Why is early Christmas so annoying?

Christmas riding an annoyed goat. By Robert Seymour (1798 – 1836) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Writing about Christmas getting earlier every year gets earlier ever year. Complaining about shops putting out their Christmas items when the Easter items are still egging up the shelves, howling in pain when I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday starts playing on Groundhog Day, and grumbling as your appointment card for your annual infusion of Will Ferrell’s Elf arrives in July has almost become a festive tradition. So called, ‘Christmas Creep’, the aforementioned phenomenon whereby retailers introduce their Christmas-based merchandise or decorations in advance of what would traditionally be viewed as the start of the Christmas period is widely considered to be pretty annoying. Almost as annoying as mince pies being on sale so early that their best before date is well before December. Although, not as annoying as the fact they didn’t call Christmas Creep ‘Premature Elf Adulation’. Overall it wouldn’t seem to be too much of stretch to say that early Christmas is considered to be a source of annoyance, but what are the reasons for this?

Annoyance is relatively poorly researched in psychology compared to emotions such as happiness, anger or disgust with Piers Morgan. As is often the case in psychology, there isn’t even a clear consensus as to what annoyance actually is. Therefore, which theory regarding the cause of annoyance we use will depend on how we define annoyance itself. Some have chosen to define annoyance as a type of stress, some as a mild form of anger, and some as a distinct cognitive process or emotion in its own right, which nonetheless is very similar to slight anger. This is ironically irritating.

Briefly, a common definition of stress is when resources (physical or psychological) are exceeded by the demands on those resources. Lazarus, and Launier stated that psychological stress is the consequence of an individual’s inability to cope effectively with environmental demands. For example, experiments from 1971 demonstrated that people who knew that they could eventually stop a stressful noise or knew when a stressful noise would stop experienced fewer stressful effects than people who didn’t have this knowledge. If you were forced to watch The X Factor and didn’t know when the Cowelly cacophony would end, then a stress response would result. In terms of early Christmas, stress and annoyance could be related to uncertainty as to when holiday demands (shopping, social obligations to family and friends, pressure to enjoy Home Alone) will start and finish, and whether those demands can be met. While the stress of Christmas is undoubtedly a real phenomenon and we could see how a prolonged state of Christmas could increase this stress, intuitively this emotional response seems difference to annoyance.

Anger in general has been more widely studied than annoyance and has been described across most cultures and multiple species. The recalibration theory of anger argues that the function (in evolutionary terms) of anger is to promote the resolution or recalibration of undesirable situations in favour of the individual experiencing anger. Anger occurs when something is wrong and needs to be changed. You are between me and some food/ a potential mate/not having my opinion unchallenged on social media and anger mobilises psychological and physical resources for me to try to correct that. Whether that thing can be changed or not is another story entirely. Early Christmas may be viewed by some as an out-of-place environmental stimulus, resulting in anger and a desire to change or avoid this misplaced jolliness. Someone shouts ‘bah’ at you, and you respond with a ‘humbug’.

A load of Christmas balls. By Calle Eklund/V-wolf (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

In keeping with the view of anger as evolved survival mechanism, which is now being applied to novel social and cultural situations, researchers such as Garrity and Cunningham have argued that annoyance is the emotional version of a withdrawal reflex. In the same way that a fly responds to a noxious stimulus by trying to avoid or move away from it, humans experience an emotion in response to a potentially ‘damaging’ situation, with this annoyance acting as a motivation or signal to withdraw from or stop the experience. This hints that for something to be annoying, some aspect of it must defy expectations. A large part of what the human brain does is to identify and seek predictable patterns. In fact, it (you) often recognises patterns where none exist. Where an environmental stimulus does not fit a pattern (I’m not normally covered in bees), it demands attention and depending on the nature of the stimulus should be avoided or stopped. As such, for a situation or behaviour to be considered annoying, it likely has three qualities: unpredictability, of uncertain duration, and experienced as unpleasant.

Moreover, behaviours that could potentially cause annoyance have been categorised into four groups of ‘social allergens’ based on how intentional they are and how specifically they are aimed at the person experiencing annoyance. These don’t necessarily explain why behaviours are annoying, but do allow some more precise description of annoying situations. The four groups of social allergens include:

• Uncouth actions/impolite personal habits (unintentional and undirected) – the person on the bus picking their nose and sticking the nasal treasure to the window
• Inconsiderate activities (unintentional and directed) – the person who was supposed to meet you on the bus, but is late
• Rule breaking (intentional and undirected) – the person smoking on the bus
• Intrusive behaviours (intentional and directed) – Katie Hopkins telling you her opinions on the bus

Look, glitter! Buy stuff! By Iamraincrystal (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Which social allergen could an early Christmas be categorised as? There are several reasons people give for finding the early celebration of Christmas annoying. Many feel that the extended displays of Christmas behaviour are a sign of increasing commercialisation of the holiday, which is annoying in itself, and argue that this encroaches on family- and religious-based reasons for festivity. Additionally, a reasonable proportion of complaints against earlier Christmas relate to a dislike of emotional manipulation that they feel is being directed towards them by companies, organisations and saccharine relatives. In related reasons, some people argue that having the Christmas period start earlier and take place over a longer period of time dilutes and removes the specialness. Others state that having Christmas ‘start’ earlier is against the traditions associated with Christmas. The behaviours can be considered intentional in that retailers mean to be putting out their stock and decorations (they didn’t sneeze and accidentally spray tinsel everywhere). The level of direction is debatable. Christmas stock is basically aimed at everyone without being targeted at individuals and as such is fairly undirected. However, Christmas advertisements and items tend to have demographics they are aimed at giving them a modicum of direction. Overall we can classify the annoyance of early Christmas as an example of rule breaking and as an intrusive behaviour.

In summary, it would seem that psychologically, early Christmas can be classified as an intrusive behaviour and as an example of rule breaking. People experience this as an unpleasant collection of environmental stimuli that they weren’t predicting to occur yet and don’t know how long will last. Annoyance is then experienced as a mild form of anger to mobilise physiological and psychological resources for the avoidance of these stimuli.

The cingulate cortex is a part of the limbic system which has generally been associated with the formation and processing of emotions, learning and memories. MRI studies suggest that the cingulate cortex is involved with annoyance, noting a positive correlation between blood flow to this area of the brain and the level of irritation. Other brain areas implicated in the feeling of annoyance are the hippocampus (consolidating memories of annoyance with early Christmas from short- to long-term) and the amygdala (forming and retaining emotional memories of how annoying early Christmas is). However, the list of emotions and functions these brain areas have been associated with isn’t getting any shorter (I checked it twice), so any understanding of a neurological basis for annoyance with early Christmas is basically non-existent. While it can be helpful to know that theories can be applied to a wider range of relevant phenomenon, there’s no evidence for any of this with regards to why early Christmas is annoying and research probably isn’t forthcoming. This means this entire article is basically a Just So story (or Just Ho Ho Ho story if you prefer). How annoying.

Sources of bias

Stigma and mental health: a one-sided conversation

A man diagnosed as suffering from melancholia with strong suicidal tendencies. This is what people thought people with mental illness looked like before they all started looking out of windows with their heads in their hands. 

What is stigma?

Stigma is basically a word for discrimination. Slightly more technically, stigma has been described as a sign of disgrace that is perceived to set a person or group of people apart from others. It’s also a Greek letter, although everyone that uses it in that way is rubbish. Stigma can affect many groups, including people with mental health problems, the elderly, and a third less serious group that I was going to include as a joke, but didn’t because it would increase stigma too much.

The casual use of language stigmatising mental illness is exceedingly common. If you’re a bit angry you might be described as mental or psycho. If you put a book away you might be called obsessive compulsive. Media portrayals reinforce stigma by constantly associating images of violent and homicidal individuals with mental ill health. The Eurovision song contest recently got in on the stigmatising act by parading a person in a Eurovision-themed straitjacket for so called crazy fans and having one of the hosts proclaim “You know what they say – crazy is the new black.” Which is definitely saying like, “Half a cup of thunder makes the bears look at the handbag” and “You don’t have to be crazy to use stigmatising language, but it…oh…I see…I’m sorry.”

