How would you feel if your local supermarket offered you the option of a 20 per cent increase in the price of all your food purchases?

I know that I promised in the last post, that I would start to explain the “why” bit, but I thought that it might be appropriate for me to highlight a little bit more of the “what”, but bring in a bit of “why”. Does that make sense? No? Okay… read on… and if it is still confusing, just call me, and I’ll explain…

One of the big mistakes that humans make consistently, is a tendency to not be very good at predicting the future. Or maybe, it would be better put as an over-inflated sense of our accuracy in predicting the future.

So when it comes to planning our food consumption, we aren’t be very good at knowing how much we will actually end up eating (or needing to eat) over an extended period, such as a week, or at a major event, such as Christmas.

What I mean, is that most of our food shopping (in the wealthy developed world) is done on an incidental basis, with little planning, and even when we do plan, we succumb to a whole range of other internal and external factors, which lead us to making not so great decisions.

We shop often, because (most of us) have easy access to food, and middle-class consumers (I hate using simplistic categories, but this will do for the moment), with a reasonable income, can afford to buy a whole range of foods that they don’t really need, but want. Marketing is very good at creating wants – and turning these wants into needs (more about this later).

So we often buy a lot more than we need.

At Christmas, this is accentuated. We purchase a lot more food, and eat a lot more, than we normally would – Australians will spend about $7.6 billion on food this Christmas, eat about 35 per cent more food than we would normally, and it is estimated that we will throw away around 20 percent of the food we purchase.

So, from an economic perspective (not adjusting for the 35 per cent gluttony factor), what we are doing is paying 20 per cent more (on average) than we should have. In other words, if you bought less, you would actually make a saving, and still have enough food for everyone.

To put that into a different frame, think about whether you would feel okay if your local supermarket said that you would have to pay 20 per cent more for your food – the opposite of a “sale”. You would be a little bit annoyed, wouldn’t you?

Now I fully understand that it is your prerogative, in an individualist society, to buy as much as you bloody well like, and you don’t need paternalistic academics, in their cosy little ivory towers, telling you how to live your life, but think about it. You are not only wasting food (thus putting undue pressure on the environment), you are also losing money.

The best way to avoid this, is to plan. But we rarely do.

So, in the next post, I’ll explain some of the psychological and sociological reasons about why we fail to plan.

My friend’s annual Festivus party is always a good time. Now, if you somehow managed to be born under a rock and not be aware of Seinfeld, read about Festivus here. The colors red & white are strictly forbidden. As are the words happy and merry.  You won’t find any sort of nog, but you will find gin, vodka, rum, vermouth, bourbon, tequila, a wide array of liquors, and at least two kegs.

I invited Nicole, but she sadly had a shift at the hospital, and couldn’t make it down. I walked in with the intent to keep a low (read: sober) profile..and it wasn’t entirely my fault that I was having a stellar winning streak at both beer pong, and stop.  Kara and I make way too good a team in drinking games. I’m pretty sure that’s what any guy is really looking for in a girl, the ability to pick up the last cup in beer pong, while you pull of the early lead.

I’m pretty sure Nicole fell victim to some semi-cute, semi-annoying, entirely drunk voicemail. Logic came back out to play and I shut my phone off after that, and went back inside to the party. I went back to the pong table, and my opponents, two blondes, were talking a fairly big game, and we were playing at least our fifth straight game, so my aim got to be nothing shy of completely embarrassing. I, did, however aim well enough to find myself in the bathroom with one of them thirty minutes later.  Even on our strongest weeks we fall victim to the weakest parts of our selves in traditional party trappings, even at the non-traditional holiday party.

I didn’t even really want to hook up with the girl. I don’t feel exactly proud of it, despite the fact that she was a solid looking girl with great legs and a velvet laugh and just the right amount of tongue. I don’t feel good about it, and I’m pretty sure my hour-long disappearance was more than noticed by a few people.  You can play coy,  but you are only playing yourself when the people who know you best notice. I got a few pats on the back, and a playful elbow nudge from a Who fan.

I’ve never been much for wakes. Something about sitting amidst crying octogenarians and making small talk with a dead body at the center of it makes it seem like some sort of bizarre dinner party, except you don’t get an hors d’overs.  It might have something to do with the fact that aside from my mother’s parents, nobody real close to me has ever died. Or it might be the fact that if you sit in that room staring at the body long enough you swear it’s breathing and then you get all sort of mixed up zombie day dreams. So you either spend your time fantasizing about the waking dead, or avoid the subject at hand. I further don’t understand the necessity for the multiple viewings which log in some serious face-time with the corpse, that you wouldn’t even normally do with the living person. I have a vivid memory of a four year old Travis sitting on the steps of the funeral home during his grandmother’s wake. He just and watched every walk by and wondered if she died because he never hugged her and rubber her kisses off.

Twenty four years later and I sat on the same exact steps while watching a parade of mourners go in and out for a distant relative I didn’t even know.  I nervously tapped my feet while checking my email on the cell phone.  That is until I heard a voice telling me that it’s a little rude to be checking my phone at a wake. I muttered out some sort of apology before looking up and noticed it was her.

I told her that if she was stalking me, a wake was hardly the place. She didn’t laugh. And I immediately apologized and said, “I tend to make jokes at inappropriate times.” Which got a small smile out of her, but  I find the stalking joke funny for about one reason. So we talked about how we mutually knew the deceased, and how we were both there out of a sense of obligation, rather than remorse and mourning.

Then I did something both smart and dumb. I told her that I wanted to get her number the last time I saw her, but the timing wasn’t exactly right.

“Hows the timing now?”

