PSYCH 424 blog

In 2002, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was created to get every child to read and do math at their grade level by 2014. That may sound great because, of course, people want their children to be well educated. The problem with this is that you can’t force a child with a disability to reach this goal. Kids were put in special education classes, so everyone got to the same level. In fact, this is exactly what failed me in school. Teachers were rushed to get every single student at the same level despite each child’s unique self. The burden was put on them, and if they didn’t get the student to this unrealistic goal, then it was their fault the child failed (Whitney & Candelaria 2017). It created a terrible cycle of teachers giving up on us in my school because there was no point in getting all of us to the same level. I vividly remember getting answers to standardized tests in a small room with other students in special education. If the standardized tests scored were terrible enough, the school could be put on probation or even forced to close (Whitney & Candelaria 2017).   

NCLB’s idea was to fund schools to help every kid get to what they thought was reasonable. Even if they were two years behind, the teachers needed to catch them up on two years of work. All the children were put into subgroups, such as their disability, race, and even socioeconomic status (Turner 2015). I was placed in special education, something very stigmatized, causing other students to see us as the “dumb kids”. It created a dynamic where we were being compared to the students at normal reading and math levels. Looking back, I could see that social comparison was created, making it seem like it was us against them (Gruman 2017). They were better than us, and the teachers had to scramble to ensure our test scores matched theirs. No wonder some teachers called us disgusting names when the entire class didn’t understand and test the same way.   

Putting us all in one class, all 4-grade levels, for us to get to the same level also failed. The schools were forced to do better or face the consequences from the state (Turner 2015). You can’t teach all four grades English all at once, which is why for three years we read the same books and took the same quizzes. I have read Beowulf 3 times, but I never read Romeo and Juliet or How To Kill A Mockingbird. They were considered too hard, so instead, they often gave the answers to kids who were falling way behind. Another stigma was created from that and made me feel even worse about myself. My perceived behavioral control was that my failed tests were simply because I was put in a group that usually failed (Gruman 2017). I wasn’t taught how to study or how to take tests, just that we had to pass them or our teachers would get in trouble. If they got so frustrated because we weren’t where we needed to be, it would be taken out on us. It created this severe anxiety where I was always afraid of failing tests because teachers would get very upset. It turns out I wasn’t the only one, several studies have found this type of link between teachers and students in the NCLB act (Whitney & Candelaria 2017).  

Over the years, I learned to self-handicap myself because this is what was put in my head, I wasn’t smart, so of course I would do poorly. I didn’t have to feel bad about failing because it was already known that I would fail. It was comforting knowing that I was barely passing like the rest of my peers. We had homeroom together, several classes together, even study hall was done together. We were the “Retard” group, the “SPEDs”, the idiots who can’t learn basic math. These were stigmas that students created and also some teachers who didn’t want to deal with us. If teachers didn’t do well, they had a chance of being fired to save the school somehow (Turner 2015). Making the teachers fear for their job could cause them to push their anxiety and questioning self-competence into us (Whitney & Candelaria 2017).  

I realize now that I severely lack knowledge from other subjects because math and reading always came first. The NCLB act created this dynamic for many kids who were forced to study hard on only two subjects, math and reading (Whitney & Candelaria 2017). It took my first year of college to realize that I was smart capable. My professors noticed it, and I thrived in psychology classes. I fell in love with science, which I would always fail. For the first time, I was intrinsically oriented because I wanted to do well for me. I didn’t care about looking good for others or to get a fantastic GPA for grad school. I wanted to show myself that I do enjoy learning and that I can do well. I may have learning disabilities, I may suffer from physical disabilities, but never should I have been set up to fail. I hope any student struggling with a disability knows that they have the chance to thrive. That they are worthy enough to try their best, even if their best isn’t what people are demanding.   

Turner, C. (2015, October 27). No Child Left Behind: What Worked, What Didn’t; NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/10/27/443110755/no-child-left-behind-what-worked-what-didnt 

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. ISBN 978-1-4833-6973-0 (E-Book Option Available) 

  Whitney, C. R., & Candelaria, C. A. (2017). The Effects of No Child Left Behind on Children’s Socioemotional Outcomes. AERA Open. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858417726324 

     A common cognitive error that many people make is called a fundamental attribution error. This type of error in thinking occurs when people focus on personal causes for an individual’s behavior and not take into account the situational factors (Gruman, Schneider, Coutts, 2017, pp 437-439).

     It’s pretty easy to attribute any behavior to the person themselves, such as their personality or character, but a big piece of information is missing, the situational factors. This would include things that are not apparent to the observer unless they are taking the extra cognitive steps to figure out that perhaps the individual had car problems and came in late to work. Or perhaps their child is sick and they had been up all night with them, attributing to their behavior.

     We tend to look at the person’s individual characteristics or personality to explain their behaviors, but without the full picture, we may fall into the fundamental attribution error trap. Allow me give another example. In high school there was a girl who would always sleep in her first class of the day. The teacher also had just let her sleep. Why would the teacher allow this in her class? The teacher was made aware that the student’s behavior was due to the fact that the girl was in many extracurricular activities causing her to stay up late to complete assignments and was still passing her classes while also submitting homework on time. The bigger picture matters.

     In this sense, those who are not “in the know” about the situation the person is in, they may make errors in judgement. So how do we make ourselves more aware of this issue and hopefully prevent future errors? Perhaps putting more weight on situational factors instead of the most of the weight on the person themselves may be one step, but it will take more mental work to do so.

     Gruman et al. points out that it has been hypothesized that this type of error happens automatically, which means people will have to put in even more effort to understand the behavior. This can be done by gathering more information, or having an open mind to the possible situational factors that may be important to understand their behavior (Gruman et al., 2017, p. 439)

     Everyone has some rough days in their lives, and with a little extra cognitive effort we can understand that it is not just the person’s characteristics, but that sometimes situations can be a catalyst of sorts of the behavior exhibited.

Reference:

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2017). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.

     The internet and technological advances we have seen in the past decades has opened a world of possibilities and opportunities, as well as dangers. As the utilization of social media and the internet increases, cyberbullying has become commonplace. Cyberbullying is indirect bullying that takes place over digital devices by email, text, direct messages, or social media networks like Instagram. 

     Why has cyberbullying become so prevalent in today’s society and schools versus traditional bullying? Cyberbullies can hide behind a screen and fake profiles while tormenting, harassing, or threatening another person. In our text it states, “Engaging in cyberbullying, in particular, removes any negative consequences that one might experience when harming someone face-to-face: the bully does not have to contend with observing up close the harm inflicted on the target, thereby taking away any undesirable outcomes or inhibitions (such as feelings of empathy) to aggressive behavior (Bandura, 1983; Kowalski et al., 2014; Lapidot-Lefler & Dolev-Cohen, 2015).” For example, when a person comments something hurtful on someone’s Instagram post, they type it then move on. They can’t see the pain or hurt they have caused the person. They do not see the effects their words and actions have. 

     How can schools reduce cyberbullying? From personal experience, I know that reporting cyberbullying to a trusted adult is not an easy task. I did not want to get my classmate in trouble and be labeled a tattle tale or be seen as a “victim”. I let the cyberbullying continue in silence until hopefully he stopped harassing me online which he did eventually. The constant cyberbullying I endured led me to feel lonely in my group of friends, distant from my parents because I couldn’t tell them, and uncomfortable in school. I think if schools implement an anonymous dropbox where students can fill out a complaint with the name of their cyberbully and situation, students could feel more comfortable to report the bullying. It is important that schools crack down on bullying altogether and create a zero tolerance rule while also educating all students on the harm and psychological effects it can cause through educational seminars and videos that allow for discussion. 

     Cyberbullying causes emotional and psychological distress and cyber bullied children may experience anxiety, fear, depression, low self-esteem, and may struggle in school (Gordon). Since cyberbullies do not see the negative consequences of their words or actions, they do not feel empathy or remorse. That is why it is necessary for schools to educate students on the effects of cyberbullying and that hiding behind the keyboard does not change or reduce the effects of bullying. Schools are meant for students to learn and feel safe not isolated and fearful. 

References:

– Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2017). Applied social psychology, 3rd Edition: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles: SAGE.

-Gordon, Sherri. “The Real-Life Effects of Cyberbullying on Children.” Verywell Family, www.verywellfamily.com/what-are-the-effects-of-cyberbullying-460558. 

When I was in elementary school (and throughout my subsequent years of schooling as well) I looked forward to school because that’s where I got to see my friends.  I really had no interest in learning; lunch and recess were my favorite subjects and I was a bit of a class clown.  I did very well in my classes and enjoyed being one of the smarter kids in class. One day, I was placed in the Gifted Program.  In my school, this was a program for children who were more advanced in their learning and required more work than the standardized curriculum.  At first, I was pumped! How cool was it that I got to leave regular classes to go to a special room and do harder work…wait. This was not cool at all.  I missed my friends.  And I didn’t want to be considered a nerd or a geek!