Even children’s television seems to have gotten in on the act. A study in the British Journal of Psychiatry found that during just one week’s worth of children’s television, 59 out of 128 programmes contained one or more references to mental illness. Terms like “crazy”, “mad” and “losing your mind” were commonly used to portray that a character was losing control. Six characters were identified as consistently shown to have a mental illness. These characters were almost totally devoid of positive characteristics. Luckily, children aren’t impressionable and don’t learn or pick up attitudes easily.

Does it really matter if people are offended?

In the great scheme of things, not really. Overall, it’s probably not good to upset people, although that largely depends on context. If you’re using abusive language and someone says your awful because of you’re abusive language and this upsets you, then you’re upset doesn’t matter a Katie Hopkin’s opinions worth. If someone with severe anxiety is offended because you’ve told them to “stop worrying”, then that does matter. You’re belittling a potential illness, and ignoring and heightening their distress. We’ll deal with these cases of offence on a case by case basis until we’ve Gervaised the lot of them.

I really wouldn’t recommend searching for “prejudice” in order to find images for your blog post.

However, this isn’t really about people being offended. It’s about the harm that can be caused by language and attitudes. Stigmatising attitudes towards people experiencing mental illness are responsible for substantial additional distress, as well as reduced employment and social opportunities. In addition, stigma can lead to hate crimes, a decreased ability to access appropriate healthcare and reluctance to seek appropriate help (if that help is even available). In fact, the stigma surrounding mental illness has been identified as the primary barrier to providing mental health care and the delivery of treatment. It turns out that if large portions of society hold negative beliefs about a group that aren’t necessarily true, then that group suffers.

So I’m banned from using certain words?

Not at all, but it would be nice if you thought about what you were saying and the impact it might have. Unsurprisingly in a matter involving language and society, there’s a lot of nuance involved. If I privately say “my cat is going bananas” while my cat does something adorable like climbing up the curtains or becoming non-fictional, then I’m probably not doing any harm. If I loudly proclaim to a crowd that another person who is shouting “has gone schizo” then that’s another matter. I don’t know who’s listening, who might be upset and who might avoid social situations or potentially getting help to avoid similar judgement. If you don’t believe in the potential impact of your words in this setting, perhaps you should look at the research, or at least have more confidence in yourself. You can make a difference!

Well, what other words can I use?

I’m pretty sure there are quite a few words that aren’t stigmatising towards people with mental health problems. There’s probably a word for that situation. I’ll check the dictionary. Anyway, a bit of variety in your insults will make you look more intelligent, which is always nice.

A good source of awful words.

Why are people so thin skinned?

It’s not really about being offended (as discussed previously), but if we’re talking about people with certain diagnoses then there is evidence that negative terms can have greater impact than in people without those diagnoses. For example, much research has shown that people with clinical depression have what’s called a negative cognitive style. That is to say they’re much more likely to focus on or attend to the negative aspects of any personal experience and to an extent may be unable to focus on positive or neutral aspects. Conversely, other studies claim that this tendency differs across individuals with the depression with some people focusing on negative information, while others pay equal attention to negative and positive information but remember negative information more efficiently than those without depression. Either way, telling someone with this problem to just ignore the bad stuff isn’t helpful. Like telling someone with their foot caught in a bear trap to just walk it off.

I have a mental illness and it doesn’t affect me like that!

That’s good. However, there are other people who it does affect.

Isn’t this just being pedantic about language?

“Just”?!

But you got several phrases regarding mental health wrong!

Probably, and I apologise for that. I daresay I’ll do it again, but I’ll try and do better. Which is hopefully what we’re all trying to do. Not you though. You’re perfect. You’re hair is particularly good.

In fact, a bigger problem is that throughout this post I’ve essentially referred to people with mental illness as a homogenous group. This obviously isn’t true, just as it wouldn’t be for any large group of people. It also potentially marks a large proportion of the population (1 in 4 is often bandied about, although I can’t find a good reference for that figure) as an outgroup. I certainly don’t want to do that, and a large part of reducing stigma should probably be in getting people to consider that the group they’re stigmatising contains as much variety in personality as any group they consider themselves a member of, that that group contains people just as capable of experiencing harm as they are (more so in some cases) and that their words have the power to impact real-world events. Easy done.

Are you finished yet?

Yes.

 

Image credits: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org A man diagnosed as suffering from melancholia with strong suicidal tendency. Lithograph, 1892, after a drawing by Alexander Johnston, 1837, for Sir Alexander Morison. 1837-1892 By: Alexander Johnstonafter: Alexander Morison and Byrom BramwellPublished: [1892]

By Ilja.mos – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46665757

 

How bad is Stormtrooper aim exactly?

A Stormtrooper gun. It’s possible they don’t know what these are for. Photo by Roy Kabanlit.

For some unknown reason, I’ve been thinking a lot about Star Wars recently. Going forward, I’ll assume you’ll be familiar with the events and characters of at least the first six films. If not, what have you been doing? Living in a recent, recent time in a galaxy that’s very close to here? Broadly speaking, this post inevitably contains minor spoilers for Episodes II−VI of the Star Wars films. If you haven’t seen them, inexplicably want to find out about Stormtrooper aim and don’t mind knowing some plot details, then feel free to read on.

There are some characteristics of characters or groups of characters within the Star Wars register that are widely held to be fact. This may be despite them not being explicitly stated within the films. Red lightsabers are for the evil, Jar Jar Binks is rubbish and Stormtroopers have worse aim than a urinating drunk man in a vibrating chair trying to hit a toilet located on The A-Team van.

Can Stormtroopers really be that bad at shooting? There is an assumption that the Empire want effective troops to maintain their evil hold of the galaxy. Surely they get some training in marksmanship rather than signing up, being given armour that doesn’t even protect against Ewoks (weirdly, the autocorrect on my phone turns ‘Ewoks’ to ‘useless’) and told to, “go forth and do bad stuff.” In fact, Obi Wan Kenobi in Episode IV: A New Hope comments, “only Imperial Stormtroopers are this precise” when examining some blast marks on a massive used droid dealership tank. So Stormtroopers have a reputation in the Star Wars galaxy for good aim. There are a number of explanations for this:

• Stormtroopers have good aim compared to everyone else, who is really awful (maybe the Star Wars galaxy is windy, wobbly or makes everyone slightly drunk for reasons)
• Stormtroopers do have rubbish aim, but are good at marketing (history may contain examples where propaganda has been used by states with less than altruistic intentions)
• Stormtroopers do have rubbish aim, but everyone is concerned about their self-esteem and tells them otherwise
• Stormtroopers normally have good aim, but during the events of the Star Wars films develop bad aim; almost as if the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy has informed its troops that they should imagine themselves as antagonists in a series of films that won’t progress very far if the protagonists keep getting shot

Seems about right. Photo by The Conmunity – Pop Culture Geek from Los Angeles, CA, USA.

Why would Stormtroopers’ aim be so bad? Is it their tools? This seems unlikely given that non-Stormtroopers steal Stormtrooper weapons and seem to have no issue with shot accuracy or a gaining a reputation for terrible aim. Perhaps their helmets obscure their vision and make aiming difficult. Possibly, but the Stormtrooper helmet eye holes don’t appear to be any smaller than human spectacles, which can’t be said to obscure vision. Not if they’re doing their job. They are tinted though, which may make aiming difficult when in badly lit conditions and make Stormtroopers look like posers when wearing their helmets indoors.

Perhaps Stormtroopers are just human. In spite of the impression given to us by world events, it is actually quite difficult to get one person to actively shoot to kill another person. During World War I, British Lieutenant George Roupell reported that the only way he could get his soldiers to stop firing above their enemies’ heads was to beat them with his sword while ordering them to aim lower. Later reports of Lieutenant Roupell winning a medal for being a slightly charming human being may have been an exaggeration. Similarly in World War II, US Brigadier and army analyst S.L.A. Marshall reported that during battle, only 15−20% of soldiers would actually fire their weapons. This should perhaps be considered sceptically, as later analysis hints that Marshall may have fabricated at least some of his results. A 1986 study by the British Defense Operational Analysis Establishment’s field studies division found that in over 100 19th- and 20th-century battles, the rate of killing was actually much lower than potentially should have been the case given the weapons involved. Some reports from the Vietnam War state that the average US solder fired approximately 50,000 rounds before they hit their target.

Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman claims that psychologically this is a result of soldiers choosing to posture (falsely display active combat to attempt to intimidate or deter the enemy) rather than fight, flee or submit to the enemy. In this regard, posturing is chosen as the least costly (psychologically, socially and physically) of the four possible options available to a soldier in combat. In terms of Star Wars, we know that the Empire is not adverse to a bit of posturing with their giant shooty snow dinosaurs, Nazi-chic uniforms and ‘tis no moon space stations. Perhaps the legendary terrible aim of the Stormtroopers is simply due to a human tendency to try and look scary rather than murder another individual. Should they be renamed as ScaryLookingHugtroopers?

To even start to get an answer to this we need to at least get some idea of the accuracy of Stormtrooper aim. Luckily, counting exists and can be used get numbers for percentage purposes. In order to calculate the Stormtrooper hit rate, the number of shots fired by Stormtroopers in Star Wars Episodes II-VI (the ones with Stormtroopers and that aren’t currently in cinemas) was counted. The number of times that the Stormtroopers hit what they were aiming at was also counted.

Let the Wookie in. Photo by William Tung from USA (SWCA – A Stormtrooper and Chewie) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Stormtroopers were identified as such by their armour. Han Solo and Luke Skywalker were not counted as Stormtroopers when they were wearing said armour as a disguise. The Stormtroopers wearing the special armour in Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (the ones dress as Arctic pepper pots) and in Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (the ones with helmets like sad bulldogs) were counted as Stormtroopers. A hit was counted as such when a Stormtrooper launched or fired a projectile that hit what the Stormtrooper was judged to be aiming at. A miss was defined as when that stuff happened but the projectile didn’t hit the target. When the final resting place of a projectile was not seen on screen, it was presumed to be a miss, unless there was some kind of sound effect that hinted otherwise (like a character saying, “Ouch, this laser wound is relatively painful”). Only shots fired from hand weapons were counted. Shots fired from vehicles were not counted as some sort of computer-aided guidance may have been used. We know they have that and that’s it’s not as good as trusting your feelings when you’re a bit forcey.

It should be noted that the resulting Stormtrooper accuracy ratings will be rough estimates only. It’s quite difficult to count shots fired in the reasonably frenetic action scenes of these films and it is likely that the number of shots fired here is an underestimate. Also it’s not real and this may be a waste of time.

Table 1 illustrates the accuracy of Stormtrooper aim for each of the films and the overall Stormtrooper shot accuracy rate across all of the films. Stormtrooper aim appears to be most accurate (37.4%) in Episode III and least accurate in Episode IV. Otherwise Stormtrooper accuracy is reasonably consistent at around 7% across the other episodes with an overall accuracy of 9.8% calculated across all of the films. Of note is that Episode III is the only film where Stormtroopers can feasibly be argued to be on the side of good. It would seem that it’s being evil that’s bad for your shooting accuracy.

Table 1: Stormtrooper shot accuracy in the Star Wars films.

However, many have noted that during the events on the Death Star in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, the plan was to let Princess Leia and company escape so that the Empire could locate the Rebels’ headquarters and blow it up along with the planet they were on. The Empire is apparently not that concerned about conservation. Or about killing lots of people. As such, it is likely that the Stormtroopers firing on the protagonists had been ordered not to kill their escaping prisoners. This may change the accuracy rate for this film as we suddenly have to count every miss in these sequences as a hit. So the space abacus (calculator) was broken out again and the Stormtrooper shot accuracy rate for Episode IV and the overall Stormtrooper shot accuracy was recalculated. Table 2 shows these new figures.

Table 2: Stormtrooper shot accuracy in the Star Wars films (assuming they were aiming to miss during those bits on the Death Star in Episode IV).

Suddenly, the accuracy of Stormtroopers doesn’t look so bad. In order to determine if this is the case, it is necessary to compare these rates with others. Ideally, this would be with other accuracy rates from the Star Wars films (probably not Greedo’s) in order to remove any confounding windy, wobbly drunken influences that the Star Wars galaxy might have. I didn’t do this for reasons of time, illness, difficulty and laziness. However, we do have some shot accuracy rates from our galaxy. These are shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Comparison of Stormtrooper shot accuracy with real-world examples.

We can see here that Stormtroopers don’t fair too terribly, with greater shot accuracy than archerfish and the average US soldier (aiming at a human-sized target) at 300 metres, but lower shot accuracy than a US sniper at 600 metres. So Stormtrooper aim suddenly doesn’t seem so bad. In terms of accuracy. Their aim is obviously “bad”. They tried to shoot Chewbacca!

If we discount the US sniper (unfair to compare to a trained specialist with more time and calibrated equipment) and the archerfish (a fish which spits water at land-insects in order to eat them and which is rarely found in conditions of modern warfare) the Stormtrooper is four-times more accurate than our only remaining comparator, the average US soldier aiming at a human-sized target from 300 metres. If we accept that reduced soldier accuracy is due to posturing in favour of other combat choices, it suddenly seems that Stormtroopers are choosing to fight rather than flee, posture or submit. This makes Stormtroopers seem less human and more terrifying. Fitting soldiers for the Dark Side indeed and certainly not deserving of their reputation for inaccuracy! Unless they didn’t read the Death Star memo. Then, they’re just average.

 

 

Shocking evidence of stereotyping in Mr Men and Little Miss

I have very occasionally been asked the question, “Why are all Mr Men good and all Little Miss bad?” I’m sure this was meant to be rhetorical, with the underlying assumption that all Mr Men are good and all Little Miss are bad, but my admittedly limited recall was not in agreement with this statement. I was sure Little Miss Sunshine existed for start and unless exposure to her was the cause of skin disease, I didn’t remember her being bad as such. I also remembered Mr Uppity, a wealthy character who was rude to everyone and could potentially run for parliament as a member of the Conservative party. I don’t think he could be considered good per se.

For those who are unaware, the Mr Men and Little Miss are a series of semi-popular children books, originally written by Roger Hargreaves, which took shapes, gave them faces and one bit of a personality and asked us to enjoy ourselves by judging their actions. Luckily, their popularity meant other people had heard of these Euclidian protagonists. When I asked others about the Mr Men/Little Miss morality divide, the general response was not that Mr Men were good and Little Miss were bad, but that the characters as a group were sexist. It was generally felt that the characters conformed to harmful gender stereotypes. This is certainly understandable. For a start they all live in Misterland. The place they live in is actually named just after the males of the population. It’s like if the countries were called Manada, Mance or Oman. Which is obviously ridiculous. Secondly, the female characters’, the Little Miss’, creation began in 1981, much later than the Mr Men, whose creation began in 1971. I don’t know the actual reasoning behind this, but it does somewhat make the Little Miss seem like an afterthought. Finally (for this list, by no means for all reasons why Mr Men/Little Miss might be sexist) why don’t the Little Miss follow the same naming convention as the Mr Men? Why aren’t they the Ms Women? Or something better? “Little Miss” seems a little demeaning, like describing something that’s demeaning as “a little demeaning.”

They’re jeans! They’re all essentially the same. Just like people. Depth!   “Clothing Rack of Jeans” by Peter Griffin – Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

There is very little reason to even divide the characters based on binary gender. If they were real people, we could say that they each identify with a gender or different aspects of genders i.e. they all have different traits as people, and that would be fine. Except that these are characters which have been assigned a traditional gender and a specific characteristic. We don’t know how this decision is made other than the gendered title is not based on primary or secondary sexual characteristics. There’s nothing specific about the characters that even make them stereotypically male or female other than their names. They’re all just shapes with personalities. Technically I suppose this is true for most people.

