Personal Distance

人类在不同的活动范围中因关系的亲密程度而有着或保持不同的距离。不同民族与文化构成人们之间不同的空间区域，多数讲英语的人在交谈时不喜欢离的太近，总要保持一定的距离。西班牙人和阿拉伯人交谈是会凑的很近，而对俄罗斯人来说意大利人交谈是过于靠近，拉美人交谈时几乎贴身。更有趣的是英国人与意大利人交谈时，意大利人不停的“进攻”，英国人不断的“撤退”。实际上他们交谈时都只不过是要占据对自己适当的，习惯的实际距离。西方文化注重个个隐私，东方人“私”的概念薄弱。在电梯，巴士或火车上，素不相识人的拥挤在一起，东方人可以容忍身体与身体接触的那种挤，西方人无法容忍，在对个人空间的要求方面，中国人、日本人以至大多数亚洲人要比西方人小的多。这是因为不同的文化习俗的缘故，西方人看中宽松的氛围，崇尚个人自由和个人权利，而东方人的传统文化根深蒂固。

空间的观念是立体的，不仅包括领域的大小距离，包含领域的高度。“拉开距离”具有保持身份的威严的功能，而保持空间领域的高度又是支配权利的一种方式。法庭、教堂、礼堂、会议厅的布置都十分注重利用空间距离来发挥这一功能，以表现优越感与从属关系。在中国，长辈和领导面朝南坐，在西方则坐在椭圆桌子头的位置，等等，不一而足，这些都说明不同文化背景的人对空间的运用和安排都有着各自的固定模式，从而构成无数文化差异，让空间的使用具有了更为丰富的文化功能。

In the US, people in the south generally give you your space; in the north, not so much.

Wikipedia: According to the psychologist Robert Sommer a method of dealing with violated personal space is dehumanization. He argues that (for example) on the subway, crowded people often imagine those intruding on their personal space as inanimate.  

This explains one interesting phenomenon: Imagine that you and your friends stand close to each other on a crowded subway, silent. When you start to talk, you subconsciously try to step back a little. Before you talk, you dehumanize your friend and consider him as inanimate. But when you want to talk to him, he becomes your friend again, and you suddenly, although probably unconsciously, notice this uncomfortable personal distance and hence step back.

On the Experience of Social Exclusion

Social exclusion inflicts psychological pains, just as physical damage inflicts physical pains. Experiments have shown that psychological and physiological pains are highly intertwined, hence social exclusion is similar to physical damage to the body in terms of the pains it causes. Indeed, neural science has demonstrated that our brains treat social threats as seriously as physical threats.

Pains are not necessarily bad. I mean, pains make us feel bad, but they serve good functions. They keep us from objects and environment that can cause damage to us. It has been shown that people do not have the physical sense of pain live significantly shorter than normal. It is not exaggerating to say that feeling pains in the environment that is harmful for us is important for our survival.

People literally feel pains when they get rejected by others. From an evolutionary point of view, we can understand why this is the case. During our evolution as a species, it is vital for survival to have a good relationship with other members in the group. Being excluded from the group in the environment can be considered as the end of future.  An individual who doesn't care about social inclusion and exclusion is likely to be eliminated by the evolutionary process. The pains caused by social exclusion serve as the signal that reminds the individual something is wrong and needs to be changed, and these pains teach the individual to strive for a good social relationship with others and try not to be excluded from a group.

The Social Animal by David Brooks

We are primarily the products of thinking that happens below the level of awareness. The unconscious parts of the mind are most of the mind--where most of the decisions and many of the most impressive acts of thinking take place.

Is it possible that the unconscious mind does virtually all the work and that conscious will is just an illusion? The conscious mind merely confabulates stories that try to make sense of what the unconscious mind is doing of its own accord.

It the study of the conscious mind highlights the importance of reason and analysis, study of the unconscious mind highlights the importance of passions and perception. If the outer mind highlights the power of the individual, the inner mind highlights the power of relationships and the invisible bonds between people. If the outer mind hungers for status, money, and applause, the inner mind hungers for harmony and connection--those moments when self-consciousness fades away and a person is lost in a challenge, a cause, the love of another or the love of God.

