Beyond Rivalry

Deep Glamour's "What Your Jeans Say About You" (other than, "These are the only ones I could find that fit me ...") reports on a ground-breaking study in the Journal of Consumer Research that finds that our 'attachment' styles determine what jeans we wear:

"See, when you were but a wee babe in your mother's arms you honed one of two attachment styles, 'anxiety and avoidance,' the authors explain. Anxious people view themselves as positive or negative and avoidance people view others as positive or negative.

'Anxiously attached individuals are more influenced by "brand personalities," the idea that a brand possesses humanlike traits, such as sincerity or excitement. "Because of a low view of self, anxious individuals use brands to signal their ideal self-concept to future relationship partners and therefore focus more on the personality of the brand," the authors write.'

The study seems to look only at people whose styles are attachment-related anxiety and attachment-related avoidance. The study summary says nothing about the jeans preferences of people whose 'attachment style' isn't anxiety, i.e., those with a 'secure' style; how do they make these ultra-important decisions? I couldn't find a free version of the full-text article to learn more.

The reason I'm posting about it is that I take online surveys offered by several companies several times per week, and often these surveys ask me to describe a cereal, store, bank, insurance company, beauty product, or beverage in human terms, which stumps me every time. Can cereal be 'friendly,' 'angry,' or 'aloof'? How? I try to find the descriptors that could conceivably translate to a product, like 'reliable' or 'interesting,' and choose those just to tick one or two boxes from the 40 or so I'm presented with. (In most surveys, you have to tick at least one box per page or the survey gets stuck.) I've foten wondered what these human characteristics were doing in my survey. Now I see that the surveyors are apparently operating on the belief that people who like to take online surveys are 'anxiously attached individuals.' (Curious, I took an online attachment style quiz to see where I fall on this scale, which was squarely in the 'secure' quadrant. The other quadrants, defined by level of anxiety and avoidance, are called preoccupied, fearful-avoidant and dismissing.)

Paige Phelps at DG notes that the study seems seriously flawed in offering only two brands of jeans, Abercrombie & Fitch and Gap. Too true. And it's even more flawed because -- secure though I am, based on one self-administered online quiz -- I can become avoidant when anxious, and I wear only one flavour of Gap jeans, which I buy used on eBay or at Goodwill. I thought it was because they fit me best, having worn, over the years Lee, Levi, Style & Co., St. John's Bay, Covington (Sears), and lots of others whose names and humanlike qualities I can't recall. (They all seem 'blue' to me. :-)) But who knows. Maybe I think my jeans signal "secure, Christmas-loving, dog-empowered, tea-drinking, hopelessly pragmatic, mellow rationalist' to those who observe me.

My blog and I have parted ways on the Myers-Briggs personality analysis. I've tested as an INTP for many years now. This blog, on the other hand, is apparently an ISTP. You can test any blog here (their first language seems to be Swedish).

ISTP - The Mechanics

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment and are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like to seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

Reading lots, between my inter-library loaned crime novels -- finished Tana French's The Likeness last week, am reading PD James' new Dalgleish novel, The Private Patient, now, and have Reginald Hill's The Price of Butcher's Meat to read afterwards -- and the arrival of the Wall Street Journal through the door slot almost every day, a little 6-month perk for having completed about 200 online surveys in the last few years ... I love the WSJ, its editorial board notwithstanding.

Here are a couple of recent gems from its pages:

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Destructive Delusions: How therapists and 'victims' seized on the idea of repressed memory, leveling false charges and ruining lives, by Theodore Dalrymple, a book review of Dr. Paul McHugh's Try to Remember: Psychiatry's Clash Over Meaning, Memory, and Mind. Best lines:

"One of the most extraordinary outbreaks of popular delusion in recent years was that which attached to the possibility of 'recovered memory' of sexual and satanic childhood abuse, and to an illness it supposedly caused, Multiple Personality Disorder. No medieval peasant praying to a household god for the recovery of his pig could have been more credulous than scores of psychiatrists, hosts of therapists and thousands of willing victims."

"In Try to Remember, Dr. McHugh hints at the cultural context in which preposterous and vicious accusations against parents and others could be so easily believed by seemingly intelligent people, including courtroom judges. ... Freudianism alone could not have produced the necessary atmosphere; there must have been other forces at work as well. The sanctification of victims and victimhood comes to mind."

