Another Contact

I got an email this weekend from a psychology professor who wants to meet with me at the conference later this month to talk about my application.  It's good to have another school in play.

Ominous Birding

Tam sent this confused, seemingly pointless Slate article about "the ominous rise of amateur ornithology." 

It's a surprising compendium of erroneous and/or unsupported assertions, such as:

Interest in birdwatching is "renascent" (i.e., reborn) or "re-emerging."  I know of no actual evidence suggesting that interest in birds in general or watching birds in particular was high at one point, then low, and is now high again.  (Indeed, I have previously smacked down some bad interpretation of data that suggested an increase in birding's popularity, but even those guys didn't misconstrue the data to posit that this is a re-emerging popularity.)  It's particularly odd given that the author later dates the birth of birdwatching to the 20th century.

"To the uninitiated, a bird-watcher's motives can seem puzzling, if not downright suspect."  Really?  How many people, other than the author of this article, would actually find themselves puzzled or suspicious of this activity?  A lot of people would be like, I don't have any interest in getting up early and looking at birds, but I doubt they would find it unimaginable that some other people would want to do so.

"Birding is a steam valve for anxiety about nuclear-age strength and habits."  Umm...right. (Back slowly away from the speaker.)

"...the birding community, these days, has moved on to gather, check, and share sightings across great distances using the fruits of technological industry."  Exactly!  This particular group of people has begun to incorporate technology into their daily lives and let it change somewhat how they undertake and communicate about their activities.  Unlike, well... the Amish?

"A birder is a person who enjoys privileged aloneness."  Nice spurious use of the adjective "privileged" - but how is this person's "aloneness" more privileged than anyone else's who isn't, you know, in a prison isolation unit?  It's also odd that this statement is followed up by a description of the two birders who are taking him on a bird walk at a popular birding location in NYC. 

"Some keep life lists (birds they want to see before they die)."  Actually, a life list is a list of all birds that a person has seen in her lifetime, not a birding bucket list.

Overall, I think my favorite unsupported assertions relate to the motivations behind birding - that it is a) puzzling or suspect to the normal person, but b) relates to anxious concerns about living in a nuclear age, etc. 

This article is a truly outstanding instantiation of the idea, discussed in lecture this week by the professor of the undergraduate research methods class I TA for, that psychological research is not journalism. 

I guess I could go all Slate-y here and note that this list of 530 ideas for creating a bucket list includes one entry about birds - "Go bird watching in Costa Rica" - and 3 about golfing, 2 about sailing, 6 about running, 6 about martial arts, and 10 about dancing.  And don't overlook the significance of "Dancing with the Stars" and other dance-related reality TV shows (of which there are none related to birding, as far as I know.)  Oh my god.  Let us all be concerned about the ominous rise of amateur dancing!

Site Visit

I'm back from my site visit to a marketing PhD program in the Big East and have started my first full, normal day of the semester.  Over the break, I didn't think all that much about hearing back from schools, but now I have joined the legions of impatient grad school hopefuls who are semi-obsessed with their applications.

Here's where I stand:

1 site visit (mentioned above).  I am expecting to hear back from them in a couple of weeks.

I have also seen "action" reported on the forums for two psychology programs I applied to - one has sent out admissions and wait lists (which puts my chances down to near 0 since I have not heard from them) and another has started conducting phone interviews.

The other two social psych applicants in my program have started hearing from schools, but not any of the ones I applied to.

It's early days, of course, but I'm still eager for news.  I just need to settle the hell down and work on remaining details, like my thesis and my poster for the conference I'm going to in a couple weeks.  Bah!

A Very Special Holiday

To my dad:

Happy 14th Day of Christmas!

Here's hoping nobody gets you this University of Minnesota Golden Gopher Christmas ornament set!

Serious Disapproval

As you may know, I am an avid fan of the Disapproving Rabbits web site, a repository of awesome grumpy rabbit photos.  But this photo demonstrates a level of Extreme Disapproval not frequently captured on film.

