Killer Research

Latest gem on the NYT comes from good ol' Alabama. Apparently some chick prof gets denied tenure, and then goes to shoot up the other faculty members. But the kicker is that when she was 18 or 19, she actually had popped a cap in her own brother, gave a thin excuse, and then got let off the hook by the cops out in Boston.

(mental note: do NOT apply to Alabama-Huntsville, EVER. Also, send thank you note to 2nd Amendment supporters.)

Now this isn't the first time some academic has decided to go postal on people. In fact, last spring, George Zinkhan III, one of my fellow marketing academics decided to take out some frustrations on his wife, and two other dudes who had the misfortune of being in Georgia community theater. What in the world is going on with academia in the southeast? I don't know, but now that I live in the southeast, I'm sort of jealous that I'm not nearly as cool as these other profs.

(mental note: make that 2 thank you notes to the gun advocates)

I wanted to do a posting last spring, but sort of lost it in the queue of things to do. Now, as I hunt around for info, I really regret not posting about this dude. After all, he seems to have discovered my philosophy of being a widower before becoming a divorcee, which I share with Drew Peterson, who has actually been successful in executing this strategy on multiple occasions (whereas I only operate on a theoretical level).

Unfortunately, it appears that this prof took himself out, rather than go out in a blaze of glory, Butch Cassidy style. But before he went, it seems that this dude was pretty awesome. It gets even better if you scroll down the comments. Boorish behavior isn't exactly uncommon from faculty members, who were generally the geeks who got picked on all throughout high school and college. One very notable exception is a prof at, oddly enough Houston, where George Zinkhan was before he went to Georgia. This dude was a #1 pick of the Expos, out of high school, whose father negotiated a contract where the Expos would pay for all of his education. He blows out his arm the next year, at 19, and then proceeds to do the whole college, grad school, PhD thing, all on the Expos tab - smart dad.

In any case, in my experiences at these academic conferences you see and hear all sorts of things regarding these old dudes w/ no game trolling after the chick doctoral students (who, with some exceptions, are "attractive" only by relative standards - much like being the gold medalist in the Special Olympics). And the sick part is that these chicks must like the attention of these older, douche bags, as well as the possibility of getting a job or getting their names attached to some research. So that basically makes these chicks whores, though probably from a longer-term perspective, and with a different currency than your normal streetwalkers. So, really, no one's innocent. But this Zinkhan dude seemed slimy, even in a slimy setting. Naturally, he's my new professional hero, replacing Jayson Blair.

(mental note: 1 - publish more research, 2 - go to more conferences, 3 - lower standards for attractiveness and/or value intelligence in women more...)

Now, I'm always intrigued when the authorities drop the ball on various issues. In both of these cases, you see where people who have been entrusted by the public have failed. The folks in Boston let a mass murderer go free. The folks at Houston never punished poor behavior, and didn't stand in the way when the folks at Georgia needed a new prof. Then the folks at Georgia turned a blind eye to slimy antics.

(mental note: if current job goes downhill, send resume to Houston and Georgia)

In each of these cases people selectively overlook important things, and you end up with a mess that hits other folks between the eyes. The thing is, we hear about these things because they become major events. But this also happens on an everyday basis with the choices that everyday people make when they're entrusted with the responsibility to serve the people around them. Power and greed are easily predictable outcomes when you simply allow human nature to go unreined and poor behavior unpunished. Especially among sociopaths w/ guns.

All I know is that I'm proud to be an academic.

-Chairman

The Life You Keep

Note, this was originally started back in November, but unfinished until now.

Interesting little discussion going on over at the NYT's Room for Debate. The original article was commenting on the call to extend the ability for parents to cover their childrens' insurance beyond the college years. This issue has come alive in part due to the increasing trend of adult children going back home to live with parents (dubbed "boomerang" offspring, since they come back after you throw them out). Explanations for this phenomenon range from cultural norms to financial practicality, to broader economic difficulties, to the tendency for extended adolescence, to increasing materialism in developed countries.

A few of my own friends had graduated from school, only to un-empty their parent's nests for various reasons. Personally, this would have never worked for me. My parents aren't as into paid escorts, gambling, and sleeping until 2pm as I am, and things may have gotten awkward, as for the third day in a row, I try to shuffle a different "date" out the door at 2 in the afternoon, after a night of decadence. But I'd suggest that the notion of cutting the purse strings completely is a very independent, very individualistic, very American notion. In many cultures living with one's family until you were married (and even living in the same family "compound" afterward) was/is pretty normal. Now, modern lifestyles have made living together physically difficult, even in very interdependent, very collectivist cultures. People go where jobs take them.

