Anthropology and Homosexuality

This has been concealed from the general public, but now the veil of ignorance is finally lifted. Last academic year we had an Economic Anthropology course in SSE Riga, quite refreshing after the Fin Economics torment. As a part of this course, students are required to do some field research. In teams of two, people usually behave silly somewhere in public and record responses from other people. Some pretend to be stealing wallets, some investigate lifestyle of the homeless, and some walk their dogs in random places. Me and Mārtiņš set out to explore attitudes towards homosexuality in Rīga.

How did we do that? Very simple.  We took two same sex couples, one male and one female, and let them be intimately friendly in the public. We also carefully recorded responses from people who saw them holding hands, hugging and kissing each other. It was absolutely hilarious!  Behaviour of the male couple evoked disgust, resentment, and overt outrage. You would not find your life easy in Riga if you were a homosexual, and here is why:

The Maxima Episode

The male couple entered Maxima and started their shopping. They were soon noticed by one salesperson who was chatting with a security guard. They both started laughing and did not hide that they were very entertained. It two minutes the management of the shop to came from their offices to look at our couple and spy on, if we translate it from Russian,  „those gays“.  In three minutes all the people already knew that our participants were in the shop, even strangers shared the information. What is strange, our couple did not suspect being in the centre of attention even though the observer could hear open laughter in the background. The efficiency of spreading the information was striking -  people wanted to reassure themselves that homosexuality is still totally inacceptable – which they did through pointing fingers and chatting about how odd and inapropriate their behaviour was. The guys bought a pack of condoms and some dog food.

Girls did better though. It was more or less acceptable to walk holding hands or to hug another female, although most other women correctly recognized the homosexual behaviour. Men had to see the girls kissing to get the idea, and generally were very happy to see a female couple making out (well, the researchers were not upset either).

The research has little validity, can hardly be generalized, and definitely has the worst Cronbach alphas ever, but:

Major Findings

• Male homosexuality is perceived as far more evil than female homosexuality.
• Women are better in spotting homosexual behaviour, especially female couples.
• In order to conceal the fact that they are staring at our couples, men constantly looked sideways (so that they would get short glimpses at our couples) and women focused their sight slightly aside (so that they could use their peripheral vision).
• Individual people were puzzled and disoriented when they saw our couples. Groups, however, quickly formed their (negative) opinion about the couples.
• Mildly speaking, service quality is not the best if you happen to go shopping with your same sex partner.
• We had a very entertaining day, huge thanks to all involved in this research!

And it seems that Latvian society is not the only homophobic society there is:

Uncover the deep structure

Micro lectures and PR

This is the first blog post celebrating fact that I learned something interesting in Microeconomics and Financial Markets lecture! Previously it was all about Neuman, Morgenstein, Arrow, and Debrew. Now the behavioural economics part has started, which instantly moved the subject to far more entertaining land. Even more, the lecture offered some public relations insights.

To start with, you would be happier if two people of your preferred gender kissed you than one person did it twice. In the same spirit, losing your keys and later your wallet would feel worse than losing both things in one “attempt”. More, people are risk averse with respect to gains – riskless greenbacks are perceived as better deal than risky (although expectedly higher) sum of money. Fair enough, most people like to cash-in fast. However, if we face losses, suddenly the risk appetite rises. In gambling “I will double the stakes and take back my money” behaviour is more often than not.

Implications for PR? Here you go:

1. Publish good news in a small pieces to maximise the impact;
2. Consolidate news about losses;
3. Do not say how much better it could have been in good situations;
4. But do say how much worse it could have been if you’ve screwed up.

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Doing average is the best strategy

Try your best average, and everything will be fine. Counterintuitive, right? I’ve come across the idea while reading a book about theatre sports. The main point there is that trying “hard” gets you anxious and tense. Couldn’t agree more – my juggling performance drops massively when I try to do the best tricks I possibly can. I guess it shifts mental resources from the actual activity to the abstract ‘trying hard’ part.

Richard Wiseman (cool family name) made an experiment connected with “trying hard”. He gave a newspaper to two groups:  people who felt that they were consistently lucky and people who thought their lives were series of unfortunate events. Both groups needed to count the number of photographs in the newspaper. On the second page Mr. Wiseman put a huge text telling how many photos were in that newspaper. Not surprisingly, the “unlucky” people tried hard to count the photos and missed the huge message. The focus on doing your best limits your opportunities for achieving spectacular results.

Pushing yourself to the limit, giving as much mental effort as possible will not work, partly because “the best” is more or less a random thing. For a given level of preparation, expected level of performance is average and “best” outcomes are pretty much random. The non-random part is preparation for a competition/performance/exam.  Better preparation leads to better results ;). The best example is Usain Bolt, who broke world record in the distance that is not his speciality; he celebrated his victory long before the finish line, and crossed it with his shoelace undone.

Let’s do average!

How Narcissistic are you?

