Life and Learning.

A casino would not be able to stay in business if it gave out more money than it took in. By that fact alone, it is apparent that, in the long run, the average gambler must lose more money than they win in a casino. If this is the case, why do people seem to keep gambling?

There is evidence to suggest that this is due to how people classify their wins and losses. People seem to discount some of their losses by classifying them as “near wins.”  This encourages the individual to continue gambling despite the fact that their “near win” is objectively still a loss.  Of course, this does not seem to work in the opposite manner.  It is rare that an individual will consider a gambling win a “near loss.”  By reclassifying losses as wins, but not classifying wins as losses, a gambler can easily lose sight of the fact that they are actually losing money.  Silly humans.

This interesting tidbit of info is based on research by Thomas Gilovich (1983, 1990).

I read a rather horrifying article today describing an event in which a high school girl was raped for more than two hours while 15 people stood around watching.  This situation brings up some interesting phenomena:

Perhaps the individuals who observed the sexual assault were only acting in accordance with the other other bystanders.  The idea of social proof is that people often look to others in order to learn how they should act in a novel situation.  Because nobody else did anything about the rape, perhaps everybody else assumed that doing nothing was the appropriate thing to do in that situation.  This can easily be described in terms of other social psychology phenomena (diffusion of responsibility, bystander effect, pluralistic ignorance, etc.), but I just find the term social proof to be a bit more generalizable.

The Just World Theory suggests that people believe the world is inherently just, and as a result, bad things do not happen to good people.  In the case of the high school girl being raped while multiple people watched, this theory would suggest that the onlookers may assume that the girl deserved what was happening to her.  In other words, if the girl is truly undeserving of such treatment then such an event would have never happened.  The idea is that, by blaming the victim, people can avoid the anxiety that would be associated with the realization that the world is inherently unjust (i.e. bad things do happen to good people).

Disclaimer:  This post is not an attempt to justify the behavior of those who observed this horrific event, nor is it intended to trivialize what happened to the victim.  My only aim is to provide insight into human behavior.

Self efficacy is a term I find to be really interesting.  I have seen this term tossed around a bit, but my understanding is that it describes prowess in a specific area of knowledge.  For example, you can be efficacious in regard to sales (or any other specific field for that matter), but being efficacious in regard to life is a more preposterous claim because it implies a high level of skill in all aspects of one’s life (a hard claim to make).

I recently read a line of research looking at self efficacy levels in salesmen.  If a high sales quota (read:  management mandated sales level) is given to a highly efficacious salesperson, they will be more likely to meet the quota.  On the other hand, if the same level is given to a less efficacious salesperson, they will not achieve an equivalent level of output.  On the surface, this appears to be rather intuitive.  However, from a goal setting perspective, this is somewhat baffling.

A classic goal setting theory suggests that setting the bar higher would encourage a higher output from a salesman.  Evidence shows that this may not be the case.  Setting an extreme goal for an individual who is not efficacious in the domain may actually lead to lower performance levels.  This has some awesome implications in the sales world.  By imposing different sales quotas on salesmen with different levels of self efficacy an organization could actually maximize their performance.  Definitely a cool finding.

My first baby shower experience turned into an exciting afternoon cornhole session at the home of my brother’s in-laws.  During my horrendous showing, Russ Bauer brought up an interesting reason for my performance.  I typically play cornhole while drinking.  As a result my cornhole skills may be dependent on my level of intoxication.

State dependent learning suggests that an individual’s condition while learning any material determines the optimal recall situation.  Does this mean I should grab a few beers before a regression analysis test? Perhaps.  In the case that I studied the material while drinking, this may be the case.

Similarly, if I developed my cornhole skills during the drunken revelry of a typical game day tailgate, perhaps my gaming skills will only manifest themselves after imbibing a few frosty beverages.  With this in mind, I suppose I should consider my eventual defeat in today’s cornhole session to be inevitable.  I guess I should play a bit more cornhole while sober.  Perhaps honing these skills in my sober state will allow me to defeat my brother in our next Sunday afternoon cornhole battle.  Alternatively, I could just take a few shots first.

For some reason everybody in Gainesville seems to be obsessed the gator football.  I have never been into sports, but there are some interesting psychological implications when it comes to organized sports.  The particular line of research I will describe is typically related to self esteem theory.  I don’t feel like provided a detailed look at the methods of the study, so I will just give a brief overview of the findings.

Interestingly, people seem to associate themselves as being part of their team when they win, but in the case of a loss, they perceive themselves as being separate from the team.  Just think about it, when your team wins a big game people tend to say “we win.”  However, in the case of a loss, you tend to say “they lost.”  If someone is devoted enough to a team to associate themselves with it in the case of a win, why wouldn’t they do the same in a loss?  Basically, why did “they lose” rather than “we lose?”

The study suggests that people tend to associate themselves with successes, and disassociate themselves from failures.  They further suggest that this serves as a buffer for self esteem.  In other words, people distance themselves from a loss because it will prevent damage to their self view.

Perhaps it is only because I hate sports, but I find this to be very interesting.  Intuitively, the success of your team should not relate to how you associate yourself with it.  This does not appear to be the case.

This line of research was conducted by the legendary social influence researcher Robert Cialdini.  Until recently, he held a dual appointment marketing/social psychology position at ASU.  These days he focuses on management consulting, and I’m sure he makes TONS of money doing so.

This XKCD comic perfectly describes a topic referred to as “meaningless differentiation.”  Carpenter et. al.  coined this term in 1994 (if I recall accurately).

Foldger’s uses the attribute “flaked coffee crystals” to differentiate its instant coffee from competitors.  At a glance, this attribute seems like it might indicate that Foldger’s instant coffee is actually better than some other brand of instant coffee you buy at the store.  However, the characteristics of instant coffee crystals actually has no bearing on the quality of the coffee resulting from mixing the crystals with water.  The only exception is the amount crystal surface area in contact with water, which will decrease the time it takes to dissolve.

Why would Foldger’s differentiate its instant coffee with an attribute that has no bearing on the quality of the product?  As you might expect, they do it because it works.  People see this attribute and assume that it has something to do with the quality of the coffee, and as a result, choose to buy it.

There are tons of other factors that go into making such purchases, but the bottom line is that “meaningless differentiation” can and does work in some circumstances.

Since the original article regarding regarding “meaningless differentiation,” there have been tons of articles that define conditions in which this phenomenon will/will not occur, and many others that say it is complete BS.  I will not bore you with the details.