I was experiencing what has been defined as a Stereotype Threat.  According to our textbook, this is “the fear that [a student] will confirm a stereotype in the eyes of others has been shown to adversely affect students’ academic motivation, self-concept, and academic performance” (Gruman, Schneider, & Coutts, 2017). Also, I suddenly wasn’t one of the smarter kids in class anymore.  I was on the lower end of gifted in that program, smart enough to pass the entrance test, but not smart or mature enough to feel accepted when we were discussing things like politics.

I was in the Gifted Program from 4th grade until I aged out in high school.  I recently realized that this program ruined my motivation, self-worth, and performance not only academically, but in life as well.  I went from being in this “special” and “advanced” Gifted Program to being in my fifth year of college.  It makes me wonder if placing children in these groups, though good intended, may have unforeseen ill effects on children.

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2017). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles: SAGE.

When I think back to Kindergarten, like many folks, I feel happy. Since I was 5, I only remember a few snapshots of events, but have strong recollections of how I felt. Based on my mother’s accounts, I was thrilled to enter school that year, and I was not disappointed. It turned out to be a magical time, full of crafts, stories and fun. I learned how to socialize and first develop a social identity. My teacher was a wonderful woman who worked very hard to make the environment one of empathy and nurturing. She actively encouraged parents to volunteer, which decreased separation anxiety for both my mother and me. However, what made the entire year so special was not how great it was when kids were happy and compliant, but how she managed the class when they were not. 

She understood that being away from home for hours at a time and acclimating to this new environment was hard for some of us. She used rewards, rather than punishments to motivate the class. Kids with disabilities or those who acted out were engaged in meaningful dialog about their behavior. I remember one boy who had such a hard time adjusting to the new reality of going to school that he would have fits full of screaming, cursing and crying. Other children would then begin to model this observed behavior. This phenomena has been studied by many psychologists, one of the most notable being Albert Bandura. His experiments in the early 60s, especially those with the Bobo doll, laid the groundwork for others who were interested in how children model violent behavior (Kaplan, 2009).    

In early 2019, I became the Center Director for a small learning center and private school. I was let go in May due to Covid’s impact on the corporation’s financial health. It was the best job I ever had. I thought about my kindergarten teacher often because her compassion and patience have always inspired me. I found out first hand on many occasions the strength that it takes to manage an ongoing situation with disruptive children. What started with one boy refusing to work, storming out of the room, knocking over chairs and generally being loud became two boys within a month when his brother joined him. After three months it became three boys. It felt like everything we tried only worsened the situation. Talking with them, empathetic listening, token economies with personalized prizes, nothing worked. I talked to the brother’s parents about their children’s behavior, but they continually made excuses for the boys that ranged from not enough outside time to boys have a genetic predisposition to get into fights. In the end, they were explicit that they “don’t care about [stuff] like that.” Eventually, the situation escalated to the point where the third boy, a friend of the brothers, hit one of the brothers and me, both very intentionally. He was suspended from school for a week. His family was unhappy to also learn that he needed to have a guardian with him for the rest of the year. Unable to comply with this, they eventually dis-enrolled from the school. It was terribly sad because this boy had attended the year before the brothers did and he was a quirky, sweet and model student. Unfortunately, because of family tension and world events, he found himself having emotional breakdowns almost daily. In the end, he sought comfort in belonging to a group that exploited him as the fall guy for the toxic culture they created. 

I’ve thought about that scenario a lot since it happened. Spoiler alert: it was not resolved by the time I was laid off in May and wasn’t resolved until the brothers moved away at the end of the year. The staff were exhausted, I was far beyond frustrated, and couldn’t help but feel responsible for destroying what had been a magical environment the year before. When I arrived in 2019, it was a happy learning center where kids voluntarily sat and listened to a teacher read them Harry Potter on their lunch break. They were kind and respectful. How had it devolved into such a negative experience for students and staff alike? I’m still ashamed to say that it was under my guidance that this occurred. There were multiple factors, several of which that had nothing to do with any of the boys, but there were directives from members of the company that I believe made the situation worse.

Due to the nature of the work (very tight schedules with specific, daily progress goals on a specific timeline for each student), the preferred method of behavioral intervention was the aforementioned token economy. Praising students and keeping them engaged by working for prizes seemed intuitive for kids who were typically resistant to reading. Most of the time, it worked well, but not in this case. Settling on a prize and sticking to it was difficult and often, they each wanted something that they knew we could not provide. The parents were not keen on providing prizes or experiences because they were busy and paying a lot of money for the children to attend. When corporate suggested we have a behavior chart and reward them for doing what they were already supposed to do as students, I felt like we were reinforcing bad behavior. Part of when the situation completely fell apart was after I was instructed to be more authoritative with the boys and “lay down the law.” Being this way has never come naturally to me. I generally err on the extreme of being a doormat, however, I am not in a habit of noncompliance when given a directive from a superior. I tried this exactly how they told me to and it failed spectacularly. An adversarial relationship between the boys and the staff exploded and continued to escalate for the rest of the year. Everyone got a much needed break when Covid hit and the boys were forced to work from home. The behaviors continued, but during lunch (typically when their behaviors were the worst) they could do whatever they wanted. 

Gruman (2018) sheds light on why none of our efforts worked. He notes that teaching students to be interested in learning by catering to their interests is a good method to help them develop a love of learning. He also notes that the best environments for this are the ones that have low external rewards. We had no idea that when we constantly bribed the ringleader that we were sending the message that learning is an undesirable activity that needs payment to complete. I wish I had known then what I know now. If I could go back and do things differently, I would. However, moving forward, I think I would have questioned the company’s methods early on and saved my staff some heartache.   

Gruman, Jamie A., et al. (2017).  Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. 3rd ed., SAGE.

Kaplan, H. (2009, Nov. 19). Bandura Bobo Doll. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZXOp5PopIA&feature=emb_title

We all know racism exists. It is a sad and horrible truth. And while society has come a long way, we still have so much further to go. It seems, now that almost everyone has a cellphone equipped with a camera, we are seeing more and more instances of racism showing up in the media, getting a glimpse of what people of color go through. But can we ever truly understand how it feels to be a person of color? Could this understanding, cause such a strong sense of empathy, that it could alter the way we see and most importantly treat people of color?

One small-town Iowa teacher, Jane Elliott, firmly believed so and has set out to make a change. In 1968, the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Elliott felt such strong responsibility to alter the perceptions of the children in her 3^rd-grade class and help them to understand what discrimination and racism felt like. She created an exercise in which she divided her class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed groups. She labeled half the group as superior and the other half inferior, reversing the roles the next day, and exposed them to the experience of being a minority. Those in the superior group were given special privileges, such as sitting at the front of the class, a second helping at lunch, and extra time at recess. The superior group was encouraged to stick together and only play or socialize with others in their group. The inferior group was not allowed to drink from the same water fountain and were singled out and chastised when they did not follow directions or made mistakes. The teacher and superior group students were essentially allowed to belittle those in the inferior group.

This exercise generated such interesting results. Children who were friends were now turning on each other, actively discriminating against one another. Children in the superior group performed better on tests while those in the inferior group did worse. Children in the inferior group reporting feeling helpless or angry at the way they were being treated. They did not understand why something as trivial and uncontrollable as eye color warranted them to be treated so poorly. This exercise has been repeated throughout the years and in 1970 it was filmed for a documentary called The Eye of the Storm. Fifteen years later the 1970 class members were reunited for a retrospective featured on the PBS series Frontline called “A Class Divided”. It was clear that the effects of this exercise were lasting, as the former students relived how the exercise made them feel and how it has altered the way in which they see and treat people of color. One couple stated that even though they still lived in that small town in Iowa where racism is still an issue, their children will never learn racism from them and their home will be a place where everyone is accepted and respected.

Jane Elliott, is now an internationally known teacher, lecturer, and diversity trainer. She has received the National Mental Health Association Award for Excellence in Education. She continues to expose prejudice and bigotry for what it is, “an irrational class system based upon purely arbitrary factors.” Everyone who is exposed to Jane Elliott’s work has been dramatically affected by it and it poses the question, is empathy the key to eliminating racism?

If you would like to know more about Jane Elliott and her work, please check the references section for links to her website and the PBS video.

References

Canvas learning management system. (n.d.). Retrieved October 29, 2020, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2077405/modules/items/29974718

Jane Elliott. (n.d.). Retrieved October 29, 2020, from https://janeelliott.com/

Jane Elliott. (2020, October 26). Retrieved October 29, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Elliott

A Class Divided. (n.d.). Retrieved October 29, 2020, from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/class-divided/

If someone were to ask you what is racism, how would you respond? Take a minute too think about your respond. Did your response entitle anything about blacks and hate? Most people respond too this question by incorporating a racial slur (Bryan, A.,2012). By age 4 or 5, one is familiar and has a common sense of understanding and knowing the basics of race or racism. Young students have a common sense of what race and racism is, however curriculum is not incorporated to teach one about the ideological of race and racism. Therefore, if students receive proper education of race and racism the chances of them being racist is decreased with proper education and knowledge.

