In today’s world, we unfortunately hear about sexual assault and date-related violence occurring on a regular basis. Whether it’s in a small town bar or at a fraternity party on a large college campus, young women aged 18-24, as well as the LGBT community, have astronomically large odds of experiencing it at some point.

In order to combat the large threat to the community that date-related violence poses, cities are implementing a measure known as “Ask for Angela”. With the knowledge of the bystander effect in mind, city officials and law enforcement are aware of the difficulty that may arise should something occur in places heavily populated. Because of the bystander effect, the surrounding crowd may not feel inclined to respond should they hear or see something that may be concerning, due to the fact that others around them aren’t responding either. If the situation isn’t an obvious emergency, and there is some question to its severity, the chances of someone responding fall dramatically. This doesn’t leave much confidence in the minds of young adults, and people of all ages, who may fear being in such a situation.

“Ask for Angela” was developed in Arlington, VA based upon initiatives that started in cities across the United Kingdom (Norwood, 2019). The program is now live in approximately 22 bars and restaurants in the area and allows people who feel unsafe or threatened in their current situation to have an immediate resource of help on their side by simply “asking for Angela”. The program trains staff in these establishments to watch and listen for any woman or man who “asks for Angela”. Should someone ask for her, the staff members are trained to help this individual leave the establishment safely, and obtain a cab for them to get home (Norwood, 2019). This program is training staff throughout the city to respond efficiently instead of falling subject to the bystander effect.

Personally, I thought this was an incredibly effective method to combat the unfortunately common occurrence of situations like these. In wake of the #MeToo movement and the opening of conversations into this topic, I felt it was very relevant, needed, and most definitely instills confidence in the community. It’s almost a way to bring the community together, to target and fight these types of crimes together. It gives victims a sense of hope and a reason to feel less alone should they fall into a situation that would require assistance like this. It also allows people to subliminally ask for assistance without blatantly saying it. I thought this was important because there may be times in which a person doesn’t feel it is safe to bluntly ask for assistance. Ask for Angela is almost a disguised way to do so. This all said, I am hoping that initiatives such as this are put into play in cities across the country, because I truly believe it would make a huge difference.

References

Norwood, C. (2019). In #MeToo Era, Cities Train Bystanders to Intervene. Governing. Retrieved from https://www.governing.com/topics/public-justice-safety/gov-arlington-ask-for-angela-sexual-assault-prevention.html

It is all but guaranteed that you know or love someone who has struggled or currently struggles with some type of mental illness. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (2015), 1 in 5 adults in the United States (that’s 43.8 million people) experience mental illness in a given year. That’s a lot of people. Despite being so prevalent in our society, people struggling with mental illness face intense levels of stigmatization that often prevent them from getting the help that they need and can have impacts on things from their career to what landlords will rent to them.

Stigmatization is what happens when a label is applied to someone that implies they are different, deviant, or somehow flawed (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012). There are many different things that are stigmatized in our society: obesity, the LGBTQ+ community, certain chronic health disorders including infertility, and many more. If it in any way deviates from what most people consider “the norm”, there is most likely a certain stigma attached to it. Once someone learns that you are associated with a stigmatizing characteristic, that becomes the master status by which they will judge everything else about you (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012). They see you through the lens of this stigma and this influences their perception of your whole character, usually in a very negative way.

One thing that I have personally witnessed start to become less stigmatized is tattoos and piercings. Just 10 or 15 years ago, virtually no one was allowed to have visible tattoos, facial piercings, or excessive ear piercings in the service industry. In 2006, I was a waitress at a breakfast restaurant chain, and I had an eyebrow piercing. Their dress and appearance code was very strict about no facial piercings, and no more than two earrings in each ear. I had put a clear retainer in my piercing to go to work, and even that wasn’t acceptable as I was made to take it out during work hours. I recently went back to that chain and noticed that many of the people working there had facial piercings and visible tattoos, signifying to me that times were changing and these body modifications were becoming more accepted.

If only it worked like that with everything, right? There have been many campaigns to try to bring more awareness to mental health issues in an attempt to reduce the stigma surrounding them. There have been a few studies that suggest that while a person’s verbal acceptance – what they say about it – of mental illnesses is much higher than their actual behavioral acceptance – what they do when faced with an actual opportunity to prove this acceptance (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012). The researchers would verify that an apartment for rent was still available and then they would call these landlords, posing as someone who identified themselves as a former or current psychiatric patient in need of housing accommodations (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012). They found that in about 90% of these situations, the landlord provided “deliberately falsified” information about the availability of the apartment (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012). In other words, they lied. People like to give acceptance of those with mental illnesses a lot of lip service, but maintain their same stigmatized views which go along with the theme of public acceptance but private rejection (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012). This can be attributed to the social desirability of acceptance… even if someone isn’t really accepting, they don’t want to look bad by admitting it (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012).

People with mental illnesses are often more stigmatized than people with physical illnesses (Ozer, Varlik, Ceri, Ince, & Arslan-Delice, 2017). They are often viewed by society as dangerous, frightening, unstable, irresponsible, unpredictable, and having communication issues (Ozer, Varlik, Ceri, Ince, & Arslan-Delice, 2017). That is some pretty heavy stuff. Is it any surprise then, that all people with any degree of mental illness are all lumped together like this and any time a serious crime is committed (like a mass shooting), it is automatically assumed that the perpetrator is mentally ill while being sensationalized by the media? While it is true that certain psychiatric conditions, like schizophrenia, are associated with violent behavior, it is only a small percentage of them and “even if the elevated risk of violence in people with mental illness is reduced to the average risk in those without mental illness, an estimated 96% of the violence that currently occurs in the general population would continue to occur” (Varshney, Mahapatra, & Krishnan et al, 2016).

Add on top of all of this that the media in the form of newspapers, TV shows, and movies, hardly every portrays people with mental illness in a flattering light. This only works to strengthen the stigma associated with the belief that mentally ill people are often violent and unpredictable and dangerous to others. As I mentioned earlier, the media loves to sensationalize tragic events and portray these violent offenders as mentally ill even when there is no such information to confirm this belief.

What can be done about this? There is some evidence that suggests that giving people information that counters these stigmas before they are introduced to stigmatizing portrayals of mental illness can help to reduce the perceived stigma (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012). Education always seems to be the key, doesn’t it? Parents and schools need to teach acceptance and inclusion of all different people of all different abilities and statuses to reduce the stigma not just of mental illness, but many other things as well.

References

NAMI. (2015). Retrieved from https://www.nami.org/Learn-More/Mental-Health-By-the-Numbers

Ozer U, Varlik C, Ceri V, Ince B, Arslan-Delice M. Change starts with us: stigmatizing attitudes towards mental illnesses and the use of stigmatizing language among mental health professionals. Dusunen Adam The Journal of Psychiatry and Neurological Sciences 2017;30:224-232. https://doi.org/10.5350/DAJPN2017300306

Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., and Coutts, L. M. (Eds.). (2012). Applied Social Psychology. Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

It is well known that scholastic performance dictates the way school-aged children view themselves, and their ability to succeed in the present and future. When students begin to make social comparisons against peers who yield greater performance success, he or she may begin to associate poor performance with lack of ability. In these situations, it is imperative that students are able to gain the motivation to work harder to succeed and disassociate low performance with a lack of aptitude. The academic self-concept has been found to affect motivation and performance in a school setting and is constantly being influenced by the student’s beliefs and attitudes on their performance in comparison to others (Schneider et al., 2012). When students gain a sense of competency, they may begin to set higher academic goals and achieve higher academic success.  Therefore, it is essential that teachers are able to facilitate a classroom environment that boosts positive beliefs about academic skill amongst student’s alongside constructive feedback on performance to help him or her improve (Schneider et al., 2012).

Much of the time, the “system” of education as a whole is criticized. However, reform on a macro scale may take more time to achieve than focusing on micro components, like teachers, for improvement within education. Teacher effectiveness and teacher-student relationships have direct and immediate effects on student performance. Hence, why it is important to discuss how teaching style may influence student learning to achieve optimal performance and ability for all students in a given classroom.

The cornerstone of the learning environment is profoundly determined by the student-teacher relationship. The formation of personal and supportive student-teacher relationships often requires much emotional involvement from teachers. For students, the quality of the student-teacher relationship is a determinant for their school engagement, wellbeing, and academic success. It has been found that positive teacher-student relationships also benefit teachers and the classroom, as, it heightens an educators personal commitment to the student’s success (Spilt et al., 2011). It is also true that not all teachers feel responsible for improving their relationships with students, nor do they understand the positive effects relationships have on student motivation and outcomes (Spilt et al., 2011). According to the Academic-Risk Hypothesis, children at-risk include those with low socioeconomic status, or SES, ethnic minority status, and those with learning difficulties will be more significantly influenced by teacher-student relationships than normative students. A study by Roorda and collogues (2011) found support for this theory, specifically, that negative or conflictual relationships further deteriorated engagement and achievement for these disadvantaged groups with emphasis on those with learning difficulties. Sadly, this research coincides with the social psychological findings that teacher’s perceptions and expectations predict academic success more strongly for low achievers than high achievers (Schneider et al., 2012).

In addition, success in schools also depends largely on student’s abilities to engage in classroom learning tasks. There is a known association between the perceived classroom environment and student-engagement and motivation. Those perceptions students make directly affect their beliefs on their ability to complete school work which that influence his or her ability to engage in academic tasks. The classroom social environment has a large potential to change an adolescent’s personal beliefs about themselves and their potential, and therefore requires close consideration (Patrick et al., 2007). For instance, when students feel supported emotionally by their teacher, they are likely to engage more fully in their academic work and put forth more effort and are likely to have higher achievement. When student’s feel cared for by the teacher, it encourages them to invest in their material and to have a desire to comply with the teacher in a way that minimizes concerns that thwart learning (Patrick et al., 2007). This way, perceived teacher support may support intrinsic motivation and emphasize mastery goals. In addition, feelings of care, support, and encouragement from peers are important to facilitate participation in academic tasks by increasing confidence and improving distracting anxieties (Patrick et al., 2007).

Altogether, it is important that classrooms become less focused on the individual success of each specific student, and more concerned on improving the classroom relationship as a whole. A study by Patrick, Ryan, and Kaplan (2007) discovered that when students received emotional support from teachers and academic support from peers; personal motivation, mastery goals, and academic and social efficacy were heightened. This research emphasizes the influential power of the classroom environment. Therefore, it is plausible to conclude that student-teacher and student-student relationships should be collaborative, cooperative, adaptive, and supportive so the entire class may be able to thrive together. Unfortunately, if a classroom fails to achieve an optimal and equal level of support for all students, there is a great possibility or even certainty, that disadvantaged groups of at-risk students will suffer poorer academic achievement outcomes.

References

Patrick, H., Ryan, A. M., & Kaplan, A. (2007). Early adolescents’ perceptions of the classroom social environment, motivational beliefs, and engagement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 99(1), 83-98. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1037/0022-0663.99.1.83

Roorda, D. L., Koomen, H. M. Y., Spilt, J. L., & Oort, F. J. (2011). The influence of affective teacher-student relationships on students’ school engagement and achievement: A meta-analytic approach. Review of Educational Research, 81(4), 493-529. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.3102/0034654311421793

Schneider, F., Gruman, J., & Coutts, L. (2012).  Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems.  Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Spilt, J. L., Koomen, H. M. Y., & Thijs, J. T. (2011). Teacher wellbeing: The importance of teacher-student relationships. Educational Psychology Review, 23(4), 457-477. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1007/s10648-011-9170-y

There has been much criticism of our education system because it seems like it hasn’t been adapted to current times or even improved upon. The idea of creativity has been just one of the topics that are often covered in these discussions. Can being creative mean different things to different people? What can we do to increase creativity in our students? The final, big question is does the way our school system work diminish student’s creativity?

