Availability Heuristic

I introduced some cognitive bias in the previous blog. In last month, I found a comic strip in the Seattle Times. It is not only funny, but it is also a good example to explain what availability heuristic is. 

Article: The Seattle Times

The availability heuristic refers to judgments based on how easy it is for us to bring specific examples to mind, according to The Social Animal.

In this comic strip, there is a conversation between an angel and a movie star. I focused on the angel's statements. For example, he (I guess the angel is Ernest, so he is male.) said "In Hollywood everybody gets plastic surgery... we all have eternal youth!" This is obviously related to the availability heuristic because as far as I know, many stars do not get plastic surgery. Only some stars get it. Also, he said "We don't have celebrity parties, but we are surrounded by stars." He added " And celebrities fly on private jets while up here we all have our own wings." These comments have the same problem. In short, being surrounded by stars and owning a private jet is not typical of the overall picture for Hollywood stars.

Finally, I am going to add typical quizzes which are often referred by textbooks:

1. Fortune magazine ranked the following 10 corporations as being among the 500 largest United States-based firms according to sales volume for 2008: Group A (Apple computer, Hershey Foods, Kellogg, McDonald's, U.S. Airways); Group B (Altria Group, AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, McKesson, Valero Energy). Which group would you say (A or B) had the larger total sales volume?
2. Which of the following causes more deaths in the United States each year? a). Stomach cancer b). Motor vehicle accidents

So, what do you think that you have 100 percent confidence to answer the questions correctly? Sometimes our perception is distorted, but not every single time, even our perception of beauty. WE LIVE IN WHAT WE PERCEIVE. Watch out women who wear makeup.

Let's Learn about Cognitive Bias

I have read Freakonomics blog. In that blog, this video was introduced. How funny it is, but not only fun but also useful to learn various kind of cognitive bias.

We do not live a life without cognitive bias. When making decisions, perceiving, and behaving something, cognitive bias is always close with us. In my opinion, it's difficult to avoid those bias, so what we need to correspond to those bias is that we recognize them and then what we positively accept them is more important to enhance a quality of making decisions and so on.

Marathon Race

I completed the Honolulu marathon with six hours and five minutes last Sunday. It was good weather to run a marathon, which means moderate warm not too hot but not too cold. The start time was 5AM. Actually, I was sleepy. Anyway, This marathon was the first time for me to run a marathon and complete 42.195km (although I did not keep running throughout the race...). I felt like 26.2mile was too long. In fact, during the race I did want to give up from time to time.

So, how was I motivated? According to last my blog, hot joggers was supposed to make me enhance my motivation to run the race. However, unfortunately, this did not work well for me because during the race, especially in the second half, I was too exhausted not to be able to afford to look for hot joggers. Rather, my eyes stayed on looking at the road, of course though it was boring. I could not look up! Instead, I was encouraged by the runners who were the same situation as me which is too tired. When seeing them, my feeling was that I did not want to lose them because they were from younger than me to older such as they looked like 80 or something years old. They were amazing for me because they were much faster and tougher than me who is 24 years old. At that point, I realized that I should train for the race a lot, but it's too late to regret because I don't like something to lose.

Eventually, I completed the race as a result of maintaining my motivation to run. After the marathon, I wanted to appreciate everybody who participated in it including the volunteers. This accomplishment was by not only my effort, but by others' support such as cheering me up at the roads, distributing water on the aid stations, and running with me regardless of intentionality. Thanks everybody!

But, I would never try to run a marathon. Thanks again.

How to Motivate

Yesterday I was jogging around my house. I am supposed to run in Honolulu in this weekend. Is it possible for me to complete the race? I am not sure. Rather, It seems to be impossible. Anyway, I will challenge it!

Suppose we need a training and study to accomplish something. How do we keep doing it? An answer is motivation. There is a means to get motivation: identification.

Article: The Seattle Times

The term identification describes a response to social influence brought about by an individual's desire to be like the influencer, according to The Social Animal.

