Red wine instead of exercise

Of course, I have serious doubts that there is much basis in truth to this.  According to the headline, one glass of red wine is the equivalent of one hour of exercise.  I am not sure if 5 glasses of wine translates to five hours of exercise, so you will have to read the article details. But I also have doubts about the first one.

I am sure that the science was done in the usual way that science is done.  Science is a very focused, targeted, investigation of limited hypotheses with specific subdomains of application and with a certain level of uncertainty.  It is when the media (or even worse - bloggers!!!) get their hands on it, that we get the earth shattering headlines that suck us into the story.

But in this case, I am going to focus on my wonderful powers of self-delusion.  I love red wine and I have given up exercise for a little while. This seems to be the perfect solution to my dilemma.  I just have to believe it.  I just have to combine self-delusion, the placebo effect, confirmation bias, and identity resonance.  And abra cadabra.

This Week in EID Episode 22

Sometimes it surprises me which articles get the most response.  I leave the sophisticated analytics to Keith, but when I cross-post on LinkedIn groups I see how many comments and likes the discussion gets.  Sometimes I participate but other times it seems to be doing quite nicely on its own. 

For the past couple of days, the Ed Tech article from Tuesday has been lighting it up.  The thrust of the discussion is about the contrast between designs that focus on promoting real education and those that are geared towards business metrics – cheaper, wider distribution, spiffy tech, long features lists to promote – you know the drill here.  Keith and I are already queueing up education-related topics for the future, maybe one a week.

Another topic that seems to be getting traction, although it is early still, is Wednesday's article on the hospital user experience and how it can improve health outcomes.  We have long known about the power of positive thinking.  It shouldn’t be a surprise that when patients are treated with dignity they experience less pain, fewer side effects, and heal faster.  Turns out, care-givers do better too.  Fewer errors, more efficient and effective care.  So I already have another one of these on my list – perhaps for early October.

Thursday’s post that cited the Daily Tech News Show was fun because the host contacted me on Twitter with some great compliments on my article.  I often get retweeted, but Tom took some real personal time.  I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that.

And then the one that I thought would get the most comments didn’t.  That was Monday’s article on behavioral nudges in the insurance industry.  Usually the behavioral science folks are pretty reliable commenters on LinkedIn.  But not this week.

Coffee drinker blindness

Did you know, coffee drinkers are less able to identify and describe their emotions?  Scientific evidence and everything !!! 

There are a few hypotheses of why this might be true:

• It could be the reverse causation – that people who can’t identify their emotions are more likely to drink coffee.  Perhaps because they think the caffeine will awaken some emotion inside that they can’t feel.
• But I think it is neurological.  Caffeine activates some neurotransmitter that blocks the link between the speech area of your brain (Broca’s area) and the emotion area (amygdala).  So you feel the emotion, you just can’t talk about it.

Think about that little mystery next time you fill up your third cup for the morning.

 

Studio Journal Episode 14 – Finally, one about the UX of small sizes

I know I framed this journal as a series of posts about the user experience of living in a small studio apartment and yet the first dozen posts were mostly about the moving process.  I thought the topics that I covered were interesting and somewhat relevant to the theme, so I included them.  But now I want to try to focus more on the original “UX of small” theme.

Appliances:  I never really thought about this before, but a refrigerator that is ¾ the size of a standard model  only fits about half as much stuff.  The electronics in the back is about the same size and the insulation requires the thickness of the sides and door to be the same size.  So to make it ¾ the size, they have to cut the interior in half.  You don’t notice it at first because the design changes are subtle.  But there are only two rows on the door and they are very slim.  The drawer on the bottom for produce is deceptively small and there is only one. 

This winds up changing a lot of my eating habits in ways I wouldn’t have guessed.  I used to cook for a week and store the leftovers in the fridge or freezer.  Can’t do that now.  I used to buy some staples in bulk, can’t do that now. And I have to go shopping more often.  I actually had to toss some leftover pizza – not because it was old but because there was no room left.

Obvious relationships are often illusions

I am going to use a controversial example so that I can get everyone mad enough to comment.  But as a strawman, the concept behind this message is really important to get, so please don’t let belief-resonance prevent you from seeing it.

We know that one of the strongest predictors of whether an adult might commit acts of domestic violence is whether they experienced them as a child.  This can be either as a victim of child abuse or as a witness of spouse abuse.  Unfortunately, it seems to be a self-reinforcing cycle of violence.

We also know that low income families are more likely to have acts of domestic violence.  I am not going to guess at the reasons, but it is a very unfortunate reality.

We also know that the NFL has a greater representation of people who grew up in low income families.  They are hardly low-income after a few years as overpaid pro athletes, but this doesn’t seem to break the cycle of violence I mentioned earlier.

If you control for this chain of factors, NFL players do not commit domestic violence any more than the general population.  It is not due to the violence of pro football.  It is not due to the culture of acceptance that has emerged in the league. It is not the pathetically weak response of league officials.  The origins happened much earlier. 

It is easier to visualize the more direct and concurrent effects of these other variables.  That makes them jump to mind much easier and stronger.  But . . .

Of course, the reverse might be a stronger argument anyway.  A strong culture against domestic violence could counteract and perhaps break the chain of domestic violence.  Stronger responses from teammates, coaches, teams, and the NFL central office could do a lot towards preventing it.  Better awareness through the kinds of programs that are just now being proposed could nip tendencies right in the bud.  So these things all should be done.

But when looking for the original cause, attributing it to these things is an illusion caused by representativeness, confirmation, availability, salience, and other cognitive processes that frequently lead us wrong when looking for cause-effect relationships.

Now back to my first caveat – I am using this as a visceral, controversial strawman.  I have seen some evidence that this is the case, but not enough to be sure. On the other hand, there is also not enough data to say that the league (culture, behavior, or otherwise) is the cause.  My point is simply that it is easier to jump to the conclusion for proximate causes than it is to look for precursor variables and root causes.