tall these men were at their current age that was most closely related to their salary, but rather their height at age sixteen. Something about having reached that height in adolescence had an effect on these men for the rest of their lives" amzn.to/3nyOrAn
That link is provided by longitudinal studies of height. The starting point is the well-established finding that tall men, on average, earn higher salaries than short men. The difference isn't negligible: it amounts to around eight hundred dollars per inch in annual income. Though evolutionary psychologists are not surprised by this finding, economists find it puzzling. The salaried workers in question are not playing basketball; they're not even changing light bulbs. Mostly they're just sitting behind a desk. Why would it be worth it to an employer to pay a higher salary to a tall guy if all he's going to do is sit behind a desk?
Recently three economists - Nicola Perisco, Andrew Postlewaite, and Dan Silverman - attempted to answer that question. They were lucky enough to have access to two large databases of information on almost 4,500 white American and British males, including the subjects' salary and height in adulthood (around age thirty), height at age sixteen, and, for about half of the subjects, height at ages seven and eleven. There was also a good deal of background information on the subjects.
The economists analyzed the data till smoke started coming out of their computers, but they didn't find the answer to the question of why tall guys get paid more. What they found instead was another puzzle. Employers, they discovered, are not paying for height per se - that is, they are not paying for adult height. What matters in terms of salary is not height in adulthood but height in adolescence. Though a man who is taller than average in adulthood is also likely to have been taller than average in adolescence, the rank ordering of individuals can change, and this enabled the economists to statistically separate the effects of height at different ages. They found that men with the fattest paychecks were not necessarily those who were tallest at age thirty: they were those who had been tallest at age sixteen. As for height at ages seven and eleven, it made little difference once height at age sixteen was statistically controlled.
The economists tested several hypotheses that might explain what they called the "teen height premium." Differences in childhood health didn't account for it; nor was it a function of the socioeconomic status of the subjects' parents. Of the factors they looked at, the one that mattered the most - it accounted for about a third of the teen height premium - was participation in extracurricular activities in high school, especially participation in sports. Notice that participation in sports requires strength as well as size, and that high school athletes generally have high status among their peers.
The economists' conclusion was that employers aren't paying a premium just to have tall employees. Employers are paying for something else - something associated with being tall in adolescence and with being good at sports, something that must persist into adulthood. What could it be?
The answer, had the economists known where to look for it, was provided by a much older, much smaller study done - no, not by a social psychologist, but by a developmentalist. Her name was Mary Cover Jones and her research was published in 1957. As far as I know it has never been replicated - except, in an indirect way, by the three economists.
Jones studied two types of subjects: teenage boys who were maturing slowly (in the bottom 20 percent for their age in terms of bone maturity) and teenage boys who were maturing rapidly (top 20 percent). These boys differed considerably in size; the gap was widest at age fourteen, when the early maturers averaged a whopping eight inches taller and thirty-four pounds heavier than the slow maturers.
"Taller men report greater satisfaction with their romantic relationship and report less jealousy than shorter men. These results indicate that male height influences not just a man’s ability to acquire a mate, but his behavior whilst in the relationship"
Researcher Torsten Christensen said: "We know that people who are short experience more difficulties in areas of their life such as education, employment and relationships than people of normal height. However, the relationship between height and psychosocial well-being is not well understood. Using this large and nationally representative sample of the UK population, we found shorter people report that they experience lower physical and mental well-being than taller people do. Our results also indicate that the shorter someone is, the stronger this relationship becomes. For example, an increase in height of 3 cm would have a positive impact on the health related quality of life of a short person, whereas the effect of an extra 3 cm would be negligible for a person of normal height.
Here is the key finding: By using one of several hazard models, the researchers found that a five-centimeter increase in height yielded a 9% decrease in risk for suicide. Shorter men were substantially more likely to commit suicide than taller men, and this relationship held true even when several confounding variables were taken into account.
The researchers offered several possible factors that might be driving this relationship. For example, to the extent that height and occupational status are correlated, and since occupational status is associated with success in the mating market (for men), one might imagine that all other things equal, shorter men are more likely to be of low-status and be single (possible precursors of suicide).
...For males in particular, height seems to be linked to greater happiness and self-esteem (though some studies suggest that the effect is modest), and a markedly reduced rate of suicide.
