Things They Should Study: what day does it feel like?

It doesn't feel like Tuesday today. It feels more like Wednesday or Thursday. This would be unremarkable, except that a number of people hve also independently told me tthat it doesn't feel like Tuesday.

Someone should study this phenomenon. Interview random people walking down the street and see what day it feels like to them. See if there's a general consensus about what day it feels like, and try to identify factors that affect people's perception thereof.

Things They Should Study: gender-based material wishlist comparison

Carol Goar has some statistics about men's vs. women's financial habits that lead her to conclude that if the economic stimulus does not address women's concerns, it won't work. On one hand, this reads like one of those articles written with the express intention of focusing on "women's issues", regardless of whether that is the best approach to the subject at hand. On the other hand, it is completely consistent with my reality. My Protect Existing Jobs policy is based on this reality, and protecting existing jobs would totally address every point Ms. Goar raises.

But the big question mark here, which I think might be a productive line of inquiry, is whether there's any difference between what men and women would spend their money on (but aren't spending it on because of financial uncertainty). Are the things they covet within their means (but they feel they shouldn't buy them) or beyond their means (i.e. the money simply isn't there)? Are the things they covet one-time purchases (capital expenditures) or ongoing lifestyle upgrades (operational expenditures)?

I'm thinking along these lines because most of the things I covet are lifestyle upgrades that are technically within my means, but I feel like I shouldn't because then if money becomes tight it will hurt to downgrade. For example, I'd very much like to use Touche Eclat and unless it runs out ridiculously quickly I could totally come up with $30-40 every time I need a new tube of concealer. But I feel like I shouldn't, so I'm making do with discontinued Skinlights purchased on ebay. I'd like to upgrade my hairdressing (I just recently upgraded from no hairdressing to hairdressing, and I like the results and want to go further) and the money is there, but if I lost my job having spent that much on my hair would be inexcusable. I'd love to get my bras at Secrets From Your Sister, but if they're as good as they say they are I won't be able to go back to ill-fitting $12 numbers from La Senza, and then if my bra explodes while I'm unemployed I'm screwed. With the exception of real estate, everything I covet is an operational expenditure that I probably could afford. And, with the exception of real estate, everything I covet is girly stuff.

My non-spending could be fully addressed with job security. If I were certain I was never going to lose my job, I would totally buy all those things. I would be buying $30 make-up and bras with prices in the three-digit range and the best hair stuff money can buy for the rest of my life.

But when I think about the men around me, the stuff they covet is different. They seem to covet more one-time purchases that they aren't purchasing because the money simply isn't there. A big-screen TV with surround sound. A car. A trip. A new computer. Their non-spending could be addressed by putting more money in their pocket. If the money was suddenly there for a big-screen TV, they'd get one. So, following Carol Goar's logic that women are underrepresented on economic decision-making, perhaps this is why some of our politicos seem to be under the impression that a tax cut would be an effective economic stimulus?

Now I have no way of knowing if I'm typical of women or if the men in my life are typical of men. But looking at all of this, I'm thinking perhaps someone should study the coveting habits of different economic groups to try to figure out what it would take to get different people spending.

Things They Should Study: is it easier to become rich or educated?

A while back someone somewhere in my comments (sorry, I'm blanking on who and where) mentioned that there are people who decry academics as elitist, but don't do the same for rich people because they (the decriers) aspire/expect to be rich one day themselves.

Someone should study whether it is in fact easier to become educated or rich. They'd need to do it by thresholds. For example, is it easier to become a millionaire or to get a PhD? What about a master's degree? What about a billionaire?

Things They Should Study: why can't parents identify with their kids?

When people become parents, they seem to lose the ability to identify with the child half of the parent-child relationship. Even when thinking in the abstract about situations that don't involve themselves or their kids, they can never seem to get past "How would I feel if I were in that kid's parents' situation?" to reach "How would I feel if I were in that kid's situation?"

This is strange. All parents have been kids. Every parent I've ever talked to can still remember things from when they were kids. They can think about their favourite toy or their first crush or a teacher they hated and remember how they felt in that situation. So why don't they seem able to think about how their child self would have felt in a parent-child situation?

