Why we tip and how to get a bigger tip

'I don't tip because society says I have to. All right, if someone deserves a tip, if they really put forth an effort, I'll give them a little something extra. But this tipping automatically, it's for the birds. As far as I'm concerned, they're just doing their job.'
Mr Pink, Reservoir Dogs.

Stats from the USA suggest that $40 billion is spent on tips every year. Yet from the traditional economic perspective, which sees us as rational agents operating in our own interest, tipping waiters, barbers, taxi drivers and other service workers is crazy. You don't have to so why do you? That's if you do. Not everyone does. In an effort to explore our motivations for tipping, Stephen Saunders and Michael Lynn sent out 29 fieldworkers to survey 530 South African citizens after they'd had an encounter with a car guard. These unpaid workers are a common sight in South Africa at shopping centres, hospitals and schools. They help with parking, protect the car from vandalism and assist drivers with loading shopping and luggage.

One explanation for why we tip is that we're trying to encourage good service in the future. However, Saunders and Lynn found no evidence that people who used a car guard more were more likely to tip, as you'd expect if this were their true motive. By contrast, perceived service quality was associated with both the likelihood of giving a tip and the amount tipped, thus suggesting that participants were using tipping as a form of reward. Similarly, those who said they thought it was important to help others in need tended to tip more (although they weren't any more likely to tip), suggesting altruism was another motive. Finally, social norms were a key factor - participants who said their friends and relatives thought it was important to tip were more likely to tip themselves, especially if there were more people with them at the time of questioning. Size of tip was not associated with this factor, perhaps because it's only the act of tipping that's visible to others, rather than the amount tipped.

'Hopefully this paper will encourage more economists to look beyond the apparent irrationality of tipping and to study it from both a behavioural economics and psychological perspective,' the researchers said.

In a separate study, based in Utah, John Seiter and Harry Weger tested the effects of ingratiation on food servers' tips. They had two waiters and two waitresses go about their usual duties but with a twist: for half the parties they served they were instructed to compliment the customers, telling them that they'd made an excellent choice in what they'd ordered. Counting the tips received from 348 dinner parties showed that complimenting customers on making a shrewd order led to tips that were three per cent greater on average than when no compliment was made - a statistically significant boost.

'A roughly 3 per cent increase may seem a small amount,' the researchers said, '[but] an additional $1 to $5 per shift could translate into hundreds of dollars per year for each food server.'

More in-depth analysis showed that complimenting customers on their order only led to bigger tips for parties of two to three people. It made to no difference with a party of four and actually led to smaller tips for groups larger than this (the research involved parties of up to seven). It also turned out that one of the waiting staff had received smaller tips after complimenting customers (even though the group average was for larger tips in this condition). Seiter and Weger surmised this could be because she didn't come across as sincere.

This study builds on earlier research showing that use of mimicry, light touches on customers' shoulders, happy faces on the bill and squatting to customers' eye level can all help provoke larger tips.
_________________________________

Saunders, S., & Lynn, M. (2010). Why tip? An empirical test of motivations for tipping car guards. Journal of Economic Psychology, 31(1), 106-113 DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2009.11.007

Seiter, J., & Weger, Jr., H. (2010). The Effect of Generalized Compliments, Sex of Server, and Size of Dining Party on Tipping Behavior in Restaurants. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 40 (1), 1-12 DOI: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2009.00560.x

Diarrhea

Since last night.


Diarrhea non stop.


F.M.L.

Healthy Snack Idea: Funny Honey Bunny Spread

Yesterday’s cooking class on “Healthy Snacks” went so well. The kids (ranging in age from 7-18) were sweet, totally engaged and excited to try all of the recipes. Twenty little and medium hands shot up whenever I asked for a volunteer. I will admit that last week was exhausting, juggling caring for my own family, doing a little volunteer work, prepping for this lesson, teaching it, then coming back and hitting the ground running again back at home. Lucky for me, my parents are in town visiting and between their eager assistance with the kids, and a husband who totally engages with them too when he’s home on the weekends, I was able to relax a bit yesterday…after running three loads of cooking equipment through this dishwasher!

