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Post by the light works on Dec 21, 2013 22:16:52 GMT
I just accused Cyber of rearranging the furniture again, which reminded me of an old stereotype: that women are always rearranging the furniture.
now, obviously this would not make for a very good episode, but what is your take on it? DO women habitually rearrange furniture? in my house, the only time furniture changes locations is when something comes or goes; and growing up, it was us (male) kids who instigated any rearrangements.
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Post by OziRiS on Dec 21, 2013 23:18:15 GMT
In my experience, most women (who I've known) are actually more prone to want things not to change very often. They'll maybe redecorate the house or just a single room every 5-10 years and even then, they're much more sentimental about what gets thrown out and what stays and for what reasons than most men I know.
More often than not (and women themselves perpetuate this myth extensively) women are more orderly than men and it often shows early on in childhood. Go into any average household where there are two kids, a boy and a girl, roughly the same age and each with a room of their own and what do you see? Even if the boy is more orderly than average, his room will often appear more cluttered and messy than the girl's. Why? Two things:
1. Impulse control. It develops earlier in girls than in boys, which makes girls better at finishing what they're doing before moving on to the next thing. Boys will often just let go of whatever's in their hands once something else grabs their attention.
2. Males are less worried about aesthetics than females and tend to pay more attention to practicality. A good example is a play house. If the kids have a say in how a play house will look, a girl's play house will be pretty and neat both inside and out, have a nice paint job, curtains, proper furniture, the whole shebang. A boy's playhouse will have the bare essentials. Four walls, a roof, some windows, a door, something to sit on and a million little weird things that make his games more fun, like gun ports in the walls, secret entrances and so on. Almost all of them are added on after the house itself has been built, whereas most of what's in the girl's play house was thought out well before the first nail was even bought.
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Post by the light works on Dec 21, 2013 23:37:06 GMT
In my experience, most women (who I've known) are actually more prone to want things not to change very often. They'll maybe redecorate the house or just a single room every 5-10 years and even then, they're much more sentimental about what gets thrown out and what stays and for what reasons than most men I know. More often than not (and women themselves perpetuate this myth extensively) women are more orderly than men and it often shows early on in childhood. Go into any average household where there are two kids, a boy and a girl, roughly the same age and each with a room of their own and what do you see? Even if the boy is more orderly than average, his room will often appear more cluttered and messy than the girl's. Why? Two things: 1. Impulse control. It develops earlier in girls than in boys, which makes girls better at finishing what they're doing before moving on to the next thing. Boys will often just let go of whatever's in their hands once something else grabs their attention. 2. Males are less worried about aesthetics than females and tend to pay more attention to practicality. A good example is a play house. If the kids have a say in how a play house will look, a girl's play house will be pretty and neat both inside and out, have a nice paint job, curtains, proper furniture, the whole shebang. A boy's playhouse will have the bare essentials. Four walls, a roof, some windows, a door, something to sit on and a million little weird things that make his games more fun, like gun ports in the walls, secret entrances and so on. Almost all of them are added on after the house itself has been built, whereas most of what's in the girl's play house was thought out well before the first nail was even bought. on the other side of the coin, my office has 3 decorations. one is a calendar, and the other two were left there when Mrs TLW moved out of it into the dining area, when we had her mother living in my old office (the bigger of the two rooms that could be used as an office) which is now HER office, since her mother moved back home. (and that office only had one decoration on the wall - which Mrs. TLW both purchased and hung) and when I was in that office, I had one time that in a fit of irritation, I quite literally shoved everything off one of my desks onto the floor. within 24 hours, that desk was completely full, again, with things I had not put there. |
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Post by Cybermortis on Dec 21, 2013 23:39:07 GMT
Humm, that might be a good basis for a battle of the sexes myth with a little more work - and working out how you'd test it when you only have test subjects for a day at most.