...
If height and self-esteem are so enmeshed, what are the psychological consequences of feeling smaller than usual? That was the question we set out to explore in a recent experiment. Our hunch was that the experience would cause people to view themselves more negatively, reducing their sense of status and self-esteem, and triggering a sense of vulnerability. And, because these psychological traits play a major part in paranoia, we wanted to see whether lowering a person's height would change the way they viewed other people's intentions towards them. (Clearly, there are times when it's sensible to be wary, but the term paranoia denotes unjustified fear.)
...
The results were dramatic: When they felt smaller, the participants reported increased feelings of inferiority, weakness, and incompetence. And this explained why they were also more likely to experience paranoid thoughts: for example, that someone in the carriage was being hostile or trying to upset them by staring.
"The brutal truth is that even short women seem to prefer guys who are 5’10” or taller...for every inch below 5'10,’’ a man has to earn $40,000 more to be seen as equally appealing to a woman."
The slow maturers eventually caught up in size; in their early thirties, when Jones revisited them, the two groups of subjects differed by an average of only half an inch. They were also about equal in educational attainment. But the early maturers were more likely to have achieved what Jones called "status-conferring" positions in their careers, and there were still significant differences in personality (as measured now by standard personality tests) between the groups: the early maturers scored higher on personality characteristics associated with dominance.
Jones's study and the one by the three economists fit together like Lego blocks. Qualities such as tallness, strength, and athletic ability give a boy high status in his adolescent peer group, and having high status in adolescence has lasting effects on his personality. It makes him more sure of himself, more dominant, more competitive, more of a leader. These personality characteristics impress employers and they also impress voters. In presidential elections in the United States, the taller candidate usually wins.
The finding that height in adolescence matters more than height in childhood implies that personality can still be modified as late as age sixteen. This is consistent with the results of the study of personality development across the life course, which I mentioned in chapter 1, and suggests that the status system does its work at a more leisurely pace than the socialization system. Sixteen is not too late for a boy to develop a self-assured personality, but it is too late for the son of a Japanese executive who has lived for several years in the United States to return to Japanese norms of social behavior, and it is too late for a new immigrant to learn to speak the language of his new country without an accent. Each system has its own developmental timetable.
Personality can change during childhood and adolescence as a result of experiences. Theorists who believe that children's personalities are shaped early, presumably by experiences at home, have been misled by the continuities hey see in personality: the timid child who becomes a timid adult, the conscientious child who becomes a conscientious adult. Such continuities are due mainly to genetic influences on these traits.
No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality. Harris, p. 216-219.
"The shortest man a woman would date is 68.9" (5'9) and the tallest is 75.3" (6'3). The shortest woman a man would date is 60.6" (5'1) and the tallest is 69.8" (5'10). 23% of men and 4% of women would accept a relationship where the woman was taller."
Take, for example, short men. Women place an enormous value on height. In a study of personal ads, 80 percent of the women said they wanted a man at least six feet tall.
Women value it so much that they end up overvaluing it in market terms.
In a recent study of online dating, researchers found that a
5'6" man needed to earn about $175,000 a year more than a six-foot man
in order to overcome his height disadvantage. A different online study
basically replicated these results, finding that a 5'8" man needed to
earn $146,000 more than the average salary to attract the same women as a
six-foot-tall man, while a five-foot man needed to earn a whopping $325,000 more than the average.
"6 FOOT, 7 FOOT, 8 FOOT HUT!" - Lil Wang (Or However Those Lyrics Go!)
Rob Henderson
"6 FOOT, 7 FOOT, 8 FOOT HUT!" - Lil Wang (Or However Those Lyrics Go!)
How Women Rate You Based On Height
Rob Henderson
"Women prefer, on average, a larger height difference between themselves and their partner than men do...women are most satisfied when their partner was 21cm (8in) taller, whereas men are most satisfied when they were 8cm (3in) taller than their partner"
https://twitter.com/robkhenderson/status/1176250107634888706
https://twitter.com/robkhenderson/status/1176250107634888706
By any measure, women are wildly overpaying for these extra inches of height, asking for roughly $30,000 a year in salary for each inch they are giving up. It's enough to make you wonder why any man 5'11" and under isn't wearing lifts. There is no denying that height is what biologists call a fitness indicator, a sign of good genes and good health, and studies have show that women attribute all sorts of excellent qualities to tall men based on their height. Other studies have shown that tall men do enjoy many societal advantages as well.