In this comic strip,  a guy wearing glasses tells his dog "I think I'm pushing myself too hard." And then, he explains that the motivation for him to run too hard is " I was watching some hot girl jogger and ran into a building." This is obviously an example of identification because his jogging results from an influence to watch or hopefully get along with girl joggers.

To run the whole distance (42.195km), I may need to find a hot girl jogger.

Aronson's First Law

Article: The Seattle Times

This is a sad story. But, this is a our tendency. 

Aronson's first law is that people who do crazy things are not necessarily crazy. According to The Social Animal, some situational variables can move a great propotion of us "normal" adults to behave in very unappetizing ways.

This article says that Pfc. Andrew Holmes, a soldier accused of killing an unarmed Afghan man last January, is on a trial. And, he is one of five soldiers alleged to have been involved in the killing of three unarmed Afganis. this case has drawn international media attention because some soldiers took photos of a platoon posing with the corpses. Although the fact that he is involved in this affair is still unclear, taking pictures with the corpses is obviously an abnormal behavior. The soldiers treated corpses as if they were dolls so that guards treated other boys who are prisoners as if they were despicable animals in a Zimbardo's experiment (In fact, I knew the experiment by watching the movie "The Experiment". It is known as "es" in Japan.). That behavior is crazy. If we met a corpse, we would not take a picture posing with it. Immediately we would call the police. I guess that we will have a nightmare for the next few days or few months. I think this is a usual reaction to corpses. However, in Afganistan the soldiers behaved differently from that. This is related to the situation, which is the war between Afganistan and America. How much different we behave in a war from in our usual life is shown by a lot of examples, such as the Holocaust, atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and so on. Thus this article indicates Aronson's first law.

An Unfortunate Day

I was pulled over by a police officer today. This was the first experience for me to be stopped by a cop, even in JPN I had never had. At that time, I was so nervous, because I was driving within the speed limit! What the heck was going on? The reason for that is that my licence plate was not updated. I had to update it, but actually I didn't know that because I've never received a letter to let me know running out the limit of my plate. Fortunately, it was not a serious case. However, I do never want to be stopped by police officers, even though she who made me pull over was kind. 

The Matching Hypothesis

Photo:

BEN STANSALL / AFP/ GETTY IMAGES



Recently I have been busy to prepare for my future. It is an excuse for readers in order not to have posted a Blog for a while.

Today I will introduce a kind of a hot topic. It is about a royal wedding, Britain's Prince William and Kate Middleton. They will get marriage next year, according to an article of Seattle Times. The article focuses on predicting how the royal wedding will look like. However, I don't care about the thing. I am interested in the photo which I uploaded in the article. Are both of them a beautiful and attractive person, aren't they? I think so. Anyway, what do you think of them? Do they match each other?

Do you know what the matching hypothesis is? According to Walster et al. (1966), people tend to form long-term relationships with others whose level of physical attractiveness maches theirs. This is called as the matching hypothesis. The picture provides evidence that the hypothesis is cogent explanation.

Is the hypothesis fitting in our perception? In my own experience, couples generally have a pretty much equal level of physical attractiveness. However, my parents don't fit in it. My father is a fat, while my mother is a slim. So, I think the matching hypothesis is still "hypothesis" not theory.

Don't Think About Reasons Too Much

Photo: Frontier Academy Art

From time to time, people ask me "Why?" or "How come?" And then, I answer "I don't know." Many people dislike my saying "I don't know." What I mean is that people want to know a reason for something. Of course, I know having a reason for something is important when making a decision and doing something. However, in this story, I want to emphasize "a reason is made after we do or behave something." This is shown by some studies in the field of Neuroscience (Actually, I knew the fact by reading a book by Takeshi Yohrou.). In addition, today I found an article to reinforce my opinion.

It is "Typing Errur? Your Fingers Know Even When Your Brain Doesn't." It says our fingers do something, and then our brain recognize it. I suspect that a mechanism of our speaking can be explained by the same analogy. This is because we sometimes are speaking something without thinking. Our mouth knows, maybe. This unconscious process is what I want to say. In short, our brain doesn't know, but we have behaviors by the other organs: hands, foots, mouth, ears, and nose.

