Prior to writing this blog entry, I wanted to do my best to figure out what other research had been completed around crisis and building a sense of community either before, during or after the aforementioned crisis. Fortunately, I was able to find a recent article published by Rose Stone about the Ebola pandemic in Western Africa that took place primarily during 2014 thru 2016 (specifically in Liberia). In Western Africa, the World Health Organization (WHO) documented 800 health-care workers that contracted Ebola – more than 500 of them perished. This extremely high death rate is what separates Ebola from the common flu, SARS, and other respiratory illnesses. 

What I had found with the research that Stone completed as an ethnomusicologist allowed me to compare and contrast the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic as it has swept across the globe. Before March 17th or so, there were few cases in the United States, however, various cities and countries across the globe were on lockdown. “Lyrics of warning songs included key points of information developed by international public-health groups” (Stone, 2017) could not hold more true today. The government of Vietnam released an animated video on COVID-19 and various preventative steps to take in order to not contract the virus. As of writing, it has nearly 28 Million views on YouTube alone. Another parallel that I noticed recently was people singing various pieces of John Lenon’s Imagine to form a unified video. These viral videos bring people of all communities together to better “realize that Ebola [COVID] was not a government plot, and not a sign of witchcraft, but a real disease, which could easily wipe out entire areas of the country” (Stone, 2017) by having a celebrity or prominent member of the community discussing the virus.

A pastor at a church in Liberia was unable to hand the communion wafer to attendees but rather had to use a tweezer to ensure he would not potentially contaminate the wafer with his own hand. The pastor even stated, “sound could transcend the space between separated people and draw congregations close” (Stone, 2017). We’re seeing this today in Italy and other countries where people in quarantine/lockdown are playing instruments on patios with neighbors singing the words to popular songs. As Stone states, songs weren’t just for citizens to bond with one another, but even “normal and common way [for nurses/doctors] to prepare for fighting the Ebola battle daily.”

There is a certain sense of community knowing that everyone is going thru the same thing as each other (or should be practicing physical distancing). The religious songs that were repurposed in Western Africa, jingles created by celebrities, and other music-making played an integral part in allowing citizens to express community solidarity. As we move forward with COVID-19, it is important to think about what we can do to create jingles or have shared musical experiences to still have a sense of community – whether local or global with everyone.

Meni nga golong, e pilang wule mai, e kula lii soli su.
What I know about song, it came from sorrow.

A nee i wolo, i meni kelee ke,
Even if you cry, you do everything,

Fe no, i pele ke.
You must perform.

Nalong aa ke pele-kei.
The man is performing.

Nii suu aa laygi.
The inside of his heart has cooled.

Ilii a soli, ifa see tong ngono.
If your heart hurts, you can’t sit quietly again.

Kele, bifoo ba see tong, fe no i wule too.
But before you sit quietly, you must sing.

— Ge-weli-wula

References – 

MIN OFFICIAL. (2020, February 23). Ghen Cô Vy| NIOEH x K.HƯNG x MIN x ERIK | WASHING HAND SONG | CORONA SONG. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtulL3oArQw

Ries, J. (2020, March 18). Here’s How COVID-19 Compares to Past Outbreaks. Retrieved from https://www.healthline.com/health-news/how-deadly-is-the-coronavirus-compared-to-past-outbreaks#20022004-severe-acute-respiratory-syndrome-(SARS)

Stone, R. (2017). “Ebola in Town”: Creating Musical Connections in Liberian Communities during the 2014 Crisis in West Africa. 63(3), 78–97.

The moment people discover the distinction that someone is usually different from me is usually when they perceive the division into ‘we’ and ‘them’ and this creates stereotypes about ‘them’. Even though they are all different and varied, if they find an easy sign between others that suggest they are all the same (such as skin color, religion, national origin, and economic status) they don’t care about the individual differences and just think of the unit as ‘them’.

The gaze of ‘them’ that does not belong to ‘us’ is often hostile and unfairly biased. This is because the fact that the onlooker or onlooking group belongs to ‘we’ makes them feel safer and gives them a sense of belonging and superiority.

Nowadays, as I receive news about racism caused by coronavirus, I ponder what to do and what to do to keep from being prejudice. It is time to check and evaluate for yourself whether the majority of thoughts are right and whether there are any prejudices unconsciously accepted without your knowledge.

In order to be an uncritical accepter of a given thought without our thoughts, I continue to ask and check whether my thoughts are right or wrong. The basics of human rights start with equality. As human beings, we must not forget that the dignity of human beings applies equally to everyone. It is a necessary attitude to recognize that the rights of others are as important as my rights and are equally precious.

‘A class divided Prejudice primarily viewed people’s lives as limiting their lives, narrowing their horizons and shrinking the world. Discrimination also distorts the lives of others, sometimes millions’.

Peters, W. (1987). A class divided: then and now. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Instructions:

Read this RIGHT NOW. Or are you waiting till later?

“I get everything done at the exact moment I say I’m going to do it”. Said no one ever. Who are we kidding? Many of us have procrastinated in something within our lives. The textbook defines procrastination as “delaying the completion of a task or intended course of action” (Gruman, Schneider, Coutts, 2016). Have you ever caught yourself or someone you know saying: “Ehh, I’ll just do it tomorrow”? I’m right there with you. I know for a fact that I’ve been guilty of this countless times. For example, I might wake up one day and tell myself that I’m going to clean the house or my room that day. After a long day of work or a long day of doing schoolwork, I’ve found myself so exhausted that I tell myself that I’ll clean tomorrow and that it’s not a big deal.

With the school environment, there are studies that have shown that there is a big section of students in college that tend to procrastinate on their school work (Gruman, Schneider, Coutts, 2016). In my first year of college, before I started working more and had lesser responsibilities, I can recall myself procrastinating a lot. Back in middle/high school, I was a huge procrastinator. The textbook says that that there are some students that prefer to work under pressure because they feel like they produce even better academic work when they pull an all-nighter (Gruman, Schneider, Coutts, 2016). Another reason that is described is that there are students that have a fear of failing and have concern over the impact that the failing would have on their self-concept in school (Gruman, Schneider, Coutts, 2016). The individual might feel like they’re incapable of completing the assignments or studying for an exam and through this, it could all bring their self-esteem down (Gruman, Schneider, Coutts, 2016). There were many times that I ended up pulling all-nighters back in middle school and high school. After reading the textbook, I look back on my grade school days when I pulled those all-nighters and honestly even in present day when I’ve procrastinated or pulled an all-nighter and these reasonings that researchers have given make sense.

I have always had a fear of failure and that’s exactly why I’d stay up all night or procrastinate. I’ve had the mentality often where I don’t think I’m intelligent enough to accomplish an assignment/project or that I won’t pass an exam because I’m not capable of retaining information in my brain and I’ll probably fail anyway. This mindset has made me push off doing things in an attempt to avoid that feeling of failure. From what I’ve learned through my studying in psychology, I’ve learned about exposure therapy and how I should slowly expose myself to my fears in order to hopefully one day overcome them, rather than avoid what scares me for the rest of my life. It obviously won’t change in an instant or overnight, but the little steps you take are so very important. I think I’ve come a long way from my middle/high school days in term of school work but there’s a lot more work to do (no pun intended). However, progress is key.

Another reasoning for procrastination has been described by researchers as being an issue of motivation (Gruman, Schneider, Coutts, 2016). Trying to find the motivation can be tough as well. I know for me, with the other aspects of depression and anxiety that I face every day, finding motivation can sometimes seem like the biggest task in the world. With this, and that fear of failure, some days it can be so difficult to convince the mind to engage into things. Studies have shown that students that are motivated, have the ability to focus their attention on the tasks/goals at hand, and organize themselves and their time and effort so that they finish what they need to get done (Gruman, Schneider, Coutts, 2016). It’s even harder when you don’t want to procrastinate, and you have the desire to so badly to do everything beforehand instead of the last minute, but those things that I mentioned above, hinder you from doing so.

In present day though, as mentioned before, exposing myself to that fear of failure very slowly is showing me a little bit that my idea of being “incapable” or “not smart enough” is my brain playing tricks on me. Some days I believe it 100% but now there are some days where I feel like I am capable instead and I’d call that progress. Exposing yourself to that fear (or any), can help to rewire your brain into thinking that you are capable. Besides, if I’ve ever learned anything, it was from one of my favorite Disney movies, Meet the Robinson’s, where the main message is to “KEEP MOVING FORWARD”, no matter how many times you think you’re failing. I hope that I get to a place one day where no anxiety, no depression, no lack of motivation, etc. will stop me from completing my tasks without hinderance/procrastination. Sharing this “fault” of procrastination that I see in myself is hard but necessary. What about you? Do you have situations/experiences of procrastinations that you’ve had in your own life? If so, why do you think you procrastinate? Is it different now than it was back in grade school?

Works Cited:

https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pensu/reader.action?docID=5945490&ppg=1

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/32/1a/d1/321ad1590a6d471e3bae3675a5fea11f.jpg

 SELF-HANDICAPPING, DEPRESSION, AND COVID-19

Covid-19 has changed nearly every aspect of life as we knew it. Turmoil and chaos are becoming the norm. Grocery stores are empty, schools are closed, hospitals are overwhelmed, and the deaths continue to pile up. With all of this going on around us, how could we possibly be expected to continue on with classes as normal? At what point does the mental health of students, professors, and personnel prevail over profits? Am I self-handicapping by thinking the expectations placed upon us are absurd considering the unprecedented situation we find ourself in? Am I depressed because of my feelings of helplessness because I know there is nothing I can do? It’s almost ironic – learning psychological terms and theories – anxiety and depression, and then being diagnosed with them because while everything is falling apart around me, I’m expected to continue performing academically as if nothing has changed. Scratch that – it’s not ironic. It’s disgusting.

“According to the social psychological concept of self-handicapping , people act in ways that may undermine their subsequent performances, thereby having anticipatory excuses for potential failures.” (Gruman, P.563) What if the anticipation is logical? What if the anticipation is statistically probable? “Zuckerman, Kieffer, and Knee (1998) found that among college students, higher self-handicapping scores were directly correlated with lower GPAs, less time spent on academic work, and less efficient exam preparation.” (Gruman, P.563) My cumulative GPA isn’t the best at a 3.42, but I did get my associates degree with a 4.0 and the President’s honor roll distinction. So far this semester my lowest averaged grade out of the 3 classes I’m taking is a 97. So again, am I self-handicapping? Am I making excuses because I’m anticipating failure or is failure unavoidable? How does it make sense that while I’m figuring out how to homeschool my two children, while I’m worried about my father that has congestive heart failure and refuses to self-distance, while my husband’s job and my families livelihood is as novel as this virus that there still isn’t a standardized treatment, cure, or vaccine for, and while my life and the lives of everyone else in this country and around the world are being turned upside down, that we are expected to continue on with blog posts and exams like there aren’t mass graves accumulating in Iran (Cunningham) or refrigerated trucks and makeshift morgues full of dead bodies in NY. (Annese)

Does my pessimistic outlook mean I’m depressed? According to the doctor I spoke to from 98point6, it does. The specific diagnosis is – Adjustment disorder with mixed anxiety and depressed mood. Are the academic expectations the sole reason for the diagnosis that I received yesterday? – Definitely not… but to think that they aren’t compounding the issue is preposterous. “The 1978 human model was called the attributional reformulation of the learned helplessness theory of depression . The attributional model proposed that people are depressed because of the attributions they make for why unfortunate things happen. According to the model, people who are prone to depression make pessimistic attributions that cause them to believe that there is nothing they can ever say or do to change their unfortunate circumstances. Technically, such a state of mind is called a negative outcome expectancy (discussed earlier) or simply helplessness. According to the 1978 model developed by Seligman and his colleagues, helpless thoughts about the future prompt symptoms of depression.(Gruman, P.152) I think it’s pretty clear that I feel helpless and that  my mental health is suffering (and let’s be fair if I didn’t feel helpless and I actually believed I could change anything or thought I come up with a cure for Covid-19, I would be delusional) – I’m not naive enough to think that my academic performance isn’t going to be affected but I also don’t have the luxury of taking the time I need for my mental health, because – student loans and I need the grades to raise my GPA for grad school. I also know that I can’t be the only person struggling to adapt. I know that the solutions given to us by administrators – when we’ve worked so hard all semester to maintain and excel aren’t sufficient. Penn State University has failed me, failed my fellow students, my professors, and the personnel. So again, why am I writing this blog post and why are you reading it as if nothing has changed and it’s business as usual?

