Tag Archives: Princeton University

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A thousand times goodnight

Am I working against the grain? Or is it just that I’m getting older? Unable to assimilate new situations quickly enough to form a useful opinion? I’d rather think of it as the wisdom of Age, but, of course, I would think that, wouldn’t I? And yet, the realization that first impressions are often premature impressions is something only acquired through experience, I suppose, because it’s difficult to shed the initial suspicion that you may have discovered something really important.

I’m pretty sure I have never formed friends like that -friendship (as opposed to acquaintanceship) is acquired slowly, and over time. And as to something akin to ‘love at first sight’, I can only say that for those kinds of feelings to last -at least on my part- they have to be reciprocated. That, too, takes time. ‘Attraction at first sight’ is another thing altogether, though -it is more superficial, and probably less demanding. Love is a deep -dare I say, spiritual– thing, whereas I think attraction sits more tenuously on the rather slippery surface of our attention.

Still, I recognize that as the years slowly thicken around me, they may have dampened the restless partner-seeking vibrissae to which younger, thinner skin is so exposed. I’m not sure that I am completely disqualified, but at least my muffled needs have allowed me time to reflect before deciding -to breathe, before seeking to envelop…

And yet, I remain curious, if not vicariously attracted to the issue of first impressions, so I just had to read the BBC story that promised to unwrap it like a bedtime story from long ago: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190401-is-there-such-a-thing-as-love-at-first-sight

In an essay for BBC by William Park, he writes that ‘There is evidence that we are able to make an assessment of someone’s attractiveness in the blink of an eye, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that those assessments are accurate… It takes less than 1/10th of a second to form an assessment of someone’s face. These first impressions predict all kinds of important characteristics, not just attractiveness.’ And, ‘These impressions we make in a split second are not random; they tend to be shared by the majority of the people surveyed. But it doesn’t necessarily make them correct. “A first impression could be misleading,” says professor Alexander Todorov [an academic at Princeton University]… “We only make first impressions about strangers. So naturally they are superficial.”’

‘Whether our predictions are accurate or not, we make them quickly and we stick to them. Even if we are given more time than 1/10th of a second to judge the attractiveness of a face, we are unlikely to arrive at a different conclusion… There are three universal qualities that people infer from a face: attractiveness, trustworthiness and dominance. Evolutionarily, this makes sense. Attractiveness is a mating cue, trustworthiness implies useful social characteristics, like being able to care for children, and assessing dominance is useful to avoid conflict.’

So far, so good, I suppose -if a bit reductionist. But the essay goes on to suggest that we prejudge facial photos using the same categories and ‘portraits taken from a low angle are more likely to be judged as dominant, which is positive for men and negative for women. Whereas the reverse is seen in portraits taken from a high angle.’ -so, my first clue as to what kind of picture to put on a dating site, I guess. But there is a catch: ‘In dating apps, it is a case of love at second sight. When asked to rate the attractiveness of potential partners, if the preceding face was attractive you are more likely to rate the next face as attractive and vice versa.’

Well, that confirms my suspicion that online first impressions are such stuff as dreams are made on. ‘First impressions are rapid but shallow and mutable if you have better information.’ You have to talk to somebody, engage with them to sustain something more than a passing interest. And then, of course, it is no longer a ‘first’ impression. But, I’m only reiterating what Todorov  believes: ‘“The only way to tell whether two people will really like each other – they have to talk. People don’t make good predictions for compatibility without talking,” says Professor Todorov.’

Uhmm… I have to say that I began to lose interest at that point. I began to wonder, as I pointed out earlier, whether the essay was more about attraction, than love. It’s easy to get them mixed up in the soup of hormones in which we swim. In many ways, the article was a ‘how to’ for the young and restless. I was more intrigued by something  Park points out in the dying embers of his article when he quotes a professor of psychology from California State University, Los Angeles, Karen Wu. ‘Wu studies dating behaviours in Asian-American communities who put a different emphasis on certain values… “Western cultures value individual goals more than group goals. Collectivistic cultures might value niceness more because you’re interested in group benefits rather than individual benefits.”

In other words, ‘Considering this, it is a miracle that we ever find someone who is as attracted to us as we are to them. The conversation your potential partner had directly before meeting you, their general mood, their cultural background, the angle at which they are looking at you, whether they deem themselves to be more popular than you – all these factors could influence whether you hit it off seems endless.’

So, is it any wonder that Age seems like a vacation at the cottage? No compulsion to drive somewhere, and then get up the next day and drive someplace else. No need to worry about the angle from which you take your selfies, or whether the next individual who wanders past is judging you by the standards of the person with whom they last talked.

These all seem like minor things in the bigger picture, and yet they loom large in the quest for partnership, I suppose. Attractiveness, trustworthiness and dominance -is that what we’re expected -okay, designed– to glean from the first glance without even needing to break the ice with a smile or a kind word? Biologic atavisms, if you ask me… although I am seldom canvassed for that kind of opinion anymore. I’m not sure why.