Here is a recipe that I made with the kids yesterday, that was a hit. I whipped up a batch for my own children today. It’s something I’m leaving in the fridge that my dad can spread on a whole wheat bagel, as a quick snack or easy lunch for the kids when I am away (drum roll please) at a spa with my mom this week. Oops, did I just say that? More on that later! Right now I need to fill the fridge with some child-friendly foods to make snack time and meal time simple and healthy while I am away!

Funny Honey Bunny Spread

1 tub of whipped cream cheese (preferably organic)
1-2 cup(s) shredded carrots
¼ - ½ cup raisins or cranberries
Honey (to taste)
Cinnamon (to taste)
Whole Wheat Bagels

In a bowl, mash the cream cheese, carrots, raisins (or cranberries), honey and cinnamon together. Spread on mini whole wheat bagels or on whole grain crackers as a sweet, but healthy, treat. Spread may be kept in the fridge for up to a week in an airtight container. Just give it a stir before spreading!

Have equipment, will travel!

On the heels of recent debate over snacking, tomorrow I am teaching a “Healthy Snack” cooking lesson to a whole flock of children/tweens/teens. I may have gotten myself in over my head with so many participants, but I think I’ve picked recipes that’ll work with 18 sets of little hands…and that will excite them: Berry Dip, Funny Bunny Spread, Tzatziki, Edamame Hummus and a Smoothie Bar.

What kind of Internet user are you?

Before Kraft's Executive Board had even heard of Cadbury's, there used to be an advert on British television that showed people eating Cadbury's cream-eggs in a number of odd and inventive ways. The tag-line was 'How do you eat yours?' Now a pair of researchers based in Turkey, Leman Tosun and Timo Lajunen, have taken a similar tack with Internet use, asking hundreds of undergrad students how they use their time on the global interweb.

More specifically, the researchers were interested in whether the students used the Internet for the benefit of their existing face-face relationships - for example for arranging meet-ups and sharing photos - and how much they used it for establishing new friendships or conducting Internet-only relationships. The researchers also wanted to know whether the students found it easier to express their true selves online than in the flesh. The point of all this was to see whether people with certain personality types tend to use the Internet in particular ways.

Using Eysenck's classic personality test, Tosun and Lajunen found that students who scored high on extraversion (agreeing with statements like 'I am very talkative') tended to use the Internet to extend their real-life relationships, whereas students who scored high on psychoticism (answering 'yes' to statements like 'does your mood often go up and down?' and 'do you like movie scenes involving violence and torture?') tended to use the Internet as a substitute for face-to-face relationships. Students who scored high on psychoticism were also likely to say that they found it easier to reveal their true selves online than face-to-face. The personality subscale of neuroticism (indicated by 'yes' answers to items like 'Do things often seem hopeless to you?) was not associated with styles of Internet use.

'Our data suggest that global personality traits may explain social Internet use to some extent,' the researchers concluded. 'In future studies, a more detailed index of social motives can be used to better understand the relation between personality and Internet use.'
_________________________________

Tosun, L., & Lajunen, T. (2010). Does Internet use reflect your personality? Relationship between Eysenck’s personality dimensions and Internet use. Computers in Human Behavior, 26 (2), 162-167 DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2009.10.010

Magical Unicorns at the Tasting Room...

January has been a busy month at The Bruery – it seems like 2010 is flying by already! We’ll try to do our part in ending January on a high note.  What better way than with Kogi & new beer?

This weekend our good friends at Kogi BBQ are bringing their delicious Korean-Mexican fusion to the Tasting Room again.  They’ll be here Friday night from 6:30 – 9 pm for your snacking pleasure!

We also still have bottles of Oude Tart available.  This barrel aged sour Flemish red ale is selling quickly though so come down and pick up your bottles soon!  Keep in mind there is a 3 bottle limit per person.

We are also planning to run a pilot batch past you this weekend.  Amulet: Tyler's Magical Unicorn, is a dark strong sour ale that was brewed with a medley of plums, pears, and raisins that were reduced and carmelized with rum.  It was fermented with several strains of brettanomyces, plus pediococcus and lactobacillus to achieve a pleasant sourness.  It was then aged on oak with pinot noir grapes.  Sound good?  It is!  Keep in mind this is a small pilot batch, so it’s very limited.  Come let us know what you think!

