Millenials vs The Rest

Almost every company wants them, they think completely different compared to the ones before them, and they represent the largest generation the U.S. and the world have ever seen; The Millenials. Furthermore, as the world has become more obsessed with doing research, they are also the most researched generation there ever was. Results are opposite, the Time classified us as “the me generation”, that we are lazy narcissists. On the other hand, other studies showed that we are better at multitasking, are more socially engaged, and better educated.
                There has been a growing trend in education, this is best by CNN Money’s graph.

This graph shows the percentage of millennials with a bachelor’s degree. Quite a difference from the older generations as you can see. But this doesn’t give any proof of the, so called, different choices millennials make, does it? Well, a little bit. We know two things now, millennials are better educated, and millennials are younger. With the help of two extremely influential decisions made this year, I will show you how millennials and older generations are head-to-head.
                The first one being the Brexit. For the ones of you who don’t know, a big part of Britain decided to leave the EU. This was decided in a referendum, which means that the government doesn’t have to obey this result, but in the case of Britain they did. This decision will change the lives of a lot of people, and if you take a closer look at the results something remarkable comes up. If we look at the demographics of people who voted for and against the Brexit, we see some interesting things. Unfortunately there was no possibility to get the image in the blog, but you graphs are on this page The Atlantic Graph. The graphs with respect to bachelor's degree and age are the important ones.
 We established before that millennials are higher educated and younger. From these graphs, you can see that both the degree of education and age were strong indicators of what you would vote. The millennials against the others.

The other example is for most of you a little bit closer to home, the presidential election. It is less strong than the example of the Brexit, but still valid for the head-to-head argument. If we look at the 50 most educated counties, we see a surprising result. We would expect a 50/50 score, as the score of the total election was, but we see something totally different. FiveThirtyEight showed with data from the American Community Survey that only 11 out of 50 counties were republican. I don’t care who you voted for, but this showed us once again that the millennials are head-to-head with the others.

Sharing the economy

Most of the ideas for new blogs come randomly, I see something and I’m like; this is interesting for a blog! However, some of them come from blogs other people write about, which is the case today. I was looking how everyone was doing for a course which I’m taking and I saw a post from Isaac Nelson, link will be down below. He wrote about the sharing economy. Something in which I was interested before, but shoved to somewhere back in my mind by the unbelievable pace of college. I was reading his blog on my smartphone, which unfortunately has a magically broken screen, but that is another story for another day. As I turned my screen off the cracks became more visible and I thought of something my geography teacher once told us; products are not made to last.
                Back then, we were talking about the gigantic amount of waste in the oceans, and how that could have happened. He raised the concern that most of the products can be made to last a lifetime and the only reason for getting rid of equipment should be technological change. Unfortunately, this is impossible, companies make products which are not supposed to last. They are supposed to break down before they become outdated, therefore we will always buy a new product before it should be necessary.
                However, there may be hope! In the form of the sharing economy. By now, probably all of you have heard about Uber, AirBNB, Lyft or Craigslist. All part of a growing trend, sharing what you have for a, almost always lower, fee. One of them has a cheap place to stay, the other makes some extra money by letting you sleep in a small apartment they never use. We are starting to use the objects we possess to its fullest, totally opposite from the other trend mentioned above.

                Are consumers really turning around the sort of economy we have? Or is it just a breeze of fresh air which will soon disappear? In my opinion it is the first, the sharing economy is just too big to be ignored as a change in the economic landscape. However, we are still far away. Oil waste is declining in the ocean, but the pollution caused by general littering is still increasing. Almost all companies are just trying to sell as much as they can on black Friday, giving huge discounts which just stimulates the production economy. Buy, buy and buy some more, most likely you’ll need it because we still make products which break to soon. But there is light on the end of the tunnel, younger people share, share and share some more. They have taught us to turn the world around. Unfortunately, they can’t let go of what they’ve learned in the past and adapt to the new world. Hopefully the change will go faster than the destruction of the earth. 


https://thecollegestudentsbusinessblog.blogspot.com/2016/11/share-share-and-share-some-more.html?showComment=1480372343473#c5349793928387670370 

