The Flaw In Assortative Mating Theory

In a word: Credentialism.

Credentialism, as defined by CH, is a system where the signaling value of a credential exceeds the content value of the acquired knowledge implied by the credential.

Keep this definition in mind, because it will explain a lot about the shortcomings of assortative mating data.

Assortative mating is the theory that people pair up according to social class, which in modern America is nearly synonymous with educational class. Proponents of assortative mating theory speculate that a cognitive elite — and perhaps soon a racial elite — is evolving from the observed mate choices of the upper classes to marry solely among themselves. Sort of like an “educated class inbreeding”. The mechanism by which educated class inbreeding happens is through meeting one’s mate on college campus, or later at the office or within social circles, both of which tend to be segregated by smarts and its proxy, college degree.

The more generations that pass through the filter of selective breeding for credentials, the likelier that a distinct race of übermensch becomes a permanent piece of the American social scene. A Bindi-style caste system is not far behind.

The flaw in assortative mating theory lies in its major premise: That credentials are as accurate a gauge of smarts and knowledge and social class now as they were in the past.

There’s no doubt women have flooded academia, and now outnumber men on campus by a nontrivial margin.

The fact that the female representation in college has risen so dramatically in such a short time period tells us that genetics are not the driving factor. Women did not suddenly become smarter, nor did they become smarter than men, during their rise to higher ed prominence. No, what happened instead is one-parent families became unaffordable in The Disunited States of Diversity, and, more pertinently, the average college degree lost a lot of its value.

Crudely, women have flooded into college to earn shit degrees like Communications, English, Education, and Women’s Studies.

Liberal arts degrees are useless degrees, because everything you’d wind up doing in a cubicle job with such a degree can be learned in two weeks if you have half a brain. In fact, these degrees are worse than useless, because they saddle women with a mountain of debt that they must pay off by marrying in their dried-up 30s a no-game-having, scarcity-mentality, provider beta male.

The uselessness of humanities degrees to real world value creation is exacerbated by the diversity industrial memeplex, which has further eroded the college cachet by the necessity of dumbing down and grade inflating the degree programs that vibrant students swarm into on the largesse of creator class endowment money.

What you are staring at is the twisted face of credentialism, the college debt racket and status whore end game that proves nothing except that women can be gifted conformist suck-ups in the stampede to earn a parchment declaring them competent at arranging client meetings, thinking inside the box, and mingling with white collar men who satisfy their hypergamous desire.

Empty, status striving credentialism is the reason assortative mating theory is flawed. Men and women aren’t matching up by IQ or class; they’re matching up by credential. Except that, on average, the men’s degrees are actually worth the paper they’re printed on.

Assortative credentialism is the more precise term for the marriage trend that we observe took off after women stormed the campus citadel. Conflating runaway credentialism with IQ misses the fact that today’s paper pushing woman with a communications degree was yesterday’s equally competent secretary with a high school degree, and perhaps even yesteryear’s farmhand mother with sharp instincts for survival.

So there will be no genetic überwench class. This isn’t to say an evolved cognitive elite is impossible; rather, what appears to be happening is less IQ stratification than a perverse reiteration of the patented CH BOSSS (Boss-Secretary Sexual Strategy) sexual market mechanism to reduce wealth and class inequality. The high school grad secretary of yore has been replaced by the college grad secretary of today. And as long as she stays thin and pretty, she’ll catch the eye of that high status man, and GSS data will erroneously pick this up as mate sorting primarily based on college experience or IQ.

There’s another flawed premise bedeviling assortative mating theory: It’s not really assortative MATING as much as it is assortative MARRYING. Whatever marriage trends we see between degreed SWPL women marrying degreed SWPL men are happening later and later in life, late 20s to early 30s. But before then, during those prime female nubility late teens and 20s, marriage rates are low among the “inbred educated class”. However, women aren’t waiting fifteen years in stark celibacy before assortatively marrying. There’s plenty of Pill and rubberized reproduction-thwarted mating going on between ages 15 and 30. The mating is what really animates men, moreso than the marrying. And women *are* assortatively mating, if by assortative we mean women are choosing to fuck sexy alpha cads who aren’t interested in footing the living expenses bills for women with feminist studies expertise who delight at the prospect of earning a paycheck to throw back mimosa-fueled single lady brunches.

