Thursday, September 22, 2005

Psycho-sociology experiment, anyone?

I invented an experiment in the shower this morning. Now all I need is for someone with suitable knowledge to actually do it and write it up. Yes, it is rather hetero-centric, but that's how it came to me. One must limit one's variables, you know.

1. Using psychology and sociology, construct a masculine ideal and feminine ideal. The ideal for each gender is what the members of that gender themselves want to be (i.e. the kind of man that men want to be, and the kind of woman that women want to be). So men who want to be manly want to be exactly like the masculine ideal, and women who want to be womanly want to be exactly like the feminine ideal. For reasons that will become apparent momentarily, we're focusing more on personality and interests and lifestyle rather than physical appearance or age or anything else purely superficial.

2. Once you have established the ideal, create the exact opposite of the ideal, which I will call the anti-ideal. So you have a man that men do NOT want to be, and a woman that women do NOT want to be. In general and on average, if a person has any of the traits of this anti-ideal, they are ashamed of them and/or are trying to change them. Again, we are not going for physical appearance or age, but personality, interests, lifestyle etc.

3. Write a personal ad seeking an anti-ideal man or woman. The sought-after anti-ideal traits should be presented positively or neutrally in the ad (i.e. no saying "...seeks stupid loudmouth asshole"). The person whom the ad is purportedly from should be a fictional character, specially designed to be as attractive as possible to as wide a range of people as possible, while still remaining realistic. The personal ad should say nothing about age or physical appearance so as to make the pool of candidates as wide as possible, although if necessary a conventionally attractive photo of the person purportedly placing the ad can be included.

4. See if anyone answers the ad, since by answering the ad they'll be self-identifying as anti-ideal. If people do answer, see how well they correspond with the anti-ideal, and see if they like their anti-ideal traits. Since the ideal, and thus the anti-ideal, are based on collective attitudes rather than individual attitudes, there wouldn't necessarily be anything wrong with the people who reply. It would just be interesting to see what kind of response it would get.

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