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Post by OziRiS on Dec 22, 2013 0:02:19 GMT
Humm, that might be a good basis for a battle of the sexes myth with a little more work - and working out how you'd test it when you only have test subjects for a day at most. Good idea, but as you say, it won't be easy to find a viable way to test it. What's considered "orderly" is pretty subjective, not to mention that you're venturing into an area where you're most likely to get a good result if the test is done in a somewhat private setting. Not many people will apply 100 percent of their own perception of "order" to a setting that isn't their personal space in some way, since they don't have ownership of the space and don't want to step on any toes by making too many changes to it. In other words, you could very well have a test subject look at a space and think it's out of order, but not actually act on that thought, effectively leaving you with no measurable result. |
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Post by the light works on Dec 22, 2013 0:03:08 GMT
Humm, that might be a good basis for a battle of the sexes myth with a little more work - and working out how you'd test it when you only have test subjects for a day at most. true, we could call it "inherently Orderly" or something like that. you could do surveys at various stages in people's lives. the biggest catch would be that you would cave to compare people in similar spaces and socioeconomic groups. to get a balanced perspective. for example, my office is much more cluttered than my wife's. however, my office is a third to a quarter the size, and has as much stuff in it - including some stuff that is not mine. |
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Post by OziRiS on Dec 22, 2013 0:29:54 GMT
There's also the aspect of upbringing. If your parents were neat freaks, there's a good chance you are too and vice versa.
Then there's the variable of controlled chaos where, even though a space looks chaotic, there's an order to it that would be impossible for an outsider to see, but where the owner can find anything he/she needs in a matter of seconds.
Individual personality also plays a part. Just as there are women who are exceedingly messy, there are men who are so neat they're bordering on OCD (if not already there).
Also, what's orderly to one person may be not enough/too much in the eyes of someone else.
It just occured to me that to have a chance of getting anywhere with this, we'll have to define "order" before we do anything else. Any suggestions?
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Post by ironhold on Dec 22, 2013 0:44:15 GMT
Humm, that might be a good basis for a battle of the sexes myth with a little more work - and working out how you'd test it when you only have test subjects for a day at most. Good idea, but as you say, it won't be easy to find a viable way to test it. What's considered "orderly" is pretty subjective, not to mention that you're venturing into an area where you're most likely to get a good result if the test is done in a somewhat private setting. Not many people will apply 100 percent of their own perception of "order" to a setting that isn't their personal space in some way, since they don't have ownership of the space and don't want to step on any toes by making too many changes to it. In other words, you could very well have a test subject look at a space and think it's out of order, but not actually act on that thought, effectively leaving you with no measurable result. Stage a pair of office cubicles. Inside each cubicle is an assortment of items that one would find in a normal office. There would be a desktop computer (with monitor, keyboard and mouse). There would be three or four different types of calenders, including two wall calendars and a large desk calendar (the ones that are the size of an end table). There would be three or four different styles of in / out boxes. Et cetra. Each person is told that the crew is doing an experiment concerning how rapidly a person can adapt an unfamiliar setting to their own tastes. They are to pretend that they have just started working for this company, and have X number of minutes to arrange this hypothetical office in the fashion that they best see fit. For those items where there are multiples, the person is told to set them outside the cubicle's entrance. Not only will the crew take multiple images showing how each person set their space up, they will debrief the person to ask them why they set things up the way they did. The hypothesis is confirmed if more women than men indicate "appearance" as a primary concern for the accessories they choose and how they arrange everything. It is busted if more women than men indicate "functionality", if more men than women indicate appearance, or both genders indicate the same primary concern with the same frequency. |
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Post by ironhold on Dec 22, 2013 0:59:32 GMT
2. Males are less worried about aesthetics than females and tend to pay more attention to practicality. I'm with you on this one. There was a several year period in which my mom's attempts to "clean" my room almost always ended in disaster. Either she would: A - put things away in a fashion that made sense to her at that given moment, forcing me to tear my room right back apart in order to find such-and-such or B - throw something away because she thought it was "trash" and didn't bother asking anyone if it was important, forcing me to dig through the garbage in order to pull it back out. She finally backed down a little when it hit home that her excessive zeal to "clean" was costing everyone time and money, especially when we had to replace things she either threw away or essentially hid. But we *still* occasionally have arguments concerning our respective standards of cleanliness. |
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Post by the light works on Dec 22, 2013 1:08:50 GMT