Someone should really study this from a psychological and neurological perspective.

How to do a reverse apology

Via Language Log, some guy walks around New York City apologizing to people who bump into him.

That took a minute, didn't it? We all do that automatically, it a basic part of Canadian etiquette.

The problem is, the guy in the article is overdoing it. His reverse apologies are really pointed and come across as passive-aggressive. A proper reverse apology has to come across as perfectly automatic, as automatic as saying thanks when the cashier hands you your change. It needs to be non-specific. "Sorry" or "Oops, sorry" will do just fine. "Sorry you dropped my apple" is petty and passive-aggressive. However, even if you are just saying the word "Sorry" and saying it automatically as soon as the incident occurs, you also need to say it like it's no big deal. Imagine you're walking through a subway station, busy day, a lot on your mind, striding briskly towards the platform (the train isn't there yet so you aren't running) and you bump into someone else. No big deal, no one is hurt, really your bag just hit their bag, no need to break stride, you say "Oops, sorry" and continue on your way, the encounter forgotten two seconds later. That's the kind of tone you need. In my corner of the world, that will elicit a sorry of equal or greater value. Doing anything bigger or more pointed for a minor incident in which you are not at fault will come across as passive-aggressive and put the other person on the defensive.

It would be interesting to repeat this experiment with someone who is fluent in reverse apologies, who does it automatically, and who isn't so actively seeking to change behaviour. Canadians who are currently in New York City (I'm sure there are some Canadians in New York City at any given time): spend a day apologizing like a Canadian and blog your findings!

Things They Should Study: who establishes the greeting protocol?

I have some family members with whom I hug and/or kiss as a greeting. This wasn't my idea, I was never consulted, and I don't hug or kiss other family members with whom I have the same degree of relationship (some of whom have the same degree of relationship as me to the huggers/kissers).

Someone should do some research into how these things develop.

I think delayed gratification is different depending on whether you have witnesses

A while back there was a study that showed that children who could delay gratification had greater success later in life. They tested this by leaving the kid alone in the room with a treat for 20 minutes, and telling them they could have two treats if they didn't eat it until the adult came back.

My four-year-old self would totally have been able to wait the 20 minutes, but my motivation wouldn't have been the second treat. It would have been the praise from the adult about how good I was for being able to wait.

I've found I operate this way IRL. Using the broadest and pettiest possible definition of delaying gratification to achieve a goal, I'd say I succeed in 100% of the cases where my achieving the goal actually affects other people, 90% of the cases where other people will see whether or not I achieve the goal, and maybe 50% of the cases where no one but me will see whether I achieve the goal. For example, my current goals for this weekend include getting my translations done on time, buying a birthday card for a friend, and washing my windows. The translations will definitely get done because the client needs them. The birthday card will most likely get bought unless something goes egregiously wrong. The windows may or may not get washed, depends what happens. I'm not going to blow off the translations or the birthday card in favour of gaming or reading fanfic or otherwise being a lazyass, but the window washing I might.

I don't know how this affects the relationship between delayed gratification and success i nlife, but it seems like something worth studying.

Things They Should Study: body language a sociolinguistic perspective

I don't wink. The best way I can describe why is to say that it isn't part of my active vocabulary (even though it isn't actually a speech act, although it does have pragmatic value). I do sometimes communicate flirtatiousness and "this is an in-joke" and conspiratoriness (or whatever the correct word is), but I do this with facial expression and tone of voice in a way that I can't quite articulate yet because I've given this about 30 seconds of thought so far.

I wonder, if you studied it, if there would be demographic patterns among people who do or don't wink as part of their active vocabulary of body language? And I wonder if there are similar patterns for other kinds of body language?

I wonder if people's parental status affects their opinion about Omar Khadr

I have no basis for this theory, not even anecdotal evidence, but it occurred to me as something that some people might think.

The people who want to keep Omar Khadr on Guantanamo generally support their argument at least partially on his family's political opinions. I wonder if parents are more likely to feel this way as compared with non-parents? Parents try to instill their own values in their children, so it stands to reason that they might be more likely to think people share their parents' values and that this attitude is permanent. (I've noticed that when people become parents, they seem much less able to identify with the child half of a parent-child relationship, even though they are still someone's child themselves.) I have a theory that Omar Khadr's natural adolescent rebellion might have turned him into a moderate if he'd gotten to spend his adolescence in a more normal environment, but I've never had anyone who is a parent agree with me that this was even a possibility.