You can kiss my lily white ...

When your rabbit shows his heels to you, he's really not happy with you.  As the amusing and informative Language of Lagomorphs page explains, the foot flick registers on the Offensiveness Scale as a 5 of 7 - "I am shaking your dust off my heels."

I confess to getting this sort of disapproval from Leo (an easily offended dominant rabbit) several times.  Robert and I also got the top level of disapproval - "You are the scum of the earth" - from Leo when he would be released from his carrier after a visit to the vet or the bunny sitter.  Katy was a much more phlegmatic bun.  However, I cannot remember a time that our rabbits were angry enough at us to rebuff the offer of a raisin; their hunger was bigger than their disapproval, I suppose.

Anyway, I thought this was an exceptionally adorable disapproving bun (get it, "bun").

(Note: The Disapproving Rabbits people should not be blamed for the tasteless caption on the photo.  That's my fault.)

Baaaack: A Few Numbers

Drove through 12 states in about 12 days.

Drove through 3 (or 4?) mountain ranges.

Listened to country music on the radio due to non-functional CD player for about 10 million years.

Listened to special bluegrass Christmas music program on a Kentucky radio station for the last 30 minutes.

Saw American crows in 10 states.

Looked for life birds 1 time.

Saw 0 life birds.

Ate lunch at Braum's 2 times.

Ate dinner at Kentucky Fried Chicken in Kentucky 1 time.

Ate 2 slices of pumpkin pie, 2 slices of chocolate pie, 1 slice of apple pie, and 1 bowl of vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup.

Gained 0 pounds (not sure how that happened).

Petted 4 cats. 

Was bitten and scratched by 1 cat.

Have been rejected by 0 PhD programs.

Have arranged a flyout interview (at program's expense) with 1 PhD program (the same one that I spoke to on the telephone before).

Another Kind of Self-Regulation

Robert emailed me the link to this article about industry self-regulation of fast food marketing to children. 

To me, the funniest part of it was the author citing the Catholic church as an authority on the age at which kids develop the ability to reason.  (He also links to the UNESCO child learning web pages, though not to anything that specifically addresses this issue).  Too bad there is no systematic scientific inquiry into such questions, a field like "psychology" or something, because it would be possible, I think, for such scientists to empirically investigate such issues and then disseminate their results so that other people would know about them.

A sad part of all this emphasis on "What do kids know and when do they know it?" is that there is often an assumption that once children are old / cognitively developed enough to "reason," to recognize selling or persuasive intent, or whatever developmental milestone is selected, they will have a robust cognitive defense against these marketing ploys.  But conscious awareness isn't itself all that great of a protection against influence.  While people continue to argue over the plausibility of "subliminal advertising," effective marketing techniques dependent on implicit attitude change, prime-to-action effects, etc., are regularly employed among adults as well as kids.  In addition, there is a large literature on third-person effects in persuasion - the tendency for people to believe that others are more influenced by persuasive communications than they are themselves. And people with high levels of defensive confidence have been shown to willingly expose themselves to more counterattitudinal information, which does change their attitudes.

This being said, I think the McDonald's rant was way overblown.  For example, I don't see any basis for the author suggesting that of course no kid who was not "bioengineered" would ever willingly ask for apple dippers and caramel sauce rather than french fries.  (He offers evidence that McD employees automatically include fries with the Happy Meal 90% of the time, but that doesn't speak very directly to the claim he's making.)  And what does he mean by bioengineered anyway?  (I want somebody to go neuroscience on this guy's ass.)

Robert made the amusing but awesome suggestion that McDonald's should start selling the toy from the Happy Meal independent of the food for the same price.  Imagine: Parents who don't have the will to resist the nagging from their kids about the latest crappy plastic little cartoon-movie tie-in but who are concerned about their kid being obese by age 8 can just buy the toy separately.  (My former principles of marketing professor was in this category; his kid nagged incessantly for Happy Meals but wouldn't even touch the food most of the time - he just wanted the trinket.)