Monthly Archives: March 2011

How living in the city affects social behavior

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Recent research and commentators have suggested that cities are greener and more innovative. This post from The Infrastructurist summarizes recent research on another possible outcome of interest for city residents: prosocial behavior.

Using census data, Samuel Arbesman and Nicholas A. Christakis of Harvard Medical School examined urban populations for their tendencies to display several prosocial behaviors, including voting, organ donation, and political contribution. As they report in the journal Physica A (in press), Arbesman and Christakis believed this positive social behavior would indeed be superlinear, in part to offset the less desirable elements of a city, such as crime:

If larger networks … fostered increases in violence more rapidly than, say, increases in kindness, city growth would be constrained in a fundamental way.

What they found, however, was that prosocial behaviors “do not obey a clear pattern.” People in cities aren’t more likely to vote or to donate a living organ, though they’re much more likely to give a deceased organ or a political contribution. Taken together, these positive behaviors do not scale the same way that innovation and economic growth typically scale within cities. In short, conclude Arbesman and Christakis, “prosocial behavior is not a single category when it comes to understanding urban scaling with respect to population.”

The mixed results harmonize with previous findings. Some studies have found that people in cities are more likely to return a lost letter than those in both suburbs and small towns. Others have found that willingness to trust strangers declines as a region’s population grows.

The unexpected findings might be explained, in part, by which behaviors the researchers chose to define as “prosocial.” Political contributions, particularly the sizable sort found in cities, could rightfully be considered a selfish endeavor, as opposed to a positive social one. (At the same time, it seems likely that Arbesman and Christakis were limited by available data sets.)

These results are interesting for several reasons. First, there are methodological questions: do we have data in which researchers in the city were specifically looking at prosocial behaviors? A common approach to looking at social behavior and networks these days asks respondents to name their five closest friends and then how closely their personal beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes align with the respondent. But if this study is based on Census data, these social network questions are not present. I’m not quite sure why political contributions would not be considered prosocial – participating in the civic process would seem to be part of being prosocial.

Second, these questions about prosocial behavior are not new. Some of the earliest sociologists developed the discipline for exactly these reasons: what would happen to relationships and society with more and more people moving from small, rural communities to large, anonymous cities? Durkheim and Tönnies developed typologies to explain this: mechanical and organic solidarity and gemeinschaft and gesellschaft, respectively. Simmel, in particular, seemed worried about the effect that the city would have on individuals. He talked about how urban individuals would need to develop blasé attitudes in order to cope with all of the commotion and people they would meet. Simmel continued on to ask whether the individual could maintain their individuality amidst the life of the big city.

It would be interesting to look at data over the years about American perceptions about whether city or suburban dwellers are more prosocial (if such data is available). On one hand, the suburbs are supposed to be the place where kids run free and families know each other yet we talk about how people just drive in and out of their garages without ever knowing their neighbors. On the other hand, we see reports all the time about crime and disorder in the city even as we occasionally hear stories of vibrant neighborhood and storefront life. My guess would be that the suburbs win out easily in this battle of perceptions – even as the research data is mixed on whether city or suburban residents actually exhibit more prosocial behavior.

Another composite measure: “the happiest person in America”

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Happiness studies are a cottage industry unto themselves (see related posts here, here, and here for several examples) as are composite measures that tells us things like the mean population center of the United States or the world’s most typical face. Here is a new measure that gives us some information about the happiest person in America:

The New York Times asked Gallup to come up with a statistical composite for the happiest person in America, based on the characteristics that most closely correlated with happiness in 2010. Men, for example, tend to be happier than women, older people are happier than middle-aged people, and so on.

Gallup’s answer: he’s a tall, Asian-American, observant Jew who is at least 65 and married, has children, lives in Hawaii, runs his own business and has a household income of more than $120,000 a year.

This may make for an interesting news story but I’m not sure it really tells us much. Composite measures like this take different pieces of information, such as differences in happiness by gender, age, race, income, and more, and then try to attach them to a “typical” person. Is it more helpful to see a “typical” person or to have a series of graphs that show the differing levels of average happiness by various demographic characteristics? Personally, I think it would be more helpful to have the series of graphs or tables – which are also included with this story (just need to click on the tables/maps on the left side).

Of course, this article goes a step farther by trying to actually to track down someone who fits this profile. And this N of 1 who says he is “a very happy person” shows or proves what exactly?

