Musing about a summer evening incident

It was not unusual that it was drizzling though it was a summer evening. It is a beautiful aspect of Bangalore that you can expect showers on a hot day. It was not unusual to have been crawling through main road traffic after a stagnating 40 minutes on a service road.. While it was first time with me, it was not totally unusual when a rogue followed up my car, banging the left door and window yelling something at me(right hand drive). In Bangalore it is common to see disputes in between the traffic when a vehicle nicks the other, where the victim sometimes even goes chasing the wrongdoer.

The heavy knocking took me aback. I lowered the window trying to decipher what was wrong. He seemed to be saying ‘I have been asking you to stop. Can’t you stop the car?’ while also trying to put his hand through the window, probably to not let me shut him off by closing the window. I was fairly sure I had not nicked any vehicle on my way and began to wonder if I had nicked any individual. My instant response was to fight back and say ‘Why are you walking in the middle of the road?’ Because he continued to shout aggressively, I told ‘I will pull my car to left and let us talk’ wishing not to worsen the traffic.

At that moment I heard similar banging on the right side and I turned right to take notice of it. Because it looked to be related cases, I again turned to the person on the left and indicated I would stop. He seemed to have understood and allowed me to proceed. I knew it would be a while before I could find any place to stop and kept looking if anyone was following me. Every honk seemed to have been aimed at me. My heart was beating faster and wondered if I could move on without stopping. After a while when it seemed nobody was in-fact following me, I continued to drive — perplexed and a bit scared but still glad not to have gotten into an ugly tussle. As I continued to drive, I was trying hard to make sense of what had transpired.

Later only when I noticed that music was not playing is when I realised my iPhone was missing!!! The thieves I had encountered, knowingly or unknowingly, had used the principles of psychology better than any I had have witnessed up until now. This series of articles is my attempt to make deeper sense of what happened. In this article we will talk about social hierarchy and friendship.

As you might have realised I was not in great mood. I had a strong urge to share the news of the incident with my close friends(luckily I had another phone in my bag and called a couple of my friends). At the same time imagining the embarrassment I would face sharing the event with the rest made me cringe.

These two feeling seemed to be interesting and interrelated. I also felt that sharing would have been far less embarrassing had I simply been burgled. A story where in I was totally helpless seemed far more comforting to narrate than a story where in I was tricked and fooled. The mechanism behind this seems to be the work of millions of years of evolution.

Social Status

Social hierarchy is a crucial aspect of the architecture of the society we live. Robert Wright exlains this in The Moral Animal

“Put a group of children together. Before long they fall into distinct grades. The ones at the top are best liked, most frequently imitated, and, when they try to wield influence, best obeyed.”

The evolutionary explanation for this is simple.

Our thinking and behaviour are adaptations more so to environment of our evolution than to present society. In hunter-gatherer societies where our ancestors lived, fighting for scarce resources like food, shelter and mating opportunities was common. The ‘strong’ men won the fights and claimed more resources. A gene that helped an individual to pick the ‘right fight’ flourished. Such a gene by imparting selective fear of the ones with whom the individual was likely to lose and ‘advised’ combat with ones he was likely to win helped the individual to survive and thus brought hierarchy to society.

Fast forwarding the clock, actual fighting is far from frequent now. However we are still the product of our evolution.

With the people we interact regularly — friends, colleagues and family — there is unspoken and vague status hierarchy that runs. Resources may not be scarce now but it still helps to be higher up in the hierarchy(including more choice for better mates etc). However what exactly bring ‘status’ is cultural and local. For example ‘starting up a venture instead of a job’, among many, could be status winning trait in the society you live. Your aunts know these better.

Every conversation serves to renegotiate/reevaluate that hierarchy, albeit in small increments. Your friend keeps doing something stupid? He is not as bright as he was thought to be and his position is unconsciously reevaluated and reassigned. This is more true for men than women*. Deborah Tannen in You Just Don’t Understand mentions:

.. for men, unlike women, conversation is “primarily a means to preserve independence and negotiate and maintain status in a hierarchal social order.”

Now you might be thinking ‘This is not true. There is no hierarchical feeling between us friends’. You are mostly right. For this we must to talk about ‘reciprocal altruism’.

Friendship

Have you ever wondered why something like friendship got evolved? If you understand a bit of evolution you would understand when it is said ‘organisms can be thought to be ‘designed’ by machines(gene patterns) to maximize single currency — total genetic proliferation, inclusive fitness.’ From this ‘selfish’ perspective friendship and altruism does not seem to fit neatly with the design. It took a while for us humans to figure out — especially when living in society which can be modelled as a ‘non-zero sum game’ and people remembering your past deeds:

.. an individual who maximises his friendships and minimises his antagonisms will have evolutionary advantage, and selection should favour those characters that promote the optimisation of personal relationships. — George Williams

Thus friendship in gross terms is ‘I scratch your back, you scratch mine’ strategy that has sustained. In hunter-gatherer society, where information was scarce resource, friendship served to ‘trade gossip’ (one of the main things friends still do). And in modern times “one might suspect that, from natural selections point of view, status assistance is the main purpose of friendship…. Whether these things(things told about a friend) are true doesn’t especially matter. They’re just the things friends are supposed to say. Friends engage in mutual inflation. Being a person’s true friend means endorsing the untruths he holds dearest.” — Robert Wright

So when I was calling my close friends, I was unconsciously seeking their help in preserving my position in the hierarchy formed in the minds of people around. We also feel sharing with friends to seek validation for our actions so that we can continue to maintain our self-esteem**. “Do not worry man. It is not much you could have done.” were exactly the words I wanted to hear.

And next day when I shared the event with more people around, many remarked ‘you should have been more careful’. After some pondering I realised I could not have handled the situation much different than how I had handled it. Why so? That would be topic of our discussion for the succeeding article.

Notes:

* There is evolutionary explanation for why status matters more to men than women. It has something to do with huge reproductive potential of a male and limited potential of a female and the resulting disparity in reproductive success among males. For men, reproductive stakes of status were higher and thus were always in competition with other men. While females competed for parental investment, the competition seemed to have been lesser compared to that among males.

** Self-esteem plays a significant role in evolution point of view, guiding the individual to lay claim to resources and shy away from risks, as appropriate. It is a mechanism to deceive ourselves so that we can deceive others better.