Finally, maybe some people would wonder "Hey, what are you doing when you really need a reason?" For this, I have a tip to make reasons for something immediately. Before explaining about it, I want to introduce kinda another thing but related. Kenichi Omae, a famous business person in Japan, said in his book (although I forgot which books it was written.) "In a presentation, if you mention the three cogent reasons for your opinion, then you could persuade your audiences." In my opinion, this would be right. Also, An experiment written in a book by Noah Goldstein, Steve Martin, and Cialdini Robert depicts that you want to copy soon, but some people are getting in a line in front of a copy machine. Suppose in the situation you want to cut the line because of your hurrying so much. To be succeeded it, adding a reason for cutting the line when you ask someone who is the front of the line a favor for that is much more likely to be acceptable to your favor than not saying a reason, even though the reason is not reasonable (It was surprising for me!). Anyway, we would need to make something reasons to persuade somebody. In my case, I categorize reasons into two groups: dispositional (internal) and situational (external). For example, suppose I went to watch a movie, Public Enemies, in a theater yesterday. Next day, one friend asked me "I heard yesterday you went to watch a movie. I was surprised! I thought you didn't like going a theater. Why did you go?" I answered " Because I like Johnny Depp (this is a dispositional reason), and also yesterday was special day for the theater. So, the ticket was very cheap (this is a situational reason)." And... maybe readers think you should pick one more reason! Please hold on... I have one more strategy. It is called as connectional reason by me lolol. It is a little bit difficult, compared with dispositional and situational. However, I think it is very effective to persuade people. So, let me back the conversation. I would say "My friend invited to me. He said if we go to the theater, we watch the movie starred by Johonny Depp at low price. So, I decided to go!" A hinge of connectional reason is to use aforementioned information, and to combine with these information.

This might seem so systematic. However, really useful. Try it!

But, to be honest, I don't want to make reasons. So, when I am asked reasons, saying "I don't know" is my honest feeling. Ironically, saying something reasons is a kind of compromise for me. If I thought about reasons too much, I could NOT do anything and never move as if becoming 'The Thinker' by Auguste Rodin.

A Day of Safety Driving

To do a homework of social psychology, I was a safety driver last Tuesday.

Photo: comlinkgps.com



On that day, I had an opportunity to drive cars for a long time. This was because I took my friend to a driver’s license office in her car in order for her to take the driving test. Usually, my driving tends to pay attention to other cars, I mean I hardly pay attention to own speed meter.  In fact, we need to adjust to traffic, according to the Washington Driver Guide. So, my speeding is usually 5 to 10 mph over the regulation speed. However, as far as I remember, there is no instruction about adjusting to traffic in Japan where I took driver license at first. We have to obey speed signals in Japan. In short, what I want to say is that my belief or true feeling is to keep or obey speed signals, but here every day I followed others’ behavior. My challenge is to keep driving below the regulation speed.

What was my result of the challenge? I almost accomplished my assignment, throughout driving. However, as I said “almost”, what I mean is that we have a dilemma between keeping the regulation speed and following others’ behavior. When I kept driving at the regulation speed, some cars passed my car. Such behavior was pushing my feeling to drive at faster speed. I was fighting between accomplishing my object as a nonconformist and obeying others’ behavior in my mind. At this time, I considered a question of why people drive at 5 to 10 mph over the speed limit. I thought this is a norm. If everybody kept the regulation speed, I would not care about own speed meter or police officers. However, because some people drive faster than the criteria, our feeling like driving over a little bit, such as 5 to 10 mph, encourage, because everybody does so. This power, unanimity, is strong enough with us.

Finally, I will explain about why I was able to reach the task of keeping the speed limit. The reason why I kept my belief is related to two social psychology concepts: compliance and commitment. In the night before the day, I incidentally heard a story from my host mother. The story was that she was given a ticket for speeding in a school zone, and she paid $271. Obviously, it was my motivation to avoid this kind of punishment, and it was compliance for me. Second, my situation of taking my friend to the driver’s license office made me especially aware of safety driving. Also, though the situation would be a kind of conformity, I needed to show her to a model of good driving. Thus, in advance I decided to keep all of the traffic rules in my mind. I think this is a good example of commitment.