So far these are all opinions based on perceptions. Perceptions, psychologically speaking, are prone to an enormous amount of bias. For example, Distinction Bias, where there is a tendency when considering two things to see them as more dissimilar when evaluating them at the same time than when evaluating them separately. Like when comparing different pairs of jeans in a shop and tiny differences are magnified, but really they’re all incredibly similar because they’re just blue trousers for crying out loud! Or potentially when comparing Mr Men and Little Miss. Or there’s Trait Ascription Bias; where individuals consider themselves to be variable in terms of behaviour and mood, while considering others to be much more consistent and predictable. To be fair, this may be understandable when it comes to the Mr Men and Little Miss. Our judgement on the relative goodness of Mr Men and Little Miss may therefore be influenced by such bias. Can the morality of these shapely (literally) populations be objectively examined?

Each book in the original Mr. Men and Little Miss series introduced a different title character with a single dominant personality to convey a moral lesson. The dominant personality trait was also their name. Luckily this is not how humans or Piers Morgan are named. To examine whether the Mr Men and Little Miss are separated by some sort of weird moral judgement, it should therefore be relatively easy to use their names to observe if there are any trends.

The populations of Mr Men (n=50) and Little Miss (n=37) were examined. Based on their names alone, each character was assigned a moral weighting of good, bad or neutral. For example, Little Miss Brainy was considered good, Mr Greedy was considered bad and Mr Bounce was considered neutral. These decisions were just made by me, which will almost certainly introduce a source of bias towards my own values, determined by upbringing, culture, socialisation and so on, regarding what’s good, bad and neutral. I could have attempted to correct this by hiring a suitably varied team of Hargreaves-trained research assistants and averaging their judgements, but I haven’t the money, time, inclination or money.

The proportion of the total population for each moral assignation was then calculated. No further statistical tests were performed to compare the two populations, as the numbers involved weren’t large enough to make these comparisons meaningful. Any differences observed can therefore be considered trends or as a real statistician might technically call them, “nonsense.”

As Figure 1 illustrates, contrary to what was originally proposed, there were fewer good (18 vs. 24%) and more bad (48% vs. 38%) Mr Men compared with Little Miss. So it would seem that generally Mr Men are (a bit) morally worse than Little Miss.

Figure 1. Moral Proportions of the Populations of Mr Men and Little Miss.

However, we know that what is considered morally good or bad changes over time. For example, it was formerly considered a moral failing to be left handed. This attitude is now agreed to be a bit sinister.  Previously there was a lot of public judgement as to the type of clothing women should wear. Nowadays, this is also done on social media. There may be one or two other examples in history. Perhaps the moral association of the Mr Men and Little Miss has also changed with time. To examine this, the populations of Mr Men and Little Miss were divided into new and old characters based on whether the book featuring them was published before or after 1990. This year was selected as a fairly natural cut-off as in 1988, Roger Hargreaves unfortunately died and his son, Adam, began writing and illustrating new stories and characters.

Figure 2. Moral Proportions of the Populations of Old and New Mr Men and Little Miss.

 

Figure 2 illustrates that there are fewer good (10% vs. 24%) and more bad (56% vs. 48%) old Mr Men compared with old Little Miss. It can also be seen that there were fewer good (18% vs. 25%) and more bad (25% vs. 18%) new Mr Men compared with new Little Miss.

From a slightly different perspective we can also see from these data that (numerically at least) there are more good and fewer bad new Mr Men than old Mr Men and approximately the same number of good, but fewer bad new Little Miss than old Little Miss. So it would seem:

• Mr Men have been historically morally worse than Little Miss and continue to be so into the present day

• New Mr Men are morally better than old Mr Men

• New Little Miss are more morally neutral than old Little Miss

Because we’re humans with prejudices and bias, it is easy to interpret these trends in a number of ways. For example, it may be argued that it displays the prejudice of the the Mr Men and Little Miss book series, with the Mr Men being allowed more complex characters and the Little Miss, where they have moral character at all, being relegated to the old “good, sweet and innocent” stereotype. Sugar and spice and all things nice, that’s what little female polygons are made of. Without looking in greater detail at the actual traits assigned, it is difficult if not impossible to say what this may reveal; if there is any stereotyping present or if these trends are simply random.

It could be argued that rather than morals changing over time, these data show the change in morals between Roger and Adam Hargreaves. I don’t know either of them, so can’t really say anything in that regard, but I do know that books are rarely just produced by one person on their own and the differences will at least reflect the views of two teams.

Judgement across gender stereotyping is obviously more complicated than a seemingly simple good versus bad dichotomy. The idea of gender as a binary concept is laden with all sorts of complex and subtle stereotypes and comparisons. It may be possible to broadly determine if there are any obvious stereotypical comparisons by matching the names within the Mr. Men and Little Miss populations to see if they conform to any traditional gender roles.

To examine the roles of the Mr Men and Little Miss, the populations were examined to see if their names could be paired with a counterpart with the same meaning e.g. Mr. Birthday and Little Miss Birthday, with a counterpart with the opposite meaning e.g. Mr Messy and Little Miss Tidy, or if there was no counterpart e.g. Mr. Moustache. Where pairs were available, the moral weighting (good or bad) and the meaning of the names themselves were compared. Again, it was just me that was checking, so interpretation is potentially based on any prejudice I may have lurking within my poor tired brain.

Table 1. Matched and Opposing Mr Men and Little Miss Characters

From Table 1 we can see that is was relatively more common for Mr Men to be matched with Little Miss than for them to be opposing. We should perhaps be pleased about this meagre hint of equality, although it is perhaps notable that the majority of the matching pairs may be considered bad characteristics.

Where the Mr Men and Little Miss are compared in terms of their opposite character, they seem to be reasonably balanced in terms of which group is good or bad. However, when we look at the actual words associated with the Little Miss (tidy, neat, helpful, scary) and Mr Men (messy, brave, mean) it begins to sound too much like the parents in a sitcom for us to be comfortable about the lack of gender stereotyping. The sitcom where the husband is the silly, humorous idiot and the wife is an attractive, home-based nag. I’m sure you know the one. However, these characters represent only 13% of the total pooled population. This is perhaps too small a proportion with which to judge all of the 2D people.

In summary, we have managed to get a few bits of information by looking at the total population of Mr Men and Little Miss. We know that the population of Mr Men contains more bad characters than the population of Little Miss and this is also the case historically. Pretty much just like with humans. We also know that stereotyping is likely present in this population, but we can’t say more without cooperation between more people. Pretty much just like with humans. Finally, we know that gender and how it can be used to stereotype is a complex issue (even the word gender means different things to different individuals) and that there is a lot of thought needed to advance many issues in this field. Pretty much just like with shapes with personalities.

 

The Interpretation of Dreams: The Musical

What about this guy doesn’t say “musical” to you

The curtains go up. The Interpretation of Dreams, the first version of which was published in November 1899 by Dr Sigmund Freud, is considered to be a landmark in the development of modern psychoanalysis. In fact whatever your opinion of psychoanalysis is made up of, from the mid-1890s onwards, Freud’s life basically is the history of the development of psychoanalysis. In fact, Freud’s autobiography concentrates almost entirely on the development of psychoanalysis with very little mention of his personal life. In 1885 he wrote to his fiancé, stating that he had destroyed many of his notes, documents and manuscripts, adding that he had no wish to make life easy for his future biographers. Freud and a camel then toured the world in a space ship shaped like a bee.

Freud’s theory of dreams still holds some influence, although largely dreams are currently more likely to be thought of in terms of information processing. The word “dream” is also used as a form of verbal punctuation by TV talent show contestants. A large problem is that many of Freud’s theories regarding dreams are simply not testable. The book itself consists largely of Freud stating a part of his theory, describing an example dream in a way which he says illustrates that part of the theory and then shouting “Proved!” If you hold any copy of The Interpretation of Dreams to your ear you can hear a good number of modern research psychologists weeping. Librarians too, but that’s probably just because you’ve got ear wax on one of their books.

Regardless, Freud did believe in the application of the scientific method and perhaps it’s important to recognise that it was Freud who set up the dream as a phenomenon worthy of scientific study and if we’re being generous, the idea that many mental processes could be assessed scientifically. So that’s something to think about and then study the processing of thinking about it because you can.