(n.d.)

I think many of us assume that creativity has one meaning. Some of us might also consider the idea that you are born with it or it can be developed. None of these thoughts are right or wrong. Creativity can be about imagination, self-expression, and innovation. Creativity can also mean using logic and scientific principles to solve problems (McLennan, 2019). There are definitely some people who are more creative than others. It is just a skill which some people possess more than others.

I don’t think education is about memorizing facts and dates as they teach in History. In school, we are encouraged not to color inside the lines. We are also taught that being “good” means being quiet and still (Dalile, 2012). While energetic students are usually reprimanded for being too hyper. Maybe it’s time to change what we teach and how. For instance, schools should start including a more diverse range of subjects in their curriculum (McLennan, 2019). We could have art or poetry classes. We could even start teaching traditional subjects in a different way. Instead of memorizing dates in history class students can act out certain events to feel connected to what they are learning.

There is no perfect school system but some are better than others. Schools can diminish creativity by the teaching style they use. Most of the subjects in school like math, science, and history (as I mentioned above) require structured right or wrong answers. While classes like art are available at schools they are usually taught as an elective and not a core subject. Maybe the procedure in which the above subjects are taught can increase creativity in young children.

To sum up, I would say our school system is not actively trying to destroy creativity. Just the way the learning takes place favors the skill of critical thinking over creativity. However, there are ways that we can keep the good things about our education system while increasing creative skills in our pupils. The first step is to consider our definition of creativity. The next step is for our schools to broaden their curriculum to include mandatory, more creative subjects (McLennan, 2019). I think it’s impotent to remember while our school system is not the best at fostering creativity we still have very bright and creative students coming out of it. Also, not everyone has to be skilled in creativity, we still need future leaders who are more talented in critical thinking.

Works Cited

Dalile, L. (2012, June 10). How Schools Are Killing Creativity. Retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/line-dalile/a-dictator-racing-to-nowh_b_1409138.html

McLennan, N. (2019). Do schools really “kill creativity”? – RSA. Retrieved from https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/rsa-blogs/2018/04/do-schools-kill-creativity

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.google.com/search?safe=strict&biw=1280&bih=665&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=K2mYXLvQGtKSjwStm7PIDA&q=ourclassroms then and now&oq=our classroms then and now&gs_l=img.3…56720.63098..63275…4.0..0.183.2194.27j3……1….1..gws-wiz-img…..0..35i39j0j0i67.Kn35kXzm9bQ#imgrc=srCiKBEtEz8TiM:

In the time that humans were hunters and gathers, children were used in the realm of work and the education component included much in the way of work and play.  As the Industrial Revolution began, children became enslaved and play started to disappear.  They were sent to work in the agriculture fields and the manufacturing plants during the Industrial age to meet the needs of the lords and the landowners.  During the 17^th century, the education system evolved into a structure that is somewhat reflective of what we know learning to be today.  The church stepped in because they wanted children to be able to read.  The learning was frequently done through inculcation and again, fun and play were replaced by hard work and repetition.  Into the 19^th century tests and exams were set up to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of the training (Grey, 2008).

When we think about education today, there are so many factors that affect the students’ ability to meet the expectations of the educators.  One of the biggest challenges that students face is comparing themselves to other students.  Am I smart? do I have friends? How do I fit in? Each of these questions brings a comparison of ourselves and our scholastic abilities to our peers. This is called the social comparison theory which can create in the student a sense of ‘I need to try harder’ if the differences are not too great.  It can also be completely defeating if the student doesn’t feel capable and the gap is too great (Schneider, Gruman & Coutts, 2012).

As a career coach who works with people in recovery, I frequently see the defeatist attitude in my clients around education because they never felt like they fit in.  Their home environments were unstable and unsupportive which caused low self-esteem.  This carried forward into their school environment, where their esteem issues brought forth the self-fulfilling prophecy.  The teachers and other students have a low expectation of these students which would help to maintain an unsupportive learning environment.  They would get left behind and drop out of school, or if they were lucky, graduate with marginal marks.  According to the research of Rosenthal and Jacobson’s, Pygmalion in the Classroom, teachers unwittingly contributed to the betterment of the perceived, engaged students.  This also exacerbated the experience of those who were not engaged for the teacher, which ultimately contributed to the demise of the disengaged student (Schneider et al., 2012).

Today I spend my time with my clients to help them see the value and contribution that they can potentially bring to the community.  We look at the areas that the client has felt successful and put our energy into identifying an employment direction that will create a sense of satisfaction for them.  According to Ken Robinson in his book Finding Your Element How to Discover Your Talents and Passions and Transform Your Life, (2013) he focuses on three key principals to create these successful outcomes.  These principals include; 1) Your life is unique, 2) Create your own life and 3) Your life is organic.  My work is doing exactly this, helping each client to see the experiences that they have had and how their experience can inform their opportunities going forward.  They create their life by setting goals that allow them to match their yet to be filled desires.  Often this is about returning to school and finding the right supports in the educational system to set them up for success.  When they focus on their strengths in education they are successful which helps to rebuild their self-esteem which perpetuates their re-creation.  Finally, we talk about how the process is organic, and that being open to something that they had not anticipated can further set them up for success.  One of the other key messages of Ken Robinson’s book is that the education system can inhibit our creativity because we are expected to follow this linear model.  But life doesn’t always work like that.

Behind us are the days of laborious work and education during the industrial age that created compliance amongst children.  We are moving into a time where education is the currency of success and this currency is inflated.  A bachelor’s degree used to get you a solid well-paying job but now a master’s degree is often the minimum requirement.   To this end, our schools need to develop strategies that don’t ostracise the learner who has still not found out how to fit.  They need to create a learning environment that focuses’ on the learner’s strengths which creates a sense of success.  In using my clients’ strengths they have been able to move past their attitude of defeat to a space of “I am interested and engaged, I can see my way to success”.

References

Grey, P., PhD (2008, August 20). A Brief History of Education. Retrieved April 24, 2019, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/freedom-learn/200808/brief-history-education

Robinson, K., & Aronica, L. (2013). Finding your element: Living a life of passion and purpose. New York: Viking.

Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (2012). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles: Sage.

For this week’s lesson, we learned about how stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination can have dire effects on the education system. We were told to watch two videos: The first being the experiment with Jane Elliott’s A Class Divided (Frontline, 1985) and the second being the Bandura Bobo Doll Experiment (H Kaplan, 2009). However, the experiment with Jane Elliot caught my attention, because this issue that she was trying to address could be compared to some issues that students face in a school setting.

The day after Martin Luther King jr was assassinated, Jane Elliot, a small-town teacher from Iowa, did a daring experiment where she treated children with blue eyes as the superior children and the children with brown eyes as inferior-this led to children with blue eyes discriminating the children with brown eyes. These children from the experiment are still affected by this experiment till this day (Frontline, 1985).

Elliott’s experiment reminded me of an issue that we are facing today. Children are being sent home, suspended from school, and discriminated against because of their hair. Children with curly hair, in particular African Americans, are getting into trouble in schools, simply because their natural hair is not in accordance with school policy. There are many videos and articles circling around social media, showing young children often crying as they have to leave school, because they have been told to fix their hair or else they would not be able to attend class (Sini, 2018). Children with this particular type of hair texture are being singled out in front of other classmates and being told that if they do not follow school policies they will get into trouble.

The children’s hair are usually in styles such as braids, cornrows, dreadlocks, or simply a brushed out afro. The children are often told that they have unnatural hair styles and that is the reason for being sent home or suspended from school; however, the other children with bleached hair or highlights do not get sent home from school, which leads to the children feeling discriminated against. Two young twin sisters from a Massachusetts school got suspended from school because they were told that their braided hair extensions did not follow school policy (Mettler, 2017). The two sisters, Mya and Deanna Cook, felt that they were being punished for being black and that the policy disrespected black girls. The girls were kicked off school sports teams, banished from prom, and received hours of detention for refusing to change their professionally braided hair. The mother of the twins mentioned that all the black girls in the school were taken outside for hair inspection; this is disturbing because this singles out the girls and is a direct form of discrimination (Mettler, 2017). This reminded me of Elliott’s experiment “A Class Divided” (Frontline, 1985). Young black girls are being singled out and the other students who are not black are watching the event take place. What is the school teaching black and non-black students?  The schools are teaching them lifelong lessons of stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination against black girls and that some hairstyles and hair textures are intolerable. They are teaching young black girls that their natural hair and hairstyles are unacceptable. The teachers across the country should not be allowed to do such things. They are setting a terrible example for the young children attending these schools.

Majority of American school policies have dress codes that also address what hairstyles are allowed and not allowed in schools. The dress codes mentioned things such as hairstyle should not be distracting to other students or children should have their natural hair color (nprEd, 2017). These policies are then used to discriminate the young children’s hair and deemed as distracting (nprEd, 2017).

Should hairstyles and hair texture really be a determination of a child’s performance in school? Hairstyles such as braids, cornrows and dreadlocks are natural hairstyles and can be compared to a ponytail. These hairstyles are worn as a way to either manage, style, and protect (protective hairstyles) children’s hair. Just because they have a different way of wearing their hair does not mean that it is a bad or a negative thing–it is simply a hairstyle. And when you brush out curly hair, the hairs will separate and create an afro hairstyle.

Young children are being deprived from being able to go to school. In an article published in nprEd (2017) titled, “When Black Hair Violates the Dress Code” addressed the issue of young black girls being suspended from schools because of breaking the dress code and furthermore, it interferes with the girls’ education. In the article by Daniel J. Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies, it stated that black student suspension rates are higher than their peers’. In addition, he found that at the highest-suspending charter schools in the nation, the majority of students were black. The article also mentions that when analyzing what the suspensions in charter schools were for, it consisted of minor nonviolent offenses including dress code violation, which were half of all the subsections in schools across the country (nprEd, 2017).

This is a discrimination that many young children are facing in our schools, we must revisit our school policies and furthermore come to the conclusion that children with curly hair are not a distraction or unnatural and that their hairstyles, which have been worn for centuries, are not going to distract other students or interfere with their learning abilities. Students facing this discrimination are experiencing limitation to the education they receive and furthermore this type of discrimination can impact their mental health. Young girls and boys should not be denied education because of their hair.

References :

Frontline. (1985). A Class Divided. Retrieved online at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

H Kaplan. (2009, Nov. 19). Bandura Bobo Doll. Retrieved from Bandura Bobo Doll.wmv (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Mettler, Katie Mettler (2017, May 22)Black Girls at Mass. school win freedom to wear hair braid extensions. Retrived from  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/05/22/black-girls-at-mass-school-win-freedom-to-wear-hair-braid-extensions/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.79fac7dd56d3

nprEd (2017, July 17). When Black Hair Violets The Dress Code. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/07/17/534448313/when-black-hair-violates-the-dress-code

Sini, Rozina (2018 Aug. 23). US School Faces Backlash after black Student’s Unnatural Hair Criticised. Retrieved from  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45269540

Education is a very useful tool that we use in our everyday lives, from using our knowledge for our jobs or just simply by knowing how to read. A world without education would be a very dull and boring place. We wouldn’t have anything fun or exciting to do without at least one person asking why certain things occur in life. Without education it may be hard for society to even communicate efficiently and effectively. As we grew up to adults, we have truly learned just how important our education was or can be.

