Science Of Small Talk

Down on Luck

Sam Sommers — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:30:37 +0000

One of the recurring themes of this blog has been the basic human tendency to overlook the external forces that shape our lives. We prefer to think of the social universe as a predictable and orderly place–one in which, for example, individuals act a certain way because "that's the kind of person they are." These are reassuring notions in a world that otherwise can seem disconcertingly random.

So we assume we actually "know" public figures based on highly constrained slices of performance we see filtered through the media. We blame the negative acts of others on a predisposition for malfeasance or misanthropic personality type. And more generally, we look right past the influence that daily situations have on our social perceptions, experiences, and behaviors.

For similar reasons, we're typically down on luck. That is, we don't cotton too well to the suggestion that chance dictates important outcomes in life. Think about your best friends from college, as just one example. What was it that brought you together and made you as close as you once were? Shared interests, whether academic or decidedly non-intellectual? Compatible personalities?

Sure, those factors played a role. But if you're like most people, simple physical proximity was the major determinant of whether you and future friends even crossed paths to begin with. It's no coincidence that most students have a disproportionate number of friends from the building, floor, or hallway to which they were initially (and somewhat randomly) assigned.

Yes, these path-crossings evolve into meaningful relationships based on substantive bonds. But luck–in this case, in the form of the vagaries of the campus housing office–is often what opens the door to even our most intimate of relationships. Yet we have a hard time accepting this conclusion because it's distressing to think that friendships can be dicated by something as mundane as floor plan.

Our reservations about luck also guide reactions to other events. Consider the apparent outcry surrounding the newly famous Australian banker who made the poor choice to peruse risqué email attachments while a colleague was filming a live television news spot over his back shoulder.

Oops.

According to media reports, "Dave the Banker" is currently on leave. And according to cnn.com, a website has now been launched by his supporters to try to save his job. The argument most often offered in his defense is that he was simply doing something that all of us do almost every day: using his office computer/time for activities unrelated to work.

(As an aside, some might suggest there's a sexual component to the story, a prerequisite for many a blog post, it would seem. But Dave the Banker's story isn't really about sex. He wasn't looking at hard-core pornography–apparently these were photos taken from GQ. And Dave didn't seem to be showing them to anyone else in the office, though, admittedly, even without the camera behind him, he wasn't really in private. But I imagine this story plays out in similar fashion had he been caught playing web poker, skyping with friends, or wasting time on youtube.)

This story is all about luck. Again, the chief argument for defending this happenchance internet star is the very happenchance nature of the incident. He had the misfortune to be caught doing something many–if not most–people do every day.

But is that really a compelling defense? Is it different than arguing with the cop that everybody rolls through the stop sign, it's just that you were the unlucky one who did so in front of a patrol car? Or claiming in court that everyone fudges their tax deductions, but you just drew the short straw of the random audit? Which leads to a few more questions, like even when the risk is quite small, don't we assume it nonetheless when we knowingly engage in behaviors we're not supposed to? And doesn't failure to enforce those rules because of the luck involved with their enforcement defeat the very purpose of having the rules in the first place?

Unlike the origin-of-your-college-friends example, for pecadillos like those just mentioned, it's not that we overlook the role of luck. Rather, we're uncomfortable with the notion of pinning major consequences to a bad outcome driven by an unlucky roll of the dice.

It's an interesting asymmetry, because we're quite taken with stories of good luck: the future movie star spotted by the talent scout in a mundane location, the fan in the right place at the right time to catch the record-breaking homerun ball, the downtrodden lotto player who miraculously hits the jackpot, and so on.

Our reactions to luck seem to boil down to self-focused concerns. We have a hard time shaking the idea that the luck-based outcome could just as easily have happened to us. So we enjoy hearing the good-luck story because it allows us to hold out hope that we, too, could be just moments away from sudden fame or fortune. And the bad-luck-related outcome sparks uncomfortable "there, but for the grace of God..." thoughts.

That's why, in the end, I imagine our Australian friend won't lose his job. It was a minor offense, of course, and Dave's supervisors will likely come to think of it in terms of "something similar could've easily happened to me." And even if he is fired, he'll probably hit the talk route circuit and end up with a book deal, leading all of us to bemoan why it is that we can't have the good fortune to get caught looking at semi-clad models on our office computer.

Luck, much like our reactions to it, can be fickle that way.

The Greatest Blog Post Ever

Sam Sommers — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:46:14 +0000

Sex. Discussion of young, attractive people having sex. Allusions to young, attractive people having sex. Anything even tangentially related to the possibility of that, at some point in time, people of even moderate youth or attractiveness had themselves a bit of sex.

Marriage and its inevitable ups and downs. Communication in marriage, or lack thereof. Sex in marriage, or lack thereof.

