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On why your girlfriend hates me

It might be hardwired into us to be suspicious of, or dislike, close friends of our significant other who are the same gender as us. 

According to my very scientific survey of the internet, there seems to be lots of articles out there on why girlfriends hate their boyfriend’s female friends, or boyfriends being uncomfortable about their girlfriend’s close male friends (and all the LGBTQ equivalents).

Apparently, the argument goes that the close friend of your boyfriend or girlfriend presents a risk to your relationship because of supposed underlying or residual feelings on the part of your significant other or the friend. These supposed feelings pose a risk to your own relationship, regardless of whether you end up forming a friendship with your significant other’s close friend or not (which can be done to build trust).

Do we live in a world where the close friends of our significant other are waiting ready to pounce when we stop watching – and monogamy means nothing – or is there something else going on here?

Identity Threat. Identity threat is an experience that you perceive to signify potential harm to the value, meaning, or enactment of your identity. Threats to your identity can be very unsettling, and can cause people to respond in all kinds of seemingly irrational ways. Identity threats are also associated with lowered self-esteem, resistance to change, and stigmatiszation.

An individual’s identity is a complex thing – people form identities over time and often in relation to group-membership roles and unique characteristics. Some identities are involuntary (race or eye colour), but most are voluntary (in a serious relationship with so-and-so). Our identity is intrinsically tied to our psychological well-being, defining an identity positively is tied with our self-worth. On the flip side, taking hits to an identity can lead to serious negative consequences.

A threat to an identity can take a couple of different forms.

• It can be something that devalues an identity in the future (ex. “people from this town tend to be stupid”). 
• It can be something that makes the association between an identity and its meaning unsustainable in the future (ex. when an artisan baker is forced to work on an assembly line making the same things day after day rather than applying the artistic talents normally associated with ‘artisan’).  
• It can be something that prevents someone from enacting their identity (ex. a chronic illness).
  

I am suggesting that your boyfriend’s close female friend could be an identity threat… and that’s why you don’t like her.

Why the close friend is an identity threat:  

I see two major reasons. The first being that your significant other has a list of qualities he/she likes and doesn’t like in people. As a result, I’d wager this close friend has some of the same qualities that you have. The similarities feel like more direct competition.[1] The second reason is that this close friend directly threatens the enactment of your relationship. Enactment here refers to the special connection two people have together – knowing each other’s preferences, shared memories, same community of family and friends. There will also be a similar body of knowledge and a connection with a close friend – maybe they have been a friend from childhood, they know and share in a passion of your boyfriend/girlfriend, a close friend is there to listen when the boyfriend/girlfriend is having a tough time. These are things that, by virtue of them taking place with the close friend, are not always taking place with just you. It threatens the enactment of your relationship, but it also potentially threatens the meaning and value. If your boyfriend/girlfriend can have this special connection with someone else, is yours really special?

There are a couple of tactics associated with identity threat that could translate into behaviour. Let me list them, and you can judge if you’ve seen this happen before:

• Derogation. To protect your identity as a couple, it’s possible to discredit the source of the threat, diminishing the potential harm. This has been observed in competitive situations, and helps an individual cope with a potentially negative identity. This might take the form of: smack-talking the close friend, pointing out their flaws, embarrassing them in a group setting, etc. 
• Identity-enhancing. This is when an individual presents identity-enhancing information, often in an attempt to change the attitude of the individuals or groups who are the source of the threat. This is done in an effort to boost their identity in the face of the threat, creating distinction between oneself and the negative identity. This might take the form of: boasting in front of the significant other, boasting in front of the close friend, doing things that get the significant other’s attention whenever the friend is around or mentioned.  
• Other responses: making friends with the close friend, intensifying the couple-relationship, or breaking up. Making better friends with the close friend can create the illusion of trust. We would feel slightly more confident that he/she wouldn’t make a move because he/she would then be making a transgression against you as a friend. Intensifying the couple-relationship could also happen – creating closer bonds with the significant other also increases trust (getting engaged, getting a pet, moving in together, etc.) as the significant other would have more to lose if they transgressed. Finally, breaking up. This is doing away with the couple identity altogether.
  

Have you seen people react that way before – or have you yourself done this? 

It might not be your girlfriend’s fault that she hates me. I probably didn’t do anything to deserve it either. Just my mere presence might be enough to act as an identity threat.

Here is some helpful advice for you to contemplate:

• Boundaries: make it clear to your significant other that there are some topics and memories that are special to just the two of you. Perhaps you both enjoy watching Scrubs on a Sunday night, or book a trip just the two of you where you’ll have those shared memories. Create positive distinctiveness surrounding the core of the couple-identity. 
• Emotion-recognition: understand that you might be hardwired to be uncomfortable. Question if the close friend ever actually did anything that legitimately warrants suspicion. Make sure you recognize these feelings and act accordingly. Ask questions if you feel uncomfortable.  
• Sensitivity: be sensitive if you see your significant other having trouble with the proximity of your own close friend. There is a way to manage it where everyone feels appreciated and valued.  
• Appreciate: it might be a great thing that your boyfriend’s best friend is a girl, or vice versa. It might make him more understanding and more empathetic.
  

Now for a poll:

Have you ever felt the significant other of a close friend dislikes you? Have you ever disliked the close friend of your significant other? 
Link to the survey:
https://imperial.eu.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_5zKhV5qKr2mbUO1




DD

P.s. I try really hard to make sure no one hates me! This title was an attempt at some flashy eye-catching language.