This weekend we’ll be pouring:

 

Orchard White (available for growlers)

Saison Rue

Rugbrød (available for growlers)

Mischief

Humulus XPA (available for growlers)

Amulet: Tyler's Magical Unicorn

We look forward to seeing you this weekend!

Cheers,

Stef & the other folks at The Bruery

Extras

Eye-catching studies that didn't make the final cut:

Attractive women tend to be happier, but only in cities, not the countryside.

Near-conversational synthetic speech generated via brain-machine interface.

Review of eight meta-analyses of psychodynamic psychotherapy effectiveness: 'The perception that psychodynamic approaches lack empirical support does not accord with available scientific evidence and may reflect selective dissemination of research findings.'

The individual and situational factors that predict work place bullying. Men and victims of bullying are more likely to bully. Stressful work places with role conflict and interpersonal conflict also host more bullying.

Women process multisensory emotion expressions more efficiently than men.

Lookism in a Facebook age: 'The results indicated that both male and female subjects were more willing to initiate friendships with opposite-sex profile owners with attractive photos.'

Lusting while loathing: 'We show how being “jilted”—that is, being thwarted from obtaining a desired outcome—can concurrently increase desire to obtain the outcome, but reduce its actual attractiveness'.

Dreaming and the brain: 'It is now possible to ... address fundamental questions: how conscious experiences in sleep relate to underlying brain activity; why the dreamer is largely disconnected from the environment; and whether dreaming is more closely related to mental imagery or to perception'.

Wiley has a new cognitive science review journal.

Busy busy day...no time to cook.

I had an absolutely nutty day. No time to cook, but I don't want to arrive to book club empty-handed. So, guess what I am bringing tonight as my app? Hint: it's the same thing my children just had for dinner (1/2 a spinach one and 1/2 a chicken one each). Though my book club friends will be enjoying a glass of wine instead of edamame, dried cranberries and apple slices on the side.

Time flew by ... I must have been enjoying myself

Have you ever been in the cinema and felt the time drag? It's happened to me. A glance at my watch and then the thought that I can't be enjoying the film all that much or else the time would surely have flown. My experience matches the findings from a series of studies by Aaron Sackett and colleagues. The folk psychology belief 'time flies when you're having fun' is so powerful and ubiquitous, the researchers say, that whenever we feel an event has passed more quickly than we expected, we infer that we must have been enjoying ourselves, and vice versa for events that drag.

The researchers first had dozens of undergrads look through passages of text and underline any words with adjacent repeats of a particular letter. Crucially, the researchers told the participants that the task would last ten minutes, but in reality it lasted either five minutes or twenty minutes, thus creating the illusion of time flying or dragging, respectively. A sneaky switch of stop-watches helped create the illusion. Afterwards, the participants who'd experienced the sense of the time flying rated the task as far more enjoyable than did the participants who'd experienced the sense of time dragging.

Further experiments showed that provoking the feeling of time flying led participants to be more tolerant of an irritating noise, and led them to enjoy their favourite song more than usual. This last finding was important because there was a possibility that it would feel unpleasant for a pleasurable activity to end earlier than expected.

If people really do use the 'time flies when you're having fun' adage to evaluate their own enjoyment, then challenging or encouraging the truth of the adage ought to affect the kind of findings described above. That's exactly what Sackett's team found. When participants read a scientific article challenging the 'time flies' adage, speeding up their subjective sense of time no longer increased their enjoyment of a word-based task.

It was a similar story when participants were given an alternative explanation for why time might have raced by. Participants were given ear plugs, which they were told could speed people's time perception. Again, the illusion of time flying didn't lead these participants to enjoy a task more, presumably because they attributed the sense of time flying to the ear plugs rather than to their enjoyment.

