A Primitive tendency of Indian society- Exceptionally high Conformity

I have always been amazed at the many primitive tendencies prevailing in the indian society. One very absurd primitive tendency is the exceptional level of conformity. In western societies, the word " conformity " usually means "following the trend" in such inconsequential areas like fashion, music and movie preference. But in North India, exceptionally high levels of conformity are seen even in areas of grave importance , like career selection.

When I was in Std. 12th, I was left amazed at the level of mindless conformity among my classmates on the issue of career selection. All my classmates ( science students ) wanted to become either an engineer or a doctor. As if nothing else exists in the universe. India might be requiring talent and manpower in basic sciences,journalism, and countless other fields but sorry, these are not in fashion. Every Tom, Dick , and Harry with no exception wanted to go for either of these two careers; individual tastes, capabilities and interests be damned. A few females talked of a career in fashion designing and some males thought of a career in defence forces, but thats it. I wondered why India is called the " land of diversity " when everyone wants to do the same thing !!

Whats more, I learn that most of the engineering students just want to enter one field : Computer software. Again , as if engineering skills are not required anywhere else in this country. This rat-race is regardless of the specialistion of the student. When asked why , such people say " there is lot of scope and people get " good pay packages " in IT " --- This , I must say, is an extreme example of mindless conformity - how conveniently they have have forgotten that india's software industry is basically an offshoring/outsourcing industry, and hence , is bound to have an uncertain future -- in contrast to other industries, which cater to domestic demand and hence are likely to be more stable in the future.

Back to my own story - very few students in my undergraduate chemistry class wanted to take up careers in the subject of their study, and most of those who chose to do so , did out of compulsion rather than choice. Most general graduates , who are career minded, say that they want to go for management careers. Again as if , the country only requires MBAs ,and again, failing to realise that the high pay packages of MBAs come at the cost of peace of mind- in a capitalist economy , there are bound to be recessionary phases, with layoffs and "workforce reduction" . Teaching and administrative jobs may not give the fat pay packages of management, but they do give the person peace of mind and stability.

Whats more, there is a regional aspect to this phenomenon of conformity in career selection - Most students from Bihar and adjoining areas want to enter the civil services and even boast of the " high number of Biharis in the IAS " -- I am amazed at this level of conformity and collectivism. As if a person's individual interests, capablities and talents are of no importance and all that matters is what others of his ethnic/social/economic background are doing. The socioeconomic status of the student is also important, with most belonging to middle and upper class families preferring engineering, management careers while those in the economically weaker section preferring IAS and administrative vocations.

....And I thought, careers should be decided on the basis of an individual's personality, interests , intelligence and talents . What a fool , I am.

6. Memory performance boosted while walking
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Psychologists usually think of attention as a limited resource. The more of it you use on one task, they say, the less you have left over for others. Supporting this, countless studies have shown that performance deteriorates under dual-task versus single-task conditions. But what if, rather than having one pool of attention to share around, we have multiple pools for fueling different types of activity. By this account, if two tasks are different enough from each other, there should be no performance decrement under dual-task conditions. That's exactly what Sabine Schaefer has shown in a new study that looks at memory performance whilst walking. In fact Schaefer's research goes further, showing that memory performance is actually superior whilst walking compared with sitting down.

Schaefer's team had 32 nine-year-olds and 32 adults (average age 25) complete the N-back working memory task in three conditions: walking on a treadmill at their own chosen speed; walking on a treadmill at a set speed chosen by the researchers; or sitting down. The N-back task requires that participants listen to a stream of numbers and indicate, in the easiest version, whenever the current number was the same as the number one back. For more difficult versions, it's a repeat of a number further back in the stream that must be spotted.

The headline finding was that the working memory performance of both age groups improved when walking at their chosen speed compared with when sitting or walking at a fixed speed set by the researchers. This was especially the case for more difficult versions of the working memory task, and was more pronounced among the children than the adults. So, this would appear to be clear case of mental performance actually being superior in a dual-task situation.

Why should the secondary task of walking aid, rather impair, mental performance? The researchers aren't sure of the mechanism, but they think the attentional pool tapped by a sensori-motor task like walking is likely separate from the attentional pool tapped by working memory. Moreover, physical activity increases arousal and activation, 'which then can be invested into the cognitive task,' they said.