If parents are more likely to want to punish him based on his family's political opinions, it would also be interesting to see whether this changes based on the age of the person's kids.

Does the age at which you learn to read affect your accent?

Where there is room for variation in pronunciation, I tend to pronounce words very literally, very close to how they are written. I pronounce the T instead of using a glottal stop in words like button (I have both pronunciations around me, I haven't done enough observation to work out which one I'm supposed to have ended up with). I pronounce Tuesday as "toooosday" instead of "chewsday" (I've heard "chewsday" from people with similar background and education who should have developed the exact same pronunciation as I have, but again I haven't done enough observation because I just thought of this). I know there are others because I've noticed them, both IRL and when we were doing Canadian dialects in my linguistics classes, but I can't think of examples offhand.

I'm wondering if this might be because I learned to read using phonics at a very early age - I think I started learning at the age of 2, and by the age of 4 I could fluently read age-appropriate books. I spent less time during my formative years having an auditory-only relationship with my rightful accent, and more time with the internalized concept of one-to-one correlation between letters and pronunciation. (I know it isn't actually one-to-one, but you can't exactly explain the subtleties to a two-year-old).

In support of this hypothesis is my very literal pronunciation, and the fact that I tend to mispronounce words because I've only seen them written more than other people do. (I was 25 before I realized that the written word and verbal pronunciation of annihilated are in fact one word.) I also tend to fudge my vowels a bit when the spelling is different - I don't pronounce buoy and boy exactly the same, even though I remember learning the word as a child and I thought it was "boy", but I still pronounce buoy with one syllable instead of "booo-ey" which is the accepted alternate pronunciation. And I do caught and cot, and collar and caller, like half a phoneme different - not as much as in accents where it's a proper accent feature, but not identically the same even though I think I pronounce them identically the same. (Can I has a few linguistics cred points for knowing that I pronounce something differently but think I pronounce it the same?)

On the other hand, I did manage to acquire Canadian raising, which is acquired strictly through aural assimilation and contradicts strict phonetics. And I Canadian raise in exactly the right places despite the fact that I devoice all my final consonants, which is an inherited accent feature aurally assimilated from the ESL side of my family and also contradicts phonetics.

I haven't talked to any other early readers about this or made proper observations of my family's pronunciations, but if other early readers have the same thing it would be an interesting thing to research.

Things They Should Study: how does vocal register change when speaking another language?

When I'm speaking another language, I tend to speak at a lower pitch. In French (my second language and the one I use most often) it drops a little bit, not very noticeable. I lose access to the higher pitch that I use in English for casual-young-female and customer-service-perky, but I'm mostly within a natural range. But by the time we get to Polish (my fifth language, the one I speak worst of the language I can even remotely claim to speak, and also the one that's least similar to English) my entire register drops a whole octave and I can't even reach my normal pitch. (I am physically capable of speaking Polish at a higher pitch, but I'd have to make a very deliberate effort. In the course of normal conversation, trying to think of what to say and how to say it in the other language and how to pronounce it properly, my pitch drops.)

I didn't think much of this until I saw some stand-up comedian on TV talking about how he has a Francophone wife/girlfriend/whatever, and how her pitch drops when speaking English. This has me wondering if it's a common phenomenon. Does pitch always drop in the other language, or does it rise sometimes? Do certain target languages (or target languages in combination with certain mother tongues) consistently cause pitch to raise or lower? Is the phenomenon the same for both men and women? Is it related to how similar the target language is to the speaker's mother tongue?

Things They Should Invent: a study of how people on the receiving end of "I'm sorry" process the statement

Nan Connolly said I erred in saying women should decline additional assignments when they were already swamped at work by telling their co-worker, "I'm sorry. I'm on deadline."

"Too many times women say they are sorry," she wrote. "People bump into women in airports and they, the women, apologize. I see this all the time, everywhere. Someone out of your department waylaying you for additional work should not be told you are sorry not to do it."