In a previous blog post I asked if the theory of evolution is so good that it can’t be improved by singing. Musical theatre is a very popular art form that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance to communicate a story and its emotional content. Many in the field of science communication might argue that adding these sorts of layers to the communication of science, particularly the emotional content, improves the efficacy of communication, ultimately promoting enthusiasm and a desire for more science learning. They might even say that they fucking love expressing this enthusiasm for some of the content of scientific findings. As has been hinted, Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams attempts to describe a scientific model by levering a concept onto examples he picked himself, which is far from ideal and shouldn’t be attempted. So can the musical format improve what scientific content there is in The Interpretation of Dreams?

No, obviously not. It’s just a gimmick for describing an influential book by an influential doctor, which is worth reading for historical interest, for an understanding of the foundations of modern psychoanalysis, and because in Freud had an excellent literary style. So, without further suppression, let me introduce The Interpretation of Dreams: The Musical!

R.E.M: the obvious link between sleep, dreaming and musi… oh nevermind!

Introductory Remarks

The introduction establishes that Freud believed the interpretation of dreams could be accomplished within neuropathology and that he intended to use his own dreams and those of some of his patients to illustrate his theories.

Song: Brain Dream Rereader

Cheer up, Sleepy Freud
I’ll tell you what dreams mean
To a brain dream rereader
Though I can’t keep it clean

Preface to the Third Edition

Freud said that he still thought his theories were pretty good despite needing a new edition less than a year since the last one, but that he had since attached greater value to symbolism in dreams interpretation.

Song: Rewrite My Idea

Rewrite my idea, expand my theory’s my only desire
Rewrite my idea, symbols show your love
Rewrite my idea, expand my theory’s my only desire
Rewrite my idea symbols show, symbols show, your love, (what to shove!)

I. The Scientific Literature on the Problems of the Dream

Freud states he’s going to show that the interpretation of dreams is a legitimate psychological technique and that by analysing dreams in this way, important processes occurring in the waking mind are revealed. He also argued he was going to show why sometimes dreams are a bit weird and what mental forces produce and shape dreams. Previous writings by people who aren’t Freud are mentioned.

Song: Let’s Get Ready to Analyse

Let’s get ready to analyse
Let’s get ready to analyse

Just a chrysanthe mum.

Let’s get, let’s get, let’s get
Ready, ready
Let’s get ready, ready
Let’s get ready, ready
Let’s get ready to analyse

Straight up science
A symbolic triumph
It’s a literal appliance
It ain’t no hype!

Watch us expert cite
Watch us expert cite
Psyche!

II. Method of Dream Interpretation: The Analysis of the Sample Dream

It is argued that dreams have hidden meanings that are substitutes for other thought processes and that this meaning can be revealed by looking at parts of the content of the dream separately rather than analysing the dream has a whole.

Song: The Snoop Snoop Song (It’s in the Dream)

What do you wish?
I wanna know!
What’s the info in your frontal lobes?

(Is it in the eyes?)
Oh no! That’s cataracts!
(Is it between the thighs?)
Oh no! Please have some tact!
It’s only sciencish
But if you need the wish
It’s in the dream!
(If you look at the bits!)

III. The Dream is the Fulfilment of a Wish

Freud states that dreams always represent the fulfilment of a wish of the person having the dream. He gives the example of a woman who had dreamed her periods had stopped and states that this was a “clever way of giving notice of her first pregnancy” and that the wish fulfilment was her wanting to enjoy her freedom before motherhood began. So forget those pregnancy tests! It also contains the following incredible sentence;
“The dreams of little children are simple fulfilments of wishes, and as compared, therefore, with the dreams of adults, are not at all interesting.”

Just a banana.

Song: Ring of Desire

Dreams, can be seen as deep
And they happen, in REM sleep
Psychoanalysts enquire
To reveal your hidden desires

Dreams reveal your hidden desires
And you’ll frown, frown, frown at the therapist you hired
But you’ll learn, learn, learn
Your hidden desires, your hidden desire

IV. Distortion in Dreams

Freud argues that even painful, fearful or indifferent dreams are examples of wish fulfilment, just better disguised wish fulfilment. The reason for this disguise is that the person doesn’t like that they have that wish and so it’s not expressed properly in the dream.

Song: Don’t worry (About a Dream)

Don’t worry, about a dream
‘Cause every little wish, is revealed at night
Singin’: “Don’t worry, about a dream
Even if that little dream, gives you a fright!”

Rise up this mornin’
Frowned at the risin’ sun
Had a nightmare
Dreamt I was falling
But Freud’s theory
Said my fear was undue
Sayin’, (“Dreams are sex wishes by you-ou-ou”)

V. The Material and Sources of Dreams

This chapter states that the content of a night’s dreams comes from the events of the preceding day, but can come from events at any time in the person’s life if something connected to those events has occurred that day. So basically they can come from any event in your life. Freud also states that there are no series of associations in dreams which cannot be adapted to the representation of sexual facts. Will he get away with that?

Song: The Batman Theme

Penis Penis Penis Penis
Penis Penis Penis Penis
Batman!

VI. The Dream-Work

Freud describes the mental processes (dream-work) by which the contents of the dream are rendered less disturbing to the individual. I don’t know if that’s why the company that made Kung Fu Panda is called that. These processes include condensation (the fusing of ideas into a single image), displacement (disturbing idea replaced with a connected but less disturbing idea), representation (thoughts are converted to visual images) and symbolisation (neutral objects stand for aspects of the person’s sexual life they’d prefer not to recognise or would rather keep mum about).

Just a lighthouse.

Song: Dream-Workin’ Night to Night

Dream-workin’ night to night,
What a way to make a symbol
Makes a tunnel rude
It all seems fairly simple
You just use your mind
And let your deep subconscious edit
It’s enough to womb you penis
If you let it

 

VII. The Psychology of Dream Activities

Freud tries to explain certain phenomenon associated with dreams. For example explaining why people forget their dreams by saying that they don’t really forget them and even if they remember them incorrectly, important information is still obtained. Apparently not an excuse they’ll accept when you’re taking exams.

Song: It’s the End of The Dream as We Know it (And I Can’t Remember It)

That’s great, it starts with a something, nurr nurr nurr aeroplane,
Something, Something… Chorus!

It’s the end of the dream as we know it
It’s the end of the dream as we know it
It’s the end of the dream as we know it, I shouldn’t have had wine

The curtain closes while the Freud dancers smoke cigars in a cave.

Comedians Are Not Psychotic

Comedy mask outside a theatre. There’s also a tragedy one. This isn’t proof of anything sciencey.

“Successful comedians display symptoms of psychosis, study says” went the headline. “Psychotic traits in comedians” said the title of the study the headline was referring to. “Bang” went the foreheads meeting the desks of many psychologists, psychiatrists and humans who’d thought for five seconds about what this headline could do for science, psychology, psychiatry and mental illness stigma.

The scientific study, which in this case is apparently Latin for “press release based on a journal article”, states that the popular belief that creativity is related to mental illness is borne out in comedians, who showed higher levels of psychotic traits than actors, who both showed higher levels of psychotic traits than “normal” people. The word normal was the article’s rather than mine as obviously actors and comedians (and by association people with traits of mental illness [?!]) aren’t “normal”. At least the authors are thematically consistent with their description of their research methods and their conclusions.

Is this what the research really suggests though? Spoiler alert 1: Bananas release an enzyme that causes other fruit to go off quicker so keep them separately. Spoiler alert 2: No. No, this isn’t what the research really suggests. This isn’t going to be a painstaking dissection of the research. This isn’t the place for that kind of analysis, the research isn’t particularly hard to critique and I’ve got important slamming my hand in a car door to do. This will be a brief look at how the headline changes as we look at the research and what can be inferred from it.

The authors claim that humour often involves the ability to compare normally incongruous frames of reference. For example chickens don’t normally have complicated reasons to cross roads, elephants shouldn’t be wearing Grouch Marx’s pyjamas, Michael Gove is somehow a politician in a position of power. Thinking in people with schizophrenia is often characterised by disorganisation of thought and speech containing ideas that are not logically connected or “word” salad in one of its more extreme forms. In a leap worthy of when Indiana Jones walks across that canyon to get that magic cup, it’s then argued that because humour can involve comparing disconnected ideas and schizophrenia can involve disconnected ideas that comedians are therefore more “psychotic” than people who aren’t comedians. They chose poorly.