'Taken together, these findings have important implications for understanding and changing hedonic experience,' the researchers said. The Digest got in touch with lead author Aaron Sackett, Marketing Professor at the University of St. Thomas, to ask him how this might apply in the real world. He said the first thing to do is minimise people's access to accurate time cues. Next, alter their subjective time perception. There are numerous ways to do this. For example, physiological arousal speeds time perception so a free coffee at the start of a long queue could work (as long as no clocks were in sight). Even music that's incongruent with the context (e.g. Chinese music in an English restaurant) has been found to speed time. Finally, you need the surprise moment, when people are alerted to the true passage of time. That provokes in people the sensation of time having flown, followed by the gratifying inference that they must therefore have been enjoying themselves.
_________________________________

AM Sackett, LD Nelson, T Meyvis, BA Converse, & AL Sackett (2010). You're having fun when time flies: The hedonic consequences of subjective time progression. Psychological Science : 10.1177/0956797609354832

Beautiful Sabah Underwater Photos

As requested. Underwater and the great marine lives photos!




Not just Sipadan. The photos below includes diving photos taken from Mataking and Mabul Islands as well, neighbouring islands of the great Sipadan.


Nudi Branch


Which, btw, those of you who are interested to go diving in Sipadan, book wayyy in advance. Because unless you have contacts, like really good contacts, daily permit to enter the island is VERY VERY limited.

Last I heard each dive centre was only allocated 7 permits. During diving season (between June and August), the permits might be fully booked two to three months in advance, more difficulty for group divers.


Gerald doing a spin off.

Now I have friends who went to Sipadan and came back complaining that there wasn't anything to see and the island was overrated bla bla bla.

Well, serve you right for not going there during the diving season. Instead they chose to go there during the year end period where there's no one and hence easier to obtain permits, etc, and ended up diving in rain all the time. Hence murky water, low visibility.




And it's called the diving season in July for a reason, because all the other months you just won't see shit! The fishes are all elsewhere you douche.




Anyway, I went there during the peak (July 2009) and the water was clear, abundance of marine lives







and beautiful gigantic sea turtles!







On this trip, there were a total of five of us. Four advanced divers and one newbie. Three guys two girls.




Among two of them were my readers (actually just one of them, the other one was his colleague), Raymond and Westley. Raymond emailed me one day, after finding out that I was planning a trip to Sipadan and said he wanted to tag along. And so with my best bud Gerald and my lady friend (whose name shall not be named), we planned the trip together.


Raymond doing a kung fu


The baby of the group did not join us on our first three days of dive trips because she was taking her first open water license. Hehe. You will see her in her wetsuit later in the post.

Let's start off by talking about my bandana.




Which Gerald bought for me.


Him scouring in his bag for my gift.


At first I thought it was weird for a guy to buy something like a bandana for a girl,


how I wore it when he handed me the piece of cloth



he got himself one too


but then I realised that it actually came pretty much in handy.

You know when you go diving, for those who have long hair or fringes, your hair it always gets stuck in the mask when you put them on.




fringe fly here fly there


Well, a Bandana helps secure your fringe up and hence easy for applying mask.





An example of a badly secured Bandana.


The other usefulness of it, I found out, was identity.

If everyone in your group rented wetsuit from the dive centre, you all, well, look pretty much the same underwater. Especially when you dive deeper and all the colors except blue remains.


I still have no idea who that is in this photo


But with a Bandana, for the first time, it was really easy for me to identify which one was Gerald!!




Even deep in the water, I just need to look over one's head and instantly know which one he was.




Or me for them.




Bandana rocks.


you might think that I was pointing to my bandana in this photo, but I was actually signaling that I was having a splitting headache underwater, which btw passed me out.


Now, on to the great marine lives!!

I've been practising my underwater photography skill and I must say, I have improved tremendously since I first started out.

I can control my buoyancy more accurately now (so that I don't float all over the place while taking photos) and hence, more amazing close up photos!


frog fish

see, I didn't scare the fish off this time!


I've also grown more spontaneous underwater which meant that I was able to capture that million dollar moment with some of the most beautiful creatures underwater.




Now I just need a really good and expensive underwater casing for my SLR, and a strobe.

Some shots of the endangered green turtles.

We saw countless of them. It was amazing.


chasing after one for a good shot












Gerald, you better thank me for this shot.


