Researchers discover two new behavioral syndromes

Saturday, 19 April 2008 03:28

Written by essbee, onion uttapam news

Dr. Mahesh Paranjpe, senior professor at Tata Institute of Social Sciences was disinterestingly browsing the morning papers when his eyes fell upon two news items posted side by side. One item revealed that a survey has ranked Mumbai as the seventh dirtiest city in the world. The other new item was about four Indians making it to the list of top ten billionaires in the world. Dr. Paranjpe's instinctively knew that it would be the second news item that would make the most of the buzz of the two.

After a few chats with friends and colleagues and after browsing through several related articles on internet, his suspicions were confirmed. Most of the cityzens of the city that he has made his home for 22 years didn't care much about the city going down the drain, preferring to focus their attention and euphoria on the achievements of the fab four who have made it to the top ten.

This set the old doctor thinking and he along with a few of his colleagues at TISS decided to do a research paper on this interesting trend amongst Indians to bask in reflected glory of others achievements. After two months of research, Prof Paranjpe and his colleagues have published the research paper of their findings which includes discovery of two new psychological syndromes that explains the extraordinary pride of people in the achievements of the rich and the famous.

At a press conference held at New Delhi, Dr. Paranjpe disclosed that they have found a behavioral trait amongst people that is somewhat similar to the 'Stockholm Syndrome', a syndrome in which hostages of abductions display loyalty towards the hostage-taker often identifying with their causes. According to Dr. Parnanjpe, people affected by the syndrome, which he has named "Smockhome (Shitholes may be our common karma, yet happy we'll be for our moneyed elite) Syndrome", find a common cause with billionaires of the country of their origin, the nationality being the only common factor, overlooking all other differences and feel happy and excited when these billionaires do well in international wealth rankings.

People affected by this syndrome, which affects mostly everyone, ignore and overlook the messy situations and surroundings they are themselves stuck in and instead revel and celebrate the success of the few of their fellow countrymen who make it big in Forbes list.

As is with Stockholm syndrome where staying together for a long duration allows the hostage takers to subtly brainwash theirhostages into sympathizing with their cause, similarly we find that with Smockhome syndrome the top billionaires through effective PR campaigns and media generated hype subtly brainwash people into feeling pride over their achievements, said Dr. Paranjpe

Dr. Paranjpe and his colleagues also discovered another behavioral trait that explained the curious phenomena of feeling pride over billionaires wealth rankings. According to the professor, stories of Indian billionaires reaching the top of wealth charts created a feeling of "I-too-can-become-a-billionaire". Naming this behavioral trait 'I2C Syndrome', Dr. Paranjpe said that this syndrome makes people make quick and easy connections with big billionaires on the basis of superficial similarities like a common nationality or common race, overlooking more complicated differences.

Dr. Prakash Rathod, also professor at TISS and part of the research team added that this syndrome made no scientific sense since top billionaires have more in common with other billionaires around the world (including third-world countries like Mexico) than with ordinary average joes of their common nationality. According to Dr. Rathod, statistically speaking an average Indian on the street had 1.66667e-9 percent chance of making the list of top 10 billionaire list when there was no Indian in the list. With four Indians making it to the elite list, the chances of an average Indian have increased slightly to 0.00000001 percent, but still far too minuscule to make much of a difference.

The research team debunked the general perception that this behavior arises because Indians are unselfish and highly patriotic. Dr. Paranjpe said human beings are very complex creatures with a rich emotional terrain made up of complicated behavioral eccentricities which often get mistaken for simple emotions like unselfishness or patriotism. If people were really unselfish and patriotic, they would work harder to make their country a better place; they would care about their surroundings and take measures to improve the quality of their cities and that of their fellow countrymen instead of gloating over the achievements of a few billionaires.

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