Research Proposal

The end of the semester approaches and slowly things are coming to a head. Assignments are due, exams are looming and decisions need to be made. I wisely decided to invest my last three days in going out, getting back late and sleeping too little. I truly am the epitome of self-control and restraint.

Actually, I’m not being very fair to myself. I was able to go out these last three days because I’m well on target and going strong. I’ve been (scarily enough) working ahead these last few weeks and though there is certainly work left to be done, the three days of misbehaviour won’t hurt too much.

But today I’d better get back to it – specifically by working on one assignment. I have to create a research proposal for one of my classes. In order to create that I need to first think of something to research, so that I can write a research proposal about it and that’s the clinch. There is so much out there that I want to look into, that I really don’t know where to begin.

Do I want to investigate our inability to read other people? Do I want to explore how bad we are at understanding what other people mean? This field has certainly been sparking my interest in these last few months – mostly by filling me with self-doubt and uncertainty.

Do I want to look into the Halo effect, the effect whereby everybody thinks they are better than the average? Do I want to explore the realisation that the normal people see the world incorrectly and have things by the wrong end, while depressed people seem to be more accurate in their predictions of the future?

Or would I rather continue my investigation into whether I can dismantle ‘Terror Management Theory’ a grand or encompassing Social Psychology theory that I don’t place a great deal of stock in (and have already spent a great deal of time working on in the last block)?

Then there is consciousness, which sparked my interest through a discussion I had in my café on Thursday (and one thing everybody has been saying to me is to use things from daily life. This discussion certainly qualified, though admittedly it wouldn’t have belonged in most people’s daily life debates).

And what about our understanding of beauty? That’s pretty fascinating as well, especially since there seem to be some rules there that decide who’s beautiful – but we’re not yet sure what they are.

So many ideas! Now I just need to whittle it down and start thinking of something original to do with what’s left.

Monday Mornings

It’s probably massively strange to most of you but I really like Monday mornings. It’s probably because I really enjoy going to the university. For me it’s actually the Sundays that are the toughest and that’s because on Sunday I don’t really get to go anywhere, or meet anybody; plus it’s hardly a day of rest for me, seeing as uni brings a whole host of homework requirements with it.

No, Mondays are where it’s at - classes, classmates, topics, discussions, research, people and something to look forward to. That is, of course, the opposite of everybody else who’s life can be wisely summed up with the Garfield quote “Mondays are a horrible way to spend one seventh of your life”.

I have trouble remembering that life. More than a year ago I remember the working life, where I was teaching English back in Singers and Mondays were filled with somewhere in the neighbourhood of eight to ten hours of work. Back when I was still earning mucho money and hitting the bars, clubs and women (or should I say seducing with that last one? Maybe ‘hitting on’ would have been good enough already...)

Money is – of course – a largely absent resource in my life, right now. As, for that matter, are the clubs and the women. In the bars I spend a great deal of time standing on the wrong side of the fence – as in that side where the drinks get poured into glasses rather than into mouths.

My life has certainly twisted and turned. In fact I’d say that if my life were a square of paper than somebody could have probably folded a lotus by now.

In the red corner – I’m cold, poor, sober and lonely. In the blue corner – I’m learning, growing, working towards something and intellectually challenged.

Ring a ding ding. Of course the red corner is all about the now, while the blue corner is all about delayed satisfaction. That’s what you get for growing older. Responsibility, discipline, standing up to your fears; all things I still haven’t learned.

I have, however, learned how to hide all my uncertainties behind layers of jargon and black-white speak. A skill that certainly should not be sneezed at.

Research

This was a week of research. We had to do our first little research project, just to get into the swing of things. It had to include an element called ‘Action and State Orientation’, which is the idea that people are either one or the other; where the first is an orientation towards doing things and the second is more an orientation to your surroundings and dwelling on things (suffice it to say that the first is far more advantageous than the second).

We decided to investigate how something called stereotype threat (the anxiety associated with belonging to a discriminated group makes a person perform badly on tests) might be influenced by one’s action/ state orientation. (The prediction being that people that suffer from a stereotype threat will do more poorly when they are state oriented). The way we did that was through a questionnaire that we spent literally hours collecting all around the campus.

It was an interesting experience.

Just how people behaved towards the questionnaire in different areas of the campus was already quite revealing. Obviously the fellow psychology students were very helpful (reciprocal altruism, or ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’), but the problem with them was that they could probably figure out what we were doing (which might mitigate the effect) so we didn’t want too many of them. The consequence was that we had to go hunting around for other participants.