The unconscious mind maintain no distance from the environment around them, but are immersed in it. It scurry about, interpenetrating other minds, landscapes, and ideas. If the conscious mind thinks in data and speaks in prose, the scouts crystallize with emotion, and their work is best expressed in stories, poetry, music, image, prayer, and myth.


The central evolutionary truth is that the unconscious matters most. The central humanistic truth is that the conscious mind can influence the unconscious.  ---Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Brain research rarely creates new philosophies, but it does vindicate some old ones. The research being done today reminds us of the relative importance of emotion over pure reason, social connections over individual choice, character over IQ, emergent, organic systems over linear, mechanistic ones, and the idea that we have multiple selves over the idea that we have a single self. If you want to put the philosophic implications in simple terms, the French Enlightenment, which emphasized reason, loses; the British Enlightenment, which emphasized sentiments, wins.

Modern society has created a giant apparatus for the cultivation of the hard skills, while failing to develop the moral and emotional faculties down below. We are good at talking about material incentives, but bad about talking about emotions and intuitions. We are good at teaching technical skills, but when it comes to the most important things, like character, we have almost nothing to say.

Many policies failed. The failures have been marked by a single feature: Reliance on a overly simplistic view of human nature. Many of these policies were based on the shallow social-science model of human behavior.

The Greeks used to say we suffer our way to wisdom.

What is the point of development?

The ultimate goal of development should be freedom. People should live in dignity. The prerequisite for that is their basic physical needs are satisfied. Economic unfreedom results in spiritual downturn. Think about  Jean Val Jean who was put into prison for years just because of stealing a loaf of bread to save his dying nephews.

"Economic unfreedom, in the form of extreme poverty, can make a person a helpless prey in the violation of other kinds of freedom....Economic unfreedom can breed social unfreedom, just as socia or political unfreedom can also foster economic unfreedom."   --Amartya Sen

We should never deny our human nature. Even saints are not totally free from the human nature. We should instead channel it and let it express in a healthy environment.  Our nature as human is actually vital from our spiritual enlightenment. Our nature is the pathway through which we can truly have a glimpse of divinity.

"There is no 'royal road' to geometry." Euclid to Ptolemy
"It is not clear that there is any royal road to evaluation of economic or social policies either."

"People themselves must have responsibility for the development and change of the world in which they live."

Social Influence -- The Social Animal by Aronson

1. What is social psychology?

Social influences are the cornerstone of social psychology, which refer to the influences that people have upon the beliefs or behavior of others.

"People who are threatened with mild punishment develop a dislike for the forbidden behavior; people who are severely threatened show, if anything, a slight increase in liking for the forbidden behavior."

"We tend to like a person even more if some of the remarks we overhear him make about us are anything but nice."

"People who do crazy things are not necessarily crazy."

People who act irrationally are not necessarily irrational.

How can we know what the norms are? Usually from the gossips of people. We usually gossip on the behavior of others who more or less doesn't square with the norm in our mind.

Ellen Berscheid: people have a tendency to explain unpleasant behavior by attaching a label to the perpetrator, thereby excluding him from the rest of "us nice people."

What motivate humans? -- the importance of experimental study

Experiments are ideal for the study of complex phenomena. The best way to really understand a phenomena is to rebuild it. The best way to identify a causal relationship is to reconstruct it. By producing the cause, we can be sure that it is indeed the cause for a certain effect.

Of course, we are not conducting experiments for the sake of experiments. Our ultimate goal is to bring the results out of the laboratory into the world. The ultimate criterion for the usefulness of an experimental result is how it can help us to understand the world outside the lab and change it for the better. In this sense, experiments should be inspired by making an hypothesis outside the lab, and the results of experiments should be strived to be applied to the world outside the lab.

Social events occur randomly under complex circumstances. This intricacy renders it difficult to study human behavior. The experimentalists do not have to wait for things to happen in order to observe how people respond under certain conditions. They can conduct experiments and put people in to particular situations.

The constant failure of policies has shown us that it is imperative for us to better understand human nature.

How to boost trust and trustworthiness?

common course?  cooperative task

common fate?  shared risk

"He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged." Can we test this experimentally?

If someone likes us, we like him better if he is different from us.

Social Norm Theory

Research has shown that people are not  not only influence by pecuniary payoffs, but also other non-monetary considerations. Experiments give evidence that people have pro-social and other-regarding preferences.