Infidelity. How to detect it. How to prevent it or get over it. Why you're currently engaged in it. Why men can't help it and why women can't help but let them do it.

It's been 18 months now that I've been blogging on the psychology of daily life, or the science of small talk as the title of my Psychology Today anthology suggests. It's been quite the interesting experience. Two or three times a month I sit down at my computer, type something up, format it on the website, and then in an act of blind faith, click the button to send it out to into the increasingly overcrowded marketplace of web ideas.

Happiness. How to be happy. Why you aren't happy enough. Why you even shouldn't care about being happy in the first place.

Politics. Why Obama is the second coming. Why Obama is ruining the world. Why I thought Obama was the second coming, only to find out later that he has decided to ruin the world. Oh, and maybe something about Palin too.

You see, you're never quite sure how the 1,000 words you type up in private are going to play once they get out there and have to fend for themselves. But you find out pretty quickly. Sometimes the entries you throw together quickly end up with thousands of views in just a few days. Other times, an idea hits you like a lightning bolt, you take you time to craft a sure winner, and the post flatlines right out of the gate.

Anything about reality TV. Or Facebook. Or Twitter.

Absolute statements regarding the evolutionarily-dictated nature of human behavior, supported by unfalsifiable or circular reasoning. Also usually about sex. Like why literally everything a man does is aimed to increase his chances of having sex. Why every single stereotype you've ever heard about men and women is, in actuality, an unavoidable, Darwin-sanctioned truth.

Or more genetics lessons like why promiscuous men are more likely to have twins. Why middle siblings are disproportionately gay. Why attractive people are smarter and better and taller and funnier than you. And, while we're at it, why these attractive people have middle children who want to have sex with your less intelligent, short, unfunny, gay twins–preferably posted as a seven-part serial.

But after 18 months, I'm beginning to catch on. In looking at the number of views each of my own entries has inspired–as well as the most widely read efforts from my fellow bloggers on the site–I've started to discern some of the common elements of a popular blog post. It's an interesting psychological question to ponder, after all. And rather than ration out these common ingredients for popular posts by sprinkling them into my own work over the course of the next few months, I've decided to go for broke and throw them all into just one entry in the effort to assemble the single greatest blog post of all time. You're reading it right now.

Pictures of celebrities in the news. Pictures of attractive female celebrities whether or not they're in the news. Pictures of attractive females whether or not they're celebrities or in the news.

Pictures of anyone notorious. Pictures of anyone who just died. Pictures of anyone who allegedly had sex with people who are notorious and/or just died.

But definitely somewhere, somehow, lots and lots of pictures.

Of course, you might argue that number of hits is not the only way to gauge the greatness of a blog post. Touché. I concede that on a website devoted to entertaining, but also helping and educating readers, a blogger may have grander objectives than mere popularity. Like, for instance, the not unrelated goal of pissing people off. By that measure, too, I have high aspirations for the greatness of what you're now reading. For example...

Global warming. Nothing particularly controversial or groundbreaking about the idea, mind you, just a willingness to use the phrase and recognize its existence.

Race. The mere suggestion of racial bias. The idea that race could have influenced an ongoing current event or might shed some light on a societal issue. The audacious insinuation that we have not achieved the post-racial holy land, and still, from time to time, have to wrestle with issues of race.

Gay marriage. Health care. Religion. Socialism. Vaccination.

But mostly, race.

To be fair, the lessons on how to elicit angry responses didn't take me a full 18 months. On that count, I proved to be a quick learner–it took all of two weeks before I had been referred to in reader responses as a "racist," a "knave," and a "smug, narcissistic fraud." And you should've seen what the comments of non-family members were like.

Why you have to see the movie everyone's talking about because it reveals deep truths about human nature. Why the movie everyone's talking about gets it all wrong, psychologically speaking.

A list, preferably numbered, of how to improve yourself or achieve success in an important domain.

The problems with schools and parents today. Also numbered in a list.

Something with a vaguely-camouflaged obscenity in the title. Something with the word "lover" in the title. Something pretty similar to what someone else posted a week ago, but with a catchier, sexier, or more vaguely obscene title.

Tiger.

So there you have it: my shot at the greatest blog post of all time. Only time will tell if the grand experiment has succeeded. For now, though, it's back to the drawing board for me for new ideas. If you have suggestions, you know how to find to me–I'll be the knave scouring Google Images for pictures of Obama and Al Gore initiating the interracial climate change conspiracy... in bed.

Global Warming is Dead. Long Live Global Warming!

Sam Sommers — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 04:45:16 +0000

Baby, it's cold outside. Not just up here in New England, but across continents. Citrus farmers in Florida are worried about freezing crops. Britain is experiencing its worst cold spell in three decades. There's record snowfall in China.