She continued ... "I really think women give up some authority by frequently apologizing."

I've heard this idea before, that you shouldn't apologize if you haven't done anything wrong strictly speaking. I've heard various reasons given for this - that it makes it look like it's your fault, or it makes you look weak, or something like that.

But does anyone actually think this when someone utters the words "I'm sorry" to them?

I come from the traditional Canadian school of apologizing when someone steps on your foot. When I say "sorry" here, I don't really mean that I'm sorry, or that I accept blame, or anything. What I actually mean is "I am acknowledging the occurrence and now let's just get on with life." When I barge into a co-worker's cube with a question and say "Sorry to bother you," I'm not actually sorry. What I actually mean is "I have given thought to the fact that I might be bothering you, and this is important enough that I'm bothering you anyway." When they try to give me more work and I say "I'm sorry, I simply do not have room for any more work," I really mean "I do understand that this needs to be done, and I'm refusing because it's impossible, not just because I have the right to refuse overtime." In all cases, my key message is "It is not my intention to be an asshole."

And that's how I process a "sorry" when I hear it too. I process it as "It is not my intention to be an asshole," so I then assume goodwill on the part of the other party. It means they aren't just being cocky and self-absorbed, they have given some thought to the fact that they're inconveniencing me.

So is there anyone who gets a different message when they hear "sorry"? And if so, are there demographic patterns?

Linguistic research needed

Dear Abby readers complain about being addressed as "You guys".

Based on the letters, it seems to be a regional dialect thing. I can see how the word "guy" can be masculine when it is intended to be so, but personally when I say "you guys" it is gender-neutral. By that I mean that there's no intention of gender in it. It's even more gender-neutral than the intentions behind "Everyone should bring his book," because I don't see unless you point out to me and make me think about it how "you guys" could even be interpreted as masculine. It would be like interpreting the word "human" as masculine because the word "man" can be found in it. It isn't even like the French ils for a mixed group (which seems to be falling into disuse, incidentally). In my train of thought in using this word, it isn't marked as masculine at all. It's like "you guys" is a completely separate term from "guy".

So what they should study (in addition to mapping "you guys" usage) is whether anyone who says "you guys" ever intends it as masculine, whether explicitly or through an "everyone should bring his book"/ils/mankind type usage. Because in my dialect there's no thought of gender whatsoever. It's just that we don't have "y'all" or "folks" in our active vocabulary, so there's not much else we can put there.

Things They Should Study: how do childless elders feel about their social lives or lack thereof?

You often hear or hear of elders complaining of social isolation because they don't get enough attention from their descendents. And people with children do tend to assume that their children will take care of them in old age.

But what about childless elders? On one hand, if you're childless, you don't have any younger people who have some sense of duty to take care of you. But on the other hand, you can see it coming. You know you don't have any children, so you aren't going to be surprised when you get old and you don't have any children or grandchildren around you.

I did a quick google and the research I could find suggested that childless elders are more socially isolated, although marital status is also a factor. However, none of the abstracts (I can't access academic databases from home so I couldn't see the whole articles) said anything about whether this bothers them.

What's interesting is this is all going to be moot anyway within the next generation. With the internet, even if you're confined to your home and your children never visit you, you can still blog about whatever you want or find an online community about whatever interests you (or whatever it is people will do on the internet a generation from now).

Trusting strangers

This is a tangent to a larger post I've got festering in my brain, but I think it's turned into its own separate idea:

We all know that in general the prudent thing, for women especially, is to have a certain wariness of strange men (if you care to discuss this point, wait for my next post on the subject; for this post we're taking it as a given). I've heard a number of times of situations where the men involved take offence at this - like when a woman steps back from the curb as they pull up in their car, or waits for the next elevator, or namedrops her boyfriend, or turns up the chill as a precautionary measure, they take offence that she is apparently presuming they're rapists or they're only after one thing or whatever. I can't speak to the mindset behind this attitude or the actual trustworthiness of the people who feel this way, I've just heard from several discrete sources that it exists.