Economists usually represent people's preferences using utility functions. A lot of research has been devoted to capture this type of other-regarding preferences along with monetary payoffs. Economists have proposed utility function that incorporate the idea of inequality-aversion (Fehr and Schmidts 1999, Bolton and Ockenfels 2000), emphasize that the role of  reciprocity and intention (Rabin 1993),  and highlight the role of social norms  (Bicchieri 2005; Krupka and Weber 2008).

Social norms theory overcomes the consequentialism nature of traditional preferences, highlights the role of contexts, and has more predictive power compared to other theories. Of course, predictive power is not the only criterion to evaluate the quality of a theory, as there is always a trade-off between predictive power and the complexity of the model. When using social norm theory, we can always claim whatever an individual chooses is caused by the consideration of social norms. By explaining everything, we explain nothing. Fortunately,  Krupka and Weber (2008) propose a way to elicit social norms in the lab using incentive compatible coordination game, and using this objective measure they find that social norms theory can be used predict individuals' behavior. This gives us confidence that social norm theory is sound.

On Corruption in China

China has the long traditional notion that the whole nation is owned by the emperor. The government officials were considered as servants to the emperor. The government officials were not treated with dignity and respect, and laws were made as a control of officials' behavior. This mistreatment tended to crowd-out the intrinsic motivation of officials to act honestly to the emperor. This may be one reason that corruption has been prevalent in China.

Culture has far-reaching impact on a society. The French Revolution changed subjects into citizens. The rule of China by communists change subjects into comrades. But the French has long held the notion that people are created equal, while the Chinese has the long history of considering the emperor as the son of heaven and  hence owns everything under the sky. Before the French Revolution, the French did not consider the king of France as having supreme power. Even after communists took charge of China, the Chinese still consider Mao as an emperor and even worshiped him as a God.

Crowding-Out Effect

"Civic virtue is bolstered is the public laws convey the notion that citizens are trusted.... In contrast, a constitution that implies a fundamental distrust in its citizens and seeks to discipline them tends to crowd out civic virtue and undermines the support which citizens are prepared to exert towards the basic law." Frey 1997

The fierce punishment in Ming dynasty did not prevent corruption from happening.


When we have a negative notion on and show distrust towards politicians, the civic virtue of politicians can be crowded out. What's even worse, when this negative notion is established as a stereotype, citizens with high civic virtue will choose not to participate in politics, and people with low civic virtue will self-select into politics because they are not burdened by the negative notion. A self-fulfilling prophecy hence realizes.

Risk vs. Uncertainty

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk#Risk_versus_uncertainty

Uncertainty: The lack of complete certainty, that is, the existence of more than one possibility. The "true" outcome/state/result/value is not known.

Measurement of uncertainty: A set of probabilities assigned to a set of possibilities. Example: "There is a 60% chance this market will double in five years"

Risk: A state of uncertainty where some of the possibilities involve a loss, catastrophe, or other undesirable outcome.

Measurement of risk: A set of possibilities each with quantified probabilities and quantified losses. Example: "There is a 40% chance the proposed oil well will be dry with a loss of $12 million in exploratory drilling costs".

In this sense, Hubbard uses the terms so that one may have uncertainty without risk but not risk without uncertainty. We can be uncertain about the winner of a contest, but unless we have some personal stake in it, we have no risk. If we bet money on the outcome of the contest, then we have a risk. In both cases there are more than one outcome. The measure of uncertainty refers only to the probabilities assigned to outcomes, while the measure of risk requires both probabilities for outcomes and losses quantified for outcomes.

On Our Nature of Socialization

It is important to have a healthy and abundant social life. Social interactions are positive sum games. When you interact with others, both parties benefit. It is especially important to collaborate with others for our ancestors in ancient time: they needed to collaborate to hunt a deer, they needed to collaborate to protect themselves, they needed to collaborate to share food to protect survive days without too much harvest. Even more recently, in agricultural societies, people needed collaboration to find water and irrigate the crops. A loner simply cannot survive.

Because of the importance of sociality, evolution tends to select those who feel unhappy when not socializing with others and aspire being social. That is why socialization is not only important materially, but vital psychologically as well. It's inherent in our genes. Nature calls us to be social. Well, most of us.

Hyperbolic Utility Functions

Economists think people discount the future in an excessive and inconsistent way. This discounting can be described using hyperbolic utility functions. While this type of discounting are considered by economists as irrational to some extent, we can find its rational reason.