For example, it's virtually impossible to become president of this
country if you aren't tall. You have to go all the way back to the
nineteenth century to find the last president who was of below-average
height. Even so, it looks as if a certain amount of irrational
exuberance has crept into women's valuation of men's physical stature.
Compare, for example, how much a man's height is
valued in the workplace. In one study of men's salaries, each inch of
height for a man is worth less than six hundred dollars a year in salary.
That's more than a $29,000 spread per inch between the value that the
economic marketplace places on height and the value that women place on
height, a classic example of a market imbalance ripe for exploitation.
"among men, 13.5% want to only date women shorter than them...among women, 48.9% wanted to only date men taller than them"
https://twitter.com/robkhenderson/status/1148270316600418305
https://twitter.com/robkhenderson/status/1148270316600418305
If
a woman wants to be really smart about it, she can squeeze out even
more value from a short man. She just has to find a short man who was
tall in high school. This is not the oxymoron it may at first appear.
What she should look for is a man who had his growth spurt early, giving
him a chance to tower over his peers before they surpassed him in later
years. Why is this an advantage? It turns out that adolescent height is
an excellent predictor of intelligence. In addition, the height
advantage during those formative years gives the men greater
self-esteem, which also increases their chances of success later in
life. In fact, all those salary statistics don't hold up when it comes
to men who were tall in high school but short later in life. Those short
men earn more like a tall man, despite their stature. The reverse is also true - short men in high school earn less later in life even if they are tall - so, considered from an economic point of view, women should avoid those men. (Decoding Love)
"I'M ANTISOCIAL AND IT'S DRIVING ME CRAZY" - Mr. Free
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/after-service/201909/5-reasons-why-women-and-men-care-about-height
Rob Henderson
https://twitter.com/robkhenderson/status/1180191988114771968
Humans
have many ways indeed of signaling "I'm the general and you're not"
without mooning or wearing a shoulder patch with stars on it. As in
other primate societies, gaze direction and stare are important signals
of dominance in human society. For example, if a child looks away while
the parent is scolding, the adult might say, "Look at me while I'm
talking to you!" I've said that myself on occasion, though since you
don't hear with your eyes, the demand seems to serve no functional
purpose. The interaction is really about the parent's demand for respect
- or in primate language, dominance. What the adult is really saying is
Stand at attention. Salute. I am dominant, so when I speak, you must look at me!
We may
not realize it, but we don't just play the gaze game with our children;
we play it with our friends and acquaintances, our superiors and
subordinates, when we speak to a queen or a president, to a gardener or a
store clerk, or to strangers we meet at a party. We automatically
adjust the amount of time we spend looking into another's eyes as a
function of our relative social position, and we typically do it without
being aware that we are doing it. That might sound counterintuitive,
because some people look everyone in the eye, while others tend to look
elsewhere, whether they are speaking to a CEO or the guy dropping a pack
of chicken thighs into their bag at the local grocery store. So how can
gazing behavior be related to social dominance?
It
is not your overall tendency to look at someone that is telling but the
way in which you adjust your behavior when you switch between the roles
of listener and speaker. Psychologists have been able to characterize
that behavior with a single quantitative measure, and the data they
produce using that measure is striking.
Here
is how it works: take the percentage of time you spend looking into
someone's eyes while you are speaking and divide it by the percentage
spent looking at that same person's eyes while you are listening. For
example, if, no matter which of you is talking, you spend the same
amount of time looking away, your ratio would be 1.0. But if you tend to
look away more often while you are speaking than when you are
listening, your ratio will be less than 1.0. If you tend to look away
less often when you are speaking than when you are listening, you have a
ratio higher than 1.0. That quotient, psychologists discovered, is a
revealing statistic. It is called the "visual dominance ratio," and it
reflects your position on the social dominance hierarchy relative to
your conversational partner. A visual dominance ratio less than 1.0 is
indicative of being lower on the dominance hierarchy. In other words, if
your visual dominance ratio is around .0 or higher, you are probably
the boss; if it is around 0.6, you are probably the bossed.