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Afifi, W. A., & Guerrero, L. K. (2000). Motivations underlying topic avoidance in close relationships. Balancing the secrets of private disclosures, 165-180.
Blades, Lincoln Anthony (08/12/2011) Why GIRLFRIENDS INHERENTLY Hate Their Boyfriends Female-Friends. This Is Your Conscience. http://www.thisisyourconscience.com/2011/08/why-girlfriends-inherently-hate-their-boyfriends-female-friends/#sthash.Xm3hmwdO.dpuf
Nagi, Ariel (11 March 2013) Should You Be Jealous If Your Boyfriend's Best Friend is a Girl? Cosmopolitan. http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/a4263/boyfriend-best-friend-is-a-girl/
Petriglieri, J. L. (2011). Under threat: Responses to and the consequences of threats to individuals' identities. Academy of Management Review, 36(4), 641-662.
[1] Some fun research about trying your luck at the bar when you go with a friend who is very (physically) similar to you: https://realityswipe.wordpress.com/2013/03/12/improve-your-attractiveness/

On When the World is Turned Upside Down

These are indeed uncertain times. Any Facebook user can attest to this statement. Most of us face a barrage of political opinion, news, and satire all waking hours of the day. This is just one example of how tension and change in the global political atmosphere trickle down to our individual lives. We see things happening out in the world and try to make sense of what it will mean for us and our loved ones. With many changes taking place in the American political landscape, and the response by civil society and government alike, I’m turning to some concepts in psychology and organisational studies to better understand how we make sense of it all. 

Do uncertain times cause us to stick more closely to our belief systems or let in new information? I’m exploring the concepts of cognitive dissonance and sense-making.

Cognitive Dissonance. Leon Festinger’s (1957) theory of cognitive dissonance relies on the assumption that people are motivated to maintain internal consistency. Cognitive dissonance refers to the psychological tension that someone experiences when they hold two or more conflicting beliefs or values, behaves inconsistently with their own beliefs or values, or when an individual receives new information that contradicts their beliefs and values. For example, consider the conflict embedded in the belief of “I trust my government to protect the rights of all its citizens, including the right to freely practice their religion” and new information, say, that your government will not allow immigrants and green card holders from seven countries of a particular majority religion to immigrate, flee war, or return home.
 
Essentially, when you experience internal conflict, it feels bad. It feels so bad that we are motivated to get rid of the internal conflict. Do we accept the new information, or cling to the old beliefs? What if the old beliefs are religious beliefs? We are starting to learn more and more about what we actually do to alleviate cognitive dissonance.

Recent research from Jagiellonian University, led by Małgorzata Kossowska, researched this human instinct to “cling to the rocks of dogma”. Dogma is the philosophical tenet, doctrine, or set of principles put forwards by an authority of a school of thought - often in reference to religion. Past research had identified that uncertainties, ones that often fit well with the concept of cognitive dissonance, can be relieved by reaffirmation of dogmatic beliefs. Unfortunately, in doing so, any group or individual with opposing beliefs can soon seem like the enemy. This can lead to prejudice and bias against opposing groups and opposing opinions. Kossowska’s team finds that this process isn’t unique to religious folk; we are all motivated by the need to cope with uncertainty. They measured the ability to cope with uncertainty and level of dogmatic belief in both religious individuals and atheists. They found inability to cope with uncertainty was correlated with dogmatic beliefs for both religious and non-religious alike. In the next step of the study, they manipulated feelings of uncertainty and found that both groups were more prejudice against non-similar social groups. What does this mean? Those who hold stronger beliefs are at risk of becoming more prejudiced in times of uncertainty. This is significant because it is a human response not unique to religious believers, but our natural reaction to uncertainty.

Sense-making. The act of searching for meaning in order to deal with uncertainty[1]. Making sense of our world is important in that it guides and constrains our actions. Finding meaning in a way that corresponds with others’ sense-making is also important. Numerous elements intertwine in how individuals make sense of events:

- Self-identity: who one is within the context in question. Given that our identities can be fluid and context-dependent, understanding the role we play within the context in question is a part of the sense-making process;
- Environment: looking to the context for cues in understanding what information is important and relevant;
- Plausibility: understanding that shared accounts are potentially politically-infused, accepting what seems realistic rather than what seems entirely accurate;
- Narrative: building narrative accounts of the uncertain situation helps to organise how an individual experiences, interprets, and controls the event;
- Shared: sense-making is a process that is personal but also social in that narratives, accounts, and meaning can be shared and communicated with others to generate shared meaning;
- Retrospect: a shift in time gives people a new perspective from which to sense-make a particular event;
- Continuity: sense-making is an ongoing process that shifts and evolves in response to the uncertain environment or event. Just as chaos is dynamic and ever-changing, the sense-making process is too. It forces us to continue this process of finding and sharing meaning.

Understanding the way in which we search for meaning and share it with others is a fascinating part of dealing with uncertainty. Combined with gaining a better understanding of how uncertainty – specifically dissonant information, behaviours, or beliefs – impacts our own thoughts and motivates us to act, can help us in moving forwards into this new world.

Some closing thoughts:

• Stay open-minded. Understand that uncertain times will motivate us to cling more committedly to our beliefs. This will help us have better politics conversations.  
• Uncover what elements, and at what level, make you feel more uncertain or insecure (political and policy change, organisational change, social change, etc.).
• Analyse how you yourself sense-make.

And above all, try to treat non-similar others with compassion and understanding, as you would hope they'd do the same for you.


DD


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[1] Since I come from a sub-discipline of management, my understanding of sense-making originates from Weick (1979), who identified factors that individuals work through to make sense of uncertain or ambiguous situations within an organization.
Jarrett, Christian (24 January 2017). Are These Uncertain Times Drawing Us Into A Cycle of Dogma and Prejudice? The British Psychology Society Research Digest. https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/01/24/are-these-uncertain-times-drawing-us-into-a-cycle-of-dogma-and-prejudice/
Kossowska, M., Czernatowicz‐Kukuczka, A., & Sekerdej, M. (2016). Many faces of dogmatism: Prejudice as a way of protecting certainty against value violators among dogmatic believers and atheists. British Journal of Psychology.
Maitlis, S. & Christianson, M. (2014). Sensemaking in organizations: taking stock and moving forward. Academy of Management Annals, 8(1), 57–125.
Weick, K. (1979). The Social Psychology of Organizing. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Weick, K. (1988). Enacted sensemaking in crisis situations. Journal of Management Studies, 25, 305–317. 