Microsoft is a place where sociologists could work

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Sociology majors are always wondering what kinds of jobs they might have in the future. I ran across an article that mentioned a talk by “Mark Smith, Research Sociologist at Microsoft.” With a little Google searching, I found an excerpt from a 2003 interview with Smith who describes how he ended up at Microsoft:

How did a guy like you get to work for a company like Microsoft?
I’m a sociologist. I’ve now been at Microsoft Research about four-and-a-half years. Microsoft has a few social and cognitive psychologists, but I’m the only sociologist.

Which means what, exactly, in the context of technology employment?
A sociologist studies the attributes of relationships and the group of relationships that add up to a collective or a community. As a technology group, our mandate is to both explore and to build tools to study the phenomenon that we could call online community. We sociologists don’t like to use the term “community,” particularly–we like to refer to them as social cyberspaces…

So why exactly does Microsoft need a resident sociologist?
Microsoft has a big investment in online communities, and has not had until recently many tools to enhance that investment. What Microsoft wants around communities is what every enterprise does, which is a peer-support, knowledge-management application. And that means that if you go into Usenet, you’ll find 3,000 Microsoft public newsgroups, with 1.5 million people posting 10 million messages. And that’s 2002–and it’s going to more than double this year, because it more than doubled in ’01. We don’t see traffic flagging at all.

Trained sociologists could be very useful to businesses and organizations who want to conduct their own research and see how potential customers or clients operate in the world. I remember reading an article years ago about Microsoft employing anthropologists who would live with (or spend extended periods of time with) families in order to see how the different family members would use the computer and Windows.

What would it take for more sociologists to convince organizations they can help add to their bottom line or help them reach their goals? Or what might it take for businesses or organizations to start seeking out more sociologists?

Rationalizing the economic costs of raising children

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Discovery News reports on two recent studies that look at how parents respond to information about how much it costs to raise children today:

New research suggests that people may exaggerate the perks of being parents to rationalize the financial costs of raising children.

Two studies, featured in the journal Psychological Science, measured more than 140 parents’ feelings after being presented with information regarding the hefty bill of raising a child. In the Northeast, raising one child to the age of 18 costs nearly $193,000, according to the research.

In one of the studies, researchers exposed half of parents to the overall costs of raising a child, while the other half received information about the costs as well as information suggesting that children care for and financially support aging parents later in life.

The team discovered that parents who were only exposed to the costs of parenthood (not the benefits) rationalized such costs by reporting a higher intrinsic value of being parents. The other group, which received information regarding the costs and benefits of parenthood, did not show an increase in rationalization…

These findings by no means suggest that parents do not enjoy parenthood or fail to love their children, but rather emphasize that parents are sometimes faced with conflicting feelings regarding the costs and benefits of having children.

It would be interesting to hear what it means to parents when they talk about “a higher intrinsic value of being parents.” Are there certain kinds of behaviors from children or experiences parents have with children where the economic costs end up outweighing “the intrinsic value”? How much can parents openly talk about the economic costs of children when it seems like a crass way to talk about their kids?

Quick Review: Catfish

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Perhaps we could consider the movie Catfish a companion to the more publicized film The Social Network (reviews from Brian here, Joel Sage here): both films consider the effects that Facebook and other digital technologies have on our world. But while The Social Network was a stylized retelling of the founding of Facebook, Catfish covers the lives of more ordinary people as they use these technologies to search for love. Here are a few thoughts about this film:

1. The story revolves a guy, Nev, from New York and a girl from Michigan, Megan, who build a relationship built around a Facebook friendship, IM chats, text messages, and phone calls. Both parties are looking for love though why they are doing this ends up being the plot twist of the film.

1a. I think what makes this film work is that Nev is an appealing character. Even though he hasn’t met Megan in the early stages of the film, he falls hard and ends up giggling and swooning like a teenager. But when things turn out to be more complicated than this, he still finds a way to make sense of it all.

2. More broadly, the film presents a question that many people wonder about: can two people really build a lasting relationship through Facebook?  While this is an interesting question, research on Facebook and SNS (social networking site) use suggests most younger people are not looking to meet new people online. Rather, they are reinforcing existing relationships or reestablishing past relationships. And this film deserves some credit: whereas a film like You’ve Got Mail suggests that email and other electronic communication work the same way as traditional dating (and the typical romantic comedy happy ending), this film introduces some complications.