When someone becomes a parent, it can help them to realize how important school really is, because now you are thinking for your child rather than just yourself. One of the first kind of education programs that are available to your growing toddler is Preschool. Many parents of all ages have many different opinions about school at such an early age. Some believe the longer you are at home with your child the better off they are in the long run because of the nurturing effect. Nurture means to help raise your offspring and encourage their development (Nurture. n.d.). Others believe that the earlier their child starts the easier the transition will be to kindergarten.

Preschool can be very beneficial to our children. It can help them to grow as individuals, learn to appropriately interact with others, teach them how to act in a classroom and much more. Education at an early age can only help them to develop. “Children who attend preschool are more likely to have long-term educational success, attend post high school education and even have a higher income in their careers” (Shrier, C., 2015, March 06).

A lot of people in society believe that most parents that send their kids to school at an early age need the “childcare” and that is why they send them (Wright, K. 2018, February 6). But this is not always the case. For instance, my son was born premature and had many delays since he was born. He was in an early intervention program throughout his whole life until the school system took over at the age of 3. He is now 4 and he still needs some guidance on his speech. The reason I chose to send my child to preschool is because it was recommended by his therapists and I knew it would give him a good experience to be around other kids his age that can talk well. Within just a few months his speech improved drastically. The teachers have also taught him how to behave around others and follow directions. Having a routine and structure daily has helped him to improve his behavior throughout the day and night. This is another benefit to having your child attend an early learning program. Even though your child attends school it is still our jobs as parents to nurture them to the fullest and help them grow as individuals. Without preschool my son would still be more behind than kids his age. “Kids who attend public preschool programs are better prepared for kindergarten than kids who don’t” (Sanchez, C. 2017, May 03).

Reasons why some parents choose to keep their children home instead of taking them to preschool is because, they want one-on-one time with them, they wanted to teach them the basics, it can be expensive to send them to school, one parent is a stay at home mom/dad, etc… A few parents also believe their child is not socially or developmentally prepared for a classroom and they have a fear of them hating school at an early age (Wright, K. 2018, February 6).

These can all be valid points but when it comes to parenting every parent has different views and opinions on education for their children. Our main jobs as parents is to help them learn, develop, and give them as much love as we possibly can. When it comes to preschool there is no right or wrong way to raise your growing toddler. But according to professional experts it can be more beneficial for your child to attend preschool, rather than not.

References:

Nurture. (n.d.). Retrieved March 24, 2019, from https://www.thefreedictionary.com/nurture

Sanchez, C. (2017, May 03). Pre-K: Decades Worth Of Studies, One Strong Message. Retrieved March 24, 2019, from https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/05/03/524907739/pre-k-decades-worth-of-studies-one-strong-message

Shrier, C. (2015, March 06). Should I send my child to preschool? Retrieved March 24, 2019, from https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/should_i_send_my_child_to_preschool

Wright, K. (2018, February 6). Why I’m Not Sending My Kid to Preschool. Retrieved March 24, 2019, from https://www.google.com/amp/s/mom.me/toddler/207234-why-i-said-no-preschool/amp/

Picture: http://clipart-library.com/images-of-preschool-children.html

How the educational system approaches motivation in the classroom has a lasting impact on a student’s inclination to learn.  First, it is important to note the two different types of motivation:  intrinsic and extrinsic.  According to the APA, intrinsic motivation is defined as “an incentive to engage in a specific activity that derives from pleasure in the activity itself (e.g., a genuine interest in a subject studied) rather than because of any external benefits that might be obtained (e.g., money, course credits)” (APA, 2018).  Whereas the definition for extrinsic motivation is essentially flipped around, “an incentive to engage in a specific activity that derives from pleasure in the activity itself (e.g., a genuine interest in a subject studied) rather than because of any external benefits that might be obtained (e.g., money, course credits)” (APA, 2018).

Ideally, intrinsic motivation is in the forefront of the learning process.  However, that is not always the case in the educational system.  It has been argued by psychologists that schools are very extrinsically oriented (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012).  Can you recall any of your teachers using a type of reward in the classroom? Pizza parties, prizes, extra credit, etc.  These are things that fall under the category of extrinsic motivation to complete a task.  This is not always a bad thing, but it can certainly lead to a shift in perspective. Students may start to look at engaging in schoolwork for the benefit of the reward, rather than the enjoyment of learning something new.  This shift in motivation is known as the overjustification effect, the loss of motivation and interest as a result of receiving an excessive external reward (Schneider et al., 2012).

Deci (1971) conducted a study that shows the effects of extrinsic motivators on intrinsic motivation.  Undergraduate students that displayed intrinsic motivation for completing a puzzle (doing it out of enjoyment) were separated into two groups.  Those in the experimental group were offered a payment for solving the puzzle, which now blended extrinsic factors with the initial intrinsic motivation.  The experimental group then showed an increase in time spent on working on the puzzle due to the reward.  The financial incentive was then removed and both groups were compared.  Those that were previously paid to complete the puzzle were remarkably less motivated to complete the puzzle, compared to the control group who continued to work on the puzzle longer, which confirms the overjustification effect.  Interestingly, Deci conducted another experiment in the study which used verbal reinforcement and positive feedback as forms of extrinsic motivation (replacing the money incentive).  The group that received the positive feedback showed an increase in intrinsic motivation, compared to the group that did not receive any reinforcement or feedback.

These findings are important to note for ways to combat the overjustification effect in schools as supported by self-determination theory (SDT).  This is the degree to which an individual sees themselves as being autonomous and having a choice in actions and behaviors, without feeling pressured to behave in a particular manner (Deci & Ryan, 1985).  Extrinsic motivation can undermine an individual’s sense of autonomy and thus their intrinsic motivation to do something because they attribute their actions to the external reward.  Educational systems should consider these effects, and instead strive to foster an environment that strengthens students’ sense of autonomy which will increase their intrinsic motivation to learn.

References

Deci, E. L. (1971). Effects of externally mediated rewards on intrinsic motivation.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 18(1), 105-115. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1037/h0030644

Deci, E. L. & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. New York:  Plenum Press.

Intrinsic Motivation. APA Dictionary of Psychology.  Retrieved from https://dictionary.apa.org/intrinsic-motivation

Extrinsic Motivation. APA Dictionary of Psychology.  Retrieved from https://dictionary.apa.org/extrinsic-motivation

Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (2012). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

Have you ever heard about the Pygmalion effect? In 1914, George Bernard Shaw created a play called Pygmalion. You may certainly be familiar with the movie inspired from the play: My Fair Lady. This is one of my favorite movies. Audrey Hepburn plays the lead role. She is a pretty little flower seller who meets an eminent professor of phonetics. He casually wagers that he could teach her to speak “proper” English, thereby making her presentable in the high society of Edwardian London, and he succeeded.

Very Exciting, I highly recommend the movie!

Let’s go back to the Pygmalion effect. Robert Rosenthal, a professor of social psychology at Harvard and Lenore Jacobson, an elementary school teacher in San Francisco, conducted in 1965 a study known as “Pygmalion in the Classroom”. In their class experiment, Rosenthal and Jacobson told teachers early in their school year that, based on the result of IQ test, some of their students had above average academic potential (a group labeled “bloomers”). In actuality, these “bloomers” had been randomly selected, and were on average, no smarter than the other students in their classes. The teachers were unaware that the feedback to them had been falsified, and the students were not told about the label given to them. By the end of the school year, the bloomers showed significant increase in their IQ scores when compared to students in the control condition. Teachers’ expectation had come true (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968).

My first thought after reading this study was how to apply the Pygmalion effect in my professional and personal life. I have come to a strong conviction: we all have a seed of excellence in us. Just find it, plant it in a fertile soil, water it regularly and give it enough light to grow and develop. When I share my insight with those around me, I regularly hear two reactions:

• What if I do not have a seed?
• It’s so theoretical !

This is how I often answer to my loved one: First, have high expectations and ambitious goals! What this study teaches us is that having high expectations for others, lets to “self-fulfilling prophecy”. A self-fulfilling prophecy refers to having expectation about another person that influences how you perceive and behave toward that person. Your expectations, and the behavior based on these, in turn, affect the way in which that person behaves when interacting with you.  According to self-theory, individuals come to “know” their own attitudes, emotions, and other internal states partially by inferring them from observations of their own overt behavior and/ or the circumstances in which this behavior occurs (Bem, 1978). Thus, by having high expectation for one self and setting ambitious goal, we can make our own expectation come true.

Then, cultivate your “self-responsibility”. A quote from Nathaniel Branden’s book “The six pillars of self-esteem”, sums up pretty much the notion of self-responsibility: “No one is coming” . In other words, the wonderful teacher who will discover your fabulous potential, and allows you to shine may not cross your path. It’s better to be your own Pygmalion, it’s less risky!

Finally, discover and develop your strengths: I often ask this question during a recruitment interview: “Do you want to work on your strengths or weaknesses? Almost all candidates answer: “on my weaknesses”. When you work on your weaknesses you can go from mediocre to not bad. But, when you work on your strengths, you can strive for excellence. Manage your weaknesses so that they are not an handicap for you, but put all your energy on developing your strengths.

To conclude,  you may just have to ask yourself the right questions: What do I like to do? What gives me energy? What works well in my life? What are the topics that spark my interest? When do I feel good? All these questions will give you a direction for were to look for your seed!

Bem, D. J. (1972). Self-Perception Theory. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology Volume 6 Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 1-62. doi:10.1016/s0065-2601(08)60024-6

Branden, N. (1994). The six pillars of self-esteem. New York: Bantam.

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. (2012). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles ; London ; New Dehli ; Singapore ; Washington DC ; Melbourne: SAGE.

Thorndike, R. L., Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the Classroom. American Educational Research Journal, 5(4), 708. doi:10.2307/1162010

If you pay attention to the news media cycles, you will no doubt have an intimate knowledge of the school shootings that make national headlines several times a year. The most recent one that stirred the pot of controversy surrounding school violence, mass shootings, and gun violence happened on February 14, 2018, in Parkland, Florida. A former student entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and killed 17 of his former classmates and staff members, injuring many more. Immediately afterward, our country was driven apart at a fracture, with people wondering how we can keep letting this happen to our children and having wildly different views on what can be done to prevent these things in the future. Impassioned pleas from traumatized students and grief-stricken parents filled the news waves for gun control, arming students and teachers, more armed security across school campuses nationwide — anything. They begged us, please do something.

Figure 1. School-associated violent deaths from 1992-2015. Courtesy of the CDC. Click to enlarge.

By all accounts, after being witness to the fallout of such a traumatic event and the intense media coverage given to these tragedies, you would think they are extremely common, that it’s an epidemic, even. But what does the data tell us? According to data offered by the CDC (2018), violent deaths that happen at school have remained fairly steady from the reported period between the 1992-93 school year and the 2014-15 school year (see Figure 1). And while even one violent death at school is too many, these numbers are not entirely indicative of a sudden epidemic or dramatic increase in violent school-related deaths. But at the same time, one has to wonder: With these incidents becoming more prevalent in the media without necessarily becoming more prevalent in everyday life and with more resources than ever before aimed at curbing these numbers, why haven’t we been seeing a steady downward trend? To me, that is the most alarming thing. After over two decades of school violence on a massive scale being front and center in the media and being the hot topic of proposed policy changes and community outrage, why has seemingly nothing changed? Perhaps the answer lies with the strategies used to try and combat this stream of violence.

