Category: School


NaBloPoMo Day 3: Scope-Severity Paradox

My dad sent me an article today by Loren F. Nordgren of Northwestern University and Mary-Hunter Morris McDonnell of Harvard Law school about the “Scope-Severity Paradox.” Standard logic would state that for the more victims a given crime has, the more severe it would be, and therefore the stricter punishment would be.

As they found in their studies, this was not really the case. Interestingly, in 2 direct studies they found that the exact opposite was the case: students who reviewed vignettes of cases with few victims in fact tended to rate the crimes as more severe than those students who reviewed vignettes of cases with many victims. For example, take two nearly identical cases: A fraudster cheats two people out of their money, and a fraudster cheats 20 people out of their money. Consistently, the first case was rated as more severe, and given harsher punishments than the second.

Weird, right? Observing the results, it’s difficult to grasp that such a thing can even happen, but they were able to document the same result with about 90 different students. While it seems to defy all conventional logic, the researchers were also able to find a cause: identifiably.

In a secondary study, the identifiably of the victims of the groups were increased. The small-group case studies were accompanied by names, occupations, etc. The large-group case studies were accompanied with a photograph of one of the many victims. In this study the severity and punishment scores were drastically normalized, with the differences being statistically insignificant.

While this is an oversimplification of their studies and results, it sufficiently demonstrates the effect, and quite frankly, it just blows my mind! To clarify a bit further, they didn’t just find these results in a lab: they also studied actual jury decisions on all manners of “toxic tort” cases (asbestos, lead poisoning, etc.). Juries awarded smaller judgments to cases with more plaintiffs, and larger judgments to those cases with fewer plaintiffs.

Where this becomes extremely interesting to me is how we all do this illogical thing all the time, without realizing it. I wonder how the actual legal system tends to skew these results as well. Particularly in cases of copyright infringement, especially dealing with the RIAA.

In these cases, the damages sued for are astronomical in consideration of the actual cost of a single song or album, and indeed, jail time for pirating one single song can often be longer (and with more severe parole stipulations) than rape or murder. How do these instances mesh with the findings of this article? Is an advocacy group more immediately identifiable than a murder victim? Or can the advocacy group more readily identify its victims to the jury because of the notoriety any given band already has?

As for how this knowledge can be used to change the world, it seems this article is the perfect explanation for why a martyr is so effective. A singular person is seen as being victimized by a faceless organization, be that a government, interest group, etc. So people are already predisposed to see the acts of the group as more severe (either positively or negatively) because it was just the one person victimized. So no matter which side of the issue you stand on, the martyr is more effective. From his side, he’s an individual victimized by a group. From the group side, an individual was victimizing many. So the predisposition is that the individual is either more powerful as an individual or more identifiable as a “this could happen to me” situation.

Fun stuff. If you would like to read the actual article, it can be found on the SAGE website. Unfortunately, only the abstract is free, unless you have either a personal subscription or a subscription through a school of some sort. If you can figure out a way to read it, I highly recommend it.

Achoo!

So, I logged in, and began dusting off the surface around this place, and decided to let everyone know just what’s been going on that I’ve been neglecting this place for so long.

First of all, I’ve been spending lots of time with my girlfrie…err fiancee. That’s right, I got engaged back in mid-October. The real surprise is that we’re getting married soon. Like, in December! While we’re not doing the big traditional wedding thing (much to the chagrin of her family), we are going to be having a spiffy reception. If you want to come, or if you just want to buy us some pretty stuff, I’ve setup a small site with the basic info on it, so give it a visit and make sure to check out the registry page.

So, in keeping with the getting married theme, we had to find a house, and quickly, since her lease on her own place was up on the first of this month. Given that we got engaged only a couple weeks before that, we had to hurry. We both spent a lot of time making phone calls, talking with possible landlords, and the like. Ultimately, we found a place, and it’s perfect. It’s a small 1930s 2 bedroom, 1 bath, and it’s really pretty much just perfect for the two of us.

Then, of course, after we found a house in record time, I had to move her in. Her work schedule didn’t afford much time for her to do it, so I grabbed a buddy, and the two of us spent a Saturday moving what she’d packed over to the new place. The rest of that weekend was spent getting things settled in the house.

As it turned out, the fiance doesn’t so much like to stay at the house alone, so we got ourselves a welsh corgi, who we’ve named Thalia (Tall-ee-uh). She’s a little special, but she’s awesome. Pictures to come at some point in the future.