References

Annese, J. (2020, March 26). NYC builds massive makeshift morgue near Bellevue Hospital. Retrieved March 26, 2020, from https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-coronavirus-city-puts-up-makeshift-morgue-outside-bellevue-hospital-20200325-raora6bqxncp5gx3qfoagyxida-story.html

Cunningham, E., & Bennet, D. (2020, March 12). Coronavirus burial pits in Iran so vast that they’re visible from space. Retrieved March 26, 2020, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/iran-coronavirus-outbreak-graves/

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (Eds.). (2016). Applied social psychology : Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

Oftentimes people believe that adults become prejudice when they are older and it develops as they mature and form their own opinions on life. However prejudice is a learned behavior that begins in childhood.

When a child is younger they absorb whatever material they can see, hear or touch. During the bobo doll experiment it was proven that a child will mimic an adult’s behavior to be aggressive towards the doll after watching the adult hit it. The child did not understand the behavior, did not understand the aggression or that the behavior was not a positive one. The child simply watched and followed. This is how a child learns and understands the world around him starting at a young age.

Adults do not just turn prejudice one day, the conditioned behavior begins when they are children by the influences of the adults around them. Prejudices are usually based off fears and misconceptions others have that are inaccurate and not immediately corrected. Children absorb the assumptions and prejudice’s around them by observing the adults they are in contact with daily.

One way to reduce the amount of prejudice we see in society today is to begin targeting prejudice and begin education at a younger age. The education system should begin focusing more on educating students on how to recognize, react, and reduce the prejudice they have learned and unconsciously continue to enforce in their daily lives. There is an old saying that goes, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”; one translation of this means, it is hard to change a thought or belief that someone has had for a long time. If the education system can intervene while the students are younger, the system can correct harmful, inaccurate thoughts and educate on truth, equality and honesty.

It is important to frame children’s thoughts and beliefs while they are young and impressionable to be more positive, welcoming, and fair rather than attempt to correct a thought that an adult has had for many years.

Reference

Oswalt Morelli, A. (n.d.). Prejudice. Retrieved March 26, 2020, from https://www.gracepointwellness.org/1262-child-development-parenting-middle-8-11/article/38395-prejudice

I did an experiment back when I was in high school.  Especially since I was part of the “in” or popular crowd.  I lived in a small town, and community that was comprised of mostly whites, only one black family, and Hispanic families.

I being Russian, Hungarian, and Turkish and religious-wise, I was christened as a Russian Orthodox Christian, I was very curious how my peers, friends and all of the teachers would react if I came to school dressed in the traditional Russian dress from the Old traditional Russian Orthodox churches.  We had some students, who were my friends dress like that and they were accepted to a degree, but were also mocked.  So I personally wanted to see if my own friends, and the “in” crowd would treat me differently if I changed what they were accustomed to and not used to.

I had a few custom made dresses from my cousins, as I usually received some for the Easter holiday, which is almost always a different day, usually a week later, but sometimes longer in the Russian Orthodox faith as it goes by Passover and old calendar.

I didn’t tell anyone, and wore a dress one day.  None of my friends seen me like that except for those who were also Russian.  My friends knew, but have never seen me in the traditional dress.  The looks and body language told me a lot.  Now, some of my good friends were cool with it, even though they thought it was brave of me to do that knowing that there were plenty who would not receive me the same.

Some of my teachers were different in there actions.  I decided to do this for an entire week.  That is when I really saw the changes in how I was treated and viewed.  I even sat at the table where the few who dressed in that traditional dress sat at.

It really surprised me at how many were different in there reactions, facial, body language, how they acted, even my teachers.  More experiments should be done in classrooms to show how easy it is to sway how one views a person, or a thing, and not knowingly become prejudice or begin discriminating against a person for something different or surprising or unknown to them.

With the technologies today, more of these types of interventions can be implemented and then discussed like that experiment of Mrs. Elliott and her 3rd grade classroom on the Blue and Brown eyes.  (Frontline) For my experiment, this was eye-opening to me and the people were cool people I never thought would waiver and they did.

You would be surprised that any of us may have prejudices that can change on circumstance that is presented just as in “A Class Divided” has shown.  (Frontline), and with my own experiment I shared here.  If we try to do more interventions by implementing similar types of experiments, then more people would really FEEL what transpires and become more mindful of actions and reactions and thinking in the future and better implement fair practices.

References:

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

While a majority of us, including myself, regularly take online courses are accustomed, many other students are not used to this lifestyle. Online school is a lifestyle. It is harder and challenging, in my opinion. Many of us have no option other than taking online college courses due to different reasons. While I m stationed on the other side of the globe, many others prefer to do it from the commodity of their homes or simply because they like the flexibility that online school offers. Right now, the world is facing a pandemic, the Covid-19.

The Covid-19 situation ruined my wonderful trip to some amazing countries and the chance to see my oldest sister, whom I have not seen in more than a year. Not only has the situation worsened his past two weeks, but it has made some changes to the world, including the U.S educational system. With schools closing due to the pandemic, students are forced to shift onto distance learning.

Governments all around the world have closed educational institutions in an attempt to contain the global pandemic. Many parents and students are facing hard times because many are not used to this lifestyle, but somehow have to adapt to pass their classes. Meanwhile, many low-income family students rely on school food, and being out of school makes it a challenge. Besides, many parents are facing difficulty in staying home and watch their children because some jobs, including the military, require us to work even longer hours now. With schools and after school/daycare centers closed, I am forced to bring my son to work every day, exposing him to the virus.

Nonetheless, in times like these, we realize how important and vital education is. Scientists are working hard on finding a cure to the virus. Doctors and the rest of the medical field are saving lives and protecting those who are most vulnerable. Teachers are working hard from home or school to keep our children educated.

Children’s performance in school has a lot of different aspects to it. It’s not just simply how intelligent they are, how well they test, how much they study, et cetera. These things are definitely relevant, but we are ignoring something that is pretty important. I think a lot of school performance comes from how children feel and their emotional support. Children are learning how to control and handle emotions at a time when they expected to perform well in school.

When we talk about emotions in children regarding school, a big topic that we talk about is test anxiety (Gumora & Arsenio 2002). That makes a lot of sense, because it’s a highly studied topic, that shows highly anxious kids suffer from test anxiety and subsequently may not do very well on tests (Gumora & Arsenio 2002). However, there is a lot less research on how emotions and social factors affect school performance (Gumora & Arsenio 2002).

Gumora and Arsenio (2002) studied 103 middle school students and surveyed them on their mood, emotions and academic performance. They hypothesized that children who reported negative emotions would have poorer academic performance, which was proven to be accurate (Gumora & Arsenio 2002). This study showed there is a correlation between a student’s emotions and their academic performance (Gumora & Arsenio 2002). Since it’s correlational, there isn’t a definitive cause and effect. However, this link shows there is a need for further research into the topic.

It makes sense that children’s negative feelings could be related to poor academic performance. Children are working through big emotions that they have no idea how to process. At the same time, they’re expected to perform well in school. I think this shows that we should try to find ways to help children feel better, so they can do better in school. 

Gumora, G. & Arsenio, W. (2002). Emotionality, Emotion Regulation, and School Performance in Middle School Children. Journal of School Psychology. 40(5). 395-413. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-4405(02)00108-5

Racial and gender discrimination used to be a much bigger problem than it is today. While we still see discrimination today, there are laws that protect people from being discriminated against in the workplace. These laws are put in place so people feel comfortable in their work environment and so that there is no discrimination when hiring, firing, and with promotions. This is great that most people have this law protecting them, but what if there is no discrimination law that protects you from this?

Recently it was brought to my attention that there is no law that protects weight discrimination. In fact, there is only one state that has a law for weight discrimination, Michigan (Morabito, 2020). According to the video there are a number of stereotypes towards people who are overweight, these include that they are lazy, lack discipline, or less intelligent (Morabito, 2020). This discrimination against weight is much more serious than I ever knew. The video mentions that when an overweight person is hired they are payed much less than other people, a study showed that overweight males were payed 3.4% lower and overweight females were paid 6.1% lower than their colleagues (Morabito, 2020). This is a problem that needs to be addressed, so why is there no law that protects this discrimination?

According to the video there is a lot of support to pass a law that prohibits employers from discriminating against weight; from studies they have conducted, roughly 80% of people support this (Morabito, 2020). Even though there seems to be a lot of support there is still no law for weight discrimination. Why is that? In the video they mention that there are concerns about passing the law. These concerns are that lawsuits will start because of the past experiences (Morabito, 2020). To me this just sounds like an excuse, they can easily address this concern. One example I can think of is writing the law that states that there will be no legal action taking place before May 1st 2020.

While there is no law in place experts recommend that employers should take action and try to prevent this discrimination anyway (Morabito, 2020). This is a good idea, but I would like to see in the future a law that protects people from this type of discrimination in the workplace. I think that judging anyone based on the way they look is ridiculous, especially in the workplace. If someone is qualified to work a certain position and they are reliable, then they should be hired.

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/01/24/weight-discrimination-in-the-american-workplace.html

References

Morabito, C. (2020, January 24). Studies show weight discrimination permeates the US workplace – but it’s legal in 49 states. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/24/why-weight-discrimination-permeates-the-us-workplace.html

Aggressiveness in children can happen due to many reasons. Sometimes its their home life, other times it can be other kids at school or their environment. Then there is the big dilemma of media playing an enormous role in causing a child to be more aggressive, and not just any form of media, specifically violent video games. Violent video games have been around for years, and the question still remains as to whether they could negatively affect a child’s behavior, more importantly can these types of video games cause aggressiveness?

I feel as though research has always been tricky with this because some studies seem to support the idea that violent video games could cause aggressiveness in children, while others have evidence that refutes this. According to an article I found, it states that researchers have found that there are some kids that may be more likely to exhibit certain aggressive behavior, but with the reminder that it is difficult to draw a direct cause and effect between video games and behavior (Children’s Health, 2020). It definitely could be difficult to know if there are other underlying factors causing the aggressiveness instead of the video games. How could anyone be 100% sure of this, without accounting for any other outside factors that could cause a child to be aggressive? Research is so conflicted that it has become a problem really determining this issue with violent video games. According to research, a 2007 study found that while some children became more aggressive, others became less aggressive. On the contrary, a 2010 study found that video games only lead to aggression in children who display certain personalities (Morin, 2020). Without looking at hundreds of thousands of pieces of research regarding violent video games and childhood aggression, just these couple of studies exemplify that research has mixed views.

With this conflicted research, poses the other issue that the research may not be acquiring for exact behaviors of aggression. A lot of the research on violent video games and children measures frequency of aggressive thoughts or language, instead of measuring physical aggression such as hitting or pushing (Moyer, 2018). I truly do believe this is a huge issue with this type of research because kids display aggression in many different ways. Again, this becomes an issue because even though there are specific testing measures after the experiments are completed, it does not account for previous aggression in the child prior to the experiment. What if they have a behavior issue that involves aggression or are just naturally aggressive from environmental factors? This could mean the research is flawed. But is it really flawed? That remains the question because of other risk factors. The APA has said before that there is no single risk factor that consistently leads a person to act aggressively or violently, but it is an accumulation of multiple risk factors that cause the aggressive or violent behavior with violent video game playing as one of the risk factors (Albanese, 2015). This again goes without saying that aggression can be caused by a multitude of things, and some people believe video games contribute to this, while others do not.