You know what this means, of course. Brace yourself for yet another spate of obituaries declaring the end of global warming.

The jokes I can tolerate well enough. I mean, who, in the midst of shoveling snow, hasn't been tempted to throw out a one-liner to their neighbor like, "hey, what happened to global warming?" Or "tell Al Gore I have an extra shovel for him when he's done with his next book." It's tough to resist the temptation–it's the cold-climate equivalent of saying, "man, it's like a sauna in here" when you are, indeed, taking a sauna.

But it's the person who offers supposedly serious conclusions based on limited, recent observation that's tougher to swallow. It's beyond me how someone can look a camera, editor, or blogosphere in the eye and, with straight face, suggest that a few weeks of frigid winter temperatures put a resolute end to multi-year trends. It's as ridiculous as suggesting that because your uncle smoked until he was 90, the link between cigarettes and cancer has been dispelled.

We simply read too much into recent events in assessing present conditions and forecasting the future. We put so much stock in what has just happened that we lose sight of the broader trajectory that brought us to this point. Recent developments are more salient and therefore more influential in how we think.

So the past few weeks have been bitterly cold? Well, then, the earth can't be getting warmer. It's little different than the bettor's overconfidence that the three teams that won last week's relatively meaningless football games will also win the rematches this weekend when the NFL playoffs start. Or the all-you-can-eat buffeteer's certainty that he's never going to be hungry again after inhaling half his own weight in shrimp cocktail.

And just as it demonstrates the power of recency, the inevitable surge in global warming skepticism after a cold spell also illustrates what seems to be our society's increasing imperviousness to data. As Michael Specter suggests in his new book Denialism, in many respects, we seem to be devolving into a culture in which we'd rather rely on gut feeling than scientific inquiry.

When I was in graduate school, I once heard a psychologist I greatly admire caution against reading too much into isolated examples. "The plural of anecdote is not data," I recall hearing her say more than a decade ago. But all too often, it would seem that more of us subscribe to the sentiment underlying a different quotation, namely Mark Twain's claim that the three varieties of lies are "lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Sure, statistics can be manipulated. In fact, I hear that's true 87% of the time. But this is precisely why reasonable scientists don't base their conclusions on just one study, one set of data, or one research team. Consider the Climategate controversy a few months ago surrounding those hacked emails from British climatologists. Some trumpeted that these emails were proof of fraudulent research practices (they weren't, as a close reading of the actual messages reveals). But even if they were, it's not as if these were the only data indicating a clear trajectory of increasing temperatures over decades.

When I teach research methods to college students, I emphasize all semester long this notion that the plural of "anecdote" isn't "data." But we lose sight of this premise too easily in daily life. How else to explain why we allow a couple weeks of cold temperatures to influence us more than the finding that 2009 was one of the top 10 warmest years in recorded history?

Or why we become convinced by a few instances of co-occurrence that vaccination causes autism?

Or why we believe we've experienced a psychic moment when the long-lost friend we suddenly dreamed about the other night phones out of the blue?

Your gut can be misleading.

No, science isn't perfect. After all, it's inherently a process of trial and error. But when we read too much into singular events, recent developments, coincidences, and regular fluctuations, we don't stand even a chance of learning anything meaningful about the world around us. Without stepping back to take a big-picture and–dare I say it?–an empirical/statistical view, we get too distracted by the random blips to truly understand what's on the radar screen in front of us.

So strap on your boots, gloves, and thermal underwear, and remember, this is what winter feels like. Sometimes it's cold, sometimes it's damned cold, and sometimes it's not so bad. A colder-than-average January doesn't disprove global warming any more than one warmer-than-average month confirms it.

Or as Twain himself might have put it, the rumors of global warming's demise have been greatly exaggerated.

The Specifics of Helping Out

Sam Sommers — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:59:39 +0000

We humans are capable of great kindnesses as well as heroic acts. Every so often we hear the news report of the neighbor who rushes into a burning building to save a young child or the tourist who jumps into the ocean to rescue the drowning stranger. We read these stories and we feel good about humankind.

Until, that is, we see the story about the woman who died in the emergency room after collapsing in full view of multiple employees who didn't intervene. Or the man who died on a city bus but remained unnoticed for hours as it continued its route and eventually parked for the night at the depot. Or the woman stabbed to death while her neighbors failed to respond to repeated screams for help.

Then we do a 180-degree turn in how we feel about human nature. Instead of feeling good about the world, we rue the current state of affairs in society, asking what has happened to our common sense of decency and humanity?