We tried the main building, which has the largest student population, but found that for some reason the people there were far more blasé about the whole thing. This building is filled with a large number of social science students and humanity students. They didn’t seem to like taking part in experiments. I kind of have the feeling it’s the ‘cool building’ to hang out, for those students that are more motivated by everything around class than what goes on in class.

The group that we found out was the most helpful ended up being the medical students. Maybe they feel some kind of kin ship with psychology students? (Psychology is being accepted more and more as a science and we do study a part of the body, even if it’s only a very small part of it. Maybe you could consider us like orthodontists, except we focus on the soft tissue and they focus on the hard stuff).

Or maybe it was that they liked answering our IQ questions, seeing as med students are generally some of the most motivated and hard working students in the Netherlands (it’s very hard to get in).

Except for learning that med students are great students (hurrah for med students) we spent most of the rest of our time finding out how we should make our test better next time. Fundamentally it meant spending more time prepping and doing more pre-tests before you start the main experiment.

Nonetheless, it was interesting enough that I’d like to do it again.

A dark mirror

Did you know that every time I go to my blog I check my site meter? If you click on it you can find out from where people are visiting, how many and what link they followed to get here. I click on it and I try to imagine who these people might be that come here to read what I’ve got to say. I wonder if I know them; if they know me.

Some people I recognise. Friends that I know read what’s going on. They generally access from the same server and follow the same links. There’s a couple of links from Singapore, the States and Indonesia now. Then there’s a few visits per week from Britain, Germany and Portugal. Friends and family keeping tabs on me (and me keeping tabs on them in turn). Some of the addresses I can’t place and I can’t help but wonder ‘who are you? Do I know you? And if I don’t, what are you like? Why do you choose to follow my life?’

And I’m mystified. What is it about what I write here that keeps people coming back? What is it in my life that makes people want to keep up to speed with what’s going on in my life? And why does it always seem to hover around about seven people a day? Do these people read everything that I write? Or do they just skim? Do they like what I like? When I’m proud of an entry, does it move them too, or is it something else? Do they like the soul searching, or the philosophy, or the science, or the honesty?

Do I intrigue them? Make them laugh? Cry? Worry? Do they think I’m arrogant, smart, or bitter?

Who are you? And why do you care about me?

It’s one of those mysteries in my life. And I realise it will probably have to stay that way. In the past I’ve tried getting people to comment, speak and reveal themselves. Almost nobody ever does. They say that for every person that speaks on the internet, ten listen quietly. That’s always amazed me; but then I’ve never been terribly good at being quiet. I’m always out there sharing my opinion, whether you want it or not.

Do I mind it, that I don’t know who you are? Well, it keeps things interesting. I can imagine that you’re all beautiful, intelligent and important. That my words make a difference. Or I can imagine that my words help people that need a bit of support. That somebody might find solace here. That somebody might occasionally go, ‘it’s hard for him too.’

And what am I going to do about it if I do mind? When I throw my thoughts out there into cyberspace, it becomes a common good. To be consumed and considered at everybody and anybody’s leisure, in the open or in obscurity.

And even though they (you) stay in anonymity, they (you) are still there. They (you) still care. It does help, you know, that little extra tick added to the counter of ‘how many have been here before’.

My words matter to somebody. In fact, they matter to at least seven people a day.

Anthropomorphism

And then suddenly my mood improves. A few small things on the outside certainly helped (e.g. I got back my grades for my first two courses at uni and both are markedly better than expected, with both being above the cum laude threshold), but they can only be seen as catalysts. All in all, it is the inside that has changed; as it always seems to be. My downward moods (I hesitate to use the word depression) seem to truly be chemical imbalances. Often only the smallest things have turned against me when suddenly I end up feeling truly despondent.

That’s the thing I’m discovering more and more as I get into the Social Psychology literature, despite our beliefs that we are logical, rational, straight thinking, internally consistent and honest with ourselves the truth of the matter is that we’re none of those things. In fact, it is quite spectacular that we manage to function as we do at all. The more I learn, the more amazed I am that society actually works and stunned that we’re not more surprised (or interested) at how it actually does just seem to tick along.

But that’s the anthropomorphism in us; our inability to see beyond our own humanity and our belief that since we work this way, well obviously everything must work this way. Of course this is just an absolutely huge (and incorrect) assumption, but since 99.9% of us engage in it, we’re never really confronted with this assumption. In fact, it is incredibly difficult for us not to engage in this activity. It’s a bit like trying to imagining the world in five dimensions. We’re so used to four that we just can’t seem to shift our perception and that while M theory (one of the more promising theories of ‘everything’ in physics; a derivative of string theory) doesn’t just require five dimensions but somewhere in the order of 13.

