Hormonal humor, doctors' duds, Wii workouts

[kirisutogomen]

Don't just read these articles. Comment on them. I want some discussion here.

Humour 'comes from testosterone'

Patients 'like smartly dressed doctors'

Wii players need to exercise too

Comments

[brilit.livejournal.com]

I've seen a few of these before. However, the second one reminds me of a similar story I heard this week. There was a study that handsome NFL QBs make ~$300K more then less their less handsome breathen. (Creating a lot of amusement on Mike and Mike in the Morning, but that's an aside.)

I was wondering root causes, and if it's right or wrong that they get more money. After all, maybe they're putting a better product on the field. For example, maybe they're drawing more female viewership so deserve more money. Maybe it's a holdover of the high school big-man-on-campus that trickles down to the NFL. Maybe it's subconcious. Maybe it's an invalid study. Regardless, it was amusing.

Here's an article on it (probably not the definitive article):
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/sports/playmagazine/0914play-FBALL-QBS.html

[countertorque.livejournal.com]

It's pretty well established that pretty people live better lives. Everyone is nicer to people if they're pretty. It's how we got to where we are.

[jmandresen.livejournal.com]

It's also true that pretty people are more intelligent. It turns out that if you have "good genes" it gives you lots of advantages, including physical beauty, intelligence, disease resistance, and many others. (In other words, the same genes that regulate accurate production of a person's face also regulate accurate production of a person's brain.)

[kirisutogomen.livejournal.com]

Is it clear where on the distribution this is operating? If, say, there were some reasonably common dysfunctional gene that made people ugly and cut their IQ to 20, then the population of pretty people would have a higher average IQ than the population of ugly people, but that wouldn't actually tell you anything about the pretty and ugly people we meet outside of institutions.

I.E., are these "good genes" you're talking about really just "you don't have Down Syndrome, mental retardation, autism, neurofibromatosis, etc."?

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

1) I am not sure that I agree with using "likelihood to shout random crap at passing stranger" as a measure of humor.
2) Duh.
3) Duh.

[mjperson.livejournal.com]

1) I'm more annoyed by blaming the result on testosterone levels, like that's the only meaningful difference between men and women.

2) Duh.

3) They're doing it wrong.

[readsalot.livejournal.com]

1) What firstfrost said.

2) There's a general perception that people dressed professionally are better at whatever they do. It's why everyone's supposed to dress up when customers come to visit, or when we go to a customer site. I do not have this perception, possibly because having to wear suits to work for 15+ years pissed me off too much, or possibly because I know that many of the other people around me wearing suits weren't very good at what they did. I also know that the one time that i went to a MacWorld Expo in my business clothes, I got a lot more attention from people trying to sell me things than I did all of the other times when I went wearing a t-shirt and jeans. Silly of them--I have much more money to spend on toys when I don't have to buy suits.

3) This seems like a very silly study. Obviously waving your arms around while standing in place isn't going to be as good as something that actually gets your heart rate up.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

There's a general perception that people dressed professionally are better at whatever they do.

I admit that I buy into this somewhat - but it's more "the people who dress appropriately for their profession are more likely to be following the other rules of their profession more competently as well." It is not a guarantee that the physician who dresses smartly is a better surgeon, but I would probably not trust that the physician who dresses in shorts and a t-shirt will have a good bedside manner, since they are either oblivious to or unconcerned with the social signals they're sending.

I do realize this is very circular - people who follow the completely arbitrary rules are better at projecting an aura of being able to follow the rules, whatever the rules are. And I also don't know how much I think it ought to matter for the generally non-people-facing professions.

[psychohist.livejournal.com]

The rules aren't completely arbitrary. Physicians wear white coats for the same reason no one else does - because it shows dirt and stains well. That way it's easier to tell when they need to change to avoid passing along infections and such.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

Though the study claims that the nice shirt and nice trousers are the thing that matters more to patients - which is more of the standard arbitrary dress code.

[psychohist.livejournal.com]

Well, the example question from the study - "would you buy a used car from this man" - was also completely unrelated to health care. ("Would you buy a used car from this man?" "No, he's wearing a lab coat, why should I expect him to know anything about cars?" Though for all I know, lab coats may be standard dress for auto salesmen in Australia.)

[countertorque.livejournal.com]

I'm completely onboard with the idea that we dress the way we ought to because it's the way we ought to dress. When I dress up for a meeting, I'm stating that I'm smart enough to realize that people expect me to dress up for a meeting. It doesn't make my hardware work any better, but at least it leaves people with the impression that I care what they think of me and my hardware.

There are very few situations where dressing up can work against you and many where it can help you.

[readsalot.livejournal.com]

I've run into people who were really good at dressing up and otherwise projecting competence, but not at all good at actually being competent. That's why it distresses me when we start to equate being well-dressed with being competent.

[countertorque.livejournal.com]

Yes, I run into people like that as well. And I completely agree that when we are evaluating others, we must be careful to try to avoid judging them by their clothing.

However, the fact that incompetent people are sometimes smart enough to give themselves a positive modifier, doesn't mean that we should pass up on the opportunity.

[rifmeister.livejournal.com]

There's also an overdressing issue. At Google, if you bother to ask our recruiter whether to dress up for interviews (software engineering), he will tell you not to bother --- that the people interviewing you will be in jeans and t-shirts. If you do bother to dress up, people will view you (very slightly) as less of a good culture fit. But it's certainly a second-order effect --- if you're good, you'll get a job offer no matter what you're wearing.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

True. I think this is more an issue of dressing appropriately, rather than dressing up. I don't want my doctor in a tuxedo, either. :)

[dcltdw]

Heh, I was just ranting at a friend about bad science articles on reuters yesterday. One was, I believe, conflating correlation with causation (what #1 is doing as well, I think). Another was just ... impossible to figure out if the study was crap or the reporting was crap: something about how researchers had looked at the web to find results, etc.

Well, umm, did they just believe what they read on the Web (crap science) or did the reporter just fail to explain (crap reporting)?

I think I'm sensitized to this, because I was just watching the Rick Steves lecture on "travel as a political act", where at the end he complains about the dumbing down of people rather than the smartening up. Yes, I realize the irony of using those words. :)

[mathhobbit.livejournal.com]

Men are less socially inhibited than women. We're blaming that on testosterone? It's a cute little study; I'd be proud of any kid who entered it in a science fair.

I haven't played much Wii sports, but the Wii Fit UI is poorly designed for exercise. I always end up spending a lot of time flipping through menus between exercises. (My theory is that the usability expert on the team was a human/computer interaction geek who didn't know squat about menus.)

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

I'd be ok with a doctor with a nose ring, but I'd have a lot of trouble trusting a doctor who wore that sweater to work.

Wii Fit is significantly more active than Wii sports, but yeah, my estimate is that it takes me an hour to get 20 minutes of exercise from it.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

Or the sunglasses! I disapprove of doctors wearing dark glasses while examining patients, regardless of the rest of their dress. :)

[readsalot.livejournal.com]

That sweater looks way too three-dimensional to me--almost like he's wearing a backpack on his chest. That would certainly be distracting.

At the risk of stating the obvious...

[desireearmfeldt]

I reject the premise that aggression = humor (or even that humor is necessarily always aggressive, or that "gags" are the only type of humor).

He's demonstrated that men are more likely than women to jeer at a stranger doing something goofy. He hasn't actually demonstrated anything about whether the men who did so were funny.