When our ancestors lived in savanna, a lot of uncertainties prevailed. They didn't even know whether they could survive today. In that situation of high uncertainty, it is actually better to place much more emphasis to the consumption in current time and in the near future: compared to $100 one year from now, you may prefer $10 tomorrow, because you don't know whether you can survive to next year. Having a good meal today with a possibility of starvation tomorrow may not be a bad choice given that the meal gives you strength to protect yourself and improve your chance of survival and finding more food tomorrow. Storing too much food doesn't help that much if you may get attacked by wild animals or raided by people from other tribes tomorrow, and lost everything you have. The motto of our ancestors may be: let tomorrow take care of itself.

To make the point, what has been described is an exaggeration. Of course, our ancestors were not that shortsighted. They do plan and care for tomorrow. But the point is when high uncertainty is a rule rather than an exception, you don't want to plan too much in the future, and hence we discount the future to an excessive  extent.

This is rational. Well, it is rational in the savanna time. For now? Not that rational any more. Now we live in a world with affluent resources and much higher safety. Now it pays to be far-sighted and patient. It pays to invest into the future. We see that nowadays successful people usually display a trait of patience. But most, if not all, of us have the genes that make us tend to excessively discount that we have inherited from our ancestors. The way successful people succeed is to use their mind and willpower to overcome their tendency  to be shortsighted.

This may be one reason that people consider patience as a virtue: it is indispensable for success, while our nature prescribes that we act impatiently. You may wonder: can we one day overcome our nature? There is a possibility, though not very likely, in the future. We know that patient people have evolutionary advantage over those who are impatient, and patient people tend to be more successful and get more resources, creating better environment for offspring to pass on their patient genes. But unlike other primates, human beings are more civilized and empathetic. The most successful "alpha male" in the society will not, fortunately, dominate other males and get all the mates. Even though the patient genes have their advantage, but the advantage is not obvious and all the impatient genes have their change to pass on. Moreover, even if the patient genes have salient advantage, it takes thousands, if not millions, of years for evolution to select advantageous genes. Therefore, even though there is a possibility that we would change our impatient nature, it would happen at a time that you  have long gone from this world. Sadly.

But why do we care, we short-sighted?




Nature to be commanded must be obeyed.

Social Norms and Sanctions

Vampire bats...share blood...don't share then get punished by others.

reciprocal altruism... positive sum game...

sanctioning eliminates free riders...


accept drinks but don't pay. cheaters in the short run outperform non-cheaters

cheat detectors...  watch for cheaters
A vampire bat strikes it big but doesn't share. Later other vampire bats who strike it big starve the selfish bats...



Social emotions and the prisoners dilemma
•We feel GRATITUDE and LIKING for people who cooperate with us. This motivates us to be nice to them in the future
•We feel ANGER and DISTRUST toward those who betray us. This motivates us to betray or avoid them in the future
•We feel GUILT when we betray someone who cooperates with us. This motivates us to behave better in the future


irrationality in relationship makes it last longer. Rational:"You are the best person I've met so far. I will stay with you as long as that is true."

Levels of rationality differs from culture to culture.
Culture of honor

Genetic doesn't mean inevitable, and cultural doesn't mean easy to fix.

More testosterone, less social.

Problems of empathy and problems of social cognition are more prevalent among male than female.

The pain of others is even aversive to babies.

Chimpanzees are empathetic to other chimpanzees, but not other animals, like rabbits.

The Robbers Cave study: common goal, common fate to rebuild a larger group from separated groups.

minimal groups: Henri Tajfel

Moral Judgments: evaluation; obligation; sanctions
Three frameworks of moral thought: ethics of autonomy (rights, equality, freedom), ethics of community (duty, status, hierarchy, interdependence), ethics of divinity (purity, sanctity, pollution, sin)

acquaintances matter.



You THINK everyone notices you.
1. Spotlight effect.
2. Transparency effect: people systematically overestimate the extent to which other people notice their secrets. We constantly overestimate how much other people know.

Positive enhancement effect...we feel good about ourselves.