Weick, K. E. (1993). The collapse of sensemaking in organizations: The Mann Gulch disaster. Administrative science quarterly, 628-652.

On Never Getting Your Stuff Back

The adage goes like this: an only child doesn’t like to share.

Well, I don’t like to be defined by old adages. Even as a young child I knew my “sharing skills” were going to be judged with more scrutiny than other kids. I’ve always done my very best to overcompensate on the sharing front.

If I showed you a list of all the things I currently have ‘lent out’ you’d believe me. I can count around ten people in my life that have one or more of my items. A sweater, a pair of leggings, etc. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE! The lending time ranges from a few years to two months since I saw my zip-up.

How is it possible that all these people just forgot to give me my stuff back? I’m a poor student, for goodness sake, I need clothes!

Scholars have many ideas about the psychology of borrowing… money. Maybe there is something in this field that helps explain my friends’ borrowing behaviour.

• The blind spot. When it comes to loans between friends or peers, borrowers and lenders recall loans differently. Research has found that borrowers self-servingly rewrite their memories where they perhaps think they paid off more of their loan than they did. Without the formality of a contract, interest, and perhaps without some key details like a specific date of repayment, the details can become shifted in the respective party’s memories. This is a form of egocentric bias, and it has been found on the part of borrowers in research by Lowenstein and Gezso (2012). In the field of psychology it is widely acknowledged that memory is highly reconstructive, and this opens the door for some amazingly powerful self-serving biases to shift the content of one’s memories to reflect more positively upon his or herself. Some other self-serving, egocentric biases include the belief that what is good for us is objectively fair, the motivation to see ourselves in a positive light, and that when good things happen to us it’s because of our own efforts rather than luck. In some cases, borrowers reconceptualise the loan as a gift (which I really hope isn’t the case with any of my friends… guys, I need my stuff back!). In the study, Lowenstein and Gezso found that fewer borrowers reported incidences of delinquent loans than lenders. Thus more often than not people tend to remember the loans they give and forget the ones they get. Great.

But that’s about money. Money has different psychological properties compared to stuff. Dan Ariely found that the further removed something is from “money”, the more it changes behaviour. For example, in a study about cheating, he found substituting tokens for money made people more freely willing to cheat (steal) and not think of themselves as a bad person[1]. Although stealing and borrowing are not the same (or are they?) there is a strong sense of morality at play in both cases. The fact that I’m lending something other than money might hurt my chances of getting it back even more. Here’s a reason why:

• The Endowment effect. This is the principle in behavioural economics that people value things more merely because they own it. In one of my favourite experiments in the field conducted by legends Daniel Kahneman, Jack Knetsch & Richard Thaler, participants were given a mug and offered the chance to sell or trade for a good of equal value. The experiment found that the amount participants needed to be compensated in order to sell the mug was twice as high as they were willing to pay for the mug in the first place – just because they own it! How does this apply to lending: I own that hoodie, so naturally I value it more than you do. It means something to me. It doesn’t mean as much to you. Because you don’t value it as much, you don’t think about how important it is to get it back to me. Thanks a lot… NOT.

Research by Lowenstein and Gezso also looked at the impact of personal lending on the relationship between lender and borrower. There is an opportunity for the strengthening of friendship because informal loans rely on trust between lender and borrower and can show generosity on the part of the former and respect on the part of the latter. But trust can also be violated, and threaten the relationship in the first place. They write that the violation of trust could lead to mutual hostility, ending friendships, and distrust. This threat of social punishment – the potential loss of a friendship – is what motivates me to give back what I’ve borrowed as fast as I can since intuitively I know that the lender values the loan greater than I do. This threat does not seem to motivate everyone the same way (my story is evidence of that).

To my borrowers: don’t worry, I still like you. Can I have my stuff back now, please? 

DD




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Dezső, L., & Loewenstein, G. (2012). Lenders’ blind trust and borrowers’ blind spots: A descriptive investigation of personal loans. Journal of Economic Psychology, 33(5), 996-1011. Dye, Lee. (26 July 2012) Why It’s So Dumb To Lend Money To A Friend. ABC News. http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/borrower-lender-scientists-explain-loan-friend-dangerous/story?id=16857078
Goldstein, Noah, J., Ashley N. Angulo, and Michael Norton (2013) ,"The Psychology of Borrowing and Lending", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 41, eds. Simona Botti and Aparna Labroo, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research.
Kahneman, D., Knetsch, J. L., & Thaler, R. H. (1991). Anomalies: The endowment effect, loss aversion, and status quo bias. The journal of economic perspectives, 5(1), 193-206.
Kahneman, D., Knetsch, J. L., & Thaler, R. H. (1990). Experimental tests of the endowment effect and the Coase theorem. Journal of political Economy, 98(6), 1325-1348.
[1] A nice concise summary here: http://danariely.com/2008/02/01/societe-generale-%E2%80%93-behavioral-economics-at-work/

On Charity Lotteries

Trust me, I'm not trying to pick on lotteries (see my earlier post on the irrationality of lotteries here). But when you get down to it, they are fascinating - especially when you start to consider the question of rationality.
 
Why do people pay large sums to enter a charity lottery?

Young and new to the workforce, I have friends who's income barely covers their living expenses. These hardworking optimists must have exceptionally big hearts because many of them participate in charity lotteries where the buy-in can be 100-200% greater than the cost of playing standard lottery games.

Take the Canadian-based SickKids Foundation Lottery benefiting the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada. The proceeds of this charity aim to do extremely meaningful things for this organization including ending heart failure in kids, curing allergy in the next 10 years, and raising the survival rate for kids’ cancer – a cause that is very near to my heart. Tickets start at $100 CAD for one ticket, scaling up to 20 tickets for $900. The lottery boasts 1 in 2 odds for a slew of minor prizes, and a grand prize of one million dollars. In Canada, the yearly revenue for charities from charity lotteries is $700 million, with charities accessing $200 million after expenses, marketing and prizes. This is a big deal.

