Disgusted people have enhanced ability to spot dirt

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The cool, calm extravert - that's the emotional profile that our culture puts on a pedestal. Prudes, introverts and scaredy-cats just aren't fashionable.

Yet there's mounting psychological research showing that unpopular emotional traits often come with advantages. The anxiously attached are quicker to detect danger, such as smoke in a room; those with trait anxiety have fewer accidents; introverts speak in a way that's perceived as more trustworthy. Now Gary Sherman and his colleagues have published research showing how prudish disgust-sensitivity is associated with a superior ability to detect impurities.

Over one hundred students had to judge repeatedly which of four squares on a computer screen was the odd-one-out in terms of its shading. The squares were either light grey against a white background, with one slightly darker or lighter than the others (akin to spotting dirt against a white background); or they were dark grey against a black background, with one slightly darker or lighter than the others.

Students more prone to disgust (they agreed with statements like "it would bother me to see a rat run across my path") tended to have heightened sensitivity for spotting grey shades against a white background, similar to spotting dirt on a clean surface. They displayed no such heightened sensitivity at the other end of light spectrum - grey on black.

A second study was similar, but this time students more prone to disgust had heightened sensitivity when identifying digits written in light grey against a white background (yet they were no better at spotting grey digits against a mid-grey background).

In a final study, looking at disgusting pictures (e.g. maggots on meat) boosted the ability of disgust-sensitive participants to spot grey digits against a white background. Participants low in disgust sensitivity didn't show this response to the pictures, perhaps because they were unmoved by them.

The effect documented here is a form of perceptual tuning, like the way in infancy we gradually lose our ability to hear sounds that feature in foreign languages. It's not clear if being disgust prone leads to more exposure to clean white surfaces, and so more practice and superior ability at seeing darker shades against a light background. Or if instead, some people have heightened sensitivity at this end of the colour spectrum, which has the effect of making them more prone to disgust. Or both, in a self-perpetuating cycle.

"Disgust not only makes people want to avoid impurities," the researchers said, "but also makes people better able to see them."

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Sherman, G., Haidt, J., and Clore, G. (2012). The Faintest Speck of Dirt: Disgust Enhances the Detection of Impurity. Psychological Science, 23 (12), 1506-1514 DOI: 10.1177/0956797612445318

--Further reading--
More research items on disgust.

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

Upcoming Documentary on America's Longest War: The War on Drugs, "A Holocaust in Slow Motion"

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The soon-to-be-released documentary "The House I Live In" is an inside look at America's longest war, The War on Drugs, from executive producers Danny Glover, John Legend, Russell Simons. From the film's website:

"Filmed in more than twenty states, THE HOUSE I LIVE IN tells the stories of individuals at all levels of America’s War on Drugs. From the dealer to the narcotics officer, the inmate to the federal judge, the film offers a penetrating look inside America’s criminal justice system, revealing the profound human rights implications of U.S. drug policy."
 
Here are some quotes from the trailer above: 

"The Drug War is a holocaust in slow motion." 

"The Drug War is a war on all Americans." 

"You have to understand that the War on Drugs has never been about drugs."

From a review by US News:

Two years after he was elected president in 1969, Richard Nixon first used the phrase "war on drugs," in a tough speech on drug policy. Four decades and more than 40 million drug-related crimes later, the war on drugs is still simmering.

And now, just months before the presidential election, a new documentary "The House I Live In" explores the ways in which that war could be rethought. The film also implicates President Barack Obama, who promised a compassionate drug policy while running for president but requested $25.6 billion for drug enforcement in 2013—the highest yearly total ever.

A reviewer from The Boston Globe says "I'd hate to imply that it's your civic duty to see "The House I Live In" but guess what - it is."   

The movie will be in theaters on October 5.  

Fire: Environmentalist's Way to Thin the Forests

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From Terry Anderson's editorial in today's WSJ "Environmental Protection Up in Smoke": 

Environmental laws since the 1970s require public input into federal land-use decisions including logging on national forests. This has led to lawsuits challenging efforts by the U.S. Forest Service to prevent forest fires by thinning out trees (most of which are dead or diseased) and brush by machines and carefully controlled burns. This dead wood is the fuel that feeds catastrophic wildfires. 

Removing the fuel reduces the likelihood of fires, and if fires do break out, makes them easier to fight. Meanwhile, the suppression of fires costs the federal government nearly $2.5 billion annually. 

A fuels-management project to log and thin 4,800 acres in the Bozeman, Mont., watershed exemplifies the problem. This project has been held up since 2010 on grounds that the environmental-impact assessment did not adequately protect the habitat of the Canadian lynx and the grizzly bear, both listed as threatened species. 

Now a wildfire threatens the watershed, burning over 10,000 acres and costing more than $2 million to fight. As one firefighter put it, "fire is the environmentalist's way of thinning the forests."

