In the November issue of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP), authors Dittmar, Bond, Hurst, and Kaster have a meta-analysis on the effects of materialism on well-being. The existing literature has found a negative relationship between materialistic beliefs and well-being, but this is the first recent meta-analysis of the relationship, and provides direct evidence for the strength, consistency, and direction of the relationship. Materialism is defined as "individual differences in people's long-term endorsement of values, goals, and associated beliefs that center on the importance of acquiring money and possessions that convey status" (p.880). The meta-analysis looks at how materialism, as defined, affects four broad types of well-being: subjective well-being (a person's satisfaction with their life and feelings of overall happiness); self-appraisals (how positively or negatively individuals view themselves); mental health (the level of negative mental-health disorders such as depression, anxiety, and compulsive buying); and physical health (a measure of health symptoms such as headaches and stomachaches, as well as the propensity to engage in risky health behaviors such as drinking and taking drugs). Finally, the authors investigated whether any variables, including age, gender, ethnicity, education, profession, income, and societal factors, could make the link between materialistic orientation and well-being stronger or weaker.

Overall, the authors confirm that there is indeed a significant negative relationship between materialism and well-being, such that individuals who are more materialistic are less happy/satisfied with their life. In fact, this negative relationship holds over all categories of well-being, but is especially strong for physical health and mental health outcomes (this means that people with materialistic goals are more likely to have negative health symptoms, are more likely to engage in risky health behaviors, and are more likely to consume compulsively).

Interestingly, the authors find that the relationship between materialism and well-being is not affected by demographic factors such as education or income, but is affected by others, such as gender, age, and profession. The relationship is stronger for women than men (meaning there is a larger effect of materialism on well-being for women), as well as for older people (compared to younger people). Another interesting finding: there is a weaker effect of materialism on well-being for people working in materialistically oriented professions such as economics, marketing, and business. This is believed to be true because these professions offer a match between the values of the individual and the priorities of the profession, which leads to greater validation, an easier time conforming, and less conflict between internal and external goals. Despite these changes in the relationship by some characteristics, it's more interesting that the negative relationship broadly holds across most demographic, economic, and cultural factors. Thus, everyone is made worse off by being materialistic or having materialistic goals. It's important to note that since this is a meta-analysis, the authors are not evaluating whether some of these cultural or societal factors can affect how materialistic an individual is, they are only saying that controlling for a level of materialism, its effect on well-being holds across these different demographic characteristics. 

Ultimately, the meta-analysis confirms that any way you cut it, being materialistic hurts you. And, yes, some factors can reduce the level of that hurt, but nothing the authors looked at found a positive or even neutral relationship between materialism and well-being (i.e., under no circumstances did being materialistic lead to more happiness). Now, if only they had a recommendation on how to change how materialistic a person is.

Image source: Gemma Correll

Yesterday the NYTimes ran a piece about Tinder, the online dating app. In many ways, Tinder changed the online dating landscape: instead of having elaborate profiles or algorithms that turn dating into a numbers game, Tinder relies mostly on instataneous reactions to pictures and other visual cues. If a person finds someone attractive, they can swipe right; if they find someone unattractive, they can swipe left. The interesting part about the article, however, is a discussion on what determines "attractive" when it comes to looking at pictures. The author of the article discusses this with an employee at Tinder who's sole job is to determine what about pictures makes someone swipe left or right. Turns out, people make a lot of inferences about others based on what they see in pictures. It seems that people are scrutinizing the pictures they see to try to determine a level of compatibility and acceptability. In this sense, the settings of the pictures are just as important as the main target. As one of the co-founders of the app points out: "'A photo of a guy at a bar with friends around him sends a very different message than a photo of a guy with a dog on the beach.'”

It's also important that attractiveness is not universal: "'There isn’t a consensus about who is attractive and who isn’t,' Mr. Eastwick [an assistant professor in human development and family sciences at the University of Texas, Austin] said in an interview. 'Someone that you think is especially attractive might not be to me. That’s true with photos, too.' Tinder’s data team echoed this, noting that there isn’t...one group of users [who] get the share of “like” swipes." In this way, Tinder is still a numbers game: with enough users, variation in what is deemed attractive will be great enough to ensure that many users get right swipes.

