#metoo and the Sexual Overperception Bias
In the first chapter of Amia Srinivasan’s The Right to Sex, the author attempts (albeit in a condescending tone) to see the #metoo movement from the male perspective:
Patriarchy has lied to men about what is and is not OK, in sex and in gender relations as a whole. Men are now being caught out and unfairly punished for their innocent mistakes, as women enforce a new set of rules. Perhaps these new rules are the correct ones; and, doubtless, the old ones caused a lot of harm. But how were men to have known any better? In their minds they weren’t guilty, so don’t they too have grounds for acquittal? How many men are truly unable to distinguish between wanted and unwanted sex, between welcome and ‘gross’ behaviour, between decency and degradation? (Srinivasan)
Until very recently, I believed that all men were able to distinguish between this ‘wanted and unwanted’ behaviour. However, it is gradually becoming clear to me that there is a greater discrepancy between the perceptions of the sexes than one would expect. In particular, I am referring to the ‘sexual overperception bias’, whereby, as evolutionary psychologist David M. Buss puts its, ‘men possess mind-reading biases designed to minimize the costs of missed sexual opportunities’. According to Buss, men are more likely ‘to falsely infer that women are sexually interested in them when they merely smile, incidentally touch their arm, or are simply friendly […] Interestingly, men who view themselves as especially high in mate value are especially prone to experience the sexual overperception bias’ (Buss).
This bias might help explain the incredulity of the #metoo accused. These men predominantly belong to the ruling elite (indeed, a major issue in these cases is the discrepancy in power between the accuser and the accused) and are therefore more likely to belong to the group of men who ‘view themselves as especially high in mate value’ and are thus ‘prone to experience the sexual overperception bias’. These men are literally seeing different things:
In one study, 98 men and 102 women watched a ten-minute videotape of a conversation between a male professor and a female student.4 The student visits the professor’s office to ask for a deadline extension for a term paper. The actors in the film are a female drama student and a male drama professor. Neither actor acts flirtatious or provocative, although both have been instructed to behave in a friendly manner. Participants witnessed the tape and then rated the likely intentions of the woman using 7-point scales. Women watching the interaction were more likely to say that the student was trying to be friendly (6.45), not sexy (2.00) or seductive (1.89). Men, while also perceiving friendliness (6.09), were more likely than women to infer seductive (3.38) and sexual (3.84) intentions. Similar results were obtained from a study using photos of a man and women studying together.5 Men rated the photographed women as showing moderate intent to be sexy (4.87) and seductive (4.08), whereas women rating the identical photographs saw considerably less sexual intent (3.11) and less seductive intent (2.61) (Buss)
An illustrative example of this occurs in the following sequences of Nancy Meyers’ rom-com, What Women Want (2000). In the first sequence, ‘smooth-talking advertising executive’, Nick Marshall, manoeuvres through the workplace interacting with various women who appear receptive to his flirtatiousness:
However, after Marshall miraculously gains the ability to hear women’s thoughts, the same sort of sequence appears completely different:
It is only after we see this second sequence that the first reveals itself to be a fantastical distortion caused by the overperception bias. The smiles, for instance, have completely different inflections.
Of course, this is no excuse for sexual misconduct. If anything, becoming aware of these perceptual differences is the first step to correcting them. As it stands, ‘[m]en seem to think that women are more like them than they really are, and women seem to think that men are more like them than they really are’ (Buss) — and it is this overidentification that clouds our ‘cross-sex mind-reading’, and fuels animosity (because it is assumed that people know better).