“Well, we are at a wake so…I’d say we have bang up timing.”

So, yes I got a number at a wake, which makes me feel more than slightly horrible. But it was just a manner of being at the same place in the same time.

I’m pretty sure dating is like old Nintendo games. This may be because I get my values, pet peeves, and impatience from old Nintendo games…but I think it’s a pretty solid metaphor. You jump over fireballs, dodge all the little monsters and tests she tosses your way. And when you finally think it’s over, your princess is in another castle.  In fact, most girls wind up being the spikey-shelled koopa instead of the fair-haired princess.

Last nights date was just another date. You share a cup of coffee with someone while they silent judge you, and you internally pick them apart. Every single second I picked up on things I liked, didn’t like and didn’t really analyze the final tally until I got home.  I will say this though, I’ve started to weigh potential futures well I go out with these girls now, and I don’t exactly give a lot of wiggle room. I don’t really know what to say about it.

We shared conversation over hot chocolate and bagels. We held hands at we walked.  I will probably never speak to this girl again, because I don’t I see any sort of Princess, or even Toad, in her

The Misconception: Music with mass appeal rises to the top of the charts.

The Truth: The music which becomes the most popular year to year is the result of random chance being influenced by social cues.

Every decade, you look back on the music you used to think was awesome and the clothes you used to wear in public and think, “What a dumbass.”

Some of it will stand the test of time, but most of it will fall from grace and return to its original form – crap.

How does this happen? Why do you keep doing this? Where to fads come from?

Lucky for you, researchers at Columbia University and Princeton figured out the answers to these questions.

Duncan Watts and Matthew Salganik created a fake music Web site where people could download and rate new songs from unknown artists. After a few weeks, they reset the experiment, brought in new people and did it all over again.

In the end, 13,000 people participated, and with each group some songs ended up being very popular, and some didn’t.

The crazy thing is, the songs which made it to the top of the charts were different with each run of the experiment with the exception of a handful which turned out to be popular no matter what.

They then did another round of experiments where they would take the songs a previous group said were crap and give them fake high ratings before letting people listen to them. This time around, those songs ended up at the top of the charts, with the exception of the truly awesome ones and the truly crappy ones, which still moved up or down based on their merit.

So, it turns out, if a song is simply mediocre, the success of the song is based on the self-fulfilling prophecy effect. (If people think there is going to be a shortage of gas they run out and buy a lot of it, which causes the shortage. If they think a song is popular, they buy it, which makes it popular.)

If a song is actually awesome and enough people hear it, it will be successful. If it sucks, same thing. But, if it is just somewhere in the middle, people will decide whether or not to like it based on the opinions of others.

After about 10 years, you get your objectivity back, and you look back on what used to be popular and realize it was never all that great and you are not so smart.

Links:

Scientists are working on an algorithm which predicts movie popularity

The study and other like it

A study on how pop music began

At the risk of being called a Scrooge (the Dicken’s character, rather than the Disney character who wears no pants), I’m suggesting we buy less food during the Christmas season.

In the lead up to Christmas, I find it so interesting, yet understandable, that we engorge ourselves, and purchase so much food, only to throw away a significant amount of food after the Christmas celebrations. According to Foodwise, Australians waste over $5 billion worth of food per year, which is over 3 million tonnes. But food waste peaks in the festive season when, according to 2008 figures, Australians spend $7.6 billion on food in December alone.

So, as the great Cadbury spruiker (and scientist), Professor Julius Sumner-Miller said, “Why is it so?”

As with all things in life, it is both complex, and simple. At a simplistic level, the reason we throw away so much food, is because we buy so much. I know this sounds blatantly obvious, but we need to fully get this aspect of it, before we start looking at other, more complex causes. To some degree, we need to come to terms with the reality that we simply buy too much stuff, including food, and we need to recognise that it is virtually impossible for us to consume all the food that we buy.

So, the first, and simple, solution is for everyone to buy less. Which is actually harder than it sounds.

You will notice that I haven’t said we need to eat less, which is what politicians will most often tell us to do. The reason is that the first step for us to overcome both wastage and obesity, in the developed world, is for us to buy less.

The eating less, comes after the buying less.

However, for a mainstream politician to tell his or her constituents to buy less, would be political suicide, particularly because we have been trained to dance to the “growth at all costs” mantra over the past twenty years. To encourage people to buy less, would seriously challenge the growth ideology (which it is), and make any politician who told us this, an outcast from the political orthodoxy (see Greens).

The more complicated answer encompasses a combination of psychology, sociology, ecology, evolution, economics, and marketing. I’ll explain how this all works in my next post.

Women’s lib is dead. Positive discrimination is right out. We’ve won all of our battles for equality. Right? If women aren’t in the boardroom, it’s because they’re choosing not to be – not to work the hours, not to take the stress. Or it’s something inherent to women’s work behaviour. They don’t push. They say “I’m grateful to have a job”, when they should be saying, “I am the linchpin of this organization. Up the offer or I walk”.

No, the one thing I think it’s not OK to say is that women might not get to the top of organizations because we are still subconsciously far harder on them than we are on men. All of us. I’ve often wondered if a man who walked and talked and acted the exact same way as I did would ever get told he was “abrupt”, or “not a team player”. I’ve often wondered if the same assumptions would be made about this hypothetical him. I have, needless to say, suspected that they would not.

In the spirit of my scientific credentials, obviously, I can’t make a statement like that without testing it. And the only way to test something like this is in a controlled trial. And there is a way to do a controlled trial – remotely, like, say online. What would happen if two people supposedly presented themselves, and produced work, and all-in-all were judged over a period of time, exactly the same, except that one was a man and one was a woman?