But let’s get a bit closer to earth. What the hell am I talking about? Well, let me give you an example. In 1990 a Psychologist called Elizabeth Newton did an interesting experiment in which she got two people together and asked one to tap (on a table top) a popular song to the other person; but first she asked the tapper to predict how likely it was that the other person would guess the song the tapper was going to tap. The tapper’s, on average, thought it was about 50% likely that the other person would get the song they were going to tap out. In truth, the chance turned out to be around 3%. Yes, that’s right, not 30%, but 3%. One in 30 songs was correctly recognised, when the tapper believed about one in two songs would be correctly recognised. It gets even worse, when the listener was made aware of what song the other person was going to tap out and then was asked, afterwards, how much chance an uninformed listener would have of correctly guessing the song they also thought it would be about 50%

In other words, we are completely inept at ignoring what we already know. We reason from our own perspective and find it neigh on impossible to do otherwise. We are human and it colours our perspective, reasoning and belief system in every possible way.

And most of us don’t even know it.

Letter from the editor

I might not have mentioned this, but i recently became the chief editor of a magazine at my University. It doesn't pay and it's only two issues per year, but it's something. I decided to write a letter to the rest of the team (who are also new, the whole old team graduated and moved on, so we're all fresh) and since I spent enough time working on that I thought I'd use it for here as well. So, without further ado, my letter:

I realise it's strange that I'm writing an editor's letter when we don't yet have a magazine, but I felt we had to start somewhere and since this is the start of our joint effort to produce a magazine it seemed somehow fitting. To me it seemed rich in some sort of symbolism, though admittedly not the sort of symbolism that provoke poetry, inspire artists or generates paradigm shifts; but more the type of symbolism that crops up after a heavy night of drinking, the type of symbolism that seems oh so potent when the drinks have hit the double digits, but is fortunately forgotten the next day.

The reason I'm writing this letter is to get the ball rolling or rather, to sharpen the incline, seeing as all of us started it moving already. I want to tell you what I know, what I think and what I hope; so that you can tell me the same, or something similar, or something totally different.

So first what I know: What I know is that I'm happy to be working with each and every one of you. I've said this before and I'll say it again, I'm very impressed with the calibre of my class mates, as well as their enthusiasm and dispositions. That goes twice for all of you, because you've decided to not only take the responsibility of this degree on your shoulders, but also the publishing of a magazine, which is not something to be sneezed at (something that applies equally to publishing the magazine as you taking up this responsibility).

What I also know is that if we all put our minds to it, we'll produce something that we can be proud of; something that when people ask to see it you don't feel the urge to tell them that you've lost your copy but instead you want to tell them over and over again that you were a part of making what they're holding.

What I think: if we manage to do this, if we manage to pull this off then it will create bonds that will serve all of us well over the years to come. Call it friendship, call it mutual respect, call it an understanding of strengths and weaknesses, call it pizza, for all I care, but over the years what I have come to appreciate most are the handful of people who have helped me or I have helped do great things. And if things go well I'd soon like to add all of you to that list.

I will be honest, I am very demanding – but that is because in the past those people who have placed high demands on me and then helped me reach them have made my life so much richer and have brought me so much closer to my potential. So yes, I am very demanding and I expect (demand?) that you are the same way towards me. After all, why be good when you can be great?

What I hope: I hope this letter inspires you, that it provokes you, that it fills you with thoughts, ideas and criticisms. I also hope we'll all be honest with each other and stay true to what we signed up for. I hope that you'll be honest with me. I know I can be loud, obnoxious, autocratic and intimidating. Don't let it scare you. It's probably just me hung over.

What I also hope is that in two years time we'll all be happy with the decisions we made in terms of this magazine. That we all feel we learned something and that we moved ourselves and the magazine forward. What I hope is that this is the beginning of a great working relationship. And I hope that all of you want that too.

Your reality

Interestingly, when you’re depressed your image of reality is actually closer to the truth than when you are – what they call – normal. It used to be believed that people that are sane have the most objective view of reality and that it was the abnormal who’s vision of reality was further away from what was really out there. In the case of depression this has been shown not to be the case.

There are a whole lot of reasons for this. The most important one being that if we didn’t have an incredibly rosy picture of ourselves, our friends, our past and our future in our minds, none of us would ever get out of bed. (Though that then begs the question, who exactly would be building those beds?) In order to maintain our sanity we actually can’t be – as we traditionally described it – completely sane.

For example, we believe we are move clever than we are (almost everybody thinks they are above average in intelligence, which obviously is impossible), have more control than we do (everybody seems to believe that they have a below average chance of getting into an accident, getting sick, or getting in trouble), are friendlier than we are (if everybody was as friendly as they thought they were, there wouldn’t be any more wars, I’m sure!) and have a brighter future than we do (everybody that’s young is certain they’ll be rich and famous when they’re older!)