As Americans, we tend to embody a culture of “let’s throw money at the problem and see if it helps.” It a lot of cases, it’s true, more money spent in the pursuit of a solution does yield favorable results, but first, you have to make sure you’re funneling the money to the solution that is actually going to make a difference. A study done by Nathaniel Bryan in 2009 looked at the correlation between the money schools spent on safety programs and their overall level of violence. What he found was pretty surprising, to me at least. He found that there was no significant correlation between a school’s financial investment into safety programs (security guards, metal detectors, cameras, etc.) and a school’s level of violence (Bryan, 2009). In other words, it did not appear to matter how much money a school spent on security measures as there was no link between more money (and more robust security systems and programs) and lower levels of violence. I mean… wow. Isn’t that what you hear all the time, that we need more guns, more guards, more cameras, more lockdown drills, more money for these programs to keep our schools and children safe?

This is an incredibly complex issue, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the solutions will not be so straightforward or easy to implement for immediate results. It’s definitely not as easy as throwing money at schools and turning them into fortresses. This is an inside-out issue: We need to fix the inside first – how students relate to one another and themselves which begins as early as preschool.

In an article by Astor et al. (2005), a study was outlined that compared the effects of low-quality and high-quality preschool programs on future violent crime and criminal activity. The findings showed that the children who attended higher quality preschool programs were significantly less likely to be involved in violent and criminal activity than those who experienced a lower quality preschool (Astor et al., 2005). The study followed these children until the age of 27 and found that these effects persist through early childhood and into adulthood with those who had attended low-quality preschool programs being, at age 27, five times more likely to be arrested five or more times with a large portion of these arrests being for violent crimes (Astor et al., 2005). Because preschools tend to focus on social responsibility, decision-making, empowerment, and conflict resolution, these children are gaining these important and necessary skills at a critical point in their development which the researchers believe is what has the tempering effect on violent crime (Astor et al., 2005). And if you think about it, it makes sense. Children’s brains grow and develop at an exponential rate, so giving them these skills at such an early age gives them time to integrate them and provides scaffolding for later experiences.

In 2017, only 40% of 3-year-olds were enrolled in full- or part-time preschool (NCES, 2019). This is alarming and kind of sad. Preschool, especially a high-quality program, has been shown to be an effective possible solution to the problem of violence in our schools. Which is why a good direction to go in is to offer free or affordable preschool options to all children in our country. Many children don’t have any real experience with their peers in a learning environment until they start Kindergarten, having missed the opportunity to learn these skills at a much earlier age which puts them at a major disadvantage.

School violence is a phenomenon that has been carefully cultivated over several decades, and there will not be an easy or quick fix to it. We have to look at our values as a society and make the conscious decision that our children deserve better… and not just the eventual victims of school violence, but the perpetrators of it as well. We are continuously failing all of them and we have to start doing better. We can’t throw money at the problem in the form of increased security, turning schools into strongholds, and we can’t expect adolescents to suddenly learn skills that have not been continually modeled starting from the time they are virtual babies. If we want to fix this problem, it has to start early, and everyone needs to have an equal opportunity to grow and thrive.

References

It is no secret that there are certain assumptions made about certain groups of people performing better academically than others. These assumptions are typically based upon differences such as race or gender. For example, each of us have probably heard the thought, at one point or another, that Asians are ‘better’ at math. Even in movies and TV shows, the Asian actors or actresses are almost always portrayed as the ‘nerdy’ kids.

When digging deeper into the history of these assumptions, the phenomenon knows as Stereotype Threat was discovered. Stereotype threat is the idea that describes the anxiety students experience when in situations where they fear conforming to negative stereotypes about their social groups, especially when those groups are believed to be academically inferior (APA, 2005). Social psychologists Claude Steel and Joshua Aronson examined the presence of stereotype threat during a study involving Black and White students’ performances on a short exam containing difficult GRE exam questions (APA, 2005). Steele and Aronson gave Black and White college students a half-hour test. The study included two conditions: the stereotype-threat condition in which the students were told that the test would diagnose intellectual ability, potentially revealing the assumption that Blacks are less intelligent than whites; and, the no-stereotype-threat condition, where the students were told that the test was a problem-solving lab task that mentioned nothing about ability (APA, 2005). Results showed that in the stereotype threat condition, Blacks, who were academically equal to Whites in the group based on SAT scores, did less well than Whites. In the non-stereotype threat condition, Blacks’ performance matched that of academically-equal Whites in the group (APA, 2005). An additional study found that when students merely recorded their race, this led to decreased performance in Blacks as well (APA, 2005).

This research revealed that negative stereotypes are raising doubts and inducing high-pressure anxieties in a test-taker’s mind, resulting in decreased performance despite their actual academic abilities (APA, 2005). Simply passing reminders that someone belongs to one group or another, such as recording one’s race before completing an exam, can detrimentally lower test performance as well (APA, 2005).

This research has given insight into the world of differing academic performance, and I find it extremely relevant with how much pressure is placed upon test-takers, especially for college entrance exams. Steele and Aronson have since admitted that the phenomenon of stereotype threat cannot entirely explain the gap in academic performance between certain groups, but it certainly shows that the differences are not merely due to cultural or genetic differences (APA, 2005).

References

American Psychological Association. (2005). Stereotype Threat Widens Achievement Gap.      Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/research/action/stereotype

Working in the education setting, everyday I see some type of discrimination occur. When we hear discrimination in education it happens when a person takes unfair action against someone who belongs to a certain category that is entitled to full educational rights. Last year I worked in a self-contained setting and all of my students had something called an Individualized Educational Plan (IEP). An IEP is a legal document that basically explains all of the special education services that the student will receive and it will explain why as well. Discrimination in education for example discrimination against the students who have IEP’s is very common. I have seen students not receive the help they need, because there are not enough resources and that absolutely qualifies for discrimination. A lot of times these students are discriminated against because their guardians or parents do not know their rights and it is very sad. It is also unfortunate that as an educator I am unable to let these parents know either.

Education discrimination can also be based off of the student’s disability, age, gender, nationality, or even their religion. I know it sounds pretty crazy but it is happening in this world. This discrimination normally takes place by teachers, administrators, or even by their peers. In order to prevent these things from happening, the government has implemented certain protections for these individuals. The first one is Tile VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which basically prohibits discrimination because of someone’s trace, color, or national origin. The next one is Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 which prohibits sex discrimination. Also, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1990 prohibits disability discrimination. Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 does not allow discrimination because of someone’s disability. This act also protects those who do not receive federal assistant due to their disability.

You are not allowed to retaliate against any person who opposed or testifies against you in any complaint which falls under Title VI. If this does happen, it is considered a violation. All of these protections protect all education programs as well as facilities that receive federal assistant which includes State education agencies, elementary and secondary school systems, colleges and universities, vocational schools, libraries, museums etc. There are many places to name! All of these places listed about must also provide benefits and services in a nondiscriminatory manner. This includes admissions, recruitment, financial aid, counseling, discipline, grading, physical education, athletics etc.

In conclusion, if you or someone you know is suffering from educational discrimination because of their disability or something of that nature there are plenty of attorneys who specialize in educational rights. Those individuals deserve the right to a fair education, no matter their disability, age, race, gender, etc.

References:

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. (2012). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles; London; New Dehli; Singapore; Washington DC; Melbourne: SAGE.

Pennsylvania State University World Campus (2019). PSYCH 424 Lesson 10: Education Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1973019/modules/items/25635725

Based on the commentary notes in lesson 10 (2019) the education system is usually the first form of social interaction that takes place outside of a child’s home for many children. The effects of the exposures from it can be vital for their future successes. The education system is where a great deal of human development occurs and is shaped (Lesson 10: Education, 2019). There are several factors we should consider when it comes to student performance.

According to Ajzen (1991), the theory of planned behavior looks at the individual’s attitude, their perceived subjective norms and their perceived behavioral control. The attitude towards the behavior can be positive or negative. It is the belief that individuals hold about completing the work or tasks. Subjective norms are what an individual believes to be true based on their parent’s expectations such as working hard earns success. Along with both of those factors we should also consider the child’s behavioral control, this is the assessment of how difficult or easy school appears to be for the child (Schneider, Gruman & Coutts, 2012).

According to a study conducted by Sideridis and Padeliadu (2001), it was found that high and poor performing readers differed drastically regarding the theory of planned behavior. It appeared as if the low-level readers held less value with being a good student and had weaker subjective norms than the higher-level reading students did. In fact, the higher-level readers worked harder and showed a perceived control in their ability to achieve good grades from their hard work. These findings were interesting because it means that if educators can increase student’s beliefs about their abilities and their control they have over their academic successes, students will want to work harder to achieve higher successes/grades (Schneider et al, 2012).

Similarly, a student’s academic self-concept has been found to affect motivation and performance at school as well. Of course, academic self-concepts differ based on the student’s demographics (age, race, gender and ethnicity). Guay and colleagues (2003) found that as the students grow older their academic self-concepts became more stabilized overtime. This shows how important it is for educators and parents to help elementary and high school students develop a positive academic self-concept, and an academic self-concept is especially important for minority students (Schneider et al, 2012).

As you can see based on the information above, parents and school environments appear to be some of the most vital contributing factors towards positive social interactions and academic success for students. Having a positive academic attitude towards education, having an established positive perceived set of norms and having a perceived behavioral control over their successes can be a crucial step in building students’ successes now and in their future. Education and the factors that contribute towards academic success can start in the home with the parents/caregivers and build throughout development within the school system (Schneider et al, 2012). Without applied social psychology, these important factors may not have been assessed and discovered. It is important that caregivers and parents realize that education and educational values start in the home environment. It is time for parents and educators to work together and model and foster positive behaviors for our students and young children, as they are our future.

References

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. (2012). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles; London; New Dehli; Singapore; Washington DC; Melbourne: SAGE.

Pennsylvania State University World Campus (2019). PSYCH 424 Lesson 10: Education Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1973019/modules/items/25635725

When you first go away to college, your living situation is important. Many colleges create extensive questionnaires for accepted students in order to match them with the best, most compatible roommate(s). As colleges become more impacted, this becomes even more important as many dorm rooms that used to be doubles are now triples. Getting along with your roommate is important as it can have a huge effect on your success in adjusting to college life. There are even whole books devoted to what to expect the first time you have a roommate and how to get along with them. One aspect of housing that has more recently come into play is gender inclusive housing. With the LGBTQ+ movement gaining power, it makes sense that colleges around the United States are being pushed to be inclusive, especially in their housing options.

In May 2016, the U.S. Department of Education and Justice invoked Title IX, the law which prohibits gender discrimination at schools who receive federal funding, to make it clear to colleges that students have the right to live in housing that reflects their gender identity (Malone, 2016). Colleges have been moving in this direction for some time, but with this announcement that federal funds could be withheld from schools who discriminated against individuals due to their gender identity, schools started moving up plans for gender inclusive housing on their campuses (Malone, 2016).

There were a handful of schools already implementing gender-inclusive housing, even before this announcement was made about the legal ramifications of not having housing equality on campus (Malone, 2016). Many of these campuses were in the Northeast and on the West Coast. Universities in the South and religiously affiliated schools have been slower to adopt these policies, if they are adopting them at all (Malone, 2016).

One reason that this movement for gender-inclusive housing has been less controversial than other social movements is that the younger population found on college campuses are typically more comfortable with the issue of gender identity (Malone, 2016). However, despite this higher level of comfort with the issue, not that many students are taking advantage of the gender-inclusive housing being offered (Malone, 2016). According to Georgia Tech, only 42 out of 4,100 students on their Atlanta Campus sought out gender-inclusive housing (Malone, 2016).