How do these charity lotteries differ from standard lottery games? There are a few main differences:

• Ticket prices are often much higher than standard lottery tickets.
• The odds of winning any prize are much higher than winning a jackpot in a standard lottery – but the grand prize is smaller than the jackpots often found with standard lotteries which start at ten million dollars. 
• The social benefits of a charity lottery are obviously stated – this lottery benefits SickKids. The standard lottery supports many charitable initiatives and doesn’t necessarily market on behalf of one specific cause.

Even still, this is a lottery, and the chances you will lose out from a notable prize and lose the value of your initial ticket are high. Furthermore, a research study in Canada found only 27% of each dollar ticket value was retained as funding for the charity – with the rest being spent on prizes and marketing. 

Is playing the lottery rational? And what makes charity lotteries different from conventional ones? Consumer Psychology might offer some insights: 

• Self-Signals. The choices you make say something about you – and self-signalling refers to the self-information you gain from your choices rather than the you that is represented to the world. People are motivated to make choices that send themselves positive self-signals, such as being generous, charitable, and a ‘good person’. A charity lottery provides more positive self-signals than does a conventional lottery because of its inalienable link with the proceeds benefitting that specific charity. Charity lottery ticket-buyers may gain extra value from their participation from the self-signals because even if they don’t win they think they are making a donation to charity which reflects positively on their character.
• Altruism. Is it really all about the prizes? Hassay and Peloza (2005) interviewed charity lottery ticket buyers who disclosed they saw the purchase of these tickets as a donation to support the charity or cause. They found that altruism was the primary motive for this behaviour, making the purchasing of charity lottery tickets a very different barrel of fish in comparison to the buying of standard lottery tickets. Altruism has long been a focus on Behavioural Economics because it may not always seem rational – for example, how can we explain individuals showing kindness or generosity to others when there is no chance for repeated future interaction with recipient? Even though this is a perplexing question, we still observe many examples of altruism in our day to day lives.
• Deriving Pleasure from Purchasing. Putting the FUN in fundraising. Research has found that consumers derive considerable pleasure from shopping and buying, and all the more satisfaction when that shopping is in the form of experiential consumption. There is a sense of fantasy associated with experimental consumption of lottery tickets. This hedonistic aspect sweetens the deal and gets supporters involved. 
• Reciprocity. Although buying a ticket is being made akin to donating money to charity, the charity is giving you something back in return – they are also potentially giving you one million dollars. The transformation from a one-way money transfer to a two-way street revokes the social norm of reciprocity. Reciprocity is often discussed in the context of charities – where some organizations include a small gift in their appeal for donations. This transaction is of a different nature, however, because the transaction is not guaranteed.

The reality is that generally charities are experiencing challenges in raising the money that they need to fulfill their philanthropic missions. The number of charities seeking funding is growing each year. Beyond donations, research has found that charity lotteries need to be better understood in order to get a better sense of charity support behaviour. 

Are charity lottery tickets donations – or are they another form of entertainment? Are you willing to participate in a charity lottery knowing some of the donations are going to be given away as prizes?

Back to the original question – why do my (poor) friends support charity lotteries? Perhaps they can mentally write the cost off as a donation, perhaps they get value out of the self-signal of being altruistic, or perhaps the better odds of a charity lottery offers a much more desirable chance they will earn some much needed cash back. 

Note: I can’t recall a time when any of my friends actually won something from a charity lottery, but I sure hope they do soon!

DD


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Bodner, R., & Prelec, D. (2003). Self-signaling and diagnostic utility in everyday decision making. The psychology of economic decisions, 1, 105-26.
Dhar, R., & Wertenbroch, K. (2012). Self-signaling and the costs and benefits of temptation in consumer choice. Journal of Marketing Research, 49(1), 15-25.
Fehr, E., & Fischbacher, U. (2003). The nature of human altruism. Nature, 425(6960), 785-791.
Grossman, Z. (2010). Self-signaling versus social-signaling in giving. Department of Economics, UCSB.Fehr, E., & Gächter, S. (2000). Fairness and retaliation: The economics of reciprocity. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 14, 159-181.
Derek N. Hassay and John Peloza (2005) ,"Fundraising: Having Fun While Raising Funds", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 32, eds. Geeta Menon and Akshay R. Rao, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 605-605.
Holbrook, M. B. (2000). The millennial consumer in the texts of our times: Experience and entertainment. Journal of Macromarketing, 20(2), 178-192.
Holbrook, M. B., & Hirschman, E. C. (1982). The experiential aspects of consumption: Consumer fantasies, feelings, and fun. Journal of consumer research, 9(2), 132-140.
Liao, M. N., Foreman, S., & Sargeant, A. (2001). Market versus societal orientation in the nonprofit context. International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing, 6(3), 254-268.
Sick Kids Lottery. http://sickkidslottery.ca/
Thompson, G. and Cheng, E. (November 2013) Charity Lotteries in Canada: An examination of charities holding mega lotteries in Canada. Charity Intelligence Canada. https://www.charityintelligence.ca/images/2013_lottery_report_web2.pdf

On Bad Drivers

Some days I face a long commute. The repetition engages my dorsolateral striatum, cerebellum, and basal ganglia, thereby freeing up my prefrontal cortex (the centre of self-regulation and thought) and every now and again I take a break from my carpool karaoke to think about people’s behaviour.

Often I ended up thinking about people’s driving behaviour. It’s hard not to, because I am often cut off. I drive a small car, in a non-threatening colour, which I do believe makes me a less threatening option to cut off for aggressive drivers - “aggressive” which here means someone who doesn’t respect the normalized (“polite”) driving protocol.

It turns out lots of other people think about this too from the school of Traffic Psychology. This school of thought argues that we are not simply plagued by a subset of delinquent drivers, but we are subject to cognitive roadblocks (heehee – get it?) and environmental factors that systematically influence driving on the road.