Most young students have an understanding of what racism is due to experiences through parents or family member. Any information that a child, have a strong sense is learned. Therefore, young students first learn about racism at home or behaviors that their parent exhibits towards others. However, every few parents actually have that conversation with their children about racism (Bryan, A.,2012).

School environments, are also a place where students encounter racism. In, schools there are students and staff of all sorts of races and cultures. Sadly, not all schools incorporate curriculum about racism and race. In fact, formal education reinforces, rather than challenges, theories if racism, and endorses the ideological of colour-blind racism through definitions and explanations (Bryan, A.,2012). Education fails too encourage students of all racial backgrounds to critique white domination to critically engage them with institutional racism, and highlight problems associated (Bryan, A.,2012). If, interventions were applied to broaden and educate students about racism and race, it would cause a great awareness to them in the future, when they are older, which potentially changes their way of thinking.

In the past there have been inventions, implemented where discrimination exercises were completed in order to teach students the principles of racism (A Class Divided.,1985). In the experiment completed by” A Class Divided”, students were separated by the color of their eye, and first blue eyed students had dominance and were considered to be more superior than brown eyed student (A Class Divided.,1985). And the next day, brown eye students were superior than blue eyed people (A Class Divided.,1985). Years, later when the students gathered together as adults, their way of thinking towards racism and race were positive because they treated everyone with respect and did not let differences in skin color play a role in how they treated someone (A Class Divided.,1985). And also, they were able to teach their children the same principle (A Class Divided.,1985). Therefore if schools incorporate similar exercises, where children at a young age are taught and educated on racism and race, these principles will carry to them when they are adults and may be passed down from one generation to the next, with the chances of decreasing potential of being racist.

References

A Class Divided. (1985, March 26). Retrieved October 28, 2020, from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/class-divided/

Bryan, A. (2012). ‘You’ve got to teach people that racism is wrong and then they won’t be racist’: Curricular representations and young people’s understandings of ‘race’ and racism. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 44(5), 599–629. https://doi-org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1080/00220272.2012.699557

Teaching Children With Autism 

Along with going to school I also have to make money and work full-time as a behavioral therapist. My job is to reduce undesired behaviors and also teach the client academic, cognitive, adaptive, social, and language skills using ABA therapy. I love my job and it tends to come up in my school work because it is easy to make connections between my learning and my work. This week’s chapter rang a bell with some of the procedures I do at work but also showed some marked differences due to having to use a different approach when working with Autism.

First, the chapter spoke at length about using intrinsic rewards to help increase the motivation and build the confidence of the child to help improve learning. This is an approach I totally agree with. However, at my work, it is very difficult to mold some clients with intrinsic beliefs with their learning. With some clients, it is impossible sadly. When this is the case, extrinsic reward systems are the only way to improve learning, motivation, and attention. An example of this is a token economy. For every X amount of times a child participates in the specified programming, he is given a token. After receiving a predetermined amount of tokens they are rewarded with an activity/object/person/location etc. If the child is unable to express his wants due to being nonverbal, a preference assessment is done to find out what the most desired thing is for that child at the moment. This flies in the face of the textbook because the learning is based entirely on extrinsic rewards. We always give nonconsequential and other reinforcements to build confidence and pride as much as possible because what they are doing is awesome and we do everything to make sure they know that. However, when it comes to maintaining sustained attention, extrinsic rewards still prove to be most motivating. 

A similarity with the text and assigned video is the cause of aggression. All clients always are great with iPads (it’s the younger generation lol) so some get access to youtube and other platforms when parents are unable to attend at home due to cooking dinner or other requirements in the home. Some clients will watch violent videos because they see the reaction that they get when a violent act is performed. This translates to the main functions of behavior which are attention, escape, access to tangibles, and automatic reinforcement. When a client sees one of these acts they see how the person in the video quickly received whatever they wanted. This in turn is interpreted as an efficient way for the client to get what they want. When the client acts out this behavior (biting, punching, stabbing) they see the reaction they receive and can weigh it as being far more effective than tapping someone on the shoulder to get their attention. The behavior is reinforced repeatedly and it becomes one of the main target behaviors for the client. We as therapists then have to work with the client extensively at times to show them alternative behaviors for them to use instead of the violent act.

The last similarity is something we just began doing as a treatment center. Peer plays have always been done extensively to increase social ability because this can be a main deficit with autism but now we also do social cognitive learning. This is done by having an older and younger client paired together. The older client is proficient in a skill that the younger is learning, the older client then shows the other how to perform that skill (brushing teeth as an example). We have recorded higher acquisition rates using this method of having the client watch a peer perform the skill. This would be comparable to tutoring in some ways.

In short, these are a few comparisons with my job and our chapter. The kids I work with are incredible and overcome major hurdles every day. Their learning is far more impressive than any of us and they inspire anyone who is around them. My life has changed after being immersed in this community and if you are looking to do something in the field of behavioral psychology then I highly suggest making this your focus. Although difficult, the rewards are amazing.

References

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

H Kaplan. (2009, Nov. 19). Bandura Bobo Doll. Retrieved from

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

There are so many things in life that contribute to student performance. Let’s face it life is very stressful at times. Between bills, responsibilities, relationships, jobs, school, time, and money that is a lot on a person’s plate. Education is such an important part in life, and it gets hard to just focus on that when there is so much going on. Education is now even harder because of COVID-19 and things being virtual. This year has been turned upside down and education was affected by this. The graduating high school classes this year did not even get a real graduation or a prom. There is so much stress that comes from all of this that would affect student performance even more then normal.

Attitudes and academic behavior are looked into affecting student performance. “In a classic review of research examining the link between attitudes and behavior, Wicker (1969) indicated that attitudes and behavior might not always be consistent.” (Gruman, 223). Many students have attitudes that they need to succeed in school but then their behaviors reflect them hanging out with friends instead of studying. The theory of planned behavior was made by Ajzen (1991, 2002). This theory looks at what is causing the behavior and eventually can predict future behavior. There is a lot of expectations and pressure on students. Parents may place a high expectation on their children which could cause their behavior to do the opposite.

Education comes with extreme pressure especially when it comes to college. College puts even more pressure on education because of the amount of money, time, and effort is needed. College is when people decide what they want to do with their life and what career field they want to enter. The pressure of trying to get good grades and maintaining everything else in life is hard to juggle. I believe that attitudes and behavior has a huge impact on education performance. I also believe that stress, pressure, and expectations also play a huge role on academic performance. My academic performance is highly affected from my daily stress in my life. Working a full time at home job, being a full time student, maintaining relationships in my life, and bills all affect my performance in school. I have been better at time management which has made it a lot easier to perform better in school.

Gruman, Jamie A., et al. Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. SAGE, 2017.

This week on the blog I will be talking about belief perseverance. Belief perseverance is described by Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2017) as “the tendency for people to maintain their initial ideas or beliefs despite exposure to disconfirming evidence. They may discredit, ignore, misinterpret, or give the disconfirming information little weight, but the effect is the same in that their ideas or beliefs persist.”. If this sounds familiar to you, you might be able to guess what the subject of this post will be. I am talking about politics (more recently). Firstly, I want to bring up Donald Trump. We have all witnessed his lies, sometimes being deliberately untruthful, sometimes telling lies based on his own misinformation or lack of information entirely. We have witnessed vulgar remarks he has made about women, immigrants, and POC. And yet, he still has a fairly strong following. I believe this could be partly explained by belief perseverance. You will often see people trying to justify the things Trump says or trying to justify why they still support him, by discrediting fact-checking reports, blatantly ignoring negative things he says/does, or trying to twist his words. I tend to hear a lot of “well, what he really meant was…”. IMO he’s known for saying whatever he wants. If “what he meant really was…” were true, that is what he would say. That’s beyond the point though.

Now that you have read my example, I will go into a study I read called “Belief Echoes: The Persistent Effects of Corrected Misinformation” by Emily Thorson. In this article, Emily explains her research on belief perseverance, or what she calls “belief echoes” in politics. She created three experiments with the goal of testing her hypothesis that discrediting previously believed information creates belief “echoes”, testing whether belief “echoes” can be created even when disinformation is immediately corrected, and to explore the belief “echo” creation process. In each of the three experiments, she has two groups: the misinformation group and the control group.

As you might expect, all three of the experiments’ results suggest the presence of belief perseverance and determined the strength of those beliefs. The misinformation groups in all three experiments reported higher beliefs in the original, misinformed data than the corrected data than did the control groups. Thorson’s study was complimentary to the well-researched idea that people will refuse to believe information that goes against their political beliefs. A strong predictor of people’s belief perseverance in politics is weak pre-existing attitudes. These pre-existing attitudes strongly shape how people respond to new, refuting information (Thorson, 2015)

With this information, it is easy to see how misinformation can lead to lasting belief perseverance. Unfortunately, the belief perseverance can be passed onto others from the person who originally stuck with the misinformation they were told even in light of new information. I believe there is a certain admirable quality to people who are able to change their views based on new, refuting information to what they previously believed. We see this in the media from time to time. For example, when people dig up negative old tweets or old statements from a celebrity or politician and all of a sudden it seems like the world is boycotting that person. To me, if I can see that a particular person was able to challenge their previous negative or untruthful beliefs to a more positive and true belief, I find it commendable. Especially when you are someone who is in the “spotlight” with everyone watching you. It takes a lot of courage to admit you were wrong and leave your old beliefs (and maybe even people who supported you for those beliefs) behind.