And what happens after you pick someone to date? A new article at Pacific Standard suggests that even if you discover a fatal flaw or incompatibility, you will still pursue that person if you are currently on a date with them (or more generally, if they are nearby versus just online). This is based on a new article in Psychological Science by Joel, Teper, and MacDonald which shows in several lab studies that people are almost twice as willing to go on a date with an unattractive or incompatible person if they think that person is nearby (in the lab setting, they were told the person was in the lab and ready to meet up). This effect was mediated by a concern for hurting the target's feelings, which was stronger if participants thought the other was nearby.

Ultimately, the PS article and the Psych Science paper discusses our inability to accurately predict how good we will be at rejecting romantic interests (or, in other words, hurting someone else's feelings). Turns out, humans don't generally like being mean to other humans (I would like to argue this point having lived in NYC for a couple months now). The problem is, "[w]e tend to be more satisfied in relationships with people who come closer to our ideals, and focusing on others’ feelings could keep us from seeking what we truly want." This can have consequences down the line, "As flaws become more grating over time, one partner may finally call it quits, causing more hurt than if they’d never gone out in the first place. Alternatively, a desire not to hurt a boyfriend or girlfriend could lead them to stay in a strained relationship longer despite the incompatibility." Ironically, our inability to hurt someone else's feelings can lead to greater hurt down the line (in addition to wasting everyone's time).

Image source: many (screenshot from google images search)

Let's be clear: this is NOT a book review. Namely, because it would be totally biased and littered with "Amy is the best" and "You MUST buy this book," which is neither helpful nor necessary (because everyone loves Amy Poehler already and I'm not adding anything new to the conversation). This is also not a book review because I haven't finished the book yet (please, it was only released yesterday!). But I wanted to share an excerpt from the preface because I think it so perfectly sums up what makes Amy Poehler so great and what it's like to pursue any endeavor that involves writing or creativity in general. 

"So what do I do? What do we do? How do we move forward when we are tired and afraid? What do we do when the voice in our head is yelling that WE ARE NEVER GONNA MAKE IT? How do we drag ourselves through the muck when our brain is telling us youaredumbandyouwillneverfinishandnoonecaresanditistimeyoustop? Well, the first thing we do is take our brain out and put it in a drawer. Stick it somewhere and let it tantrum until it wears itself out...And then you just do it. You just dig in and write it. You use your body. You lean over the computer and stretch and pace. You write and then cook something and write some more. You put your hand on your heart and feel it beating and decide if what you wrote feels true. You do it because the doing of it is the thing. The doing is the thing. The talking and worrying and thinking is not the thing." (Yes Please, Loc 119-126, it's on my kindle and there are no page numbers).

And my favorite, less about writing and more about appreciating the vulnerability inherent in life: "So let's peek behind the curtain and hail the others like us. The open-faced sandwiches who take risks and live big and smile with all of their teeth." (Yes Please, Loc 126-133)

So, yeah, you should DEFINITELY get this book (or not, whatever). Oh, and if you do want to read a review, here's a pretty good one from The A.V. Club.

Image source: www.diydancer.com

This weekend I attended the Association for Consumer Research (ACR) conference in Baltimore. The conference is approximately three days of attending talks, meeting with co-authors, and socializing. There is also a lot of meeting new people. Sometimes this interaction is great - you get to talk to other researchers about their work or you get to learn more about someone whose papers you have read religiously. But there is also a significant amount of interaction that feels fake and empty - interaction with people only interested in talking to you for the sake of "networking" (collecting contacts like notches in a bedpost that they can point to as a metric of their success). The worst offenders are usually easy to identify: they are the ones whose eyes dart around the room while you discuss your research (a question which they asked you in the first place), who flit off as soon as they see someone more "important", or who only talk to you after inspecting your name badge. These are the people who wouldn't speak to you when you were a lowly PhD student, but who then want to be your best friend forever as soon as you get a good job placement. Even worse, they usually have a knack for showing up just as you are about to leave for a group lunch or dinner, shamelessly asking for an invite. 