Some shots of the Hawksbill turtle.


*spotted*



"who?"



"urgh, can't a turtle rest in peace" *swim off*





On our last day (actually, my last day, I fell sick after that), we spotted a HUGE green turtle.

I mean this boy was really BIG. Easily 1.7m long, that's my height!!! The freaking turtle was the size of ME!!!










I swam really close to it to get a good shot while Gerald was readying his camera at one side. Then I straddled my legs and pretended that I was riding the turtle and *snap*!




Of course I wasn't really riding the turtle. I didn't even touch the big mama (or daddy).

Gerald decided to tail it.




Community shout out here for a while.

While diving, I spotted a floating plastic bag underwater. Guys and girls, listen to Nicolekiss, if ever one day you spotted a floating plastic bag, please please... I beg you, go pick it up. Because if you don't, some turtles might actually think that it's a jellyfish, go up and consume it, and choke and then die!!




Do you want to see these beautiful endangered creatures die?! NO!

So I swam up and held the plastic bag in my hand for the rest of the dive session till we got on the board, and discarded it accordingly when I reached mainland.


Peace out


Another grand things you'll encounter when you dive in Sipadan during the peak diving period was that you'll see seasonal school of fishes that only appear in that time of the year.




Believe me, it will be the grandest thing you'll ever see in this part of the world.

It's nothing like the petty school of fish you see in the photo above. Nay.

The school I'm talking about here was something more like this...










This was a school of barracuda spotted in Barracuda point in Sipadan. They usually swim in school and will circle in big whirlpool. I was actually inside the circle when I took these photos.











Breath-taking was one way to describe my feeling.

But awe-struck kinda hit the spot of how I was reacting.




Then there were the schools of jackfish, which came at least in 2 thousands or more of them!


vortex of jackfish






oh look who has joined us











Funny story. I actually got lost in this school of jackfish. I just wanted to swim inside and take really nice shot of the fish from inside but by the time I was done snapping, I realised the vortex of fish had dragged me else where and I couldn't find my way around, they were still surrounding me at this point. It was crazy.

So I kept swimming forward, against the school of fish to find my way out and thank god after a while I spotted my diving buddies. Phew~

I actually have video of me being lost. Will share them in my next post. Including the videos of the school of barracudas and jackfish too.


Here are photos of other marine lives.


lion fish (or scorpion fish for some)









longnosed hawkfish





Spotted a rather huge Flamboyant Cuttlefish.











Nicole thinking: "yum, calamari."


Spotted a baby one too.




Spotted a copper-band butterfly fish.




An angry copper-band butterfly fish.




I don't think it was very happy us disturbing its peace.




The all evil looking Murray Eel.


Reminds you of your mother-in-law doesn't it?


The ugly frog fish.




Another ugly fish.




A fish that looked like worm of which name I couldn't remember. It's somewhere in my previous post.





A shark!




A long snouted fish (what's-his-name?).




Three different giant sea cucumber.


This sea cucumber is at least 1.4 meter long!



This one looks like poo.



1.3m long of bad allergy?


Some yellow fish.




Two fish from Fishville.




They are the fish from fishville, aren't they?


ignore the dead fish. I'm too lazy to play the game now.


What's their name again?



Oh yea.. firefish.

See, facebook games can be educational.


Oh look, another lion fish.




Come everyone, let's take a photo with it.




One day, I swear, we'll eventually gonna annoy all the fish in the sea with our cam-whoring habit.

Saw a very big angel fish? "chang yu" (you know, the one that our parents always serve on dinner table) swimming up close to Raymond.




oh Yummy, lunch.




Other random photos.











dive master creating circular air bubble









looking through your window~



o o .. I know this pun: sorry to burst your bubble.






christmas tree coral?



swimming through



going down. it's like playing maze in Mabul island.



what was this doing down here?



for Gerald to finish his business of course



Gerald going long~~~








Welp! It's about time to return to the surface. The post is ending (PHEW).








Guys, I shall end this post with this.



seasick bunch


We were completely wiped out!


PS// the above photos were dives taken within a period of 4 days over at least 9 dives.