The truth of the matter is that bystander apathy is hardly a recent phenomenon. In fact, many a research psychologist has examined the obstacles that stand in the way of our getting involved with others who need help (see, for example, this PT post). Sometimes we're too busy to notice the person who needs assistance. Other times we notice what's going on, but assume that the situation is under control and doesn't require intervention. Or we simply figure that someone else will take care of things–why should I be the one to get up and miss part of the movie to report that the projector is out of focus? This mentality has trivial repercussions at the multiplex, but more serious consequences during an emergency.

Of course, with this understanding of the factors that influence helping behavior comes specific suggestions for how to bypass our less helpful tendencies. And one major lesson we've learned after years of research is that it pays to be as specific and unambiguous as possible in soliciting help.

Much of time, emergencies are ambiguous. Bystanders can't tell if the screams they hear result from drunk horseplay or genuine confrontation; the bus passenger is unsure what to make of the man across the aisle with his head slumped against the window. Anything you can do to cut through that ambiguity makes people more likely to help, as does giving them a precise idea of what, specifically, they can do to make things better.

For instance, today's cnn.com has an interesting story about one charity website trying to put this lesson into real-life practice. The site is called modestneeds.org and its objective is to provide potential donors with detailed requests for minor financial assistance, allowing prospective benefactors to decide how, specifically, to direct their gift.

The article describes the story of a 5-year boy whose mother requested $50 for a down payment on a pair of $500 lenses that would help him with a correctable eye problem. Enough donors made small gifts to ultimately pay the entire cost of the lenses. According to the article, "when he put them on for the first time, the little boy turned to his mother and said, ‘Mommy, is that you?' When they went home, he drew his first picture with shapes: a portrait of his family."

There's sound psychology underlying the website's method. While general charity appeals can be successful, many a potential donor may feel as if the paltry amount they can afford to give is unlikely to make a dent in a massive problem like world hunger or cancer research. But finding out that my $15 can help a lower-income family pay their electric bill and avoid eviction? Learning that $10 will get a disabled individual that much closer to the car repairs that will permit her to secure part-time work? Those goals seems much more attainable, the path to helping much more direct.

So in the spirit of the holiday season, let's try our own social psychological experiment–here's your unambiguous request for specific assistance: go to modestneeds.org and sign up for an account. It takes 45 seconds. Then browse through the aid request donations and make a small gift of $5 or $10 to the beneficiary of your choice.

For that matter, I'll make things even more specific (and easier) if you don't have the time to browse the site: when I searched for requests from single parents with children, the first profile I pulled up was #135523, from a working mom looking for help making her rent this winter. Here's the link. As of my typing this, she's 23% of the way to her requested amount with just a few days to go before Christmas. All it'll take to get her there is a few mouse clicks and a few dollars of your spare change.

And whether you direct your helping towards this request or another one the site, you'll have put your knowledge about the psychology of helping to great use. Not to mention maybe restored some of your own faith in human nature in the process.

UPDATE: Wow, fast work. Within the hour, #135523 had her full request filled. Of course, feel free to browse the listings on your own. But here's one more direct link (#134821) if you prefer one-click donating.

UPDATE 2: Two hours down, two requests met. Third time's the charm too? One more direct link for #137035.

What Tiger Teaches Us

Sam Sommers — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:12:00 +0000

Few public figures in recent memory have fallen as far as fast as Tiger Woods. Indeed, we're just one or two juicy steroids insinuations away from hitting rock bottom on his downward trajectory. Oh, wait. Never mind.

Of course, falling so far requires one to first have scaled the highest of heights. But Tiger's athletic and business accomplishments are not the only reasons this story continues to have legs. Its momentum owes just as much to the fact that his alleged behaviors seem so very much at odds with the type of person we believed Tiger to be.

Tiger Woods is calm. In control. Remarkably self-disciplined. Those are the traits the average American would have used to describe him three weeks ago. We thought we knew who Tiger was, and the reckless actions we hear about now couldn't be further removed from that impression.

So there are plenty of potential lessons to be learned from Tiger's fall. Lessons regarding the potential for fame, success, a sheltered upbringing, and–let's face it–power to skew one's sense of propriety and risk. Lessons regarding the inevitable trade-off between public acclaim and personal privacy. Lessons involving the perils of hero worship.

In terms of more daily life, Tiger's troubles also remind us of the dangers of thinking that we know someone based on highly limited exposures. Again, what drives much of our interest in this story is the incredible juxtaposition between the man Tiger seemed to be and the behaviors he apparently engaged in. But think about it: how foolish was it for any of us to think we knew who Tiger was based on sterile press conference soundbites and scripted product endorsements?

