This is Improbable

by Marc Abrahams

  The story is not always that simple, the researchers caution, nor is it guaranteed: ‘The relationship between chief executive facial structure and financial performance is moderated by the decision-making dynamics of the leadership team.’

  Wong, Haselhuhn, and Ormiston painstakingly examined the financial performance and chief executive facial measurements of General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, Nike, and fifty-two other publicly traded Fortune 500 firms for the period from 1996 through 2002. The companies are big, averaging $38 billion in annual sales and about 120,000 employees.

  The researchers obtained chief executive facial photos from the Internet, using these as raw data from which to calculate each chief executive facial WHR. They looked up each firm’s return on assets (in financial industry shorthand, the ROA), using that as the measure of the company’s financial performance.

  Wong and Haselhuhn spell out their logic in a study called ‘Bad to the Bone: Facial Structure Predicts Unethical Behaviour’, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B in 2011. They tell of experiments conducted on students, which showed ‘that men with wider faces (relative to facial height) are more likely to explicitly deceive their counterparts in a negotiation, and are more willing to cheat in order to increase their financial gain’.

  They explain the mechanism that might make this happen. Prior research indicated that wide-faced men are ‘associated with more aggressive behaviour’. If ‘observers respond to facial cues by deferring to men whom they perceive to be aggressive based on their facial WHR, these men may find it easier to take advantage of others. Similarly, if men with greater facial WHRs are treated in ways that make them feel more powerful, this may foster a psychological sense of power, which then affects ethical judgement and behaviour.’

  The facial indicators, say the researchers, are more reliable in men than in women.

  The American Psychological Association, which is publishing the CEO study, issued a press release that finishes with this warning: ‘Don’t run out and invest in wide-faced CEOs’ companies, though. Wong and her colleagues also found that the way the top management team thinks, as reflected in their writings, can get in the way of this effect. Teams that take a simplistic view of the world, in which everything is black and white, are thought to be more deferential to authority; in these companies, the CEO’s face shape is more important. It’s less important in companies where the top managers see the world more in shades of gray.’

  Wong’s work reinforces an ancient and reluctantly treasured belief: that having a good head on your shoulders does not, by itself, ensure success.

  Wong, Elaine M., Margaret E. Ormiston, and Michael P. Haselhuhn (2011). ‘A Face Only an Investor Could Love: CEOs’ Facial Structure Predicts Their Firms’ Financial Performance.’ Psychological Science 22 (12): 1478–83.

  Haselhuhn, Michael P., and Elaine M. Wong (2011). ‘Bad to the Bone: Facial Structure Predicts Unethical Behaviour.’ Proceedings of the Royal Society B online, http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2011/06/29/rspb.2011.1193.

  Some Psychology of the Fruit Machine

  It’s hard to get good payoffs from slot machines, yes. But it’s also hard to get good information from slot-machine gamblers, and that made things awkward for British psychologists Mark Griffiths of Nottingham Trent University and Jonathan Parke of Salford University. They explained the issue in a monograph entitled ‘Slot Machine Gamblers: Why Are They So Hard to Study?’

  Griffiths and Parke published their report in the Electronic Journal of Gambling Issues. ‘We have both spent over 10 years playing in and researching this area’, they wrote, ‘and we can offer some explanations on why it is so hard to gather reliable and valid data.’

  Here are three from their long list.

  FIRST, gamblers become engrossed in gambling. ‘We have observed that many gamblers will often miss meals and even utilise devices (such as catheters) so that they do not have to take toilet breaks. Given these observations, there is sometimes little chance that we as researchers can persuade them to participate in research studies.’

  SECOND, gamblers like their privacy. They ‘may be dishonest about the extent of their gambling activities to researchers as well as to those close to them. This obviously has implications for the reliability and validity of any data collected.’

  THIRD, gamblers sometimes notice when a person is spying on them. ‘The most important aspect of non-participant observation research while monitoring fruit machine players is the art of being inconspicuous. If the researcher fails to blend in, then slot machine gamblers soon realise they are being watched and are therefore highly likely to change their behavior.’