2. Males are less worried about aesthetics than females and tend to pay more attention to practicality. I'm with you on this one. There was a several year period in which my mom's attempts to "clean" my room almost always ended in disaster. Either she would: A - put things away in a fashion that made sense to her at that given moment, forcing me to tear my room right back apart in order to find such-and-such or B - throw something away because she thought it was "trash" and didn't bother asking anyone if it was important, forcing me to dig through the garbage in order to pull it back out. She finally backed down a little when it hit home that her excessive zeal to "clean" was costing everyone time and money, especially when we had to replace things she either threw away or essentially hid. But we *still* occasionally have arguments concerning our respective standards of cleanliness. there is the age old argument of where things "belong" there is one skillet I use every day at breakfast time, if not more frequently (as in, nearly every time I fry anything). Mrs TLW believes it belongs in the pantry with the other skillets I use only when I am cooking stuff that doesn't fit in my regular skillet. I believe it belongs on the back burner. or, the one I alluded to earlier: everything that she is interested in has a place it belongs - everything else "belongs" in my office, whether I had anything to do with it or not. or if she doesn't expect to use it in the near future, it "belongs" in the attic. - which leads to me making the comment "I USED to own ___________..." (I USED to own a bathrobe, I USED to own a duster coat, I USED to own a lot of things that I can't seem to find any more. |
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Post by ironhold on Dec 22, 2013 1:33:04 GMT
there is the age old argument of where things "belong" there is one skillet I use every day at breakfast time, if not more frequently (as in, nearly every time I fry anything). Mrs TLW believes it belongs in the pantry with the other skillets I use only when I am cooking stuff that doesn't fit in my regular skillet. I believe it belongs on the back burner. or, the one I alluded to earlier: everything that she is interested in has a place it belongs - everything else "belongs" in my office, whether I had anything to do with it or not. or if she doesn't expect to use it in the near future, it "belongs" in the attic. - which leads to me making the comment "I USED to own ___________..." (I USED to own a bathrobe, I USED to own a duster coat, I USED to own a lot of things that I can't seem to find any more. Mom and I actually used to fight about such things, too. Generally speaking, I would leave my shaving razors on top of the container of acne wipes. Mom decided that my razor didn't belong there. Instead, she decided that it belonged on top of the bar of soap that sat next to the sink. This meant that every time someone needed to wash their hands, they had to touch my razor in order to get at the soap. It wasn't until after several weeks of my yelling and loudly throwing my disposables in the trash that she finally realized I had an issue with her doing that. And she literally could not understand why I would be so concerned with my razors being contaminated by people touching them when my "room was always such a mess". Yeah. |
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Post by the light works on Dec 22, 2013 1:54:23 GMT
there is the age old argument of where things "belong" there is one skillet I use every day at breakfast time, if not more frequently (as in, nearly every time I fry anything). Mrs TLW believes it belongs in the pantry with the other skillets I use only when I am cooking stuff that doesn't fit in my regular skillet. I believe it belongs on the back burner. or, the one I alluded to earlier: everything that she is interested in has a place it belongs - everything else "belongs" in my office, whether I had anything to do with it or not. or if she doesn't expect to use it in the near future, it "belongs" in the attic. - which leads to me making the comment "I USED to own ___________..." (I USED to own a bathrobe, I USED to own a duster coat, I USED to own a lot of things that I can't seem to find any more. Mom and I actually used to fight about such things, too. Generally speaking, I would leave my shaving razors on top of the container of acne wipes. Mom decided that my razor didn't belong there. Instead, she decided that it belonged on top of the bar of soap that sat next to the sink. This meant that every time someone needed to wash their hands, they had to touch my razor in order to get at the soap. It wasn't until after several weeks of my yelling and loudly throwing my disposables in the trash that she finally realized I had an issue with her doing that. And she literally could not understand why I would be so concerned with my razors being contaminated by people touching them when my "room was always such a mess". Yeah. I just remembered the real head scratcher: where to TV remotes belong? on the side of the coffee table that can't be reached from the couch. |
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Post by OziRiS on Dec 22, 2013 1:58:06 GMT
Good idea, but as you say, it won't be easy to find a viable way to test it. What's considered "orderly" is pretty subjective, not to mention that you're venturing into an area where you're most likely to get a good result if the test is done in a somewhat private setting. Not many people will apply 100 percent of their own perception of "order" to a setting that isn't their personal space in some way, since they don't have ownership of the space and don't want to step on any toes by making too many changes to it. In other words, you could very well have a test subject look at a space and think it's out of order, but not actually act on that thought, effectively leaving you with no measurable result. Stage a pair of office cubicles. Inside each cubicle is an assortment of items that one would find in a normal office. There would be a desktop computer (with monitor, keyboard and mouse). There would be three or four different types of calenders, including two wall calendars and a large desk calendar (the ones that are the size of an end table). There would be