I have always found networking among researchers odd - it seems that interaction should be based on overlapping interests or mutual friends. But, at the same time, I have always wondered if this aversion to networking for networking's sake was the wrong approach. Perhaps networking could make me a better researcher somehow. Ultimately, I find approaching or adding people on Facebook that I do not know and am only trying to form a "relationship" with because they are well-known or well-respected in the field to be too awkward and insincere. This sentiment was echoed in an article in Science Magazine. The author perfectly summed up what "networking" among scientists should be: 

"Perhaps the term “networking” has come to encompass too many meanings—kind of like the word “friend.” There are valuable steps you can take to support your science career that some would call networking, but you can just as easily call them what they are: attending conferences, learning new things, having interesting conversations, meeting people. You can do all of these things without “Where’s the value for my career?” at the front of your mind. Just do them, enjoy them, and become a better scientist."

Sometimes it's hard not to get caught up in the "who do you know?" aspect of conferences, but it's also important to remember that attempts to form relationships on the basis of "advancing your career" are often transparent and not well-regarded. As the author of the article points out, "You assume that everyone wants to help you, simply because they meet you once..." My best advice to a young researcher hoping to make contacts at a conference is this: approach someone selectively and with purpose (they do research you are interested in, you have a project pitch for them), or wait to be introduced by someone you know who also knows your intended target. Make the interaction sincere and don't immediately follow it up with a Facebook friend request.

Image source: Elizabeth C. Webb

My mom works as a nurse at a nursing home in California. Through her experiences I have heard many stories about death and dying; the way that people choose to spend their final days, months, and years; and how, often, people make a slow, unremarkable march to death. In an excerpt from his book, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End published on Slate and sent to me by a very talented PhD student at Columbia, Atul Gawande discusses the risk inherent in choosing how to die. Sometimes it is the unremarkable - doing the seemingly mundane things that snowball into an entire life - that makes people most happy. Thus, removing the ability to partake in these things can completely devalue the pure extension of life. Importantly, people also heavily weight how their life ends. As Gawande poignantly points out:

"In the end, a person doesn’t view his life as merely the average of its moments—which, after all, is mostly nothing much, plus some sleep. Life is meaningful because it is a story, and a story’s arc is determined by the moments when something happens. Unlike your experiencing self, which is absorbed in the moment, your remembering self is attempting to recognize not only the peaks of joy and valleys of misery but also how the story works out as a whole. That is profoundly affected by how things ultimately turn out. Football fans will let a few flubbed minutes at the end of a game ruin three hours of bliss—because a football game is a story, and in stories, endings matter." 

Thus, being able to end life in a way that matters, whether that be by being at home with friends, or lying in bed holding your spouse's hand, is something that people do not want to risk losing. Any operation or treatment that moves a person away from this control may be seen as (statistically) worse than it actually is if there is any positive probability of the treatment taking away the option to end life as one sees fit. This is because all a person will focus on is the loss of this preferred ending. Of course, as Gawande also points out, not all endings are controllable and not all people are offered this control. But as he also says, "[O]ur most cruel failure in how we treat the sick and the aged is the failure to recognize that they have priorities beyond merely being safe and living longer; that the chance to shape one’s story is essential to sustaining meaning in life; and that we have the opportunity to refashion our institutions, culture, and conversations to transform the possibilities for the last chapters of all of our lives."

Image source: Flickr user Fiduz via kuriositas

In a SundayReview piece on the NY Times today, NYU psychologist, Gabriele Oettingen discusses the downsides of positive thinking. She and her colleagues have found across several studies that positive thinking leads to a feel of having already attained the desired outcome, which leads to less energy, and less motivation available for actually attaining the goal. This, in turns, leads to a lower probability of success. Oettingen recommends a sort of moderate thinking approach called "mental contrasting": "[t]hink of a wish. For a few minutes, imagine the wish coming true, letting your mind wander and drift where it will. Then shift gears. Spend a few more minutes imagining the obstacles that stand in the way of realizing your wish." This approach leads to more success than when people focus only on the fantasy of achieving the positive outcome or only on all the things that could go wrong along the way. Interestingly, mental contrasting can also help people abandon unrealistic ambitions in favor of more "realistic" pursuits.

The article doesn't distinguish between positive thinking and wishful thinking. It's possible that one may be more helpful than the other, but presumably the author is thinking of both pursuits that are and are not actually attainable. I also wonder how positive thinking, as defined by Oettingen, interacts with beliefs about luck (i.e., do people who attribute success to luck or external processes suffer less from the pitfalls of positive thinking?). This article also lends support to the lay-theory that imagining a positive outcome or vocalizing a hope that you attain something can jinx the whole affair and actually make it less likely to come true. 