Obviously not all comedians have mental distress indicative of schizophrenia of another mental illness. This is where the O-LIFE Personality Scale comes in. As well as being a song by Des’ree, the O-LIFE (Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences) Personality Scale is a measure developed from the idea that symptoms/characteristics of mental illness exist on a spectrum and therefore traits which may predispose individuals to schizophrenia can be identified in non-clinical populations. In other words it looks for traits that everybody has that aren’t symptoms of mental illness but potentially would be if they were substantially exaggerated. It’s a bit like saying that people who really think dusting is important could have obsessive compulsive disorder if this trait were amplified.

A vacuum. Science hates these.

New headline 1: Professional cleaners display symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder.

New headline 2: Successful comedians don’t display symptoms of psychosis but would do if the traits they possessed were very much exaggerated. You know, like with most people.

The O-LIFE questionnaire through getting you to answer YES/NO questions on around 160 questions (versions vary) gives you a rating in four different personality traits, identified as aspects of schizophrenia (or as the study more broadly calls it, psychosis. The two are not the same, but that’s an argument for another time.)

• Unusual Experiences: tendency for magical thinking and to experience perceptual distortions.

“I believe in telepathy and sometimes think I hear people telling me telepathy isn’t real.”

• Cognitive Disorganisation: distractibility and difficulty focussing.

“I never listen to them though because….oooh biscuits!”

• Introvertive Anhedonia: reduced ability to feel social and physical pleasure.

“I wish to be alone to eat my biscuits. Your presence makes me uncomfortable.”

• Compulsive Nonconformity: tendency to impulsive, potentially antisocial behaviour.

*Punches potential biscuit thief. Wanders of to watch Derek Acorah for 2 minutes.*

In terms of the O-LIFE (Ooooooh life! Oh life, doo do do doo) questionnaire, the higher your rating in these four areas, the more you possess traits related to psychosis. I’d rather have a piece of toast.

The study asked online for people from online comedian agencies, comedy clubs, comedian associations and comedian societies mainly in the UK, USA and

Australia who said they were comedians to complete the O-LIFE questionnaire.

New headline 3: People on the internet who say they are comedians might have traits similar to psychosis if the traits they said they had online were exaggerated.

“Actors” were recruited in a similar way through acting agencies, clubs and so forth. The sample of people saying they were comedians consisted of 523 individuals (404 men and 119 women) The control sample consisted of 364 people saying they were actors (153 men and 211 women) and the “normal” control group consisted of 831 people (246 men and 585 women). It should be noted at this point that there is clearly a big discrepancy between how many men and women are in each group and the men and women studied were different in terms of O-LIFE personality traits in the comedian, actor and control group. However they did their statistics all up in it and there was no interaction between sex and being a comedian that affected O-LIFE score so this potentially massive confounding variable gets ignored. Do men who claim to be comedians rate their own personalities differently to women who don’t? We’ll never know.

We do know.

New headline 4: More men than women say they’re comedians and also rate their own personalities differently. Information is used unwisely and incorrectly for jokes and “banter”.

A tragedy mask at a theatre. It’s sad because of badly communicated science.

The much flouted results were that people who say they’re comedians had significantly higher ratings across all four personality traits than people who don’t say they’re comedians. This seemed to particularly be the case for Introvertive Anhedonia and Impulsive Nonconformity. The authors noticed these were opposites and claimed that this means comedians were more likely to have personality traits a bit like bipolar disorder. Spike Milligan was wheeled out which proves it.

New headline 5: Mental illness is common so it’s not that shocking that some comedians have mental illnesses.

The conclusions seem to be that these traits allow comedians to be creative in a way that leads to comedy. It seems reasonably logical to assume that you have to think slightly differently when trying to be funny than when you’re not, and that comedians can identify that they do this kind of thinking more often. Does this mean that comedians have psychotic traits? No. You’ll note that none of these new headlines are particularly good or attention grabbing. Does the headline that comedians have psychotic traits fulfil this function? Yes. Did they get my attention in that manner like some sort of chump?

New Headline 6: People who identify themselves as having a creative profession rate their own personality as having creative traits. Nobody is shocked until they claim it relates to psychosis which it doesn’t. I write about it like a chump.

Women are Funny.

Do not, under any circumstances, Google “funny women” to find an image for your blog post.

When you type the phrase, “women comedians” into Google the second suggestion that appears is “women comedians aren’t funny.”Now I’ve no idea how Google works, probably librarian-trained crows, but this does seem like a worryingly common-place opinion. I have had a discussion fairly recently which involved the other person saying, “But women just aren’t funny” which made me concerned that the person I was talking to had never met or spoken to a woman. And the person I was talking to was a woman! Probably still is.

It’s not up to me to decide what’s funny. What people find humorous, while sharing many commonalities, varies wildly and so does what people say and do in an effort to be funny. Farts! This variation is obviously true of women who much like snowflakes, fingerprints or human beings are all individual and unique. Some women will be funnier on average than other women and funnier on average than some men.  The funniest woman is likely as funny as the funniest man. I don’t even though how you’d reliably judge “funniest”. What unit would it be measured in? MilliMillicans?

It’s not up to me to defend women. They are perfectly capable of defending themselves. Declaring that women simply lack the ability to be funny is odd though. While there are many theories as to what is humorous, one prevalent idea is that laughter comes with incongruity. This theory states that humour is perceived at the moment of realisation of incongruity between a concept and the real thing in relation to that concept. If this were the case (and it certainly seems to be at least some of the time) if you claim that women can’t be funny then you are claiming that women can’t conceive of ideas and situations not matching. This is an ironically difficult notion to conceive of.

Oestrogen and laughter are apparently not contra-indicated.

I’m not especially interested in whether the ideas that women aren’t funny or that women aren’t as funny as men are true or not. They’re blatantly not.  The Funny Women Awards have just celebrated their 11th year with the 2013 winners being duo Twisted Loaf. The Funny Women Awards unlikely to have years where they can’t award anything due to women being unusually mirthless for a select 365 days. There are multiple examples of very funny women including Sarah Pascoe (@sarapascoe), Sarah Millican (@SarahMillican75), Rachel Parris (@iamrachelparris), and Gabby Hutchinson Crouch (@Scriblit). I have purposefully not made this list extensive as I am sure to miss out some excellent individuals and some idiot is bound to sweep a paw across the list and state that “None of dem are funny” as if it were an objective truism rather than a subjective comedic preference.

I’m more interested in considering the arguments people use to justify this opinion and whether they stand up to scrutiny (they won’t). I’m going to use a vague biopsychosocial approach to do this. Not because I think detractors of female comedy, or as it is sometimes known “comedy” do so but because it’s a reasonably simple way to manage the ideas.

Evolution/Biology

Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller (when he wasn’t busy tweeting about students being fat) proposed that human characteristics like humour evolved by sexual selection. Sexual selection: good name for a part of evolutionary theory, bad name for a box of confectionary. He argues that humour (which he states has little survival value) emerged as an indicator of other traits that were of survival value, such as intelligence. On this basis if you argue that women aren’t or can’t be funny you would be arguing that either women can’t use humour to show their intelligence (clearly wrong), that they can but they don’t (clearly wrong because of examples) or that if they did men might not appreciate it (ahem). Women are showing intelligence through humour and people are ignoring it or at worse threatened by it? They would have to be pretty small-minded, insecure people. At this stage you can assume I am giving meaningful looks.

Another evolutionary psychology theory takes a break from copying Rudyard Kipling and argues that, like male deer clashing antlers, humour is produced by males competitively to impress potential mates for breeding. Consistent with this theory is research that females indicate a preference for mates who makes them laugh, whereas males prefer a mate who laughs at their humour.

