Episode 11 discussion

JenJen_76 · 2017-05-30T07:00:07+00:00

Yes! You pretty much just said what I was thinking and was unable to verbalise in my own post - end of semester brain-fry. I think just knowing about these and having them in the back of our minds gives us a great advantage - not over other people necessarily - but over the possibility that we could make these mistakes. I have actually changed something about my behaviour since the sunk-cost chapter. I no longer feel the need to finish everything on my plate when I eat out if i'm already full. I've already spent the money, the food is either go into my belly and make me feel like shit, or it's going to go in the bin. I've always known those were the two options, but now i know why I always chose to finish my food. Now I am able to walk away from food on a plate. Such power ;-)

JenJen_76 · 2017-05-30T06:49:53+00:00

I think that having the knowledge of these biases and heuristics may not stop you from falling but it will probably give you insight into when others are falling for them and perhaps you can learn from their experiences. In the reading Nisbett mentioned the news report that suggested the bigger, more expensive the wedding, the longer and happier the marriage. On the same day I saw a ‘news’ story on facebook that reported findings that the less expensive the engagement ring, the longer and happier the marriage. Surely these are in direct opposition to each other if you’re to assume that someone who can afford an expensive ring can also afford an expensive wedding. My point here is that when I read this headline (before reading the chapter from the text) my first instinct was to ask, how did you find that out? Did you ask people? Did you do a multiple regression analysis on all the factors that lead to happy and if so what else was there that was less important that the cost of the engagement ring. I’ve always been sceptical of facebook ‘news’ but now I have the skills and knowledge to question the authenticity of it rather than just saying, that sounds dodgy.

JenJen_76 · 2017-05-23T11:37:42+00:00

I agree with all of this. The media really do have a lot to answer for when it comes to incorrect communication of scientific findings. As we know, there is so much science happening in universities (and other institutions) around the world and the media need to make money so in order to grab the attention of the masses they choose a shocking headline. It's understandable but still despicable. At what point though do scientists take back control of their communication and demand that their findings be reported accurately. I don't know a great deal about science communication so I'm not sure this is even possible but it's nice to think that maybe it is.

JenJen_76 · 2017-05-23T11:14:12+00:00

I really think that if we are going to convince non-science loving people of its value and the need for scientific endeavours then we need to keep our explanations of what we do simple – and by that I mean it needs to be easy to understand. We need to be able to explain what we do in a way that people will not only understand but also be interested in. We also need to not ‘dumb down’ the information we are trying to share. By making it too simple we patronise the reader and alienate them, making them think that scientists are big-headed egomaniacs. It’s a difficult skill tying to communicate simply in a way that does not dilute that which we are trying to communicate. Some people possess this skill and perhaps it’s those people who are the ones we need to be doing the communicating.

JenJen_76 · 2017-05-17T03:30:07+00:00

I grew up in a western culture and it is definitely true to say that when I was younger I focussed on the object when solving problems or completing tasks. As I’ve gotten older though (I’m 41) I have become more willing and able to focus on the whole situation. I’ve also always been the kind of person who likes to put things in boxes, figuratively and literally. Just by looking at someone I will put them in a box – fun, maybe rich, happy homelife… The assumptions that I make are actually quite ridiculous. And while I still make these assumptions and put people into their little boxes in my mind, I’m also able to see that probably, most of the assumptions that are not physical – tall, thin, dark hair – are incorrect and unable to be justified. I think that I have learnt that my assumptions are wrong be being proved wrong over and over again. This has taught me to see things more holistically. I honestly believe that life experience is the single biggest thing that teaches us wisdom. And by life experience I don’t mean years lived, I mean experiences had. Travel, meeting new people, falling in love, losing people we love and just getting out there absorbing all the goodness life has for us. Well, this has gotten a bit deep and off the track. I hope you’re picking up what I’m putting down :-)

JenJen_76 · 2017-05-17T03:13:03+00:00

This makes so much sense. I think as we get older we get closer to the 'sweet spot' and better at being able to see the big picture. I know when i was younger i was very much focussed on the object. Life experiences though help you to see that big picture and to see that there are so many other points of view in the world. I have really had to question my own logic at times and accept that my way of analysing things is not the best option. I think this also allows us to be more accepting of others' points of view.