The question researchers asked, when they saw all this data, was, why – exactly – do we have such a rosy picture of ourselves, our future and our surroundings? Isn’t it true that having an incorrect view of reality means that we’re all the more likely to get ourselves into trouble? (by way of comparison, if we thought a car was approaching differently from how it was, we’d be far more likely to step in front of it.) And no doubt it is.

The thing is, we’re not just observers, we’re also actors. We don’t just see ourselves as being better than we are, we also then proceed to act that way and that is the crux of the matter. We act like we are going to succeed at tasks we really only have a very slim chance of succeeding at and as a result sometimes succeed at them! This is commonly referred to as a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’. If you believe you can do something, chances are better that you’ll actually manage to do it then if you don’t believe you can do it.

And then there are always two final protective mechanisms to guard us when we do fail. The first is that we attribute success to our own skill and failure to circumstance. While the second is that we forget when we fail and remember when we succeed (thereby also establish a more rosy picture of our past, as well as the present and the future).

Depressed people disengage most of these defensive mechanisms and end up with an unfiltered view of the world around them. They see the brutality of the world around them and their insignificance within it. Their depression functions a great deal like the Ultimate Perspective Machine dreamed up by Douglas Adams in his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

We need to be convinced of our own importance. Otherwise, why bother? Therefore, we witness reality through numerous filters and interpretation devices – just to avoid being termed insane.

Gordian Knot

There’s a great Dutch saying that roughly translates as ‘being knotted up into your self’. The meaning is that you’re making things harder for yourself than they need to be, or that you’re getting in your own way. Actually, it’s more a bit of both.

I’ve constituted that that’s my problem right now. I think I’m moving forward, but my break lights are on (that’s not mine, it’s Jack Johnson’s, but then things are very rarely mine, even if I’m not aware of it. The subconscious is the biggest plagiarists of them all). Every night I sit in my room, studying, working, watching movies, reading and generally trying to entertain myself – when in truth I want to be out meeting people, seeing places and doing things.

Yet during the day, when I could be doing something about it, I’m not. I could be setting things up so that I’d have things to do in the evenings, but instead buy a pre-packaged meal, go home and eat alone.

People have tried to help me. They’ve invited me out. They’ve offered advice. I haven’t taken any of it. And I don’t know why. Well, I do. It’s because I’m ‘knotted up into my self’.

Or maybe it’s because I’m so used to it being so easy for me to find nice people, do nice things and see nice places that now that I can’t seem to understand that over here it takes effort, time and patience. Over here I’m not special anymore. I’m just another Dutch guy, wandering the streets of Amsterdam with a pre-packaged meal under his arm.

And yet I find it incredibly hard to do anything about it. I think that’s what happens when you’ve managed to get yourself stuck in a rut; the longer you’re in there, the harder it gets to get out.

I think it would be fair to say that I’ve been pretty unhappy with my situation for quite a while now. I hide it from myself, from others; but when I’m going home alone again in the evening I know it’s true. When I’m sitting on the bus, aware that soon I’ll be in my room and my fellow passengers will be the last people I will see till the next morning, sometimes this desperate loneliness tries to overwhelm me.

Of course it’s gone in the morning. Then there’s a whole day of meeting, talking, discussing, sharing, complaining, ridiculing, chatting and interacting. Then I’m okay. I forget about it, even.

It’s just the evenings.

And what to do?

You see, the thing is that what I miss is kindred spirits. People like me. People that used to be easy to find when I was younger but have been getting progressively harder to encounter as the years have passed me by.

I don’t know if that’s because I’m getting more unique, more choosy, or just less social. I do know that recently I find it easy to make acquaintances, but neigh on impossible to make any friends.

It’s your friends that you hang out with in the evening.

So I go home alone.

My Choice

Even though it doesn’t matter, seeing as I’m not American, (and there are no doubt literally thousands of people doing the same thing at this very moment) I’m going to tell you who I would have voted for and (to make matters worse) why.

If I would have been allowed to vote, I would have voted for Obama. The reason why can largely be summarized in one word and that word is Palin.

But let me explain myself, seeing as one word hardly qualifies as an explanation. Before this election and before the primaries and before all of that jazz, I actually already knew about McCain. That, I realise, isn’t a great accomplishment, but it is probably more than a great deal of Americans themselves can say. I can go even further, I actually liked him.