However, I'm the complete opposite in terms of my expectations. I'm always a wee bit surprised when people trust me. I start talking to a baby (my ovaries make me!) and its grownup is amused and sometimes even actively encourages the "conversation." A fellow resident whom I don't actually know holds the access-control door open for me instead of making me beep myself in. I'm short a quarter, the coffee shop lady spots me from the tip jar and says I can get it next time. The beepy security label is right on the back of the waistband of the pants - the part that's crucial to whether they gap or not - and the saleslady is all "Sure, no problem," when I ask her if she could possibly remove it.

Now, I am trustworthy. I'm not going to steal your baby or rob your apartment or shoplift your pants or cheat you out of your quarter. But people have no way of knowing that. I mean, they can probably tell by looking at me that I couldn't beat them up, but apart from that I'm still a complete stranger without any particular credentials. I know part of the reason why I'm surprised people trust me is because in childhood and adolescence they didn't because of my youth, so going into a store and not being treated like a shoplifter is somewhat novel. But mostly I'm surprised because they have no particular reason to trust me any more than anyone else.

I think it would be interesting to study this in broader society. Who are the people who expect to be trusted on the basis that they are in fact trustworthy? Who are the people who don't expect to be trusted on the basis that they are strangers? Which of these people are actually trustworthy? How much do they trust strangers? Does their empirical experience of being trusted or not affect what they expect from strangers?

Things They Should Research: Does the morphology of numbers in different languages affect those cultures' perceptions of adolescence?

Q: Which ages are considered "teenagers"?
A: 13-19
Q: Why?
A: Because those are the numbers that have "teen" in them.

This has nothing to do with adolescent development, does it? It's just because that's how the numbers go. But the numbers don't do the same thing in every language. Here are the numbers 10-20 inclusive in a few languages. "Teens" (i.e. morphemes deriving from 10) are bolded.

English: ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty

French: dix, onze, douze, treize, quatorze, quinze, seize, dix-sept, dix-huit, dix-neuf, vingt

German: zehn, elf, zwölf, dreizehn, vierzehn, fünfzehn, sechzehn, siebzehn, achtzehn, neunzehn, zwanzig

Spanish: diez, once, doce, trece, catorce, quince, dieciséis, diecisiete, dieciocho, diecinueve, veinte

Polish: dziesięć, jedenaście, dwanaście, trzynaście, czternaście, piętnaście, szesnaście, siedemnaście, osiemnaście, dziewiętnaście, dwadzieścia (the numbers 11-19 all formulate the same, but it isn't a derivative of 10 as far as I can tell)

Russian: Десять, Одиннадцать, Двенадцать, Тринадцать, Четырнадцать, Пятнадцать, Шестнадцать, Семнадцать, Восемнадцать, Девятнадцать, Двадцать (text copy-pasted from the first appropriate website because I can't convince my keyboard to do cyrillic. Again, 11-19 all formulate the same, but it isn't a derivative of 10)

Portugese: dez, onze, doze, treze, catorze, quinze, dezasseis, dezassete, dezoito, dezanove, vinte (thank you Poodle)

Afrikaans: tien, elf, twaalf, dertien, veertien, vyftien, sestien, sewentien, agtien, neëntien, twintig(thank you Poodle)

Italian: Dieci, Undici, Dodici, Tredici, Quattordici, Quindici, Sedici, Diciassette, Diciotto, Diciannove, Venti (via Google translate)

Dutch: Tien, Elf, Twaalf, Dertien, Veertien, Vijftien, Zestien, Zeventien, Achttien, Negentien, Twintig (via Google translate)

Greek: δεκα, εντεκα, δωδεκα, δεκατρεις, δεκατεσσερα, δεκαπεντε, δεκαεξι, δεκαεπτα, δεκαοκτω, δεκαεννεα, εικοσι (via Google translate - I can't actually read Greek so I'm just identifying patterns visually)

If you have access to any other languages, please post in the comments! Google Translate also does Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, but I can't read those well enough to draw any conclusions - if you can, your contributions would be most welcome. (I know I should be using Google Translate and normally I don't but this is one of the most straightforward translations possible with no negative consequences of getting it wrong.)

Anyway, given that the change in number formulation can occur anywhere from 11 to 17 depending on the language, I'm wondering if this affects how various cultures perceive adolescence. Anyone in the market for a thesis project?