Gender-inclusive housing is a way for universities to support and show their acceptance of individuals belonging to a minority community. Gender-inclusive housing is also the best way to integrate this community into the college campus while ensuring their safety. One of the alternative suggestions was to build separate LGBTQ+ housing on campuses, but that would just create segregation of the LGBTQ+ community from the rest of the college campus (Rosaria, 2018). Gender-inclusive housing has the same benefits as separate housing, but without the negative effects (Rosario, 2018). It creates a safe environment for LGBTQ+ youth while promoting the idea of inclusion on campus (Rosario, 2018). The LGBTQ+ community should not have to be separated from the larger community to ensure their safety, they should be accepted for who they are, and gender-inclusive housing does this (Rosaria, 2018).

References:

Malone, S. (2016, June 10). College Dorms a New Front in U.S. Battle Over Transgender Rights. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lgbt-education-idUSKCN0YW15P

Rosario, I. (2018, May 21). Student Housing Inclusion. Retrieved from https://www.multihousingnews.com/post/student-housing-inclusion/

Imagine that you are working at the Division of Psychology at the University of Newcastle in England. You share a coffee room with your fellow coworkers. Coffee, tea and milk are provided, but you must pay your consumption using an honesty box. Would you be more likely to pay your drink if an image of eyes is staring at you from above the price list?  I guess your response is no. You will argue that you are an honest person and nothing will impact your behavior. Certainly not a fake glance! Bateson, nettle and Roberts (2006) conducted this study. They examined the effect of an image of a pair of eyes on contributions to an honesty box used to collect money for drinks in a university coffee room. People paid nearly three times as much for their drinks when eyes were displayed rather than an image of flowers.

In a study conducted by Josephson (1987) the effect of television violence on boys’ aggression was investigated. Participants in the study, a group of young boys,watched violent or nonviolent TV, and half the groups were later exposed to a cue associated with the violent TV program. They were frustrated either before or after TV viewing. Aggression was measured by naturalistic observation during a game of floor hockey. Prior to the study teachers rated the boys’ aggressiveness. Groups containing more characteristically high-aggressive boys showed higher aggression following violent TV plus the cue than following violent TV alone, which in turn produced more aggression than did the nonviolent TV condition.

Thesetwo studies illustrated two very different types of priming. Priming refers to the effect of a preceding stimulus or event on how we react to a subsequent stimulus. Priming procedures were first used in cognitive psychology to explore the structure and representation of information within network models of memory. Network models of memory assume that information is stored in memory in the form of nodes, and that each node represents a concept.  Furthermore, these nodes are connected to related nodes in memory by associative pathways. An additional assumption of network models of memory is that each node has an activation threshold. The node fires if the levels of activation exceed its threshold. When a node fires, it can influence the activation levels of other related nodes. A final assumption of network models of memory is that the activation level of a node will go away over time, making it a short time effect. Research by cognitive and social psychologist has demonstrated that a prime’s effect on a target behavior or thought is related to the intensity of the prime (Gruman, Schneider, &Coutts, 2012).

Cues in our environment are priming our behaviors. This finding can have a practical interest for those designing honesty based system, or wishing to maximize cooperative behaviors. We can also prime our own behavior. Stop reading, and take a look around you. What kind of behaviors is your surrounding priming?

Bateson, M., Nettle, D., & Roberts, G. (2006). Cues of being watched enhance cooperation in a real-world setting. Biology Letters, 2(3), 412-414. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2006.0509

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. (2012). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles ; London ; New Dehli ; Singapore ; Washington DC ; Melbourne: SAGE.

Josephson, W. L. (1987). Television violence and childrens aggression: Testing the priming, social script, and disinhibition predictions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53(5), 882-890. doi:10.1037//0022-3514.53.5.882

Cultural Stereotyping

It’s impossible to deny that each country in the world is made up of a groups of people who tend to be defined by a certain culture. While different countries can include a mixture of cultures, especially today, we normally have a general idea of the key factors of cultures. If you stop and think about it, you could probably list a few things about the cultures of certain countries even though you have not necessarily been there to see it first hand! A list you might come up with could look something like this:

German culture: Very strict and punctual people. Enjoy drinking beer. Somewhat of a cold culture in the sense that the people are not extremely friendly. Very strong accent when speaking English.

Spanish culture: Lazy people who like to take naps and drink beer. Bull fighting and dancing is super common.

Russian culture: Drink a lot of vodka. Not the nicest people. Very cold country calls for cold culture.

Australian culture: Loads of expressions having to do with animals. They hang out with kangaroos and do a lot of water sports. Crazy individuals.

British culture: Very posh and formal. They have tea time every day. Always rainy, never sunny and they are very white.

Italian culture: They talk with their hands and eat a lot of pizza and pasta. The Italian mafia.

French culture: French boys are the most romantic. French woman are extremely delicate and formal. The language sounds beautiful. The people are a little stuck-up.

American culture: They eat a lot of fast food and love hamburgers. They think they are the best and are very patriotic.

I’m sure that, even if you don’t necessarily think of the exact things that are on this list, that your general thoughts on these cultures are similar. This is because a lot of our knowledge of these cultures comes from movies, music and social networks that we are all connected to. It is not until we go to the country and experience the culture first hand that we can see how it is in reality. The issue is that, at that point, we already have an idea in our head of how the culture is and instead of walking in with an open mind and allowing a new image to form, we try to fit our experiences into the cultural box we have already created in our mind.

All the factors we consider when thinking of cultures are not just ways of defining a culture, they are stereotypes and we are creating and using them all the time without realizing it. It is important to realize that these stereotypes do have to come from somewhere, that is to say that there is absolutely some truth in them, but normally they are extremely exaggerated. While in many situations these types of stereotypes can be harmless, it is important to be careful when using them so that they do not get out of hand.  

Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination. (n.d.). Retrieved March 18, 2019, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1973019/modules/items/25635726

In today’s world, social media is everywhere. No matter where we go, we observe people browsing or posting to some form of it, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or others. People everywhere share information and photos about their personal relationships, their careers, their current locations, and more. This sharing and observation of information has become a fascination, as the use of social media has drastically increased from 7% of the American adult population in 2005 to 65% in 2015 (Perrin, 2015). With how popular it’s become, it raises the question of whether or not it’s also potentially harmful.

I have read briefly about the possibility of a connection between social media use, particularly Facebook, and its connection to depression and mood. Yuen et al. (2018) attempted to unravel this mystery by examining how the moods of “emerging adults”, specifically undergraduate students at a private university, were impacted by their use of Facebook (Yuen et al., 2018). The researchers chose to focus on undergraduate students as it is known that 90% of these emerging adults use social media, thus making them a reliable sample (Perrin, 2015). Upon beginning the study, the researchers hypothesized that Facebook use would be associated with a lower mood.

The researchers initially surveyed the participants to uncover their pre-experiment moods before using Facebook. They then implemented Facebook usage into the study by allowing  one group of participants to engage in various Facebook activities for a period of 20 minutes, while another group engaged in general, non-social media related Internet usage for the same period of time (Yuen et al., 2018).  Immediately afterwards, the researchers administered another mood-based survey in order to obtain the participants’ moods after using Facebook and the Internet. The pre- and post-experiment mood evaluations were then compared in order to determine the impact of Facebook and the Internet upon participants’ moods. The results showed that Facebook use led to a significantly lower mood than did browsing the internet, supporting their hypothesis. The authors gathered that, with how heavily Facebook is used, especially by emerging adults, continued negative impact on mood over time could be detrimental to psychological well-being (Yuen et al., 2018).

This was eye-opening for me because I know that the majority of my friends (emerging adult age) are incredibly involved in social media. I have witnessed first hand the effects that certain posts or information sent or received through social media sites has had on friends and it is overwhelming at times. I have witnessed amongst my friends break ups, fights, losses of friends, losses of jobs, the onset of therapy, onset of depression and/or anxiety and more all related to social media usage. As the aforementioned research supports, I find it extremely important to continue research into the impact of social media usage on our mental health and well-being. Is this connection to lower moods after Facebook usage a sign that Facebook is, over time, leading to depression? If so, the more we discover pertaining to the connection, the better we will be able to prevent such effects from being as detrimental.

References

Perrin, A. (2015). Social networking usage: 2005– 2015. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/08/social-networking-usage-2005-2015/

Yuen, E. K., Koterba, E. A., Stasio, M. J., Patrick, R. B., Gangi, C., Ash, P., Barakat, K., Greene, V., Hamilton, W., & Mansour, B. (2018, January 18). The Effects of Facebook on Mood in Emerging Adults. Psychology of Popular Media Culture. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000178

“Sup”

“Hey baby. What are you doing?”

“Nothing. Wya?”

“?”

“It means where you at”.

The above dialogue is a typical conversation I have with my 14-year-old son. Our conversations mostly consist of him texting me in text slang and me trying to decipher it and feeling old. I feel like limiting TV screen time is a thing of the past since an average teen has a smart one and spends more time socializing through social media or instant messaging. When I hear parents bragging about their strict parenting styles and not letting their kids have smart phones, I try to admire it, but in reality, I’m rolling my eyes. I will lie if I said I’m constantly monitoring my son’s phone usage. I mean, between juggling a full-time job, going to school and writing blog posts, the easiest choice is to let him entertain himself in his room and leave me alone for a moment.

Most parents I know feel more at peace that their adolescent kids have cell phones since they can be in contact throughout the day. Adolescents kids gain more freedom in their middle/high school years and spend more time away from parents. Ever since my son started walking home from school, I made sure he has a cell phone with him at all times. Unfortunately, the cell phone is not being used just for communication. Although parents like the idea of being in contact with their kids, they also raise concerns of negative consequences of cell phone use. Parents and school staff have voiced their concerns about cyberbullying and other conflicts connected to text messaging and social media (Tulane, Vaterlaus, Beckert, 2014).

It’s been reported that parents prefer to oversee their kids’ cell phone use rather than having school administrators or teachers have that control. However, studies show that cell phone use is more under control with adolescents who attend schools with strict cell phone rules. With schools enforcing strict cell phone rules, many teachers acknowledge the advantages of smart phones in classrooms as they can be used for research and class projects. Teaching students the resourcefulness of smartphones as opposed to their disruptive use, teachers play catch-22 trying to advocate for balanced use of cell phones (Tulane, et al., 2014).

Going back to the beginning of this post where I made myself sound like a terrible mom, yes, parents are not perfect, and yes, we do educate our kids to be responsible cell phone users. Before becoming parents, we have this ideal parent in our heads that we try to look up to, but then reality comes, and we’re not that strong anymore. I have always been outspoken about teaching and educating children as young as possible. We warn them about drugs and unsafe sex, we teach them to see the difference between right and wrong, we educate them to be responsible for their actions. Cell phones are just another addition to the list of things we want to make them aware of. And even if they spend a little more time on their smart phones while mom is getting things done, then that’s just the reality we have to live with, at least for the time being.

References

Tulane, S., Vaterlaus, J.M., Beckert, T.E. (2014). An A in their social lives, but an F in school: Adolescent perceptions of texting in school. Sage Journals, 49.

