Lessons learned in The Netherlands

After about two years spent in The Netherlands I can say that I’ve learned several lessons:

1. As long as you are not really stupid, how intelligent you are does not really matter in the output of your work (mainly academic). What actually counts is how much work you put in. In brief, as long as one’s IQ is at least average, then it is not about who is smarter, but about who sweats more.

2. Related to the previous point, it is impossible to make big jumps. In brief, everything is taken step by step and each progress is incremental.

3. It’s OK to be different; everyone is different in a different way.

4. As an Eastern European, I thought that the westerners are more civilized, but this is not true. People in themselves are not more civilized. They behave in a civilized manner mostly because the environment (in a broad sense) is shaped in a way that guides behavior towards a desired one.

5. Related to the previous point, civilized behavior in not an individual choice, it is imposed as the only choice.

6. Truly cherish sun light, sunny days and good weather!

7. Although I thought it was impossible, tall and large buildings can be built on sand (sandy soil).

8. The best beer in The Netherlands is in fact Belgian; same with the chocolate.

9. Cherish the vegetables that actually taste like vegetables! 

10. For me Romanian women are the most beautiful ones (particularly my wife :) )

Mating Reality Check

At ERIM there are countless occasions when I am asked what my research interests are. When I say that it is “mating related behavior” or “the psychology of mating” I get the feeling that the audience has a hesitant reaction… something like “yeah, but is that important… is that actually an area of research, especially in business administration?”.
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Of course, mating, at least apparently, is not at the core of business activities and thus it might not be worthy of the attention of business researchers. During one class discussion I was even told that my research project does not have too many practical implications… Now here are some arguments why research in mating psychology and its implications in day to day life are important.
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First, every living human is the result of (successful) mating, even the ones that laugh at my interests. Is this important enough?
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Second, many research areas are important because of the fact that they investigate something that is related to a big market. One such example is research in finance and incentive schemes etc. Taking into account that the mating market is about 6 billion people (assuming that 1 billion are below mating age), I’d say it is a very large market. Moreover, mating exists (and has existed) even where financial markets and other forms of “modern” business don’t exist.
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Third, a huge number of behaviors are mating driven. Of course some prefer to say that there is no (direct) link between, let’s say, dancing or getting a Master degree and mating. I don’t think so… one would be amazed what the mating INSTINCT can make people do… Regarding the size of the market influenced by mating, just think about all the products and services that are bought to show the love for the significant other. Then add all the cosmetics markets, part of the car market, most of the fashion market and many more… is that big enough?
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Fourth, no other topic has received this much coverage in culture and no other topic accounts for a bigger chunk of well-being as mating does. Of course poems and songs don’t talk explicitly about mating, rather the pseudonyms of “love” and “romance” are used. Yes, in case anyone missed the point, romantic love is the more polite, more conventional way of saying “mating related behavior”.
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Fifth, mating is extremely practical. If anyone sees first the theoretical part of mating, then that person has lived in total isolation.

How to get smarter … and costly signaling theory.

About two years ago I wrote a post on this blog on “How to get smarter” (in Romanian) and every few days I get visits from people who searched “How to get smarter” in Romanian. I even got visits from Iceland, Japan, Switzerland, Australia and many other countries apart from Romania. In the last two months the number of visits that the blog got through googling these words increased (the blog is in the top 3 google results depending on exact combination of words).
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Initially I thought that more and more people are looking for ways in which to increase their intelligence or cognitive capacity or whatever you want to call “being smart”. This is not a bad thing, wright? It’s good if more and more people want to be smarter and look for ways of achieving this… or at least it’s a good thing if more and more people realize that they are not smart (enough).
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A few days ago I discovered what could be a much more plausible reason for the increased number of visits to this blog in search of ways to enhance one’s IQ. On the Romanian Radio station that I listen there is a commercial for Vodafone with a famous singer that says that if you buy a smartphone you’ll get smarter “automatically”. I guess that many of the people who ended up on this blog were searching for ways to get smarter without buying a smartphone which is expensive or maybe to get confirmation that owning one would lead to an increase in intelligence.
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Intelligence is a very important personal trait in social life and everyone (sane) wants to have it at a high level and display it even more. The reason for displaying intelligence is quite simple: everyone wants to have smart friends, smart spouses and IQ is a very good predictor in many things that we generally want to have such as job performance – good salary and successful mating (healthy kids that actually survive and don’t become junkies or end up in jail).
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Now there are various ways in which to display intelligence. Some people chose to buy complicated to use products like smartphones, or by getting MBA’s, PhD’s, Master degrees etc. Of course that smartphones and MBAs don’t display just IQ and these aren’t the only ways to show one’s intelligence, but this is not what I want to talk about. Some signals are more or less fake – they signal a trait that it not actually that high. For example one can buy a smartphone and not be very intelligent at all (he or she just stole some money and went directly to the store). Flashing out a brand new High-tech gadget will signal to his or her acquaintances that that person is smart enough to get the money needed and to know how to use the 10.000 features of the gizmo.
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Unfortunately for those who use false signals, there are much more natural and simpler ways to signal a trait such as intelligence. One of these is conversation. Let’s suppose that our dude that just bought a flashy last generation smartphone with 11.001 features and applications goes on a date with a young lady that was unconsciously attracted to him by the gadget. They go for some drinks, a nice walk etc. He can’t just stand next to her playing with his alleged IQ extension and not say a word. He has to talk to her or at least mimic a decent conversation. Now, talking and communication have been around far longer than electronics and we know how to unconsciously decode these more natural signals.
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So our guy that has spent at least 500 Euros on an intelligence showing piece of electronics has to prove in a very ancient way (conversation) that he’s actually smart. If the conversation is at a very low level of intellectual engagement, then he’ll not get a second date. Of course there might be some exceptions such as: the girl is less intelligent than him and she’ll perceive him as better fitted for mating; or the girl just wants a short (rather embarrassing) adventure.