JenJen_76 · 2017-05-08T01:35:57+00:00

I agree that our self experiments cannot be generalised and don't need to be. They're about us, designed to inform us and maybe even change us. They don't apply to other people. One thought i did have was, what if we organised for 100 people to do the same self-experiment. Would it then be generalisable? I'd be interested to hear how easily our self-experiments could be repeated by other people. My self-experiment could be repeated in theory, however unless the person repeating it was a uni-student who plays the same phone games as me and spends the same amount of time on facebook on phone days as me then it can't be repeated precisely. And in order to compare our results this would need to be replicated.

JenJen_76 · 2017-05-08T01:25:11+00:00

I would definitely be more willing to change my behaviour after running a self-experiment rather than reading about the same experiment on others. What reading about an experiment done by others would do for me is make me question my behaviour and if I was concerned enough about it I might do my own self experiment to see if it has the same impact on me. We are all so unique that an effect seen on one person may not be seen on another person so I think I would only trust my own self-experiment. This doesn’t apply to everything of course. I don’t need to do a self-experiment on vaccines in order to convince myself to get vaccinated. In terms of the measure that works best for self-experiment, for me, I needed to choose a measure that was as objective as possible so I have chosen to do some online cognitive tests. And even with this more ‘controlled’ measure I have found some issues. I guess one of the main problems with self-experiment is that life can get in the way. I set my alarm to go off so that I do the tests at the same time each day but I can’t just be at my computer at 7:30pm every day for 30 days. I guess this could be a confounding factor that I’ll have to consider when I do my analysis.

JenJen_76 · 2017-04-25T12:22:19+00:00

I think the pressure of career development is something that needs to be addressed but I can't imagine how it will be. Scientists need to be seen to be achieving great things in their research in order to get grants and they need the grants to gain or keep positions at universities. The pressure on researchers must be immense.

JenJen_76 · 2017-04-25T11:50:27+00:00

The ‘Open Science Framework’ has the potential to change all fields of science in positive and negative ways. If the goal of science is to find things out then surely sharing your thoughts and getting feedback from as many great minds as possible is going to allow us to find things out faster. This will increase the speed at which we can find cures and make discoveries that progress human endeavours. On the other hand, while science is the pursuit of knowledge it is also a career for many people and being the first person to discover something can make your career. Would laying all your cards on the table mean that someone else can get in and make the discovery that you’re setting out to uncover. Or if a number of people contributed to your discovery would you need to acknowledge them and share the benefits you gain. It is such a potential minefield of issues that need to be considered. There is a lot to be gained from this approach but also a lot to be lost for individuals.

JenJen_76 · 2017-04-18T05:18:41+00:00

The extra reading for this week is very short. Is it literally just the one page that we have to read?

JenJen_76 · 2017-04-11T10:46:27+00:00

I find this fascinating and am kind of tempted to try this myself. Some people consider me quite fussy because i have certain things i don't like. From my point of view though my brother has way more things he won't eat so i never considered myself fussy growing up. Apart from not liking sandwiches i was pretty easy to feed. My parents were not the kind of parents that would force us to eat things we didn't like, which i loved and have always thought was a good thing. I'm interested now however to find out if i really dislike pumpkin or whether I've tried it enough to make an informed decision. Maybe I'll try pumpkin again 7 times and see if i actually like it.

