Monday, May 31, 2010

How it Works: Alcohol, the Sleaze Propellant.

Alcohol has many physiological effects on the human system, but it's well acknowledged that with higher doses of alcohol, the higher cognitive functions tend to be more susceptible to its affects. If we take our cognitive model of the female brain, we can see that under the influence of alcohol the weighting that the rational mind has in decision making becomes reduced.

Initial State:

After a few drinks:

What we see here is that primitive and social process gains greater weight in decision making even though overall cognitive function has reduced. It also needs to be noted that social functioning, whilst it assumes a greater weight in the decision making, is actually diminished and hence concern with regard to the social consequences of our actions becomes diminished.

As alcohol is further consumed, the mind resembles this state:

Here, mental processing is diminished overall but primitive processing completely overrides rational thought and social processing has only a small amount to play. After seeing far too many drunks than I care to remember, it's interesting to note that women will still try to preserve some modicum of decency even at very high levels of alcohol consumption. Unless absolutely intoxicated, women will still keep their legs together and make an effort at preserving some semblance of modesty commensurate to the degree of their intoxication. It's interesting to note just how this differs when compared to men. As in women, the higher level functions deteriorate with increasing alcohol cosumption, but given that the "cognitive hard wiring" in men places less weighting on social issues , they are more likely to engage in anti-social behaviour at lower levels of inebriation than women.

Now there are a couple of take home messages here:

Firstly, it's important to the recognise the importance of social factors in female decision making and of its relative resistance to alcoholic effects. This would seem to indicate that the weighting is "hard wired" and innate to female nature. Men and women process information differently.

Secondly, under the influence of alcohol the weighting given to primitive processing increases while the weighting given to rational and social processing decreases. The net affect is that a woman is more likely to make decisions based on her feelings rather than on rational calculation. In terms of mating, the man that can elicit a sexual/mating response whilst the woman is in this state is going to get the goods. But since the mating response is contingent on activation of the alpha receptor(and this to a certain degree is hard wired) it follows that alpha traits will elicit this response. Traits which elicit a feeling comfort ( Nice Guy traits) are not going to elicit a sexual response. This is why the Nice Guy gets to take the drunk girl home with a peck on the cheek(no sexual response elicited), whilst the dominant jock gets to engage in unnatural perversions(High sexual response). It's also why the "nice girl" under the influence, is prepared to engage in depraved acts since her brain is totally being driven by "basic instincts", the inhibitory cognitive pathways have been neutralised by alcohol.

Tirdly, the choice of mate that a woman makes whilst inebriated is not the choice that she would make whilst sober, as in sober states rational and social factors influence mate selection. This is why the sober woman frequently regrets the drunken one night stand.

Alcohol is a "sleaze propellant" because it neutralises our higher cognitive functions, letting our 'baser instincts" take control. As more alcohol is consumed we in fact become more like animals; and like the animals, mating preference is genetically geared towards alpha males.

8 comments:

Hestia said...

This is very interesting. I'm a teetotaler and have never had a sip of alcohol in my life, but my sober state has allowed me to observe much nuttiness at required social functions where alcohol was allowed. The choices people make while intoxicated are strikingly different than many they'd make while sober.

Mrs. Geezerette said...

Fiction usually tells us something about real life. I am wondering if the movie Knocked Up does that in this case.

Alison Scott is a career-minded woman who has just received a promotion of sorts. She goes to a bar to celebrate. There she meets Ben who does not really possess the characteristics of an Alpha male. He is pudgy for one thing. But they strike it up anyway. After a night of heavy drinking, they have sex (without protection due to a misunderstanding.)

The next morning they meet over breakfast and she discovers just how big a loser Ben really is. He is a pothead. He is in a "going nowhere" band. He lives in his parents' basement as I recall. So she dumps him to his disappointment.

Eight weeks later she discovers she is pregnant. The rest of the story is about how they come to terms with the pregnancy and their relationship. In the end, with much struggle on his part, Ben becomes a rather good expectant father. They fall in love and go on to marry.

I mention this movie to you, because I think it may show that under the influence of alcohol a woman might very well sleep with any male and not just an Alpha male although he probably has a better chance with her. What do you think?

The Social Pathologist said...

Susie.

I mention this movie to you, because I think it may show that under the influence of alcohol a woman might very well sleep with any male and not just an Alpha male although he probably has a better chance with her. What do you think?

I think we need to clarify what we mean by Alpha male. I've not seen the movie but have You-tubed a couple of snippets and the man in question certainly seems to have more "personality" and presence than your average nice guy. What he lacks for in physical "presence" he may makes up with positive personality attributes. Still I reckon the movie represents more a screenwriters fantasy instead of a correspondence with reality. In real life, the drunken girls drift towards the jocks. It's the way to bet.