The
unconscious mind provides us with many wonderful services and performs
many awesome feats, but I can't help being impressed by this one. What
is so striking about the data is not just that we subliminally adjust
our gazing behavior to match our place on the hierarchy but that we do
it so consistently, and with numerical precision. Here is a sample of
the data: when speaking to each other, ROTC officers exhibited ratios of
1.06, while ROTC cadets speaking to officers had ratios of 0.61;
undergraduates in an introductory psychology course scored 0.92 when
talking to a person they believed to be a high school senior who did not
plan to go to college but 0.59 when talking to a person they believed
to be a college chemistry honor student accepted into a prestigious
medical school; expert men speaking to women about a subject in their
own field scored 0.98, while men talking to expert women about the women's
field, 0.61; expert women speaking to nonexpert men scored 1.04, and
nonexpert women speaking to expert men scored 0.54. These studies were
all performed on Americans. The numbers probably vary among cultures,
but the phenomenon probably doesn't.
tall men were perceived as more socially attractive, better adjusted, more masculine, and as having greater professional status when compared with short men but not with men of average height...findings suggest shortness is more of a liability than tallness is an asset"
Men's
dominance dances may seem like macho nonsense, but that doesn't keep
them from mattering a lot. Nowadays politicians don't fight deadly duels
against their political rivals. But they do compete in formal verbal
duels, in which what they say with their bodies matters as much as what
comes out of their mouths. If you were to read over the transcripts for
the first presidential debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama in
2012, you might come away thinking that both men had their stumbles
along with their winning flourishes, and that the contest was more or
less a draw. But as Richard Nixon learned when he took on John F.
Kennedy in the first televised presidential debate in 1960, there's more
to a verbal duel than words. Nonverbal elements such as posture, facial
expressions, perspiration, and gesticulation all affect the score. The
consensus among people who watched the first Obama-Romney debate - both
Republicans and Democrats - was that Romney won big. He was more
energetic, and his gestures were typical of dominant individuals in that
they were large and sweeping, demanding more space. Obama's body
language was more typical of a subordinate: he kept his elbows tucked
close to his ribs, making little T. rex gestures with his
forearms and hands. Most important, in contrast to the president, who
spent an inordinate amount of time frowning down at his lectern, Romney
held direct eye contact with the camera, with the moderator, and with
Obama himself. On the occasions when Obama did meet Romney's gaze, he
was almost always the first to look away. In the course of the
ninety-minute debate, Obama made the submissive move of looking down
five hundred times more than Romney did.
Obama
was roundly panned by his own side following this debate, and his lead
in the polls eroded. He knew he needed a stronger showing in the second
debate, not only when it came to matching Romney's aggressive rhetoric
but also in matching the virility of Romney's nonverbal cues. What
ensued was the most fascinating and anxiety-provoking presidential
debate in recent memory. It was a massive contest for male supremacy,
waged with tough words, forceful gestures, and challenging eye contact.
Obama was more energetic and engaged , and waas armed with sharp
rhetorical darts. But he also came prepared to literally stand up to
Romney. Unlike in the first debate, where the candidates were entrenched
behind lecterns, now they were free to roam around a large circular
stage. The result was, as many pundits noted, like a pantomime fight,
with the two men physically circling, squaring off, and trading
rhetorical blows. Often they closed almost to within punching distance,
gesticulating, accusing, and making strong eye contact. As Sarah Kaufman
commented in the Washington Post, "At times, the thinly veiled
aggression grew so hot - with President Obama and Mitt Romney closing in
on each other like street fighters - that you wondered if the two would
come to fisticuffs." (And then what would have happened? A
bench-clearing brawl between rival Secret Service details?)
Obama
lost the second alpha male contest as well. Romney was more likely to
fire his answers and questions directly into Obama's face, while the
president more often addressed the moderator or the crowd. And Romney
kept striding forcefully into the neutral zone dividing the two halves
of the stage, invading Obama's territory. Like a savvy prize-fighter,
Romney physically claimed the center of the ring, pushing Obama to one
side of the stage and holding him there like a boxer pummeling an
opponent against the ropes. And all the while, Romney bore into Obama
with his fierce gaze (though he usually managed to mask the fierceness
with a frozen smile.)