James Chartrand knows. The story of how a female writer came to work primarily under a male pseudonym, because the same work got more bids, better pay, and more respect, is fascinating and depressing. I wish I could believe that this was unusual. I really do. The people who paid more for “James’s” work than that of a female writer, and praised it more highly, almost certainly had no idea that gender was a factor in how they responded. How can there be equality in the workplace when we still understand our own brains, the filters through which we see and judge people, so poorly?

It’s fascinating that belief systems from Christianity to Objectivism are so centered around the idea of free will. A recent study suggests that strong general support for free will is at least somewhat cross cultural. I can’t think of a group of people (besides philosophers / psychologists / scientists) who don’t believe in free will.

I’ve wondered for some time if there is an evolutionary basis for the concept of free will. As we learn more about how our genes, childhoods, and social surroundings effect us, it’s amazing we take free will seriously at all.

Is there something about believing in free will that makes you more moral? A couple new studies seem to suggest that hearing anti-free will quotes makes people behave less ethically. In fact, if you are read an anti-free will statement, you’re more likely to spice up a bland food lover’s food with more hot sauce than you otherwise would. Ouch!

The only critique I have with these studies is that they only presented hard determinism as an alternative to free will, not compatibilism. In fact, compatibilism seemed to be confused with free will at times. I bet that hearing about hard determinism is a lot more likely to make people act unethically than simply hearing anti-free will statements. I would like to see a study contrasting the effects of learning about hard determinism with the effects of learning about compatibilism.

You can pretty much boil down any relationship with someone to one moment. For me and her, it was right after sex. Not the first time we had sex, nor the last, but one of the countless other occasions. Nothing about the sex itself was memorable, not that it was bad or mundane, it was just one of many exchanges of fluids. And then I went and did it.

I have this penchant, it’s more of a superpower really, for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, or not saying the right thing at the right time…basically time, saying things, and me have our issues. So I used my God-given talent to say one thing.

You know what was awesome?

A beat.

Those mozzarella sticks from before.

And, I’m aware that, of the potentially stupid post coital things I could say, this is somewhere in the middle of the list, but I said it. She immediately got pissed and I almost-immediately apologized. But somehow I’m sorry was never good enough. She tried to head butt me, but I moved. She always claimed that I never fought for the relationship. So I guess avoiding her head diving into mine was just another example of that.

And despite my stupidity and her trying to bash my head in, I was so unfathomably comfortable. So I’d do my best to avoid her, and we’d try to mentally beat the crap out of each other only to slide into each other and fit together like some fucked up, broken, and singed puzzle pieces that nobody else could pair up.

How would the behavior of 100 people influence you?

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For a sample of related Situationist posts, see “Solomon Asch’s Famous Compliance Experiment,” “Solomon Asch’s Conformity Experiment . . . Today,” “Journalists as Social Psychologists & Social Psychologists as Entertainers,” “Gender Conformity,” “The Situational Effect of Groups.”

Say what you want about my drinking, my playing the field, and my perpetual downward spiral, but I think the weird anomaly known as the lunch date is great. Sure, it’s a tad bit of a brushoff, but not a first date. On a first date you are just squeezing each other into your crazy schedules, not relegating them to the “B” meal like friends you don’t really want to catch up with.

I am not opposed to occasionally getting mildly more spiffy then I normally am at work. Yes, that includes a tie and the minimal amount of hair gel I necessitate when I bother.  The people at work were even complimenting, including the co worker, who told me, “You don’t look as crappy as normal, Travis.”

As for the girl in question, I met her a couple weeks ago when on a late afternoon coffee run, we both work within a few blocks of each other. After getting the number and trying to unsuccessfully procure a date, I tried the lunch attempt. So we met at this little cafe a few blocks over, a place I’ve passed a million times but never gone in.  I asked her about her job in fashion, and how my particular outfit faired. She told me it was, “passable”, while giving me sly little smile. After our meal, the waiter brought us over candy canes, a seasonal alternative to mints.

This is where I made a fatal mistake. I broke the curve it off. She just started at me awkwardly. I pretended to panic and said, “pretend you didn’t see that”. I told her that I didn’t eat the heads of candy canes, and more so I never show one of my quirks off on a first date, but honestly wasn’t even thinking about it.  She told me it was cute, but misguided. “Those aren’t the heads, they are the handle” as she held it by that and started eating it.

“False, you hang them on trees. It’s the head”  She laughed, and I won the mini-argument. Since we were on a time crunch, we had to rush our goodbyes. I just sighed and told her that I really hate doing it in this case, but I had a good time, and I honest-to-God wanted to kiss her. So we had a quick kiss, and I told her I called her. And here’s the shocker. I just might. I’m not saying she’s the girl who’s gonna make me give this up, or even that I’m going to tell her about it, but I don’t know if it would kill me or bastardized the project if I happen to keep in contact with a girl during this.

Alison was and always will be the definition of the two week relationship. We met the day before my Junior year of college and I was all kinds of in lust with her, and then two weeks of 4am phone calls, hour-drives, and some pretty damn good oral sex, we were sick of each other. To be honest, I forget of her existence on an a pretty consistent basis.  The only way I think of Alison is when I think about the small relationship I later found out she ruined in hindsight..then Facebook decided we should be friends, and she decided she wanted to grab a beer and chat.

When I got to the bar, I was greeted by an already tipsy Alison. She hugged me, and I’m pretty sure that this was the first time that ever happened. I got a sloppy kiss on the cheek that was essentially on the side of my lip. She bought me two shots, so I could “catch up”, I just joked that I thought thats what we were supposed to be doing…but just in the other kind of sense.