Next day, during driving, I totally forgot to keep to the regulation speed, after losing compliance and commitment. How ironic it was. I thought my feeling or brief was changed by American culture. I would be a conformist because I was so comfortable to follow others.

Scandal Capriccio

I have no idea about political things. However, I want to introduce one article of analysing Japanese politics. This article, by Newsweek: Scandalmania, was really interesting for me, I think it was the best I have recently read.

Unfortunately, the article was written in Japanese, so I am going to summarize it. It divided into four parts. First part was explained about a difference of political scandal between Japan and the other developing countries, and was depicted Japanese history of scandal in the political world. Next and thirdly, a idea introduced to explain about why our politicians are losing the job due to happen only one scandal. Finally, the author picked an example to reinforce his opinion. It was the case of Suzuki Muneo, who lost the status as a politician due to politics-and-money scandal.

Most interesting part for me was the explanation why scandals are directly connected with dismissing the politicians who caused the scandals. The author picked two reasons for that. First, we, Japanese people, are less likely to look at a good result than a scandal. Second, we expect that the politicians are clean which means no sextual, no money, and no violate scandals. Of course, clean persons are wonderful, but, unfortunately, we have some problems as usual, not excepting the politicians. Recently our country keeps to discussing scandals by the politicians, even though we have a lot of problem, such as the exchange rates, the territorial disputes, pention problems and so on. I agree with his idea that we should see the performance and ignore a smaller problem. And, we should focus on more important problems.

I hope this piece of music will end quickly. This is because I am tedious to listen to the news. Next music would be a great concerto, I hope!

I cannot imagine it before I see it



Air Multiplier by Dyson.com

 Today I went to Fry's for the first time with D, my host's friend. There were a lot of interesting products. What I was most interesting in the products was an electric fan by Dyson. It is a very fashionable shape, and looks like a magnifying glass. My surprising point was that Air Multiplier, the product's name, has no blades. It is amazing for me. What do you think about it? It because I thought a fan always had blades before I had seen Air Multiplier.

I just want to say "Innovation is super!" By an innovation, we are sometimes noticed or recognized somethings about which we have never thought. Today my host father was also surprised at Kindle, though I don't have it and I am wondering whether I buy it or not so far. The reason why surprised was a speed that he bought a book online and then Kindle got it immediately! We don't need to wait for a cashier in the bookstore. Hmm...unbelievable!

Superhero

I went to a Japanese festival two days ago. In the festival, I joined a seminar of Taiko, Japanese drum. It was so much fun, but so much tough. When finishing the seminar  for two hours, I was very tired. The reason was that playing Taiko was like sports, I mean it uses whole bunch of body. Through the seminar, it reminded me of Group harmony, which is often pointed out as a characteristic of Japanese culture. All participants, I think there were 14 that includes some children, beat drums together along a pattern. For that, we sang a song and danced, which is Ainu's, native Japanese. I thought the reason for doing so was to enhance harmony as a group. Some people would come up with a question why Japanese people like group harmony. I have an interesting example of group harmony. And in the following, I will introduce the example and also show a difference between single and group in the business world.

