Game Theory and Flirting
Sep. 15th, 2017 11:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flamingswordhttps://youtu.be/MHS-htjGgSY
Now bear with me because you're going to need to watch that video or already have a grasp of the basics of game theory for this post to make sense.
In heterosexual spaces, men come at approaching women and flirting as though the act is a cooperative game. They see the dynamic as establishing a consortium of two people dedicated to sharing a good time and they try to be entertaining to the woman in the dyad in order to promote fairness, but due to cultural biases are not generally very good at distributing attention fairly between themselves and women. Men believe that they are competing with other men for access to women, and treat other men as potential threats to themselves but not to women.
Women come at being approached by men and the subsequent flirting as a competitive, zero sum game. They generally see men as seeking their attention and competing for attention within the conversation. Women believe that they are competing with other women for highly selected for men, but also as cooperating with other women to maintain safety and help out of awkward and unwanted situations. Women tend to be defensive players of this game since men represent a threat to them.
This represents a fundamental and hard to communicate power imbalance.
Now bear with me because you're going to need to watch that video or already have a grasp of the basics of game theory for this post to make sense.
In heterosexual spaces, men come at approaching women and flirting as though the act is a cooperative game. They see the dynamic as establishing a consortium of two people dedicated to sharing a good time and they try to be entertaining to the woman in the dyad in order to promote fairness, but due to cultural biases are not generally very good at distributing attention fairly between themselves and women. Men believe that they are competing with other men for access to women, and treat other men as potential threats to themselves but not to women.
Women come at being approached by men and the subsequent flirting as a competitive, zero sum game. They generally see men as seeking their attention and competing for attention within the conversation. Women believe that they are competing with other women for highly selected for men, but also as cooperating with other women to maintain safety and help out of awkward and unwanted situations. Women tend to be defensive players of this game since men represent a threat to them.
This represents a fundamental and hard to communicate power imbalance.