However the data are not entirely consistent with this view. Most studies find male humour appeals most to other men.  In purely evolutionary terms, if you are in search of a mate to breed with, attracting a bunch of guffaws and their supposed sexual advances from members of the same gender isn’t the best move. Secondarily this theory in no way explains why women can’t do the same thing. If you’re arguing for a theory, it’s not really enough to state that they just don’t. Any attempts by MRI to catch the ovaries strangling jokes before they leave the body have thus far failed. So we’re left with a theory that tries to make humour the exclusive domain of rutting men, but fails like a pleasant look on Piers Morgan’s face.

Psychology

Lee Mack on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs has said fewer women become comedians because they are not so inclined to show-off or be competitive in conversation. Lee Mack stated “I am only quoting other scientific reports on it.  When men sit around together and talk they are very competitive… When you get six women in a room together they share a lot more…and it’s a more interactive. “This idea may have links to the evolutionary theories seen previously.

The concept that men are more likely to do stand-up comedy or just be funny because they are more competitive than women is pervasive. Generally, research into how groups of single and mixed sexes converse agree with what Lee Mack is saying. A sentence I never thought I’d type. But these are just tendencies. Women may be more likely to support each other in conversation, but that doesn’t mean they all do it all the time. They can also be competitive and try to show off. Same goes for men for support and chances are it’s largely context dependent.

These studies investigated conversation and weren’t about being funny and/or a stand-up comedian. Just because a woman is on average more likely not to be competitive in conversation, doesn’t mean she won’t change her style of interaction when “performing” to her friends or performing onstage as a comedian.

It was depressingly difficult to find a picture of a female clown that wasn’t trying to be “sexy”.

Finally and more importantly, competition and showing off doesn’t necessarily equate to funnier. For some reason people who make this argument seem to be focussing on one style of comedy. One-upmanship is fine for some things (human pyramids and so on), but a lot of comedy relies on interaction, support and listening e.g. improvisation, sketch comedy. Stand-up itself doesn’t need to be competitive as such and many a skilled comedian can build a hilarious act through audience interaction and support. Just watch Dara Ó Briain open a show.

Social (and some psychology)

The entertainment industry seems to agree with the idea that women are not or can’t be funny, or at least can’t be as funny as men. One figure tossed around is that only 10% of stand-up comedians are women and it’s relatively rare to see more than one woman on one of the ubiquitous comedy panel shows.  I don’t have the data to argue that many more women want to be or are funny and hard-working enough to be successful stand-up comedians and lack or don’t see the opportunity, but given societal and prevalent psychological bias it seems a likely explanation.

It would seem that across an alarming swathe of society, humour and the production of humour is not valued or even recognised in women.  If you think women aren’t funny and as a result ignore it when they are then what’s the incentive for women to be funny? Lo and behold you fulfil your own bias. Or you try to. if you hold the ridiculous opinion that women aren’t funny and as proof try to point out a non-existent lack of funny women then by your own logic you only have yourself to blame. Luckily there are women who defy this societal bias to produce excellent comedy.

Research shows humorous items are often remembered more successfully, in a phenomenon known as the humour effect. For example in one study (linked to already in these ramblings) related to providing funny captions, the items judged as funnier were remembered better. The analyses also provided evidence for a humour-based retrieval bias.  Individuals of both genders tended to misattribute humorous captions to male writers. This was true both for misremembering captions whose author’s sex the participants knew and for when participants were only guessing the sex of a caption author. So again it’s not that women can’t or aren’t being funny, it’s that due to existing societal bias, when they are you don’t remember or worse, you remember the humour and think it was a man that did it. Again you only have yourself to blame for thinking there are no funny women. “I don’t remember ever doing this!” you might shout. Quite.

The Guff at the Long-Awaited End

Ultimately there appears to be no strong argument that women can’t be funny or aren’t funny or aren’t as funny as men.  If you think there are, then you are contributing to the biased social and psychological forces that contrive give that appearance.  This isn’t surprising and I’m sorry if any of this has come across as patronising.  I don’t think that people who hold that opinion have even though about it that much other than as a subtle impact of prejudice. Then why bother taking-apart the arguments behind women being “not funny” at all? To paraphrase Josh Whedon, “I’ve got a theory, it could be bunnies…”

 

A Bad Case of the Zombies: Could a virus really cause World War Z?

A zombie playing the sousaphone. I wanted one playing the trombone because of the tenuous trombone/bone/zombie connection. Ho hum.

The other day I went to see the film, World War Z. It was fine and thus ends my review of my enjoyment of it. Anyway, the real World War Z will of course be between those who pronounce it “zed” and those who pronounce it “zee”. World War Z is based on the 2006 novel by Max Brooks (a follow-up to his 2003 book, The Zombie Survival Guide). Both books are excellent and if you’re not too bored of zombie-based fiction then you should read them. I say this because there seems to have been a recent upsurge on things about zombies of some kind. The zombies are everywhere, which I suppose is ironic. The film stars Bradley Pitt as a retired United Nations employee who must travel the world to find a way to stop a zombie-like pandemic.

In the film being a zombie (Zombieism? Esprit de corpse? Zombosis?) appears to be caused by a viral infection, primarily caught by being bitten by a zombie. Those who are bitten appear to die within about 30 seconds and then reanimate with slightly cloudy eyes. They then become very aggressive and begin to chase down victims to bite them and spread the infection. They do not appear to eat their victims; rather keep on going just generally being runny and a bit bitey. I say runny as in they run a lot rather than hinting at any advanced state of decomposition. Although eventually the zombies do appear to go a bit rotten.

I accept that all this doesn’t have to be dead-on realistic (ahem) but there are a few problems with the concept. It’s assumed that the mass zombification is caused by a viral pandemic. Yet time from being bitten to turning into a zombie appears to be too rapid for this to be the case. It would take a bit longer for whatever virus it is to circulate, invade cells, hijack their genetic machinery and start producing copies of the virus and manifest symptoms. Especially given that the virus appears to completely take over the host’s central nervous system and musculature while leaving the rest of them deceased. Like a more infectious version of Britain’s Got Talent.

While viruses certainly can be deadly they generally need the thing they’re in to be alive to make more virus and spread them. This might be by sneezing in their co-worker’s face, not washing their hands, licking fruit bowls etc. The zombie virus doesn’t appear to need this. It kills the host and still somehow has them running around. Where is the host’s energy coming from? Could the humans all just hide and wait for the zombies to fall apart? Granted this would make the film quite dull. Nobody wants to watch a film where people eat sandwiches in a bunker waiting for their enemy to decompose. Although Panic Room is OK.

The idea however that an infection can control its host’s behaviour to help its spread is well established in nature. For example, malaria is an infectious disease spread by mosquitoes, caused by one of five species of the Apicomplexan parasite, Plasmodium. Most deaths from malaria are caused by Plasmodium falciparum. It really is an awful disease with the WHO estimating that in 2010 there were 219 million cases of malaria resulting in 660,000 deaths. As I’ve hinted, Plasmodium can change the behaviour of mosquitoes to spread itself faster and wider.

The common Plasmodium Puppet. Also known as the mosquito.

Once in a mosquito, Plasmodium needs time to move to the mosquito’s gut to mate and reproduce to form ookinetes. These are a sort of mobile egg. The story of Plasmodium really ruins Humpty Dumpty. Ookinetes develop into sporozoites (Literally: “animal seed”. Don’t go planting your hamsters though!) and travel to the mosquito’s salivary gland. Prior to this it doesn’t do the Plasmodium much good for the mosquito to bite someone with the risk the mosquito might get killed during the attempt. So Plasmodium tries to alter the mosquito’s behaviour to prevent this. For a mosquito to get your blood it has to drive its proboscis through your skin and find a blood vessel. The longer this takes the greater its chances of being noticed and squashed. Like if McDonalds killed you if you queued too long rather than years later of heart disease. If a mosquito finds it too difficult to draw blood they’ll quickly give up.  A mosquito with ookinetes in it will abandon biting quicker than an uninfected one.

However once the sporozoites reach the mosquito’s mouth, it benefits Plasmodium for the mosquito to bite as much as possible.  The Plasmodium at this stage appears to make the mosquito “hungrier”, causing it to drink more blood and visit more hosts to get it. In these ways and more Plasmodium is manipulating its hosts behaviour to reproduce itself and spread more easily.