Ali was there with a couple friends who, within ten minutes, had all but vanished. I asked her vague questions, because I didn’t remember a whole lot about her other than her life-gaurding job and the fact that she was blonde and Irish. I didn’t forget the Irishness, but I did forget the freckles.  So we did another shot..on her time. I have to say that I don’t entirely hate women trying to liquor me up and buying me free rounds. It’s the 2000s for Christ’s sake…at least for a few more weeks.

So yes, knowing me how well you know me by now dear reader, I got fairly tipsy on a Tuesday. In the middle of the bar, she just loudly asks, “Do you plan on kissing me, or what?” So I obliged the young lady, being the gentlemen I am. And we made out a little in the bar. And I really truly hate making out in public, and I’m pretty sure people were watching. After two minutes max, we cut it out and went back to talking.

Last call hit, and I (read: the bar) decided we should call it quits, and I walked her to the 6, and she let me finish my cigarette. ” I felt the need to ask if she wanted to do it again sometime. A beat. Then a sharp inhale and a, “well…”

Well, I just guess that was that and that that was fairly confusing.

Jesus had 40 days of temptation in the dessert. Moses had 40 years of wandering in the desert. And Noah with his his 40 day flood.  And then you come to me and on my 40th day of dating, one night-stands, meaningless sex, and everything in between. After 12 years at a Catholic school, I can spout out those numbers without even really caring. One of my favorite lines in literature, that I’m sure I’m about to bastardized is, “I didn’t care what it was all about, I just wanted to know how to live in it.”

These days I’m starting to feel like I don’t really care what I’m trying to get out of this project I’m nearly doing. I have little going on in my life, and I just want to get through this. It just might be my sick desire to see things into their ungodly end.

And on my fortieth day there was April, the brunette, not the season.  There was nothing particularly interesting about April. She didn’t stop the flood, or lead me to the promised land, she got some very bland chinese take out with me and forced me to sit through The Hangover. I did, however decide to not even bother trying to make a move. Sure, she was pretty. She was not entirely dumb, and not boring enough to make me want to kiss her to shut her up, but she wasn’t someone I wanted to be a warm body.

I wound up spending the rest of the night bullshitting with Kara on the phone til 4.

Will robots destroy all of humanity? I’m not sure, but there’s a case to be made that they’ll kill us off by permanently altering romantic relationships.

Check out these latest realistic robots being sold in Japan. While they may not technically be “sex bots,” they make me think that sex bots are going to arrive soon. Just the marketing alone for these robots (“You are attracted by her girlish gestures”) has to convince you. It seems inevitable that these robots will make human women romantically obsolete, at least in heterosexual relationships.

I believe that most men will completely or partially change over to new robot girlfriends. It all boils down to evolutionary psychology. Considering it’s pretty hard to keep some guys away from a skanky waitress at Perkins or a high school babysitter, do you think these sexy robots stand any chance? Don’t be fooled by appearances -  these robots are not as innocent as they look! (Though it is pretty revealing that they look about fifteen years old.)

I can only imagine that these robot girlfriends will be programmed to entice every type of man around. They’ll do their job, and they’ll do it well. And I’m guessing many men will have a harem of these wide-eyed schoolgirls. Think about all the men addicted to their iPhones or Xbox 360s. Now imagine a super hot, super young looking group of women who never complain, never age, never get fat, and do whatever men want. Plus, they will likely have the personality of an iPhone. What man can resist that?

Modern women will just probably give up. We’ve got better things to do than botoxing, dieting, and waxing ourselves to death in order to stay in a perpetual state of looking almost high school aged. Maybe we’ll read Twilight instead. Maybe we’ll all go to medical school. Maybe we’ll opt to have relationships with other women. Maybe we’ll tear each other’s hair out competing for the few men who don’t prefer robots. No matter what, I have a feeling we’ll be having a lot less kids, unless these kids happen be sired by our robot boyfriends.

MANY an exhausted mum has suspected her husband of pretending to be asleep when the baby cries in the middle of the night.

But the man really is firmly in the land of nod, say researchers.

While a baby’s sobbing is the No.1 sound most likely to wake up a woman, it doesn’t even figure in the male top 10.

Car alarms and howling wind are prime noises guaranteed to disturb a man’s sleep.

The differences were revealed by tests measuring subconscious brain activity.

They found that a woman’s maternal instincts kick in at the sound of a baby’s cries – whether or not she is a mother.

The tests, carried out at the MindLab institution as part of research into the importance of a good night’s sleep, recreated a ‘‘sleep environment’’ for each volunteer before playing sounds and measuring the results on an electroencephalography machine to measure how regular brain activity is disturbed by them.

Psychologist Dr David Lewis said: ‘‘There is nothing more likely to leave you feeling drained and depressed than disturbed sleep.

‘‘While some sounds – for instance, your partner coughing or snoring beside you – disturb men and women equally, other noises such as a howling wind cause men to be more disturbed than women.

‘‘Women are more likely to be disturbed by a crying baby. These differing sensitivities may represent evolutionary differences that make women sensitive to sounds associated with a potential threat to their children while men are more finely tuned to disturbances posing a possible threat to the whole family.’’

The tests also found that 33 per cent of both sexes had moved to a spare room to get away from a partner’s snoring.

Source news.com.au

The Misconception: Problems are easier to solve when a group of people get together to discuss solutions.

The Truth: The desire to reach consensus and avoid confrontation hinders progress.

When a group of people come together to make a decision every demon in the psychological bestiary will be summoned.