As for drunken women sleeping with anyone, I think the term AFC (average frustrated chump) pretty much refutes that idea. The man-o-sphere is full of tales of men who failed to pick up even under the most auspicious of circumstances due to personality characteristics. Indeed, "Game's" most enthusiastic proponents are men whom women wouldn't sleep with under any circumstance until the men changed their ways.

Neil Strauss once again is a case in point. Here was a fellow who went back stage for a year with Motley Crew( I think) and failed to get any action. This would of been a cornucopia of needy and drug and alcohol affected women, the fact that he could not score a peck on the cheek would seem to refute the idea that when given a choice, women will sleep with anyone.

George Sodini, was a reasonable looking guy who stayed fit and was presentable, but who could not get any action for 20 years. If a man does not have the vibe he's not going to get some.

Mrs. Geezerette said...

Thanks for responding.

I was laid up in bed with a virus last night, so I decided to rent the movie Knocked Up and watch it again.

I was wrong about a few things. The character Ben does not live with his parents and is not in a band. He lives with a bunch of other losers, all of them gross, who are wasting their time daydreaming about starting a trashy Internet website to earn money. He is unemployed and quite content living off a meager award, soon to run out, he received due to an injury he incurred.

Ben does have personality, but there must be another category aside from Alpha, Beta, and Omega for loser men like Ben. He implies that he has had trouble attracting women. No wonder.

In the movie, Alison dances herself into a sexual frenzy with willing Ben who is definitely interested in her sexually. My impression is that Alison goes on to use Ben to satisfy herself sexually. It wasn't that she was reacting to anything Alpha in him that I can see. She may have been turned on by all the testosterone that was present in the barroom that night. Ben was merely handy.

What's interesting is that Ben turns into this predominantly Beta male with a nice hint of Alpha about him. He turns into a family man (gets a job, rents an apartment for his family) who adores his baby daughter.

Of course, the movie is fictional. But I can imagine it would be that way for some women under the influence of alcohol.

When I discovered your blog several months ago and you talked about "Game", I had no idea what you meant. Since then I have discovered other blogs along the same line as yours. Now I understand Game a little better, but not completely. I am working on it though.

This whole idea of Game has piqued my curiosity, because I have been happily married to a wonderful man for nearly 50 years. He has had enough "Alpha" in him to satisfy me, that's for sure. I am wondering if Game, or some version of it, has been present all along in our marriage, without my knowledge, and accounts for its success, or if something else has been responsible.

The Social Pathologist said...

Hi Susie, hope you're feeling better.

I am wondering if Game, or some version of it, has been present all along in our marriage, without my knowledge, and accounts for its success, or if something else has been responsible.

Some men are naturals but of course other factors are at play. Many times marriages can reach awful lows and what keeps you going is not instinct but idealist concepts such as duty or a belief in keeping promises or some sort of intellectual vision that sees and desires the goodness of the other even when they are most repugnant.

The "Game" community is basically about reconginisng a womans instincts and capitalising on it, it's not about long term relationships. It's main proponents are men who are looking for short term relationships and their advice for long term ones is incomplete. The thing is human being are composed of both animal and rational natures and for too long we have neglected the animal component or pretended that it didn't exist, especially when it came to women.

Feminism owes much of its cultural legitimacy to traditionalist conceptions of woman hood. Women were seen as passive and asexual and a carnal vision of them, a injury to their true nature. Sex sullied the pure woman, Traditionalists dreamed this stuff up before Dworkin.

Game's value lays in attacking this vision head on, reasserting the carnality of women. However Games failure is that we are not carnal creatures only. Roosh's latest post a case in point.

Anonymous said...

You hit the alcohol response on the head - drunk girls don't "go home with anyone," but rather become more receptive to primitive (in the strictest sense of the word) sexual tactics. Your charts demonstrated this regression so simply, I might bring them to a party.

Thursday said...

Girls are quite different with or without alcohol. For most girls, you basically need alcohol to get her into bed relatively quickly. Remember, by far the best predictor of the number of partners a woman has had is her alcohol budget. More than masculine personality traits etc.

The Social Pathologist said...

Thursday:

Girls are quite different with or without alcohol

Agreed. Personality is another factor that is superimposed onto that cognitive diagram.

The problem when talking about any heterogeneous group like men and women is that you have to remember that there is a wide variety of variance across the group, maybe even some functional overlap. Still there is enough evidence to show that,at the micro-processing level, men and women's brains are "hard wired" differently.

You've been quiet lately Thursday, have you given up blogging?