We do this all the time, observing snippets of behavior under controlled circumstances and then jumping to conclusions about a person's more stable disposition. Like the patient surprised to see his well-regarded, highly-trained physician struggling with a rudimentary, but non-medical task like parallel parking. Or the audience member confused by her favorite thespian's inability to carry on impromptu small talk.

It's all part of our love affair with personality. The world seems like a less threatening, more predictable place when we can rest assured that the behaviors we observe reflect some sort of stable predisposition lurking beneath. So we read too much into the few glimpses of behavior that we do observe, and we quickly form impressions about "the type of person" someone therefore must be.

What Tiger has to teach us is that we're too quick to assume that the person we see in one situation is the same person who exists in all other situations.

Like how we find it jarring to see our buttoned-down attorney enjoying a carefree night out on the town.

Or how we're caught off guard by the politician who moralizes publicly, but scandalizes privately.

Why we're consistently shocked to learn what those around us are truly capable of.

Or why we're actually surprised to find out that actors are nothing like the characters they play (and why some fans apparently send letters to actors who portray TV doctors asking for medical advice).

I encounter a more mundane variation on this theme, though in my case with students. A few months ago on a Thursday afternoon, a soon-to-graduate senior sat in my office and asked me questions about his final paper. Once we finished that conversation, he shifted to small talk, asking what I had planned for the weekend ahead. I suggested that I had to get through Friday first, but that nothing too exciting was on my weekend calendar.

He responded by suggesting that back in the day, my weekends must have been more interesting and probably stretched as early as Thursday nights. I assured him that wasn't the case, but he pressed on: "It seems like you would've been a fun guy back in college." I took it as an effort at flattery combined with a misguided attempt to extrapolate my classroom demeanor to other aspects of my life. When I asked what made him think this, he responded that he thought I was accessible and entertaining when lecturing. And so, he assumed, he'd probably see me the same way in other contexts.

But he wouldn't, I assure you. Unless, that is, his idea of "fun guy in college" includes guiding the Nintendo Red Wings through the entirety of a 4-round, best-of-7 Stanley Cup run on the same night as a college-wide semiformal. For the record, I dispatched of Montreal in 5 games in the Finals.

Indeed, my interactions today with the students I teach provide a consistent reminder of the oft-overlooked power of situations to shape how we see the world around us. I'm quite sure that some of the very undergrads who now ask me to serve as their advisor or tell me how much they're enjoying my class wouldn't have given me the proverbial time of day when I was in college. And that's fine–the characteristics we prefer in a teacher should be different than those we seek in friends. But we often fail to realize this, with my students instead assuming that who they like in the classroom is also who they'd like outside of class.

And so it goes with Tiger.

He's just one more reminder that the politicians, athletes, entertainers, and other figures we're introduced to in the public domain are not people "we know." We have a hard enough time fully appreciating the broad range of capacities possessed by the people who are actually parts of our own lives. So why would be any more accurate when making similar judgments of strangers from afar?

News of the (Turkey) Day

Sam Sommers — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 16:56:50 +0000

Thanksgiving. A weekend of time-tested traditions like visiting with family you don't see enough, eating when you don't feel hungry anymore, and watching televised parades and football games that you don't actually care about. And then there are the newer traditions as well, like discussing the latest holiday installment of the cable/internet news story du jour.

That's right, in this day and age the 24-hour news cycle takes no holiday breaks. There is no such thing as a slow news week anymore. What are the stories that have dominated this long weekend's coverage? First, the couple who crashed the state dinner at the White House. And then, a different type of crash: Tiger Woods' car.

They're an interesting juxtaposition, the two "hot" stories of the weekend. In one sense, they have a lot in common, demonstrating as they do our continued obsession with human interest stories as opposed to more generalized news coverage of social developments or larger trends. Our popular news continues to focus on individuals, on what kind of people we think they are, what we expect of them, and even what they look like.

That's why the Tiger story is so intriguing. As is the case with most individuals in the public eye, we feel like we know what kind of person Woods is even though we only have carefully orchestrated public appearances/comments on which to base this impression. His personality seems calm, professional, and almost boring in public appearances. So it comes as a surprise to us to read allegations and insinuations that run the range from careless late-night driving to marital infidelity. But really, regardless of how this story shakes out, why should we think we know Tiger any better than all the other people in our lives who consistently surprise us by what they're capable of? If we don't know our intimate others as well as we think we do, why should our intuition fare any better when it comes to celebrities and strangers?

But the juxtaposition of the two news stories is also interesting because they focus on two targets that have very divergent goals when it comes to the media and public attention. While Woods has worked for years to keep his personal life out of the public spotlight, the White House crashers appear to be the latest in an increasingly long line of Americans pursuing reality-TV fame and media-based fortune at any expense.