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Japan's Latest Fashion Has Women Playing Princess for a Day

Japanese women in their 20s and 30s are dressing up as doe-eyed princesses, aiming "to look like sugarcoated, 21st-century versions of old-style European royalty. They idolize Marie Antoinette and Paris Hilton, for her baby-doll looks and princess lifestyle." They buy $1000-outfits (frilly dress, parasol, handbag, shoes) and work their straight hair so that it's curly with 'super-volume" to assuage a "longing for a happy-ending fairy tale," if you accept that bit of sociological analysis.

The women (aka 'girls') particularly idolise 24-yr-old Keiko Mizoe, sales clerk at one of the stores that sells the gowns, who calls those who sport the look "perfect, gorgeous and feminine."

A 16-yr-old who's buying the clothes online because the store seems too intimidating says:

"Their cuteness is beyond human. I'd like to be like them."

A 36-yr-old housewife felt "shy about her plump figure" so she lost 33 pounds and can now wear the tight-waisted dresses, on which she spends $2,000 or $3,000 a month. Her parents "send the couple food so they have more money for Ms. Yamamoto's shopping sprees.

'I figure it's OK as long as what I'm buying is pretty,' she says."

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How a Drug Maker Tries to Outwit Generics describes how pharmaceutical company Cephalon, Inc. maximises profits on its drugs, in particular, its narcolepsy drugs Provigil and Nuvigil, and entices customers away from cheaper generics. The company, using an apparently common tactic of pharmaceutical companies, has been recently increasing the price of Provigil -- now $8.71 per tablet, 24% more than 8 months ago and 74% more than 4 years ago -- so that patients will have an economic incentive to switch over to Cephalon's new and longer-lasting narcolepsy drug, Nuvigil, which will be available next year at a lower cost -- and, critically, which won't be off patent until 11 years after Provigil will be:

"It works like this: Knowing that Provigil will face generic competition in 2012 as its patent nears expiration, Cephalon is planning to launch a longer-acting version of the drug called Nuvigil next year. To convert patients from Provigil or Nuvigil, Cephalon has suggested in investor presentations that it will price Nuvigil lower than the sharply increased price of Provigil. By the time the copycat versions of Provigil hit the market the company is banking that most Provigil users will have switched to the less-expensive Nuvigil, which is patent-protected until 2023."

One woman who takes Provigil off-label for Parkinson's stopped taking the drug when her cost went to $565 per month. Her insurer, like most, won't cover payment of an off-label use (a use not approved by the FDA).

The article later notes that "fully preventing tactics like Cephalon's would be difficult short of outright regulation of drug prices. Most other countries in the world control drug prices, but most U.S. regulators and legislators have opposed such moves."

***

In further drug-related news: Power of Suggestion: When Drug Labels Make You Sick by Melinda Beck looks at the effect of nocebos, which are the opposite of placebos: the power of suggestion that brings on illness:

"Research deliberately causing nocebos has been limited (after all, it's kind of cruel). But in one 1960s test, when hospital patients were given sugar water and told it would make them vomit, 80% of them did.  Studies have also shown that patients forewarned about possible side effects are more likely to encounter them."

Interestingly,

"the rare, serious side effects listed on drug package inserts -- say, toxic epidermal necrolysis, in which one's skin falls off in large sheets -- are less subject to nocebo effects."

It's harder to "suggest" one's skin to slough off than to evoke headache and fatigue by suggestion, and anyway, as is noted in the article, large percentages of the general population experience these vague symptoms regularly; in a 1968 study of healthy subjects not on medications, only 19% said they had no symptoms (such as headache, fatigue, dizziness) in the past 3 days. Also noted, that anxiety about illness can bring about common side-effect symptoms like nausea, diarrhea, dry mouth and rapid heart beat.

** Hours after I read this, I learned that the dear friend of a friend of mine is suffering from exactly this "rare, serious side effect" of toxic epidermal necrolysis, likely from anti-inflammatories she had been taking for a while.

Woman killed by husband's coffin (11 Nov.)

God's Facebook Wall (12 Nov.)

Apparent 6th severed foot found in British Columbia (12 Nov)

Two Dead in Argument Over 'Bama-LSU Game (10 Nov.)

The Essential 007: A Recap of all 22 Bond Movies (13 Nov.)

Unregulated Credit Default Swaps Led to Weakness (31 Oct.)

Exxon Mobil: Biggest profit in history (30 Oct.)

The age when children begin attempting to appear racially colour-blind (27 Oct)

The Quest for the Perfect Morning Routine: The first in a series on lifehacking, at Slate (12 Nov): "The advice here is not my own, but I have clicked on it."