Festinger cognitive dissonance... we act to reduce dissonance...
can also be explained by status quo bias? Not in this case.
people who get paid $1 reported to enjoy the task more than those who get paid $20.
People who are in a bad relationship for quite a long time tend to convince themselves that they are in love with their partners, even their partners are jerks.
"haze" in fraternity, get people to like the group.
"If you don't pay people, they are more committed to the cause."
Therapy for free are more likely to be ineffective.
Cognitive Dissonance... vs. intrinsic motivation...
We adjust our beliefs to make ourselves look more moral and rational than we are.

Three findings about yourself:
You THINK everyone notices you.
You believe that you are terrific
What you do makes sense. If it doesn't make sense, or if something you do is foolish or make you look manipulative or cheap, you will distort it in your head so that it does make sense.


"mere exposure effect"
People tend to like something they see often or they see before. People like their mirror image more, while their friends will like their image more.
familiarity is itself a force for liking.

couples become more and more similar during the course of the relationship.

"Matthew effect" developmental psychology term. the rich get richer...

stereotype...

Other people's expectations are important for people's behavior.
People are full of potentials. But people's stereotyping makes them ignorant of the evidence that is against their stereotyping. We other people believe that you cannot do well, they tend to ignore the evidence that you are doing well. So if most people believe that you cannot do well, it doesn't help that much if you do well, because they are unlikely to notice anyway. You then may get discouraged and don't try at all to do well. People's low expectation is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's not that high expectations increase people's performance, but rather that low expectations extremely limit people's potentials.

Why people tend to ignore evidence that is against their theories and beliefs? To reduce cognitive dissonance.

being chased is the most common dream.
memory consolidates during a dream


Laughter is social and communicative. involuntary noise-making.

Most laughter is inspired by some degree of aggression, but it's attenuated and not real. A laughter is a signal that it's not real. Mock aggression; collective aggression.
"Laughter is a form of bonding against a common enemy. a sound of group cohesion against common enemy."



Schemas are frameworks that develop to help organize knowledge.

•Assimilation -process of taking new information or a new experience and fitting it into an already existing schema
•Accommodation -process by which existing schemas are changed or new schemas are created in order to fit new information

Happiness

H.L. Mencken - A wealthy man is one who earns $100 a year more than his wife's sister's husband.

Ending matters a lot for memory. 90% bad stuff + 10% good stuff in the end is much better than 90% good stuff + 10% bad stuff in the end.

1. The brain is the source of mental life, but we don't know how this happens.

2. About a half of the variants in personalities of different people are due to genetic factors, but we don't know how the other half happens.

3. The social influences are important to induce and drive people to do certain things. But some people are immune to these social influences.

Man does not live on bread alone.

Matthew 4:4 says, man does not live on bread alone. We certainly need material substance to survive and function, but money and material cannot bring happiness.

We need personal interaction with others to feel fulfilled, to feel motivated and to feel the meaning of life. Hence social affluence is much more important than material affluence to bring happiness into life.


spill-over effect, spread effect in psychology
Neurological research suggests that the modular construction of our brains limits the power to differentiate between varying circumstances (Frank 1988: passions within reason. The strategic role of emotions).  neurological compactness, which has an evolutionary advantage..
Technical separability does not imply attitudinal separability.

Double Spacing in LaTex

source: http://albertskblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/to-doublespace-latex-document-you.html

To doublespace a LaTeX document, you should include the line

\usepackage{setspace}

after your \documentclass line.

Before your \begin{document} command,

\doublespacing

will make the text of the whole document doublespaced.  Footnotes,
figures, and tables will still be singlespaced, however. For one-and-a-half
spacing, instead use the command

\onehalfspacing

In order to make a part of the text of your document singlespaced, you can
put:

\begin{singlespace}

at the beginning of the text you want singlespaced, and

\end{singlespace}

at the end.

You can also set the spacing to be something other than doublespaced; for
example, if you wanted to have one-and-a-quarter spacing between lines,
use the line

\setstretch{1.25}

before your \begin{document} command, and after the
\usepackage{setspace} line.

Search in Vim

On a single line you can use fo and then ; to go forward (or , backward).

On multiple line, you must use /o and then n to go forward (or N backward).

Alternatively, your problem might be solved by using regexp and substitute, ie :%s/[your odd character]//g

To manage to copy and paste your "odd character", you should go in visual using v to select the character, then y<ESC>.

Then type : :%s/<CTRL+r>"//g

<CTRL+r>" will copy the content of the copy register in the command line.