This is not a very accurate measure,  but I scored 21 points out of 40 which is above the average of 15.3. Yesterday I took the Pinsky test, which measures how much are you absorbed into yourself. The areas covered include Self-sufficiency, Vanity, and Exhibicionism. The questions made me reflect where I position myself among other people. If you have time for another episode of Family Guy, do this test instead.

Question of the day: Suppose you are a blogger. Choose one option:

• The opinion posted in your blog is better than most people could produce.
• The opinion posted in your blog is rather average and most people could produce this or better.
• Your internet space is designed to put funny pictures.

LT won World Online Debating Championship

Yes, we are the winners! Huge thanks to Rapolas, Aurimas, Aurimas, and Arvydas. It was a pleasure to be in a team with you all :) Very briefly about the competition:

The competition. It was hosted by debatewise.com. There were teams from all over the world. The judging panel was impressive. It extended from middle August to the beginning of October.

The format. Two teams compete in a round. After the motion is announced, the proposition has 24 hours to write their arguments, afterwards, opposition has its 24 hours. As if it was not enough, same procedure is repeated once more and afterwards teams write their summaries.

The motions. We had five debates, most of them very challenging.

R1 against Latvia (these cool guys are also from SSE Debate Society) ==>

• Democracies should ban the display of communist and Nazi symbols (link). We tried hard not to use arguments from Euros’08. Freedom of expression and all the public discourse arguments bought the judges’ vote.

R2 against Canada on somewhat economic motion ==>

• All taxes on inherited wealth should be abolished (link). Dont redistribute that wealth!!

QF against South Africa on economic motion ==>

• Interest rates on personal lending should be capped at 20% (link).Extensive arguments about how banks set interest rates. Easy.

SF against South Korea on somewhat law’ish motion ==>

• All evidence gathered by intelligence agencies should be admissible in courts of law (link). After extensive research and killer introductory arguments we found out that Koreans forfeited.

Final against England, hardcore as it should have been ==>

• We should prize freedom over security and abolish anti-terrorism laws (link). Defending personal liberties for some reason is a natural thing in our debate society.  This was a very hard debate: worthy opponents and even more research than in SF.  To mix things up, due to IT problems we whote the summary in the last 35 minutes.

The conclusion. It was a good experience. At least now I know massive amounts of random trivia.

There will also be a post describing how we coordinated ourselves from three different countries and managed to produce reasonable arguments.

Keep it real.

Living in a container house is awesome!

Came back from Amsterdam, a very, very nice city (as being judged by “it feels good here” index). Together with Aurimas and the amsterdamer Ieva we saw the Potato Eaters, Hellenic artefacts, the Red Light District, and the bay (the place with the ships and water).

The last object was Ieva’s apartment, which is literally a decorated sea container. The whole house is like a huge lego puzzle assembled of these containers. One container per one person per one flat. Apparently, they are a huge success: check the building company,  the blog, and the youtube video.

It’s cheap, it’s quite strong, and, apparently, it’s quite comfy. Sound isolation might be better, but you can remove a noisy neighbour with his whole flat. Overall, it’s a nice and even stylish option for affordable housing.

Dimensions of a container

The view from the outside.

The apartment

Listening is the key

One of he main ideas from the Dale Carnegie’s book: carefully listen to what your conversation partner says and everything will be fine.  Here’s a random thought, so very true:

More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can
think about is that I can’t wait for them to finish so that I can tell
my own story that’s not only better, but also more directly involves
me.

Usually occurs in areas densely populated with exchange students and in locations of medium to high alcohol consumption. Remember the last time you were so dying to tell something that you didn’t listen to the other person. It was today, right? ;)

Some links for your consideration

1. Short movie: russians drink vodka in style [youtube].

2. People on your periphery are more important than you thought [psychology today]

3. Peter Boettke on what’s wrong with neoclassical (and Austrian) economics.

4. Krugman on what’s wrong with economicts (yep, the same everyone already posted).

Opportunity cost

Is the value of the next best alternative forgone as the result of making a decision [wiki]. Very handy in the decision making. And trivial. Why to assess two options when you already know that the first is better. Say, buying a Jagermeister would give you more utility than drinking cheap vodka. Say, studying algebra now is better than learning how the remote control works.

But once you decided, motivation problems kick in. How do you actually do what you think is best? Two options here: either have strong willpower and actually do the thing (not feasible for many people), or have a huge opportunity cost and get motivated by that. Lets explain that using two situations.

Situation 1: You prefer to invest your time to read some Tolstoy. Your second best alternative is to stare at the wall.

Situation 2: Your want to read some scientific papers. Your second best alternative is to go out and have fun with friends.

Question: in which situation are you most likely to do the most you can to benefit from the decision you’ve made? Obviously, the second as the foregone option would press you to extract the most utility out of your preference. As in negotiations, with better BATNA (best alternative to negotiated agreement) you get better position to strike a good deal.

Keep it real, folks!