Alright so what do we know? We know that violent video games absolutely can cause aggression in children, but they also may not. Truthfully, it depends on the type of child. Every child is different. Some are impressionable, while others are not. One factor that may influence behavior in children is that they could model themselves after people or characters in the video games that they identify or connect to (Children’s Health, 2020). This could be one of the reasons that they display the aggressive behavior if the person in the video game does. It does not mean that they will remain aggressive indefinitely. TO get into the video game they may just want to act as if the character is acting. We know that there is mixed research that sometimes supports and other times refutes that idea that violent video games cause aggression in children. The undetermined is the level of aggression it causes if it does cause any for certain children in these studies.  I think it is still too undetermined to know if violent video games truly do cause aggression in children, and with research improving over the years, one day we may have all of the answers.

References

Albanese, G. (2015, August 14). Violent Video Games Create Aggression, but Do They Cause Kids to Commit Crimes? Retrieved from https://www.healthline.com/health-news/violent-video-games-create-aggression-but-they-do-cause-kids-to-commit-081415#1

Health, C. (n.d.). Do video games cause aggressive behavior? Retrieved from https://www.childrens.com/health-wellness/do-video-games-cause-aggressive-behavior

Morin, A. (2020, March 8). Are Your Child’s Video Games Too Violent? Retrieved from https://www.verywellfamily.com/aggressive-behavior-and-video-games-1094980

Moyer, M. W. (2018, October 2). Do Violent Video Games Trigger Aggression? Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-violent-video-games-trigger-aggression/

For our discussion this week we had to watch the Frontline video. I think that this video and the exercise that was asked to be done by the 3rd grades was really an amazing idea. It was very clear that the children who were put in the lower superior group, which was only for a day, were very upset about how they were being treated and about how they didn’t have the privileges that other students had. At one point with the flashcards the teacher even made a comment about how they didn’t do as well with the assignment as they had the time before due to the switch of the groups.

I think that this exercise sent a powerful message to the students without having to cause much harm to them mentally at all, as this all took place over one days time. Once they fast forward and they all come together again years later, 14 years later I think the students said, and they bring their spouses along too. Everyone sits down and watches the video from 14 years ago and they then discuss how it has changed them. Many of them discuss how they use this exercise to explain to their own children how they shouldn’t discriminate for any reason against any person. Even the spouses who were not there in that classroom years ago agree with their spouse about what they are saying and how they handle things among their child/children.

Upon going further through the video, the same exercise is done with adults who are employed in a prison and they too have very similar reactions. The people who are in the non-superior group feel agitated, annoyed, mad, anger etc. when they are not given the respect when they are used to getting respect and not questioned or belittled for every little thing that they do or say. I think at the end of their exercise as well they have a conversation and they discuss how they feel and it is very similar to how the children felt in the 3rd grade when they went through the exercise.

I think that this experiment that was done by this teacher was a very powerful thing. Even watching this video almost 40 years later I think that there is still a strong educational message that an individual can gather from this. Discrimination may not be as bad as it was years ago with segregation and things of that nature but discrimination is absolutely still a problem in many areas of the world.

I personally never really understood why people discriminate against one another for things that are out of their control such as skin color, eye color, religion, ethnicity. I truly believe that hate is something that is learned. To hate someone because of the characteristics I described above is not understandable to me but I believe it is something that is witnessed at a young age from children who look up to certain people and they just mimic the behaviors that they see.I understand to the children this is something that seems “normal” as this is all they know but it doesn’t make it right. And it is teachers like Mrs. Elliot who can make a small difference or at least try to because it worked for her students in the 3rd grade class she tough many years ago.

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

Violence in mainstream media is a part of our everyday life. Ninety percent of movies, 68% of video games, and 60 % of TV shows show some depictions of violence (Emmons, 2013). Exposure to such content in early age is a predictor of aggressive behavior later in life. The typical child will witness more than 8,000 murders and 100,000 acts of violence on network TV alone before reaching 18 years of age (Gruman, Schneider & Coutts, 2017). Hundreds of studies, including quasi-experiments, longitudinal studies, and experiments have examined the effect of TV violence on violent behavior. Across all of these studies the results consistently demonstrate that TV violence increases aggressive behavior (Gruman, Schneider & Coutts, 2017).

Violent behavior leads to violent crimes. In the US alone, there were 1.16 million violent crimes (murder, rape, robbery, and assault) reported in 2013 (Siegel, 2017); it is no wonder then that roughly quarter of world’s prison population in 2017 resided in America (2.16 out of total of 8.5 million) (World Prison Brief), another 4 million was on probation, and 850,000 on parole (Siegel, 2017). Granted- not the entire prison population is in there for committing violent crimes, however not all violent offenders are brought to justice either. Per every 1000 serious crimes in the US, out of which only half get reported, only 21 adults and 5 juveniles actually end up in prison (Siegel, 2017). That gets us to the number of, on average, 1 apprehended and convicted criminal per almost 40 crimes (of any sort, including violent ones) committed. Violence, therefore, not only has a way of remaining a big part of our daily lives, but for many people it is the way of life even.

Sensitization to violence, and considering violence to be a normal way of problem-solving and overall behavior isn’t the only way media violence affects children. There are more subtle ways in which it manifests itself. Exposure to media violence is, according to Soron, Srabony, and Chowdhury (2018), a significant risk of psychological wellbeing and development of the children. Among the various mental health problems depression is one of the major problems they encounter. Exposure to media violence distorts sleep and optimal development of executive functioning and cognitive process, and cuts down children’s opportunities to acquire protective experiences from their family or peers which require active social, intellectual, or athletic engagement. All these factors can lead to depression (Soron, Srabony & Chowdhury, 2018).

Children seem to be most vulnerable to the effects of violence on TV (Gruman, Schneider & Couts, 2018), meaning that their value systems start forming from very young age, and that media’s influence in shaping those value systems can be very powerful. I have two young daughters aged 4 and 5 that I want to protect from all negative things coming their way, as I assume most parents do when it comes to their children. Some things, such as natural disasters, we can’t protect them from. But for some others, especially those harsh-consequence-producing ones, such as media violence, we have to figure out the way to do so. TV networks reducing media violence would certainly be huge step in that direction. But until that happens, helping children create proper habits by limiting their exposure to television, video-games, and internet content has to be a way of dealing with this situation.

References:

Emmons, S. (2013, February 21). Is Media Violence Damaging to Kids? Cnn.com. Retrieved from: https://edition.cnn.com/2013/02/21/living/parenting-kids-violence-media/index.html
Gruman, J.A., Schneider, F.W., & Coutts, L.M. (2017). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Unknown. (2018). World Prison Brief. Retrieved from: http://www.prisonstudies.org/
Siegel, L.J. & Worral, J.L. (2017). Essentials of Criminal Justice. Boston, MA. Cengage Learning.
Soron, T.R., Srabony, G.F.S., Chowdhurry, C.A. (2018). Media Violence and Childhood Depression. Journal of Psychiatry 21(2).

The human race is unique from any other species on this planet due to our higher cognitive thinking. However, sometimes it is our big hearts that gets in the way of our big brains. Have you ever heard a story from someone and it made you so mad but later you found out that the details were inaccurate, and had you known the real chain of events you would have felt or acted differently. And maybe you had already repeated the false narrative to two or three others?

Coming from a small town I can tell you a good story can really take on a life of its own. I remember I was working as a cashier and old school friends would come through my line and ask how I was doing. Once a former grade school friend came through my line and asked a very bizarre question. “How are you, I heard you were pregnant.” As this was not even a possibility at the time I could not even fathom how that story got started. The one positive to social media now is if you are friends with someone they hear first hand what is new in your life, and they are aware that others that are also your friend also have firsthand ability to scroll through your feed and see if something is true or not. This has certainly changed gossip in my small town.

Studies show that a story that illicit’s an emotional response, even if the story is false, is believed. This is likely due to the typical independent western attribution error thinking. If we hear something negative about someone we naturally attribute it to an internal explanation. We often do not get the full story behind a big news event and therefore we make an emotional decision based on reported characteristics of someone. But what we cannot see the external factors or life events that led to the action or mood of the individual at the time they became a news story.

False News has really been put under the microscope these past few years. We naturally depend on our news sources to report the news. The news is supposed to be a first hand accounting of events going on in the world. But how often have news sources been wrong? And how deep do we usually dive to find out if the stories that most effect us are true. How many of us only watch one news source even if it is clearly biased. If you are strong left or right than it makes sense that you are comfortable listening to news and media outlets that align with your values. However if you consider yourself a moderate or middle of the road than how often do you challenge your viewing habits or news sources?

Reference

Baum Julia, Rabovsky Milena, Rose Sebastian Benjamin, Abdel Rahman Rasha, Clear Judgement Based on Unclear Evidence: Person evaluation is strongly influenced by untrustworthy gossip. Volume 20 Issue 2 (March 2020) 248-260

Grady Rebecca Hofstein. Examining, Correcting, and Failing to Correct Politically Biased Judgements and Momories in Real-World Contexts. University of California, Irvine, ProQuest Information and learning 2020

Propaganda- “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.”

I found this topic to be appropriate during these trying times. Since the world is in the middle of a pandemic, we rely on the news for a lot of our information regarding the spread of Covid-19. The news in Jacksonville, Florida where I live has started using the phrase “facts not fear”

I know that during these times, we can quickly fact check what is being put out there by utilizing the CDC, WHO, and NIH. However, while the media may not be spreading as much propaganda as they did during world war I and world war II but I would have to say Facebook as begun to take over, covering the propaganda. A recent report from the University of Oxford showed that Facebook is the most common platform for governments to spread “fake news.”

It shouldn’t come as much as a surprise that Facebook is at the heart of Propaganda issues in this time period. While Facebook itself is attempting to crack down on so-called “fake news,” I bet you could scroll through your Facebook right now and read at least one fake article.

While society today may not refer to it as propaganda anymore and just call it “fake news,” it is just another way that propaganda is only spreading.

References:

Chuck, E. (2019, November 22). ‘Greatest propaganda machine in history’: Sacha Baron Cohen slams Facebook, other social media companies. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/greatest-propaganda-machine-history-sacha-baron-cohen-slams-facebook-other-n1089471

Hanbury, M. (2019, September 27). Facebook is the most popular social network for governments spreading fake news and propaganda. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-disinformation-campaigns-new-oxford-study-2019-9

Propaganda. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.dictionary.com/browse/propaganda

This week’s Blog topic, Media and Communications creates a most fitting theme to the current pandemic sweeping our country. I will refrain from going into too much detail on the actual pandemic and stick mainly with the topic of media and communication. Communication has changed over the decades resulting in a mass attention towards online sources. A creditable source relies on history of the source, authority, accuracy, objectivity and actuality (Edvog,2019). Therefore, finding a creditable source involves much more than a quick google search. Let’s take this into consideration when we relay information to our fellow co-workers, family and friends. What are we really telling people? I doubt many of us are researching creditability in the information we share. Does this mean most of our conversations have no creditable value? How does this come in play with serious topics?
Let’s briefly revisit the topic of the current pandemic and how communication has played a role in relaying information on this topic. I’m assuming a majority of people first heard about the pandemic from a media source, via Facebook, twitter, snapchat, etc. I only have Facebook, but I can recall how saturated my news feed was with links, media clips, articles, and personal posts on the topic. The news blew this topic way out of control causing a major fear factor in individuals, which in turn created odd behaviors resulting in the need for immediate hoarding and increased panic. In reality, the news in my opinion is one of the least creditable sources. The news presents information with little credibility then takes that information and scatters it all over the media with ridiculous headlines in order to get a reaction. The public then takes this “information” into their own control, ultimately making matter worse creating unneeded anxiety and panic. Now we have people google searching the virus and looking for any possible news on the subject. Over the past week, I have heard and seen some of the most outrageous sources of communication via word of mouth or shared articles. Yesterday, a co-worker told me dairy farmers are immune to the virus, because cows once had the virus and the farmers drink a lot of milk. She then went on to say, “if you drink a lot of milk you’ll be immune. Another common indicated a need for gargling salt or vinegar to prevent the virus from getting to your lungs, if you were to have it. I heard the theory on how a particular rodent spread the virus. The fear the virus could have ordinated by animal are causes some individuals to abandon their beloved dogs and cats in fear they will spread the virus. This information is exactly why creditable sourcing is so important.
In coming to a close on this topic, communication and sources has declined due to the rise in technology. I found a few reasons which impact creditable communication and sourcing. First, the use of poor grammar. Grammatical tools such as autocorrect, talk-text, and the increase of slang added to the dictionary hinder the use of the English language. These tools come in handy when writing a paper or email, however I feel they have greatly hindered the carrying out of a proper sentence or thought. Second, shorter attention spans pose the need for skimming articles instead of getting the whole story. Society has become more incline with basing communication off headlines and news clips rather than reading the entirety of the main source. Lastly, we come to the concern for limited thoughts, forgetting to live in the moment and distancing ourselves from quality time. The best conversation are in person, when a topic can be discussed with real emotion and an extended time frame for thoughts and ideas. Clearly there are individuals that take low credible sources with the intent that they are 100 percent truth, in turn creating unneeded thoughts that lead to hasty behavioral choices. If more people took the time to uncover creditability in sources we could ultimately reduce the spread of false information, which would lead to more genuine communication.