However the financial linkages between parent and child are often still very alive. For example I consider myself to be very independent, particularly with regard to my finances. And I've also realized that my view of material goods lean towards Spartan (though not excessively so - I drive a '99 Toyota Camry, a fine car, but I also realized that the undergrad RA's that I have hired all drive nicer cars than I do). But over the years, as different major issues have come up, my parents have been gracious enough to help with things like the closing costs on my house, and giving me two cars while I was in school (note, in fairness, I was in school for a really, really long time). In that sense, it's been very comforting to know that any financial concern of less than, say, low 5-figures wasn't going to be much of a problem. What I think is interesting is that conventional wisdom in American culture is that this would result in an entitled brat. Now, I'm not suggesting that I am anything but an entitled brat, but I think that the reason for this is that I'm smarter than everyone else, not because I'm richer than everyone else. Certainly, I think that the structure of the financial help matters. For example, having an ongoing line of credit w/out any accountability could be much more problematic than giving money based on specific episodes, with discussions attached to each episode.

But what I think is more interesting is that I believe that there's a cultural linkage to the outcome of whether or not financial help from a parent leads to negative results (like a sense of entitlement, irresponsible fiscal behavior, excessive materialism), or are positive (offering a sense of security, promoting responsible fiscal behavior, having an appropriate view of material goods).

Over the years, I'd guess that my parents have given as much assistance to me as they have to my younger brothers'. I think that it's interesting that we have very different perspectives towards this. Until about a year and a half ago, my parents were helping out my brother on a regular basis, and he still had a credit card that was billed to my parents. You could describe this as more of an ongoing support. And he lived on that credit card and that line of credit so that he was living the same lifestyle as he was when he was living at home. My brother's view is generally, "of course they should be helping me out - we're family." And you could easily argue that this is a very Asian (interdependent, collectivist) view of the world. I wouldn't call my brother fiscally irresponsible, but he definitely has more/better stuff than I do and is a bit freer with his spending than I am, especially once you factor in our difference in income (he's a teacher in public schools, whereas I'm rich, bitch).

The way in which my parents supported me was somewhat similar until I started grad school, and I had gotten my own income. During those undergrad days, though I think that my perspective was a little different. Though I fully understood that I was unable to pay for my needs (like tuition, rent, utilities, and even my groceries), I sort of disliked the idea of depending on my parents too much for things that were "wants" (like my paid escorts, my gambling, etc.). So, my spending on those activities were always minimal. You'd probably describe me as having that American ethos, where you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Once I started having my own income, I cut up the credit card that was linked to my parents, and tried to take over as many payments as quickly as possible, to the point where I really did describe myself as independent financially from my parents in grad school. That is, until things like car accidents emerged. Or my mother wanted to give me some money to fully fund an IRA contribution. What happened was that the help that my parent's gave me was viewed in terms of helping me through particular events, and not something that was a given. And I'd argue that if you had to compare between myself and my brother, that I'm definitely less materialistic, feel less entitlement, and am a little more fiscally responsible.

What I think really drives this is how our cultural perspectives fit in with the norms and values of the society as a whole. I think that my views toward finances are more in line with the norms of American culture, whereas my brother's were more collectivist/interdependent. And I suspect that the way in which I perceived the assistance that my parents gave (as being event-based) was different than the way in which my brother perceived his assistance (as being ongoing). This leads to a couple questions. The first is what happens when you change the style of assistance (i.e., give me ongoing assistance, and give my brother event-based assistance), given our cultural perspectives. The next level question is to ask what happens when you change the setting, so that it's still me and my brother with our cultural perspectives, but you change the societal norms. Then how does the style of the assistance change the effects on us as people?

My suspicion is that if you were to take this across a large sample, you'd see that they way in which financial assistance is offered affects people differently, depending on their cultural perspectives. However, I'm not entirely sure the direction of the change (i.e., would giving me ongoing assistance make me more or less materialistic than I would have otherwise been), though I have a suspicion that the level of cognitive dissonance associated with this would have been a key factor, with decreases in cognitive dissonance reinforcing the things that you already believe, and increases in cognitive dissonance stymieing those processes.

In any case, at this point, I'm sort of geeking out in a social psychology kind of way, so I'll end things here. But the point was that how we process information (in this case the message that is sent by receiving assistance from our parents) influences/is influenced by our personal beliefs and how they fit into societal norms. So, it's not necessarily a good or bad thing that people are moving back in with their parents, but how it's happening is going to affect things greatly.

-Chairman

Professing

There's a nice, little article in the New York Times that talks about why academia is a liberal institution. They note that some current perspectives on this issue revolve around individual differences like intelligence (i.e., liberals tend to have higher IQ's, professors tend to have higher IQ's, therefore liberals are more likely to become professors), but the research here talks about something that's on the selection side of things. In the industrial and occupational (I/O) psychology literature, they talk about two major factors that contribute to employee performance: Selection and Training. Basically, what do you look for before you hire someone, and how you train them once you do hire them. Now, I'll argue that there's relatively little training, once you hire a professor. We get hired, and then we're generally left to our own devices. The biggest thing is adapting to an organization's culture. But there's much less of the formal mentorship than you may figure. So we're largely left with the selection side.