Conformity, rationalization, stereotyping, delusions of grandeur – they all come out to play, and no one is willing to fight them back into hell because it might lead to abandoning the plan or a nasty argument.

Groups survive by maintaining harmony. When everyone is happy and their egos free from harm it tends to increase productivity. This is true whether you are hunting buffalo or selling televisions.

Team spirit, morale, group cohesion – these are golden principles long held high by managers, commanders, chieftains and kings. You know instinctively that dissent leads to chaos, so you avoid it.

This is all well and good until you find yourself in a group your brain isn’t equipped to deal with – like at work.

When you are in a group, you are observing the other members in an attempt to figure out what the consensus opinion is. Meanwhile, you are simultaneously weighing the consequences of disagreeing.

The problem is, every other person in the group is doing the same thing, and if everyone decides it would be a bad idea to risk losing friends or jobs, a false consensus will be reached and no one will do anything about it.

Often, after these sorts of meetings, two people will go somewhere private and reveal they think a mistake is being made. Why didn’t they just say so in the meeting?

Social psychologist Irving Janis mapped out this behavior through research after reading about the U.S. decision to invade southern Cuba – The Bay of Pigs.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy tried to overthrow Fidel Castro with a force of 1,400 exiles.

They weren’t professional soldiers. Cuba knew they were coming. There weren’t many of them. They were slaughtered. It took three days.

This led to Cuba getting friendly with the U.S.S.R and almost led to nuclear apocalypse.

John F. Kennedy and his advisers were brilliant people with nearly unlimited resources who had gotten together and planned something incredibly stupid. After it was over, they couldn’t explain why they did it.

Janis wanted to get to the bottom of it, and his research led to the discovery of groupthink, a term coined earlier by William H. White in Fortune magazine.

It turns out, for any plan to work, every team needs at least one asshole who doesn’t give a shit if he gets fired or exiled or excommunicated. For a group to make good decisions, they must allow dissent and convince everyone they are free to speak their mind without risk of punishment.

It seems like common sense, but it isn’t. You are not so smart.

How many times have you settled on a bar or restaurant no one really wanted to go to? How many times have you given advice to someone you knew wasn’t really your honest opinion? How many times does everyone decide to do Secret Santa and everyone gets crappy presents?

True groupthink depends on three conditions:

• A group of people who like each other
• Isolation
• A deadline for the decision

The recent housing market collapse, the failure to prevent the attack at Pearl Harbor, the sinking of the Titanic, the invasion of Iraq – all of these can be attributed to situations  in which groupthink led to awful decisions.

When groups get together to make a decision, an illusion of invulnerability can emerge in which everyone feels secure in the group. People begin to rationalize other people’s ideas and don’t reconsider their own.

You want to defend the group’s cohesion from all harm, so you supress doubts, you don’t argue, you don’t offer alternatives – and since everyone is doing this, the leader of the group falsely assumes everyone is in agreement.

This situation can be avoided if:

• The boss is not allowed to express his or her expectations.
• The group breaks into pairs every once in a while to discuss the issue.
• Outsiders are invited periodically to evaluate the group’s decisions.
• One person is assigned the role of asshole who finds faults in the plan.
• Before a final decision is made, a cooling off period is allowed.

The research shows groups of friends who allow members to disagree and still be friends are more likely to come to better decisions. So, the next time you are in a group of people trying to reach consensus, be the asshole. Every group needs one, and it might as well be you.

Links:

Using physics to predict groupthink

How groupthink led to the invasion of Iraq

How corporate groupthink squashes talent

In honor of the season I decided it was time to have somewhat of a misfit date for the season. Something I would normally do with a girlfriend, something that bordered on cute and adorable.

Claire, one of the waitress I met on my bartending shift the other night, came over last night for a marathon of pizza, cheap beer,  and Christmas specials. We worked our way through the Grinch, the Chipmunks, Rudolph, and The Nightmare Before Christmas.  In date terms, it was probably the down right date-iest of the ones I’ve been on since I started this. I don’t know, I guess the Kara thing followed by the Kate thing, got to me a little bit, and I kind of needed a nice night of fooling myself.

We kissed a couple times and made out halfway through Nightmare Before Christmas, but by the end of it, it was getting late and we both had work in the morning, I told her she should go.

I’d put three relationships that I’ve had over the years in the “important” category.  There was the end of high school girlfriend, the college/live in girlfriend, and the one before the project.  All of them were intense, messy, and brutal. I’d never gotten closure on any of them really. The two most long-standing exes went far, far away after the breakup, and we don’t even talk anymore.

When I found out Kate was going to be in the state, I was anxious to try and see her. I felt bad about how it ended. I said a lot of horrible things I didn’t even mean, and some even more horrible things that I did.  It took more than a little to get her to agree to a cup of coffee…and even then it was like pulling teeth to try and maintain a somewhat normal conversation.   It was obvious from the get go that she didn’t want to be remotely near me, and the fact of the matter was she’d spent more time looking at her tea than me.  Eventually, I hit a wall with trying and told her I’d be right back. I walked out and started to smoke in plain view. Of course, she came out, and started giving me crap about it…to the point of literally taking it out of my mouth and flicking it away.

Dirty habit

Expensive habit, I fired back.

And then she gave me the look that I was, even after eight years, so painfully familiar with.  Nobody could quite convey an overall sense of disappointment  with a small subtle look like Kate did. She just said  four words that really cut to the chase of it.

Where are you going?

Nowhere.  Then a beat before I continued with my own four. Want to join me?

And I swear to God she cracked a smile. But her heart didn’t grow, and I didn’t get my Hallmark moment. She just walked away. And you can say what you want about a lack of closure, but I suppose seeing somebody walk away and just not having the words for you, says a whole lot more than any long list of disappointments.