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Fairness Which Strikes the Eye

Sometimes it seems we cannot help ourselves –the pull of the tide is just too strong to resist. And sometimes an argument, when considered too quickly, too uncritically, captures us with its ostensibly intuitive wisdom. We have no need to question it. No need to probe the basis of its logic.

The rhetoricians of old were well versed in this form of argument –the art of persuasion and how to best achieve it. Aristotle, for example, suggested three essential features of a convincing argument: ethos –the credibility of the contention; pathos –understanding the needs and emotions of the audience; and logos –the patterns of reasoning and the words chosen. His wisdom, although modified and woven into the contemporary tapestry, has not been lost in modern times.

What could provoke a greater sense of outrage in a population than the 1% contention? That is to say, in at least one of the iterations fostered by the Occupy Movement, that in the United States, 1% of the population controls 40% of the wealth. And to many, that unequal distribution of wealth, is symptomatic of what is wrong with Capitalism. It certainly resonates with those of us in the 99% who hear it. It begs for remonstrance; it demands rectification.

And yet there are usually many sides to a story –or at least this one, at any rate. There are times  when we need to move back a step or two in order to appreciate the different perspectives. Even so, I have to admit that an article in the BBC Future series came as an intriguing surprise: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170706-theres-a-problem-with-the-way-we-define-inequality It allowed me to entertain an alternative that I had not even considered.

As they tease at the beginning, ‘Some researchers argue that income disparity itself may not be the main problem. The issue, they say, is not the existence of a gap between rich and poor, but the existence of unfairness. Some people are treated preferentially and others unjustly – and acknowledging that both poverty and unfairness are related may be the challenge that matters more […] While many people may already view inequality as unfairness, making the distinction much clearer is important.’

They go on to say that ‘In a paper published in April in the journal Nature Human Behaviour called ‘Why people prefer unequal societies’, a team of researchers from Yale University argue that humans – even as young children and babies – actually prefer living in a world in which inequality exists. […] Because if people find themselves in a situation where everyone is equal, studies suggest that many become angry or bitter if people who work hard aren’t rewarded, or if slackers are over-rewarded.

‘“We argue that the public perception of wealth inequality itself being aversive to most people is incorrect, and that instead, what people are truly concerned about is unfairness,” says Christina Starmans, a psychology post-doc at Yale who worked on the paper.

“In the present-day US, and much of the world, these two issues are confounded, because there is so much inequality that the assumption is that it must be unfair. But this has led to an incorrect focus on wealth inequality itself as the problem that needs addressing, rather than the more central issue of fairness.” And as Mark Sheskin, one of the co-authors remarks, ‘“People typically prefer fair inequality to unfair equality”’.

In a way, a lot of the argument hinges on definitions. There are, after all, several ways to look at inequality: equality of opportunity, equality of distribution of benefits, and of course, equality of outcome. Must all of them be addressed, or is there a priority? Is the existence of a super-rich 1% the problem, or would it be more helpful ‘ to concentrate more on helping those less fortunate, who via a lack of fairness, are unable to improve their situation’?

‘Harry G Frankfurt is a professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University. In his book On Inequality, he argues that the moral obligation should be on eliminating poverty, not achieving equality, and striving to make sure everyone has the means to lead a good life.’ Poverty, in other words, is the problem; it is unfair…

I suppose, when considered practically, it would be unrealistic and unduly Utopian, to think that we could ever dispense with at least some degree of income disparity. People ‘don’t typically work, create or strive without the motivation to do so’. It seems to me that the unfairness does not lie in the money fairly accumulated for work done, so much as in the fact that ‘not everyone is afforded the same opportunities to succeed, even if they put in that hard work.’

But, on the other hand, it’s not all simply a matter of the equality of opportunity, nor even of equality, per se. Fairness is something different. The issue of fairness is in a different Magisterium altogether. I’m Canadian, and I believe that no one should have to live in poverty. Not everyone has the skills, or indeed, the capacity to hold a job, even if an opportunity presents itself. Some are disadvantaged by appearance, or gender; some are discriminated against by virtue of their origins, or life-style; some, even, have succumbed to past failures and have given up trying… It is unfair to give up on them –any of them- simply because of the lotteries of birth or circumstance.

Fairness, it seems to me, is universally available and accessible health care. It is a living wage that allows even the poorest to feed their family. It is safe and obtainable shelter. It is the respect afforded even to those we do not understand. It is toleration of difference, even when the rest of us may not understand, or agree with it.

It seems to me that inequality, by itself, is not what drives revolutions. Inequality is not what causes societies to weaken and their moral fabric to unweave. Inequality is just the chipped and discoloured veneer most easily visible on the surface. What festers directly underneath, sometimes only detectable when the surface weakens or is pulled asunder, is inequity. Injustice. Unfairness… Poverty, unlike wealth, offers little protection. And that is the iniquitous thing.

For some reason, I’m reminded of Shakespeare’s King Lear: Through tattered clothes great vices do appear; Robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold and the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks. Arm it in rags, a pigmy’s straw does pierce it.

Prove me wrong…