Check this out: https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2013/aug/19/driving-road-neuroscience-psychology

Most interesting to me is point number 4 – where cars can be equated to status and impact aggressive driving behaviour. I notice that when I drive my car I am frequently cut off, but when I drive my parents’ car – a newer, bigger, redder SUV, people cut me off far less. My inner social scientist now wishes to set up an experiment, but it has already been done for me. Research by McGarva and Steiner (2000) showed that aggression is influenced by perceptions of ‘status’ as judged simply on the vehicles involved. Thank you, academia, for basically telling me I need to get a new car…

Can the behavioural sciences do anything to improve the state of affairs out there on the road?

I have a few suggestions:

• Even though you might feel especially vengeful after that pick-up truck cut you off, stick to being polite. Although driving is a right bestowed upon us by the government agencies who award our licence and enforce traffic rules, it’s also a system and a relationship between all drivers on the road. There is an accepted system of social norms – sub-rules that won’t get you a ticket but will annoy other drivers when broken - and anyone who breaks the social norms is often considered a jerk (or worse). In non-repeated relationships, we are unable to directly punish infractors of social norms with the usual slew of behaviour-modification techniques (communication, shame, etc.). As a victim you have two options: a) take revenge to other drivers in general and start breaking the social norms yourself or b) continue to uphold the system. Path a) might cause other drivers to also forego all the rules, as when we see everyone breaking rules it becomes the new normal. Path b) actually has a chance of improving the situation in the exact same way. Continuing to be polite (or avoiding being impolite) upholds the system. Although we’ll never be able to fully limit aggressive drivers, it’ll at least stop one more aggressive driver from being on the road (you) and potentially risking the creation of a bunch more. 
• Let cars in. Stop to let a car turn in front of you. Even if there is a space behind you. In doing so, you are potentially awakening the contagious effect of social cooperation. People often look around them for behavioural cues – that’s where the contagion plays a part. The “pay it forward” philosophy can work both with positive or negative, so I say start paying it forward with letting people in and hope for the best. Many of my friends say that if someone lets them turn into their lane, they often try to do the same for another car later. 
• Wave. Smile. Research has shown we tend to dehumanize other drivers. The anonymity of cars is powerful. Drivers can feel more comfortable being rude when they are faced with a machine rather than a fellow human being. Break down these facades by waving, smiling, gently honking and ultimately reminding other drivers that you are all in fact humans behind the wheel. Try this technique especially when you need to scoot your way over a few lanes in a traffic jam – it might just get you there quicker.

Driving is a complex system of coordination and for the most part it runs remarkably well. Let’s try to make it a little bit more friendly and polite.

Stay safe out there!


DD










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Chambers, Chris. (2013, August 19) Bad Driving: what are we thinking? The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2013/aug/19/driving-road-neuroscience-psychology Fowler, J., & Christakis, N. (2010). Cooperative behavior cascades in human social networks Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0913149107
Lowenstein, L. F. (1997). Research into causes and manifestations of aggression in car driving. Police J., 70, 263.
McGarva, A. R., & Steiner, M. (2000). Provoked driver aggression and status: A field study. Transportation research part F: traffic psychology and behaviour, 3(3), 167-179.
Vrabie, Alina. (2014, October 7) Are Menial Tasks the Secret to Great Achievement? Sandglaz Blog. URL: http://blog.sandglaz.com/are-menial-tasks-the-secret-to-great-achievement/

On a Clean Room

When I’m a guest – either at a friend’s house or a hotel – I try to make as little mess as possible. I mean, I make my bed when I’m at a hotel even though I know that a housekeeper will have to take the sheets completely off the bed to be washed anyway. Is that irrational?

This isn’t because of habit, like most of us I don’t always make my own bed at home. But I get this overwhelming sense of guilt that someone – specifically a stranger in the case of hotels – will have to put everything back in its place after my stay. The idea of putting things in order only to have them messied up day after day sounds like its own little kind of hell.

In fact, this closely resembles the story from Greek mythology of Sisyphus, whose punishment from the gods was to push a heavy rock up a hill for eternity. When the rock was almost at the very top, it would roll right back to the bottom and he’d have to start again. The demotivating impact of repetition of a laborious task that is ultimately futile is something that we can all relate to.

Especially a housekeeper. So I try to reduce the amount of mess I leave in any room I stay in, even if we often think of this housekeeping service built into the price of the room and you might never see that housekeeper again.

As for keeping my own room clean (or not), there are a couple of forces at play. Keeping my room totally clean is an accomplishable goal – and we often get a sense of satisfaction when we complete a task.[1] Accountability is another issue – if I don’t clean my room, perhaps no one else will ever see that I was untidy or lazy, so it doesn’t matter.[2] Perhaps no one in my house keeps their room clean (social norms) so I don’t feel I need to either. Perhaps it’s part of my routine to keep my room clean. I also have control over the room and the items need not be put back exactly the same way (agency). This might just be me, but I don’t go through the same effort to dutifully keep my room clean as I do someone else’s.

Either way, I’d like to offer some parting words: make sure to thank the housekeeper.




If you are interested in work and motivation, Dan Ariely and colleagues have done some fascinating experimentation in this area. Check out this Ted Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_what_makes_us_feel_good_about_our_work?utm_source=tedcomshare&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=tedspread



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[1] Lazzaro, N., & Keeker, K. (2004, April). What's my method?: a game show on games. In CHI'04 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1093-1094). ACM; Ariely, D. (2015). Behavioural Economics Saved My Dog: Life Advice for the Imperfect Human. Oneworld Publications.
[2] Silverman, S., Kulinna, P. H., & Crull, G. (1995). Skill-related task structures, explicitness, and accountability: Relationships with student achievement. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 66(1), 32-40.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Intimately tied to all the merriment and optimism associated with ushering in the new year is the practice of new year’s resolutions. Maybe it’s the picture of starting fresh in a new year, a blank slate to be a better you, but many of us feel heat to come up with an exciting and ambitious resolution to make this year the best one yet.

