Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature

Thought I'd just post this interesting article on Stereotyping and Discrmination for the fun of it, even though it may not be credited.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20070622-000002.xml

Why Beautiful Women Marry Less Attractive Men

This week's tutorial touched on attractiveness. Before this class, I stumbled on an article online which I thought was very interesting and accurate actually.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20080410/sc_livescience/whybeautifulwomenmarrylessattractivemen

What do you think? Is it true that the guy will work harder at keeping faithful towards his girlfriend or wife if she is gorgeous?

Sad news for us girls who have to wake up to a not good-looking face. Hahahaha....But good news for guys for we girls are not that superficial. Darn. Pity the girls.

Discrimination irony

During last week's tutorial, we were showed 2 videos on how discrimination is taught - one in a classroom context with school kids, another in a single-blind experiment with correction officers. It was truly interesting to observe their emotions and listen them sharing their experiences post-experiments.

When it was our turn to share our discrimination stories, I related mine to the class.

Ever since young, I have always blended in better with the non-chinese, be it Malays or Indians. Maybe coming from an English-speaking family contributed heavily to my confidence in approaching the non-Chinese, since English was the common language. But even though my race is considered as the majority, I was a minority in my non-Chinese clique. I experienced discrimination in the smallest way such as excluded me in conversations when they talked among themselves in Malay, having to tolerate their mockery at my race, etc.

Having said that, I still do not hold any contempt for them. Conversely, I developed an aversion to my own race, particularly to those whose command of English isn't up to standard (as sadly as it sounds and I'm probably embarrassing myself here).

Is my attitude towards those cannot-speak-good-English Chinese considered as a form of discrimination?

Monkey see, monkey do

In today's YOUTHink section in The Straits Times written by Yen Feng, the writer illustrates the life a typical Singaporean teenager and how they fall into a certain type of conformity. Below is the full article.

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He drinks Coke, eats McDonald's, wears Nike and uses Gatsby in his hair. His favourite band is Click Five. When he's not listening to music, he's surfing YouTube or watching a movie. He does not care for fancy cars but hopes for a good job that'll pay the bills. His greatest fear: To faill ill or to go war.

This is the portrait of the young Singaporean, drawn from a survey of 728 youth, aged 12 to 19. A report on the survey was released this month by Sulake, a Finnish company. The company is best known for creating Habbo Hotel, a virtual world populated by teens who chat, interact and play games online. Ninety per cent of its 9.4 million registered players are teens aged 13 to 18.

The Singapore survey was part of a larger effort by Sulake to track the spending habits, values and attitude of the young. Overall, 58, 486 teens from 31 countries across Europe, South America and Asia were interviewed in October and November last year.

The 2008 report also compared the values of Singapore youth against a global average. It found that youth here are 15 per cent more likely than foreign youth to be religious, and are 12 per cent less likely to support tough sentencing for criminals. They are also 13 per cent more likely to defend computer piracy, and 10 per cent less likely to be patriotic. These numbers support the results of a similar survey conducted by Sulake in 2006 among youths here.

In that report, Singaporean youth also ranked music, computers and movies top among their interests. It concluded that young people here were "more positive towards computer piracy", and "most religious" compared to youth in other countries.

Young Singaporeans interviewed by The Straits Times generally felt the survey results were on the mark - except for one. Steven Yang, 17, a Singapore Polytechnic engineering student and cell group leader at his church, said: "I don't drink Coke anymore. I prefer Coke Light."

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I see informal social influence and normative social influence in this homogeneous trend in young Singaporeans. Teenagers especially are easily influenced by their peers, those around the same age. They do what their friends do. They play the hottest computer games recommended by their peers, they download the latest songs their friends tell them, and they watch what others are watching.

Just because.

That is informal social influence. The idea that everyone else is doing it, so it's not wrong to follow what they think is right. Normative social influence, on the other hand, is taunted by the power of media mostly to make teenagers feel a need to belong.

This sense of keeness "forces" teenagers to possess and use branded materials. Teenagers who carry such possessions are envied by others and "encourage" their peers to obtain the exact items to be admired by their friends as well. As a result, it is not surprising that the statistics are consistent in the local context. The thoughts and actions of teenagers are shaped by one another.

Such conformities do not stop at the adolescence stage. It persist through adulthood too. As long there are others around us, there will always be confirmity. It's simply human nature.

To lend, or not to lend?

A friend of mine recently asked me to lend him some money. This form of solicitation has been going on for close to a year, with me conforming to it everytime he asks, which is as frequent as every month or 2. Stupidity on my part? Maybe. Though I must say that he has been repaying his debts on time, perhaps that reinforces my trust in him to repeatedly agreeing to it.

However that trust is gradually fading. At the start of this year, he asked for a sum of money which I lent without much hestitations as usually. This time around, he broke his promise of returning it to be on the date he appointed. I waited a week before I sent a gentle reminder. No reply. Another week past and I sent another SMS. Still, no reply. This went on for another 2 weeks, which made up one whole month. Eventually, after over a month, he sent me an SMS informing me that he has transferred the money back to me.

I wasn't very pleased, of course. But what can I do? At least the money's back. But when he wanted to borrow some money again recently, I was caught in a dilemma. Below illustrates my plight.

Why should I lend it to him

• The fear of him playing me out is highly possible
• It's not a large sum, or at least if I were to compare with his other borrowings
• Once bitten, twice shy?
• He wouldn't want to jeopardize our friendship
• I don't want to jeopardize our friendship by refusing
• I'd rather he turn to me then to commit crimes

Why shouldn't I lend it to him

• The mistrust makes it harder to agree
• This financial dependence on me is not healthy
• I dread his SMS-es nowadays

My final decision? I said no. And as much as he was understanding, dissonace started to fill my mind. Gulit, disappoinment, regret. But guilt mostly. Though it's not a large sum that I could readily agree to, I just couldn't. A friend in need is a friend indeed. So am I not a friend by rejecting his cry for help this time?

I justify my dissonace by reinforcing the reasons for not lending the money to him. Hopefully with time, the gulit and regret I'm feeling will fade. But as of now, I feel like I've betrayed a friend.

This is the hardest post-decisional dissonace experience yet.

Same thing...Not!

In this cute Baby Blues comic strip, there is a clear difference between the mom and her son, Hammie, in interpretating drying of dishes.

To her, she dries the dishes by using a dish towel. To Hammie, a blow-dryer works the same way - it dries things!

Applying the 4 processes of 'Social Thinking', we can understand why Hammie would choose to use that industrial equipment on a simple household chore.

Pay Attention: Hammie is aware that the dishes are not dry and hence sought out something that he presumed would help dry them.
Interpret: Hammie must have seen someone using the blow-dryer to dry some other stuff, and hence he interpreted that information to be useful in this situation.
Make Judgment: Hammie generalized that interpretation to everything that can be dried by using that equipment.
Rely on Memory: As mentioned above, Hammie must have seen someone using the blow-dryer before elsewhere, otherwise it wouldn't occur to him that that equipment could be used for this purpose.

This process is a cycle that is inter-connected with one another. This example is a demostration of how it is linked. Based on Hammie's innocently-made mistake, he would learn that a dish towel is more appropriate to dry the dishes. This new information is stored in his memory. In future situations, he would know to use the dish towel (relying on memory) to dry the wet dishes, instead of that giantic machine he (i presume) has trouble balancing it to start with.

Disclaimer: As part of the module requirement, this blog is setup to apply our knowledge on what we learnt in Social Psychology taught on that certain week. As interesting as it sounds, I hope my entries are logical enough to help me score in this course.