Cats, Dogs, and Jerks: a description of human social interaction

[nancylebov]

Do you think this is accurate?

[Note: this is going to sound at first like PUA advice, but is actually about general differences between the socially-typical and atypical in the sending and receiving of "status play" signals, using the current situation as an example.]

I don't know about "good", but for it to be "useful" you would've needed to do it first. (E.g. Her: "Buy me a drink" You: "Sure, now bend over." Her: "What?" "I said bend over, I'm going to spank your spoiled [add playful invective to taste].")

Of course, that won't work if you are actually offended. You have to be genuinely amused, and clearly speaking so as to amuse yourself, rather than being argumentative, judgmental, condescending, critical, or any other such thing.

This is a common failure mode for those of us with low-powered or faulty social coprocessors -- we take offense to things that more-normal individuals interpret as playful status competition, and resist taking similar actions because we interpret them as things that we would only do if we were angry.

In a way, it's like cats and dogs -- the dog wags its tail to signal "I'm not really attacking you, I'm just playing", while the cat waves its tail to mean, "you are about to die if you come any closer". Normal people are dogs, geeks are cats, and if you want to play with the dogs, you have to learn to bark, wag, and play-bite. Otherwise, they think you're a touchy psycho who needs to loosen up and not take everything so seriously. (Not unlike the way dogs may end up learning to avoid the cats in a shared household, if they interpret the cats as weirdly anti-social pack members.)

Genuine creeps and assholes are a third breed altogether: they're the ones who verbally say they're just playing, while in fact they are not playing or joking at all, and are often downright scary.

And their existence kept me from understanding how things worked more quickly, because normal people learn not to play-bite you if you bare your claws or hide under the couch in response ! So, it didn't occur to me that all the normal people had just learned to leave me out of their status play, like a bunch of dogs learning to steer clear of the psycho family cat.

The jerks, on the other hand, like to bait cats, because we're easy to provoke a reaction from. (Most of the "dogs" just frown at the asshole and get on with their day, so the jerk doesn't get any fun.)

So now, if you're a "cat", you learn that only jerks do these things.

And of course, you're utterly and completely wrong, but have little opportunity to discover and correct the problem on your own. And even if you learn how to fake polite socialization, you won't be entirely comfortable running with the dogs, nor they you, since the moment they actually try to "play" with you, you act all weird (for a dog, anyway).

That's why, IMO, some PUA convversation is actually a good thing on LW; it's a nice example of a shared bias to get over. The LWers who insist that people aren't really like that, only low [self-esteem, intelligence] girls fall for that stuff, that even if it does work it's "wrong", etc., are in need of some more understanding of how their fellow humans [of either gender] actually operate. Even if their objective isn't to attract dating partners, there are a lot of things in this world that are much harder to get if you can't speak "dog".

tl;dr: Normal people engage in playful dog-like status games with their actual friends and think you're weird when you respond like a cat, figuratively hissing and spitting, or running away to hide under the bed. Yes, even your cool NT friends who tolerate your idiosyncracies -- you're not actually as close to them as you think, because they're always more careful around you than they are around other NTs.

By PJ Eby.

I'm not signing onto the idea that everyone who's uncomfortable with teasing should learn how to handle it or they're missing out on a lot of the good in life. As a strongly catlike person, I'm curious about whether the description of interactions is plausible.

I suspect that a lot of social difficulty is caused by dog types who *don't* know how to dial it down with cats, or are so in love with their usual behavior that they feel they shouldn't have to. They aren't jerks (those who enjoy tormenting cats), but they can look rather similar.

And as for real cats and dogs, I've met at least one cat who grew up with dogs and does a pretty good approximation of tail-wagging. Most of the tail motion comes from the base-- the tail isn't as stiff as a dog's tail, of course, but you don't see the full feline tail thrash-- and the cat isn't upset.

Comments

[chaosdancer.livejournal.com]

Oh, that sounds so familiar! It used to be torture going to visit my cousins, because they would (in my interpretation) taunt me unmercifully...it took me years to figure out that they were just trying to play with me the way they played with each other, but I was an only child and didn't understand it. It still amazes me that they like me now that we're grown up - all those years I thought they hated me. They just didn't know what my deal was, being all uptight like that.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

I've learned to tease and be teased since high school, so this definitely rings true. I suppose I'm mostly bilingual now, though still a native cat speaker. I would say... if you tease back successfully, dogs will respond positively even as they continue to tease. Jerks will back off--it was a real dominance attempt, and they're upset that it didn't work.