References:

– Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2017). Applied social psychology, 3rd Edition: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles: SAGE.

– Thorson, Emily (2016). Belief Echoes: The Persistent Effects of Corrected Misinformation, Political Communication, 33:3, 460-480, DOI: 10.1080/10584609.2015.1102187. Retrieved from https://www-tandfonline-com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/doi/full/10.1080/10584609.2015.1102187

Academic self-concept is a critical factor to consider when evaluating the chances of academic success and achievement in students in minority groups. Whether those groups are based on race, ethnicity, low socioeconomic status, or various other factors that put the students at higher risk. It is the place of the educator to try and do what they can to help close those gaps that separate these students from a more positive academic self-concept. How can we help ourselves and the young people of the future make the most of their lives?

Applied social psychology is a great way to approach such a problem, but to apply it to help close the gap, we have to understand what causes the gap. What is the route of doubt in the student’s self-concept, does it stem from an environmental cause, like a household where there is a lack of academic example because adults in the household did not finish their own education? Does it stem from prejudice or discrimination that the student experiences in the educational environment? Is it a low-income area where success is hard because there are not enough resources?  Does it stem from a difference in what the student believes is most important? Where relationships are prized above money or education? The most likely answer is a combination of many different factors combined.

I grew up in a low-income area. However, unlike others in our community, my parents were well educated. I think it is far to stay that I grew up in a limbo position. Education was important, but academics were not the most important thing in our community. I had the things I needed, but I did not have every opportunity that comes from a higher income area. For example, not all the classes and clubs were available at my school that would have helped me educationally and brought more scholarship opportunities. There was not a STEM club, there were no big after school programs to encourage academic pursuits.

I was still one of the lucky ones because I did have the support of the adults in my life, encouraging me to succeed academically. However, I also struggled with math and had trouble believing in my abilities in that regard which made me more reluctant to put as much effort into it. This led to some rough times during my grade school years. As it turns out my story is one shared by many children that grew up in similar circumstances.

According to Rady, Kabeer, and El-Nady, “Self-concept is the core of human personality. It refers to the totality of people’s perception about their physical, social and academic competence” (Rady, H. E., Kabeer, S., & El-Nady, M. T., 2016). This means it is the root of how a student/child/person views themselves. It is based on perceptions the individual has about themselves, it includes the characteristics, qualities, failings, struggles, successes, and values that the individual comes to believe about themselves. This means it impacts every aspect of a person’s life, including their academic efforts, achievements, and failures and ultimately it provides the framework for what a person believes they can achieve in life.

One’s academic self-concept, according to Cooper, Krieg, and Brownell “is one’s perception of his or her ability in an academic domain and is formed by comparing oneself to other students” (Cooper, K. M., Krieg, A., & Brownell, S. E., 2018). This type of perception shapes what we believe. We can achieve academically and therefore ultimately helps decide what we will achieve, or not achieve academically. This means that what I believed I was capable of in mathematics shaped what I was actually capable of in the subject.

This has been an interesting area of investigation in recent years, especially among minority groups in America, such as the subjects of Germine Awad’s study of college students in 2007. In Awad’s study among African American students, “The results indicated that academic self-concept significantly predicted students’ GPA but not their test scores” (Awad,2007). Self-concept can be as limiting or as inspiring as we allow it to be. If there had been a teacher there that actually boosted my confidence, showed me the right way to approach the subject, and told me I was capable, then there is a good chance I would have been more capable.

Interestingly, Cooper, along with her colleagues found in that study that generally “men had significantly higher academic self-concept relative to their groupmate compared with women” (Cooper, K. M., Krieg, A., & Brownell, S. E., 2018).  While Rady and his colleagues reported that “most studies showed that, on average, girls did better in school than boys. Girls got higher grades and completed high school at a higher rate compared to boys’ standardized achievement tests also show that females were better at spelling and performed better on tests of literacy, writing, and general knowledge (Rady, H. E., Kabeer, S., & El-Nady, M. T., (2016). Though these findings seem to contradict each other one thing has become clear. Whether we are male or female or even non-binary, our self-concept or self-belief is affected by everything from our sex to our family history, and the region that we live. It is no surprise that it can have such a drastic effect on our lives both as students and as members of society at large.

Having outside support is also important for the development of our academic self-concept, if a student is noticed, supported, their achievements recognized and encouraged it can drastically improve their future performance academically. The problem, as Flowers and Banda reported is that “Unfortunately, who is deemed as either a “gifted” or “smart” within the context of our educational system remains a narrow prescription “(Flowers III, A. M., & Banda, R. M., 2018). As an adult college student, I can attest to the importance of a support system. When I entered college my test scores indicated that I needed some extra help with time test, but Penn State was ready and willing to provide that help and I have met some wonderful professors who have shown me I can believe in myself and my capabilities. I have since gone on to be a very successful student.

A student can be successful regardless of their race, gender, ethnic, or racial background. The most important thing is what kind of academic self-concept the person develops. The adults in their lives, from parents, neighbors, friends and educators have a large influence on what a student’s academic self-concept can be. If the adults in their lives support them and guide them and encourage them to believe in themselves then they will be more likely to succeed in their academic pursuits and in their adult lives.

References

Awad, G. H. (2007). The role of racial identity, academic self-concept, and self-esteem in the prediction of academic outcomes for African American students. Journal of Black Psychology, 33(2), 188-207.

Cooper, K. M., Krieg, A., & Brownell, S. E. (2018). Who perceives they are smarter? Exploring the influence of student characteristics on student academic self-concept in physiology. Advances in physiology education, 42(2), 200-208.

Flowers III, A. M., & Banda, R. M. (2018). When Giftedness and Poverty Collide and Why it Matters: Gifted, Poor, Black Males Majoring in Engineering. Journal of African American Males in Education, 9(1).

Rady, H. E., Kabeer, S., & El-Nady, M. T. (2016). Relationship between academic self concept and students’ performance among school age children. American Journal of Nursing Science, 5(6), 295-302.

Academic self-concept is a critical factor to consider when evaluating the chances of academic success and achievement in students in minority groups. Whether those groups are based on race, ethnicity, low socioeconomic status, or various other factors that put the students at higher risk. It is the place of the educator to try and do what they can to help close those gaps that separate these students from a more positive academic self-concept. How can we help ourselves and the young people of the future make the most of their lives?

Applied social psychology is a great way to approach such a problem, but to apply it to help close the gap, we have to understand what causes the gap. What is the route of doubt in the student’s self-concept, does it stem from an environmental cause, like a household where there is a lack of academic example because adults in the household did not finish their own education? Does it stem from prejudice or discrimination that the student experiences in the educational environment? Is it a low-income area where success is hard because there are not enough resources?  Does it stem from a difference in what the student believes is most important? Where relationships are prized above money or education? The most likely answer is a combination of many different factors combined.

I grew up in a low-income area. However, unlike others in our community, my parents were well educated. I think it is far to stay that I grew up in a limbo position. Education was important, but academics were not the most important thing in our community. I had the things I needed, but I did not have every opportunity that comes from a higher income area. For example, not all the classes and clubs were available at my school that would have helped me educationally and brought more scholarship opportunities. There was not a STEM club, there were no big after school programs to encourage academic pursuits.

I was still one of the lucky ones because I did have the support of the adults in my life, encouraging me to succeed academically. However, I also struggled with math and had trouble believing in my abilities in that regard which made me more reluctant to put as much effort into it. This led to some rough times during my grade school years. As it turns out my story is one shared by many children that grew up in similar circumstances.

According to Rady, Kabeer, and El-Nady, “Self-concept is the core of human personality. It refers to the totality of people’s perception about their physical, social and academic competence” (Rady, H. E., Kabeer, S., & El-Nady, M. T., 2016). This means it is the root of how a student/child/person views themselves. It is based on perceptions the individual has about themselves, it includes the characteristics, qualities, failings, struggles, successes, and values that the individual comes to believe about themselves. This means it impacts every aspect of a person’s life, including their academic efforts, achievements, and failures and ultimately it provides the framework for what a person believes they can achieve in life.

One’s academic self-concept, according to Cooper, Krieg, and Brownell “is one’s perception of his or her ability in an academic domain and is formed by comparing oneself to other students” (Cooper, K. M., Krieg, A., & Brownell, S. E., 2018). This type of perception shapes what we believe. We can achieve academically and therefore ultimately helps decide what we will achieve, or not achieve academically. This means that what I believed I was capable of in mathematics shaped what I was actually capable of in the subject.