But if you think about it, what was so dramatically different in our lives from yesterday (December 31st) to today? What makes January 1st the best day to commit yourself to a new goal? What makes today the best day to start and not tomorrow?

On the subject of resolutions, Behavioural Economics has a lot to say about setting and sticking to goals. I’m not touching that hot potato. Instead I am asking:

Why January 1st? Behavioural Economics might have the answer.

Mental accounting might be able to explain why we budget our time the way we do. Mental accounting originated to describe how people mentally allocate money to different budgetary categories even though money itself is fungible.[1] It explains why people might not be willing to spend $30 on a meal they eat alone, but will do so with friends because the former comes from the food budget and the latter comes from the entertainment budget. Rajagopal and Rha (2009, p. 774) describe this concept expertly: “a mental account is a psychological account which individuals form to evaluate costs and benefits of outcomes which are later evaluated using the principles of prospect theory (e.g. loss aversion, risk seeking behavior for losses etc.). This leads to the differential ‘‘posting” in accounting parlance of money to different accounts. For example, the loss of a $10 bill and the loss of a ticket which cost $10 could be framed very differently and assigned to different loss accounts (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981).”[2]

What does this have to do with new year’s resolutions? I think we can explain the phenomenon with the mental accounting of time. Time is a limited resource, which makes it valuable.[3] Research has found that people create mental accounts for time, and allocate time differently for different activities – such as work and non-work.[4] The literature also acknowledges that there are differences between perceived time and actual time based on a slew of biases and heuristics of distortion, where "perception and cognition intervene between the decision maker and his objective environment” (Simon, 1959, p. 272).[5] Similar to mental accounting of money - where we get caught up thinking all money is not the same - perhaps we also think that not all time is the same. Days of the week are also treated differently in terms of perception of time – with weekends being associated more closely with leisure, and behavioural decisions following suit.[6] This goes to show we tend to allocate specific activities, and align our decisions with those activities, with specific days. Like the setting of resolutions on New Year’s Day.

Some scholars point to our tendency to delay the start date of accomplishing a challenging goal with hyperbolic discounting. This refers to how people tend to value immediate rewards even if they are smaller than future rewards that might be greater but more uncertain, where people discount future rewards depending on the length of time that separates them from the outcome.[7] The concept points to how people prefer more immediate rewards, and why we often wait until Monday to start our diet, or next month, and instead eat the cheeseburger right now. What is the powerful force behind New Year’s Day that allows us to overcome hyperbolic discounting?

A last piece of the puzzle could be social norms. This is the idea that people feel they ought to do something because others are doing it too.[8] Seeing our friends and family setting goals triggers the sense that we should do it too, and social norms explains why the seemingly "appropriateness" of that particular behaviour motivates us to also participate.[9] Even if we don’t actually see the achievement of others' resolutions, knowing that those resolutions are out there captivates us to join in.[10]

Mental accounting of time and hyperbolic discounting explain why we pick January 1st to quit gobbling up the donuts, and social norms explains the collective excitement to jump on the bandwagon. No comments are being made as to how successful these resolutions will be…

Either way, I wish you good luck with your resolutions… and a happy 2017!



--------------------------
[1] Thaler, R. H. (1985). Mental accounting and consumer choice. Marketing Science, 4 (3), 199–214. 
Note: My mother would like you to know that fungible means mutually interchangeable, replaceable with an identical item. It isn't a type of little mushroom, unlike my made-up definition for it.
[2] Priyali Rajagopal, Jong-Youn Rha, The mental accounting of time, Journal of Economic Psychology, Volume 30, Issue 5, October 2009, Pages 772-781, ISSN 0167-4870, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2009.06.008; Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981). The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science, 211 (4481), 453–458.
[3] Jacoby, J., Szybillo, G., & Berning, C. K. (1976). Time and consumer behavior: An interdisciplinary overview. Journal of Consumer Research, 2 (4), 320–339.
[4] Priyali Rajagopal, Jong-Youn Rha, The mental accounting of time, Journal of Economic Psychology, Volume 30, Issue 5, October 2009, Pages 772-781.
[5] Priyali Rajagopal, Jong-Youn Rha, The mental accounting of time, Journal of Economic Psychology, Volume 30, Issue 5, October 2009, Pages 772-781; Simon, H. (1959). Theories of decision making in economics and behavioral science. The American Economic Review, 49 (3), 253–283. 
Note: a heuristic is a mental aid involved in learning, self-education, and trial and error - it does not necessarily produce perfect results for goals but one that is sufficient and immediate. The way we systematically make errors in our learning, judgement and decision-making involving heuristics is a key underlying component of Behavioural Economics.
[6] Priyali Rajagopal, Jong-Youn Rha, The mental accounting of time, Journal of Economic Psychology, Volume 30, Issue 5, October 2009, Pages 772-781
[7] Loewenstein, G., & Elster, J. (Eds.). (1992). Choice over time. Russell Sage Foundation.
[8] Cialdini, R. B., Reno, R. R., & Kallgren, C. R. (1990). A focus theory of normative conduct: Recycling the concept of norms to reduce littering in public places. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 1015–1026.
[9] Lindenberg, S., & Steg, L. (2007). Normative, gain and hedonic goal frames guiding environmental behavior. Journal of Social issues, 63(1), 117-137.
[10] Goldstein, N. J., Cialdini, R. B., & Griskevicius, V. (2008). A room with a viewpoint: Using social norms to motivate environmental conservation in hotels. Journal of consumer Research, 35(3), 472-482.
Note: This is in contrast to the Theory of Planned Behaviour, which argues that people are motivated to pursue their own self-interests based on a cost-benefit analysis (Ajzen, 1985).

Why do people play the lottery?