The Professor Bias

Psychology and its derivatives in various sciences which usually include the term “Behavioral” give a lot of attention to decision making biases… in normal language: why we don’t make the optimal decisions.
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In the very many years of going to school I realized that there is what I call the “Professor Bias”. This means that a professor has the WRONG impression that his or her course is the most important one that students have at a particular time or even in all of their education. Most severe cases of “professor bias” imply that the teacher strongly believes that the students take only his or her course and no other.
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This bias leads to an overload for students and that it’s not necessary a problem in itself, but in most cases it leads to an overload with less important, less interesting and even less useful study work. From both my learning experience and teaching experience I know that studying something one doesn’t enjoy or finds it useful leads to only one result: failure. Failure can come in many forms. Some fail by dropping out of school, other by becoming “brain dead” and losing all innate human qualities like creativity and empathy.
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The “professor bias”, as most of the other decision making biases, is in most cases unconscious. The people who have it don’t know they do and they see nothing wrong in emphasizing on their course. When students don’t respond in acknowledging that the course is the holy grail of their life, the teachers often get upset and try to force the students to do what he or she thinks it’s right for them. It makes perfect sense, but it’s still wrong. What can be done is not to convince teachers that their course is totally useless or that it might be interesting for only 5% of the students. Educational programs come in packages (more courses together) and there is the key – in managing these packages.
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Now there may appear the “manager bias” which in my view means that the program manager only looks at the name of the courses and maybe at some of the broad topics covered by a course. This is the beginning of the problem. If one looks at the curriculum presented for an education program everything makes perfect sense. For example if you want to become a researcher (scientist) in business administration of course it makes perfect sense to learn about philosophy of science and research methodology, statistics, management foundations and many others. The problem is when during those courses you find at least half of the content to be uninteresting and un-useful.
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Another side of the professor bias is that a lot of teachers assume that the students are 101% rational and they are there to learn what he or she has to say. Again, it’s nice, but totally wrong. If you give a lecture at 4PM students might have something else on their mind especially if it’s on a Friday. Another example is when one has a heterogeneous audience and teaches something rather specific. When the teacher goes into the “technical” details, for example matrix algebra, the people who don’t understand will just switch off.
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This is one aspect of the big conflict between “should” and “do”. What a teacher should J do is to know that every time he or she goes into a classroom he or she has to gain the attention of that audience, even if it’s the 10^th lecture of the same course. But, as we all know: should is not equal to “actually do”.

Chinese Clustering – Follow-up

I usually don’t write follow-ups, but this is too good not to be written. Yesterday late at night I published the post on how clustering occurs in groups with the example of the Chinese clustering in the courses that I take at ERIM.
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Today one Chinese colleague, let’s call him G, changed his usual behavior (I believe reading the post had something to do with it) and in the amphitheater changed his usual place. He was first to come into the class room and I was the third so I was able to observe. As I love experiments, well I just sat back and watched how the colleagues take their places in the room. I had about 15 minutes of observation.
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The first thing I noticed is that the first Chinese colleague that came into the classroom went directly to G and talked a little, afterword taking a sit in the row in front of him. Next the PhD students came and they all kept their usual places forming the PhD sector on the right side of the amphitheater (G was on the left side and I was in the middle). Next another Chinese colleague came in and was a little disorientated that her usual entourage wasn’t where they used to be. She decided to sit on the left side of the room two rows in front of G and one row in front of the other Asian colleague that came before her. Next one Dutch colleague that usually sits on the left side (I told you that people are coherent with their previous behavior) is confused for a second to see the Chinese there, but he takes a sit next to one of our Chinese colleagues. The Chinese PhD student was also coherent with his previous behavior and sat on the right side in the PhD sector. One Chinese student was absent.
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Up to now all of our Asian friends were coherent with their previous behavior – the PhD student was in his previous group and the master students from China kept clustering even if they changed the sector of clustering. Then the professor came into the classroom and next another Chinese colleague came in. Now let’s see what happened: she looked at the center side (where the Chinese sat before this week), then looked after them and saw them on the left side, but… she broke the cluster and sat in the center. Two minutes after the course started another Chinese colleague came. Being late she took the first seat next to the door (ironically the person next to her was the Chinese PhD student).
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Most interesting is that none of the two colleagues that were late didn’t change her place during the brake to join the cluster. Another interesting thing is that other European colleagues that sat on the left side of the room were also coherent with the previous behavior and, thus, they mixed with the Chinese cluster.

What does actually mean to make a choice?

Making a choice means giving up all the other possible options.

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I made one big choice… what’s your choice?