This has been an interesting area of investigation in recent years, especially among minority groups in America, such as the subjects of Germine Awad’s study of college students in 2007. In Awad’s study among African American students, “The results indicated that academic self-concept significantly predicted students’ GPA but not their test scores” (Awad,2007). Self-concept can be as limiting or as inspiring as we allow it to be. If there had been a teacher there that actually boosted my confidence, showed me the right way to approach the subject, and told me I was capable, then there is a good chance I would have been more capable.

Interestingly, Cooper, along with her colleagues found in that study that generally “men had significantly higher academic self-concept relative to their groupmate compared with women” (Cooper, K. M., Krieg, A., & Brownell, S. E., 2018).  While Rady and his colleagues reported that “most studies showed that, on average, girls did better in school than boys. Girls got higher grades and completed high school at a higher rate compared to boys’ standardized achievement tests also show that females were better at spelling and performed better on tests of literacy, writing, and general knowledge (Rady, H. E., Kabeer, S., & El-Nady, M. T., (2016). Though these findings seem to contradict each other one thing has become clear. Whether we are male or female or even non-binary, our self-concept or self-belief is affected by everything from our sex to our family history, and the region that we live. It is no surprise that it can have such a drastic effect on our lives both as students and as members of society at large.

Having outside support is also important for the development of our academic self-concept, if a student is noticed, supported, their achievements recognized and encouraged it can drastically improve their future performance academically. The problem, as Flowers and Banda reported is that “Unfortunately, who is deemed as either a “gifted” or “smart” within the context of our educational system remains a narrow prescription “(Flowers III, A. M., & Banda, R. M., 2018). As an adult college student, I can attest to the importance of a support system. When I entered college my test scores indicated that I needed some extra help with time test, but Penn State was ready and willing to provide that help and I have met some wonderful professors who have shown me I can believe in myself and my capabilities. I have since gone on to be a very successful student.

A student can be successful regardless of their race, gender, ethnic, or racial background. The most important thing is what kind of academic self-concept the person develops. The adults in their lives, from parents, neighbors, friends and educators have a large influence on what a student’s academic self-concept can be. If the adults in their lives support them and guide them and encourage them to believe in themselves then they will be more likely to succeed in their academic pursuits and in their adult lives.

References

Awad, G. H. (2007). The role of racial identity, academic self-concept, and self-esteem in the prediction of academic outcomes for African American students. Journal of Black Psychology, 33(2), 188-207.

Cooper, K. M., Krieg, A., & Brownell, S. E. (2018). Who perceives they are smarter? Exploring the influence of student characteristics on student academic self-concept in physiology. Advances in physiology education, 42(2), 200-208.

Flowers III, A. M., & Banda, R. M. (2018). When Giftedness and Poverty Collide and Why it Matters: Gifted, Poor, Black Males Majoring in Engineering. Journal of African American Males in Education, 9(1).

Rady, H. E., Kabeer, S., & El-Nady, M. T. (2016). Relationship between academic self concept and students’ performance among school age children. American Journal of Nursing Science, 5(6), 295-302.

We have all been a victim of stereotyping at some point in our lives. Be it because of the color of our skin, the color of our eyes, our geographical location… the list goes on. Stereotyping typically makes an appearance early on in childhood. Children experience some form of stereotyping and prejudice at school where they are surrounded by other children from all walks of life. Students join clubs that fit their social liking, they play sports with like children, they eat lunch with their in-group. In some way, this categorizes groups from other groups and in turn brings about the opportunity for prejudice or stereotyping. There becomes a pecking order of sorts. Children get together and talk about the children in the out-groups.

Where do they learn this type of behavior? We can look at society right now and see how divided we are on the grand scale. Democrat’s vs Republicans vs Liberals, white vs black vs yellow. We learn from our home environments how to treat others. We learn from our home environments about politics and other affairs. According to an article on children’s social stereotyping, children learn this behavior by the time they are 4 years old. (Bigler & Liben, 2007) Bigler and Liben discuss a new theoretical model that can help address the issue of stereotyping and prejudice. Developmental Intergroup Theory (DIT) looks at the reasons children categorize certain attributes of a person such as race, gender, age and even a person’s appeal and how to direct a child’s attention to correlations that are related.  Bigler & Liben call the gender, race and age traits meaningless because they have nothing to do with who a person really is. So, how do we fix this problem of prejudice and stereotyping that has been around since the beginning of time? We may never really know.

Bigler, R. S., & Liben, L. S. (2007). Developmental intergroup theory: Explaining and reducing children’s social stereotyping and prejudice. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16(3), 162-166. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2007.00496.x

In public school, very little value is placed on emotional education. That is, tolerance, expressing emotion, coping mechanisms, and labeling emotions. These may be topics children are expected to learn about at home, but I think incorporating emotional education into common curriculum may prove to be more valuable and lead to more success in both school and relationships for those involved.

The reason I suggest putting more stock into teaching emotional literacy is twofold. One, is that it will normalize emotions and processing them for the children involved, making them more likely to talk through issues than, say, using violence. Such classes would also provide an emotional buffer for children who may not be getting adequate emotional education at home. I think promoting emotional literacy also in turn promotes empathy.

Applying social psychology to schools can help produce more effective communication in adulthood and may help children develop certain social skills that will help them maintain relationships for the rest of their lives. Recent research by Coksun and Oksuz (2019) showed that students who were trained in emotional intelligence over a 2 month period saw a significant increase in emotional intelligence after the program. If more programs like this could be implemented in public schools across the country, we could see increases in empathy, communication, and understanding, and reduction in bullying.

While I typically only reference research from the most recent decade, I also found a great deal of research on this topic from the early 2000s. In fact, the majority of articles I came across were in the range of 2000-2010. Emotional intelligennce first became a topic presented in the 1980s, and has since developed into a concept that more adults are becoming familiar with. Introducing emotional intelligence to the school environment can be a very useful tool for the prevention of violence and deviant behavior in schools (Cowie & Jennifer, 2007).

As a child, I would have benefited greatly from emotional literacy. I would have had better relationships with those around me, and I would have formed healthier friendships and bonds had I based my friendships on mutual hobbies and empathy rather than selfish desires. I also think emotional literacy can lead to better mental health outcomes for kids who learn it early. As a person who works with at-risk children every day, I cannot stress the importance of acknowledging and managing emotions enough. We should all encourage our children to be empathetic and considerate.

Here’s a TEDtalk I enjoyed on the topic as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu9oSkCe1e0

References

Coskun, K., & Oksuz, Y. (2019). Impact of emotional literacy training on students’ emotional intelligence performance in primary schools. International Journal of Assessment Tools in Education, 6(1), 36-47

Cowie, H., & Jennifer, D. (2007). Managing violence in schools : A whole-school approach to best practice

There has long been an association between impulse control, executive function, and self-regulation issues and individuals incarcerated in the criminal justice system. Socially deviant and criminal behavior is often regarded as a flaw of character and not a pathology, except usually in cases of extreme violence. For example, If asked what you thought the reason behind someone being incarcerated for distributing substances was, you would likely say something to the effect of, “They didn’t want to get a real job like the rest of us”. “Their parents didn’t raise them right” “That’s what people from that area end up doing.”  When asked the same thing about someone who has committed serial murders, your answer would likely look very different “They are insane”, “they obviously have something wrong in their head” “They’re sick and twisted.”  Stigmatizing statements aside, we don’t really stop to think about the actual reasons behind people’s behavior criminal or not. Anyone outside of the societal norms is automatically regarded as deviant and therefore flawed.

Impulse control, executive functioning, and self-regulation are all aspects that make up a large portion of the symptomology of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD), 2018). These are also aspects associated with criminal behavior. A research study completed on the identification and treatment of ADHD in individuals in the prison population. The study found that 25% of prisoners met diagnostic criteria for ADHD.  So, one-fourth of the prison population studied had a diagnosable and treatable neurodevelopmental disorder (Young et al., 2018). If ADHD is a treatable neurodevelopmental disorder, then why are so many of the inmates from the study identified as such, and what is the relationship between their diagnosis and their involvement in the criminal justice system? The answer to that is a prevalence of mis and underdiagnosis of ADHD, along with several barriers to treatment for many populations of people. One of the largest issues regarding the mis and underdiagnosis of ADHD is race. There are several existing studies that show that there is a disparity in receiving a diagnosis between white and black children, with white children receiving a diagnosis far more often than their black peers. Conversely, black children are punished far more frequently than their white peers. This isn’t even taking into account the racial disparity impacting diagnosis for Hispanic children and those of other ethnicities (Moody, 2016, p. 154).

In evaluating an incarcerated population of males in a high-security prison in Sweden it was found that with the utilization of medication, rehabilitation, and CBT-based offender groups the population showed a significant improvement in reducing the symptoms of ADHD including behavioral control, global and executive functioning, and quality of life (Ginsberg, Långström, Larsson, & Lichtenstein, 2013, p. 346). This supports the idea that if barriers to treatment prior to becoming an offender are addressed then the likelihood of an individual entering the criminal justice system would decrease, or for previous offenders lower the rate of recidivism.