It’s everywhere!  The bells and whistles on your phone sending you notifications.  The endless signs, flashing billboards, politicians up for election.  Hey!  It’s tax season, I just waved at someone dressed up as the Statue of Liberty trying to tug at my patriotic heart strings to hand over my personal information so this company can do my taxes.  You can’t stand in line at a grocery store without looking over and seeing the latest gossip all over magazine covers.  You listen to random conversations around you and hear people chiming in on all the latest news topics.  Kids have become mini-marketers posting video ads for toys that collect thousands of views and make thousands of dollars.  It’s hard to avoid.  Media is everywhere, and it influences our daily lives from the things we buy to the things we try to the things we think about daily.

We are living in a world of information overload as we are continuously inundated with information everywhere we turn, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.  On the one hand, it’s impressive and inspirational to see people turn into designers, architects and celebrity chefs through clever social media marketing.  On the other hand, there is no off button to reduce the constant influx of horrifying news stories, the fixation on the dangers of humanity and the harmful effects of misinformation.  We live in a world where our days are filled with impressive home hacks and quick recipes to horrifying scenes of mass shootings and endless propaganda aimed at dehumanizing humanity.  Between all that chaos we are inundated with ads that distinctly target our desires.  It can be unnerving to know that every click we make is monitored and tracked for companies to present us with money saving deals and headlines.

Our minds race between wanting to create something great for dinner to thinking about the latest technological wizardry available for purchase to wanting to build a bomb shelter for our family to hide in until the persistent threats broadcast on the news no longer haunt us.  It’s a horrible play on our emotions.  With so much coming at us at such a fast pace it’s easy to feel like everything is out of our control.  I can understand why many people want to disconnect and close their eyes to the constant influx of information.  But are we truly helpless in a society inundated with media frenzy and rapid-fire information?    Absolutely not.

It’s important for members of society to recognize that our eyes are valuable to media outlets.  We are the targeted audience.  We must not allow our time and attention to be devalued.  By having a better understanding of media in all forms we can better prepare ourselves and our families to be wise consumers and efficient users of media. Critical viewing skill and media literacy skills should be viewed as being important for the safety and benefit of society.  Media in all forms has helped movements, created a world where we can connect with each other, but it has also promoted wars and hatred through repeated coverage with poor framing.

It’s imperative that our society, as audience members of media outlets, advocate for media literacy and critical viewing skills across the board for all ages.  In doing so, we can give society members the tools needed to protect ourselves from being inundated with unnecessary information, incorrect information and harmful information.  By promoting media literacy and critical viewing skills, we can begin to re-shape the way information is relayed and consumed to encourage a healthier media dynamic.

Arke (2005), showed a positive relationship between media literacy skills and critical thinking skills with quantitative data.  This study shows a correlation that many textbooks have previously only assumed.  Given this information, it’s important to work on expanding such studies to create effective interventions aimed at increasing media literacy skills throughout the lifespan.  With the reality of an ever-expanding age of information upon us, we can no longer choose to just disconnect from media outlets.  We must take proactive steps to ensure that society members are able to work through the information being spun daily.  As a society, whose attention is valuable to many media outlets, our increased media literacy skills can help shape the way media sources produce information.

Mingoia, Hutchinson, Gleaves & Wilson (2019), created a pilot study on the effects of media literacy on female university students.  They wanted to see if media literacy training would affect their opinion on tanning.  After providing media literacy training to participants for two weeks, the study showed that participants who received media literacy training experienced less internalization of tanning as being ideal for appearances.  Participants were less likely to become influenced by the allure of tanning which could have harmful effects such as skin cancer.  This study reflects the way media literacy skills increase critical thinking skills which in turn can help media audiences become more cautious consumers of media.  Media literacy skills can help prompt people to stop and really think about what is being seen, read or heard on media outlets before internalizing any negative or incorrect messages.  It’s a very important skill to have in our times.

It’s important to recognize that as members of a media loaded society, we are all responsible for media literacy and critical viewing skills.  We must remain vigilant in our own actions and avoid the bystander effect by choosing to be part of solutions that can change the system of media that many of us feel overwhelmed by.  Aside from advocating for media literacy in institutions through legislation, we must embrace our own responsibility of increasing media literacy around us.  We must be vigilant in our own actions and not diffuse responsibility to other people or institutions.  We all have a hand in this together.

The first thing we need to do is to encourage communication with each other.  When a person references a topic, they’ve seen broadcast on the news or something they saw on social media, we can encourage critical thinking by asking questions about it.  Encourage our friends, family and children to ask questions about the topic, the outlet that presented the topic, discuss the prospective of this topic and whether it’s positive or negative.  Use these moments as teachable moments with everyone.  Relate the topic to everyday life and everyday people.  Discuss implications of what was presented and how it was presented to offer a different perspective.  Model critical thinking skills by using critical thinking skills when talking about topics that tend to be hyper-propagandized.  When someone is exhibiting bias because of something on social media or on the news, don’t be afraid to call it out.  Encourage people to look for multiple sources of information to try to verify information.  We all play a role in influencing each other and by modeling critical thinking during conversations about things seen in various media outlets we can encourage media literacy skills in those around us.

It is well within our power and our right to be proactive in creating a solution to the information overload we all experience.  It’s part of our responsibility as a society to advocate for media literacy education to give society members the necessary tools needed to be critical consumers of media in all forms.  As more people in our society become critical consumers of the information provided by media outlets, it can change the dynamic of the media outlets themselves.  If we arm ourselves with the media literacy and critical thinking skills necessary to thrive in a world of information overload, we can reject misinformation and deter media sources that can be harmful.  In doing so, we could proactively change the way media sources are vying for our attention and shift it in a healthier pattern for everyone.

References:

Arke, E. (2005). Media Literacy and Critical Thinking: Is There a Connection? (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/9

Media Literacy Now. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://medialiteracynow.org/your-state-legislation/

Mingoia, J., Hutchinson, A. D., Gleaves, D. H., & Wilson, C. (2019). The impact of a social media literacy intervention on positive attitudes to tanning: A pilot study. Computers in Human Behavior,90, 188-195. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2018.09.004

Pennsylvania State University World Campus (2019).  PSYCH 424 Lesson 9: Media/Communications Technology  Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1973019/modules/items/25635718

Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. Los Angeles: Sage.

It’s undeniable that media is a large part of our daily lives, in fact it would most likely take a calculated effort to seclude oneself from the plethora of media that one encounters in a day.  The hyper accessibility of the media has many benefits, you can tune in to see what’s going on in the world thousands of miles away, watch a how-to video on YouTube, communicate with a friend in another time zone…the list goes on and on.  Despite the many benefits that we reap from media, there are some negative aspects that stem from media use.  A type of media in particular that is tied to some detrimental findings is social media, specifically in the form of social networking.  Social networking websites (SNS) include Facebook, Twitter, dating applications, etc.  There have been concerns over it’s addictive potential and negative psychological effects within a minority population of its users.

Kuss & Griffiths (2011) conducted one of the first scientific literature reviews on the topic and have since updated their findings several years later.  In the updated literature review it was noted that there is conclusive evidence that social networking site (SNS) addiction does exist (Kuss & Griffiths, 2017).  The previous review could not conclude such findings because research on this topic was in its early stages.  It is important to note that while SNS addiction has been recognized, very few are clinically diagnosed.  For others it’s clearly a habitual behavior that may be perceived as annoying or rude to others.  Furthermore, it can cross the line and become problematic when it impedes driving performance by creating a distraction (Kuss & Griffiths, 2017).

So, what facilitates excessive social media use?

Kuss & Griffiths (2017) states that people access SNS mainly through their smartphones which gives users the ability to constantly check their smartphone. The behavior that is associated with the need to constantly stay connected is explained by the concept Fear of Missing Out or FoMO.  It is defined as “pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent, FoMO is characterized by the desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing” (Przybylski, Murayama, DeHaan & Gladwell, 2013, p. 1841).  Empirical results regarding FoMO conducted by Przybylski et al. (2013) showed that FoMo was negatively associated with mood and life satisfaction.  These results parallel with Kuss & Griffiths’ (2017) findings that there are negative psychological problems such as anxiety, depression, loneliness, in a minority population that excessively uses social media.

Dr. Mark Griffith suggest implementing what he calls “digital detox strategies” if you are spending too much time on social media.  In a Washington Post article, Kuss & Griffith listed six questions that helped evaluate if you could benefit from a digital detox or if you are teetering on the line of potential addiction.  Besides evaluating your own personal social media use, I think that our society could benefit from rules being put in place to minimize our usage, such as workplaces and schools.  At the end of the day, it’s more fulfilling to be present in your own life, rather than mindlessly scrolling.

References

Kuss, D.J. & Griffiths, M.D. (2011). Online social networking and addiction: A literature review of empirical research. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 8, 3528-3552.

Kuss, D. J. & Griffiths, M. D. (2017). Social networking sites and addiction: Ten lessons learned. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 14(3), 311; doi:10.3390/ijerph14030311

Kuss, D. & Griffiths, M. (2018) 6 questions help reveal if you’re addicted to social media. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/04/25/social-media-addiction/?utm_term=.fcb7ca018554

Przybylski, A. K., Murayama, K., DeHaan, C. R., & Gladwell, V. (2013). Motivational, emotional, and behavioral correlates of fear of missing out. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(4), 1841-1848. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2013.02.014

Walton, A. (2017). 6 ways social media affects our mental health. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2017/06/30/a-run-down-of-social-medias-effects-on-our-mental-health/#7c4c20c92e5a

Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels

Could you imagine driving the length of a school football field at 60 mph with a bl.ind fold on? If you think about it, whenever you are texting and driving that is exactly what you are doing. Texting behind the wheel can take the driver’s eye off the road for an average of 4.6 seconds according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Do you think that is pretty dangerous? Of course! The leading cause of death among teenage drivers used to be drinking and driving however now it has been replaced with texting and driving. Teenagers are not the only ones to blame though, 49 percent of American adult drivers admitted that they text while driving. This has become a big problem in the United States. Being on our phones has become such a habit for us that we even will risk our lives to check our phones.

Texting while driving if you get caught can be very expensive. In Wisconsin their inattentive driving law does not allow drivers to text behind the wheel. Your first penalty the fine is as high as 400$ and also 4 points on your license. If you get caught the second time it is going to cost you 800$. In Minnesota their texting law does not allow drivers texting behind the wheel either the penalty is 300$. If you do get pulled over and tell the police officer that you were not texting they are able to obtain a subpoena for your cell phone company and check to see if you were texting. Crazy right? Also, fines like this may also make your car insurance premium go up!

So how can you help? A very important way of helping would be to lead by example. Never send or respond to a text message while driving or even when you are at a red light! If you do so, it can not only put you at risk, but others as well and is against the law. If you feel like you can not contain yourself and control yourself maybe you should turn off your phone or put it in your pocket or purse and only use it when the car is in park. Always stay focused on the road as well, keep your eyes on the road. If you are in the car with someone who is texting please say something. Also, it is good to make people in your community aware of the dangers of texting while driving too!

In conclusion, texting while driving is very dangerous and can not only get you or someone else seriously hurt but it can also cost you and another person’s life. It is a no win situation. However, you are able to prevent this from happening on your part. It is simple, hide your phone when you are driving so that way you can not feel tempted to use it behind the wheel. It is also important to only use your phone when you are parked. Never use your phone even if you are at a red light.

References:

Insurance, I. (n.d.). Dangers of texting while driving. Retrieved from https://www.integrityinsurance.com/tips/dangerstexting

Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., and Coutts, L. M. (Eds.). (2012). Applied Social Psychology. Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

I have to admit, when I first heard the term “influencer”, I thought what is that? Most influencers have amassed a massive social media following by creating content that promotes brands, with the aim of gaining attention from those brands (Glucksman, 2017). They’re usually posting about products such as make-up, handbags, or clothing and providing their followers with reviews. If a brand likes what they see, the individual can potentially become a paid spokesperson for the brand.

