Unexpected

The most satisfying kind of Christmas gift - and the one most likely to stay for years of festivity memory - is the unexpected kind.

For weeks before Christmas, my wife and I have included our three-year-old darling to prepare and celebrate the holidays. Christmas tree and gingerbread man were decorated in a funny manner. Some of the decorations are traditional, some unconventional, and many are exaggeration. The Santa Claus decoration, as she'd made in the school, had five whopping eyes.

On Christmas Eve, my wife invited Jasmine to wrap the gifts - and again in the most unusual style. Unbeknownst to me, they made use of chocolate gift paper to wrap a scarf for me ("So that daddy will think that's a box of chocolate!"). Jasmine was pretty much focused on the task. Alas, that's a secret to trick the daddy.

That is, until I came home just after they put a finishing touch on that "box of chocolate."

I had not the foggiest idea what my daughter and my wife were doing. "What a beautiful day and a lovely girl," I said. And she is.

"Nooooooo, daddy, don't get too close," my daughter was really excited, "and you won't know this box is a scarf!"

When I realized that she had been trying to keep the secret but actually leaked the story, I told myself, "It's sure to be a kid's secret to remember."

Stereotype

On my way to work, I heard the news that we have to follow incredibly stringent rules when submitting photographs for application of Chinese visa. Absurd as the requirement is, it states precisely the dimension of the face, the interval length between two pupils, the area for the two eyes to fall within the photograph, and emotion of the applicant. For this very reason, many applicants fail.

I had no idea what these rules are trying to achieve, but I tried to guess. Can they make the identification more accurate? Can they get rid of forged visas? The answer in both cases is no. Be not beguiled. Our brains don't need that detailed and sophisticated photograph to make a conclusion.

Which brings me, somewhat uncomfortably, to the question of how stereotype - and not detailed analysis - determines our decision. To try to prove this point, a psychologist carried out an experiment by flashing either a black face or a white face on a computer screen. The subjects caught a glimpse of the face, and were then shown either a picture of a gun or a picture of a wrench. Each lasted for 200 milliseconds. Imagine you were sitting in front of the computer, you would know that details like the dimension of the face and the pupil separation won't make a centimeter of difference in 200 milliseconds. Here comes the results of that study: when subjects were primed with a black face first, they would identify the gun as a gun a little more quickly than if they were shown a white face first. It's a grotesque "colour-bind" prejudice, to say the least.

What if the subjects were forced to make a snap decision within 500 milliseconds? Well, they were quicker to call a gun a gun when they saw a black face first. But you will be surprised at how many errors occur. In fact - and this is the interesting part - when they saw a black face first, the subjects were also quicker to call a wrench a gun.

Sure, it seems unfair. But so do lots of things. Judging application materials, for instance, seems very unfair. A recent randomized, double-blind study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences confirmed a real bias against female students, even in science faculty from research-intensive universities. Researchers did an experiment by submitting identical curricula vitae to a broad, nationwide sample of biology, chemistry, and physics professors - there were 127 in all - to apply for a science laboratory manager position. The CVs were exactly the same except a random allocation to be submitted under a male or female name. In the end, women were significantly less competent and hireable than men even though student gender was the only variable that differed. Women were, I should make plain, also offered a lower starting salary. How can that be? Stereotype bias, but hey, it's something.

Rebuke

One day, a city was struck by a hurricane.

There's no joy for the citizens in such bad weather, and certainly none for the fire brigade. All the firemen were exhausted. And that's not all. Some frustrated firemen grabbed the streetsleepers' shawls and blankets to wrap themselves up in. Some defecated in the open. Some fled. Morale had been swept away as if by a tsunami.

So what can be done to a poor guy whose home happened to be on fire?

The answer: not much - at least not immediately according to that fire brigade's triage system.

There are few experiences as depressing as a fire brigade's manager who was helpless and watched his home ablaze. Horror. Sheer horror. That's what the manager felt when he decided to make a long distance call to his fireman friend in another city. His friend was a middle-aged fireman who had been in the fire service for years.

The middle-aged fireman rushed to the scene, did his job, and went home before the manager had time to thank him. The fireman, by now quite used to help people in need, didn't seem too flamboyant at the thought of his rescue. He almost forgot the event until, one week later, he received a complaint letter from the hard-pressed fire brigade. "Oh," said the middle-aged fireman, puzzled. He glanced at the complaint, with a frown. He said nothing for a while. He was more than a little bewildered by the intrusive language.

"All right," said the middle-aged fireman. "All right. I won't let this ridiculous letter sour my daughter's birthday tomorrow." He tried to control his temper and started to write a spur-of-the-moment reply:

My dear colleagues,

I confess that I went to your city and put the conflagration out last Wednesday morning. I had no right whatsoever to be critical of the way you feedback. Please forgive me.

The scene happened to be our fire brigade senior manager's home. The flames were out of control, and his home could have burned to the ground within minutes. I happened to know this manager for many years, and he requested me to make a quick assessment. I find it not true that I "didn't acknowledge any of your team member (as what was written in the feedback)." In fact, I was so grateful that your fire service superintendent handed me the hose and gave me a key to the equipments. I did return them after finishing my job.

Now I ask your forgiveness because I violated your policy. I'm very sorry that I had to let the poor gentleman "jump the queue (to quote your words)." I thought an early intervention was necessary to help my fire victim - before everything turns into ashes. I don't want to whitewash my stupid mistake, but the fact is that the house was saved.

When I read the sentence in your feedback letter that I "create more chaos and endanger all the other people waiting to be seen," I would beg to differ. I am in no position to make your department more chaotic than the current situation - and how can I?