When Alzheimer's Hits at 40 in the WSJ (14 Nov.)

and

"I don't remember a whole lot about that period; I appear to have bought a couple of truly depressing sweaters, the kind you only wear when all you really want is to curl up under the bed for several years..." (The Likeness, p. 47, Tana French)

(Photo: Recent Drinking: Ironstone Cabernet Franc 2004)

Admit it. Certain things make you desperately unhappy, and you don't know why -- the Sbarro at the mall, the taste of Jolly Ranchers in winter, the woman in the Buick station wagon you saw at the KwikTrip, the Food Network after ten p.m.

In 100 words or less, please answer the question, "What makes you so unhappy?" in the comments field [at his site]. Selected answers will appear in Dean Bakopoulos's new novel, My American Unhappiness, forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in late 2009 or early 2010.

I'm not the first to say it, but, hey, way to outsource the novel!

My irregular annotated link dump:

>> Never Say Die: Why We Can't Imagine Death by Jesse Bering in the 22 Oct. 2008 SciAm:

The crux: "So why is it so hard to conceptualize inexistence anyway? Part of my own account, which I call the 'simulation constraint hypothesis,' is that in attempting to imagine what it's like to be dead we appeal to our own background of conscious experiences -- because that's how we approach most thought experiments. Death isn't 'like' anything we've ever experienced, however. Because we have never consciously been without consciousness, even our best simulations of true nothingness just aren't good enough."

Fun for the Whole Family: "In a 2004 study reported in Developmental Psychology, Florida Atlantic University psychologist David F. Bjorklund and I presented 200 three- to 12-year-olds with a puppet show. Every child saw the story of Baby Mouse, who was out strolling innocently in the woods. 'Just then,' we told them, 'he notices something very strange. The bushes are moving! An alligator jumps out of the bushes and gobbles him all up. Baby Mouse is not alive anymore.'"

What We Can't UnLearn: "Back when you were still in diapers, you learned that people didn't cease to exist simply because you couldn't see them. Developmental psychologists even have a fancy term for this basic concept: 'person permanence.' Such an off-line social awareness leads us to tacitly assume that the people we know are somewhere doing something. ... We can't simply switch off our person-permanence thinking just because someone has died. This inability is especially the case, of course, for those whom we were closest to and whom we frequently imagined to be actively engaging in various activities when out of sight."

>> For a Fee, a Thai Temple Offers a Head Start on Rebirth by Seth Mydans in the NYT, 26 Sept. 2008. (Reminds me of a vividly described scene in the movie My Dinner with Andre.)  What interests me about the Thai story is the explicit connection between anxiety due to the state of the economy (i.e., decline in prosperity) and the need for this kind of burial and resurrection ritual:

"Nine big pink coffins dominate the grand hall of the temple, and every day hundreds of people take their turns climbing in for a [minute and a half] as monks chant a dirge. Then, at a command, the visitors clamber out again cleansed -- they believe -- of the past. ... A cardboard sign warns visitors not to stand behind the coffins, where bad karma sucked from the 'dying' devotees may still be hovering ...

"It is a renewal for our times, as recent economic hardship brings uncertainty and people try seeking a bailout on life. In growing numbers, they come here from around Thailand to join what has become an assembly line of resurrection.

"'When the economy is down, we latch our hopes onto some supernatural power,' said Ekachai Uekrongtham, the writer-director whose movie The Coffin is in Thai cinemas now with a plot revolving around such funerals for the living."

>> Psychology Voting: 'My Candidate, Myself,' by Robert Burton in Salon, 22 Sept. 2008 (I previously cited Burton's work on certainty when it appeared in a 9 Oct. SciAm piece): The lead-off quote is this: "Let's make sure that there is certainty during uncertain times" -- George W. Bush, 2008.

Burton laments humans' inability to change our minds, to view our own opinions with skepticism, to refuse to be swayed by logical appeal.

He cites a 1999 paper reporting on a study of Cornell undergraduates, which found that the most incompetent people overestimate their abilities to the greatest degree. In other words, "People who lack the knowledge or wisdom to perform well are often unaware of this fact. That is, the same incompetence that leads them to make wrong choices also deprives them of the savvy necessary to recognize competence, be it their own or anyone else's." And, conversely, "smart people tend to believe that everyone else 'gets it.'" They overestimate other people's abilities.

Further: "Closely allied with this unshakable self-confidence in one's decisions is a second separate aspect of meta-cognition, the feeling of being right. ... [F]eelings of conviction, certainty and other similar states of 'knowing what we know' may feel like logical conclusions, but are in fact involuntary mental sensations that function independently of reason. ...  The evidence is substantial that these feelings do not correlate with the accuracy or quality of the thought." And, "Like other powerful mental states such as love, anger and fear, they are extraordinarily difficult to dislodge through rational arguments."