Things They Should Invent: study of introverts living in nursing homes

When I hear about what life is like in nursing homes, I dread it. Even if the care is exemplary, it would be hell for me because I am an introvert. Rather than having their own shower, nursing home patients are bathed (because they can't do it themselves). Health care workers come check up on them in the middle of the night. Their lives are necessarily regimented because the institution is, well, institutional - they have to wake up and go to bed and eat and be bathed at a specific time rather than whenever they want.

For me, that's no way to live. I get great joy - yes, joy is le mot juste - from sleeping in as long as my body needs to, having a ridiculously long shower and doing some of my best thinking in the pseudo sensory-deprivation that ensues, then eating whatever I want whenever I want at my own pace. I call this process rebooting my brain, and it's an essential part of staying sane and personable enough that people don't defenestrate me. Another thing that's important is being able to completely let my guard down. I cannot completely let my guard down when another person (apart from mi cielito) is in the room, or may enter the room. I could never let my guard down at my parents' unless I was home alone, and my personality suffered for it. If I lived in a nursing home where there were no locks on the doors (which is normal, according to a PSW friend of mine) I could never let my guard down, at all, ever, for the rest of my life. That's not a life worth living, that's just being kept alive.

Someone should do a study on how nursing home conditions affect introvert patients, whether they're significantly worse off than extrovert patients, and maybe come up with new care models to help people preserve their psychological privacy. I tried googling, but the results were tainted by non-scientific definitions of "introvert" - people who think the word means shy or quiet or nervous or doesn't want to go to the potluck, rather than the technical definition of being energized by being alone.

Things They Should Research

Scott Adams muses that women's salaries might be lower because women are more hesitant to negotiate.

This gives me an idea for something that should be researched: what is the male/female ratio like in jobs where there is no room for negotiating salary?

If you're unionized, you can't negotiate your salary - it's in the collective agreement. Some jobs have salary legislated by the government - you can't negotiate those. And some employers simply pay what they pay, and if you don't like it they'll call in the next candidate. I wonder if this all has any effect

Things They Should Research: plastic bags' route to the landfill

With all this talk of banning plastic grocery bags, I'd really like to see a user-centric study of how they end up in the landfill. A lot of the suggestions I've seen for grocery stores' alternatives to plastic bags seems to be based on the assumption that people bring their groceries home, unpack them, and then throw the plastic bags straight into the garbage. However, 100% of the anecdotal evidence I've collected (by asking everyone I've been talking to the last couple of days) indicates that people save their grocery bags and then use them to wrap their garbage or clean up after their pets. The bags do end up in the landfill, but as garbage bags, not as garbage. If we didn't have the plastic bags, we'd still need some kind of plastic bag to wrap our garbage and clean up our pet's waste, and that plastic bag would still need to go into the landfill. I'd really like to see some research or stats on user behaviour to see if these anti-plastic-bag people are way off, or if there's actually a "throw out the plastic bag" contingent out there somewhere.

A research project for the Freakonomists

Freakonomics mentions in passing that in Switzerland, every adult male is issued an assault rifle for the purposes of militia service, and they are permitted to keep them at home. They then mention that Switzerland has a low gun crime rate, but don't go into the details because they're more focusing on the US.

This raises a serious question though: every adult male has an assault rifle in their home. So what about women? Are single women more likely to be victims of crime than in other countries? Do robbers scan the death ads looking for new widows to rob after the militia comes and takes away their late husband's assault rifle? Are women more likely to seek out male roommates? Do single mothers encourage their adult sons to continue living at home? Are women more likely to go straight from their husband's house to their father's house? How does this affect domestic violence? How does this affect gang violence? Do men with disabilities that prevent them from serving in the militia also get an assault rifle? If not, are they more likely to be victims of crime? Can women serve in the militia if they choose? Can they get a free assault rifle anyway, just to even things up?

Perhaps the omnipresence of firearms does help reduce gun crime overall - Freakonomics doesn't make it clear whether this was cause and effect or just correlation, and I'm in no position to speculate - but how does it affect crime against those who don't or are unlikely to have a firearm in the home?