WTH is happening to America?

Boston Boomer more or less asked this question on The Confluence blog in several different ways over the last few weeks. The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein holds some answers and there’s my ancient text from a Sociology Class, “The Conquest of Society“, by Snell Putney with more reflections on the current state of chaos.

Both Klein’s book and Dr. Putney’s book mention the war on the middle class — not as the main theme but one of the underlying themes. It seems that throughout recorded history there has always been one class that wanted everything for themselves. Economics & Social Psychology & History hold some of the answers to our quest to understand the current upheavel happening in our lives.

DK the Economic Professor in residence also at the Confluence has extended her classroom out into the world of the Internet. It is well worth the time to read her posts which makes Economics accessible to anyone with common sense. I like economic theory but not the heavy-duty math that is required to understand some the high level forces that drive all the interconnected wheels of the economic buggy.

Cognitive Dissonance — we heard our middle class parents tell us that if we worked hard, followed the rules, saved our money, we too could have a comfortable retirement. So those who have been saving and planning for retirement are watching the bonus/parasite class more or less loot the US Treasury. The bonus class are the Goldman Sachs (and other Wall Street firms) who will lavish huge bonuses on their employees this month. These are the same companies who gambled and played long shots — sort of like they were at a casino or the horse races — and then they needed a bailout from the US Treasury (that would be the middle class tax payers).[The cognitive dissonance is -- hey I've played by the rules, I don't lie and cheat -- but it is the greedy liars and cheaters who are the winners.]

So while the middle class is taking one hit after another — job losses, home foreclosures, health care insurance increases, savings and investments heading toward the basement, this bonus class is making out, well, like bandits.

At the same time — the middle class should be on the same team, but we are being divided by very cleaver politicians and their best buddies the media. The media sold a product called Obama — he had the magic they claimed to make everyone’s world wonderful. Just when we should be pulling together as a Nation to solve some major problems — like finding jobs for the close to 20% unemployed — this isn’t happening.

See what I do understand about economic, which really doesn’t take any math skills, just critical thinking, is that when a person works at a good job this person will PUT money back into the system and pay taxes. It seems so simple — put people to work. What new industry is on the verge of being THE technology which drives the economic engine? Where are the jobs to put people back to work, making a good and decent income to start paying back into the system? It is the middle class who will bring about any recovery — the innovative ideas come from us. The parasite class can only feed off of the golden goose (the middle class). Some species of parasites can adjust their feeding off of the host and not killing the host. Other parasite species kill their hosts by over feeding and the parasites die with their host. The greedy parasites manage to survive — with the first to feed and leave principle.

But we have another problem — apparently jobs created in America just happen to end up overseas where labor is cheaper. Then the argument by the bonus class is that the wages in the US need to DROP so that American workers can be competitive on the world-wide job market. BUT notice that the bonus class still wants their tens or hundreds of thousands of dollar bonuses at the end of this year. The bonus class doesn’t want to give up that bonus to someone overseas who might be smarter and greedier.

The purpose of the Shock Doctrine is to so disorient the middle class that they have NO ability to stand up against the looting of their country. And that’s what we are seeing the continuation of the looting started by GW Bush. Both parties are doing the looting. What the bonus class hasn’t looted, the Congress will loot with this so-called “Health Care” Insurance Bill. The final amount that families will have to pay for insurance sounds so unrealistic and bogus that it is hard to wrap our minds around the fact that we are being beat up by bullies and then we are told that the beating is for our own good.

America is made up of a lot of small businesses who depend on the middle class to stay afloat. When a huge percentage of income is predicted to be required to pay for health care insurance then, this leave less money for the middle class to spend. Cuts will have to be made to bear bone essentials. Food, shelter, transportation, clothes TAXES and HEALTH CARE INSURANCE.

The Gilded Age was a time when there were very very rich people who lived like Kings and Queens in America. I’ve visited the homes turned into museums of this wealthy class. I’ve also toured Palaces of the royalty in Europe — there isn’t a whole lot of difference in the opulence and the servants needed to run the homes of the ultra rich at the turn of the 19th Century.

It seems like we are having a rerun of the Gilded age of America  — will the middle class be forced into submission?

In the countries where the Shock Doctrine has been used a large percentage of the middle class dropped into the poverty classes. The gap between the rich and the poor looks like a repeat of the Gilded age (reference below).  Some historians tell us to find comparisons to our modern era with the Guilded age. Also this was when the doctrine of Manifest destiny came into Prominance — America’s Destiny to take ove the world.

The war speech that 0bama gave to West Point Cadets should have had “liberals” sceaming manifest destiny — but only one online blog caught 0bama’s underlying message:

Obama lives and breathes American Manifest Destiny – which means, as a non-white person, he is profoundly mentally unbalanced. But any lefty worth her/his salt should have known that. Obama’s yearly talks to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the regional equivalent of the Council on Foreign Affairs, were models of imperial-speak, totally consistent with his West Point performance. Beginning years ago, he repeatedly declared that, as president, he would draw a line in the sands (or mountains) of Afghanistan – which is something only militarist, imperialist pigs draw in other people’s countries. He warned everyone that, under the Bin-Ladin-Might-Be-There Doctrine, he would refuse to respect the sovereignty of Pakistan. And he has ceaselessly lied about his actions and intentions in Iraq – a key qualification for the job of imperial U.S. president.

The above quote is taken from the blog called The Black Agenda Report article, Will the “Last Progressive for 0bama” please turn out the lights?