We’ve talked about one of the main disparities between individuals who receive a diagnosis, but what about barriers to treatment? According to Moody, one of the first barriers to treatment is a lack of awareness. He references a study published by The Journal of the National Medical Association in which they found that less than 70% of black parents had heard of ADHD, 40% of that had accurate and reliable information about it and only about 10% knew that it wasn’t caused by a sugary diet. If there is a lack of psychoeducation available to different populations then the impact on those populations specifically is likely to be much higher than those that do have access to psychoeducation. Lack of social networks is another barrier that Moody discusses, in that because there is a lack of awareness there is a resulting lack of social networks and support available to parents of children with ADHD. The disorder is treated purely as behavioral issues and punishment occurs at home (Moody, 2016, p. 154). Another barrier to treatment is the stigma not only surrounding mental illness as a whole but also ADHD being regarded as somewhat of a “bad kids” problem. The treatment for ADHD being primarily psychopharmacological stimulants also adds to a treatment barrier, as parents do not want their children to be “on drugs”, the knowledge and discussion around non-stimulant medications for ADHD is not frequently discussed enough(Moody, 2016, p. 154).

If there was a nationwide focus on raising awareness, education, and advocacy around ADHD, especially in low-socioeconomic and black communities there would be more opportunity for children to receive treatment and therefore a reduction of about 25% at a minimum in the prison system. Prisons are currently overcrowded and underfunded and a reduction of that magnitude in the population would be significant. What are we waiting for?

Sources:

Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD). (2018, May 8). ADHD and a Pathway Toward Criminality: Preventing Trouble Before It Begins. Retrieved from https://chadd.org/adhd-weekly/adhd-and-a-pathway-toward-criminality-preventing-trouble-before-it-begins/

Ginsberg, Y., Långström, N., Larsson, H., & Lichtenstein, P. (2013). ADHD and criminality: could treatment benefit prisoners with ADHD who are at higher risk of reoffending? Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics, 13(4), 345–348. https://doi.org/10.1586/ern.13.22

Moody, M. (2016). From Under-Diagnoses to Over-Representation: Black Children, ADHD, and the School-To-Prison Pipeline. Journal of African American Studies, 20(2), 152–163. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-016-9325-5

Young, S., Gudjonsson, G., Chitsabesan, P., Colley, B., Farrag, E., Forrester, A., … Asherson, P. (2018). Identification and treatment of offenders with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in the prison population: a practical approach based upon expert consensus. BMC Psychiatry, 18(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-018-1858-9

I watch a lot of YouTube.  Because of this, I also seem to watch a lot of political advertisements.  When I can, I skip them as fast as possible, mostly because I want to get back to the video that I was watching, but also because I don’t want to be influenced by those advertisements.  After reading through this week’s chapter in the textbook about media and how it influences our thoughts, I realized that most of the presidential and political advertisements out in our media right now are “political advertising gone bad.” Our textbook explains that “in the United States, most negative campaigns do not focus on the disadvantages of the opponents’ positions on the issues. Rather, the typical negative campaign focuses on what a despicable individual the opponent is” (Gruman, 2017).  If I am going to watch a political advertisement, it better be outlining the important factors of the election, not just encouraging people to think badly of the candidates. Therefore, when we are watching TV or YouTube or Hulu and these political advertisements come on bashing candidates, it makes it challenging for voters. According to the textbook, “several experimental studies demonstrate very clearly that negative campaigns decrease voter turnout” (Gruman, 2017).  Especially in our current election and in my home state of Pennsylvania, we really don’t want a decrease in voter turnout.  We want to complete opposite!

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2017). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles: SAGE.

For years, people have been consuming all types of pornography. Whether it was at a local peep show to a VHS shop that lets you rent out pornography videos, it has always been obtainable. There is almost every type of pornography you can think of online. So, what is porn exactly, and what constitutes something as sexual? Pornography, or porn, is defined as sexually explicit material that shows sexual activities or reproductive organs in a sexual manner (Coutts et al. 2016). What constitutes it as porn is that it is explicitly made to arouse the consumer. In the last decade, it seems you can now find porn anywhere and everywhere. Before, you’d have to go buy a magazine at a gas station or make your way to rent a VHS with your fetish. Yet today, porn can be found so quickly that it has become a public health issue. Children can find porn as easily as literally typing the word “porn” in google. Kids are naturally curious, and there is no harm in them trying to educate themselves. The problem is, they aren’t finding out helpful, factual information to educate. They can easily find violent porn that is causing adolescent boys to think that is what sex should be (Rostad et al. 2016). 

This is where porn becomes unethical and a public health crisis. Porn didn’t always have rules or ethics, but it was mostly done by actors or with photoshoots. It wasn’t as easily accessible, and porn magazines were very taboo. Now, anything can be uploaded online to thousands of free websites. There is no longer a structure of how porn is produced and distributed. Currently, the popular porn site Pornhub is under severe scrutiny for this lack of structure and accountability. There are several lawsuits against them because nonethical porn is being uploaded. That includes revenge porn, rape, and even child molestation (Cheong 2020). It has become such a problem that organizations such as #NotYourPorn help victims get their nonconsensual videos off porn sites. To be clear, all 3 of those nonconsensual videos are illegal yet not being removed (Schmitz 2016). In early 2020, Pornhub verified a 15-year-old girl who was being sex trafficked, and her videos were allowed online (Cheong 2020). If you’re wondering, no, Pornhub does not take these types of videos down right away. One woman’s videos from when she was 14 were uploaded, and their family asked Pornhub to take them down for six months once they were discovered (Mohan 2020). 

The answer isn’t banning porn altogether, which some countries have wanted to do (Schmitz 2016). Not only is that not possible, but porn can be found everywhere in every way. The way porn is seen and consumed needs to be changed. Porn made through production has also had a very long history of not being consensual, the scene goes off script, and the actress is pressured to do what is wanted (Wood 2016). People are trying to fix this problem by making porn more ethical, not ban it altogether. We need to make sex between two (or more) people feel like they actually consent and care about each other’s wellbeing. Make sure performers do scenes that are consensual and safe for their wellbeing. There needs to be a clear cut line between real porn and sex trafficking. Making porn ethical doesn’t mean make it soft and vanilla. It means making sure the porn your teenager is watching isn’t violent snuff, sex trafficking, or putting the idea that degrading women during sex is the only way. Ethical porn doesn’t have to be free of kinks or vanilla. It just needs to be done by real people who enjoy doing sex work and creating (Wood 2016). 

So how can you, as a consumer, make sure your porn is ethical? How can you help create change for youth? First, education about sex should be taught to teens. Porn is free everywhere and won’t stop them from consuming it, but you can have serious talks about porn with them. Educating kids can prevent them from thinking sex should be violent and aggressive (Rostad 2019). Another way you can help make porn more ethical is by finding the right place to consume it. Many sites allow free and paid porn where you can see who is producing it. These sites demand a driver’s license when sex workers sign up, and they have rules on the type of porn uploaded. The best way to consume porn ethically is to pay for your porn (Ethical Porn Curators 2017). You can find sex workers on these sites who focus on different kinks and styles that you may enjoy. Again, porn doesn’t have to be boring or banned. It just needs to start being consumed more ethically and made with consent. Lastly, stop using sites like Pornhub that allowed rape and sex trafficking videos to stay up for months, even years before being taken down. If not for you, help the next generation see sex and porn as two different things. Make sure they see sex as respectful, consensual, and not violent. Remember, sex should always be consensual, and so should your porn. 

Coutts, J.A.G.F.W.S.L. M. (2016). Applied Social Psychology. [MBS Direct]. Retrieved from https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781506353968/ 

Rostad, W. L., Gittins-Stone, D., Huntington, C., Rizzo, C. J., Pearlman, D., & Orchowski, L. (2019). The Association Between Exposure to Violent Pornography and Teen Dating Violence in Grade 10 High School Students. Archives of sexual behavior, 48(7), 2137–2147. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-019-1435-4 

Schmitz, M. (2016, May 24). The case for banning pornography. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2016/05/24/the-case-for-banning-pornography/ 

#NotYourPorn. (ND). The commercialised porn industry is mass distributing and profiting from image-based sexual abuse. . Retrieved from https://notyourporn.com/general-2 

Cheong, I. M. (2020, March 1). Pornhub Verified Child Sex Trafficking. Retrieved from https://humanevents.com/2020/03/01/pornhub-verified-child-sex-trafficking/ 

Mohan, M. (2020, February 10). “I was raped at 14, and the video ended up on a porn site.” Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-51391981 

Wood, E. (2016, May 18). Does ethical porn exist? Retrieved from https://ethics.org.au/does-ethical-porn-exist/ 

Ethical Porn Curators. (2017, January 1). Why Pay For Your Porn? Retrieved from https://ethical.porn/why-pay-for-your-porn/ 

The media is such a huge topic in today’s world. Back when my parents were growing up the media did not have this huge impact as it does today. The media plays a role in influencing people’s thoughts and behaviors. As the media focus on topics the public becomes more concerned with that topic and more people begin to question it or talk about it.