three or four different styles of in / out boxes. Et cetra. Each person is told that the crew is doing an experiment concerning how rapidly a person can adapt an unfamiliar setting to their own tastes. They are to pretend that they have just started working for this company, and have X number of minutes to arrange this hypothetical office in the fashion that they best see fit. For those items where there are multiples, the person is told to set them outside the cubicle's entrance. Not only will the crew take multiple images showing how each person set their space up, they will debrief the person to ask them why they set things up the way they did. The hypothesis is confirmed if more women than men indicate "appearance" as a primary concern for the accessories they choose and how they arrange everything. It is busted if more women than men indicate "functionality", if more men than women indicate appearance, or both genders indicate the same primary concern with the same frequency. The biggest problem I see in this approach is introducing speed as a factor. Timing people on a task almost always puts aesthetics on the bottom of the to-do list and it doesn't matter if you're male or female at that point. Another thing is the setting. If you're not used to working in an office environment, how are you supposed to know what's smart to do and what isn't? Even if you are familiar with office work, if you don't know what kind of work you'll be doing there (accounting, project planning, secretarial work and so on) what's to tell you what's practical? Is the calculator a big enough part of your job that it should stay on the desk or is it rarely used and should go in the drawer? Will your job involve a lot of schedule keeping/planning, making it important that the calendar is within easy reach at all times or is it more of a decorative item? Get the idea? I think we need to move to a more private setting to level the playing field. How about furnishing and decorating a living room? That's something everyone knows what's for and how is traditionally laid out. Supply the contestants with an empty room, complete with windows, doors and electrical outlets, an assortment of couches, chairs, tables and other furniture, books, drapes/curtains/blinds, decorative items (pictures, paintings, sculptures, plants, maybe even an aquarium) and various electronics, including lamps, TV sets, audio systems, game consoles and so on. Each contestant is given a full day and two helpers to make it just as they want it and as you suggested, the crew then talks to them afterward about what they did and why. This could easily run for days on end, since there's only need for a camera man and a sound technician full time. The rest of the crew are only really required to be there for the beginning and the end of each contestant's run to explain what's supposed to happen at the beginning and to do the debrief afterward. I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of the guys spent most of their day on setting up the electronics and the surrounding furniture, possibly opting for blinds instead of curtains/drapes, if they even get that far - which speaks to practicality - and a majority of the women spent most of their time making it cozy, hanging up pictures and drapes, picking out the lamp that goes perfectly with the dining table and so on. But even this plan is flawed at best. Even though the men are more likely to focus on the electronics, some of them are bound to start looking at stuff like hiding the wiring and what recliner goes with the TV table, which speaks to aesthetics and order and some of the women are likely to consider stuff like which dining table is not only the best looking, but also makes for the best use of space, which speaks to practicality. See the dilemma? |
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Post by the light works on Dec 22, 2013 2:15:05 GMT
That's why I think it is necessary to make it a space that actually IS their own.
I don't know if they could pull it off - but if they could do a week-long project, they can bring in volunteers and lodge them in a hotel for the week. if you make it a project that includes observation, you can even have the cameras in the room for the final analysis.
so what could we have as an excuse to have a dozen people under observation in a hotel for a week?
a jet lag cure test maybe?
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Post by OziRiS on Dec 22, 2013 2:43:34 GMT
I think I just had an idea...
Going back to what I said earlier about a play house, how about the entire team goes to a primary school in the area and announce to the students that they'll be building two play houses/club houses for them? One for the boys and one for the girls. Catch is that a group of the kids will have to be involved in both planning and building both houses.
I think this could make for a really fun episode, following the teams as they interact with the kids, brainstorming ideas, going out to find materials and furniture, helping the kids build the entire thing and maybe even teaching them a thing or two about science and tools and building methods in the process.
During the entire process, the team could then compare observations on the difference in overall focus between the boys and the girls, the level of order/chaos that naturally arises in each group, both in terms of physical order surrounding planning and building materials and order in terms of staying on point and not straying from the assignment. Also, they could look at how much emphasis each group puts on aesthtics vs. practicality, the level of finish each group wants to put on the project before they're willing to call it finished and so on.
It certainly more actively involves the cast than having other adults do all the work and then just interviewing them afterward, making for a more interesting viewing experience. Plus there's the added side bonus of turning a large group of kids, if not on to the MythBusters, then at least on to the idea of creating something from nothing, planning the work and working the plan as a group and taking pride in the end result.