3. The Social Network seems to suggest that technology helps keep us apart. (A side note: this seems to be an argument from the older generation talking about younger generations. One thing I wonder about The Social Network: was it so critically acclaimed because it fed stereotypes that older people have about younger people? How much did the characters in this film resonate with the lives of younger film-goers?) In that film, Zuckerberg founds Facebook in order to join the in-crowd, is being sued by two people after arguments related to developing community-building websites,  and at the end, he is shown still searching for a connection with a girl he lost years ago. Catfish seems to make an opposite argument: despite the imperfect people who try to connect online, the film suggests there is still some value in getting to know new people. When Nev’s love becomes complicated, he doesn’t just withdraw or call it quits – he tries to move forward while still getting to know Megan.

4. This film claims to be a documentary though there is disagreement about whether this is actually the case. Regardless of whether the film captures reality or is scripted, it is engaging. (The presentation seems similar in tone to Exit Through the Gift Shop, reviewed here.) Have we reached the point in films where the line between what is real and what is written doesn’t matter? And should we care or do we just want a good story?

Overall, this film seems more hopeful about the prospects of Facebook and other digital technology. With a documentary style and an engaging storyline, Catfish helps us to think again about whether people can truly get to know each other online.

(This film was generally liked by critics: it has a 81% fresh rating, 109 fresh out of 134 total reviews, at RottenTomatoes.com.)

Can a McMansion be rated LEED Platinum?

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There are 64 LEED-certified houses in Missouri, with 51 of these built by Habitat for Humanity in recent years. The director of the St. Louis office for Habitat says, “Actually, right now, we’re the largest LEED Platinum builder in the U.S. for single-family detached homes.” But within this discussion, the St. Louis director talks about why it would be difficult for larger homes to be certified as LEED Platinum:

Hunsberger said the investment for Habitat is fairly minimal. He estimates LEED adds about 5 percent to the cost of a standard home.

He said some of the organization’s costs are offset by partnerships with providers of energy-efficient products. Plus, there’s an advantage to Habitat’s houses — size. LEED applies a home-sizing ratio that makes Platinum certification easier to achieve for smaller structures.

“In essence, they don’t want McMansions,” Hunsberger said. “They don’t want 10,000-square-foot single family homes that may have two people living in them to reach LEED Platinum because it’s kind of anti what the movement is.”

This is interesting – so I did a little checking into LEED certification. According to “LEED For Homes Ratings” (a PDF file) from the US Green Building Council, the square footage of a home does factor into its ratings. There is a neutral home baseline and smaller homes have lower thresholds to reach certification levels (Certified, Silver, Gold, Platinum) while homes larger than the baseline have higher point thresholds to reach. The neutral home size is 900 square feet for 1 bedroom or less, 1,400 for 2 bedrooms, 1,900 for 3 bedrooms, 2,600 for 4 bedrooms, 2,850 for 5 bedrooms, and 250 square feet for each bedroom after this. The rationale behind this is explained on page 42 of the PDF file:

These data were simplified and generalized to the assumption that as home size doubles, energy consumption increases by roughly one-quarter and material consumption increases by roughly one-half; combined, these amount to an increase in impact of roughly one-third with each doubling in home size. Thus the point adjustment equates to one-third of the points available in the Materials & Resources and Energy & Atmosphere categories combined for each doubling in home size.

So it is not as if larger homes can’t be LEED certified but they have to meet stricter guidelines. Ultimately, I want to know whether a McMansion, say a home of 4,500 or 5,000 square feet, be LEED certified by making up for its size sufficiently elsewhere?

(I am also intrigued by this Habitat director tying the size of a McMansion to 10,000 square feet. That is not just a McMansion: it may very well be a real mansion. How exactly how large a home has to be in order to be deemed a McMansion is unclear but 10,000 square feet seems on the high end.)

Mean population center of US shifts west and south; Midwest may no longer be the heartland

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Geographically, the Midwest is a broad US region between the two coasts and north of the South (as it was constituted in the Civil War). But symbolically, the Midwest is often referred to the as the “heartland” or as where “mainstream” America is, an idea illustrated by a journalist’s claim that a Nixon policy would “play in Peoria” in 1969.

A little-referenced geographic measure, the mean center of population in the United States, is moving west and south again, suggesting that the Midwest will no longer be the American center within several decades:

When the Census Bureau announces a new mean center of population next month, geographers believe it will be placed in or around Texas County, Mo., southwest of the present location in Phelps County, Mo. That would put it on a path to leave the region by midcentury.