In the 1980’s illegal drug use started to become a problem. As the years went on the media started to cover this topic more and more. As the topic was covered by the media people began to pay more and more attention to the problem. During the coverage of this illegal drug use the related deaths began to decrease. As the related deaths were decreasing the people were still involved and concerned with this topic most likely due to the media coverage.

“The idea that the media can shape what issues we think about or what issues we think are important is referred to as agenda setting.” (Gruman, 181) A perfect example of agenda setting is the current media coverage on COVID-19 and the election coming up. Most of the media are focused on these two topics and a lot of people are taking these topics to their own media platform. People are posting on social media platforms voicing their opinions on these two important topics. There are so many other topics the media should be focusing on also such as sex trafficking. The world needs to really focus on the sex trafficking issue but due to media only covering COVID-19 and the election not many people are focusing on the sex trafficking issue.

Media has both it’s pros and cons. The pros of media include an easy way to get information out, easy way to communicate, and a way to keep people informed. The cons of media include influencing people, fake news, negativity on topics and wrongfully portraying topics. In today’s world everyone automatically believes what the media is saying and portraying and that could be a really bad thing. Media is sometimes portraying the right things but there are so many things that can be twisted and portrayed in a wrong way on media. I do not want to get into the topics of politics but there are so many things that the media either leave out or portray in a wrong way when it comes to elections and politics. It is sad how much influence media truly has on people. Back in March when quarantine started due to COVID-19 everyone just automatically believed the media. Is it wrong to question the media and think that they could be lying to us? No, it is not wrong because people know how much the media has an impact and influence on the world. People just automatically believed that COVID-19 was real and they had to follow all the rules. I am not saying that COVID-19 is not real because I know it is, but a lot of people did not even question it and just went along with everything the media was saying. That right there shows how much media has an influence and impact on this world.

Gruman, Jamie A., et al. Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. SAGE, 2017.

When you turn on the television it is hard not to see some form of violence. You turn on the news, there is violence. You turn on sports, there is violence. With violence, we often see the precursor, aggression. Violence has, more or less, become somewhat of a norm in today’s society. Especially in the climate that we live in currently, violence is encouraged when you don’t agree with one another or want to incite some form of “change”.

When you turn on the nightly news, they often begin with a story that has to do with either a bad accident, the upcoming election, or some form of violence that has taken place. Ever wondered why they decide to start their programs like that? The answer is simple, journalism aims to gain the viewer’s attention immediately, and then continues to keep it (Barber, 2016). The media uses these stories to gain viewership to their networks and often it’s not always the truth. Fear is the fuel that media utilizes most, and the text states that 90% of children are frightened by the media at some point in their young lives (Gruman et al., 2017). Let me give you an example that is relatable to our lives today. The presidential election is less than 2 weeks away, and whenever you turn on the television, I am sure you have seen the countless political ads for whatever candidate they’re trying to persuade you to vote for. Some, if not all, of these ads often use portray a scene of violence and then tell you how this person caused it or failed to do something related to it. This is a prime example of fear based or fearmongering, is used as a political tactic to convince you that this is a bad person when that may not always be the truth.

Another great example of fear-based media would be the countless “updates” we receive to the never-ending protests around this country. Does the media show the actual protest happening and how it may have been nonviolent? No, they choose to show you the violence that has ensued or is ensuing to gain attention. Cultivation theory focuses on the effects of heavy exposure to television, and that affects everyone in the United States as the television has become a primary source for entertainment and information (Gruman et al., 2017). My nieces pay attention to what is going on around them, and I encourage them to pay attention to current events because it may eventually affect them, and I want them to be prepared. They have seen the violence some of the protests have created, and to my youngest niece this had scared her to the point where she was afraid to sleep. She wouldn’t want to sleep alone, or she would refuse to sleep in her room as she has windows and she was afraid that someone was going to attack her. Despite explaining to her that the protests were nowhere near her, nor would I ever allow someone to get close enough to attack her, she still had trouble understanding this. This was a prime example of how the media had only portrayed violence as a means to what actually “happened”.

Lastly, it’s hard to truly know what news is true and what news is untrue anymore when you watch the news. Again, you can turn on the television and see the violence, they may direct focus to a group or responsible individual. You can turn on another news broadcast covering the same event and they may state that a completely different group or individual started or caused it. Media also uses priming, which is defined by the text as the effect of a preceding stimulus or event on how we react to a subsequent stimulus (Gruman et al., 2017). This is used by networks or media outlets when they specifically want to target an unfavorable group or person. This distorts reality to the point that we struggle to recognize fact from fiction (Barber, 2016). We fail to realize what the truth is, because the real truth gets lost in the story or the coverage. The current demographic of the media loves to attack the President of the United States, and I am not one to say that I agree or disagree because I don’t know the guy. However, I do see the constant use of priming used to attempt to portray him as a bad person or failing to do something. Same can be said for the President towards anyone that opposes him or he has a disagreement with. So, for one to say the media is unbiased is a flat out lie, because at the end of the day they incite violence and they use fear as fuel for their stories. Personally, I would love to see a news outlet that actually portrays the news for what it is, but I don’t think that will ever happen.

References:

Barber, N., Ph.D. (January 16, 2016). Why the News is Loaded With Violence. Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-human-beast/201601/why-the-news-is-loaded-violence

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W. , &. Coutts, L.M. (Eds.). (2017). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems 3rd edition. SAGE Publications.

“You are who you hang with,” our parents warned us as children. “If you eat crappy food, you’ll feel crappy,” our health teachers said; but nobody warned us about the effects of television and the media. In the internet age, we consume massive amounts of TV and other forms of media on a daily basis. Does this mean we are also what we watch? TV shows are 15 times more likely to promote violence/neutrality to violence over non-violence (Gruman, Schneider, & Coutts, 2017). But what does that violence do to us, and why is it so popular?

George Gerbner (1999) states that violence, aka action series and movies, are so popular because they translate easily across cultural barriers and increase revenue for filmmakers. Through his studies on the media, Gerbner developed the cultivation theory which suggests that people who consume large amounts of TV begin to see the world as more dangerous (Gruman et. al., 2017). Gerbner (1999) said that violence is power and its story has consequences. TV violence has shown to influence child violence when a reward is shown for violent behavior (Gruman et. al., 2017). Studies have also shown that heavy TV viewers express apprehension and are likely to exaggerate their chances of violence (Gerbner, 1999). What’s worse is minority groups who witness victimization and underrepresentation in the media develop a sense of mistrust (Gerbner, 1999). Cultivation theory simply focuses on hours of television watched rather than the particular types of programs consumed (Gruman et. al., 2017). Thus, the research suggests that TV is so saturated with violence that it doesn’t even have to be singled out to have an effect.

When my sister turned 18 she moved into the city of Philadelphia. Naturally, I bought her some pepper spray. I also find myself unable to watch the local news without double checking if my windows and doors are locked. Studies have demonstrated that adults who watch the local news often are more likely to be worried about crime in their community than those who don’t (Gruman et. al., 2017). As a mom of two boys in an ever increasing media filled world, I think about the messages my children consume through the media. It’s funny, when I go to show my kids my childhood movies, I often think about how the cultural norms for what is acceptable have dramatically changed.

Overall, I think it’s imperative that we teach not only ourselves but our children to view the media with a critical frame of mind. Media consumption is somewhat of a luxury in our lives, but with every increasing day it is becoming more and more of a necessity. Through knowledge there is power, and if we take our own power back and look at the ways TV can cause us to view the world, then we can change those views too. Maybe it is true that we are what we watch, but thanks to education we don’t have to be.

References

Gerbner, G. (1999). The Stories We Tell(*). Peace Review, 11(1), 9. https://doi-org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1080/10402659908426225

Gruman, J.A.,Schneider, F.W., & Coutts, L.A. (2017). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Social media has grown exponentially in the last few decades. As a milennial, I grew up in a changing world, and the technology grew as I did. This also means that dating websites became wildly popular as I became an adult. I had Bumble, Tinder, OkCupid, MeetMe, PlentyOfFish, and the one I met my husband on: Hinge. Something I have observed in my time on all these sites is the insane amount of choices a person may have on these sites at any given time. When I first started on these sites, I was sweet, and replied to most of the messages I got from folks who even had a little in common with me.

After a while online and multiple less-than-magical dates, however, I found myself becoming extremely selective with my messages. If the person was not super attractive, funny, watched the same shows as me, liked the same things, etc., I would not even give them the time of day. If they did not respond to me quickly, I deleted them. If they replied too quickly, I deleted them. I started becoming so selective that if the initial message was not clever or interesting, I would not even open it. In fact, my husband’s initial message to me was about Freddie Mercury (I’m a HUGE Queen fan) and that was the only reason I even responded to him. He is not photogenic so I thought his pictures were not amazing, and his profile did not seem interesting to me. Now, 1.5 years of marriage and one very cute baby boy later, I find myself reflecting on the factors that led me to him, and I cannot help but wonder if my pickiness was a result of an endless amount of choices. I am glad I chose my husband, really, but as I talk to my single friends and swipe through hundreds of tinder profiles with them, I find that we are very judgmental and hyper-focus on small details instead of the big picture. Are they actually red flags, or are we spoiled brats?