The Grosse and Fosse research looks at aspects of the selection side. If you think about this interaction, as the saying goes, you need two to tango. They probably ask questions like, "What makes people want to enter an academic field?" which would help answer the question of what the pool of applicants looks like. And they probably ask questions like, "What characteristics are most common in professors?" which would help answer the question of the things academics value. Now, with the second question, you start to get a feel of what the ethos of the institution is. But that alone can't really point to bias or intellectual corruption as a characteristic of the institution (which is what the conservative vanguard may have you believe). For that, you need to see something systematic when examining the first question. Now, if you see a whole bunch of equally or overly qualified conservatives who want to enter academia being turned away at the door, then maybe you have a case. But if all you have are liberals who want to enter the doors, then the issue isn't bias as a characteristic of the institution.

This research suggests that there's a self-selection going on. The interesting question here is why. My first instinct here has a lot to do with how people think about the world around them. If you think about placing people on a continuum, ranging from left-wing to right-wing, you probably get a bell curve with a few nuts on the far left and the far right, and the majority of people in the middle. Now, this may not be a clean bell curve. This could be something that people call a bimodal (two modes - modes being the data points that appear most often) curve, or less-refined folks call a two-humped distribution. Sort of like a camel. Or boobies.

A Boobie Distribution. This is why I have the warning page when you first show up here.

What this means is that most people are either moderately conservative or moderately liberal. And this makes sense, given the simple, one-dimensional way of looking at the world. For example, conservatives are ordinarily all for fewer laws, less regulation. Yet, they demand laws that regulate abortion (which in terms of governance, would be a very liberal move). Similarly, liberals are all about the expression of people's beliefs and individuality, and recognizing that every person has a right to believe what they want. However, they are entirely against things like public displays of religious faith, or people expressing that they support something like religion. We also know that a given person is likely to have different ways of looking at the world, as the different domains change. For example, they may think differently about their work than they do about their worship, and differ yet in how they think about their family. We can easily imagine how people who label themselves as the same political philosophy (liberal vs. conservative) will differ on a number of different issues, since these different issues touch on many different domains in our lives.

In fact, read through the characteristics of what a conservative is, on this cool-looking webpage. How many different dimensions do they touch on? Patriotism, individuality, morality, religion, taxation, governance, economics, immigration, etc. Is there a core philosophy underneath all that? Or is there just a label that people like to use to encompass a number of different takes on different issues? If it's the latter, then conservatism is simply a label that's meaningless - just like pondering about the significance of a made-up word, like "Lexus." Now, that isn't to say that liberals have it all figured out. Check out this less cool-looking webpage, and it's take on what it means to be a liberal. Just as jumbled. I guess what I'm saying is that we like to use these different labels as an easy proxy.

While I think that having labels can serve a very practical purpose (having heuristics really does simplify our thinking processes), the labels that we attach (such as conservative or liberal) often end up being these one-size-fits-none when the labels become too broad. This ends up being detrimental to the causes that we push for. If you look at our two-party political system, you see a prime example of where the prototypical conservative or the prototypical liberal truly represents a very small slice of our population, once you break things down into their constituent parts. And you end up with a very unfortunate situation where folks that are generally reasonable are forced into silly behaviors, such as being a single-issue voter, because they value certain issues so much that they end up making their taking the stance that they can overlook anything else, so long as this one issue goes their way. Of course, being a single-issue voter is probably preferable to being a non-issue voter (or just a regular non-voter), like yours truly.

Now with regard to what this whole conservative/liberal thing has to do with me as a academic, it's surprisingly little. I recently spoke with a professor of educational psychology out in California who was a very liberal (Marxist, feminist, etc.) who converted to Christianity about 20 years ago and spent time with Mother Teresa's mission. She mentioned that after she converted, she basically lost all but two of her friends in her professional field. In disciplines that are big on dogma, but not as big on objective fact, your philosophical stance is everything. One thing that she also noted (which I had also observed) was the areas in which you saw the most people who believed in God were in the physical sciences and in business, where there is a much more pluralistic approach to knowledge, with an emphasis on objective facts. And in fact, that's a reasonable description on what I'm trying to accomplish. I don't necessarily have a preconceived notion of how things are, and I'm open to letting the evidence speak.

While I label myself a moderate-conservative, my beliefs vary greatly for each different domain. For example, even though I believe greatly in the hope and power of the individual, I firmly believe that structure needs to be imposed for a more effective society. Similarly, I like the notion of inherent rights, but believe that turning many of those rights into privileges would be a more effective way to run things. I don't know that these things really affect much of what I say from the lectern, but they may have a little bit of influence on the research questions that I'm curious about. But at the end of the day, I still believe enough in the integrity of the research in my field that my research will get published based on the quality of the work, not necessarily the dogma behind the findings. And I believe that's true for fields that readily accept conclusive research based on hypothesis testing. Where things get murky is when you delve into fields where the work is entirely qualitative, and/or "research" is really writing philosophy. I appreciate the existence of that stuff. I may even use some of that stuff in my work (mainly in an effort to be thorough). But I'm glad that I don't really need to get too much into that stuff :-)

-Chairman