He cites another study in which "staunch party members from both sides" are asked to "evaluate negative (defamatory) information about their 2004 presidential choice:

"Areas of the brain (prefrontal cortex) normally engaged during reasoning failed to show increased activation. Instead, the limbic system -- the center for emotional processing -- lit up dramatically. ...'[B]oth Republicans and Democrats 'reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted.'"

Burton suggests that we would know more about our political candidates if we could give them thought experiments that would demonstrate how they think. He'd also like to focus on "each candidate's intellectual grasp of scientific method, from choosing and evaluating evidence to seeing how they would respond to a well-constructed contrary line of reasoning." And what do they do when they are presented with evidence that their answers are wrong? Can the candidates recognise their intellectual limitations? And can we?

A couple of interesting insights in this SciAm article, "The Certainty Bias: A Potentially Dangerous Mental Flaw," written by neurologist Robert Burton:

First, that thinking, learning, and "feeling certain" stimulate the brain's pleasure centers ("the mesolimbic dopamine system primarily located in the upper brain stem") similarly to the way that "cocaine, amphetamines, alcohol, nicotine and gambling" do:

"It is quite likely that the same reward system provides the positive feedback necessary for us to learn and to continue wanting to learn. The pleasure of a thought is what propels us forward; imagine trying to write a novel or engage in a long-term scientific experiment without getting such rewards. Fortunately, the brain has provided us with a wide variety of subjective feelings of reward ranging from hunches, gut feelings, intuitions, suspicions that we are on the right track to a profound sense of certainty and utter conviction. And yes, these feelings are qualitatively as powerful as those involved in sex and gambling. One need only look at the self-satisfied smugness of a 'know it all' to suspect that the feeling of certainty can approach the power of addiction."

Second (and evidenced in some studies), Burton suggests that we are more likely to "retreat into absolute ideologies ... during periods of confusion, lack of governmental direction, economic chaos and information overload. At bottom, we are pattern recognizers who seek escape from ambiguity and indecision. If a major brain function is to maintain mental homeostasis, it is understandable how stances of certainty can counteract anxiety and apprehension.  Even though I know better, I find myself somewhat reassured (albeit temporarily) by absolute comments such as, 'the stock market always recovers,' even when I realize that this may be only wishful thinking."

From Dave at How to Save the World, this descibes my process much of the time:

"The coined term (by Barbara Ganley) is 'slow blogging', but I much prefer the term my friend Chris Lott uses: 'mindful wandering'. [I like both.] The idea is to see blogging, which is really just a new way of recording your thoughts in a diary, as a meditative practice, taking the time to ponder the meaning of what you're reading, thinking and writing, letting your mind meander in thoughtful and creative ways to 'make sense' of it. I find that some of my best blog posts are those I've stopped and restarted several times, allowing time for thoughts to percolate and new ideas to emerge."

For me, blogging has become primarily a way of seeing and expressing connections among various things I read, think, experience, feel, desire, do.

Along similar lines of previous research reported here comes a report of this study at Ira Flatow's Science Friday, via Overcoming Bias:

"In situations in which a person is not in control, they're more likely to spot patterns where none exist, see illusions, and believe in conspiracy theories. In a series of experiments, researchers created situations in which people had less control over their situation, and then tested how likely the participants were to see imaginary images embedded in snowy pictures. The researchers also had participants write about either a situation in which they had control, or a situation in which they didn't, and then presented stories involving strange coincidences. People who had written about a situation in which they were not in control were more likely to draw non-existent connections between the coincidences, the researchers found."

As Robin concludes:

"This summary suggests out-of-control-feeling folks are biased to see more than there is, but perhaps in-control-feeling folks are biased to see less than there is."

I tend to believe the former, because humans seem to me predisposed to make meaning, but the latter isn't out of the question, i.e., maybe there is meaning in everything and I don't see it. Or, maybe there are patterns I don't see because I am biased to not see them. Are people who feel 'out-of-control' spotting "patterns where none exist" (as the summary states) or are they seeing patterns that  bias blinds others from seeing?

There's a Charles Darwin quote that I like that seems related to this: "It is important to notice exceptions." Exceptions are the non-patterns, which might in themselves make a pattern. Being on the lookout for exceptions in all things is one way we can try to overcome our own biases, our own predilection for seeing particular patterns and meanings. At the same time, looking for exceptions is a way of exerting control, another way of making meaning.

As usual, the comments from readers are worth reading.

"Below what we think we are
We are something else,
We are almost anything."

-- DH Lawrence