The "Octomom." Jon & Kate. The Balloon Boy parents. And now the White House crashers. We've clearly reached the point where people aren't content to sit around and wait passively for their Warholian 15-minutes of fame. In fact, many are willing to take great risks to get this attention, whether to the psychological well-being of their children, the sustainability of their marriage, or even a clean record.

It says something about the incentive structure of our current media-driven society that people are willing to risk criminal charges to pull off a balloon hoax or crash a party with the President. And if any of these new arrivals to the media scene manage to land a reality show of some sort or even a few subsequent TV appearances of note, then one can only imagine the type of positive reinforcement that future schemers will have received for even worse plots.

In the end, it would seem that any publicity may indeed be good publicity, at least for those who seek to escape the challenging economy of today's reality by gaining entrée into the more lucrative world of "reality" media. Who knows if talk-show appearances and book deals await the White House crashers? Time will tell whether the same holds true in Tiger's case, since he's a pre-established celebrity of accomplishment. While his current tabloid-friendly exploits may come at the expense of the pristine reputation he has built up over the past decade, sometimes a little bit of controversy also makes the celebrities we take for granted seem just little bit more interesting than they were before.

But I'll leave all that for someone else to figure out. I'm busy working on my latest plan for multimedia world domination that will outdo even the White House crashers: I'm going to beat Obama to the podium and give my own State of the Union address in January. It seems like the potential benefits outweigh any possible costs...

Fort Hood Fallout

Sam Sommers — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:32:47 +0000

Psychologists call it illusory correlation. The idea is that when we think about others, we tend to overestimate the association between groups and actions that are distinctive. It's one of the ways in which societal stereotypes are perpetuated and endure over time. And it's exactly what has many an American Muslim concerned in the wake of this week's tragic shooting spree at the Fort Hood Army base.

Consider the following research study: you're shown flash cards with information about individuals from two different groups, X and Y. For both groups of people, 75% of the individuals are described as having engaged in some sort of positive, expected behavior. Like tipping their waiter, holding the door for someone else, or helping a fellow shopper load groceries into her car.

The other 25% of these fictional individuals are described as having engaged in negative, deviant behavior. Skipping out on their restaurant bill. Letting the door close on someone behind them with hands full. Trying to sneak more than a dozen grocery items through the express checkout. Etc.

When you're then asked to estimate what percentage of Group X and Y individuals exhibited deviant behavior, your answer will typically depend on relative proportions of these groups in the population at large. The more distinctive a group is, the more likely you are to associate its members with distinctive, deviant behavior.

So when there are 100 Group X individuals in your flash card population, but only 20 Group Y people, it seems like more of the Group Y folks are doing negative, distinctive things. Even though the rate is the same 25% in both Groups X and Y, we tend to inflate the number for the minority group, Group Y.

That's the behavioral science underlying the concerns of many Muslims in the wake of Fort Hood. Sure, the shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan, is Muslim. And though we're still in the early stages of reporting and investigating on the crime (it's worth noting that preliminary reports apparently haven't been all that accurate, including several stating that the shooter had been killed at the scene), yes, by many accounts it seems that Hasan's religious beliefs and experiences may be relevant to what precipitated these killings. But the concern of many Muslims is that people's reactions will be to paint their entire group with broad brushstrokes as potential killers.

It seems a legitimate worry in light of all we know about illusory correlation. Not only do we tend to overestimate the association between distinctive behaviors and distinctive groups, but this tendency is also exacerbated when we have pre-existing expectations that the variables in question go together. And the stereotype of American Muslims as violent extremists was clearly a salient one in post-9/11 America long before this week's tragedy at Fort Hood.

Again, I don't mean to suggest that Hasan's religious beliefs are irrelevant when examining his terrible actions. Time will tell, but many indications suggest that they are related. And by no means do I seek to minimize the horror of what he appears to have done. But it seems a legitimate question to ponder how his actions may impact the way Americans see his group more generally.

Timothy McVeigh was a libertarian and NRA-loyalist; Eric Rudolph cited his religious beliefs to explain his violent opposition to abortion. But as White, Christian Americans, their social category membership wasn't particularly distinctive. Thus, it's not surprising that their abhorrently deviant acts didn't have much lasting impact on the perception of their groups at-large. Research on the illusory correlation suggests that the fallout to the Fort Hood shooting could be different in that respect.

At least, that's the fear of many Muslims today, as demonstrated by the following quote in the New York Times from an ex-soldier who attends the same mosque as Hasan: "When a white guy shoots up a post office, they call that going postal, but when a Muslim does it, they call it jihad."

This isn't the first time the stress of deployment and other untold factors have driven someone to open fire on fellow soldiers. It isn't the first time a disgruntled employee has turned a weapon on co-workers–in fact, it wasn't even the only such incident of workplace violence this week. And unfortunately, it won't be the last time either. We shall see whether the tendency towards illusory correlations plays any role in how this particular tragedy is reported and responded to.