“The geography is clearly shifting, with the West beginning to emerge as America’s new heartland,” said Robert Lang, a sociology professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas who regularly crunches data to determine the nation’s center. “It’s a pace-setting region that is dominant in population growth but also as a swing point in American politics.”

The last time the U.S. center fell outside the Midwest was 1850, in the eastern territory now known as West Virginia. Its later move to the Midwest bolstered the region as the nation’s cultural heartland in the 20th century, central to U.S. farming and Rust Belt manufacturing sites.

In my mind, the best use of this measure is to track its changing path over time: it has consistently moved West though hasn’t moved that far South. In terms of showing where the “center” is, it is less clear. I would see this type of measure as similar to National Geographic’s recent “most typical face“: it tells us something but is best useful for tracking changes over time.

As for whether this moving mean center of population really means that the Midwest will not be considered the mainstream, this remains to be seen. Could the West really be the new heartland in the eyes of the American people? This would involve a shift in symbols, particularly about what it means to be the “heartland.” Is it where most of the people are, where the swing states are, where there is the most history, where there is the most agriculture, where people are most traditional, or where the people are the most “normal”?

 

Debate over whether cities or suburbs are gaining population

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As the 2010 Census figures trickle out, some commentators are debating about how to interpret this data: “are cities gaining or losing population?” While it seems fairly clear that more people are moving to the suburbs and out of central cities (a long-running American trend), it is less clear if they are moving to the land of single-family homes on the metropolitan fringe or to denser suburban areas (which might be considered cities in their own right).

Fair comment

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A mea culpa note: I originally wrote this post about a week ago.  At that time, I thought that SF360 was moderating their comments and not approving mine, for reasons that I implied might have something to do with the policy position of my remarks.  I was wrong — there was an innocuous, technical reason that my comment did not post.  Thanks to SF360’s editor Susan Gerhard for helping me get my comment up, and my most sincere apologies to her and everyone at SF360.  I made a mistake, and I thank Susan for being so gracious in the way that she corrected me.

***

I made a comment recently on a SF360 article titled “What you Need to Know to License Music for Film”.  Here is the relevant bit of the article that I was addressing:

Licensing can be a complicated, frustrating process. Yet, the copyright owners have exclusive rights over the music and using the music in a film will generally not be considered a fair use. Therefore, to avoid litigation a filmmaker must acquire the necessary licenses before including any music in their film. [emphasis added]

As I wrote in my comment, this characterization of fair use is, at best, highly misleading:

George [Rush, who wrote the article] says that “the copyright owners have exclusive rights over the music and using the music in a film will generally not be considered a fair use.”  This is simply not true; there are a lot of uses of music in films — particularly documentary films — that can be considered fair use.  There is a Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use, and there are even companies that issue errors and omissions insurance based on fair use claims.

Before using any music in your film, you should definitely seek legal counsel.  But don’t assume that you *always* have to license music.  Despite the grumblings of music labels, fair use still exists.

George is right that the issues are complicated and that sometimes hiring a professional (like him) to help negotiate various music licenses is the proper way to proceed.  But that’s not always true.

The virtues of Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

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A guest blogger at the Christian Science Monitor extols the virtues of Max Weber’s classic The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism:

Weber’s historical thesis is fascinating in itself, but what really makes the work is that it is a mini-study in how to historically investigate a social-science proposition, complete with asides on method w[h]ere Weber explains what he is doing. He takes two situations that are in most respects the same (that of German Catholics and that of German Protestants) and notes a crucial difference (besides religion): the two populations have significantly different degrees of participation in the capitalist mode of economic organization (as of 1905).Then, he asks whether the first-noted difference (in religion) could be to some extent responsible for the second (in economic circumstances). He systematically rejects alternative explanations as inadequate, and then shows why religion was, indeed, an important factor in the rise of capitalism.

It is interesting to see Weber’s classic as a methodological text.

Since I’ve always heard this book talk about from a sociological perspective, I would have liked to been able to read more in this post about how an economist would view this work. From the sociological end, this book is one of the first to suggest that “ideas matter” or “culture matters” for larger social structures. While Karl Marx argued that culture was the result of the economic base of society and Emile Durkheim was interested in how culture, rituals, and religion held society together, Weber argued that theological ideas could lead to cultural and economic changes.