Of course, there are overlaps with other places. Currently, they are divided into travelling, eating, working, visiting, shopping. There is one category which I can’t get a better name for which fits into the rest – in the movies or watching plays.

There are ‘rules’ of behaviour to just about everything. And not everyone agrees.

For eating, especially, there are so many ways to set the table. There are several ways to signal to waiters that you are still eating, or if you are done and that they should start clearing plates. I’ve read an article where a reader passionately comments that it bothered him/her to see people eating with their hands. But, in Singapore, many people eat with their hands. My family does. And I’m pretty sure lots of people eat roti prata with their hands too.

However in other places, like an office, there are lots of things I agree with. Like people who tended to shout over cubicles to talk to others. Or like overpowering perfumes. Or loudly singing.

Looking at this list…it just kind of is hilarious that we have to have ‘rules’ to behave in a human manner to other humans going through the day.

Oh. And I was reusing paper that I found thrown away in the open lab. So…sorry about the printed orhtographic thingamabob.

One of the advice I was given was to list out all the actions I consider to be inconsiderate. Which makes sense. I totally overlooked doing this. At the moment, here’s a list which I’ve come up with. I tried putting them into categories… I think the categories might change. But one thing I do realise about these actions is that: the actions are sort of like… making a public space (like a train or something) into your personal space… like someone who burps loudly in a train. It’s such an unsuitable action for the setting…and yet…it makes the space more… human or homely. Hmmm… it intrigues me.

Anyway, here’s what I’ve got at the moment. Looking forward to write more. (Haven’t even gotten to forums and people’s additions yet.)

Pattern of perception

 Table of Contents

1 People have different perceptions about things they see.

2 People attach meaning to images they see.

3 An image does say a thousand words.

REWRITTEN ATTEMPT #1

This really happened. And by the looks that everyone else was giving her, everyone assumed that she was being inconsiderate by putting her things on an empty seat next to her. It was almost like we’re ganging up on her… Only to realise that the things next to her weren’t even hers in the first place.

Sorry, lady. Sorry.

Pattern of perception

 Table of Contents

1 People have different perceptions about things they see.

                – What is perception?
                – Why perceptions differ?
                                – Studies done on perception
                – Why is this big deal?
                                – How our perceptions of things affect the way we see the world

2 People attach meaning to images they see.

                – What is meaning?
                – Why do we need meaning?
                                – Meaning helps us relate to images
                                                – Does meaning make us like an image better? Why do we like an image?

3 An image does say a thousand words.

                – What is an image?
                – People don’t necessarily see the same things in an image.
                                – Do they find things in an image they can relate to?
                                        – An image would provoke different feelings or perceptions from different people.
                – They attach different meanings to an image based on who they are.
                                – Personality
                                                – Traits, Values and Life events

4 Everyone is unique. So are their viewpoints.

                – What makes you unique?
                                – ‘Who are you?’ based on personality studies
                – If everyone is unique, doesn’t that make everyone similar?
                                – How unique are people from which other?
                                                – Perceptions would be differing, even if your traits are similar.

5 An image that represents you.

                – Would a person describe themselves as an image?
                                – If they could, would every image be similar? Or would every image be unique?
                – Do we like an image based on how we relate to it?
                                – Perceptions make people see the world differently.
                                                – Are we more different, or similar to each other?

6 The pattern of perception

- Are we more different? Are we more similar?
- If we see an image that represents our perceptions, would we like it?

It made sense when I wrote it. BUT I realise that I am missing a major part of my project. I listened to CZ’s and Cheryl’s table of contents and I saw that I didn’t have a solid fyp topic that I could tie everything in. Which is probably major fail.

On top of that, after the useful discussion, I realised that -it’s true- the projects I come up with to try to fit my research is very superficial. I see it now.

AND now that I see it, I know where I’m at. And where I’m at is scary because it almost feels like I am close to the start all over again.

BUT, I have been given really good advice. Which is awesome. Instead of trying to fit everything, forcing it into the topic I’ve chosen, I should let everything go natural. I am just afraid that I won’t have time, or that I’d stray so far to come back to my project proper, or if I should even pursue the road of perception. Or.. okay okay…

The good thing out of this is that I know where I am at, and I still have time. Right?

right.

Duration: minimal
Props: none
Effect: complicity (<— I have no idea what this word means.)

I did it.

And made a baby cry.

(I made a cat nuzzle me too. But it was probably because I smelt like food.)

Okay. I’ve found the chapter in this book that I got reminded of when I was reading another book and came across this line: ‘Those 200 men will have statistically similar lives and relationships to mine than a random sample of British men would have, but they will not be the same as me.’

 I was reminded of chapter 94 in ‘Astonish yourself!’

 (This book is actually filled with 101 philosophical experiments that are part of your daily life. Each chapter is one mini experiment. I was attracted to the cover.)

94: Think about what other people are doing’

Duration: 10 to 15 minutes
Props: none
Effect: dissolving

You are alone for a while. Rightly or wrongly, your solitude weighs on you. You feel cut off from the rest of the world. False, of course. To find out just how mistaken you are, begin by asking yourself what, at that very instant, your loved ones, your family, and your best friends are doing. Picture in your mind, as precisely as you can, their current activity. Try and place them in space. In relation to where you are now, are they in front of you? Behind you? To the right? To the left? Higher? Lower? Picture how far away they are from you. Look at them from various angles, as silhouettes and in the greatest detail. Now widen your field of vision bit by bit. Admit to the scene the people who are around each of them.

Now think of what everyone else in that neck of the woods is doing, in each village, suburb, city. Who is working, wailing, wandering? How many, at this moment, are asleep? Consider the question from a planetary perspective. What percentage of human beings, at this precise moment, are yawning? Cutting their nails? Writhing in pain? Waking with a smile? Drinking soup? Screaming with pleasure? Dying of boredom?