Searching for the Perfect Victim

Sam Sommers — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:36:16 +0000

In its most recent issue, Newsweek has a story on an ongoing string of unsolved murders in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. The victims in these cases have been poor, Black, and–in some instances at least–have had criminal records. I spoke with Krista Gesaman, the reporter who wrote the piece, and though my quotations in it are among the most obvious and least interesting aspects of the story, it's worth a read.

The thrust of Gesaman's article is that various characteristics of the victims may help explain why the story has received far less attention than other, seemingly less serious (or, at least, less widespread) crimes of recent memory. Unlike the stories of missing women like Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy, Natalee Holloway, and Annie Le, these North Carolina cases have flown under the radar for the most part. The Rocky Mount women don't seem to fit the mainstream media model of sympathetic victim–they aren't educated, upper-middle class, attractive young women.

The story explores the same issues of race, class, and media coverage that I blogged about a few months ago. Here's a brief excerpt from the Newsweek piece:

The victims in Rocky Mount–which residents describe as a "typical Southern town," and is about 40 percent white and more than 50 percent black–were different [than Peterson, Levy, Holloway, et al.]. They were all African-American, many were poor, and some had criminal histories including drug abuse and prostitution.
"If it was someone of a different race, things would have been dealt with the first time around; it wouldn't have taken the fifth or sixth person to be murdered," says Andre Knight, a city-council member and president of the local NAACP chapter. "All these women knew each other and lived in the same neighborhood; this is the sign of a potential serial killer. When it didn't get the kind of attention it needed, it made the African-American community frustrated."

The article doesn't focus exclusively on race, and it's worth checking out in its entirety. If you ask me, the moral of the Rocky Mount case is that when it comes to media focus, surprise and relatability count for a lot. It's a surprise when a boy supposedly flies off on a weather balloon; it's a surprise when a suburban private school has a student shooting. We're less surprised by the shooting in an urban school or neighborhood that we really don't expect to be that safe in the first place. And, accordingly, we get less worked up by violent incidents in such locales, numbed a bit by low expectation to begin with.

And relatability counts too. When the victim of an apparent crime seems like she could be someone we know from school, work, or the house next door, that story hits home harder. Most of the mainstream media is targeted towards the same "mainstream" audience, and so certain victims become more newsworthy than others. For instance, it's no coincidence that American news outlets always go out of their way to tell us the number of American casualties in a foreign disaster, in addition to the total numbers involved–the story grabs our attention more when it involves people just like us.

Sure, there are exceptions to these tendencies, as I'm sure many readers will be quick to note. But overall, some victims get more coverage than others. And as a general rule, race, class, and even attractiveness seem to factor into these decisions of media focus, even if those who write the stories and produce the segments assert otherwise.

In the end, media representations shape but also reflect how the populace at large sees the world. So this is more than just a media-related issue. After all, in many cases they're simply giving us the news they know we'll tune in to.

I'll Have What He's Having

Sam Sommers — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:54:06 +0000

The scene: New Orleans, the French Quarter. I'm out with college friends to celebrate the wedding weekend of a fellow buddy. It sounds like the set-up for a Vince Vaughn or Seth Rogen movie– with a lead-in like that, I'm sure you can envision any number of intriguing outcomes to the tale.

Alas, you don't know me very well.

Those who do would be quick to assure you that this story is less likely to end in Judd Apatow-inspired, plastic-bead-related debauchery, and more likely to segue into an admittedly overwrought psychological analysis of mundane daily life.

So we're sitting around the table at an ornate, well-known, French-Creole restaurant and the time comes to place our order. Our waiter, clearly a local, reviews our lunch options. Because we're part of a group, we have but two choices available to us. The first is the trout. The second is a menu offering I've never heard of before–something that sounds like FEE-lay.

I gaze around the room to see what my lunch companions are making of all this. Many look as puzzled as I am. Grasping for clues, I desperately hope the waiter starts taking orders at the other side of the table. Otherwise I'm going to be stuck ordering the trout, and I don't even eat fish. That, or I'm going to have to suck it up and ask what the feelay is.

After a few orders of trout, the bride's brother takes the plunge and goes for the feelay. The waiter says something else I have a hard time deciphering, to which my friend's future brother-in-law replies, "medium rare."

A-ha. Feelay sounds like some sort of beef.

A second later, a second revelation: He's saying, "filet," but with a Creole accent.