Marketing experts know that if they want to reach the most people possible, they must have a strong social media presence. The popularity of social media has certainly presented a new avenue for brands to advertise (Glucksman, 2017). Ads on Facebook are not the only way brands are attempting to reach and influence individuals; they are paying people to promote their brands on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter…did I get them all? That’s where an influencer fits in all of this. Influencer marketing has taken off  and it has proven to be widely successful (Glucksman, 2017). A top executive for Estee Lauder, hinted to the fact that they use approximately 50% of their marketing budget on influencers (Cho, 2018). That’s a big deal. As it appears, there is money to be made as an influencer, so what am I doing here!?

Influencers can be great for business. Alex Bolen, chief executive for Oscar De La Renta, said that influencers have had a positive impact in the brand’s handbag division (Cho, 2018). Their production has nearly doubled, all thanks to influencers.

But is it all good news?

The answer is no! In case you missed it, there were two documentaries on the doomed Fyre Festival on Netflix and Hulu.  Top influencers were enlisted by McFarland to promote this festival that was supposed to take place in the Bahamas (Pampell, 2019). It was supposed to be an awesome music festival with with A-list performers and luxury villas-none of it came to fruition. Along with influencers, promotional videos with well-recognized models were also used to drive ticket sales (Pampell, 2019). If not for influencers, they may not have sold as many tickets. But they did, and people were duped into spending thousands of dollars.

Buyer, beware!

References

Cho, A. (2018). The rise of social-media influencers. CBS News. Retrieved from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-rise-of-social-media-influencers/

Glucksman, M. (2017). The rise of social-media influencer marketing on lifestyle branding: A case study of Luci Fink. Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications, 8(2), 77-87

Pampell, J. (2019).Three truths the Fyre Festival documentary proved about influencer marketing. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2019/03/08/three-truths-the-fyre-festival-documentary-proved-about-influencer-marketing/#5afc772619b3

“It is quite relaxing to be here. We have bunnies and few sheep. Today, we are potting seedlings in preparation for a big spring sale” says Hannu Kallio.  Hannu Kallio is not a farmer. He is a convicted drug smuggler at Kerava’s open prison in Finland. He isn’t locked. He doesn’t wear uniform. He works every day at a greenhouse, and earns about $8 an hour. He has a cell phone, does his grocery shopping in town and gets three days of vacation every couple of months. He pays a rent to the prison; and if he chooses to study for a university degree in town instead of working, he gets a subsidy for it. He sometimes takes supervised camping and fishing trips.

Being incarcerated in Finland wasn’t always a sinecure. In the 60’s, the country had one of the highest imprisonment rates  in Europe. Prisons were overcrowded and detention conditions were deplorable. At the same period, researchers across Nordic countries started investigating how much punishment really helps reducing crime. They concluded that it doesn’t. As a consequence, Finland rethought all its penal policy. Fifteen years later, results were compelling.  Finland have one of the lowest rates of imprisonment on the continent with 55 inmates for 100 000 inhabitant. As a comparison, the rate in the US in 2018 is 655 prisoners per 100 000 inhabitant.  Prisoners in Finland are gradually reintroduced into normal life through open prisons. Almost  third of Finnish inmates are housed in open prison, and inmates who go through open prisons are less likely to be arrested again.

Finland had it right. As you may already know, prison sentences serve several purposes. It removes criminal from the streets, it serves as a form of punishment, but it also helps to  correct or modify the criminal behavior and prepares the offender for reintegration into society. “Conventional” prisons may have succeed in the two first goals, but have failed the last one. Research suggests that incarceration has a limited value in preventing future crime and it may contribute to increase the risk of recidivism (Griffiths & Cunningham, 2000). Although by changing the prison environment to match the needs of the offender, Finland obtains better outcomes. The recidivism rate for open prisons in Finland is 17% lower than in “conventional” prisons.

Some countries may not be ready to implement open prisons. The shift from an emphasis on punishment and a “get tough on crime” perspective (Benson, 2003) will be too strong to bear.  An alternative could be to bring more humanity in prison setting through building therapeutic communities. A therapeutic community is a holistic residential environment that is designed to promote residents’ personal growth and development. The primary aim is to bring about changes in attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that lead to a healthier and more adaptive lifestyle on return to the community than the lifestyle that lead the person to be admitted into the facility in the first place. The core concept is living-learning. The therapeutic community embodies principles like honesty, openness, self-governance, and learning from individuals’ effort to live together (Grant, 1980).

Extending the therapeutic community concept to the correctional setting may seem as first quite challenging. Some additional principles have to be included like building relationship with one another, attending to antisocial attitudes, values and beliefs, victim awareness, and developing strategies for avoiding reoffending (Lipton, 1998). Therapeutic communities can provide opportunities for offenders to live in a highly structured setting that models a cooperative prosocial environment. Living in a nurturing environment can change their attitudes witch will lead to change in their behaviors. Prison based therapeutic communities have been implemented in many states, like New York, California, Oregon and Texas.

Stay’n Out Program is an example of a prison based therapeutic community. It was developed in 1977 in New York. It is a 12-months program for male and female prisoners with substance abuse problems (Lipton, 1998). Participants are phased into the program over three stages: induction, treatment and consolidation of treatment and reentry into the community. The first stage involves orientation, assessment, and assimilation into the therapeutic community model. The second stage is aimed at personal growth. The final stage involves strengthening and reinforcing the treatment gains that have been made and developing a discharge plan. The Stay’n Out program worked pretty well. Participants recidivated less often and were less likely to violate their parole. Moreover, the longer the individuals participated in the program the better were the outcome.

Therapeutic communities and Open prisons show us that alternatives exist to the “Prison break” like incarcerate settings. One must not neglect the power of the situation in shaping peoples behaviors. Besides, countries can obtain great outcomes when, like in Finland, their policy are based on the work of experts and not only on politician hunches.

Bichell, R. (2015, April 15). In Finland’s ‘open prisons,’ inmates have the keys. Retrieved March 9, 2019, from https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-04-15/finlands-open-prisons-inmates-have-keys

Griffiths, C. T., & Cunningham, A. C. (2000). Canadian corrections. Scarborough, ON: Nelson.

Grant, J. D. (1980). From “living learning” to “learning to live”: An extension of social therapy. In H. Toch (Ed.), Therapeutic communities in corrections (pp. 41–49). Westport, CT: Praeger.

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. (2012). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles ; London ; New Dehli ; Singapore ; Washington DC ; Melbourne: SAGE.

Lipton, D. S. (1998). Therapeutic community: Treatment programming in corrections. Psychology, Crime and Law, 4, 213–263

Complete shock is the only way I could describe my reaction when he pulled out his brand new, slick, orange phone. It wasn’t the modern features that caught me off guard nor the petite size. It was the tiny, little screen about the size of a quarter and the buttons with three or four letters of the alphabet printed out on them along with numbers and symbols. He had traded in his smart phone for a new, yet very much old-style phone. I looked at him questioningly, waiting to hear the explanation.

My friend calmly sat down in the chair, placed his new device on the table and looked me in the eye. “I’ve decided to make a change.” he stated. He continued by explaining to me that he felt that his life was too centered around his phone and that he was losing precious time by having access to so many things in the palm of his hand. He wanted this to change so that he could be more productive and appreciate the world around him. He assured me that he still had access to all of his social media sites through his computer, but that he would only allow himself to access these things in the evenings when he got home. Those who needed to contact him had been informed that the best way to do so was to call him, but only if it was something that needed direct attention. Everything else could be texted to him as he had this connected to his computer as well.

The more he explained, the more I began to understand his reasoning behind it. Being such a busy person he always complained about having to be in constant contact with people, always replying to messages and emails. However, this was not completely true as the need he felt to always be available was not actually a need and more of something he wanted.

I pondered about his decisions and wondered if it was something that I myself would even be capable of doing. There were definitely situations in which I needed to be in contact with people while outside my house, but would it not work for them to simply call me? There’s no doubt that I spend a good amount of time on social media, whether it be sitting down to scroll through Instagram or naturally opening up Facebook on my walk home from work. Obviously this isn’t a necessary thing. I can update myself on the world once a day, or even once every few days. Although it seemed quite difficult to wrap my mind around, the truth of the matter was that I could make it work, just as my friend had found a way to do.

A few weeks after he made this change, I met up with him again to hear about how his life was going. He seemed extremely free and joyful, it seemed like a load of stress had been lifted off of his shoulders. I wondered if this had some type of connection with the loss of his smartphone and he assured me that it definitely was a large factor on his mood. He said that even though he was more disconnected from the world, he felt like he was truly able to be part of it. In person interactions felt a lot more real to him because he was solely focused on the present and his situation in that precise moment. He was not forced to multitask between what he was doing and people trying to communicate with him on his phone. He said that he was extremely pleased that he had made the decision to get rid of his smartphone. An interesting thing that he mentioned was that he had no experiences any form of miscommunications since changing phones. While most of his contact was done in person or on the phone, there was no possibility of someone misinterpreting a text message or he himself misinterpreting one.

Although I have no intention of making such a drastic change in my life, and I don’t think it is likely for many people to do so, I do think it is important to realize how much of an impact being in constant contact with our phones can have. There are people who have a smartphone and use it purely for necessary communication purpose; this is quite impressive in my mind. However, the majority of people, especially the younger population, seem to have an entire life behind the screen of their phone. Many of them have grown up with it and do not even realize that difference there is between having access to so much of the world through a phone and simply living completely in the moment.

My friend made quite a change and I do believe that, even if it is not permanent, that it will last for a while. The concept of a “phone fast” is something that we should all consider because I do believe it would give us a little perspective on how much more involved we could be with the world around us in a physical and spiritual way as opposed to try living a large part of our lives through social media. One month of using your phone only during certain hours, or purchasing a cheap, simple phone during the summer months could be a healthy experiment.

I don’t doubt that people think this idea is good but, on hearing about it, think to themselves that it is not something they could ever do. I would encourage people to take the risk, there really isn’t much that can be lost!

Social psychologists have identified the language used in interviews and interrogations as problematic. Consequently, those subject to police interrogations are susceptible to coercive tactics and demanding language that causes a recollection of modified memories in response to leading dialect. Sadly, there is a group that is particularly vulnerable to interrogative language. Compared to adults, children are particularly vulnerable to the demanding nature of the interview context. This is due to the fact that if a previously asked question is asked again, a young child or adolescent is likely to change his or her answer even if the first response was correct (Schneider et al., 2012). This poses a variety of implications for the processes of the criminal justice system, as, coercing a child into a false confession is easily done and may result in false testimony that could put an innocent person behind bars, or exonerate guilty parties.

As previously mentioned, compared to older children and adults, young children are particularly susceptible to suggestive influences when it related to recalling events related to trauma or stressful events (Brackmann et al., 2016). In a courtroom setting, when children must testify and are the sole witnesses in cases, namely sexual assault cases, the validity of the child’s testimony is especially important to determine a proper and just verdict for the accused. In past research, children’s susceptibility to the injection of false memories has been evaluated and consistently verified. In fact, there is extensive evidence to substantiate that negative and traumatic events are preserved in a child’s memory when no suggestive pressure is involved (Backmann, 2016). Hence, researcher’s Brackmann, Otgarr, Saurland, and Jelicic (2016) reported that young children are at greater risk of conformity to suggestive pressure and are more likely to change their accounts and report false details when given repeated questioning than older children and young adults.