Millions around the world play the lottery. In the United Kingdom, 70% of adults over 18 play on a regular basis – that’s around 45 million people – with 50% buying at least once a month and a minimum of 3 tickets each week.[1] In the United State, 57% of Americans buy one ticket per year at least – around 180 million people – contributing $21.8 billion USD to government funds in 2014.[2]
 
In Canada, 25% of the population play the lottery every week, averaging $265 per household annual spend on the lottery, with sales of $8.5 billion CAD in 2011. The odds of a pay-out are between 1 in 13.9 million to 1 in 28.6 million per game.[3]

This means not only do millions play the lottery, but millions also lose.

If the vast majority of lottery players will lose, why do people play the lottery?

Given that even though most lottery players are going to lose their money, what explains the huge numbers of participants? We can easily take the normality of playing the lottery for granted, since so many people participate, but looking at the facts paints a muddy picture of irrationality:

• Jackpot size. Research has found that demand for lottery tickets increases with the size of the jackpot.[4] However, attracting more participants also increases the probability of multiple winners.

• Consumer Income. A number of scholars have found that a relatively greater percentage of income is spent by lower income levels on lottery products.[5] In the UK, consumers receiving government benefits are 4% more likely to play the lottery.[6] Large jackpots tend to attract more affluent customers while instant games attract lower income participants.[7]

• Expectations. A 2011 study by Environics Research and TD Waterhouse found that 32% of Canadians between the ages of 45-64 are counting on lottery winnings to support their retirement rather than savings and investments.

It’s reasonable to question the rationality behind purchasing that lottery ticket. Behavioual Economics and Consumer Psychology might offer clues to the powerful force behind why so many play the lottery. 

• The Availability Heuristic. Lottery sales might be a product of very effective marketing. The availability heuristic refers to the ease at which an example comes to mind, and how this ease is subsequently interpreted as being more important or a more probable outcome.[8] It is easy to recall a conversation with a friend about what you would do if you won the lottery. I would wager (haha – get it?) that less often do you have a memorable conversation about not winning the lottery – despite the fact that this happens all the more often. Flashy lottery advertisements depicting a life of luxury and ease and news articles about lottery winners have created a strong mental association for many between the word LOTTERY and the image of you stretched out on a lounge chair on a beautiful sandy beach. The availability heuristic might be responsible for why so many are compelled to play the lottery – their ease of recalling past winners makes them overweigh the probability that they, too, could win.

• Mental Accounting. Mental accounting is when we split our money up into separate accounts based on subjective or arbitrary criteria, when money in and of itself is a fungible resource.[9] When asking some of my friends and family why they enjoy the lottery, they said the lottery was “entertainment”. Perhaps some of them take some money from their “entertainment” budget and spend it on the experience of the lottery. In this sense, they might already be at peace with never seeing that money again, same as if you were to spend the money on another experience like a movie or mini golf.

• The Gambler’s Fallacy. A classic heuristic can help to explain lottery ticket-buying behaviour. The gambler’s fallacy refers to how a player may change their beliefs about the probability of a particular outcome – that is, a combination of numbers - being drawn again after those numbers come up as the winning combination, even though each drawing in the lottery is an independent random event.[10] This is the classic example of tossing a coin 10 times, each time coming up as heads. The gambler’s fallacy would suggest an individual would be inclined to bet the next flip would be tails as it is due to come up, but each coin flip is an independent event with 50/50 odds. An individual playing the lottery over time might think they are due a win, but probability theory states that the odds of winning do not change with the results of past draws, but depend on the number of participant in that draw. Indeed, researchers have found that lottery players tend not to play numbers that have been recently won.[11] Surprisingly, winning the lottery doesn’t dampen the unbridled optimism that is sparked by the gambler’s fallacy - 70% of UK lottery winners believe they will win again the future.[12] This halo effect – that is, a cognitive bias in which an individual’s overall impressions about a product is influenced by its positive feelings and thoughts about that product[13] - can motivate what Grote and Matheson call lotto fever and see repeat patterns of lottery buying behaviour. Some scholars have found that lottery players in the UK over-select recent winning numbers in the period after those specific numbers have been won[14] or flock to a lucky store that has recently sold a winning lottery ticket, boosting sales by 12 to 38%.[15]

• Information Avoidance. It is possible that lottery consumers avoid acknowledging the realities of the odds of playing the lottery. There may be an incentive for a consumer to ignore certain information even if it could help them make a more strategic decision. Standard Economic theory would predict information is sought when it can help make a better decision.[16] Instead, individuals actively ignore information that is both freely available and that they are aware exists.[17] Avoiding potentially important information reduces the chance individuals can make adjustments from potentially destructive behaviours. Avoiding discouraging facts about the lottery – such as the astronomical odds – might be one such example of information avoidance. Although information avoidance doesn’t comment about the specific motivation to avoid certain information, the idea of searching out information congruent with existing beliefs and ideas is not new in consumer behaviour. Confirmation bias (or motivated search) is a cognitive bias that describes the tendency for individuals to infer meaning from information that confirms his or her pre-conceptions in a way that could deviate from a more objective interpretation.[18] Decision-makers seek out or put extra weight on information that supports what they want to believe. This might explain the high percentage of lottery players who believe they are going to win – despite the odds, there is a chance of winning, and confirmation bias pushes individuals to put more statistical weight on this occurrence than is accurate or appropriate.

• Self-Concept. The relationship between self-concept and lottery consumption has yet to be fully explored but there are promising aspects of research that allude to how buying lottery tickets can be explained by individualized aspects of the self. First, research has shown that parental participation is a strong predictor of lottery gambling.[19] Additionally, earlier exposure to lottery and gaming – for example, receiving scratch cards as a child – is more closely related with problematic gambling attitudes.[20] Normalization can be a strong force in legitimizing behaviours; indeed, the buying of lottery tickets might become ingrained as part of one’s self-concept. The interaction between lottery purchasing and self-concept may run even deeper, particularly when looking more closely at the relationship between lower income levels and more spend on lottery tickets. A 2008 experimental study in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making finds that lower income individuals are potentially attracted to the lottery because it provides a rare occasion of a level playing field where the odds of winning distributed equally between ticket-holders rather than social-economic status.[21]

There might be a connection here between self-concept and positivity bias. Wanting to see oneself in a positive light, an individual is motivated to interpret their actions in the best way.[22] Having enough money to be able to spend on a luxury like a lottery ticket could signal to the individual that they are in a stable financial position when they might not actually be doing that well. Participation in the lottery might alternatively signal that the individual is savvy, not missing out on an opportunity to win much more than the cost of playing. Only when the jackpot is lost is it attributed to the astronomical numbers and the results being “out of my control”.