Edvog, A. (2019). What Makes a Source Credible? Determining Website Credibility . Edvog, https://www.edvog.com/2019/03/website-source-reliable-credible.html.Schleusner, E. (2015). 5 Problems With Social Media And Technology. Odyssey, https://www.theodysseyonline.com/five-problems-with-social-media-technology.

Was Fear a Factor for You?

Do you remember a time in your childhood when you watched something via the media (like a TV show or movie) that made you so scared that it gave you nightmares for some time? Did you fear going to sleep because of it or were you on edge because you thought whatever you saw was real and would come after you? Researchers have stated that children’s reactions can be strong and powerful (Gruman, Schneider, Coutts, 2016).  Research has shown that 90% of kids are scared due to media during their childhood and this can cause troubles with sleep, depression, high stress levels, and nightmares (Gruman, Schneider, Coutts, 2016).

I have a cousin who watched the show called “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” growing up and she used to have nightmares from it. The how was about a group of kids that formed a club and members had to sit at a campfire at night and tell scary stories that they wrote, hoping to scare the rest of the friends. For example, there’s a character named Zeebo the Clown was terrifying to her as a kid. However, when she looks at it now as she is older, it’s still a little creepy but she doesn’t have that same fear that she did as a childhood. A friend of mine was terrified of the Crypt Keeper from Tales from the Crypt. Personally, it was scary to me as a kid as well. The introduction to that show was pretty creepy and scary skeleton looking thing on the screen in front of you as a kid wasn’t a good idea if you wanted to have sweet dreams when you went to bed. Looking at the Crypt Keeper now as an adult, he looks silly, and kind of cool in a slightly creepy way. As I got older, I noticed more of how intricate the details were put into creating the character rather than how scary he was.

The textbook talks about how the things that kids are scared of tend to change as they become of older age (Gruman, Schneider, Coutts, 2016). Kids at a younger age may be scared of most things that LOOK scary, despite how they might not actually behave in a scary way. The example used in the textbook is of the Incredible Hulk and how kids may be frightened of him because of how scary he looks (Gruman, Schneider, Coutts, 2016). Despite the fact that he is known to help people who are good, kids tend to focus on his looks and size instead and fear him. They do however (as the years go on), find ways to cope with that fear in different ways that work for them. Some kids may cover their eyes while others might lean on the comfort of a favorite stuffed animal or toy of theirs (Gruman, Schneider, Coutts, 2016).

The older that kids get, the different their views can be of what’s scary and what isn’t. Kids who are above the ages of 9 or 10 have more fear over things that could “realistically happen” rather than have fear of how scary something might look (Gruman, Schneider, Coutts, 2016). I know a few people who were uncomfortable with watching one of the newer seasons of the show American Horror Story called Apocalypse. They grew up in very religious households and were taught all about the Rapture and the “End of Days”. Watching the Apocalypse season made them feel a little fear in the sense that they learned from a young age that something like this would eventually happen. Movies with more realistic events and concepts (like war or death) would cause more fear in older children rather than in younger children (Gruman, Schneider, Coutts, 2016). An article by MediaSmarts talks about how there are three scenarios that kids can find fear in via the media. One is when they see something/someone that can create some type of injury, the second is when they see a child who is in a vulnerable position, and the third is if they see that someone is hurt or is in the process of being hurt (MediaSmarts, 2016). Was fear a factor for you? Did you have specific ways to cope? Did you overcome that fear or does it still trigger and haunt you a bit?

Works Cited:

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (Eds.). (2016). Applied social psychology : Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

Dealing With Fear and Media. (2016, August 29). Retrieved from https://mediasmarts.ca/tipsheet/dealing-fear-and-media

Looking at the spread of an epidemic is difficult to do – especially when testing kits are in extremely limited supplies and only the already sick, celebrities, and other high profile people are being tested (Resnick & Scott, 2020). However, over the past decade or so, cell phones have become increasingly affordable to citizens residing in low and middle-income countries. The use of cell phones in these countries is used for micro-transactions for goods & services and even for mobile healthcare applications via Short Messaging Service (SMS aka Text Messaging). Looking at the proliferation of these devices and their low barrier to create an application for, I was curious if there are any applications out there to track the spread of COVID-19 and other viruses.

The research by Mohanty et al. (2019) looked at the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store to find ~30 applications with “17 Apps are for single disease surveillance, 7 Apps for multiple disease surveillance and 2 Apps provides information on possible bioterrorism agents”. This is a relatively low amount for what I was expecting and even more disheartening is that roughly 75% of these applications have been downloaded less than 10,000 times (Image One Below) In an effort to help flatten the curve of a pandemic, there are two ways to monitor people – indicator-based surveillance and event-based surveillance. Indicator-based surveillance utilizes validated reports from laboratories and from public health officials. Event-Based surveillance utilizes “media reports, rumors, stories, social media and websites to detect and monitor outbreaks” (Mohanty et al., 2019). These applications can also take in information via various Application Programming Interfaces (Twitter API, Facebook API, etc…) in order to generate a better model of the outbreak that is currently happening. However, solutions using APIs may be prone to biases which affect the reliability and validity of the data. 

Pandemic Related Application Downloads

Recently with the spread of COVID-19, the U.S. government has been holding conversations with tech industry giants like Facebook, Google, and more with health experts with how they can glean information from phones to combat the virus. At the time of publishing of the Washington Post article, there were ~180,000 cases worldwide, currently, there are 222,000 cases – or an increase of 22% in two days time. 

“The balance between privacy and pandemic policy is a delicate one,” Al Gidari, director of privacy at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, tweeted last week. “The problem here is that this is not a law school exam. Technology can save lives, but if the implementation unreasonably threatens privacy, more lives may be at risk.”

The above tweet by Al Gidari is the crux of these discussions of where technology, adoption of the technology, and privacy live. Typically, when collating data from various sources, Personally Identifiable Information (PII) must be stripped out in order to protect peoples’ privacy. If these tech companies are able to figure out contact tracing between users on various platforms, I feel that it would help public health officials make more informed decisions with shelter in place, postponing large social gatherings, etc.

However, these technologies and applications that the general public can download aren’t without faults. It was recently discovered by cybersecurity researchers that the citizens of Libya have downloaded an Android clone of the COVID-19 Dashboard that Johns Hopkins released. This application utilizes various technologies to effectively spy on peoples’ microphones, location data, etc without the users knowing or giving consent. Thinking of other shortcomings for these applications would be the lack of applications created for health care professionals to collaborate and share information amongst each other and the public on. By combining this information with user-submitted data and data vetting, the quality of the data could be increased to make the data more valuable.

All-in-all, the use of technology in the monitoring and tracking of disasters, disease, etc has increased well beyond what most of us could have imagined. However, there is a large opportunity to grow and figure out more preventative measure to ensure the health and safety of people across the globe. This is just the beginning of large tech companies, individual organizations, and governments working in unison to mitigate viruses and make informed decisions.

References – 

Lyngaas, S. (2020, March 18). Surveillance campaign against Libyans uses fake Johns Hopkins COVID-19-tracking map. Retrieved from https://www.cyberscoop.com/covid-19-spyware-libya-lookout-johns-hopkins-map/

Mohanty, B., Chughtai, A., & Rabhi, F. (2019). Use of Mobile Apps for epidemic surveillance and response availability and gaps. Global Biosecurity, 2, 37.

Resnick, B., & Scott, D. (2020, March 12). America’s shamefully slow coronavirus testing threatens all of us. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/3/12/21175034/coronavirus-covid-19-testing-usa

Romm, T., Dwoskin, E., & Timberg, C. (2020, March 18). U.S. government, tech industry discussing ways to use smartphone location data to combat coronavirus. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/03/17/white-house-location-data-coronavirus/

Image credit: Tech in Asia

There are many examples of fake news. There are many examples of where news has spread via media virtually unchecked and unchallenged with little to no known reliable source. However, prior to the unfolding of the current crisis of COVID19, there was a good amount of censoring that went on by the Wuhan Police force. Doctor Li Wenliang had attempted to warn his friends and relatives about the virus in the early stages of the outbreak (Stanglin, 2020).

With today’s social media platforms and namely China’s Weibo App, he was accused by the Wuhan police of rumor-mongering and given the warning to stop. As many people may or may not know, China is a country where platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are banned for their own various reasons. Had some of these not been banned, news of the virus could have spread much more quickly and allowed numerous countries that are now struggling to get ahead of this virus before it spiraled into a globe-stopping pandemic.

This type of censorship is only really able to be done in places like China since they don’t technically have a government as it’s more of an extension of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) (Lawrence & Martin, 2013). Freedom of speech and freedom of press should be things that we don’t take for granted; albeit they can be abused and used as tools to sew mistrust and cause disruption intentionally. We could, however, ask ourselves if there was more censorship done on our current platforms, would there be as much misinformation? Would there be as much division and hate? Facebook has recently blocked many alt-right groups and Twitter and Instagram have censored certain hate-speech from being published for these very reasons which have caused a lot of public outcry from various groups and individuals. At some point there has to be a line drawn but how far is too far? How far is not enough? Who decides what news, information, and content can spread on what platforms? Other than the FCC, how censored are other forms of media like news networks and television stations?

Ultimately there are pros and cons to the censorship of media. But how it’s implemented and by who is a matter that should be collectively sought out by the majority. Whether it be to warn, inform, or misinform, media – like many of the technologies we possess – is a double-edged sword. As humans utilizing these measures, a little bit of self-policing can go a long way in finding a proper balance.

References

Stanglin, D., 2020. Coronavirus: Whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang Dies Of The Illness. [online] usatoday. Available at: <https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/02/06/doctor-coronavirus-death-epidemic-wuhan-china-spread/4678344002/> [Accessed 18 March 2020].

Lawrence, S. V., & Martin, M. F. (2013, March 20).

Harrison, S. (2019, July 11). Twitter and Instagram Unveil New Ways to Combat Hate-Again. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-instagram-unveil-new-ways-combat-hate-again/

Social media platforms need to do more to censor hate speech. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.queensjournal.ca/story/2019-09-27/editorials/social-media-platforms-need-to-do-more-to-censor-hate-speech/

I feel like this lesson was perfectly timed. With the Coronavirus pandemic here, the media is promoting a lot of fear lately. Promoting fear is a big seller for the media. According to Psychology Today, fear based news focuses on reporting dramatic narratives in the place of scientific findings (Serani, 2011). That is exactly what they are doing with this new virus that is going around. I am not saying that this virus is not scary or that the results from the virus might not be scary, but the media has taken the Coronavirus and used it to promote fear and panic.