How many, at this instant, are playing the piano? Listening to Bach? Fleeing the police? Leaving a library? On airplanes? Wiping their bottoms, washing their hands, brushing their teeth, blowing their noses? How many are crying and how many laughing? Speaking in front of an audience? Listening? Trying to commit suicide?

How many, at this instant, are asking the same questions?

It intrigued me. This whole book did. I read it purely out of interest. But now, it kind of forms a little spark.

I am aware that there are others who share the same scores as I did on my personality evaluation. And that these people are definitely not exactly the same as me. But at the same time, I think we would have overlaps in our patterns and behaviours, which makes us similar. I do wonder how different I am from the people who have the same scores on my evaluation as I do. Probably not much. Probably too much. But it intrigues me. I would like to know what they are doing or thinking about at this very moment It just seems so interesting. And limitless.

‘When thinking about how individuals function, he distinguishes three different levels of specificity. The first tier is the big five personality-trait scores. These, as we have seen, are largely fixed by early biological mechanisms, and they give only rather broad predictive power. At the second level, we can identify characteristic behaviour patterns. These do follow from the big five personality traits, but not in a one-to-one mapping. For example, one high-Extraversion scorer might become a polar explorer. Another might take up sky-diving. A third never had the opportunity to try any of these things, but has developed a lively persona in social contexts. The point is that there are many possible behavioural outlets for Extraversion, and which one you adopt will depend upon individual history, chance and choice. The odds are, though, that if you are a high-Extraversion scorer, you will adopt at least one of them. Thus the 200 other Daniel Nettle personalities out there in Britain will with overwhelming likelihood have found different characteristic behaviour patterns to be the outlets for their dispositions than I have. They probably spend their time doing things that I can see the appeal of, but in many cases have never done or even considered.

The third level is the most idiosyncratic of all, namely the personal life story. This is not the objective events of the life, which belong to level two, but rather the subjective story the person tells themselves about who they are, what they are doing, and why they are doing it. Humans are undeniably narrative creatures’

Reading this makes me think of something I read in this book entitled ‘Astonish Yourself!’. And that’s all I remember.

But another thing it makes me think about is one of my earlier ideas.

Behaviour patterns. (Literally patterns) I thought about this because I was wondering how people would condense themselves into one pattern. I was also thinking that how you see yourself as is different from how someone else sees you. Since then, my direction has been … nowhere. So, I’m thinking about it a bit more.

Back to this later.

This book is a fresh read as compared to all the very heavy, very serious, very in-depth books on personality that I’ve been browsing through. It is entertaining even and I actually read the whole book in one sitting. It starts off by the author ‘insisting’ that the reader take a short personality quiz. I don’t really know if it should be called that… a better term would be personality evaluation probably. It’s called The Newcastle Personality Assessor. Anyway, here is mine.

(Some inconsiderate people have actually written their answers on the quiz itself. 3 people to be exact. I had to whiteout their answers after making a copy of the test. Buuuut… I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they were the ones who donated this book to the library.)

The rest of the book is divided into the traits : Extraversion, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness and Openness. The author explained each of them thoroughly. What is so interesting about this book is that this was the first encounter I had with the five basic traits. I noticed that this evaluation was used in several books but they were explained in a way that I found difficult to understand. This book however, was more English, more understandable.

I actually think… this book would be more useful to Steffi.

How this relates to what I’m doing with my FYP? I’ve found some snippets that I find interesting.

‘There are (at least) five broad personality dimensions along which we all differ, and which cause us to behave in certain ways rather than other ways. A great deal of what happens in our interests, careers, relationships, romantic lives and health follows from where we fall along these continua. The determinant of where we fall is how our brains are wired up, and the determinants of how relevant parts of our brains get wired up are firstly genetics, and secondly, various early life influences over which we have no control and which seem essentially irreversible. This naturally leads to some difficult questions. Does this mean that personality is unchangeable? Is there anymore point in striving for personal growth than there is for an adult to strive to be taller? ‘ ‘First, though, I must address the question which actually turns out to be the key to all the others. Am I really saying that it takes just five scores to encapsulate everything about who a person is?’

Okay. I actually wondered this myself. Because I’ve been browsing through books and looking at the way scientists… or rather psychologists have been categorising people based on certain personality traits, I’ve wondered whether I could somehow map the personalities of my friends onto people I’ve just met. I see it as creating my own set of personality traits (except that these will be named after my friends) and sort of inventing personas for others in order to create a pseudo world of friends.

But the author goes on to say:

‘If we accept the five-factor framework too naively, it certainly looks that way. These five constructs do seem to capture most of the broadly predictable person-to-person variation in human behaviour, and, taken together with intelligence, they constitute the best statistical predictors of life outcomes that we have. But how far should this be taken? Am I really saying that another person with the same five-factor scores as me and with the same level of intelligence would be identical to me? This seems an extraordinary idea. Of course, the five-factor framework allows for a great number of different personality configurations-technically an infinite number, since the scales are continuous. Let’s say though for the sake of argument that we can measure with sufficient precision to identify ten distinct points along each of the five scales. Since the scales are largely independent of each other, that would mean there were 105 or 100,000 possible personalities. That’s a lot of possibilities, but it would still lead to the conclusion that there are about 200 other men in Great Britain with the same personality as me. Am I supposed to believe that they have identical lives to me?

‘Of course this is not the case. Those 200 men will have statistically similar lives and relationships to mine than a random sample of British men would have, but they will not be the same as me.’

So, I realise I am trying to reach a not very likely conclusion with my ideas. Back to the drawing board, I guess.