Late to Bed..Early to Rise.. (Teenagers Life)

Not too long ago, I was a teenager myself, and one of the worst things in my life (I am sure there are many out there who would say the same) was waking up early for school. The torture of waking up early for six days a week is the one thing I don’t miss about my school days. Things didn’t get any better but then again that’s life.

Now parents never really cooperate with your intent to sleep when you please and wake up when you feel like. One of the limitations of being a teenager is your ability to reason or how parents would like to term ‘argue’. Many a times we stall without valid points or any points at all. To help teenagers with the same (courtesy of Bora Zivkovic) here are some of the points as to why you should get some extended time to sleep!

There are clear scientific data demonstrating that sleep phase in adolescents is markedly delayed in comparison to younger and older people. According to him, presumably under the influence of the sudden surge of sex steroid hormones, the circadian clock phase-advances in teen years. It persists in this state until one is almost 30 years old. After that, it settles into its adult pattern.

Now he does account the fact that, we are talking about human populations, not individuals – “ you can surely give me an anecdote about someone who does not follow this pattern. That’s fine. Of course there are exceptions, as there is vast genetic (and thus phenotypic) variation in human populations. This does not in any way diminish the findings of population studies.

Everyone, from little children, through teens and young adults to elderly, belongs to one of the ‘chronotypes’. You can be a more or less extreme lark (phase-advanced, tend to wake up and fall asleep early), a more or less extreme owl (phase-delayed, tend to wake up and fall asleep late). You can be something in between – some kind of “median” (I don’t want to call this normal, because the whole spectrum is normal) chronotype.

No matter where you are on these continua, once you hit puberty your clock will phase-delay. If you were an owl to begin with, you will become a more extreme owl for about a dozen years. If you are an extreme lark, you’ll be a less extreme lark. In the late 20s, your clock will gradually go back to your baseline chronotype and retain it for the rest of your life.

The important thing to remember is that chronotypes are not social constructs (although work-hours and school-hours are). No amount of bribing or threatening can make an adolescent fall asleep early. Don’t blame video games or TV. Even if you take all of these away (and you should that late at night, and replace them with books) and switch off the lights, the poor teen will toss and turn and not fall asleep until midnight or later, thus getting only about 4-6 hours of sleep until it is time to get up and go to school again."

He states that for teenagers, 6am is practically midnight – their bodies have barely begun to sleep.

Another important aspect to consider is that lack of sleep has a well-documented effect on mood. Teenagers are not that moody, at least most of them are not!

“ They are just barely “functional” (instead of “optimal”) and walk through life like zombies because they are operating on 4-8 hours of sleep instead of 9 hours (optimal for teens, it goes down to about 8 for adults). Of course they are moody.”

He does explains more serious issues to consider from a health and safety perspective. But the advice he adds for parents and teachers is quite good although I doubt it will have any influence!

“ Teens are almost adults. The current generation of teens, perhaps because of a closer and tighter contact with their parents than any generation before, is the most serious, mature and responsible generation I have seen. Give them a benefit of the doubt. Just because you were into mischief and hated your parents when you were their age does not mean that today’s kids are the same.”

“ Finally, rethink all those extra activities you are forcing the teens to do: sports, art, music, etc. In teen’s minds, the day does not start with the beginning of school in the morning. We may think that we are at work most of our day. Teens do not – they consider their day to begin at the time school-day is over. Their day begins in the afternoon. School is something they have to deal with before they can have their day. Realize this and give them time and space to do with their day what they want. Do not push them to do things that you think they’ll need to get into Top Universities. Let them be – leave them alone. Then they’ll go to sleep at a normal time.”

Main article:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/a-blog-around-the-clock/2012/05/20/when-should-schools-start-in-the-morning/

Coefficient of Friction in Shopping

The customer's experience of shopping for a product is quite an important aspect to consider while selling the product. Apple! Famous for many reasons provide one of the finest shopping experience. But this isn’t about Apple or the experience of shopping in their stores. It is about, David Pogue’s ideology to understand and utilize experience itself. How we can evolve our level of thinking from merely buying a product for its features or usability, to actually encourage simplicity and ease of buying and using a product. He explains this concept with a term called Friction, which can relate to the extent of involvement in obtaining the desired result. 

“Friction is a hassle. Steps. Process. And in this increasingly technified world, there is still a surprising amount of red tape—and few examples of push back. We stress about things like price, storage and processor speed, instead of beauty, elegance and low friction.” Writes David in his article 'Make Technology - and the World - Frictionless'

“Why, in this day and age, are we still typing in our address and credit-card details into Web forms, over and over again? Companies like Apple and Amazon have figured it out. Low friction means more sales. Apple has its app; Amazon has its 1-Click Buy button. You don’t have to enter any extra information. You see something you want, you click, and you’ve just bought it.”