That’s not hard. He is (used to be?) honest, a free trader, confrontational, clear and in a league all his own. He – in many ways – embodied many of the values that I believe once made the Republican party one of the greatest parties that helped govern America, before all that bible bashing, ultra-conservative empire building, war mongering lot somehow took the reigns.

The problem is that Palin represents the very wing of the Republican party that we really don’t need another four years of. The wing that thinks only in black and white, has no clue about how the rest of the world works and doesn’t really want to find out (after all, everybody outside of America must really be an American in waiting who just hasn’t quite seen the light, right?), believes the bible should decide matters of the state and believes their values should be everybody else’s values too.

By choosing her as his running mate McCain is creating the possibility, however slight, that if something were to happen to him we would end up with somebody who – in all likelihood – is even nuttier than Bush. At least I can understand what Bush was trying to do (though it was often misguided and ill conceived) but I’m not really sure I would be able to understand where the hell Palin would be coming from.

And the fact that McCain chose her says something as well. He’s willing to take somebody under his wing that he obviously doesn’t really like, who’s values he doesn’t really respect (McCain isn’t big friends with the fundamental Christians) and who he won’t be able to agree with on many points, just to get the extremes of the Republican Party to back him. What’s so honest about that?

Is Obama the best choice? Well, it is true he’s inexperienced (though it’s so strange that I can argue that when I’m only two thirds his age), but that’s something that can easily be rectified with a good team behind him. What he does have is charisma and the ability to show the world that America is not the bigoted, discriminating place that most America haters think it is.

And that is really horrible, that race needs to play a role, but unfortunately it does. Race is still a very hot topic in (and outside) America and by showing that a black man can become president the minorities will be energised, invigorated and made aware that they no longer have an excuse. Furthermore, it will prove America’s enemies wrong. America is not a country where the white man oppresses, but instead a country where everybody can live the American dream, not matter what the colour of his skin is – a dream that is still a beautiful notion.

And for the rest? Well, all we’ve seen is Obama the campaigner, with his lines scripted and his performances rehearsed. To judge his ability to lead a country by his campaigning is like judging your surgeon’s ability to operate, by how well he or she can play piano. He’s got pizzazz. He’s got character. And hopefully he’s got the vote on his side.

Lost Days

I lost yesterday completely, as well as last week Friday and some odd day the week before that. The reason? Hangovers. Terrible, day consuming hangovers that make any action besides lying in bed and groaning incredibly unappealing (and even the groaning has to be done in a soft tone, so as to avoid adding to my pain).

The thing is, I’ve drunk so much more at other times and other places that I can’t understand why the hell I’m getting such horrible hangovers now. There is no rhyme or reason to it, no justice and no fairness (and if you’re going to say, ‘well the world isn’t fair’ then I’ll be forced to answer, ‘compared to what?’). When I was in Goa, for example, I can honestly say there were times when we were abusing alcohol, drinking and partying day after day with no respite and no time for recovery; yet, though I didn’t always feel honky dory, I can’t remember even one hangover that compared to the bastards that are costing me days now.

Now I really only drink one day a week, the day – and you guessed it – before the hangovers hit. For the rest of the week it might be a beer with dinner once or twice, but no more.

My father, who is a skilled drinker by all accounts, suggests it might be because I’m lacking the necessary vitamins and that I should maybe try taking vitamin pills. This could be the case, as it is true that I’m not really eating my vegetables (They are actually really hard to get, if you try to avoid cooking like I do. I though Europe as well about healthy eating, but I might have been eating healthier in Asia than I am here).

Another theory I’ve heard is that the hangovers are hitting me exactly because I’m drinking so much less. My body is no longer used to significant amounts of alcohol, while my mind is still used to consuming like I did previously, so when I do go drinking ‘properly’ I end up drinking too much for my current tolerance level.

This would seem to fit with my memory of falling of my bicycle on Friday night (I also have physical proof, as in a hurt hand that I obviously acquired during the fall). The reason I fell off, if I’m not mistaken, is because a curb aggressively attacked me on my way home. So, either the curbs are slowly awakening and planning to take over the world, or I really shouldn’t have done those two shots right at the end there.

So what is the solution? Take vitamin pills and drink less. The first step is easy, the second one, as anybody that drinks regularly well knows, is a lot tougher. There is, to paraphrase Yoda, ‘only drink and no drink, there is no try’. So I guess that means I’ll have to do the no-drink thing. The trick there is to get my ass out of a steady drinking environment, where the beer flows freely (in both senses of the word), and into a more sober setting; yet another reason that it would be nice if I could get the research assistant job.

Breaking habits is all about removing the habit cues from your environment and since I do not drink at home the only real habit cue I’ve got is my place of employment. Well, that and weekends, but it might be a little harder to get rid of those.