So, I’ve been busy just about every weekend for the last month and a half, but that still leaves the weekdays, you say. Well, it would, but since I’ve been gone every weekend, I’m having to spend more time during the week on homework. I’ve got to make sure I do well, because I’m graduating in December now, not in May. So, you know, if you want, you can get me a nice graduation present, too.

In any event, apart from homework, things have settled down a bit, and I think it’s time to just hit “Mark all as read” and jump back into blogs now, rather than catching up on the couple thousand posts that have amassed there. Sorry, but I’ll try to go through archives and catch what I missed later on, though.

Changed Forever

Two events have recently transpired that have either changed me forever, or will change me forever in the near future.

We’ll start with what’s gone down that will be forever indelible.

I got a tattoo this past Wednesday night, after several years of consideration on the subject. I’ve had this design in mind for several years, with some minor modifications along the way. The central symbol is the Green Lantern’s. On the top and bottom are the first two lines from the Green Lantern Code (as done by Hal Jordan) with a small modification to avoid having to put punctuation in there, which would have looked silly.

The Green Lantern has long been my hero. He’s a super hero of a different sort, you see. Rather than garnering his power from radiation or being an alien, his power comes from a ring he was given. That ring allows him to bring his imagination to life. As a result, rather than being a super hero of strength or speed, he’s a super hero of intelligence, wit, and cunning. His only limitations are his intelligence and his imagination, and I’d like to see myself in that same light.

I’m a very mentally-based person. I take pride in my mental faculties (even if I sometimes don’t think they’re up to par), and whenever I come at a problem, I don’t go for trial and error so much as I reason through it, and I try to come up with creative solutions to problems. I would like to imagine myself as being able to do anything that I set my mind to, and the only thing that can stop me is if I stop thinking, imagining. Yeah, I know it might be geeky, but I’m geeky, and it means a lot to me. So there. Also, the story of getting the tattoo is pretty funny, but I’ll tell that in another entry.

The other major happening was hearing back from the people on my application to go to Oxford from January to April. After being entirely unproductive at work because I was pacing around waiting for them to contact me to say yea or nay. Around two that afternoon, I finally got an email.

Dear Tyler,

Congratulations! I am pleased to inform you that you have been accepted as a participant in the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities’ The Scholars’ Semester in Oxford (SSO) for the Spring 2009 semester (09 January – 18 April, 2009). You will be joining a talented and exciting group of fellow Christian university students on what I hope will be a life-changing journey.

So. There it is. I’ve been accepted! I’ll be going to Oxford! There’s a lot to do between now and then, but goodness me. It’s going to be a heck of a trip. I’m not looking forward to being away from my girlfriend for that long, but she’s being very supportive of my going, and we’ll work through it, hard as it’s going to be.

I don’t really have anything else to say about the trip as of now, because there’s so much information that I still have to receive from them regarding details, but rest assured that I’ll post more whenever I know more. I’ve created a new category, Oxford 2009, so you can easily keep track of anything Oxford related.

Future

So, it’s getting really close to time where I have to be serious about the whole graduate school thing. I’ve applied to go to Oxford for Spring 2009, and I’ll find that out on Friday, but the next major thing I have hanging over my head is where to go to graduate school.

I’m really jonesing after Rice. One, because the program looks awesome. Two, because they’ll offer me lots of money to go there. Three, because it’s in Houston, and I wouldn’t be going out of state.

As I’ve been looking around, there are a few other programs I’ve been looking at, too. I think I’ve narrowed it down to three possibilities, and they’re all very different from what I had been thinking previously; however, I think I’d have a blast at any of the three places.

So, here are the places I’m really wanting to get into, but probably not the only places I’ll apply, just to cover my butt.

  1. Rice
  2. Emory
  3. Temple

Some other considerations are Florida State University or Purdue (West Lafayette).

Thoughts? Comments? Grad school suggestions? Horror stories? Success stories? Want to tell me how incredibly awesome I am? Have at it in the comments section. I’m really stressing out over this whole graduate school business because I’m constantly telling myself I’m not good enough, or I’m not ready for it, and any number of other things, but I’m really excited about being able to do some advanced research in a field I love, surrounded by people who love the same things. It’s going to be a hoot, I imagine. A tough time, but a hoot nevertheless.

Powered by WordPress | Theme: Motion by 85ideas.