One example of the media creating more fear is that they call the Coronavirus a deadly disease. While this new virus has caused some deaths, this virus is still new and the CDC states that the complete picture is still unknown (Situation Summary, 2020). Like many other illnesses, it can range from very mild to very severe symptoms (Situation Summary, 2020). I also watched a video that featured Dr. Drew. On March 3rd he mentioned that the Coronavirus has killed 6 people in the US, while the Flu has killed 18,000 people (Fox News, 2020). He also mentioned that people are being forced into bankruptcy and the supply chain is down, but not from the disease; it is from the panic that has been caused by the media (Fox News, 2020).

This panic has created many negative effects. People are buying excessive amounts of products, such as hand sanitizer, toilet paper, paper towels, food, and cleaning products. Grocery stores are bare because of this and that creates more panic for the people who have actually run out of food and need to go grocery shopping.

We should all take precautions during this time, but we do not need to overreact. I think it is also important that we try to limit viewing the media and focus on advice from professionals and websites like the CDC. The CDC recommends to limit contact with people to help prevent the spread of the virus, to contact your doctor if you believe you have the symptoms, and if you are high risk to take special precautions (Situation Summary, 2020). Panicking will not help during this time. I hope everyone stays safe and healthy.

References

Fox News. (2020, March 3). Dr. Drew: Media needs to shut up over coronavirus hysteria. Retrieved from https://video.foxnews.com/v/6137817056001#sp=show-clips

Serani , D. (2011, June 7). If It Bleeds, It Leads: Understanding Fear-Based Media. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/two-takes-depression/201106/if-it-bleeds-it-leads-understanding-fear-based-media

Situation Summary. (2020, March 17). Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/summary.html

“Eating garlic will protect you from the Corona Virus”, “miracle mineral supplement, called MMS, can wipe out coronavirus”, “Colloidal silver kills some strains of coronavirus within 12 hours”, “Drinking Water every 15 minutes will prevent you from getting sick” (BBC.com, 2020). These are just some of the miracle cures that cruise around social media right now, all of them being debunked. In times like today, people are desperate for a cure, a quick fix or a recipe for a miracle, that makes everything bad go away.

Fake news are nothing new to us, nevertheless we fall for them over and over again. The social media gives us greater and immediate access to information than ever before and can create and shape social behaviors in positive and negative ways (Nelson, 2020). Regarding the coronavirus, fake news has even cost some lives. In Iran rumors had spread, that drinking alcohol can cure or prevent the coronavirus. 44 people have died from alcohol poisoning and hundreds have been hospitalized. The alcohol, which was to some extent toxic, killed more people in Khuzestan, a province of Iran, than the coronavirus (Bote, 2020).

It is scary how the media can influence us. False public accusations can ruin lives or lets a mob lynch people. In India fake WhatsApp messages accused innocent people to be child traffickers, causing a mob killing a dozen people in one month, May 2018, alone (Gowen, 2018). The situation in India developed to be so bad, that authorities hired ‘rumor busters’, that were paid to travel around India in wake of fake news and use loudspeakers to inform people of the false rumors. But this didn’t stop the mob and they killed some of the rumor busters as well (Gowen, 2018).

Fake news are dangerous and the best way to shield oneself from it is as always: educate yourself. Here are just a few tips what you can do: check the publisher’s credibility. Who is the author, did he or she publish other articles so far? Make sure and check if the story is not taken out of context. Check cited sources to confirm its accuracy. And lastly use fact-checking websites like FactCheck.org, International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), PolitiFact.com, or Snopes.com (Nagler, 2020).

BBC News. 2020, March 8. Coronavirus: The fake health advice you should ignore. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51735367

Bote, J. 2020, March 11. At least 44 dead from drinking toxic alcohol in Iran after coronavirus cure rumor. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/03/10/44-dead-iran-drinking-toxic-alcohol-fake-coronavirus-cure/5009761002/

Gowen, A. 2018, July 2. As mob lynchings fueled by WhatsApp messages sweep India, authorities struggle to combat fake news. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/as-mob-lynchings-fueled-by-whatsapp-sweep-india-authorities-struggle-to-combat-fake-news/2018/07/02/683a1578-7bba-11e8-ac4e-421ef7165923_story.html

Nagler, C. (2020). 4 Tips for Spotting a Fake News Story. Harvard Summer School. https://www.summer.harvard.edu/inside-summer/4-tips-spotting-fake-news-story

Nelson, A. (2020). PSYCH 424, Section 001: SP20ModulesLesson 9: Media/Communications Technology. Pennsylvania State University, World Campus.

Social media has gained a lot of popularity in recent years. At this point, you’d be hard pressed to find someone in almost any group without a social media presence. Many people prefer it to other forms of media, because of its reach, accessibility & interactivity (Baccarella, Wagner, Kietzmann, McCarthy 2018)). Social media has a ton of positive factors, which are regularly studied and talked about, such as better engagement opportunities (Baccarella, Wagner, Kietzmann, McCarthy 2018). Young people regularly use social media to interact with their friends, share opinions, memes and pictures etc. However, there is another side of social media use that is not talked about or researched nearly enough. This is the dark side of social media.

When we talk about the dark side, we mean the negative uses of social media. These include, but are not limited to cyberbullying, trolling, fake news, stalking and privacy issues (Baccarella, Wagner, Kietzmann, McCarthy 2018). These things are becoming more prominent in social media use and yet people still use it just as frequently. They post pictures without consent, they take part in arguments and trolling people, they read articles and believe it without a reputable source, et cetera. Social media can be a great source for networking and connecting with your friends, but at the same time, it can be a cesspool for bad things. 

Something else that’s really concerning to me, is that there seems to be an increase of adolescents using social media. When Facebook first came out, it was for college aged adults. As time went on, people started lying about their age and making Facebook profiles, which lead to younger and younger people using it. Nowadays, we have similar instances with children using Snapchat, Tik Tok and other social media platforms. With all the negative aspects of social media, this is a scary thought. I guess a lot of people don’t really think about those things. We know it happens, but we don’t think it would happen to us or it’s not as big a deal as it actually is.

Social media is a really awesome tool that can be used in so many positive ways. But, people NEED to consider the negative aspects to it as well. People should think about the consequences of the things they post or read on social media. Most importantly, we need to talk about these issues. We need to talk to our peers and our kids and our coworkers. As long as we talk about it, we can avoid these issues from surfacing.

Reference

Baccarella, C. V., Wagner, T. F., Keitzmann, J. H., & McCarthy, I. P. (2018). Social media? It’s serious! Understanding the dark side of social media. European Management Journal, 36(4), 431–438.

I recently took CRIM 100 and I found the course to be very eye opening and interesting from a social psychological standpoint. What makes one country more susceptible to criminal violence over another, or what makes one country more prone to property crime? In this criminology class, one of our assignments was to assess the level of crime in our community, which is where I discovered the low level of violent crime in my city. I live in Asia and the level of violent crime such as sexual assault and homicide are among the lowest in the world. When compared to countries with much higher levels of these types of crimes, one can’t help but wonder what differences there are and how violent crime can be prevented.

One of the most notable differences was in regards to oversight by the government. I live in a city where there are cameras on virtually every street corner, and governing bodies are monitoring the internet. While many may find this to be a significant invasion of privacy, it has served well in the prevention and solving of crime. I remember about two years ago when a baby, having been abducted from a hospital, was miraculously rescued by the local law enforcement three hours later. The police attributed their success to cameras, tracing the criminals all the way from the hospital where the perpetrator stole the baby, to the building where they had brought the baby. At the time, everyone was just happy the baby was rescued and returned to its mother, rather than being concerned over the ability to track one individual’s movements for more than fifteen blocks.

Although this particular case doesn’t explain the lack of violent crime, it may explain one of the reasons why people are hesitant to commit crime in general. Aside from fear of punishment, one of the key differences between countries with high levels of violent crime and those without, is the social norm of aggression. Many Asian countries view western culture as more aggressive due to their forward or direct way of speaking and their individualistic mentality (Triandis, 1993). Aside from the collectivism versus individualism differences, there seems to be a significant difference in the portrayal of “masculinity” between cultures.

The interpretation of masculinity in Asian countries has more to do with education and earnings than mannerisms and behavior, like it does in the United States. The idea of “toxic masculinity” in which men feel they need to “act masculine” (and even aggressive) in order to be masculine, may be one of the factors in the higher levels of violent crime in America. Another factor that often plays a role in violent crime is the seeking of power or dominance over another. Individuals that seek this type of power are often compensating for their own feelings of helplessness or hurt, thus passing it on to others in hopes it will allow them to feel “in control”. This can be a scary thing, especially when overlaid with sociopathic and anti-social tendencies, like in the case of Ted Bundy or Ottis Toole (Davies, 2019). The need or desire for power is stronger in individualistic cultures, than it is in collectivist cultures (Triandis, 1993).

While I think it would be incredibly difficult to change the social norms surrounding the interpretation of masculinity in The United States, I don’t think it would be impossible. In many cases, violence begets violence and if we can start by telling our young boys that aggression is not a rewarded trait over compassion and empathy, than we may bring about more positive behaviors when they become adults. While changing social norms will take quite a long time, increased judicial punishment and wider or more comprehensive surveillance could help to thwart the prevalence of violent crime in the present.

References

Davies, N. (2019, January 28). From Abused Child to Serial Killer: Investigating Nature vs Nurture in Methods of Murder. Retrieved from https://www.psychiatryadvisor.com/home/topics/violence-and-aggression/from-abused-child-to-serial-killer-investigating-nature-vs-nurture-in-methods-of-murder/

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., and Coutts, L. M. (Eds.) (2017). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Karakurt, G., & Cumbie, T. (2012). The relationship between egalitarianism, dominance, and violence in intimate relationships. Journal of family violence, 27(2), 115–122. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-011-9408-y

Triandis, H. C. (1993). Collectivism and Individualism as Cultural Syndromes. Cross-Cultural Research, 27(3–4), 155–180. https://doi.org/10.1177/106939719302700301