Some species of tapeworm live in the three-spined stickleback but also spend part of their lifecycle in the birds that eat these fish. The tapeworms can alter the behaviour of the fish making it more likely they’re caught and eaten. As you’d expect, sticklebacks try to keep away from heron. They stay away from the surface and if a heron appears they dart away. Sticklebacks infected with tapeworm appear to become more fearless, staying near the surface to feed even if a heron is about. These are more likely to be eaten and the tapeworm gets where it wants to go; into the heron.

Similarly, Toxoplasma gondii, a protozoan of “don’t go near the litter tray if you’re pregnant” fame, needs to move between rats and cats and back again to complete its lifecycle.  A healthy, uninfected rat will normally become anxious when it smells cat urine staying away from where they smelled it.  They will literally piss off. Rats infected with Toxoplasma however do not become anxious when they catch the scent of a cat, do not avoid it and increase their chances of becoming dinner.

Toxoplasma also appears to alter the psychology of humans it infects. Men infected with Toxoplasma become less willing to follow rules and less worried about being punished for breaking these rules. Women infected with Toxoplasma become more outgoing. Toxoplasma: the party protozoa! I probably shouldn’t get into marketing. It is not fully known how this occurs although there is some evidence that Toxoplasma increases production of the neurotransmitter dopamine and in males, increases testosterone levels.  It should be noted that this evidence is largely from rats. A lot of evidence is.

Afraid? Are you a man or a mouse? Or are you infected with Toxoplasma?

All of our examples have been parasites, but the infection is World War Z is cited as a virus, which I guess technically can be seen as a parasite. Can a virus alter its host’s behaviour to aid its spread? You bet your hot butter on toast it can! The baculovirus, infects the caterpillars of the European gypsy moth and causes them to climb to the tree-tops. Once there they die and liquefy, releasing thousands of viral particles to rain down and infect more unfortunate caterpillars. In this way Lymantria dispar forces the caterpillar to turn itself into a piñata and explode itself, raining down sweets i.e. a nasty virus, on other unsuspecting future piñata-pillars.

Rabies is another viral disease that manipulates its hosts’ behaviour. Rabies causes acute encephalitis in warm-blooded animals, including humans. More than 55,000 people, mostly in Africa and Asia, die from rabies every year. There are three stages of rabies progression. The first is characterised by behavioural changes and is known as the prodromal stage. The second is the excitative stage. This stage is also known as “furious rabies” as the infected animal is exceptionally aggressive, hyper-reactive and will bite with little provocation. The virus is present in the nerves and saliva and as such the route of infection is usually, but not always, by a bite. With the encephalitis induced aggression and biting, the virus’ manipulation to aid its spread becomes clear. The third stage is the paralytic stage (due to motor neuron damage) which is followed by death.

The excitative stage of rabies is the example we’ve seen that is most similar to our zombie virus and in fact in the film the zombie pandemic (a good name for a band) is initially mistaken for an outbreak of rabies. So could a virus cause the changes seen in World War Z and cause a zombie pandemic with Brad Pitt staring concerned across various international scenes? Probably not, but parasites and viruses can certainly manipulate their hosts behaviour in a variety of subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Although ultimately it might be preferable to have your emotions and behaviour manipulated by watching a film. Panic Room is OK.

Generic Article About Disagreeing With Science With Opinions And Anecdotes.

An angry cat because I am angry and people like cats with facial expressions.

When I first heard about the science in question I was sitting in my pyjamas, hoping that someone would say something that I disagreed with so that I could complain about it in a public forum. I like doing this and it’s a realistic image which makes you believe me and the rest of what I have to say. Someone disagreed with me fairly quickly as what I had chosen to believe about this area of science wasn’t quite right but was commonly researched and talked about. So it wasn’t long before I was casting my pyjamas aside.  After an embarrassing number of minutes stood at a window contemplating what I’m going to assure you is slightly evidenced based fury, I remembered that I didn’t need to cast my pyjamas aside to attempt to write a generic, anecdotal science piece. Don’t worry too much at the evidence though. It’s so “wrong” I’ll treat it as a humorous thing. The things I’m about to say will appeal to a template of certain group that agrees with me for political reasons. In fact really this is an opinion piece masquerading as a science piece but we’ll pretend otherwise so you more readily believe me and less likely to think that I’m pretentious, smug and bitter.

You’ll have heard of the survey, research, inspirational Facebook picture and The Daily Mail article in question because it was on the Twitter and I needed to get my article down quickly before my rage subsided and a desire for accuracy overtook me. What the research pointed out that what I previously believed about this area was science wasn’t quite right. I instantly mistrusted it because of the person that reported it and because of the numbers that they used. I had never heard of the person before which is suspicious to me despite there being quite a few scientists and I have never heard of a large percentage of them. Luckily they are a scientist so I can stereotype them as a typical scientist or point out that they don’t conform to my stereotype of a typical scientist. The numbers used were entirely the wrong sort and had obviously been worn out through all that heartless using them to describe evidence. Luckily a lot of people don’t trust numbers because of complicated counting so I’ll just disregard them or say they mean something else by doing them not quite right. For crying out loud I think I saw a four in there!

I’ve had the stuff that the research is talking about happen to me and to a relative and to a pet of mine so obviously my experience can apply to everyone else. You can tell this because of the story or anecdote that I have which will make you feel one of the emotions. You can then use this to identify me as an authority from experience and agree with me because chances are you’ll know someone with a similar anecdote. Also maybe something to do with the weather.  All science does is take some evidence and analyse it in a way that can statistically be applied to the population or area they studied. This means that it will apply on average but there will be some people or areas it doesn’t apply to and some people or areas it does. Hopefully the stuff it does apply to will be more common than the stuff it doesn’t. This is obviously unreasonable and often involves words like “mean” which can describe something mathematical but can also refer to not being very nice. That fact proves that the scientist saying these things is not being very nice. I am furious with rage that they would say these things about something I’ve misunderstood and about something that doesn’t quite apply to me because of complex circumstances. Why do scientists have to be so median?!

Now it’s time for me to quote some different science which supports my idea. This will be easy because science is complex and the analysis of its results difficult so it’s likely there are some results or some discussion that agrees with me and what I’ve been saying. I can use the science correctly so that if you thought I was misrepresenting it up until now you’ll think “actually that bit is right so maybe the rest of it is”. Then I’ll say, “yes” and you’ll say, “how are you reading the thoughts of a fictional person invented to agree with your increasingly bitter and smug point?” I’ll say something about bacon to show it’s a joke and in a misguided attempt to make people think this is witty. As you can see there is some science that agrees with me. Whether it’s because it agrees with me because it actually does or because I’ve misunderstood or misrepresented a number or a word which means something else in everyday language to its scientific definition I don’t know. You can see it definitely has the flavour of science and therefore makes my overall point correct. There is definitely an art to this kind of pseudoscience which is described much better in a piece by psychologist, Dr Pete Etchells which in a way inspired this one.

Now I’m not saying that everyone who disagrees with what I’m saying is wrong. That would be foolish and would contradict the paragraph that I am writing to make myself seem reasonable. My reasonableness and logic from everyday life now stands in opposition to the results that I disagree with and the people that produced them. I know there will be people that the results might apply to and good luck to them. However there won’t be many of them and they’re probably wrong but fingers crossed that they don’t notice when they are being patronised. The sentences throughout this piece have been quite long and some have been quite complicated so that might help in obscuring the exact meaning with shorter sentences to get across the general tone. The tone is that I am right.

Overall though you can see that my definite real experience that happened means that what I have to say against the evidence that I disagree with is nicer. This is probably the same as being right. If it isn’t nicer then I’ll probably just say that it’s more realistic and if you disagree with me you’re a daydreamer. You know you can distrust the numbers I don’t like from the person I don’t like because I’ve told you I don’t like them. You also know there’s other science that might agree with me. Don’t look it up whatever you do! Ultimately I’m a reasonable person because I told you I am in a paragraph. Whatever the point is about the science I disagree with I will now entirely win you over with this joke or comment that refers back to my opening paragraph or anecdote and which broadly reinforces my point. And also James Delingpole, Melanie Phillips and some Twitter outrage was there.