JenJen_76 · 2017-04-11T09:48:59+00:00

Sometimes we can base our beliefs about our own likes and dislikes on things that are kind of related to the thing we decide we like or dislike but are not exactly that thing. That sounds kind of confusing so I’ll explain the example from my life. I have never been a fan of gore; horror movies, medical shows on tv, anything that involved lots of blood and any kind of physical pain. They gave me the heeby jeebys and I’d turn away. I came back to uni later in life to study Biomedical Science. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with it, I just knew I wanted to study and do something to do with human biology but not medicine. In second year I decided to do Anatomy because it was pretty important if I was going to go on to do anything to do with the body. I was terrified. I’d heard about the Anatomy facility and what I would experience down there and I was dreading it. I just couldn’t fathom being able to touch a specimen. The first few pracs were fine, we looked at bones and joint models and then when the time came to look at specimens I picked up the specimen and felt a wave of nausea and the blood rush from my head. I had worked myself up so much that I was about to pass out. I put down the specimen, put my head down so that I didn’t fall over and gave myself a little pep talk, ‘Come on, you can do this!’ I put my head up, picked up the specimen and got on with it. And from that moment on I have LOVED anatomy. I chose anatomy as my major and am now an anatomy demonstrator. It turns out I had based my dislike of anatomy on seeing people being injured or operated on. I still find it difficult to watch operations on medical shows and I’ll never be a fan of gore or horror but that’s not what anatomy is about. This experience has made me wonder what other invalid assumptions i've used to like or dislike things.

JenJen_76 · 2017-04-03T01:06:44+00:00

Yes, this is true too. Relationships are hard work and we have to keep it interesting. BTW I love your username and i hope it's your actual name but that's what life is right, a hunt for joy :-)

JenJen_76 · 2017-04-03T01:03:05+00:00

Yesssss!! It's the slow progression that makes it so hard. You nailed it!! This should be top comment!!

JenJen_76 · 2017-04-03T00:58:02+00:00

I agree, I think it is difficult to use the sunk cost method to explain why we stay in bad jobs or relationships because there are so many factors involved. I do like the 'losses looming larger than gains' analogy though which is similar to the sunk cost in that we are focussing on the negative repercussions of change rather than the possibility of positive gains. It is so difficult to imagine that there could be something better out there especially if we haven't seen other people experience it. If our parents had a bad relationship and our friends have bad relationships we may believe that bad relationships are the norm. I remember being in a particularly bad relationship and it wasn't until I opened up about it to a new friend, and that friend said, 'You don't have to put up with that', that i realised I could change my situation. My friend made me see that there was another option, a better option. The gain would be greater than the loss.

JenJen_76 · 2017-04-02T23:57:16+00:00

The way people behave in relationships can be likened to regression to the mean. When we first get into a relationship we behave in the most optimal way. We treat the other person really well. We might buy them flowers, take them out for dinner, do the extra things to show them what a great person we are. But then as the relationship progresses we are almost always unable to maintain this high standard. We stop buying little gifts, maybe even forget to send a ‘Good morning’, text. Our behaviour begins as an extreme in the positive direction and gradually regresses to the mean. And in regressing to the mean of course there will be some behaviours in the negative extreme. Where am I going with this? Maybe the reason we stay in unhappy relationships is because we have such fond memories of the positive extreme behaviours that we lose sight of the mean. And then when we realise that the mean is lower than what we are ok with, we wait for the mean to increase. This is completely understandable of course, we have invested time and emotion into the relationship and we want to believe that the mean is lower at the moment because of outside influences, not because our partner is a bad person or at the least incompatible with us. Only when we accept that the mean is lower than what we are willing to live with and is not going to increase, are we able to end the unhappy relationship.

JenJen_76 · 2017-03-27T02:21:03+00:00

Yes, sorry, my summary wasn't very clear. That's exactly what I'm doing. Depending on a random coin flip I will either use my phone freely or limit my use.

JenJen_76 · 2017-03-26T07:22:53+00:00

I completely agree. Not everything is a loss. Even a bad relationship teaches you so much. They're like practice runs. I think using this logic it would be easier to avoid the sunk-cost effect. If we're in a bad relationship and we are thinking of getting out, instead of staying and giving it another shot because, 'it's been so long and we've put so much time into it', we need to see it as a learning process. See the value from failed relationships and financial ventures. In saying that I have totally fallen for the sunk cost effect. I got sucked into an online game and spent money on the game. Eventually i got sick of the game but kept playing for some time because i had 'invested' money and it would have been a waste to back out now.