Like I’ve said, it’s no coincidence that charismatic jerkboy game rose to prominence at the same time female college attendance and credentialism skyrocketed.

UPDATE

Audacious Epigone adds his pence to the assortative marrying topic.

Gay Marriage Is A Farce

Having had the great honor and privilege to detox my buttox be a member in charmed standing of social circles past that included a fair number of gay men, I’ve heard enough lurid stories about their sex lives to fill an abattoir of ripped anuses. Some of them got gay married, many of them knew someone who got gay married. As an insider, I’ll let you in on a leetle secret…

Every gay marriage that was talked about was an open relationship.

Not a one of these gays who were married, or planned to get married, held any pretense of practicing monogamy. When the topic of promiscuous married gays came up, the only surprise was the blasé avowal of the fact. The gay men announced their intention to defile the tacit monogamous stricture of marriage with such nonchalance that it would astound them to learn anyone thought they might behave otherwise.

The Chateau has gay readers. I know you’re reading this. Tell me I’m wrong.

Gay marriage will be a continuation of the unmarried gay lifestyle and all that entails, except legitimized by the state. The bathhouse won’t stop at the boy wedding. The national embrace of gay marriage will have, as per usual when infantile tantrum-throwing leftoids get their way, unintended consequences down the line, and I predict bad ones at that. Marriage is already assaulted by numerous cultural forces; undermining it further by essentially permitting into its scope avowed nonmonogamists will drive deeper the wedge between straight beta men and the institution. And once the beta males leave the marriage game, it’s game over.

Freelance Comment Of The Week: If Dwight Eisenhower Could See Us Now…

Speculating about what George Washington, were he alive today, would think of what his nation had become, commenter Sgt. Joe Friday over at Ethnocentrist of the Blogosphere writes,

George Washington? Hell, imagine Dwight Eisenhower surveying the scene only 53 years after he left office:

Then: Operation Wetback.
Now: Repeated amnesties for illegal Mexican border-jumpers.

Then: The Gemini project, first manned spaceflight.
Now: Paying the Russians to put our stuff into orbit.

Then: Single motherhood strongly stigmatized, low rate of illegitimacy.
Now: Single mother a sort of secular saint, high rate of illegitimacy and climbing.

Then: Blue collar manufacturing jobs plentiful and well paid.
Now: Manufacturing jobs shrinking.

Then: Homosexuality considered abnormal.
Now: “You’re a homophobe.”

Then: Immigrants expected to make an effort to assimilate, learn English.
Now: “You’re a racist and a xenophobe.”

Then: Own a small business and you’re a respected member of the community.
Now: “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that! Somebody else made that happen!”

Then: Traditional gender roles the norm, most believe men and women have different, biologically hard-wired natures.
Now: Women can do anything men can do, and do it more capably.

Then: High levels of trust between unrelated strangers, low rate of crime.
Now: Declining levels of trust more common, crime rate brought down through a combination of fudging the statistics, high rates of incarceration, and the rise of a “surveillance society.”

Then: Being in need of government assistance a source of embarrassment and shame.
Now: Gimmedat.

Then: Virginity or at least a minimal number of sex partners the ideal for women. Low threshold for being considered “damaged goods.”
Now: Promiscuity is praiseworthy; the idea of “damaged goods” is antiquated and misogynistic.

You get the idea.

We all get the idea, Sgt. Joe. The ugly decadence auguring the decline and eventual destruction of America could not be clearer to those with the eyes to see.

