People generally give more respect to those that are tall and or big. And I believe that the base, primal reason for this is because they perceive them as being more capable at being violent than a smaller/shorter person.
I suspect even a lot of people, including women, who consider themselves polite, reasonable, educated, peaceful, anti-violence, and progressive thinking, still subscribe to this perception.
So about the situation where someone smaller and shorter, but who has trained weight lifting/power lifting, so is stronger than the average person. Or who has trained boxing or other martial arts for a long time?
Obviously we've all seen examples of where a trained shorter smaller person beats an untrained larger taller person.
So shouldn't this factor into the unspoken rules of pedestrian etiquette?
In this situation should the smaller competent person that believes he is more capable of violence that the taller person have to duke it out to re-configure the unspoken rules of pedestrian etiquette?
Another factor is also not just who is more capable of violence, but also who is more willing to be violent. E.g. a larger taller person may very well be more capable of being violent, but for whatever reason, less willing to be violent in pedestrian situations.
In summary:
Seems like people think smaller people should have to be the ones to move out of the way of taller bigger people in pedestrian situations because people assume the taller/bigger person is more capable of violence than the smaller/shorter person.
But, sometimes, the smaller/shorter person through violence specific training, is more capable that a particular taller/bigger person.
But know one knows for sure without them fighting it out.
So what are we meant to do?
Duke it out in the middle of the street whenever there's hesitation on who should move?
There really should be a study on the psychology of expectations on who should move in pedestrian situations.
E.g. today an equal sized person walking towards me put something in a curbside bin at the same time I put something in the same bin approaching from the opposite direction. And there was a moment of hesitation and then a look of annoyance on his face when I didn't move out of the way for him after we had both finish throwing our items into the same bin.
I would've liked to know why he thought he had right of way.
Is this the dilemma that all equally sized pedestrians have when deciding who should move out of the way?
Do you guys disagree that the respect we give taller/bigger people is on a primal level related to our perception of them being more capable of violence?
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