Thoughts?
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Post by the light works on Dec 22, 2013 3:02:51 GMT
I think I just had an idea... Going back to what I said earlier about a play house, how about the entire team goes to a primary school in the area and announce to the students that they'll be building two play houses/club houses for them? One for the boys and one for the girls. Catch is that a group of the kids will have to be involved in both planning and building both houses. I think this could make for a really fun episode, following the teams as they interact with the kids, brainstorming ideas, going out to find materials and furniture, helping the kids build the entire thing and maybe even teaching them a thing or two about science and tools and building methods in the process. During the entire process, the team could then compare observations on the difference in overall focus between the boys and the girls, the level of order/chaos that naturally arises in each group, both in terms of physical order surrounding planning and building materials and order in terms of staying on point and not straying from the assignment. Also, they could look at how much emphasis each group puts on aesthtics vs. practicality, the level of finish each group wants to put on the project before they're willing to call it finished and so on. It certainly more actively involves the cast than having other adults do all the work and then just interviewing them afterward, making for a more interesting viewing experience. Plus there's the added side bonus of turning a large group of kids, if not on to the MythBusters, then at least on to the idea of creating something from nothing, planning the work and working the plan as a group and taking pride in the end result. Thoughts? me likey. I think the myth would have to be something more global in scale like "are girls really more girly than boys?" because you will have to look at their aesthetic preferences as well. consider: Attachment DeletedAttachment DeletedAttachment Deleted |
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Post by the light works on Dec 22, 2013 3:08:40 GMT
I have to say that kitchen #2 was a particular pain: Attachment DeletedI had to use my rotozip to cut a smooth mounting surface on the stone backsplash so the plugs would finish cleanly. |
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Post by OziRiS on Dec 22, 2013 13:17:09 GMT
me likey. I think the myth would have to be something more global in scale like "are girls really more girly than boys?" because you will have to look at their aesthetic preferences as well. I think we could easily still go for the myths that: 1: Girls are more orderly/organized than boys (also going into the impulse control myth) 2: Boys are more practical in nature where girls care more about aesthetics (this could also go into the age old myth that boys have better spacial relation, making them better at building stuff than girls) and 3: Girls like to "rearrange the furniture" more often than boys - this would then require the team to revisit the school after a month or so to see what's changed and what's been left the way it was. I think there's a huge potential for just generally studying the social dynamics of both genders when working in groups, which could prove interesting on levels that we haven't even thought of yet. Using kids in the age group 8-10 also has the potential to eliminate some variables like certain social norms that normally don't come into play before adolecsence, yet keeping others that are instilled very early on. I personally thought during the "throws like a girl" myth that it was extremely interesting how the guys took note of the age at which boys developed a throwing technique and girls didn't, up until which point there was no notable difference between how the two genders were throwing. |
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Post by Cybermortis on Dec 22, 2013 18:17:14 GMT
Some points/thoughts;
Mythbusters does not have the money to put people up in hotels, if you've ever read their requests for volunteers they always ask and look for people from the SF area. Meaning that at most MB only have to pay for cab fair.
They have never, as far as I know, used volunteers for longer than one day. People have to work, can't afford to take the time off and MB is in no position to compensate them for that. Again, its money - MB has less than you think.
What about taking pictures of a number of work spaces and then showing those pictures to various volunteers, who place them in order of what they consider the neatest. Then they could be asked which workspaces they think belong to a man or a woman.
Workspaces might be ideal, as they are less likely to contain anything which specifies the gender of the occupant, and if they do those items could be removed while the picture is taken.
They could take pictures of the offices at M5/7 as well as the work stations used by the cast.
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Post by OziRiS on Dec 22, 2013 19:32:01 GMT
What about taking pictures of a number of work spaces and then showing those pictures to various volunteers, who place them in order of what they consider the neatest. Then they could be asked which workspaces they think belong to a man or a woman. Workspaces might be ideal, as they are less likely to contain anything which specifies the gender of the occupant, and if they do those items could be removed while the picture is taken. They could take pictures of the offices at M5/7 as well as the work stations used by the cast. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but you usually make a point out of getting us to think about how to get the cast involved as much as possible and how to make it as visually interesting as possible. For me, this goes in the opposite direction, valid testing method or not. |
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