  Griffiths is one of the world’s most published scholars on matters relating to the psychology of slot-machine gamblers, with at least twenty-seven papers that mention so-called fruit machines, so-called for their bounty of cherries, oranges, and other juicy prizes. (It’s helpful to note that, in the UK, games of pure chance are not allowed, and so fruit machines require some element of ‘skill’; Griffiths and Parke don’t seem to obsess about the varied nomenclature.)

  Griffith’s titles range from 1994’s appreciative ‘Beating the Fruit Machine: Systems and Ploys Both Legal and Illegal’ to 1998’s admonitory ‘Fruit Machine Gambling and Criminal Behaviour: Issues for the Judiciary’. Women get special attention (‘Fruit Machine Addiction in Females: A Case Study’), as do youths (‘Adolescent Gambling on Fruit Machines’ and several other monographs). There is the humanist perspective (‘Observing the Social World of Fruit-machine Playing’) as well as that of the biomedical specialist (‘The Psychobiology of the Near Miss in Fruit Machine Gambling’). The International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction ran a paean from a researcher who said: ‘In the problem gambling field we don’t exhibit the same adulation as music fans for their idols but we have our superstars and for me, Mark Griffiths is one.’

  Griffiths and Parke collaborate often. (Strangers to their work might wish to begin by reading ‘The Psychology of the Fruit Machine’.) Their fruitful publication record reminds every scholar that, even when a subject is difficult to study, persistence and determination can yield a rewarding payoff.

  Parke, Jonathan, and Mark Griffiths (2002). ‘Slot Machine Gamblers: Why Are They So Hard to Study?’ eGambling: Electronic Journal of Gambling Issues 6.

  McKay, Christine (2007). ‘A Luminary in the Problem Gambling Field: Mark Griffiths.’ International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction 5 (2): 117–22.

  Griffiths, Mark. (1994). ‘Beating the Fruit Machine: Systems and Ploys Both Legal and Illegal.’ Journal of Gambling Studies 10: 287–92.

  Griffiths, Mark, and Paul Sparrow (1998). ‘Fruit Machine Gambling and Criminal Behaviour: Issues for the Judiciary.’ Justice of the Peace 162: 736–39.

  Griffiths, Mark. (2003). ‘Fruit Machine Addiction in Females: A Case Study.’ eGambling: Electronic Journal of Gambling Issues 8.

  –– (1996). ‘Adolescent Gambling on Fruit Machines.’ Young Minds Magazine 27: 10–11.

  –– (1996). ‘Observing the Social World of Fruit-machine Playing.’ Sociology Review 6 (1): 17–18.

  –– (1991). ‘The Psychobiology of the Near Miss in Fruit Machine Gambling.’ Journal of Psychology 125: 347–57.

  ––, and Jonathan Parke (2003). ‘The Psychology of the Fruit Machine.’ Psychology Review 9 (4): 12–16.

  May We Recommend

  ‘Physiological Arousal and Sensation-Seeking in Female Fruit Machine Gamblers’

  by K. R. Coventry and B. Constable (published in Addiction, 1999)

  The authors, who are at the University of Plymouth, UK, conclude: ‘Gambling alone is not enough to induce increases in heart rate levels for female fruit machine gamblers; the experience of winning or the anticipation of that experience is necessary to increase heart rate levels.’

  The Value of Perfume for the Poor

  What do destitute people have in mind when they haggle for famous-name
perfume? Luuk van Kempen attacked the question head-on. He describes his experiment, and his thinking, in a report called ‘Are the Poor Willing to Pay a Premium for Designer Labels? A Field Experiment in Bolivia’.

  Van Kempen, who is based at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, is trying to get at a deeper question: ‘Why do the poor buy status-intensive goods, while they suffer from inadequate levels of basic needs satisfaction?’ His study, which appears in the journal Oxford Development Studies, proceeds in social-scientific fashion, listing each of his assumptions, and shaking each one to see whether it is true.