On the other hand, it is important to identify the age-related patterns of children when it comes to the formation of false memories due to the testimony and suggestions of others. According to Ronford, Chen, and Harris (2018), two and three-year-olds will likely display a strong bias in trusting the information that others relay to them. Even, if the adult has misled or gave them false information in the past. Though, this phenomenon of blind-trust decreases with age. From elementary aged children and beyond, children have demonstrated a higher incidence of questioning the testimony of others and counterintuitive claims. In turn, with increased age, he or she is less likely to rely on the claims of others made verbatim (Ronford et al., 2018).

Furthermore, other means of children giving false testimony exist and have to do with a child that may engage in lie-telling and eliciting a false-confession when reporting the transgressive behavior of an adult to protect them from exposure of wrongdoings (Saykaly et al., 2016). By age eight, children are able to maintain their lies and provide plausible information in support of them. This ability for children to cognitively evolve requires that interview process rely on more than a series of interview and follow up questions to expose false statements and testimonies in children. More specifically, a strategy of questioning children that forces them to maintain their true and false reports in chronological and reverse orders are better methods at exposing their truths and falsities (Saykaly et al., 2016).

Finally, age prevails as one of the most pertinent implications that interfere with a child’s ability to appropriately recall memories- whether it be linguistic barriers or an increased trust in adults and susceptibility to their influence. With age, this susceptibility will likely decrease. However, during police interrogations, it is vital that the age and developmental trajectory of the child be taken into account. Overall, questioning strategies should be adapted to appropriately fit the cognitive capacity of the child in order to receive accurate testimony. Oftentimes in sexual abuse cases, young children display linguistic barriers, and will not immediately provide detail on the traumatic event. In such cases, nonverbal aids may be helpful to elicit accurate information from the child (Otgaar et al., 2016). Therefore, it becomes essential that police interrogations adopt more dynamic methods for questioning children to avoid influencing and eliciting false confessions that have repercussions for the accused, the child, the integrity of the justice system, and society as a whole.

References

Brackmann, N., Otgaar, H., Sauerland, M., & Jelicic, M. (2016). When children are the least vulnerable to false memories: A true report or a case of autosuggestion? Journal of Forensic Sciences, 61, S271-S275. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1111/1556-4029.12926

Otgaar, H., van Ansem, R., Pauw, C., & Horselenberg, R. (2016). Improving children’s interviewing methods? the effects of drawing and practice on children’s memories for an event. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 31(4), 279-287. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1007/s11896-016-9190-0

Ronfard, S., Chen, E. E., & Harris, P. L. (2018). The emergence of the empirical stance: Children’s testing of counterintuitive claims. Developmental Psychology, 54(3), 482-493. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1037/dev0000455

Saykaly, C., Crossman, A., Morris, M., & Talwar, V. (2016). Question type and its effect on children ‘ s maintenance and accuracy during courtroom testimony.Journal of Forensic Practice, 18(2), 104-117. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1108/JFP-01-2015-0010

Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., and Coutts, L. M. (Eds.). (2012). Applied Social Psychology. Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Every country has a unique prison system that differs from others in some ways. Every culture has its own way of punishing criminals. In America, we put people in prison which are unfit to live in. The United States is 5% of the world’s population but 25% of its prisoners (Lichtenberg, 2016). Some people might think that since someone committed a crime the conditions in the prison don’t matter. However, these people are still human and not all of them are violent offenders. Some people haven’t even been convicted yet, some are innocent, and others are put there because of racial bias. America’s prison system is inhumane, ineffective, and overall flawed.

One requirement of a just system is that punishments should be proportional to the crimes. Our prisons are inhumane and don’t meet this requirement because after someone’s incarcerated we don’t treat them like humans anymore. Just recently in Brooklyn prisoners were without heat and electricity for days in the winter weather. What we need to understand is that the sentence is the punishment and denying prisoners the right to freedom is ok. However, it is not ok when we deny them their human rights and fundamental freedoms. Prison conditions should not be an additional punishment.

Prisons are ineffective at stopping crime. Which is unfortunate because another requirement of a good justice system is that the punishment should not do more harm than good. More than two-thirds of criminals released in 2005 were arrested by the end of their third year (Lichtenberg, 2016). Each extra year in prison raises the risk of reoffending by 6% (2017. Meaning going to prison does not do criminals good because they end up going right back. Another harmful effect of our prison system is its effect on the poverty rate. Mass incarceration breaks up families and causes former convicts to become unemployed. This has raised the American poverty rate by 20%. (2017).

Overall, Prisons in America are flawed in many ways. One flaw that plagues our system of punishment is racial bias. Black men are incarcerated more than white men even though they make up less of the population. Also, five times as many white people use drugs as African-Americans, but black people are imprisoned 10 times more (Lichtenberg, 2016). The third requirement of a good prison system is that similar crimes should be treated similarly, which is clearly not the case in our prisons. Colored people who commit the same crimes are not treated the same way as white people would be.

Our prison system has many problems and is in desperate need of reform. Some of these problems include inhumane living conditions, racial bias, and increased risk of reincarceration. We can solve these problems if we meet three requirements of an effective system. Firstly, the punishment has to fit the crime. Secondly, it has to do more harm than good. And, thirdly similar crimes should be sentenced in the same way.

References:

Lichtenberg, J. (2016, September 30). America’s prison system is inhumane. Here’s why. Retrieved from https://theweek.com/articles/651722/americas-prison-system-inhumane-heres-why

America’s prisons are failing. Here’s how to make them work. (2017, May 27). Retrieved from https://www.economist.com/leaders/2017/05/27/americas-prisons-are-failing-heres-how-to-make-them-work

As an employment counsellor for people in recovery, I hear many stories.  And while often people arrive in my office and they just want to get a job, my investment is in the person that they are.  As I learn about their values, hopes and dreams, they begin to open up and share some of the most tender moments about their life growing up.  Many of my clients are from socioeconomically disadvantaged, inadequately educated, first nations communities who become mired in addiction, sometimes as early as age seven or eight.   More than 50% of my clients have a criminal record but this does not define who they are.  According to the strain theory, Schneider, Gruman and Coutts (2012) these attributes, poor, uneducated and social inequality prevent this group from achieving a place in the middle class offering some sense of stability.  The strain of poverty, addiction and sexual abuse in their families and their life are what positions them on the path towards deviant behaviours.

The challenges are vast for these people.  The social learning theory identifies that one’s social environment dictates how one learns to behave.  That includes behaviour around drug and alcohol use, abuse and violence.  If there they see no way out of this circumstance, the drug use seems like a reasonable escape.  According to Gabor Maté from his book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, (2009) heroin is like a warm hug, it is the only thing that takes the pain of their existence away.  If it is not heroin, it is crack or crystal meth and at this point, they are always working towards their next fix.  Deviant behaviour is motivated by their need to escape.  The criminal behaviour is rampant in their neighbourhood on Vancouver’s Downtown East Side.  Once a person becomes an addict, their behaviours become antisocial.  They will steal and manipulate to find access to the drugs that relieve the pain again and again.  And, with very few positive peer role models the hope of something different is elusive.

There are social programs established to begin to address the multigenerational trauma and abuse of the first nations people, should they be fortunate enough to access them. The treatment centre where I work is one of them.  Once they arrive in my office they have usually been in clean for approximately 90 days.  My part in this is to see the resilient, skilled, capable and creative person sitting across from me.  I do my part, one client, at a time to help them find themselves in their purpose and meaning.  I ground them in the possibility of their success and at the end of the day, when they get a job or, go to school, they find the opportunity to believe in themselves.  You see, I have a vested interest in the First Nations people.  My grandsons were born to a father who has suffered this unimaginable abuse.  I want the cycle to stop with them.

References

Kirkup, K., & Ubelacker, S. (2016, November 06). Open secret: Sexual abuse haunts children in indigenous communities. Retrieved March 03, 2019, from https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/11/06/open-secret-sexual-abuse-haunts-children-in-indigenous-communities.html

Maté, G. (2009). In the realm of hungry ghosts: Close encounters with addiction. Toronto: Vintage Canada.

Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (2012). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles: Sage.

Imagine yourself scared for your life as your best friend is acting irrational and a little aggressive because of all the alcohol pulsing through his veins. One minute he is your friend and the next he wants to kill you, literally. At this moment you have no transportation, it’s winter, you do not have heavy clothes,it is 2 a.m. and your house is 3 towns over. Your friend won’t let you leave either. He is acting mentally crazy. You are so fearful that you can’t even call the cops because if he finds out you know he can overpower you. What do you do?
All of a sudden he lunges at you and tries to choke you out. You get away and run but he gets you once again. Now what is next? There are a lot of emotions racing through your head and you decide to use fight instead of the flight response. “The fight-or-flight response, also known as the acute stress response, refers to a physiological reaction that occurs in the presence of something that is terrifying, either mentally or physically”(Cherry, K., & Gans, S.2018). “The term ‘fight-or-flight’ represents the choices that our ancient ancestors had when faced with a danger in their environment. They could either fight or flee”(Cherry, K., & Gans, S.2018). You decide to use a weapon to fight so you can get away. As the police come to arrest you, you are cooperative and you even made sure to hold pressure on the wounds of your attacker because he was your friend. You don’t want him to die. The police even say that you used self defense and that you are in the right, but they arrest you and not him. “Police officers have a duty to arrest anyone suspected of committing a criminal violation. If police officers see two people fighting, both of them could be arrested for assault and battery, even if one person was acting in self-defense”(Law, B. B, 2018). “If you reasonably believed that you were in imminent risk of death or serious injury, you have the absolute right to use force, including deadly force, to save yourself(Law, B. B, 2018). Our judicial system has turned into you are guilty until proven innocent. No matter what someone has to get arrested if the police need to attend a scene this critical.
After this tragic and frightening event with someone who was supposed to be your friend just happened, you are thrown into the judicial system. An emotional state of a person being arrested for a crime when they have been wrongfully accused can be very damaging. When someone is being thrown into jail and has to go through all of the other procedures of the other inmates, it can be very traumatizing. For example, they arrested you but not your attacker because he needed medical attention. “If immediate release is not obtained, the false arrest victim who is often utterly confused and terrified must face the dangers of jail, some of which can be lethal. For example, the risk of suicide within the first 24 hours of incarceration is well known”(Simon, R. I., M.D., 1993,p.523).
We as a society promote self defense. There are self defense classes available to everyone of all ages. One of the more common classes of self defense is martial arts. They even have classes for women on how to defend themselves if they were being attacked. If people get arrested for defending themselves, wouldn’t this factor influence the victims decision if the moment arose?
One self defense case that changed a 26 year old’s life forever was because she defended herself. She had an older boyfriend who was an alcoholic, did drugs and was very abusive. One night they were arguing and he was beating her up in their apartment. She grabbed a knife and stabbed him. She ran to a neighbors house to call for help and her boyfriends mother to let her know about what happened to him. Of course she was arrested and jailed for 19 months. The court set her at $1 million bond. She was crying because she did not know if he was alive or dead, didn’t know what was going to happen to her children, etc… Finally after trial she was freed due to the courts ruling of self defense. “Childress said, adding that authorities rushed to judgment in arresting and charging Martin. I should never have a case this good because somebody’s been to jail that shouldn’t have (been put there)” (Hitzeman, H. 2012). Unfortunately this happens quite often because even though police have the authority to arrest they were not there for the crime. Also they have to follow the rules no matter their judgement.

Works Cited