Don’t Be The Wrong Kind Of Asshole Chicks Don’t Dig

This is what a caring asshole that chicks don’t dig — as opposed to an uncaring asshole that chicks dig — sounds like:

What did this asshole do wrong? Too much investment, too much emotion, too much spite, too much butthurtitude, too much everything. When people stumble across this blog and wonder why CH claims assholes are held in high regard by women, they are mistakenly thinking of the pissed off asshole above as representative of the species assholicus vajmoisticus. But he is a subspecies of asshole, and not one particularly beloved by women (although, if it’s a notch count contest between a butthurt asshole and a supplicating niceguy, go with the butthurt asshole).

The opening salvo was strong…

my gf is on vacation, can you send me pussy pics?

…but quickly de-escalated into whiny resentment. When she sent the cat pic, a better — read: uncaring asshole — response would have been:

The above keeps the conversation moving toward, instead of away from, pussy pics.

Some will argue that the context matters. He may very well be a hockey player who used to bang this slut and justifiably thinks she’ll toss him fap material at his command. He may also genuinely give no fucks about longer-term prospects with the girl.

Irrelevant. He wanted a pic of her pussy, and he didn’t get it because of his off-key assholery. Had he played his hand better he may have gotten what he wanted.

The Young Alpha Male

A reader watched a future heartbreaker lavish alpha male love on a hot woman.

Witnessed this pre-Alpha moment at a family restaurant waiting area last week:

HB8 sits down next to a ~5 year old boy

Boy: Hi

Girl: Hi!

Boy: You smell like my grandma!

Girl: What! That’s not very nice.

Boy: I love my grandma

Girl: Oh ok! Well that is adorable. What is your name?

Boy: You’re…goofy! *walks away*

Perhaps a loyal young reader?

When I see the tightest of game in action, it’s like listening to the crescendo in Beethoven’s Ninth through noise canceling headphones in a living room dimmed by twilight. Time slows, the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight, and all the beauty and love and possibility of the world pour into my heart in that moment. This boy, practicing an ancient art which comes naturally to his sex but which he will probably relinquish as he grows into a young man assaulted by schoolmarmish do-gooders, weak beta males, and feminist propaganda, has crafted a work of seduction art so pure, so innocent, and so transcendent that Ovid himself would honor the young ladyslayer in poem.

There’s the bold approach…

Hi

the teasing neg…

You smell like my grandma!

the refusal to backpedal and the accusatory reframe…

I love my grandma

the swatting away of the beta bait, the teasing escalation, and the magisterial takeaway…

You’re…goofy! *walks away*

My Son, I am your Father.

Naturally, spergs and dweebs and misfits will cry up to the heavens from their dank fap prisons that the caprice and recklessness of the boy child holds no lesson for the adult man. To act like this boy, they would claim, invites disrepute and women’s scorn. They know so because they were told so by the skepchicks and gothghosts passing through their lives.

Experienced men know better. This conversation would fit right in place between a scrotally vital charming tomcat and his curious field mouse. About the only thing that would be different is the sexual percolation powering the words into a froth of raunchy promise, and the “incidental” erogenous touch that would accompany the grown alpha male’s playground ponytail tugs.

“You smell like my grandma” is hereby declared “Neg of the Year”. Thank this precocious boy for showing you how to act more like a sexy man.

Comment Of The Week: Be The Owner, Not The Dog

Comment of the Week winner is “anon”, who supplies a very apt metaphor to describe how successful, happy relationships are ultimately a pairing off of a psychologically beta, highly empathic woman with a less empathic, pack (socially) dominant alpha man.

This is like how a pet dog will check his owner’s face and look the owner in the eye every 10 seconds to see whether the owner is happy with the dog because the dog is behaving correctly, or if the owner is going to punish the dog for doing something wrong. A dog that is owned and trained properly by a male owner knows the owner is the alpha; the dog is beta. Both are happy.

In a relationship, the woman should be the beta. When the man is the beta, the woman is repulsed and confused. With a dog-owner relationship, when the owner is beta–like a single woman owner–the dog is confused and unhappy. You will notice, if you are a dog owner who walks his dog every day, that the dogs owned by single women spinsters are the ones who are nasty to other dogs; they are confused because the female owner treats them like a living furry teddy bear and never disciplines the dog properly.