  FIRST QUESTION: Will impoverished Bolivians bargain for designer-label perfume? To find out, van Kempen had them play a what-if game known as a Becker-DeGroot-Marschak elicitation scheme. ‘Even subjects who have received little formal education’, he explains, ‘should be able to understand the procedure.’ Indeed, 104 residents of a poor neighbourhood in the city of Cochabamba understood the procedure well enough to quarrel with van Kempen over the price of perfumes.

  SECOND QUESTION: How does one know this neighbourhood was poor? From the lack of safe water and of good sanitation facilities. The facilities ‘often consisted of one single latrine, were mostly shared among seven to 10 families’. Van Kempen explains that, for academic purposes, this had its benefits: ‘The experiment provided an implicit test of Maslow’s hierarchy-of-needs [theory], which suggests that people do not indulge in symbolic consumption, i.e. the acquisition of goods that satisfy belongingness and status needs, as long as “basic needs” are not satisfied.’

  THIRD QUESTION: Is it reasonable to assume that a lack of access to safe water and sanitation truly indicates poverty? Yes, van Kempen concludes, citing a 2001 study of a different part of the city, which also lacked water and sewers. In that neighbourhood, eighty-seven percent of the population had incomes averaging about £1, or $1.80, a month. ‘Hence’, he says, ‘lack of access to basic services is a reasonably good proxy for income poverty.’

  The main part of the study is titled ‘The Logo Premium: Do the Poor See Beyond Their Nose?’ This is where van Kempen describes his experiment. It involved bottles of perfume, some with a Calvin Klein label, others without. The perfume inside all the bottles smelled – and was – the same. Why Calvin Klein? ‘Because it is one of the best-known designer brands in Bolivia.’

  Each poor person got to choose which perfume to buy – the Calvin Klein or the generic alternative – and bargain over the price she or he would pay for one versus the other.

  About forty percent of these extremely low-income Bolivians were willing to pay extra for the designer name. What, statistically, was in their minds? Social caché, says van Kempen, the ability to walk with their noses in the air, regardless of what they might smell there.

  Van Kempen, Luuk (2004). ‘Are the Poor Willing to Pay a Premium for Designer Labels? A Field Experiment in Bolivia.’ Oxford Development Studies 32 (2): 205–24.

  Extreme Speed Writing

  Philip M. Parker is the world’s fastest book author, and given that he had been at it for only five years or so when I contacted him in 2008, and already had more than 85,000 books to his name, he is likely the most prolific, as well as the most titled.

  Parker is also the most wide-ranging of authors – the phrase ‘shoes and ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings’ is not half a percent of it. Nor are these particular subjects foreign to him. He has authored some 188 books related to shoes, ten about ships, 219 books about wax, six about sour red cabbage pickles, and six about royal jelly supplements.

  To begin somewhere, let’s note that Parker is the author of the book The 2007–2012 Outlook for Bathroom Toilet Brushes and Holders in the United States, which is 677 pages long, sells for £250/$495, and is described by the publisher as a ‘study [that] covers the latent demand outlook for bathroom toilet brushes and holders across the states and cities of the United States’. (A later edition, covering 2009–2014, retails for £495/$795. Further Parkerian volumes and updated pricing can be expected to appear automatically in the years, decades, and centuries beyond.)

  Here’s a minuscule (compared to the entire, ever-growing list) sampling of Philip M. Parker titles:

  The 2007–2012 World Outlook for Rotary Pumps with Designed Pressure of 100 P.s.i. or Less and Designed Capacity of 10 G.p.m. or Less

  Avocados: A Medical Dictionary, Bibliography, and Annotated Research Guide

  Webster’s English to Romanian Crossword Puzzles: Level 2

  The 2007–2012 Outlook for Golf Bags in India

  The 2007–2012 Outlook for Chinese Prawn Crackers in Japan

  The 2002 Official Patient’s Sourcebook on Cataract Surgery

  The 2007 Report on Wood Toilet Seats: World Market Segmentation by City

  The 2007–2012 Outlook for Frozen Asparagus in India

  Parker is a professor of management science at INSEAD, the international business school based in Fontainebleau, France. Professor Parker is no dilettante. When he turns to a new subject, he seizes and shakes it till several books, or several hundred, emerge. About the outlook for bathroom toilet brushes and holder, Parker has authored at least six books. There is his The 2007–2012 Outlook for Bathroom Toilet Brushes and Holders in Japan, and also The 2007–2012 Outlook for Bathroom Toilet Brushes and Holders in Greater China, and also The 2007–2012 Outlook for Bathroom Toilet Brushes and Holders in India, and also The 2007 Report on Bathroom Toilet Brushes and Holders: World Market Segmentation by City.

