I take him downstairs in the morning by sitting on the penultimate step, and he grabs on to my shoulders and wraps his legs around my torso. He always lays his head on my neck and says "Awwww, Dad".
@ElendilTheTall you might not be the kind of bloke standing on a bench in the local pub, brandishing his pint glass and singing "ten green bottles", but that doesn't automatically make you boring ;-)
@Cerberus what a job must that be. A tester for boringness. You get to have interviews with people suspected of being boring, and to evaluate them on a scale. Terrible.
Although, I might just have described a talent scout for comedians.
if there is a group of people who are enthusiastic about an interest you don't share and you call them "boring" then of course they will be happy together
@JourneymanGeek any good news from your side? Have companies opened the pursestrings of their 2017 budgets already and are looking for people like you?
@Cerberus I think you might be thinking of it as "influenced a major life decision" while most people probably interpret the question as "part of your character", "involved in day-to-day life" and so on.
That's... not even inaccurate, though. If people think of music (and their tastes) as something important for meeting people and socializing, isn't that a big influence?
I am imagining either people who are playing in a band that is a big part of their lives, or musicologists, or maybe groupies, or emotionally extremely sensitive people.
and people's social interactions are often not pure conversations, but with some context. Some people primarily see friends when drinking, or eating out.
So, if someone socializes with their friends by going clothing shopping, that's a pretty big influence. If they just make "nice shirt" small talk, that's not such a big influence.
Right. And I'm saying, a creative hobby that you spend enough time on to be a big deal is not actually bigger than an idle interest that influences who you do and don't get along with, and how you spend your time with people.
It may not seem that way to you, but I think a lot of people put a lot of value on social interactions and when they think about it, they'll naturally connect it to the things that influence those interactions.
I asked a fellow Dutchman, and he was very surprised to see those figures too.
@Jefromi If so, then yes.
Perhaps it is a cultural difference.
I know some professional musicians, and I know some people who go to concerts very often and know a ton about their preferred genres and talk about them all the time.
I'd say music has a big influence on my life, despite not playing an instrument anymore, not being a groupie or a musicologist or even a terribly knowledgeable amateur. It's just something that I like and enjoy and spend some time seeking out, and like to enjoy with friends, and that matters to me.
I'd expect food to be pretty high, especially recently. It's an even more standard way to socialize, and it's gotten more common for people to go hunting for really good places to eat with friends and so on.
Wine probably not so much here.
Clothing, probably mixed, but I'd imagine most women would say yes because it's something they have to worry about all the time.
Sex I guess would be pretty contextual since it's still relatively taboo. A lot of people in a lot of contexts probably feel there's something wrong with saying it's important, but if you could get honest answers, I'm sure it'd be up there.
Food is pretty central to family life for a ton of people, and to social life with friends for quite a lot too, I really would not be surprised if people regard that as a big influence.
my perfect opportunity to make a personality-cult joke is broken by the fact that Dutch people haven't had a politician who nurtured a personality cult in recent centuries
but when it's getting to the point where it sounds like just different definitions of terms in a question, yeah, maybe there's cultural things associated with that, but how people respond to the question doesn't really provide much information
It is pretty obvious that the people who think that music isn't a big influence in the average person's life interpret "big influence" (and the whole question) differently than those who do
my point is that if you look at how people answer that survey question in two countries (or a "ask my friends" version of it), and people are interpreting the terms very differently, the results don't tell you much about whether there's an actual difference in how much music matters to people
let's stay with your scenario. Group 1 thinks that "affects 10% of what you do" is enough to self-define as "a person to whom music matters" and group 2 needs 90%.
Then you ask person 1-A from group 1 who says "music doesn't matter to me" and person 2-A from group 2 who says "music doesn't matter to me"
as far as I understand you, you are saying that "it doesn't follow that it affects the same percentage of their lives"
and I agree with that part, but I find it actually uninteresting
because both people self-identify as "I am the kind of person to whom music doesn't matter"
and that is more important (if you want to get to know that person) than knowing that music affects exactly 5.4% of the life of that person
I was going a little deeper, and saying that since what they regard as mattering doesn't actually correspond to the same thing, you can't use it in the same way in terms of getting to know them.
both groups can be chock full of people who are at 80%
and in practice, if you actually hang around with them, it's gonna be a thing
One of them told you it "mattered" and the other didn't... and it turns out that difference was more about language and perspective, and less about their actual life.
the difference in perspective can still be important and interesting (if it really is perspective, and not just bad translation)
if they're actually at 80% and you say eh I don't really wanna do that with you, it's gonna matter, whether their perspective is that it matters or not
let's say that you are interested in "if this person has to decide between coming to my birthday party or going to a concert of their favorite band, what will they pick"
then the answer to the question doesn't actually tell you, because someone who's at 20% is gonna come to your birthday party, but in one case they'll have said yes and in the other they'll have said no
My feeling is that the person who self-identifies as "music doesn't matter much to me" will come to the birthday party regardless of whether they are spending 20% or 80% of their time immersed in music
well, for example, I would pretty reliably pick the birthday party unless I'd already spent money on tickets way in advance, and I'd at least consider getting rid of the tickets, and I would absolutely say music is a big influence on my life
maybe the point I should be making is that people don't make their decisions and self-identify according to a survey question
like, there's an actual "how much does this matter to me" that the person actually uses to decide things
that's what matters, and depending on context and understanding, it may reflect very differently in the survey
Yes OK, the last one is usually true (although you will likely see some interesting priming effects if you ask the question first and then have them make decisions)
and so the specific case here, at least between Cerberus and me, I think there's a big enough difference in understanding of "big influence" that our answers to those questions don't tell you all that much
I don't know if food or music actually affects my decisions more than his, but we definitely answer the question differently.
I still think there will be quite some correlation between the "music is a big influence on me" self-identification, the birthday vs. concert decision, and as a side effect, the answers to the survey question
but this could be a side effect of my own interpretation of the question
I would be really interested to see a properly made study on this, well-designed, controlled for confounding factors, etc., but it would be an amazing coincidence if somebody has really conducted such a study
Well, there definitely is that correlation among people who understand the question the same, and people's understanding isn't totally random, so yes, the correlation will exist in general.
I'm not sure exactly what you'd study there, I guess.
Another way to understand my thought would be, look at your two groups of people, ask them to name the big influences on their lives, ask them whether various things are big influences (blah blah big samples avoid priming etc). If one group says a lot more things are big influences than another, then... that's the difference in understanding.