I have just summarized all of CH’s teachings for you. I’m not even kidding. Read carefully and think about it.

In a dog-owner and in a woman-man relationship, the beta (submissive) will look at the alpha’s (dominant’s) face every 10 seconds and is very good at detecting whether the alpha is pleased with the beta.

I actually read a book about dogs one time and then I started noticing this. My dog looks at me every 10 seconds, looks at me in the eyes, and determines if I’m happy or upset with it. My dog never tires of working to please me.

As colorful summaries of the CH worldview go, this is as close to striking distance of core teachings as any.

******

COTW close runner-up is Mike, who has some insight into low SES versus high SES moral senses and ethical codes.

I’ll give my experience. I’m low SES but went to a high SES private school. Low SES people are more empathetic, and thus their interactions are different. My high SES friends cannot keep up with even normal (non confrontational) low SES interaction. They also run into issues with me because, as a lower SES person, manners and social behavior means a lot to me. The reciprocation just isn’t there with them when it should be, and when they don’t recognize protocol it comes off as disordered from my perspective.

They can be assholes, but many aren’t – as most are constrained by their SWPL ethics rather than any innate empathy. However, in some cases, their lack of empathy leads to a specific type of anti-social behavior that is a definite precursor to dysfunctional social behavior if not criminality.

Absent sociopathy, which is what Heartiste conflated with ‘normal prole criminal behavior’, the typical normal IQ (100) prole personality is less criminal prone than higher SES personalities. This is due to empathy. What makes up for that, in the statistics, are higher levels of low IQ individuals (<100), abuse or attachment disorders that screws personalities, and more culturally accepted violence as a means of resolving disputes amongst males. In black communities, that violence is amplified to much higher levels because it’s instinctual rather than cultural (empathy is shockingly low amongst blacks in general); hence the disparity in violence between prole white and prole black neighborhoods.

In other words, proles are nicer and more reliable friends but more unpredictable for dysfunctional behavior in groups. Higher SES individuals are more uniform in behavior but also in their lack of reliability and trustworthiness as friends and in business.

Here’s something funny that I’ve noticed: when higher SES individuals begin to engage in business in competitive environments, they find that those environments simulate lower SES threatening environments and thus they all of a sudden put more emphasis on loyalty and other prole social norms that depend on empathy for execution. There’s nothing more valuable to a high SES executive than the loyalty of his few truly prole underlings.

That last paragraph is astute. It gibes with my experience as well; when the heat comes around the corner, successful alpha businessmen who normally luxuriate in their social rank will quickly assume the attitude and slogans of “lower” ranking prole men, and emphasize as mike said, loyalty and teamwork (aka ingroup cohesion). It’s a microcosm for what could soon be happening at the national level, once lifestyle indicators really start to go south.

Science Proves Asshole Game Works

One day, CH will achieve the perfect post title that captures the spirit of the cosmic shiv. You will read it and the gleaming knife will metamorphose from the words right before your eyes. Perhaps this one is it…

A reader forwards a study and adds this promising promo:

Powerful people lack empathy.

Asshole game proven by science.

Nice guys do finish last.

The paper is called Social Class, Contextualism, and Empathic Accuracy. The abstract:

Recent research suggests that lower-class individuals favor explanations of personal and political outcomes that are oriented to features of the external environment. We extended this work by testing the hypothesis that, as a result, individuals of a lower social class are more empathically accurate in judging the emotions of other people. In three studies, lower-class individuals (compared with upper-class individuals) received higher scores on a test of empathic accuracy (Study 1), judged the emotions of an interaction partner more accurately (Study 2), and made more accurate inferences about emotion from static images of muscle movements in the eyes (Study 3). Moreover, the association between social class and empathic accuracy was explained by the tendency for lower-class individuals to explain social events in terms of features of the external environment. The implications of class-based patterns in empathic accuracy for well-being and relationship outcomes are discussed.

I bet you’re wondering where this is going. The suspense is delicious!

http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~keltner/publications/kraus.socialclass.2010.pdf

FYI, before delving into the paper, “empathic accuracy” simply means the ability to read another person. Someone with high empathic accuracy is very good at discerning how other people feel, based on social and visual cues.