  When I first encountered Parker’s output, Amazon.com offered 85,761 books authored by him. Parker himself said the total was well over 200,000. The number was then and is (even as you read these words, whenever you read them, possibly even if Professor Parker has been gone for decades or centuries) probably still on the rise.

  How is this all possible? How does one man do so much? And why?

  Parker created the secret to his own success. He invented what he calls a ‘method and apparatus for automated authoring and marketing’ – a machine that writes books. He says it takes about twenty minutes to write one.

  Fig. 1 of 13 from ‘Method and Apparatus for Automated Authoring and Marketing’ – ‘the embodiment of the present invention’

  Turn to page 16 of his patent, and you will see him answer the question, ‘And why?’

  Parker quotes a 1999 complaint, waged by The Economist magazine, that publishing ‘has continued essentially unchanged since Gutenberg. Letters are still written, books bound, newspapers mostly printed and distributed much as they ever were.’

  ‘Therefore’, says Parker, ‘there is a need for a method and apparatus for authoring, marketing, and/or distributing title materials automatically by a computer.’ He explains that ‘Further, there is a need for an automated system that eliminates or substantially reduces the costs associated with human labor, such as authors, editors, graphic artists, data analysts, translators, distributors, and marketing personnel.’

  The book-writing machine works simply, at least in principle. First, one feeds it a recipe for writing a particular genre of book – a tome about crossword puzzles, say, or a market outlook for products, or maybe a patient’s guide to medical maladies. Then hook the computer up to a big database full of info about crossword puzzles or market information or maladies. The computer uses the recipe to select data from the database and write and format it into book form.

  Nothing but the title need actually exist until somebody places an order – typically via an online, automated bookseller. At that point, a computer assembles the book’s content and prints up a single copy.

  Among Parker’s one hundred best-selling books (as ranked by Amazon) one finds surprises. His fifth-best seller in 2008 was Webster’s Albanian to English Crossword Puzzles: Level 1. Bestseller No. 21: The 2007 Import and Export Market for Seaweeds and Other Algae in France. No. 66 is the aforementioned The 2007–2012 Outlook for Chinese Prawn Crackers in Japan. And rounding out the list, at No. 100, is The 2007–2012 Outloo
k for Edible Tallow and Stearin Made in Slaughtering Plants in Greater China.

  Parker appears also to be enthusiastic about books authored the old-fashioned way. He has already written five of them.

  Parker, Philip M. (2005). ‘Method and Apparatus for Automatic Authoring and Marketing.’ US Patent No. 7,266,767, 31 October.

  The Hundred Trillion Dollar Book

  Gideon Gono, author of the barnstorming book Zimbabwe’s Casino Economy – Extraordinary Measures for Extraordinary Challenges, displays a rare, perhaps unique kind of scholarly reserve. He is a scholar, with a PhD from Atlantic International University, a mostly distance-learning institution based in the US, with a website that proclaims ‘Atlantic International University is not accredited by an accrediting agency recognized by the United States Secretary of Education’. And he has reserve, or rather Reserve, with a capital ‘R’. Since December 2003, Gideon Gono has been the governor of Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank. His term expires in 2013.

  In 2009, Gono was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize in mathematics. The Ig Nobel citation lauds him for giving people a simple, everyday way to cope with a wide range of numbers – from the very small to the very big – by having his bank print bank notes with denominations ranging from one cent ($.01) to one hundred trillion dollars ($100,000,000,000,000).

  During 2007 and 2008, Zimbabwe’s inflation rate rose past Olympian heights: topping 231 million percent, by Gideon Gono’s reckoning; and reaching 89,700,000,000,000,000,000,000 percent, according to a study done by Dr Steve H. Hanke of Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland, and the Cato Institute.