Jerks will also tease about more serious and unpleasant things. The rule for geeks to memorize, following Miss Manners, is that dogs tease about A) things that everyone knows you both approve of, or B) things that neither of you is likely to take seriously. So I might get teased about the fact that I excitedly geek about psychology, or about bad habits that I joke about myself. If someone were to tease me about something I was sensitive about, I would tell them it was a sensitive topic more or less gently depending on whether I thought they knew. Or if I was feeling particularly cattish, I would tell the teaser not right now. A dog would respond to either of these by backing off; a jerk by teasing me about it. Then the claws come out.

There are dog-like and jerk-like ways to tease about the same things, too, but I can't quite articulate the rules. I have a plane to catch, so that will provide plenty of fodder for discussion with S, who speaks dog natively.

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

I *so* identify with a lot of this. It resonates rather much with the eventual result of my upbringing. I'm far more of a cat but my family are mostly canine in this regard. So I learned to speak dog -- better than I learned cat, early on! That got me in trouble once my classmates at school decided I wasn't part of their pack.

I'm okay with teasing as long as I know that you're in my pack. In fact, me teasing you is a major sign of acceptance. But with folks who aren't pack, I'm a cat... except that if you really push me, and the claws come out... so will the claws of my packmates.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

Hah! S agrees that teasing about the same topic can be dog-like or jerk-like depending on body language, and that there is a rule: across species, serious dominance body language is straight-on, and play body language is curvilinear.

The example we were discussing was my height--someone can tease me about being short in such a way that I won't mind, or in such a way that I will slap them down hard. Play teasing could involve pretending to loom over me, but bending the head in sort of a half-bow. Dominance teasing could involve standing as tall as possible and well within my personal space.

Proxemics and kinesics are fascinating. And for a poorly socialized geek, it's always reassuring to have an explicit rubric to fall back on.

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

The stuff I've read that was most similar to this was in a book of a writing client of mine--she is an executive coach for women, and it was about how to break the glass ceiling by, in a way, selectively adopting some male traits in a female-compatible way. Based purely on what she wrote, I'd say two things:

1) Probably boys are trained to be dogs in a way that girls aren't, and
2) Corporate culture is very much keyed to dogs.

Personally, I'd add a couple more insights:

1) Unlike the implications here, I think many, perhaps even most dogs are bilingual and can and will adapt to cat mode, as long as the offense is taken in a polite, non-psycho way. You may lose status points for being "too earnest," but you can interact OK.
2) Linked to that last sentence: being able to be a dog matters more the more you care about status. That caring can be for practical reasons (you won't get to be a VP otherwise) or emotional (want to be at the top of the pack socially) or both. If a cat doesn't care about status with dogs, there is much, much less reason to adapt.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

I have two reasons to hate teasing: I'm a nerd who finds it unacceptably nonliteral and ironic, and I'm a cat who comes from a family of cats, so I never developed antibodies against teasing. Fortunately, I started out not caring too much about status, and learned to care even less as I realized the kind of behavior that it required.

[tamnonlinear.livejournal.com]

This feels about right, both in the pattern of interactions and your note that catlike people shouldn't have to adapt to doglike behavior. It has a lot of the same feel as introvert vs. extrovert interactions, where extroverts want to interact just for the sake of interacting and introverts are likely to look a little baffled and ask "why?". Being able to fake extroversion and understand extroverts has advantages and is a useful adulthood skill, but it doesn't mean I have to become one (they ought to have their adulthood skills as well). I also disagree that PUA tactics have their good points- the basic methodology is pointed at manipulating people, and I don't like the idea of interacting with people who want to manipulate me. I'll be occupying a windowsill by myself, and purring, if anyone needs me.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

I agree on the connection to introversion/extroversion. Another reason I'm a cat.

[tamnonlinear.livejournal.com]

I disagree with the implication that there's anything wrong with being a cat. I am not broken, low-powered, or in need of fixing. Not about this, at least.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

I don't think of myself as anything worse than lacking a few skills it would be useful to have, and I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I think all cats are even that bad.

[tamnonlinear.livejournal.com]

Oh gosh, I was responding to the original article, not to you. I'm sorry. I meant it as a solidarity between cats, not a reprimand.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Good. I don't always reply to what I intend to reply to either.

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

Total rubbish.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Would you care to expand on that?

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

Hahah, sorry--I'm staying with themikado and he's rubbing off on me.

First and foremost, I get really irritated at the attempted divide between geeks and non-geeks as "geeks" and "neurotypicals". I am a geek--not only do I fulfill the functions, I wear the uniform--but I don't think I'm particularly neurologically atypical, nor are a lot of the smartest, geekiest people I know. If you are neurologically atypical that's great, but we don't all have to be neurologically atypical to be geeks. (And in fact themikado questions the "neurologically typical/atypical" divide--but he literally is a brain scientist, so he has more rigourous standards for the use of such terms.)

I get along perfectly well with a variety of kinds of people. I learnt to be socialised by observing the behaviour of others, analysing it, and then applying the things I figured out about how to socialise when they seemed appropriate, but despite its "pastede on yay" status, it serves me quite well.