He does add the point that low friction does not necessarily add to more sales. It is more of a behaviour that you try to encourage amongst people. As an example he explains a formula for predicting someone's likelihood to vote is something like PB + D > C, where P is the probability that your vote will make a difference, B is the benefit to you if your candidate wins, D is the gratification you get from voting, and C is friction—the hassle of registering to vote, then getting to the polling place, standing in line, and so on.

" Clearly, lowering the friction would increase turnout. Imagine if we could register and vote online—or vote by making a few taps in a phone app. Voter turnout would likely skyrocket. And that would make for a real democracy. (Fear of manipulation is supposedly the reason we’re not there yet. But we could get there if we really wanted to.)"

With such detail explanation he ends the article with an excellent advice to improve our perspective for shopping. 

“Next time you’re shopping for a digital camera, don’t ask how many megapixels it has. Ask how many steps it takes to turn on the manual focus. When you buy a laptop, don’t just care about its screen size; care about how many touch tones are required to get you to tech support. When you buy a phone, see how many taps it takes to e-mail a photo. And if you’re on the other side of the table—if you’re the vendor—don’t just figure out how to attract customers. Figure out how to eliminate the friction you present to them.”

Original article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=technologys-friction-problem 

Psychoanalysis at its best

Humour is tricky, especially when you are writing for a science magazine. And amongst the few who do it well, Steve Mirsky gets my vote for his style. He has an amazing sense of humour (from the title to the end). In his recent article The Doctor is Way Out, he evaluates the so-called expert analysis of a psychiatrist named Keith Ablow who serves as the FOX NEWS expert of psychiatry.

According to Albow’s writing, “Three women have met Mr. Gingrich and been so moved by his emotional energy and intellect that they decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with him.”

“Two of these women felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married.”

Going a little further, “One of them felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married for the second time, was not exactly her equal in the looks department and had a wife (Marianne) who wanted to make his life without her as painful as possible.”

The Best Part (Conclusion): “When three women want to sign on for life with a man who is now running for president, I worry more about whether we'll be clamoring for a third Gingrich term, not whether we'll want to let him go after one.”

To this writing Steve responds saying, “I am not a mental health professional, nor do I play one on TV. Nor am I about to claim that Gingrich is a psychopath. But I do wonder whether the doctor's personal political views may be overriding his medical judgment.”

“ For example, Ablow is surely familiar with the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, used for diagnosing that serious personality disorder. If I were a psychiatrist—which again, I am not—who wanted to publicly contend that there was significant evidence for Gingrich being a psychopath—which I certainly do not—I could pretty much just quote from the checklist: glibness, grandiose sense of self-worth, being manipulative, having poor behavior control, being sexually promiscuous, having many short-term marital relationships and, my favorite for the guy still running for president as this column goes to press, lack of realistic long-term goals.”

Then mentions Albow’s prior advise to parents, not to allow their children watch Chaz Bono who was on the show Dancing with the Stars. He contended that to see Bono being applauded could kindle gender dysphoria in vulnerable youths. (Really!?)

In conclusion, I agree when he says, people who sit on the couch to see fox trots are better off than people who lie on the couch to hear Fox psych.

The Article http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-doctor-is-way-out

Deception + Deception Detection = Self-Deception

In a brilliant article "Lies we tell ourselves", Michael Shermer, the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine provides his scholarly insight on the topic of deception. A section of the article relates to the title explaining the concept of self-deception.

We being with the Evolution of Deception and Deception Detection;

According to the Author, " A selfish-gene model of evolution dictates that we should maximise our reproductive success through cunning deceit. Yet the dynamics of game theory shows that if you are aware that other contestants in the game will also be employing similar strategies, it behooves you to feign transparency and honesty to lure them into complacency before you defect and grab the spoils. But if they are like you in anticipating such a shift in strategy, they might pull the same trick, which means you must be keenly sensitive to their deceptions and they of yours. Thus, we evolved the capacity for deception and deception detection."

(Detection on its own) 

To my understanding it seems to depend upon our awareness of the person whom we are testing for deception. The Author suggests that one needs to spend time with the individual to understand their intent. As noted by Trives,“When interactions are anonymous or infrequent, behavioral cues cannot be read against a background of known behavior, so more general attributes of lying must be used.” 

He identifies three!

Nervousness: Because of negative consequences of being detected, including being aggressed against... people are expected to be more nervous when lying.

Control: In response to concern over appearing nervous... people may exert control, trying to suppress behavior, with possible detectable side effects such as... a planned and rehearsed impression.

Cognitive load: Lying can be congitively demanding. You must suppress the truth and construct a falsehood that is plausible on its face and... you must tell it in a convincing way and you must remember the story.

Clearly the cognitive load seems to be the biggest challenge considering the extent of effort one needs to put in and the side effects it causes. Likewise, overcontrol leads to blinking and fidgeting less and using fewer hand gestures, longer pauses and higher-pitched voices (examples mentioned in the article). 

(Finally, Self-Deception!)

To explain the same, the Author uses a quote by Abraham Lincoln, “You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” Unless self-deception is involved. 