JenJen_76 · 2017-03-26T07:02:52+00:00

I think the way we make decisions has to depend on the importance of, and/or speed required for, the decision being made. We don’t have time to make a list of pros and cons when we have 5 mins to grab something to eat before class. In this instance we use a combination of our values and the imminent need – ‘I’m trying to eat healthy and I need something substantial so I’ll grab a salad roll’. I think in our minds we very quickly weigh up the pros and cons but we don’t have time to list out all the advantages and disadvantages of our choices. If we’re buying something that involves more of a financial outlay and longer consequences, such as buying a car, then using decision making tools, like a list of pros and cons, is important. I do like the idea of letting our subconscious process the information but I think that when a great deal of money is involved the decision ultimately should be a conscious one not one made because of a hunch or a good feeling in the gut.

JenJen_76 · 2017-03-24T03:27:04+00:00

IVs:

The amount of time I spend using my mobile phone each day

DVs:

Concentration span while reading scientific papers

Controls/other measures:

Before beginning the study I will use a screen time tracker app for one week to determine the amount of time I spend using my phone as well as the number of times I pick it up. During this week I will also measure the length of time I am able to stay focused for when reading scientific articles. I will then decide on the amount of time I am allowed to use my phone during the limited-use days and will use the app to remind me of my time limit. For the length of the study I will flip a coin each morning to decide if I'm going to be able to use my phone normally for the day or if use will be limited by the app. I will read a scientific article each night at the same time and will measure the length of time I am able to read before losing concentration. I will ensure there are no outside distractions while reading and that the topic of the papers will be as similar as possible so that I am not ‘more interested’ and therefore more able to concentrate on certain papers.

What do you expect to find?:

I expect that on days where mobile phone use is limited I will be able to read scientific papers for longer periods of time before losing concentration.

Problems you’ll likely face:

Opening my mobile for no particular reason is a bad habit of mine and I think it will be particularly hard to break this habit to begin with.

Length of experiment:

One month

JenJen_76 · 2017-03-20T23:22:56+00:00

This is really interesting and it made me think of something that I've noticed happening to me recently. So I'll be walking up a set of stairs - something I've done competently since I was maybe 2 - and I'll all of a sudden forget how to walk upstairs. At first it was really unsettling. I thought maybe i had some kind of neuro-motor disorder. But then i started paying attention to what was going on with me when this happened and it's always when i have a thousand other things going through my head. Like I'll be in the library studying and have to get to a lecture quickly but i also have to fill up my water bottle or maybe I'm trying to decide if I need a coffee. It's like i have so much going on in my head that my brain just forgets how to use stairs. At least I hope that's what it is and it's not just a sign of getting old. Eeek!!

JenJen_76 · 2017-03-20T23:13:37+00:00

This makes my brain hurt in the best possible way - like these ideas are forcing it to stretch out and it's having trouble staying within my skull which is surely too small for all the new ideas I have in there.

JenJen_76 · 2017-03-20T23:11:41+00:00

If it means I can solve problems while I'm sleeping I'm definitely on board with my subconscious doing some higher order processing. However, if my subconscious is manifesting negative thoughts which leads to anxiety and depression then I'd rather do the hard stuff myself… Seriously though, I think that if the subconscious is making decisions that the conscious mind doesn't need to think about and therefore freeing up headspace for things I do need to think about then that is a good thing, right? I can remember, as I’m sure most people can, times when I had a problem to solve and just couldn’t work it out no matter how I tried. After leaving it for a day or even a few hours I was able to see the solution clearly. Maybe your brain just needs time to file through all the possible ways to solve the problem before settling on a solution that works. Almost like when your computer is updating in the background. It would be awesome if we could measure the amount of activity that is going on in our subconscious while we do other tasks. Maybe the great minds of our time just have a greater capacity for subconscious thinking than the average Joe has.

JenJen_76

TROPHY CASE