Attention seeking behaviour

Okay, we all want attention to some degree. It can be over the internet or it can be in real life.

I have 3 questions that have been bothering me all morning:

1. Why do we want attention? I can understand that babies want attention so they can be fed and looked after, I can't understand why I, as a 24 year old man, want attention so much all the time.

2. Attention seeking often leads to risk-taking behaviour, how can this be advantageous from an evolutionary perspective?

3. Are we, on average, more attention seeking than we were 20 years ago (due to the internet, social media, phones or otherwise)?

Reply 1

Zen Baphomet

Original post by Autistic Merit

Okay, we all want attention to some degree. It can be over the internet or it can be in real life.

I am going to pre-cursor this with a statemen that(as my sig indicates) I suffer from Histrionic Personality Disorder i,e a pathological desire for attention and recognition with sociopathic tendencies.

I have 3 questions that have been bothering me all morning:

1. Why do we want attention? I can understand that babies want attention so they can be fed and looked after, I can't understand why I, as a 24 year old man, want attention so much all the time.

Attention breeds validation and self-worth, for whatever reason our view of ourself is shaped by the positive reinforcement we receive from our wider social structure, the human brain is best equipped to perceive and deal with things from one presepctive, it's own. In order to increase certainity we seek confirmation from our peers to help us reinforce behaviour to see if it is correct or not. If it is confirmed to be correct/advantagous we want to do it again, the bodies(most creatures) method of doing this is to introduce a simple reward system in the form of various feel good hormones.

To what degree we seek this attention various hugely from individual to individual and is as much a result of genetic predisposition as it is to social conditioning at a young age.
Children who are doted on and given attention excessively are more prone to require that same mental comfort as adults as a simple example.

2. Attention seeking often leads to risk-taking behaviour, how can this be advantageous from an evolutionary perspective?

High risks often have high rewards, the creature that takes a risk intellectually and designs a tool or system or technique often reaps a high reward in that concept/items use and as such in more primitive times, received a higher social worth and as such an incresed chance of gaining food/shelter/mates etc. Even from when we were monkeys, the monkey that took a risk and learned how to reach a more difficult place to get food, earned the reward of that food exclusively and as such the respect of his pack(or whatever the group term is for monkeys).
For those humans who desire attention the reward of attention or adoration is in their minds worth the risk they plan to take, whatever that risk may be.

3. Are we, on average, more attention seeking than we were 20 years ago (due to the internet, social media, phones or otherwise)?

I personally don't think so, I think we are just as attention seeking/or not as we have been on average, however our means to express our innate desires has broadened making those of us more desirous of attention, more noticeable

Reply 2

Autistic Merit

Original post by Zen Baphomet

Interesting view. Not entirely sure I agree, though.

For example, 20 years ago someone living way out in the countryside might not have had much chance to attention seek so they might have become more introverted (reading books, walking around the country by themselves etc.) whereas now that family would likely have internet so they'd be able to attention seek through social media and ditch the books so to speak.

Reply 3

Zen Baphomet

Original post by Autistic Merit

That's exactly what I said.

Sorry if I wasn't clear in that regard.

I agree with you.

Reply 4

Snagprophet

I went to my summer ball pre-drinks and some attention seeker climbs on the back porch roof taking pictures being all 'hey hey listen, listen, hey hey listen, listen,hey hey listen, listen, hey hey listen, listen,hey hey listen, listen, hey hey listen, listen,hey hey listen, listen, hey hey listen, listen,hey hey listen, listen, hey hey listen, listen,hey hey listen, listen, hey hey listen, listen'

Very annoying.