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Notes:

1.) Cognitive Dissonance:

Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The “ideas” or “cognitions” in question may include attitudes and beliefs, the awareness of one’s behavior, and facts. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, or by justifying or rationalizing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.^[1] Cognitive dissonance theory is one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, by Leon Festinger.

2.) Gilded Age:

In American history, the Gilded Age refers to substantial growth in population in the United States and extravagant displays of wealth and excess of America’s upper-class during the post-Civil War and post-Reconstruction era, in the late 19th century (1865-1901). The term “Gilded Age” was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their 1873 book, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today.

read more here.

3.) MANIFEST DESTINY

The 19th-century political and philosophical belief that it was America’s divinely assigned mission to expand westward across the North American continent and to establish democratic and Protestant ideals was known as Manifest Destiny.

John O’Sullivan, a journalist, coined the phrase in a 1845 newspaper editorial about the annexation of Texas, in which he spoke of America’s “manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our multiplying millions.” The roots of the concept, however, can be traced to American and European writers of the colonial period and even earlier who professed the belief that the supplanting of the pagan practices of native peoples in the West was no less than an ordination from God. The term was used throughout the second half of the 19th century as justification for the United States acquisition of territory all the way to the Pacific Ocean and beyond, including Alaska and Hawaii.

Kath Hall recently poster her situationist paper, “Why Good Intentions are Often Not Enough: The Potential for Ethical Blindness in Legal Decision-Making” on SSRN.  Here’s the abstract.

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This chapter takes as its starting point the question of how otherwise experienced and principled lawyers can make blatantly unethical decisions. As recent research has shown, lawyers can become involved in legitimizing inhuman conduct just as they can in perpetuating accounting fraud or hiding client scandal. To an outsider looking at these circumstances, it invariably appears that the lawyers involved consciously acted immorally. Within the common framework of deliberative action, we tend to see unethical behaviour as the result of conscious and controlled mental processes.

Whilst awareness is always part of our actions, this chapter challenges the pervasiveness of assumptions about the power of conscious processes in ethical decision making. Drawing on a range of psychological research, it focuses on two important findings: first, that automatic mental processes are far more dominant in our thinking than most of us are aware; and second, that because we do not generally have introspective access to these processes, we infer from their results what the important factors in our decision making must be. These findings challenge the notion that individuals can be fully aware of what influences them to act ethically or unethically. It also suggests that we need to concentrate upon those conscious processes that we do know influence decision making in deepening our understanding of how to improve ethical awareness.

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To download the paper for free, click here.  To read a sample of related Situationist posts, see “The Situation of Lawyers’ Complicity,” “Gatekeepers Inside Out – Abstract,” “The Situation of Lawyers and Practicing Law,” “Law, Chicken Sexing, Torture Memo, and Situation Sense,” “The Situation of John Yoo and the Torture Memos,” “Why Do Lawyers Acquiesce In Their Clients’ Misconduct?,” Part I, Part II, and Part III, “The Illusion of Wall Street Reform,” “On the Ethical Obligations of Lawyers: Are We Snakes? Are We Supposed to Be?.”

Self Fulfilling Prophecy:  A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true. The prediction influences peoples’ behaviors so that they fulfill the once-false prophecy. For example, a job interviewer might assume that an applicant is less competent because of his or her race, gender, or background. Because of this, they might conduct the interview in a cold and detatched manner, which then causes the applicant to feel awkward or nervous and subsequently perform poorly. Thus, we observe three steps to the self-fulfilling prophecy: 1) you have an expectation about someone, 2) you behave accordingly towards him or her, and 3) he or she behaves just as you expected (which of course, reinforces your original expectations; it’s a triangle!).

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Before my friend Lurchie lost her virginity, she would get really nervous while hooking up with boys. She thought that they could tell that she was unexperienced, and that they would think she was childish (this was also during her freshman year, which compounded the predicament). As much as my friends and I insisted that men had no “virgin radar” and that as long as she acted confident she would be fine, Lurchie couldn’t get over it. She would bat her eyelashes and tease and banter all night, but when she and a boy were one-on-one, she would get nervous that she was acting childishly (it also didn’t help that Lurchie was hooking up with older guys, mainly seniors). The guys would sense that she was nervous, and then realize that they had the upper hand. These douchebags (another thing about Lurchie- she usually attracts fratty douchebags) would then captilize on this power, and make Lurchie feel even more inferior, which made her even more nervous and awkward. SFP, anyone? Her expectation (that she was inexperienced relative to them) influenced her behavior (she acted nervously) which then influenced the behavior of the men (they acted superior to her) which reinforced her pre-existing expectation (that she was inexperienced). Clearly, Lurchie has gotten over this (see “Erectile Dysfunction and Sunk Costs”). Even though she doesn’t always capitalize on her experience, and often has hookups which are quite PG, her private knowledge that she is, in fact, experienced manifests itself in her acting confidently, which then influences the behavior of the men she gets with (they think of her as confident and cool). This is actually working quite well for Lurchie, and if you knew her well enough to see her text message inbox, it might even amuse you as much as this blog does (nearly impossible, I know).