Gambling is a whole different thing

When I was looking up information for my last blog I stumbled upon something else which was interesting. Yes, it was also connected to gambling in casino’s but covered another aspect of losing, losing money in general. In gambling, there are a lot of interesting irrational behaviors, behavior from which we can learn in the business life.
                The first one being the “Gambler’s Fallacy”, which is the wrong assessment of possibilities. I found myself subject to this at the roulette table. Next to the table most casinos have a screen with the last outcomes. And if you like it or not, you will always look at the last outcome and base your decision on that. You’ll think it matters but the chance of winning will just stay the same, around 47%.
                Another one of weird behavior is the “almost got it” or “near miss”. It has been found that players don’t react with disappointment to a near miss, but with excitement, increased betting and more persistent play. This “near miss” phenomenon can also be translated to different areas, such as soccer. A player will react differently to a shot which goes in the third ring, then to a shot which hits the post or the crossbar. Both efforts are a miss, but the player will get more confidence from hitting the post than from hitting the third ring. So, why do we react in this way?
                In the case of the soccer example, the near miss most of the times gives confidence. This confidence will afterwards translate into a better performance and will result into more goals. However, when gambling the chances stay the same, a near miss will never increase the chance of winning. The only thing it might do is give you more confidence that you’ll win, such a shame you don’t have it in your own hand. 

When losing the same is still different

When I was in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago, something struck me. A friend of mine changed a 20-dollar bill for 20 bills of 1 dollar to put it into slot machines. A normal thing to do if you want to try out different slot machines, and so he did. But the interesting thing came afterwards, when I asked him; well that was an easy loss, wasn’t it? He didn’t seem bothered at all, “only a couple of dollars” he said. This wouldn’t have been weird if he would have said the same thing when he lost 20 dollars at once at the roulette table, but didn’t. He was bothered at the roulette table losing 20 dollars at once, but he was totally fine with losing 20 dollars’ worth of 1 dollar bills.
                The search on the internet didn’t result in many answers, if you google “losing” the only thing results will be about losing weight, which is another interesting subject, but not for today. The internet didn’t answer my question, so I resulted to books; Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. I classified this behavior in the irrational thinking category, losing 20 dollars should trigger the same emotion as it is the same action, right? I was disappointed once again, the only thing Ariely talked about was the cost of ownership. Which means that you give a higher value to an object if you own it rather than when you don’t own it. This concept came the closest, but still didn’t explain all of it. It is still 20 dollars and in both cases you owned it, maybe this would apply if it was money which you already won but this wasn’t the case this time.
                Loss aversion is the theory where this phenomenon is probably a part of.  Research showed that we value avoiding a loss more than gaining an equivalent amount. We’d rather not lose $10 than find $10 on the ground. It is not exactly the same, as in our case it is both losing, but in this case our mind most likely sees it as losing $1 dollar over and over again. This would mean that every time we lose we only get the disappointment of losing $1 dollar. The dollars would stack up, but our disappointment wouldn’t be cumulative. So, if we walked away after losing $20 we would walk away with the feeling of losing only $1, as that was the last bet we lost. 

A new way of learning

One of my least favorite activities, strolling through Netflix to find a new serie. It always takes too long and it is a rare occasion that I’ll find one right away. Although, after a lot of searching I found Lie to Me last week, a serie about a guy who is an expert in detecting lies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toxVYw_nRus

Lies are detected by so called micro-expressions in the face, little muscles will react to your initial thoughts when a subject is brought up. Therefore, you’ll be able to detect if somebody is lying just by looking for those. The face contradicts the words. Unfortunately, almost every episode starts with a disclaimer that it is totally fictive.

I have always been somebody who was intrigued by getting the truth out of people, so despite of the disclaimers I started to study the expressions in the serie and tried them out in real life. No clue if it worked, but I still enjoyed it. While doing this something interesting struck me, education or behavior influence through films and series.

One of the main reasons Dutch people are better at English than Germans and people from France is the way movies are presented. In Germany and France every movie is in their own language, so in an American film in Germany the spoken language is German. In the Netherlands, the language is still English, but they provide subtitles. This is not the sole reason, but it definitely helps. At this point in time I feel that this is still the only big educational gain in movies and series. But what if the only main you must do for courses is to watch a serie during the semester and talk about it in class. Wouldn’t that be great? It should be entertaining as well, but I think this would be a good way to educate.

One thing I’ve seen is that a lot of students experience huge amounts of stress. Education in this way can be stress relieving as well. Series are experienced as stress-relieving and will therefore contribute to a less stressed student. This will contribute a little to a healthier society all together, isn’t that what we all want?