It’ll seem counter-intuitive* to some, but lower class people in this study were more empathic. When you have fewer resources, the external environment exerts more influence on your life outcome. A well-off person can insulate himself from trouble (hi, Cheap Chalupas!) in ways that a poorer person can’t. So the poorer person needs to be more aware of potential dangers (and benefits), and that means being better at reading people to determine if they will hurt or help him.

*It’s fairly well-known that most criminals are less empathic**, dumber and poorer than the general population, so a study which purports to find that lower SES people have higher empathic accuracy than higher SES people would seem to fly in the face of the typical criminal profile. However, certain aspects of criminal psychology are better thought of as sharing more traits across SES than within; that is, high SES criminals may be just as anti-empathic (sociopathic) as low SES criminals, even when there are far fewer criminals as a proportion of the high SES group.

**Also worth noting: Empathic accuracy — precision at reading others’ emotions — doesn’t necessarily mean identification with those emotions. A person with robust Dark Triad traits would be very good at knowing what people are feeling and using that knowledge to manipulate them, but he wouldn’t feel much guilt from exploiting others.

Our central prediction was that participants with manipulated lower-class rank would discern the emotions of other people better than participants with manipulated upper-class rank. Initial analyses revealed that participants in the lower-class-rank condition (M = 27.08) showed greater empathic accuracy than participants in the upper-class-rank condition (M = 25.23), F (1, 77) = 4.64, p < .05. To further test our hypothesis, we conducted an ANCOVA with our social-class manipulation as a between-participants factor, gender and agreeableness as covariates, and empathic accuracy as the dependent variable. As Figure 3 shows, participants experimentally induced to experience lower-class rank were better able than their upper-class-rank counterparts to discern emotions from subtle expressions in the eyes.

This is additional evidence that social priming works, at least temporarily. (Social priming is the presumed foundation for a lot of inner game concepts, as well as “alpha maximizing” and testosterone-raising power position body language techniques.) Subjects who were made to think they were lower rank experienced improved empathic accuracy.

One prediction that follows from these tendencies is that lower-class individuals should be more accurate judges of the emotions of others than upper-class individuals are. In three studies that tested this hypothesis using measures of both objective and subjective SES, lower-class individuals, relative to their upper-class counterparts, scored higher on a measure of empathic accuracy (Study 1), judged the emotions of a stranger more accurately (Study 2), and inferred emotions more accurately from subtle expressions in the eyes (Study 3).

So what does this have to do with game and assholery?

Finally, the findings relating social class to empathic accuracy have potentially profound implications for how social inequality affects close relationships. In fact, the greater social engagement exhibited by lower-class individuals in past research (Kraus & Keltner, 2009) may spring from a similar need to perceive the external environment accurately in order to be responsive to it. Empathic accuracy may mediate influences of class on relationship quality, commitment, and satisfaction. It is also interesting to speculate about the costs of heightened empathic accuracy for overall health and well-being, particularly because lower-class individuals tend to experience chronically elevated levels of negative emotion and negative mood disorders (e.g., Gallo & Matthews, 2003). Future research should investigate whether being able to identify other people’s negative emotions contributes to relationship turmoil among lower-class individuals (Argyle, 1994; Levenson & Ruef, 1992).

Intriguingly, highly empathic people may get stressed out from constantly reading and reacting to other people’s emotional states. And this accords with experience; alpha males seem happier and also less likely to concern themselves with how others are feeling. Beta and omega males who fret about what women think of them are nervous nellies and tightly wound.

The relation of this paper with asshole game requires a connect-the-dots jog, but here it is:

Women love socially dominant men.
Socially dominant men have less empathy. They’re more self-focused and less concerned with the opinions and feelings of others.
A lack of empathy is a hallmark of assholes.
Being as asshole is attractive to women because they perceive it as the behavior of a socially dominant alpha male.
Weepy, sensitive niceguys stock up on Jergen’s and Kleenex.

Any questions?