I briefly dated this guy who we will call Danny the Drug Dealer (DDD for short). Although things didn’t work out with us (which can be attributed to the last two D’s)  I really enjoyed going on dates with him and later, hooking up him. DDD thought I was beautiful (he had good taste), and would take every opportunity to tell me. He would greet me with a “Hey gorgeous,” stop me mid-makeout to look at me and say “you’re so pretty,”  and whisper in my ear at strategic moments (“I have so much fun hooking up with you”). Little did DDD know that he was actually doing himself a favor. Neither of my ex-boyfriends (McLovin’ or the Gymnast) were overly vocal about compliments… or anything, really. As a result, while with them, I was less confident, and less vocal. But since I knew that DDD was obsessed with me, I didn’t bother being awkward or nervous on our dates. I was funny and sarcastic, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. During makeout sessions, I was too busy concentrating on having fun to worry about what to do with my hands, or if he could hear my stomach growling because I ordered only a salad at dinner. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy on DDD’s part. Let’s make the triangle: his expectations of me were that I am a cool, confident, beautiful girl. These expectations lead him to treat me as such; he spoiled me, complimented me, and treated me with respect and admiration. This behavior influenced my own; I was witty, confident, and I acted like a girl who knows she’s sexy (you know the ones). This reinforced his initial expectations. All was good, and although DDD’s choice of livelihood might suggest otherwise, he was a smart guy.

This is Part III and the conclusion of an interview of Situationist Contributor John Jost by the Association for Psychological Science Student Caucus.    Part I is here and Part II is here.  This segment focuses on John’s own remarkable and pathbreaking research.

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APSSC: Much of your research has focused on psychological characteristics of liberals and conservatives. What have you learned that could be applied in the increasingly partisan world of politics?

Jost: Well, that is an interview in itself, and I have given several on this topic (including one that is archived at The Situationist). The bottom line is that major differences of opinion (such as the debate over health care reform) are not easy to resolve because they are rooted in fundamental differences not only in personalities and values, but also in lifestyles, social networks, and even physiological responses, as our work has shown.

In general, liberals are more drawn to flexibility, tolerance, progress, complexity, ambiguity, creativity, curiosity, diversity, equality, and open-mindedness, whereas conservatives are more drawn to order, stability, structure, closure, discipline, tradition, familiarity, and conscientiousness. Presumably, society needs at least a little of both types of characteristics.

Democracy is an ingenious system when it works well, because it seeks to establish a set of rules and procedures that are fair and efficient by which individuals and groups are compelled to rise above relatively narrow needs and interests. My colleague, Tom Tyler, and I have written about this. How else can we resolve disputes except to require opposing sides to make the best possible case for policies that their adversaries are inclined to resist for their own social and psychological (as well as ideological) reasons? But when democratic norms are flouted or otherwise fail to protect us, we are lost. We find ourselves in very deep trouble.

APSSC: You’ve also spent a lot of time studying and developing system justification theory, which describes how one works to maintain society’s status quo, even when it’s not in one’s best interest. Do you think that system justification can be found in the field of psychology?

Jost: I think you’re trying to get me in trouble now. But, yes, as long as the science and practice of psychology is undertaken by human beings, I expect that some degree of system justification is likely, at least on occasion. Do I think that it’s easier to publish an article in one of our top journals that is largely compatible or incompatible with the status quo (i.e., past precedent and existing theory, as institutionalized in textbooks and so forth), I would bet on compatible.

The same is true of our legal system, which is heavily reliant on past precedent (stare decisis) and therefore inherently conservative. I am not saying that there are never good reasons to privilege what comes first — often there are. But if there is a bias that is built into scientific and legal systems, it is probably in favor of what has already been established (the status quo) and against what appears to challenge it. I suspect that this is part of human nature, and such a bias characterizes our way of thinking and most, if not all, of our social and cultural institutions.

APSSC: How has what you’ve learned through your research influenced how you live your life?

Jost: I suppose that because of my research I am more skeptical of decision outcomes that preserve the status quo than I otherwise would be. So when I had the chance to move to NYU a few years ago, I knew that psychological inertia would work against the move, and I tried to adjust for that. I even spent a wonderful year in a “neutral” location at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. In retrospect, I’m very glad that I moved to NYU. Since coming here, I have had terrific colleagues and the kinds of PhD students that one dreams of working with! I feel very fortunate. Maybe the system does work after all!

APSSC: What do you see in the future for the field of psychology?

Jost: I have no idea, but I certainly agree with various APS luminaries who regard psychology as a “hub” science. I would like to see us do a better job of connecting to — and translating important insights from — the social and behavioral sciences, such as sociology, anthropology, economics, political science, and so on. And I’m sure that psychology will continue to be influenced by the biological sciences, and hopefully we can give something back to them, too.

APSSC: Is there a question that you wish I had asked? What would your answer have been?

Jost: Is it possible to care deeply about something, like the problem of global climate change, and still investigate it scientifically? Yes, because the rules of the scientific method, if you follow them scrupulously, actually work, and (in my opinion) the rules have nothing to do with being dispassionate or disinterested. Much as genuine engagement with and adherence to democratic norms and procedures serves to elevate discourse and action above particularized interests, so, too, does genuine engagement with and adherence to scientific norms and procedures. Following the scientific method matters far more, in my view, than the specific social or personal characteristics of any given scientist, which — at the end of the day — are irrelevant. The evidence and the quality of the argument are what matter. As Kurt Lewin noted at the outbreak of World War II, this is why science and democracy go hand in hand.

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You can listen here to a fascinating related lecture recently delivered by John Jost at NYU about some of the sources, correlates, and antecedents of ideology.

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To read a sample of related Situationist posts, see “Social Tuning and Ideology – Part 1 and Part 2,” “The Situation of Ideology – Part I,” “The Situation of Ideology – Part II,” “Ideology is Back!,” “A System-Justification Primer,” “Barbara Ehrenreich on the Sources of and Problems with Dispositionism,” “The Motivated Situation of Inequality and Discrimination,” “John Jost on System Justification Theory,” “John Jost’s “System Justification and the Law” – Video,” To review other Situationist posts about system justification or ideology, click here or here respectively.