I also dislike the attempt to insert divides between geeks and non-geeks by implying that a geek can't have a close friendship with a non-geek because, apparently, they can't engage in dominance play together. A given geek and a given non-geek may not want to be friends because they have nothing in common, but that's not the same as not being able to be friends.

TL;DR: I think this may be accurate as an approach or attitude for some people, probably for the sorts on both sides of the geek/non-geek divide who feel that it's a huge gap reflected in, of all things, neurological or physiological structure, and really want there to be some sort of innate or inherent reason why they can't/don't have to try to interact with people who don't share their particular frame of reference. But it's not a universal truth, it's just a metaphor, and metaphors that work well for some people work poorly for others. I (possibly alone among your readers, but that's fine) find it inaccurate to my experience.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

I can be friends with people without engaging in dominance play with them, which is a good thing.

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

I think "dominance play" is a red herring--I don't think it actually exists in the way the person writing the original piece thinks it does. Does dominance play exist? Probably. Do all non-geeks engage in it? Do all geeks eschew it? Ahahahah...pardon me while I fall on the floor.

[siderea]

This is freaking brilliant. It's missing some nuances, but it's mostly dead-on. It captures in words some stuff I've learned to do. I'm from deep cat territory, and learned to comfortably and mostly[*] fluently speak[**] dog. I may repost w/ commentary.

[* I tend to err on swatting too hard or miss-judging the acceptability of the target or not realizing my claws are out enough to draw blood: "accent" errors I think cats are prone to.]

[** Some dialects of. That's one of the missing nuances. I've discovered there's more than one. My SO uses a dialect which shocked me at first because it uses something as a bark (tease) which was considered bite (taunt) in the dialects I'd previously known. Consider, also the role of "Your mom" jokes: do that in the wrong ethnic enclave and you'll collect an unceremonious knuckle sandwich -- and it's not because they're cats.]

[siderea]

P.S. One thing I would take issue with is the proposition that cats are people with "low-powered or faulty social processors". Faulty only in the sense a chisel is only a faulty screwdriver. I'm a cat and I would submit that my social processor is anything but low-powered or faulty. In fact I suspect that being a cat is more common for therapists than being a dog -- but most of us learn to speak dog.

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

I have a different read on this.

Two people who are behaving rudely in public have trouble understanding each other. Would you advise them to try to understand each other's behavior as a function of the ways their brains work? OK, that's fine, but how about this advice: follow ordinary boring social rules. Don't demand that someone buy you a drink in a bar. Don't offer to spank a stranger for not saying please. If you want to have genuine relationships and be close to other people, be genuine and don't play stupid games.

Miss Manners has a rule about teasing. You tease people you like about things of which they might justifiably be proud. Polite teasing is affectionate, it's not assault, as this example is.

The truth is, I don't get the whole pickup in a bar scenario anyway. I never found a lover that way. I met my spouse in synagogue where we discovered we liked each other by discussing literature, chocolate, politics, music and movies. I never got the point of teasing and I still managed to have successful social relationships in school and in adulthood. What is the point of playing verbally abusive games? I can't see one.

[tamnonlinear.livejournal.com]

Reading the scenario at the original website, I was having a lot of trouble with it. A woman walks up to a man at a bar and asks him to buy her a drink. His correct response is supposed to be to say something insulting to her, as the response she's hoping to get, because it displays that he's aware of the proper social jockeying that she's really proposing.

As opposed to my (catlike) response of "Yeah, right. Get your own drink" (which is still not the same as the suggested wrong response of "What kind of drink would you like?"). It may also be that I'm reading this wrong because I am not socialized as a male and I don't hang out in bars.

I do not get it. The expected social behavior is anti-social, both in the begging for drinks and the insults, and just looks broken to me. At a basic level, I don't see the social benefit of making friends with people who don't notice when their behavior is insulting, because then you end up with people who insult you as friends. This is not a worthwhile goal.

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly. Wouldn't it just be easier to post an ad in Craig's List for a hookup and have consensual sex without strings attached? Because who the hell wants to have a relationship with someone who hangs around in bars picking up people for one-night stands? If this is all supposed to be something like witty banter, it fails.

[madfilkentist]

I had thought that the guy's response was a way of telling her to buzz off, which is polite according to some social rules which are foreign to me -- more Martian vs. human than dog vs. cat. If it's a response which she expects, it's even more Martian to me that way.

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

I can understand the interaction as a certain kind of coded language:

"I am arrogant, because I am so good looking and desirable that I am worth it."
"I will be even more arrogant back, showing that I have even more to offer than you do."

It's 100% not to my taste, and I blanch at the idea that it shows MORE social ability than acting in a mutually affirming exchange, but if people want to play those games, this interaction is consistent.

