Digit for digit, I have my father’s stubby-fingered, large-palmed hands. Until last week, this was nothing more than an aesthetic annoyance. Then I stumbled upon research suggesting that “man hands” don’t just make playing the piano look less graceful — they also suggest that I’m more likely than my dainty-fingered comrades to be murdered. 

The Guardian is moving. After years of being headquartered in a dingy cave of questionable functionality located over another dingy cave of questionable functionality  (Hi Thai), we’re heading to the space formerly known as the most disgusting office on campus: the Media Lounge, or “old Koala office.” This latter reason is why the contractor hastened to specify the extent of planned renovations before revealing the old name of our new space. And it’s these extensive renovations that quelled my visceral reaction and started me thinking about the psychology of work spaces. 

It’s that time of year — the worst time of year: February has rolled around. Everyone is either complaining about Valentine’s Day or complaining about the people who complain about Valentine’s Day. And I am caught in the three-step psychological maneuver that I experience every fifth week. First, I glance nervously at my upcoming exams and papers and start to feel nauseated. Then, I rationalize that a “seven-to-eight-page paper” won’t take too long. Finally, I go back to my true love: doing nothing (all the while perfectly aware that a research thesis won’t write itself and soon — so very soon — I will pay).

In other words, welcome to college and — judging from the results of a 2010 study by Christopher Hsee at the University of Chicago — welcome to everyday life. In Hsee’s study, researchers gave participants the choice of dropping off a package at either a location nearby or one 15 minutes away. Regardless of the final choice, the participant would receive a piece of milk chocolate.  Unsurprisingly, few people cared enough about a piece of chocolate to pick the more taxing option. 

Then Hsee really switched things up, offering milk chocolate for staying put and dark chocolate for trekking to the farther location — and not only did the majority of people take a walk, those who did were happier than those who stayed put. The results were the same when the chocolate choices were switched around, so it’s not just the seductive properties of 80-percent cacao that lured this sudden spike in activity. The participants simply needed to trick themselves into creating an incentive — even in the form of the false choice of “I would rather have dark chocolate” — to spring into action. Or, as the study’s authors put it, “It’s as if people understand that being busy will keep them happier, but they need an excuse of some kind.” 

Hsee’s study about physical idleness is both complemented and contradicted by a study on mind-wandering by Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert at Harvard University. Here, the researchers used an iPhone app to prompt users to report what they were doing, what they were thinking and how they felt.Apparently, we spend nearly one-half our conscious hours thinking about something other than what we’re doing, and using time-lag analyses, Killingsworth and Gilbert concluded that a person’s mind-wandering is usually the cause of present unhappiness. The specific results are more confusing though: People are unhappiest when they’re on the computer, resting or — contrary to Hsee’s theories — working.
         In conclusion: People are unhappy when they’re idle, they’re unhappy when they’re working and they’re unhappy when they’re not thinking about what they’re doing, which is mostly resting or working.      

Happy February.

Like everyone else, I like to be right — but in a sickening twist on this universal desire, I especially like to be right about my (many) pessimistic predictions. Thus, I felt both gleeful and grim upon discovering research supporting a comment I made years ago about how “Breakfast Club” is a lie and my time at UCSD would not consist of connecting with fascinating strangers. 

The year was 2009, and my long-suffering best friend, trying to make me feel better about being headed to UCSD, remarked that our 30,000 enrollment would expose me to new and interesting friends. Nope, I replied, I hated parties. I was scared of people. I would not meet “lots of different people” at a big school. 

Sheer experience has proven my theory  true, as I spend 90 percent of my time with the same group of stressed-out Vonnegut lovers who won’t stop playing Sporcle games.

But it’s not just me; Ingram and Morris at Columbia University used electronic name tags to track the conversation at a mixer, and concluded that people do not mix. No matter how much people claimed that they were there to “meet new people,” they ended up talking to people they already knew, or those who are most similar, especially in terms of occupation. In other words, I shouldn’t expect that my experience at a kickback on Saturday — during which I spent most of the time talking to the one friend I brought — will change as I enter the work force. Ten years from now, I will attend professional mixers and the main difference will be the height of my heels and the length of my skirt.

Though this phenomenon is depressingly consistent across the population, research by Bahns, Pickett and Crandall at the University of Kansas shows that UCSD’s large enrollment actually makes it easier for us to stay socially isolated. Bahns et. al approached random students at five schools — the 25,000-enrollment University of Kansas, and four rural colleges with a median enrollment of 525 — to ask about their beliefs, politics and social networks. They found that the larger the school, the more likely each person was to have extremely similar friends. Small colleges force people to be friends with, essentially, whomever is around, and these friendships are closer and last longer despite the differences. In contrast, those at the University of Kansas, and us here at UCSD, use the choices offered by the large populations to find the exact people who are just like us.

So it turns out that all those freshmen events and RA mixers don’t matter much, as people simply gravitate toward their mirrors, and this holds true for everything from high school clubs to partisan politics. It’s intuitive, it’s easy, but it’s also sad, because by staying within the same social circle, we’re reinforcing our own values, and missing out on the potential of what else is out there. 

My three faithful readers (mom, dad, Regina) may remember that this space once housed a media column. But last week, I decided that I no longer want to overanalyze Twitter each week, and would rather discuss men who want to have sex with very young girls (and other facets of human behavior). Hence, Field Notes.

The U.S. House of representatives introduced the stop online piracy act last month. If enacted, this bill will expand the government’s ability to enforce copyright laws on the internet.