What about the fact that memory performance wasn't improved when participants walked on the treadmill at a speed set by the researchers? The set walking speed was actually substantially slower than the participants' preferred speed so one possibility is that it wasn't rigorous enough to provide the increased arousal that could be beneficial to memory. Alternatively, perhaps the challenge of walking at a set speed is cognitively demanding, tapping the same attentional pool needed for the memory task.

Schaefer's team speculated that a useful application of their finding could be in relation to childhood ADHD. '...[H]yperactive children might also be able to profit from some type of consistent movement that does not require much attention, even though it is often argued that those children have more problems than healthy controls when they have to divide their attention between two concurrent tasks.'
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competition increases cheating while not improving performance.

Does greater competition improve performance or increase cheating?
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What happens when you recruit dozens of students to perform a maze-based computer task and then you ratchet up the competitive pressure? Does their performance improve or do they just cheat more?

Christiane Schwieren and Doris Weichselbaumer found out by having 33 men and 32 women at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona spend 30 minutes completing on-screen mazes. Crucially, half the students were paid according to how many mazes they completed whereas the half in the 'highly competitive' condition were only paid per maze if they were the top performer in their group of six students.

The students in the highly competitive condition narrowed their eyes, rolled up their sleeves, focused their minds and cheated. That's right, the students playing under the more competitive prize rules didn't complete any more mazes than students in the control group, they just cheated more.

To be more specific, the female students in the highly competitive condition cheated more. That is, although across both conditions there was no overall difference between men and women in the amount they cheated, only women responded to the competition intensity by cheating more. Schwieren and Weichselbaumer dug deeper into their results and actually this wasn't a gender issue. Competition increased cheating specifically among poorer performers and it just happened that the poorer performers tended to be female.

How did the researchers measure cheating? After a brief practice, the students were told to continue completing mazes on level 2 difficulty, but they could choose to break the rules by switching to an easier level. The game also gave the option of clicking a button to be guided through the maze solutions. Finally, the students could lie at the end on a score sheet about how many mazes they'd completed. Earlier the researchers had loaded a spy programme on the computers. This took a screen shot on each mouse click, thus revealing the students' true actions.

'It turns out that individuals who are less able to fulfill the assigned task do not only have a higher probability to cheat, they also cheat in more different ways,' the researchers said. 'It appears that poor performers either feel entitled to cheat in a system that does not give them any legitimate opportunities to succeed, or they engage in "face saving" activity to avoid embarrassment for their poor performance."

The links between bloggers' personalities and their use of words
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You can tell a person's personality from the words they use. Neurotics have a penchant for negative words; agreeable types for words pertaining to socialising; and so on. We know this from recordings of people's speech and from brief writing tasks. Now Tal Yarkoni has extended this line of research to the blogosphere by analysing the content of 694 blogs - containing an average of 115,000 words written over an average period of about two years - and matching this with the bloggers' (predominantly female; average age 36) answers to online personality questionnaires.

Some commentators have suggested that the internet allows people to present idealised versions of themselves to the world. Contrary to that idea, Yarkoni found that bloggers' choice of words consistently related to their personality type just as has been found in past offline research.

More neurotic bloggers used more words associated with negative emotions; extravert bloggers used more words pertaining to positive emotions; high scorers on agreeableness avoided swear words and used more words related to communality; and conscientious bloggers mentioned more words with achievement connotations. These were all as expected. More of a surprise was the lack of a link between the Big Five personality factor of 'openness to experience' and word categories related to intellectual or sensory experience. Instead openness was associated with more use of prepositions, more formal language and longer words.

The sheer size of the data set at Yarkoni's disposal allowed him to look not only at links between personality factors and broad word categories (as past research has done) but to also zoom in on the usage of specific words. Among the most strong and intriguing correlations were: Neuroticism correlated with use of 'irony' and negatively correlated with 'invited'; Extraversion correlated with 'drinks' and negatively correlated with 'computer'; Openness correlated with 'ink'; Agreeableness with 'wonderful' and negatively correlated with 'porn'; and Conscientiousness correlated with 'completed' and negatively correlated with 'boring'.

'The results underscore the importance of studying the influence of personality on word use at multiple levels of analysis,' Yarkoni concluded, 'and provide a novel approach for refining existing categorical word taxonomies and identifying new and unexpected associations with personality.'
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Yarkoni, T. (2010). Personality in 100,000 Words: A large-scale analysis of personality and word use among bloggers. Journal of Research in Personality, 44 (3), 363-373 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2010.04.001

Author weblink: http://talyarkoni.com/