[tamnonlinear.livejournal.com]

That explanation makes sense, thank you. For me, it's handy if people have a shorthand way of identifying themselves as someone I wouldn't want to talk to anyway.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

I did a little googling and found a link on, well, a pickup artist site : http://www.sosuave.com/articles/at/buymeadrink.htm

Basically in this case it doesn't so much seem to be a teasing thing (in terms of the lady expecting a spank offer) as recognizing an opening gambit, even beyond "I am arrogant" but more like "will you cave?"

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

You're saying that this example is assault as if that were an objective statement rather than completely subjective. Assault is in the eye of the beholder. If neither of the participants in that conversation consider it to be assault, then it isn't, regardless of what the eavesdropping person at the next table might think about it.

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

It's just assault in the sense of threatening someone with bodily harm, that's all. It might not qualify in a court of law if the person hearing the threat didn't take it seriously, but if you tell a stranger, "I'm going to hit you" -- as this dialogue seems to do, right?--and you look like you actually might (which maybe isn't happening here) that's assault.

I googled to verify my impression that threatening violence was the legal definition of assault, and Professor Google spits this out--

Generally, the essential elements of assault consist of an act intended to cause an apprehension of harmful or offensive contact that causes apprehension of such contact in the victim.

The act required for an assault must be overt. Although words alone are insufficient, they might create an assault when coupled with some action that indicates the ability to carry out the threat. A mere threat to harm is not an assault; however, a threat combined with a raised fist might be sufficient if it causes a reasonable apprehension of harm in the victim.

So yeah, I don't think I would tell a stranger that I planned to spank her.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

I didn't realize that you were restricting yourself to the legal definition of the word.

Even so, I wouldn't want to try to convince a jury of it.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Regardless of the full truth of it I'm finding this a fascinating conversation. I don't know that it's a normal vs abnormal thing, rather than instead a cultural clash.

May I link from my journal?

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

You certainly may.

Here via Vval.

[badmagic.livejournal.com]

I gree with you about dog-types who won't adjust their behavior. Most folk think the way they behave is normal, and have a hard time realizing anyone would behave differently.

As far as teasing goes, I think the original poster missed two semi-important points:

1) The author refers to teasing as "playful status competition," but doesn't seem to realize that competition for anything isn't always playful. Rephrase "status competition" with "if you lose here, you will receive less respect, possibly forever" and you can see why the situation might get ugly.

2) Teasing is a way to enforce social norms. Eccentric behavior gets mocked to get the perpetrator to conform. This isn't as bad as it sounds. Saying "Please stop that, it's annoying" will only encourage some people to continue, but they'll stop if it makes them look silly.

I'm pretty sure this is cross-cultural; I vaguely recall an exhibit at the Smithsonian that claimed that was the job of the wearer of the Fool mask during potlatches in the Pacific Northwest.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Fascinating!

They've got different ways of solving interpersonal problems, too. As a dog, I want to jump in, wag wag woof woof, and worry it and tear it apart and maybe when it's in small enough pieces all over the floor we'll learn something. Or call mine the engineer's approach: take it apart and see how it's supposed to work and test all the parts and clean them.

As a cat, he says I'm reopening old wounds, least said soonest mended, etc. Maybe.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

Having gone back and read the original article (now on the other end of my plane flight), I see that it's focused on the whole Asperger's/neurotypical dichotomy. I know plenty of people with Asperger's, but I also think there's a tendency in geek circles to assume that poor social skills = Asperger's = biologically incapable of thinking like an NT. You can get very similar patterns simply through a lack of relevant experiences, as I did. I came into grade school having learned a couple of poor social rubrics, and as a result never got any really useful peer socialization till college. Once I started hanging out with people who hadn't seen me, at age 6, interpret mild teasing as verbal abuse, I was able to catch up on some of the skills. But being 18 years behind still means having to memorize some rules explicitly. This makes me relatively awkward sometimes, but I also have some advantages over someone who's learned the rules entirely implicitly. I can sometimes explain the rules relatively clearly to someone who has to do everything by rote. And I'm more comfortable with people who aren't working with a rule set I'm used to--for example, I can deliberately try and figure out whether someone is getting in my social space to assert dominance, or whether they're doing it because their conversational distance is a foot shorter than mine, and adjust accordingly.

It helps me to realize that many apparently socially skilled people feel nervous in social situations--they just compensate well. Humans have two major survival strategies--we make tools, and we cooperate socially. That makes social interaction a high-stakes endeavor for everyone, and the most extroverted marketing guy is more aware of those stakes, and has fewer resources put into alternative strategies. The other useful thing for me is to bear in mind is that most "mundanes" are geeks about something, whether it's accounting or Elvis or football. Even if their expertise bores me to tears, I'm reassured that they're familiar with that mindset.