If you believe the lie, you are less likely to give off the normal cues of lying that others might perceive: deception and deception detection create self-deception.

Article Link http://www.michaelshermer.com/2012/02/lies-we-tell-ourselves/

Personality of Your Gadget

In the January edition of Scientific America, David Pogue wrote an interesting article detailing why we prefer a personality in our gadget. Limiting much of the psycho-babble analysis, he made a rather simple yet not so obvious observation about the idea behind having a personality to your gadget. In his article he mentions that

Siri is a breakthrough in voice control, sure, but she’s also a breakthrough in computerized personality. The question is: Do we want our gadgets to have personality?

Until Siri came along, Apple’s software has always avoided personal pronouns such as “I” and “you.” The result: some awkward passive-voice snarls like “The document could not be opened because it could not be found.”

He is right when he says, deep down— most people know that our computers are not really engaging us – mere response of the code written by a programmer.

However, he then explains the point as to why we should care if the gadgets we use are personable. This is where he makes his brilliant deduction. Most technical writings I have read till date, describe experience as supposed to observations.

The genius of Siri’s “personality,” is that she doesn’t care if you say, Will it rain? or Will I need an umbrella? or What’s the forecast? She is programmed to understand any wording. This time the payoff is more than user-friendliness; its happiness. When Siri does what you want, the first time, when you haven’t read any instructions or followed any rules, you feel a surge of pride at your instantaneous mastery.

He concludes the article by saying that human psychology is a funny thing – citing an example of watching a magic show, “we’re delighted even when we know it’s all a trick.”

Cuppa Tea

What we see and what we observe are two entirely different things. Sitting with my friend having a cup of chai tea latte at starbucks... having a friendly chat about the drink in hand... got me thinking about the different brands and different varieties of tea available in India... and how the companies target their customer base. To pick a name, I choose Unilever, whose products are pretty much used in every household in the country (not an exaggerated statement…). They have a range of tea products in their portfolio amongst others and I am not sure how many of you paid attention to how they market their products, but its pretty interesting.

To give a brief introduction about the company, they operate in FMCG sector. The company tries to appeal to the working class of the society, selling products categorised as basic necessities. The idea associated with product marketing, branding and advertisement is to fill in the gaps of evolving standard  of lifestyle with products whose usage will add to the users comfort and satisfaction. (There are several other aspects but I’m going to limit my word count)

Lets take the following labels,

Brook Bond 3 Roses
Brook Bond Taaza
Brook Bond Sehatmand
Brook Bond Taj Mahal
Red Label Tea

While there are different tea brands operating under the same company, (in my opinion) it seems the management team controlling each of the division is different and they seem to have chosen the target market accordingly. Like wise;

Brook Bond 3 Roses has the tag line, ‘Playful banter, a little mischief, serious conversation… They always emphasised on the romantic nature of relationship. The advertising commercial stretching back to the past 10 years throughout the country including on a regional level has always included film actors and advertisement actors working in a couple scenario directly targeting the house hold couples. The strategy not only limits to the commercial. The red colour used in the box for the rose doesn’t seem to look like the actual colour of a rose. (It’s more like a triggering red!)

Brook Bond Taaza: Taaza means freshness (My Hindi is a bit rusty). The customary nature of most Indian adults includes having a cup of tea or coffee in the morning. The marketing strategy of using the term taaza and a commercial implying the freshness from nature is quite a sensibly appealing ad (though it’s a cliché). The face of the product has always been a young female with a pretty, lively face, appealing to both men and women. (Past Example – Bollywood actress Preity Zinta)

Brook Bond Sehatmand is unique! They target a more health conscious market, focusing on RDA standard of intake of nutrition as their key selling point. From the perspective of selling tea, this is the first company to emphasis the nutritional contents in the beverage which predominantly has been appealing towards freshness and taste (at least to my knowledge...)

Brook Bond Taj Mahal, Sirf chai nahi yeh hai Taj ! Perhaps the most branded tea product working on the majestic nature of Taj Mahal, and using ambassadors like Ustad Zakir Hussain, the tabla maestro and since 2006, Saif Ali Khan (Royalty!). They were the first to include tea bags and now they use the quality terms to pitch in their product value ‘smell’ ‘see’ ‘savour’(Seriously! Wah Taj).

Red Label on the other hand uses a more valuable moment scenario to appeal on a context that has totally no relation with tea as such but it reminds to the point cherishing something with tea alongside. Its heritage is its presence, so most people know the brand name for most of their life, and the subsequent generation follows the product usage on the simplest principle of having accustomed to its usage over the years. While this helps in building a standard line they seem to cherish the theme more than they cherish the moment while having the theme.

If it were up to me, I would have added more but then my drink got over by the time I came this far… and as rightly said by my friend, “Dude! Its tea…just finish yours”

Just for the record, I don’t work in advertisement, its just a screen name! neither do I posses an extended experience or understanding of living in India.