On 3 Nov 2007 at 6:24, Robin Abrahams wrote:
> I do suspect a better title for the article might have been, "I Think
> That Stripper Really Liked Me." And as usual, The Onion got there
> first:
>
> http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33584
I took a look at the article itself, because so many of them torture the
data until it confesses. Aside from giving more information that most of
us need about how lap-dancing is done, the statistics seem ok to me.
Disappointingly, they do use some fancy-pants method of "hierarchical
linear modeling" which is beyond me, rather than a few simple and elegant
direct tests of their hypothesis. But their figure with 95% confidence
intervals does seem to support their conclusions, even if their reported
group means don't allow for display of the the within-group differences
(it's a mixed design). The dreaded multiple comparisons without limit
doesn't seem to be a factor here.
But I was interested for another reason. I had a vague competing
hypothesis, even if a deeply politically-incorrect one, and wondered if
they dealt with it. The idea is that the women got smaller tips during
the non-fertile phases because they were more bitchy then, that pre or
peri-menstrual physical distress made them less interested in pleasing
the men. I recognize that PMS itself is a contested phenomenon, and that
in the end it still amounts to a recognition that the women are sexier
during their fertile phase, but the emphasis is different. Under this
interpretation what this study may show is support for a peri-menstrual
syndrome rather than for sexual signals of hot-to-trot during the fertile
period.
They do deal with it. They say, "We divided nonestrous parts of the cycle
into menstrual and luteal phases because we expected that menstrual side
effects (e.g. fatigue, bloating, muscle pains, irritability) might reduce
women's subjective well-being and tip earnings and we wanted to be able
to distinguish an estrous increase in tips from a menstrual decrease,
relative to the luteal phase."
My translation: if it's menstrual bitchiness, then tips should be higher
in the luteal phase than in the menstrual. As they were only marginally
higher in the luteal phase, and similar for normally cycling and for pill
users, they felt they had disproved this alternative hypothesis.
But the problem is that PMS is conventionally defined as occurring during
the luteal phase, although the whole concept is admittedly fuzzy, which
is why I used the term "peri-menstrual" ("around menstruation", including
both the luteal and menstrual periods). So perhaps all the study shows is
that women are more irritable during menstrual and luteal phases,
behavior which men are less likely to encourage with generous tips.
Stephen
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Stephen L. Black, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology, Emeritus
Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
2600 College St.
Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7
Canada
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