Obama
made forceful displays of his own, striding up to within a few feet of
Romney so they could both gesticulate and try to talk over each other.
Obama and Romney are the same height, but Obama's build is slighter than
Romney's, and Obama acted like the smaller man: whenever they came
together, Obama broke contact first. And when their eyes met, Obama
almost invariably looked away first.
So
if Obama came in second in this alpha male contest, why was there such
strong consensus that he had won the second debate, and why did he - not
Romney - win the election? My point isn't that the more dominant
candidate always gets to be president...My point is that deep, duelly
primate dynamics are absolutely relevant to who gets to be president.
In the second debate Romney probably overdid the macho stuff (as he had
in the primary debates, where in an effort to shut Rick Perry up, he'd
reached out and put a hand on Perry's shoulder). Just as important,
Obama made up for a performance in which he seemed weak with a
performance in which he seemed plenty strong enough, without sacrificing
any of his likability or reputation for class. If Obama hadn't been
able to make such a strong nonverbal display, Romney might have become
president.
The Professor in the Cage: Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch. Gottschall, p. 59-61.
“In presidential elections in the 20th century, the taller of the two candidates won 83 percent of the time.”
Steve Edwards (Fox News LA), I Didn't Kiss A Girl Until I Was Age 25. Steve Edwards (Fox News LA), I Didn't Have Sex With Myself (A Female) Until I Was Age 30. Steve Edwards (Fox News LA), I Don't Have A Son, Especially Not A Mexican Son Or A Filipino Son Or A Black Son. Steve Edwards (Fox News LA), I Don't Have A Gun. I Don't Have A Gun Because I'm Not Into Guns. Steve Edwards (Fox News LA), I, Like My Brothers, EXCEPT FOR STEVEN, Am Not Interested In Guns And I, Like My Brothers, Except For Steven, Prefer To Settle Our Disputes MAN0 A MAN0, Literally! Steve Edwards (Fox News LA), This Means We Like To Punch People Rather Than Shoot People.
Snoop Dogg
Why Did I Wait So Long To Have SEX, Snoop Doggy Dogg? Well, I'm Not A Nigger! That's Why. In Other Words, Snoop Doggy Dogg, I Wasn't Genetically Programmed To Sexually Mature At An Early Age Like Most Niggers And Thus Didn't Sexually Mature Until Much Later In Life! Therefore, Snoop Doggy Dogg, I Didn't Have SEX Or Any Type Of Relationship With A Female At A Young Age, Including My Twenties. Furthermore, Snoop Doggy Dogg, I Didn't Come From A Neighborhood And Socioeconomic Background Similar To The Neighborhood And Socioeconomic Background That Most Niggers Come From. In Other Words, Snoop Doggy Dogg, The Neighborhood And Socioeconomic Background I Came From Did Not Lead ME To Believe That MY FUTURE WAS GOING TO BE BLEAK And THAT DEATH MAY COME EARLY. Snoop Doggy Dogg, The Neighborhood And Socioeconomic Background I Came From Led ME To Believe The Exact Opposite. So, Snoop Doggy Dogg, This Led ME To Sexually Mature Later As Well. In Summary, Snoop Doggy Dogg, I Was Raised In A More K-selected Environment Than Niggers And I Have Genes That Are More K-selected Than Nigger Genes, So That's Why I Waited So Long To Have SEX With Myself.
MY BROTHERS DON'T REALLY LIKE NIGGERS. TWO OF THEM ESPECIALLY DON'T REALLY LIKE NIGGERS. IN MY OLDER AGE I'M STARTING NOT TO LIKE NIGGERS AS WELL.
MY BROTHERS DON'T REALLY LIKE NIGGERS. TWO OF THEM ESPECIALLY DON'T REALLY LIKE NIGGERS. IN MY OLDER AGE I'M STARTING NOT TO LIKE NIGGERS AS WELL.
I Don't Like Niggers To Think That They're Better Than ME At Basketball And I've Been This Way Since I Was A Child. Gery Is The Same Way, But Even More So. As A Matter Of Fact, I Don't Like Niggers To Think They're Better Than ME At Anything Because They Aren't.
THE DUDE
when will people learn that hating on another person will NEVER make you look better in the eyes of anyone.
When Will They Ever Learn, Wigga! Wise Words, Wigga!