You might call this type of wording an Attorney's Apology: "I confess to nothing, but if I'm guilty of anything, forgive me and please be lenient on me."

But my mother has always taught me that an apology requires our pride step aside, our egos lie low, and our prejudice die down. I will make this short and sincere...

"I'm sorry. Will you forgive me?"

Gorilla

Jasmine is going to be three years old tomorrow.

Three years isn't such a long time in the equation of life, but it was long enough for me to see every amazing new page in her life. What makes these three years special is the way my ever-more-independent daughter changes and grows. Gone is the packing of napkins every time we go out, so too is the bib. Before you know it, she walks. Before you know it, she talks. Before you know it, she is learning to use dental floss.

It's amazing that Jasmine loves storybooks, too. In fact, we bought so many books that she can reach with minimal effort. Some are silly like Gruffalo and Room on the Broom, others unfailingly interesting and humorous (yes, I mean Good Night, Gorilla).

Which brings me to a Sunday afternoon at the countryside. When we were looking for the helmet crabs, Jasmine tiptoed behind her mum's back, looking amused. I didn't know what's going on, except a glimpse of Jasmine who grabbed something from the pocket of her mum's trousers. I saw nothing and yet knew that Jasmine was somehow, by some miracle, really carrying something important. "Shhhhhhh.... this is funny," said her silly look.

"Honey," I said, "what'd you just take?"

"Keys," my daughter whispered. She held out her right hand as if opening a gate with an invisible key. "Out comes the elephant."

I got my intuition back when I made space for it, when I almost "heard" the clattering of keys in Jasmine's hand. Wow! She was pretending to be the Gorilla in the storybook. See, Gorilla tiptoed, followed by an elephant. Then a giraffe. And a hyena...

"And... armadillo!" We both laughed.

Christmas Party

With Christmas around the corner, I asked my mentor the other day why he has been volunteering to organise the department Christmas party for years. I was intrigued.

Actually, I shouldn't have been.

A story from BBC News today gave me the reason. That comes from an experiment conducted by a graduate student at Stanford University's School of Business. Volunteers were first requested to select an answer from a number of emotional responses to different hypothetical scenarios. Stories like "driving down the road, hitting a small animal" allowed an assessment of participants' "guilt proneness." The participants then completed group tasks in which they had an opportunity, but no real incentive, to take charge - somewhat like organising the Christmas party for the office. In this innovative experiment, the research team found that the higher one's level of guilt proneness, the more likely he or she was to step up as a leader in the activity. But the real surprise comes with their observation that the guilt-prone participants performed better than those who were extroverted (a trait often associated with leadership skill, mind you) but not prone to guilty feelings.

By further evaluating the performance feedback for people in real management positions, the team confirmed that those who were more prone to feelings of guilt were more often rated by their clients, colleagues, and former managers to be effective leaders.

Now I see. The willingness of my mentor to organise the Christmas party turns out to be the hallmark of effective leadership.

Cracker

If you find that you start a busy day that you lose your energy before the fag end of the day, that you don't ever bother remembering it, that you feel lost along the way, it may be that there is nothing at the end to cheer you up.

That end-of-the-day event probably feels like desserts, like ice-cream that we buy ourselves after hard work. You don't need a seven-course dessert. It may simply be a flickering moment of good bite at a candy. And then, you get your sense of humor back.

It was a busy Tuesday packed with activity and clinic sessions today. I was tired, but I kept awake long enough to finish the clinic and sign all the letters. Then I wrote to invite reviewers for a newly submitted journal manuscript. The rest - student assignments - I was forced to leave unchecked till tomorrow.

On my journey back home, I found that I had lost my voice. Still, one thing put me in the spirit to laugh. I went to the public library and borrowed Alison Jay's storybook The Nutcracker for my dear daughter. That is a great read for her after our recent watching of The Nutcracker ice skating performance. Jasmine was truly enchanted by the new book. Sitting on her mum's lap, Jamsine listened to the story, drew in her breath, as amazed as the story character Clara in the Sugar Plum Fairy. Before long, I forgot the day's hustle and bustle.

Priming

One day, a professor asked his student to his office. The student walked down a long corridor, came through the doorway, and met his professor.

"Look, this is a scrambled-sentence test. You can find a list of five-word sets in front of you. Your task is to resemble a grammatical four-word sentence as quickly as you can out of each set."

"Yes sir," the student's face lit up at the examination paper. "This is easy."

01  him was worried she always
02  from are Florida oranges temperature
03  ball the throw toss silently
04  shoes give replace old the
05  he observes occasionally people watches
06  be will sweat lonely they
07  sky the seamless gray is
08  should now withdraw forgetful we
09  us bingo sing play let
10  sunlight makes temperature wrinkle raisins

After a while the student finished the test like a piece of cake. He said goodbye to the professor, satisfied. It had never dawned on him that he walked out of the office and down the hall much more slowly than the way he walked in few minutes ago.

How so? That was hardly a difficult test, it seems, that could have made the student tired or frustrated to walk at such a slow pace. So it is perhaps surprising to find the same aftermath - slow pace - when the test was repeated in other students. Nobody could get the energy to walk fast. Ever. It was like falling down Alice's rabbit hole. One simply got weird and slow after the scrambled-sentence test.

Yes, it is possible, and the odds can be calculated quite precisely, according to the psychologist John Bargh, when you take a closer look at the words. See? Words like "worried," "old," "lonely," "gray," and "wrinkle" are scattered all around to prime our brains about being old. The exercise, as it turns out, is never meant to be a language test. The unconscious exposure to the priming words simply make one act old and become slow. Easy enough.