Sunday Soul - You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine

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goodbye my lover
You'll never find another love like mineSomeone who needs you like I doYou'll never see what you've found in meYou'll keep searching and searching your whole life throughWhoa, I don't wish you no bad luck, babyBut there's no ifs and buts or maybes
You're gonna, You're gonna miss (miss my lovin')You're gonna miss my lovin' (you're gonna miss my lovin')I know you're gonna my lovin' (you're gonna miss my lovin')You're gonna miss, you're gonna miss my lo-o-ove


Lou Rawls - You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine : You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine 7"
Lou Rawls - Let's Fall In Love All Over Again : You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine 7" B-side
Find them both on All Things In Time.

Doin' It Again

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So the one or two of you still reading might have noticed that after nearly four months absence, MISB has resurfaced, at least temporarily, for a gasp of air. It is by far the longest I've gone without sharing a song or two since it began almost six years ago (yikes, that's something like the equivalent of the Triassic period in blog years I think). Asking a magic 8 ball about its survival would reveal an answer such as "reply hazy, try again," which is to say I'm not so certain of it myself. In the meantime though, it's got a new look and a new short-term lease on life.

I settled upon a few New Year's resolutions for 2012, and when sharing them with others I prefaced them with a quote from one of my favorite authors, Henry David Thoreau: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."

I suppose I still have a few songs left in me to share. Happy New Years.

Christmas with Taleb!

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Over the weekend Barry Ritholtz linked to this profile of Nassim Taleb at The Chronicle of Higher Education. I have mentioned Taleb many times over the years and he has contributed to how I think about certain things both related to the task of portfolio construction and more broadly to life in general.

As the linked profile above alludes, Taleb has become in some ways a caricature of himself. We all have our quirks and these quirks often become more pronounced as we get older and that is what I think is going on with Taleb. His latest book is called Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder but the writer for the profile said the book "feels like a compendium of people and things that Taleb doesn't like." I got a good laugh from that one.

The profile goes on to say he doesn't like academics, sociologists, doctors, Harvard B-school, bankers and economists among many others. He also has specific ideas for what fruit he will and won't eat and footwear. Assuming the article is correct about these things, it paints an eccentric picture.

The earlier posts on this blog about his ideas targeted things that I felt added value and I still think those ideas add value but as a function of his fame we are learning more about him and the value of his contribution might be diluting. As an example, most of what he said in the above article offered no critical value (just entertainment value) but there was something. He said "You cannot rely on external confirmation and have a happy life, I don't rely on external confirmation, and I have a happy life."

There was a comment or two questioning whether he really is happy. While that is a good question, I have no basis to doubt him but the idea is interesting from a self awareness point of view. Increased self awareness can help with portfolio management. Too many people are not self aware enough to know what is really important to them and they waste time on things that turn out to be unimportant.

There was also a funny bit in the article pointing out that Taleb might be a lot of the things he doesn't like; he's a part time professor who publishes articles in journals but he says he does not publish for advancement (personal gain) they are only "technical addenda" for his books. The funny part was that the article identified as the flipside to what Taleb does; blogging in cabin somewhere which is a remark that I resemble.

Here are a couple of other links (here and here) that really hit on how eccentric he either was all along or has become. There is still value in some of his commentary but it appears as though it will be more difficult to find.

Totally unrelated, I've tried a few times to find a list of Mr. Burns' (as in the Simpsons) stock portfolio. This was in one episode many years ago but I have never been able to find the list. I remember it was very funny but didn't remember the names. At some point along the way someone put up the site Simpsons Wikia which includes a page devoted to Mr. Burns and it mentions his portfolio which consists of Confederated Slaveholdings, Transatlantic Zeppelin, Amalgamated Spats, Congreve's Inflammable Powder, U.S. Hay and Baltimore Opera Hat Company. Hysterical.

Merry Christmas.

Stay On Your Own Mat

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Over the years I have posted a couple of tag lines or other little sayings related to the task of investing. Conceptually I don't think any of them are original but that doesn't make them any less useful. Barry Ritholtz found a short blog post at the NY Times that hit on a couple of these types of things I have been writing about over the years.

One of my tag lines has been stay on your own mat which is a yoga reference about not worrying about how the person next to you in the class does the poses. Ideally a yoga student is focusing on their breathing and trying to make progress at their own pace with the positions.

So it is with investing for both do it yourselfers and professionals. We all have our own skill sets, interest levels and only so much time available to spend on the task. You may know someone who routinely makes a killing on three and four legged option combos but that doesn't make the trades right for you. In this vein the linked article talked about Harvard Management Company buying a dairy farm in New Zealand.

Also related (and in the article too) is defining and sticking to your goals not someone else's. One example from the article was recent Standford MBA grad's who go 100% equities (not sure if this was a made up example) which might be right for a 25 year old making a lot of money right out of the chute but that is not going to be the right allocation for the typical 50 year old.

Another concept picked up in the article that is covered here regularly was "most of what we hear about investing isn’t right or wrong. It’s a matter of applying what we hear to our own situation"  which is of course a different way of saying take little bits of process from various places to create your own process.

There are others we've talked about here about not panicking, about adequate savings rates but really this all boils down to the need to learn about ourselves first and then devise the right financial plan (either by yourself or by hiring someone) for our particular situation taking into account all of our quirks.

Speaking of long running themes of this blog, one of them is one off expenses that cannot be budgeted for and for us this month that is tires on the other car (we needed tires for one vehicle a few months ago).