The Resilience of Immigrants

[Stahlmann]

The idea that people with minor criminal records from 2nd and 3nd world who emmigrate to 1st to avoid prosecution in home country is true and interesting thing

The joke is I have above perspective, ertyu's, jean's or jacob's from recently "can't save topic". But.. one thing to know to how to deal with problems and the other to deal with them in reality personally .

I prolly gonna emigrate soon.

Hopefully guns aren't so much popular in Europe

Also, integration with new society vs in group coherence with your old folks who stayed in home country vs being second class citizen vs bad image of immigrant from shitty people from "your country" vs immigrants from other cultures - problem

[Jean]

@stahlmann, or any one on the forum for that matter, if you chose switzerland, don't hésitate to Ask me for tips or help, i'll be happy to help by providing potential employers to call or introducing to welcoming social circle.

[guitarplayer]

Ah what a shame, I just wrote a pose and forget to copy, meanwhile got logged out.

@ertyu, at uni we used to poke fun at the cognitive dissonance theory as a stating-the-obvious-super-broad-you-could-explain-everything-with-it-typical-American-Style psychological theory. Anyway, continental psychology tends to be more complicated (for better or worse), so if you ever get into reading more psychology, checking where the author has been trained can be not without meaning

Having lived outside of my country of birth for nearly a decade, what strikes me is the framing effect of calling oneself an expat vs immigrant. They are essentially about the same thing, moving to another country, yet the connotation of 'expat' seems to be much more positive than 'immigrant.'

[ertyu]

yepp. can't tell you how many british "expats" i've worked with that have also ranted about immigrants . Here they are, a Brit, working in Other Country and telling me how they voted Brexit because "immigrants should go home"... sure thing, Veronica . Thus I have consciously chosen to call myself a gastarbeiter ever though I work white collar jobs and thus technically fit in the "expat" definition. The immigrant/expat framing is steeped in classism, racism... it's an absolute gem. Or we can go with the modern influencer defition: "engaging in geoarbitrage"

And good to know cognitive dissonance theory is kind of like the ayn rand of psychology - you use it to place people on the Psychology Dunnning-Kruger curve then? I read about it in one of the beginning chapters of Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me and immediately pinpointed a couple of places in me where I am full of shit exactly in the way cognitive dissonance theory predicts.

[guitarplayer]

the modern influencer defition: "engaging in geoarbitrage"

This made me laugh, haha!

I haven't heard about Dunning-Kruger effect, but man:

The identification derived from the cognitive bias evident in the criminal case of McArthur Wheeler, who, on April 19, 1995, robbed two banks while his face was covered with lemon juice, which he believed would make it invisible to the surveillance cameras. This belief was based on his misunderstanding of the chemical properties of lemon juice as an invisible ink.

Such a good way to start the day, reading about these geniuses.

Psychology is not as much a hard science as it wants to be, if at all. I think of most theories in psychology as metaphors*. You can use them as tools in self-understanding if it works for you.

For example, it has been proven that the classical psychoanalytical theory does not meet the standard of science, and is not functional in behaviour change. Still, people use it in order to understand themselves, I guess. Woody Allen sometimes says that he drew lots of inspiration for his movies from the psychoanalytical sessions he used to attend so hey, there you have the contribution of psychoanalytical theory to well-being (of the masses!)

Evolutionary theory informs some parts of the field of psychology, but evolutionary psychology overextends I think in trying to explain everything with evolution. In fact, I think evolutionary theory itself likes to overextend and find reason for everything in adaptation, while some of the developments (mutations) happen by chance.

Behavioural and cognitive-behavioural psychology can be actionable. But as long as behavioural psychology is actually quite sciency, it leaves a lot of stuff cognitive psychologists are interested in untouched. Because classical behavioural psychology focuses only on observable, so it really treats persons like objects, you know like in engineering. All the 'thinking' is left out because cannot be observed, but 'thinking' is interesting!

*Oh man I don't remember the guy's name but there is/used to be a mathematics professor who developed this theory of how people use layers upon layers of metaphors in everything they say.

[nomadscientist]

yepp. can't tell you how many british "expats" i've worked with that have also ranted about immigrants . Here they are, a Brit, working in Other Country and telling me how they voted Brexit because "immigrants should go home"... sure thing, Veronica . Thus I have consciously chosen to call myself a gastarbeiter ever though I work white collar jobs and thus technically fit in the "expat" definition. The immigrant/expat framing is steeped in classism, racism... it's an absolute gem. Or we can go with the modern influencer defition: "engaging in geoarbitrage"

The distinction is meaningful. Brit who moves to Thailand because he cannot find a girl to marry him at home is an immigrant. Japanese who comes to London for a few years to run the "British" car industry is an expat.

There used to be a word for the large number of Brits who would leave the country each year for good, but it wasn't "expat."

[7Wannabe5]

I think another advantage is that immigrants often end up with multiple social models = pick any social model advantage. For example, the drive to keep up with the Joneses isn’t as great and it’s psychologically easier to start from the bottom in a brand new setting. For instance, even within country of origin, it’s easier to fall out of upper middle class by way of bad divorce and start working as waitress in new locale.

[ertyu]

completely correct. i think people severely underestimate how deeply freeing it is to just fuck off to somewhere completely different every couple of years. whenever relationships develop, expectations and gossip and judgement and condescension develop too. we are an inherently shitty species. One can't be part of a social network without "fitting in" it somehow, and one can't "fit in" without being subject to unfreedom. It is true that for many the benefit to fitting in outweighs the cost of unfreedom, but ultimately there is a reason why anyone more free-thinking or diverse usually leaves podunk nowhere and moves to a big city.