Firstly, I just want to say this example is not my original. I found it a textbook of sociology. Anyway, my example is a difference between Japanese and American Superheroes. For instance, Japanese hero is Pokemon, Ultraman, Dragon Ball and so on. A point in common among there story is that a hero works as a team, taking risks to save one another from danger. On other hand, American superhero generally works alone such as Superman, Spider-Man, Hulk et cetera. In addition, I have an evidence that Japanese people prefer Japanese heroes. According to Japanese Wikipedia, , a series of films about Pokemon that is one of Japanese animation was gross and audiences in Japan more than a series of Spider-Man. However, it is not correct in terms of gross, according to Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan, Inc. (n.e.). These evidences are not perfectly supporting the idea. And I know my evidences have a piece of bias. Pokemon takes it for granted that Japanese people prefer Pokemon to Spider-Man because Pokemon is from Japan. But, Harry Potter was more likely to be success than Pokemon and Spider-Man all over the world and also in Japan, even though Harry Potter's author is from Britain. In my opinion, the reason why Harry Potter was accepted in Japan was the story is similar to the stories of Japanese animation, from a point of view that a hero works as a team but not alone, such as Toaru Majutsu no Index. Thus, though the idea that people prefer group harmony in Japan may be still only a hypothesis, these example seems to me to show Japanese people like group harmony and working as a team.

Finally, I will introduce a real superhero. It is creators who create comic books. I read a serious journal, "Superman or The Fantastic Four? Knowledge Combination and Experience in Innovation teams" by Taylor and Greve (2006). This is not only interesting title, but this contents are also interesting. In a comic book industry, genre experience, which stands for diversity of backgrounds as the number of genres in which creators had worked over the year, hold by a single individual promotes innovation, while genre experience in a team does not. Some people still discuss which working by single or teams is better. It seems to depend on the situations and what kind of background people have, according to the thesis.

Which superhero is your favorite? Superman? Or Japanese hero?

Shy is not Shine

Recently I have worried about shyness. In fact, I am shy. In some case, shyness is a good thing, especially in terms of a good listener. On other hand, shyness has a bad aspect. Maybe many people would be taught a tip by parents. I quote it from The Fine Art of Small Talk:

• Good things come to those who wait.
• Silence is golden.
• Wait to be properly introduced.
• Don't talk to strangers.

These might be useful for us when we were children. But, as the author pointed out, now, as adults, these lesson are not useful for us, and sometimes good things come to those who wait and waiting to be properly introduced are not good things for us. The Upside of Irrationality gives us a good example for this. A professor who was smart, funny and more or less good-looking couldn't find his partner. It was because he was not outgoing and concentrated on working, even though he had an opportunity to meet women like dinner parties. (However, according to the book, he did meet his mate.)

Therefore, we often lose a good opportunity due to be shy and introvert. Hey, shyness is not golden!

The following opinion is based on just my case, but I suspect many people have the same trouble as me.

Now I study abroad in the U.S.. However, my English skills except reading skills haven't improved so much. One of the reasons for that is that I am shy. Generally speaking, to master a language, we need to have a lot of talking to the others. Of course, reading and writing help us mastering a language, but human being actually had a speaking word before making characters. In addition, as a baby, we acquired a lot of words by listening to our mother and father's talks or having a conversation to them. In other words, what I want to say is talking is important for us to improve English skills, and also other languages. So, I guess socialized people master a language more quickly than shy people.

Two days ago, I had a discussion socializing and shyness with my host mom. She thought socializing is one of the skills. I agree with the idea. And we also talked about why shy parents' children sometimes become shy. In fact, my parents are both shy. Her idea about why shy takes over was that parents who are not socializing can't teach their children how to be socializing because they have no idea. I think so, of course, though shy is also a part of personality. The above-mentoned author, Debra Fine, overcame her shyness, according to The Fine Art of Small Talk. So, I try to learn socializing!   

Love Thy Neighbor

I'm in NY!
It is a so attractive city. It has a lot of great museums, buildings, shops, parks, foods and musicals.

By kyokke tanaka

Also, I feel that it is very convenient which means easy to find and to go the places. NY city reminds me of a paper of differentiation and agglomeration, Baum and Haveman (1997). In this paper, to use the data of Manhattan hotel industry, both the strategies are using at the same time or either only. Especially, I was interested in being parametrized a variable of agglomeration because  of being based on using a measure as St. and Ave. in NY. St. is a road across east to west, and Ave. is a road across north to south. To use the hotels' address shows how far each of them is located. This stands for how Manhattan is accurately arranged in terms of urban planning. If we lost a way, we could find where we are to look at a traffic sigh and, of course, to listen to a police officer, New-Yorker, or hotel clerks. They are very friendly, kind, and useful. However, fortunately I think we hardly lose a way!