My experience with Swiss law enforcement is a very negative one. Even though I’m trying to be law abiding citizen, it is my feeling that laws in this country are constituted in such a way as to try to get you every opportunity they have. Since I have arrived in Switzerland about five and a half years ago, I have gotten 3 parking tickets (one of those was for exceeding 1-hour time limit for parking in front of my apartment building when my younger daughter was born), and 4 speeding tickets (3 of those were for driving 54 km/h in 50 km/h zone, with 3km/h being the tolerance level). Until last few months, that was the only experience I had with Swiss law enforcement, except for often routine searches that they are legally permitted to perform.
I play basketball in Kreuzlingen, a town that lies on Bodensee lake, on the border between Switzerland and Germany. We practice from 8.30 to 10 pm, and I usually drive home around 10.30 pm when there is almost no traffic in the town. I was many times pulled over by regular and border police, my car was searched, I was asked to provide my driver’s license, registration, and my residency permit as well as asked to provide police officers with my whereabouts for that night. When I would ask why I was pulled over, sometimes I would get a response that it was routine check, and other times that nobody owes me any kind of explanation. I couldn’t help but think that Fourth Amendment right against illegal search and seizure that disables police officers to indiscriminately use their authority to stop, question, or search an individual without legal justification (Siegel, 2017). Swiss police are permitted to do all of that. They can, without any explanation or legal ground, pull you over, search your car, ask for your documentation, and question you.
I do most of my shopping in Germany. Everything is of comparable quality, and it is so much (north of 50% for almost all products) cheaper compared to Switzerland. Plus, as a Swiss resident, I am allowed to get sales tax (19%) back for every purchase I make in Germany. It sounds like great way to save, and it would be if it wasn’t for Swiss strict importation laws. Whenever I am crossing the border to get back in Switzerland, and Swiss law enforcement officers notice that I am not a native German speaker, I would get randomly chosen for my car and all my shopping bags to be searched. One time I was even charged a fine for exceeding legal limit for importation of meat. Allowed amount of meat that can be imported to Switzerland is 1kg (2.21 lbs), which I was aware of and made my purchases accordingly. I was charged 170 Swiss Francs (about $180) though, because, as I was told, the packaging counts toward total weight of imported products. Because it is my duty to know this information, and I have provided the officers with false information (that I only carry 1kg of meat, when in reality, combined with packaging it was 1.15), I was charged aforementioned fine.
Couple of months ago I was on a parking lot in front of a grocery store. I tried to back up my car, and while doing that my car has collided, ever so slightly, with the car that was behind me (compared to one human touching another human’s shoulder). I went out, inspected both my car and the other car for damage, and when I have determined that there are no damages on either of the cars I went about my way. That same day, I was visited at my work by 2 police officers. I was trying to be cooperative and tell them what had happened- I was trying to back up my car, I used my parking sensors and rearview camera, going very slowly and carefully, and at some point felt that my vehicle may have collided with the car parked right behind me. I ended up getting a fine of exactly 1720 Swiss Francs (roughly about $1800) for not reporting the accident to the police, even though noone was hurt, and after very thorough inspection police officers haven’t found any damage on either of the cars.
In both of instances in which I was fined, I was told by law enforcement officers indirectly that the fines were direct result of me trying to be cooperative. I was explicitly told that, had I only said that I don’t know how much meat I’m carrying, and what had happened on the parking lot in front of grocery store, they would have no grounds for fining me. This, to me, seems highly unfair. First, it is against my moral code to leave others to deal with consequences of my wrongful actions (in this case owner of the car that was parked behind me). I felt that it is my duty to admit what I’ve done, so that the owner of the other vehicle can be reimbursed for damages that his vehicle may have suffered. And second, is it such a crime to try and do the right thing?

References:

Siegel, L.J. & Worral, J.L. (2017). Essentials of Criminal Justice. Boston, MA. Cengage Learning.

Eyewitness Testimony has been a controversial topic in court cases for as long as I can remember. Eyewitnesses to a crime can either make or break a case depending on what they can recall. A person can be convicted of a crime or not convicted of a crime depending on how reliable the eyewitness is and how much they can convey to a jury (Bryant, 2020). One of the most important things in regards to an eyewitness is their memory. Eyewitness memory is memory that involves remembering specific events, using episodic memory and elements of semantic memory, while also remembering the meanings associated with the events (Jenkins, 2018). Eyewitnesses have an incredible impact on which way a case goes and they have a difficult job to remember everything they saw in possibly a very short period of time. The testimony of an eyewitness is crucial and juries have the tendency to pay close attention to the details a witness is recalling (Jenkins, 2018). With this being said, if juries are relying on the specific details that an eyewitness is giving during a court case, are these eyewitness testimonies reliable or unreliable?

Much of the research suggests that eyewitness testimony is not always accurate (Bryant, 2020). There are certain things that are contributing factors as to why eyewitness testimony is not accurate. One factor would be age or age bias. It is suggested that the older a witness is, their memory could be declining, which in turn could cause them to not remember as many details and not be as reliable as a younger witness (Bryant, 2020). Another factor that could make the testimony unreliable is that research has shown that the type of event could be influential in the amount of information that the witness actually remembers, which could fault them on remembering details of the event (Bryant, 2020). Altering details can be problematic because if an eyewitness testimony squanders, then it may be dismissed from the case. Jurors can determine and conclude that the eyewitness is unreliable (Bryant, 2020). As stated before, a lot of eyewitness testimony can rely solely on memory. A testimony can lose its reliability if the eyewitness has been deemed to have low working memory. Therefore, a person who has a lower working memory will not have the ability to move information, such as details of a crime into their long-term memory, meaning they may not be able to recall an event that took place awhile before (Jenkins, 2018). Working memory can be controversial though, because someone who has a stronger working memory may be able to remember things better and store details in their long-term memory, which in turn would make them more reliable.

There are so many differences between what can make an eyewitness reliable and what may make them unreliable. There are theories that look towards attentional control. These suggest that some people have the ability to direct their attention to multiple objects or elements of an eyewitness event, which can make their eyewitness memory more accurate, whereas others do not (Jenkins, 2018). Therefore, it depends solely on the individual themselves and how dependable they are as an eyewitness. Many factors have to be looked at to determine reliability. It is amazing to me how little details of a crime can affect a person’s ability to actually remember the entire situation that occurred. If a weapon was used in the crime that an eyewitness saw, the weapon itself can actually affect what the eyewitness remembered specifically about the crime because they tend to focus more on the weapon and less on the criminal’s appearance (Bryant, 2020). It really makes you think whether or not these eyewitness testimonies should even be used, or who to actually believe and who not to believe. Where do we draw the line on which eyewitness testimonies to use and which ones not to use?

Supporting the unreliability of eyewitness testimony are two examples of case exonerations. In the first one, the Innocence project examined many cases where they used DNA to exonerate 130 cases. Out of the 130 cases, 78 convictions were based solely on eyewitness testimony (Bryant, 2020). Another one involved a man named Brandon Garrett from the University of Virginia School of Law who ended up analyzing 161 cases of eyewitness misidentification that ended up getting exonerated because of DNA (Ryan, 2015). If eyewitness testimony were actually reliable then all of those cases would not have been overturned. It really makes you think whether or not there are so many innocent people sitting in prisons to this day because of eyewitness testimony. What if there are people on death row that got convicted because of this as well? The system is so messed up right now, and it feels as though there should be guidelines for eyewitness testimony to be included in a case. There has to be something done so that innocent people stop going to prison. After all the reviewed articles, I would have to say that eyewitness testimony is completely unreliable, and should not be used as a means for conviction. There should be other ways to back it up in a court case, so that the jury does not rely solely on eyewitness testimony.

References

Bryant, C. W. (2010, October 13). Why are eyewitnesses unreliable? Retrieved from https://people.howstuffworks.com/eyewitnesses-unreliable.htm

Jenkins, L. (2019, February 15). Memory in the Real World: How Reliable is Eyewitness Testimony? Retrieved from https://www.psychreg.org/how-reliable-eyewitness-testimony/

Ryan, B. (2015, October 30). Eyewitness Testimony Is Unreliable… Or Is It? Retrieved from https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/10/30/eyewitness-testimony-is-unreliable-or-is-it

To Get Involved or Not To Get Involved

Have you ever found yourself in a position in which you’ve seen something (like a crime) that shouldn’t take place and you didn’t intervene or do anything about it because you thought that someone else out of the good amount of people who were around you would take action? Has there been an emergency type situation that’s occurred and you didn’t assist because you thought another witness to the situation would handle it first? The textbook talks about the “bystander effect” which is the phenomenon in which “people are less likely to help in an emergency when other bystanders are present” (Gruman, Schneider, Coutts, 2016). This ties into the “diffusion of responsibility”, which refers to an individual’s sense of responsibility being diminished because they have the belief that other people will or should intervene in the situation at hand (Gruman, Schneider, Coutts, 2016).

When the topic of the bystander effect comes up, the murder of a woman named Kitty Genovese is usually connected to the discussion. This tragedy is known to be shown as a huge example of what the bystander effect is. Kitty Genovese was a 28-year-old woman who had come back from work to her home in Queens, New York (History, 2018). As she was across the street from her apartment, a man attacked her with a knife and stabbed her as her neighbors did nothing to help her as she screamed. The man left and as she tried to make it to her front door, the man returned and stabbed her more and raped her as more witnesses watched from afar. The police were eventually called and Kitty ended up dying en route to the hospital. None of the witnesses did anything to stop the man or help Kitty because they all thought that someone else out of the group of witnesses would do something about it. One of the witnesses later claimed that he didn’t want to get involved at the time. It is said that this tragedy that occurred played a role in being one of the factors in which the 911 emergency system was set into place.

There’s a show that I used to watch called “What Would You Do?” that was hosted by a man named John Quinones. The show involved using actors to portray characters to create dilemmas in public places (like parks, restaurants, etc.). Then, with the usage of hidden cameras, John would observe individuals and see what they would do in the midst of that dilemma. He wanted to see if they would take action and do something, or if they wouldn’t do anything about it and keep to themselves. There was an episode where a young teenage girl (an actress) was sitting at a table at a restaurant and a male (also an actor) who is way older than her, approaches her and compliments her. He tells her that he’s a professional photographer and he can take great pictures of her and turn her into a star. At this point you can see people at the tables around this girl eavesdropping on the convo and most look very uncomfortable by this creepy man. People are wide-eyed and look at each other in disbelief that they’re witnessing this and that the teenager seems to believe what the man is saying, especially when he says that he’ll take her back to his place where he shoots the pictures. The man then goes to the bathroom for a second and that’s when John watches for the witnesses to see if they’ll do anything. Some of them actually went to the teenager and told her that she should be careful because the guy might not actually be a photographer and that she shouldn’t go with a stranger to his house. The teenager says things like “oh but it seems like a good opportunity” or something along those lines. Some of the witnesses respond by saying they’re not telling her what to do but are just giving her a heads up that it’s a bad idea. In some scenes, witnesses don’t say anything at all. Eventually when the man comes back, he beckons her to go with him and she proceeds to follow him. This is where John observed the most. Would these people mind their business and risk letting this young girl go with this strange alleged photographer man to his home? Or would they stop it? There were a few people who were so creeped out by what was happening that they followed the two actors outside to confront the man and pull the girl aside and begged her not to go with him. One lady told him to get lost and that she wouldn’t allow the girl to go with him. Soon after, John comes out and reveals that it’s a show and asks witnesses why they reacted the way they did or why they didn’t react.

There was an experiment done where actors were used to conduct a kidnapping in public, to see how people would react. A young girl was “kidnapped” by an older male and she is seen screaming for someone to help her as she says the man isn’t her dad, as he drags her by the arm (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJKgA9b_5p8). You can see people in the video seeing what’s happening, looking, and walking past. A woman is interviewed and she says that it’s one of those situations where you think that someone else will do something. Then you see three other men who hear the girl’s pleas and run together toward the man to stop the kidnapping. They’re then told that it’s an experiment. One of the men say that his friend wasn’t reacting so he thought not to, especially because he thought maybe the child was just being disobedient but then after constantly hearing the little girl scream, he couldn’t stand by and risk it so him and his friends ran after the guy.

It’s sad that this mentality that “someone else will do something, so I won’t/don’t have to”, exists. Sometimes we may not even realize that we’re doing it when we just make the assumption that other people will do something when a dilemma or emergency situation occurs. This kind of thought process is unfortunate, as people could really be in danger and require any one person’s help. It’s also understandable on the other end that people might be afraid that they’ll put themselves in danger too if they try to help. I recall a story where a woman was on a beach and went out deep into the water. The water came in strong and she was swept out further, unable to come back to shore and was drowning I believe. An individual was a witness to the woman struggling and so they jumped into the water, in an attempt to save her. The woman was saved and brought safely to shore. Months later, she ended up suing the individual who saved her, because she claimed that she had obtained injuries from them saving her. The individual thought that they were doing a good thing by helping the woman but ended up getting sued for doing just that. Situations like this may cause some people to stop themselves from helping. My hope is that one day we can get past this mentality that we don’t have to get involved because we think someone else will.