Other Perspectives 
Subscribers of psychology might argue that the positive reinforcement from variable-ratio schedules of reward explains why people play the lottery. From the school of Operant Conditioning, a schedule of reinforcement is a rule linking a specific behaviour with reward in order to strengthen a particular behaviour or response.[23] I don’t buy it – how does this explain why people continue to play when they have never won at all?

What do you think explains why so many people play the lottery? Comment below!



---------------------------
[1] Lottoland (16 March 2016) The People Behind the Game – Lottery Demographics. Retrieved from: https://www.lottoland.co.uk/magazine/lottery-demographics.html. Accessed 7 Dec 2016
[2] Wihbey, J. (27 July 2016) Who plays the lottery, and why: Updated collection of research. Journalist’s Resource. Retreived from: http://journalistsresource.org/studies/economics/personal-finance/research-review-lotteries-demographics
[3] Patterson, A. (31 October 2012) Canadians Plan on Lottery Winnings, Inheritance to Secure Financial Future. Yahoo Finance. Retrieved from: https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/blogs/insight/canadians-plan-lottery-winnings-secure-financial-future-151838966.html
[4] Forrest, D., Simmons, R., & Chesters, N. (2002). Buying a dream: Alternative models of demand for lotto. Economic Inquiry, 40(3), 485-496.
[5] Suits, D. B. (1977). Gambling taxes: Regressivity and revenue potential. National Tax Journal, 19-35; Clotfelter, C. T. (1979). On the regressivity of state-operated" numbers" games. National Tax Journal, 32(4), 543-548; Clotfelter, C. T., & Cook, P. J. (1990). On the economics of state lotteries. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 4(4), 105-119; Cook, P. J., & Clotfelter, C. T. (1991). The peculiar scale economies of lotto (No. w3766). National Bureau of Economic Research..
[6] Lottoland (16 March 2016) The People Behind the Game – Lottery Demographics. Retrieved from: https://www.lottoland.co.uk/magazine/lottery-demographics.html.
[7] Mikesell, 1989; Jackson, 1994; Garrett & Coughlin, 2009.
[8] Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive psychology, 5(2), 207-232.
[9] Thaler, R. (1985). Mental accounting and consumer choice. Marketing science, 4(3), 199-214.
[10] Clotfelter, C. T., & Cook, P. J. (1993). Notes: The “gambler's fallacy” in lottery play. Management Science, 39(12), 1521-1525.
[11] Clotfelter, C. T., & Cook, P. J. (1993). Notes: The “gambler's fallacy” in lottery play. Management Science, 39(12), 1521-1525.; Terrell, D. (1994). A test of the gambler's fallacy: Evidence from pari-mutuel games. Journal of risk and uncertainty, 8(3), 309-317; Papachristou, G. (2004). The British gambler's fallacy. Applied Economics, 36(18), 2073-2077.
[12] Lottoland (16 March 2016) The People Behind the Game – Lottery Demographics. Retrieved from: https://www.lottoland.co.uk/magazine/lottery-demographics.html.
[13] Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). The halo effect: Evidence for unconscious alteration of judgments. Journal of personality and social psychology, 35(4), 250.
[14] Simon, J. (1998). An analysis of the distribution of combinations chosen by UK national lottery players. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 17(3), 243-277.
[15] Guryan, J., & Kearney, M. S. (2008). Gambling at lucky stores: Empirical evidence from state lottery sales. The American Economic Review, 98(1), 458-473.
[16] Edwards, S. (23 November 2016) Why do people make bad decisions? ‘Information Avoidance’ Can Explain. Devex. Retrieved from: https://www.devex.com/news/why-do-people-make-bad-decisions-information-avoidance-can-explain-89167?platform=hootsuite
[17] Golman, Russell and Hagmann, David and Loewenstein, George, Information Avoidance (February 17, 2016). Journal of Economic Literature, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2633226 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2633226
[18] Nickerson, R. S. (1998). Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of general psychology, 2(2), 175.
[19] Wihbey, J. (27 July 2016) Who plays the lottery, and why: Updated collection of research. Journalist’s Resource. Retreived from: http://journalistsresource.org/studies/economics/personal-finance/research-review-lotteries-demographics
[20] Wihbey, J. (27 July 2016) Who plays the lottery, and why: Updated collection of research. Journalist’s Resource. Retreived from: http://journalistsresource.org/studies/economics/personal-finance/research-review-lotteries-demographics
[21] Haisley, E., Mostafa, R., & Loewenstein, G. (2008). Subjective relative income and lottery ticket purchases. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 21(3), 283-295.
[22] Mezulis, A. H., Abramson, L. Y., Hyde, J. S., & Hankin, B. L. (2004). Is there a universal positivity bias in attributions? A meta-analytic review of individual, developmental, and cultural differences in the self-serving attributional bias. Psychological bulletin, 130(5), 711.
[23] Ferster, C.B., & Skinner, B.F. Schedules of reinforcement. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts; 1957.

Hello and Welcome

Hello and welcome to my Blog!

My name is Darcie and I am a doctoral student at Imperial College Business School. My research centres on Consumer Behaviour and Consumer Psychology.

Just as a doctoral thesis focuses on a narrow section of it's field, Behavioural Economics offers a fascinating lens through which to view the big, wide, ever-expanding world. I want to use this Blog as an outlet to explore ideas and topics that just don't fit into the measly 100,000 words they are allowing me for my thesis.

Excited to share my thoughts with you and engage in discussion and debate. Together, I hope we gain a better understanding of decision-making, motivation, and behaviour.

DD