By kyokke tanaka

So, NY is a kind city for travelers!! It is because not only people are very nice, but the city themselves is great!

Very Very good Piece of a day

Unfortunately, it was not good weather today, actually rainy. However, I had a good experience to make a berry pie. It was very fun!

First, my host mom, L who lives together, and I went to pick blackberries in the morning. It was a lot of fun, even though we got thorns on the branches of blackberry's trees, ouch. Meanwhile, host mom and I suddenly tried to freeze in order to surprise L. But, I think we didn't do well. Anyway, maybe I have never been to pick blackberries. I think in Japan a blackberry is less popular than a blueberry and a strawberry. So, I really enjoyed picking them.

After the picking, we made a berry pie at home. Making a pie is also the first experience for me, so I was a little nervous. But, it was no problem to cook the pie because my host mom helped me a lot.  The process of cooking referred allrecipes.com. But, making crusts referred another recipe. However, unfortunately, this is a secret between host mom and me..

The result was that it smells good and looks good. And... also tastes good! You want to eat this one! I'm sorry we don't have enough to give it to somebody.

Nest time, I will try to make a tart! So, could you wait by the time?

Thanks, J and L!!

Who is the Villain/Villainess?

My first blog is about a relationship between Revenge and Scapegoat, both terms are a sociological concept.

Recently I have read The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely. The story of vengeance is introduced the chapter 5 of the book. Especially, I was interested in an experiment of Agents and Principals in the chapter. For instance, when we go to a restaurant, our waitress give us a bad customer service such as spending a lot of time until serving a food. And then, we want to take revenge to her through tipping her a bit less or writing the complaint of the restaurant over the Internet. To decrease the size of tip is vengeance on her, while revenge by using Word-of-mouth is not only for her whom the agent is usually, but also for the restaurant whom the principal is. According to study by Ariely and co-researchers, we tend to seek revenge not to depend on whether the agent or the principal when we want the someone to feel the desire for revenge because they did something to make us get angry.

Next, I will talk about Scapegoat. Seattle Mariners dismissed Don Wakamatsu, manager, due to be miserable team performance, even though some researches show that changing manager during the season is negatively related or not correlated with improving the team performance. Such firing is called Scapegoating in the field of succession study, which deals with how manager or CEO takes over in an organization and a company, and how managerial succession influences on firms. Also, Scapegoating is more likely to be manegers or executives who have less power than more powerful them, according to Boeker (1992). In the case of Mariners, the General Manager who is the principal did not quit, despite a responsibility of the struggling as well as Wakamatsu who is the agent.

Introduced two topics share a common point. It is that we are bad at grasping a causal relationship, and also we prefer passing a blame on to the other people. Accordingly, we often take revenge and scapegoat, which are, I suspect, an instinctive behavior.

Finally, I am going to introduce an example that both revenge and scapegoat are related. Mr. Nozoe, former President of Fujitsu Limited (Fujitsu), was dismissed on September 25, 2009 because of connected with a third-party company that was said to have an unfavorable reputation. In this time, Mr. Nozoe agreed with accepting to be fired, according to a board member of Fujitsu. But, on March 6, 2010 Mr. Nozoe sent a letter about requesting his resignation be nullified to Fujitsu, and then a relationship between him and the company was very threatening. He was about to sue the company for libel, and so far he haven't had a regal fight to them. I think he was scapegoat for a responsibility of having a relationship to a unfavorable company and carrying out too drastic reforms. However, the reason for being dismissed is still unclear. Also, Mr. Nozoe took a revenge to the company by a big report. For this, Fujitsu received to decline a reputation and pay a cost to work out. I still don't know which Mr. Nozoe or Fujitsu said a true thing, and he needed to disclose the issue because of this revenge to the company who is the principal instead of the board members who are the agent. But, Mr. Nozoe seemed to me to be the villain through the series of reports. Which do you think that Mr. Nozoe or Fujitsu is the villain?