Works Cited:

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (Eds.). (2016). Applied social psychology : Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

History.com Editors. (2018, January 5). Kitty Genovese. Retrieved from https://www.history.com/topics/crime/kitty-genovese

The media loves to go into a frenzy and get the story first before anyone else. But Pretrial publicity of criminal or civil cases that are circulated among jurists can create opinions among jury’s before any of the evidence has even been brought to trial. Imagine for a second you go to court and are innocent, but the media has already plastered details on all of the major news outlets. The gory details of the crime, and then realizing you are a person of interest interviewed the people you like the least. Like that neighbor that always has something critical to say, or that co-worker that you never saw eye to eye with and thinks you are after their job.

This can lead to some strong pretrial impressions. “with one focusing on jurors’ desire for a complete and coherent story (story model) and the other on jurors’ distortion of trial evidence to support a favored side (predecisional distortion theory).” (Ruva and Coy 2020) If jurors come in and already have an idea of what they think they might overlook evidence that proves your innocence. Now having 12 jurors is a plus, especially if only a small fraction of jurors saw the media and the other jurors are able to focus on the evidence and argue your case.

But how can we limit what is put out in public before all of the evidence is gathered and a fair trial can be completed. One could wait for the story to die down, but then this doesnt fit our fair system for a fair and speedy trial. Should we put limits on the media? can we enforce those without stepping on freedom of speech? Which is more important freedom of speech or a fair trial? I would argue if you were the one in the hot seat the answer would be a fair trial, and that giving the media some rules is a small price to pay for unbiased jurors.

References

Ruva, Christine L; Coy, Anthony E.,Your bias is rubbing off on me: The impact of pretrial publicity and jury type on guilt decisions, trial evidence interpretation, and impression formation, Psychology, Public Policy, and Law Vol. 26, Issue 1, (Feb 2020)

When we hear the word peer, we tend to think of our friends, our classmates, or even the people we work with; we tend to see these individuals on the same level as us. When we go to vocabulary.com, it defines the word peer as “a person who is of equal standing with another in a group.”

So, when we think of a jury of our peers, we expect to find 6 to more commonly 12 individuals who are equal to us. But why is it that more often than not, do we see a jury of white individuals judging an African American defendant. In Flowers v. Mississippi, the State of Mississippi used its peremptory strikes on all of the qualified black prospective jurors. This happened a total of six times. The state sentenced Flowers to death a total of 6 times, each time the Mississippi supreme court overruling the decision.

The sixth amendment of the U.S. Constitution provides us the right to an impartial jury, but can an all-white jury be fair to a black man? Well, on May 23, 2016, the Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors in Georgia violated the Constitution by striking every black prospective juror in a death penalty case against a black defendant. (New York Times, 2016)

Court Fillings in Columbus Georgia found that prosecutors had a pattern of striking prospective black jurors because of their race. Johnny Gates was sentenced to death by an all-white jury. That is just three cases, of many that I have found while searching for information for this post. However, since Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, racial discrimination in jury selection has failed to be eliminated.

In the Equal Justice Initiative Executive Direction, Bryan Stevenson said: “While courts sometimes have attempted to remedy the problem of discriminatory jury selection, in too many cases today we continue to see indifference to racial bias.” That quote speaks volumes to me; it isn’t a jury of our peers if we are still systematically racist.

References:

Brank, E. M., & Hoetger, L. A. (2010, April). Can an all-white jury be fair to a black man? Monitor on Psychology, 41(4). http://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/04/jn

Equal Justice Initiative, “Illegal Racial Discrimination in Jury Selection: A Continuing Legacy” (2010).

Flowers v. Mississippi. (2020). Retrieved March 6, 2020, from https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/17-9572_k536.pdf

Jury Notes Show Georgia Prosecutors Empaneled White Juries to Try Black Death-Penalty Defendants. (2018). Retrieved March 6, 2020, from https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/jury-notes-show-georgia-prosecutors-empaneled-white-juries-to-try-black-death-penalty-defendants

Liptak, A. (2016). Supreme Court Finds Racial Bias in Jury Selection for Death Penalty Case. Retrieved March 6 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/24/us/supreme-court-black-jurors-death-penalty-georgia.html

It is unfortunate to believe there are child and youth that struggle with feelings of depression, anxiety, antisocial tendencies and other troubling life aspects. Take a second to think back to your youth. After school did you come home to parents that were happy to see you and a home cooked meal in the process of being prepared? As an adult do you have a parent or friend that calls you during the week just to say hi and see how you are doing? Sometimes we might take these aspects of our life for granted. Youth often struggles with communication and social interaction. These aspects are a major contributing factor that can hinder decision making and behavior. Today, more than ever social media, the news, and word of mouth points our attention toward youth crime. It is hard to believe the actions behind mass shootings and suicidal tendency. The important thing to remember with crisis is knowledge and awareness are key.
One way to help understand and reduce youth crime is through rehabilitation programs, which focus on factors such as antisocial attitudes, beliefs, peer association as well as family aspects (ebook, 379). Rehabilitation programs such as MST Services provide a program intervention for high risk youth by providing a multidimensional approach in offering assistance resources based upon peers, school, family and home interaction. The MST Services is a program for extremely violent youth. Prevention and intervention programs such as MST work with youth that exhibit early signs of aggression, impulsivity, and poor social skills, students that display academic or problematic behavior, and provides techniques to strength and direction positive inductive discipline techniques (ebook, 380). The MST offers multiple programs to help build up youth and families. Some dynamics include social skills training, parent-community relationship training, time management skills, adult drug and alcohol intervention, household management and adolescent mental health services. The MST services benefit the whole family to help transform lives and prevent high risk youth from walking down troubled life paths by providing evidence-based programs (MST website)
In a 2020 article entitled The Truth About Troubled Teens, provided alarming statistic for troubled teens. The article lists statistic concerning youth and crime, teen suicide, teen pregnancy, and mental health. For the purpose of this blog I will only list the statistic associated with youth and crime, as followed: In 2013, the United States handled 1.1 million juvenile delinquency cases. More than a quarter of crimes committed by juveniles are committed by females. Almost 22,000 crimes involved weapons. Every 4 minutes a youth is arrested for an alcohol-related crime. Every 7 minutes a youth is arrested for a drug crime. The article provides a section in understanding the risks associated with the recorded statistics. The first prevention risk is knowledge in understanding the challenges many teens are struggling with on a day to day basis and provided steps to take toward prevention (Morin, 2020).
Our text conveys various components that increase the risk for crime among youth. Sociological theories discuss factors in society that could cause such tendencies. In addition, learned behaviors can develop through a person’s interactions and experience within their social environment (ebook,374). Andrews and Bonta (2016) research present eight categories of risk factors, both personal and environmental that may influence criminal behavior. Factors include emerging family factors, influence, engaged antisocial acts and peer factors, as well as temperament and poor use in leisure time (ebook 375). These factors are usually brought up during theme months within schools, where information is passed out to students, parents and faculty. Additional focus of the severity involved could help provide a better chance in reaching students and providing help where it is needed.
In understanding the complexity involved among trouble youth and the associated risk factors, we can get the edge on preventing youth toward reckless behaviors such as crime. In a school environment providing students, faculty, and parents with prevention and intervention resources can help acknowledge awareness strategies. Additional resources such as MST services can provide the individual, families, and school programs for severity troubled and aggressive youth. I often wish the everyday demands of life weren’t so difficult to manage. I feel a majority of youth issues stem from family and environmental problems. We also are in a time were communication and social interaction are often compromised. There are multiple factors involved in today’s society that could use adjusting. The first step is awareness and the second step is providing help and focus where it is needed.

References
References
Coutts Larry M.,Gruman. Jamie, Frank W. Schneider. Applied Social Psychology Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. SAGE Publications. 2016
Morin, A. (February 26, 2020). The Truth About Troubled Teens . Verywell mind, https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-happening-to-our-children-2606269.
https://www.mstservices.com/

Often times, police in our country profile certain individuals, such as African Americans in particular and automatically assume they are in the middle of some criminal act, or are criminals period.

African Americans have a different protocol to try to save their lives as well when stopped by the police because of such racial profiling.  They often have to put their hands on the dash so officer can see, and other things that a white person would typically not have to do.

This type of racial profiling has gotten several innocent African American or Hispanic men wrongfully and maliciously killed by officers.  One good example was the guy, Philando Castile, hard worker, was completely profiled and worked in a school etc.  Why was he treated the way he was and it was “assumed” that he was some criminal and would be a danger to the police? The police were a threat and danger to him, his girlfriend and child.  An innocent man was murdered because police racially profiled him.  Our country needs to do better.  The officers even said that it probably would NOT have happened if he was white. All of this was captured and live streamed on Face Book.

Our communities need to do better! Diversity training is a must for officers!  New protocol must be implemented.  This has to stop!  It should be provided in communities and more activities to unite the community to be stronger as well.  The “village” effect should come back where neighbors know neighbors.  There should be cultural awareness training given as well.

Community leaders should do more.  They should implement more.  Here are some highlights in racial profiling in an alert created by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Racial profiling alert

http://www.aclu.org/issues/racial-justice/race-and-criminal-justice?redirect=profiling

References:

YouTube.  The Oregonian.  2/23/2017.  Accessed March 5, 2020.

American Civil Liberties Union.  “Racial Profiling Alert: Highlights in the fight against racial profiling”  Accessed March 5, 2020.

American Civil Liberties Unioin.  “Race and Criminal Justice”  www.aclu.org.  2020

You can’t read a single tech blog without coming across the magical “AI ” acronym, which stands for Artificial Intelligence, and is a rising technology fad that seems to be the solution for everything. With the rise of Alexa and Google Assistant speakers in home settings, and virtual assistants on all of your gadgets from your phones to your cars, it seems that AI is the answer to everything — it can speak to you, answer questions, and predict what type of content should be surfaced to you, what you’ll most likely want to buy, and where you’re most likely going to be headed based on time of day. Artificial Intelligence is surpassing human intelligence levels by enabling us to make quicker and more data driven decisions. Could this be the solution to removing systemic bias from police investigations?

In this week’s reading, Gruman, Schneider, and Coutts show us how social psychological theory has played a significant role in “identifying possible sources of bias and error that occurs during police investigations, and in developing procedures to increase the accuracy and integrity of the work of police officers.” What this comes down to is ultimately that the inequalities and biases that exist in the real world, and that have unfortunately become ingrained in our thought process via our natural exposure to these biases in society, are now ever present in the police investigation setting as well. This systemic bias can invalidate investigations, and ultimately result in individuals being erroneously convicted for crimes that they have not committed. While the U.S. Attorney General pulled together a panel of experts to develop a document called Eyewitness Evidence: A guide for Law Enforcement to provide police officers with a set of national guidelines for the collection and preservation of eyewitness evidence for criminal investigations, only 56% of police agencies have changed one or more of their policies since the publishing of this guide (Police Executive Research Forum, 2013). If the content is available but police stations and police officers are unable to leverage this content, perhaps the solution is AI — what if artificial intelligence could predict where and when crime will take place based on historical data? Research shows that “offenders criminalize familiar areas, and there are detectable patterns associated with the times and locations of their crimes” (Friend, 2013). 

A team of researchers from the AI Now Institute investigated 13 police jurisdictions in the United States that began utilizing predictive policing technology. Unfortunately, the studies are not in the favor of this technology. AI uses historical data to develop a model by which it will predict the future trends & decision making process. At least 9 of the 13 jurisdiction in this study appeared to “hve used police data generated during periods when the department was found to have engaged in various forms of unlawful and biased police practices.” That means, there is inherent systemic bias being baked into this new technology. Artificial intelligence is not magical, and it has no awareness — what you feed the system is what you will get out as well. If there is bias in the data being fed, there will be bias in the decision making that is being delivered by the system.