So around the table we go, the waiter walking counter-clockwise and asking each of my friends, "trout or feelay." Now my anxiety has shifted from wondering what this exotic dish might be to pondering the appropriate way to say it. Do I pronounce the word the way I usually would, asking for a "full-AY," done medium? Or do I follow the old adage about when in Rome and say the word with an accent that in any other circumstance would make me look ridiculous, like June Cleaver speaking fluent jive in the original Airplane! movie?

We're faced with quandaries like this all the time. Stick to your guns or go with the flow? Raise your hand in the large lecture hall and admit that you don't understand the previous example or stay quiet with the rest of your nearly comatose classmates? Sit in your seat and clap politely for the performance that you thought was merely pedestrian, or submit to the ongoing standing ovation so as not to stand out or offend? Remain true to your principled stand on appropriate footwear or give in and join the majority of society that has decided it's OK for adults to wear in broad daylight plastic clogs with swiss cheese holes? The pressure to conform is even powerful enough to prompt us to give responses we know to be incorrect.

To be fair, conformity is a lubricant that keeps society running smoothly. Complicated social movements become easier when we conform; we like other people who act like us. There's something to be said for toeing the line and not ruffling feathers. And in some circumstances, we need the people around us to find out not just the expected way to behave, but also the right answer to important questions. Like, is it safe to cross against the lights at this intersection I've never been to before?

But especially in an individualistic culture like ours, it sometimes seems distasteful, all this going along with the majority, especially when we do it just to fit in. These are competing forces, the pressure to conform and our drive for independence. It's the yin and yang of life in the presence of others. Or the feelay and filet, if you will.

This battle of pronunciation is one that I've wrestled with on other occasions since that wedding weekend. I now live in Boston, where "Worcester" is actually "Woostah," "Billerica" is actually "Billrickah," and Derek Jeter is actually, "Jetah, you suck." The fight to pronounce my "r"s as I was taught to do growing up just isn't worth the effort in most of my interactions with Boston natives.

And so it went in New Orleans. The wave of conformity rushed around the table until it landed on me. Resigned to my fate as just another brick in the wall, I went along with the rest of the group. Head hung, I muttered in a barely audible whisper, "I guess I'll have the feelay."

Ultimately, I took the path of least resistance. I decided to save my anti-conformity bullets for other, more important fights on other days. Like refusing to give in when Microsoft Word tries to tell me I have to spell "advisor" as "adviser." Some causes are just too important to abandon, regardless of how all the Romans are acting.

Obama’s Pyrrhic Prize

Sam Sommers — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:30:06 +0000

If my morning radio talk shows, workplace chatter, and Facebook news feed are to be trusted, the big topic of discussion this weekend is going to be Barack Obama's surprising win of the Nobel Peace Prize. Specifically, the first question most people are turning to–that is, after, wait, are you serious?–is whether this honor will help or hurt Obama politically.

It's a social psychological question to be sure, especially since the awards committee seems to be using this selection as an attempt to encourage and bolster Obama's international agenda. And as with any effort at persuasion, you have to examine the issue of source credibility.

This will hardly come as an earthshattering revelation, but the more credible a source is, the more successful its effort at persuasion is likely to be. Sometimes the audience isn't that motivated to think too hard about credibility–that's where celebrity endorsements come in. But credibility matters.

How credible is the Nobel Committee? On the one hand, they bestow a prestigious award with tremendous name recognition. One the other, it's a committee that honored Henry Kissenger for his work in Southeast Asia and Yassir Arafat for his endeavors in the Middle East.

So you might suggest that this most recent news will serve as a Rorschach Test of sorts, with people's reaction to the inkblot revealing their political leanings. The Disciples of Hannity (perhaps Apostles of Beck?) will inevitably see the news as confirming that Obama is all style and no substance and has been anointed by a left-leaning, politically-correct conspiracy that now seems to span an entire globe. And the bleeding-heart, socialist crowd will view this as confirmation that Obama is, as advertised, the second coming.

But the most interesting aspect of all of this is that I don't think the latter of those two reactions is materializing right now. Most of the pro-Obama crowd I've read, heard from, and talked to is surprised as well. And nervous to boot. Because even the most ardent Obama supporter has to admit that he's still shorter on accomplishment than on promise, and they're worried that this award will only fuel the fire of the style-over-substance critique.

If you ask me, this is the issue that should concern the Nobel Committee, given their apparent goals for today's announcement. Because, yes, source credibility matters. But so does your audience. And when your preaching surprises and even distresses the choir, you may have a backlash problem on your hands. Not to mention the risk that all your future selections will be dismissed out of hand as well in some quarters, based on the precedent of this year's choice.

It's the very same principle that has shaped my decision to wait until at least next year before nominating the Beyonce-dancing baby from youtube for an MTV video award. Too much, too soon, amazing dancing baby. Too much, too soon.