Image source: Nickolay Lamm via The Atlantic

Today in The Atlantic, I came across a link titled, "This Is the Average Man's Body." I'm not going to lie, I was immediately compelled to click. But what is so compelling about the average man's body? This wasn't a link to the greatest body or the ideal body; it's just the average, run-of-the-mill body. But maybe in a world filled with comparisons of all types, knowing what the average is, is just as satisfying as knowing the ideal or the best. 

Image source: Superfine Bakery

A few weeks ago the Pew Foundation released a report discussing changes in social trends related to marriage. Of course, the fact that fewer adults are getting married is not news, but in there report on the Pew Research Center's website, the authors also discuss the reasons why this is happening and what the public thinks of these trends (as well as some very interesting data graphics, including a national map of the "marriage market," which can be found here). 

The never-been-married rate is at a historic high (as determined by census data from 2012), with one in five adults ages 25 and older having never entered the institution of marriage. The median age at which people are first getting married is now 27 for women and 29 for men (up from 20 and 23, respectively, in 1960). In terms of whether prioritizing marriage is important to society, a survey conducted by Pew showed that people are almost evenly split on this issue: 46% of survey respondents thought prioritizing marriage and having kids made society better off, while 50% thought that having other priorities made society just as well off. The percentage choosing the latter (other priorities) is significantly higher for young adults, versus older adults: implying a shifting social trend in views towards marriage.

Half of the never-married set says they would like to eventually get married. It is in questioning the never-marrieds about what they look for in a potential spouse, that we discover that stereotypes about the desirable characteristics each gender wants have not changed along with the shifting demographics. Women say the most important trait is a steady job (78% of survey respondents), while men say that finding a spouse who has the same ideas about raising children is the most important (62%). Without extrapolating too much, this suggests that women still desire a man who is the breadwinner, and men want a spouse who will take care of kids the way they want (of course, it's possible an increasing percentage of men in this age group want their kids raised in a way that is compatible with their wife working full-time, but given the survey data presented by Pew this is impossible to know). It would also be nice to know how the percentage of men rating a steady job as a very important characteristic in a future spouse has changed over time. It's currently 46%, which seems likely to be more than what males of the 1960s thought, but this comparison is also not presented.

Again, looking within the never-been-married set, there is a large discrepancy between males and females when controlling for post-graduate degrees: women outnumber men by a significant amount. For every 100 never-been-married women with post-graduate degrees, there are only 77 men with similar educational backgrounds. For men and women with just bachelor's degrees, this comparison is more equal (102 men for every 100 women). Hopefully, these highly educated never-been-married women are okay with marrying men who do not have the same educational credentials as them (28% of women in Pew's survey said it was very important their potential spouse has as least as much education as them, but we don't know the breakdown in this response level across educational background).

Image source: Vincent Giordano/Tinacria Photography (via Buzzfeed)

I recently discovered an article at Vox titled, "What research says about cats: they're selfish, unfeeling, environmentally harmful creatures." Now, as a cat owner, this isn't news. I've known this all along, but isn't this part of their appeal - their unwavering indifference to humans? The only catch is, I've also always secretly thought that my cats don't love humans in general, but they definitely love me. Turns out, that's likely not true, which means I will be stuck in an unrequited-love situation with my cats for the next 15-20 years. I'm already predicting the follow-up article: "Research shows that cat owners are masochistics with a penchant for one-sided relationships" (oh, and maybe something about being neurotic too).

Some highlights (lowlights?) from the article:

• "Cat lovers will probably respond here that their pets do show affection, purring and rubbing up against their legs. But there's good reason to believe that, much of the time, these sorts of behaviors that look like affection are conducted with entirely different goals in mind."
• "Finally, there's some evidence, turned up by [Daniel Mills, a veterinary research at Lincoln University in the UK], that many cats don't actually like being petted by humans at all. In a 2013 study, he and other researchers measured levels of stress hormones in cats, with the intention of figuring out whether having multiple cats in the same household is a bad idea. That didn't turn out to be true, but they did find that the cats who allowed themselves to be petted had higher stress levels afterward than the cats who disliked it so much that they simply ran away."

Image source: infosthetics.com

Today, one of my favorite data visualization sites, Information is Beautiful, posted its short (and long) list of contenders for the 2014 Awards. This list is definitely worth a look through. A few of my favorites are below.