What is the solution? I believe the solution is not an easy one that can be fixed by putting a computer or a new technology trend in place to replace human errors in judgement. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Every single person in this world is a part of the solution. We need to take active measures in every stage of life, starting with the biases that we learn in school, in our textbooks, in our college education, and in our public policies in order to train every single person out of this systematic bias. When someone becomes a police officer they are not learning the systemic bias in the police station — unfortunately, they have been raised with these biases surrounding them and thus it is ingrained in them. In addition to mandating that police stations utilize the eyewitness guide that was published in order to make changes in their police stations, we also need to prepare these police officers from an early age to not have this systemic bias. We all are a component of this problem, and we all need to take active steps to prevent this systemic bias from existing everywhere, but especially in our criminal justice system. There will always be crimes committed, there will always be criminals in the real world, but it is in our best interest to ensure that we are convicting the right individuals, not tampering evidence, not performing illegal or biased investigations, and getting these criminals the help they need by placing them in an unbiased criminal justice system to be supported, rehabilitated, and re-entering our society properly if appropriate.

References:

Friend, Zach. “Predictive Policing: Using Technology to Reduce Crime.” FBI, FBI, 9 Apr. 2013, leb.fbi.gov/articles/featured-articles/predictive-policing-using-technology-to-reduce-crime.

Greene, Tristan. “Predictive Policing Is a Scam That Perpetuates Systemic Bias.” The Next Web, 22 Feb. 2019, thenextweb.com/artificial-intelligence/2019/02/21/predictive-policing-is-a-scam-that-perpetuates-systemic-bias/.

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (Eds.) (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (2rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications

We dream of being like the hero in the movies we saw when we were young, but we miss out on the opportunity to be a hero in our daily lives. One reason is the dispersion of responsibility. The bystander effect indicates that the more people around you, the less likely you are to help with an emergency. (Gruman, Schneider, & Coutts, 2012, p. 289). Instead of trying to get into something that doesn’t directly relate to me, it’s a psychological factor that someone else other than me will step in and help. But, what if you witnessed a murder like the kitty Genovese case (1964)? Do you think you should hold bystanders morally responsible?

I saw a Korean movie called The Witness (2018) that was inspired by the Kitty Genobis incident. The protagonist starts by setting up a mere murder at home in an apartment complex at night. The murder took place in the middle of a number of apartment complexes, but no single resident of the apartment testified that they witnessed it. In particular, despite the scream for help from the victim, no light is lit in any house and no one looks out the window. The residents of the apartment then refuse to tell the police. The protagonist witnesses the murder scene, but is silent because of the secondary damages that could happen to his family, which gives an implicit message that silence is the best defense of survival.

I think that helping people in crisis depends on many factors. The ability to give a person real help, or if the person’s personality or the environment, etc. is affected. When I lived alone in Korea, a robber broke into my house at dawn. I was fortunate enough to save my life and cry out for help, but no one opened the window and made sure I was okay. I still can’t forget the dark facade that I saw then. But I can understand the people in that neighborhood.

If I am an eyewitness, can I call the police right away? Can I open the door and help someone out? Have you ever thought about secondary damage, especially if it could threaten your family? I personally would not be able to bring myself to assist another honestly because I still do not think that society is guaranteed to be safe for those who make eyewitness statements. Like the main character in the movie, the person who chooses silence does not think that he is a person with low morality. This choice was an extremely normal one. Who can say bystanders are wrong? It’s not easy to help someone you don’t know before. But we need to think about how many people are likely to turn away from an incident if it was a danger to ourselves.

On the day the protagonist moves in the last scene of the movie, he shouts ‘Help’ in the middle of the apartment complex. Nobody cares, and nobody wants to get into this situation.

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (Eds.) (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (2rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

The bystander effect is the phenomenon that people in groups feel less inclined to help an individual in need (Gruman, Schneider, & Coutts, 2016). When I came across the bystander effect I felt ashamed. Why wouldn’t we help someone in need? Apparently diffusion of responsibility and fear of judgement are reasons the bystander effect occurs (Overcoming the Bystander Effect). Reading about this common problem made me wonder if there are ways we can reduce the bystander effect.

An article suggests that certain factors can influence people to help others. When individuals witness people helping others they are more inclined to help (Cherry, 2019). Being more observant also increases the likelihood that an individual will help another person. People fail to take action because they do not notice what is happening around them until it is too late (Cherry, 2019). If people become more observant of their surroundings, maybe they will see or hear what is going on and help the person in need.Having a special skill or knowledge might also reduce the bystander effect. Apparently people that have a special skill or certain knowledge will be more likely to help others because they know what to do (Cherry, 2019). At my old job it was mandatory to learn CPR, maybe if more places did this it might help reduce the bystander effect. These are only a few examples of how people might feel more inclined to help others.

I think that if the bystander effect was more common knowledge maybe more people would feel inclined to help others. I hope that one day we can overcome this phenomenon because it could save so many lives. The next time I hear someone in need I am going to help them because it is the right thing to do and I would want someone to help me if I was in need.

References

Cherry, K. (2019, December 13). Are You Guilty of Participating in the Bystander Effect? Retrieved from https://www.verywellmind.com/how-to-overcome-the-bystander-effect-2795559

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (Eds.). (2016). Applied social psychology : Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

Overcoming the Bystander Effect | The Psychology of Heroism | BBC StoryWorks. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/storyworks/the-psychology-of-heroism/overcoming-the-bystander-effect

Criminal justice is something I am very interested in. I actually have considered taking a minor in criminal justice. Something that has always stood out to me is wrongful convictions. People who are sentenced to jail time for a crime they did not commit and in most cases end up serving a very long sentence 10 plus years. This is the most devastating thing, not only for them but for their families as well because the precious time that this innocent person sat in prison can never be returned to them and not to mention the real perpetrator of the crime was still out there all along possibly committing even more crimes.

One person who I am sure some of you have heard of if you are at all a Netflix fan is Steven Avery. There is an entire I believe two series show about him and his situation. Basically he was accused of murder and found guilty and after 18 years of being locked up as a innocent man he was released only a few years later to be accused again of another murder and put on trial for that. The case goes on with so many different views and theories and assumptions (Tikkanen, 2019).

It is very clear though from watching over everything that the county was out to get him any way that they could. There is multiple pieces of evidence that appear to be planted and people who appear to lie and commit crimes themselves to try and get Steven Avery convicted of this second murder. The craziest part of it all is that the people who are believed to be doing this are the police and the investigators themselves. They hide evidence or destroy evidence that doesn’t help their case, they plant evidence and rig things up to try and benefit their case and they also use Steven’s IQ level against him in the sense that they are fully aware he is mentally delayed and use this to their advantage to get what they want out of the case, which is a guilty verdict.

I think the saddest part of the whole thing is watching his parent’s suffer. They stand by his side through both murder trials and they are progressively getting older as you can see in the documentary and their health is declining and all they want is to be able to spend time with their son. At times they both crime while being interviewed and they both say all they want to do is see their son released before they die and they both have doubts it will ever happen in their life time.

This is just one case of thousands of wrongful convictions and watching how this case effects so many people from family, friends, children, the community etc. it is truly heartbreaking. This is where I think it would be safe to say that there is a major problem in our justice system and where people’s work needs to monitored more closely and actions of question or concern need to be taken more seriously.

I know things will never be perfect in our justice system but they could be a whole lot better.

Tikkanen, A. (2019, July 8). Steven Avery. Retrieved March 4, 2020, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Steven-Avery

Julia Lish, a correctional officer, comforts an inmate during one his psychotic episodes. “Its going to be OK,” she repeats as he cries and yells to the voices in his head.

Jenn Ackerman

I volunteer at an organization that brings animals to correctional facilities for animal therapy. Once a month we pack a miniature horse, sheep, chickens, guinea pigs, bunnies and dogs to the Elmwood Correctional Facility in Milpitas, California. We visit just the women’s track and are greeted by heavily medicated, neglected and confused women. These are women who are incarcerated, because they have a mental disorder or because they were living on the streets and became a nuisance. I pause here. Please read the last sentence again. Anything wrong with the picture? These women are not criminals, nevertheless they are incarcerated. Most of us see nothing wrong with it. We are used of seeing mentally ill and homeless people in the prison system, but we should not be used to that, because it is wrong.

More than twenty million Americans are right now incarcerated or have been in prison in the past; we have the highest number of prisoners in the world. In 2013, 2.3 million people were in prisons or jails, that is one in every 110 adults. There are two to four times more mentally ill prisoners incarcerated than in the general population. That means, that there are 10 times more individuals with a serious mental disorder in prisons, than in mental institutions and hospitals (Al-Rousan, et al., 2017).

The problem is, that the prison staff is not trained to take care of mentally ill people. They never got the proper education what to do and how to treat those prisoners. Most of the time the guards are overwhelmed and annoyed and consign the mentally ill to segregated units, with no contact to any human. These harsh consignments provoke further psychiatric breakdown and are again not recognized by the correctional staff, who see the behavior of those prisoners as a provocation and as rules being broken. A bad cycle is started where mental and physical abuse takes place and the mentally ill prisoner is getting not the needed medical attention (Human Rights Watch, 2003).

Just then when the mentally ill person is totally broken and psychiatric ill, will he be sent to a mental hospital to get treatment. After his stay and improvement in the psychiatric facility, he is sent back to the same prison, prison guards and their treatment and the cycle starts again (Human Rights Watch, 2003).

Homeless people on the other hand are 11 times more likely to be incarcerated compared to the general population and are very likely to have a mental illness at the same time. As an example, from the two million people booked into jails in Texas each year, 15 percent of the men (300.000) and 30 percent of the women (600.000) have a serious mental health condition (The Crime Report, 2019).

Looking at the whole picture we see a large population with mental health issues not getting the proper care it needs. The majority of mentally ill people land in our prison system instead of mental health institutions and is punished for their ‘abnormal’ behavior. Since change is creeping very slowly into our society, the least we can do is train the correctional staff extensively, so no more abuse is taking place in our prisons and jails. The ideal picture would be to have enough institutions for mentally ill people where they can be treated accordingly, get better and enter back into society.

Al-Rousan, T., Rubenstein, L., Sieleni, B. et al. (2017). Inside the nation’s largest mental health institution: a prevalence study in a state prison system. BMC Public Health 17, 342. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4257-0

The Revolving Door Between Homelessness and Prison. (2019). The Crime Report. Criminal Justice Journalists. https://thecrimereport.org/2019/02/22/homeless-formerly-incarcerated-more-likely-to-be-incarcerated-study/

U.S. Prisons and Offenders with Mental Illness. (2003). Human Right Watch. https://www.hrw.org/report/2003/10/21/ill-equipped/us-prisons-and-offenders-mental-illness

Throughout my life, I have been apart of several teams, from sports teams, dance teams, teams at work, and even a team here at Penn State. The most exciting and well-oiled teams I had the opportunity to be a part of was with the Student Ambassadors and the Penn State World Campus Psychology Clubs.

With the Student Ambassador program, I have served as a mentor to a couple of different students throughout my studies here at school. When I first arrived at school and was beginning my journey in online learning, having someone be there to answer questions and offer support was critical to my success that first semester. Since I had never done online school, it was a massive adjustment for me. Being able to be that support system for another student is rewarding.

However, with the Psychology club, we had different group roles. We have a faculty adviser, president, VP, etc. During my first couple of semesters, I served as the membership coordinator. Which according to our lesson notes would be my “task role” in this role, I would add new members to the club’s canvas page, Facebook page, and send out a welcome email to new members.

Our group norms were pretty simple; we attend the monthly meetings, discuss new topics to talk about at the next month’s membership meeting, and see if we can get guest speakers to speak during our meetings. During our advisor meeting, we would often go through the four major stages of a group: forming, storming, norming, and performing. Each month we had to come up with a structure for the next month’s meeting, had to discuss topics, club business, and then complete the meeting using technology.

Since our club was virtual, all of our meetings were done through a platform called zoom. When I first started college back in 2008, we didn’t have all of this stuff (at least not that I was aware of) all of the clubs I belonged to back then everything was held in person. Now in 2018-2020, the times have changed, and technology has made it possible to be a part of a group even though I do not live in the same state as most of my classmates.