I started digging around to see if I was the only one feeling this way, and as it turns out, in research by Pronk & Denissen (2019) the authors explore the idea that social media and online dating has caused some users to develop a so-called “rejection mindset.” This essentially means that we are presented with too many options and the overwhelming amount of choices can cause decision paralysis or a decrease in satisfaction. Ya know, the old saying of the grass being greener on the other side? Online dating is like that, except one yard is all weeds and the other side is astroturf.

The average tinder user is shown 140 options per day (Pronk & Denissen, 2019). How many of us actually physically interact with 140 potential mates per day? (This was pre-corona. The good old days.) That number is just on one app, on average. Imagine that number, but on each site, and a lot of users have more than one site they use for dating. One could potentially view hundreds of profiles a day, and maybe only respond to a dozen. Ironically, all these choices cause us to look harder and harder, search more, and seek out someone better and better each time, which has been deemed “dating burnout” or my personal favorite “Tinder fatigue” (Pronk & Denissen, 2019).

I am curious to hear others’ opinions on online dating, and if they feel they experience this as well. Mine ultimately turned out to be a success, and for that I am grateful, but I have a very close friend who has not been as lucky, and we often look at her messages together and pick out cuties and potential man candy for her. I wonder if future dating sites will have more advanced matchmaking options, or if we are all better off just going out and meeting new people without all the strain of endless options.

References

Pronk, T. M., & Denissen, J. J. A. (2020). A Rejection Mind-Set: Choice Overload in Online Dating. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 11(3), 388–396. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550619866189

When I was growing up, my grandma loved to allow me to do things that my mother would not let me do. Most of these activities were movie-related and even went as far as letting me sled down the stairs and out the front door like on Home Alone. Surprisingly, sledding down the stairs was not the mistake she made (I loved it and was not hurt) but instead was the movie E.T.

In case you have not seen the movie (I have only seen it the one time), it is a kid-themed movie about an alien who gets trapped on Earth and enlists the help of a young boy to get him back to his alien parents. My grandma bought the VHS thinking this will be a good quality movie that I would enjoy but the reality of what happened changed my life forever.

I sat down in her house and watched the movie in its entirety (I do not know why I watched the entire movie) and it horrified me. I was under five years old at the time and was not really afraid of many things such as dinosaurs, monsters, witches, etc. but it turned out that I was very afraid of aliens. There was a part in the movie that gave me nightmares and stress for the next several years where E.T. hides in a little girls stuffed animal collection (honestly, I still do not like to think about it). There is also a part where they lure E.T. out of the woods using Reece’s Pieces and I still will not eat them to this day. To be fair though, I don’t think I like them today because I conditioned myself as a child not to eat them because of this movie. As I stated before, the movie gave me nightmares for a long time and caused me stress and anxiety when it was mentioned as well as anything else alien-related. Although our reading says the fear usually subsides after a period of time such as kids being scared of the Hulk and then getting over it, my fear of aliens lasted for a decade. When I was young my coping mechanism was behavioral because I would cover my head with sheets when I was scared and when I was older it became cognitive because I would tell myself that aliens are not real. Fun fact, it made such an impression on me that two years later I was bitten by a bug while swimming in our pond that caused me to have vivid hallucinations….. those hallucinations were of aliens coming up the stairs and into my room. My cognitive coping skills began to work over time and it no longer caused fears but I have always had an uneasy feeling about aliens and E.T. since.

This was the first thing to come to my mind while reading about fears caused by media and if you have not seen E.T. I would suggest skipping over it on whatever streaming service you use.

Scott Hensley

References:

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2017). Applied social psychology, 3rd Edition: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles: SAGE.

Pornography.  You either love it or hate it.  You either watch it alone, with a partner, or not at all.  Whatever your opinion is, it’s a part of life.  The statistics on porn in the United States are wild.  Nearly 40 million Americans regularly visit pornography sites, and 1/3 are women. (Internet Pornography by the Numbers, n.d.).  Every day, 68 million search queries are related to porn.

What qualifies as pornography?  Pornography is sexually explicit material that a person views offline or online on the Internet.  It depicts sexual activity in unconcealed ways.  There are three different types of pornography: erotica, nonviolent pornography, and violent pornography.  We’re going to investigate the long-term consequences of nonviolent pornography.  So, what does nonviolent pornography mean?  Nonviolent pornography is the sexual activity among casual acquaintances, by satisfying sexual desires and fantasies. (Gruman et al., 2016).  It lacks passion and sensitivity between partners, that’s found in erotica film.

Meta-analysis research has discovered that exposure to nonviolent pornography in males can lead to negative attitudes about women.  Other research has concluded that the more pornography a male consumes, the higher the possibility they would have negative attitudes about women.  However, others argue that a person’s attitude may precede consumption.  This is basically saying that men with more negative attitudes tend to consume more pornography.

Okay, this blog post isn’t to bash men and their porn consumption.  In fact, watching nonviolent porn can affect attitudes towards family values in both men and women.  Family values include the parental commitment and nurturance of children.  Nonviolent pornography shows a lack of emotional involvement.  Does watching porn conflict with a person’s family values?  A study concluded that it does.  70 men and 70 women watched nonviolent pornography.  It consisted of six one-hour videos over six weeks.  At the end of the study, the participants were less sexually satisfied, more accepting of myths related to health risks of sexual repression, more accepting of nonexclusive sexual intimacy, more accepting or premarital and extramarital sex, lowered their value on faithfulness in relationships, and wanted fewer children. (Gruman et al., 2016).  One can say these are serious and negative consequences, over the period of six weeks.

Other individuals who watch pornography find it “sexually liberating”. (Collins, n.d.).  A study conducted by Weinberg and colleagues found that men and women who view porn, associated it with feeling empowered and confident within their intimate relationships.  Men and women felt more comfortable with their sexual knowledge, feelings about sexual activity, and their perceptions of the opposite gender.

Where do you stand?  Do you think porn can negatively harm a person’s perspective on women and their family values?  Or do you find it empowering?

Works Cited

Collins, R. (n.d.). Effects of Porn: A Critical Analysis. PhilPapers. Retrieved October 19, 2020, from https://philpapers.org/rec/COLEOP

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2016). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications, Inc.

Internet Pornography by the Numbers: A Significant Threat to Society. (n.d.). Webroot. Retrieved October 19, 2020, from https://www.webroot.com/us/en/resources/tips-articles/internet-pornography-by-the-numbers#:%7E:text=40%20million%20American%20people%20regularly,of%20porn%20viewers%20are%20women.

In lesson nine we explored the environments that are created by communications technologies, such as email and social media platforms. Today communication happens in the blink of an eye with little more than the click of a button. Chatrooms, email, instant messaging, and social media services like Facebook, Twitter have led to an era where we are connected electronically but disconnected socially. Any of these services can give us connections/communications delivered almost instantaneously to almost anywhere in the world with the click of a button. It can be a wonderful thing helping us to stay connected with friends, family, and work, but it also means the possibility of connecting to archrivals, enemies and frenemies, and trolls. Our digital lives can bring us trouble in the real world. Two of the main concerns are cyberbullying, and a common type of depression connected to social media platforms, which has been named “Facebook depression” (Blease, (2015).

In terms of the psychological impact, this leads to people saying and doing things that they would not have the nerve to do in person. Rudeness is rampant, cyberbullying is on the rise and it is all due to the social disconnect that distance brings and the feeling of anonymity being on the other side of a screen creates. This twofold separated situation leads to a plethora of bad decisions and negative outcomes. With the whole of the internet at our disposal and countless sites where we can connect, look at pictures, upload and download content and send all manner of messages to each other, often the messages are not positive.

Often the negative messages come under the umbrella of cyber-bullying. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary online, cyberbullying is “the electronic posting of mean-spirited messages about a person (such as a student) often done anonymously” (2020). Patchin and Hinduja’s definition goes a bit deeper, defining it as ‘‘willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices.’’ (Patchin, J. W., & Hinduja, S., 2010).  People practically live on their phones and other electronic devices putting the hurtful words at their fingertips nearly twenty-four hours a day. Imagine how much damage that can potentially do to a fragile psyche, like that of a young person. Young people are still developing and lack the emotional and mental maturity to deal with such situations. They feel things much more intensely and the pressures of those emotions often lead to poor choices in coping mechanisms.

Patchin and Hinduja reported in their study that one of main the reasons cyberbullying is so prevalent is the feeling and reality of sustainable anonymity, “cyberbullies can remain ‘‘virtually’’ anonymous through the use of temporary/throwaway e-mail and instant messaging accounts, anonymizers, and pseudonyms in social networking sites, chat rooms, and on message boards” (Patchin, J. W., & Hinduja, S., 2010).  Anonymity makes us foolishly brave, excessively brash, and stupidly callous leading to people saying hurtful things and posting hurtful images that make fun of others just for amusement. Patchin and Hinduja listed common forms of cyberbullying as “sending threatening text messages, posting libelous or malicious messages on social networking sites such as Myspace or Facebook, or uploading unflattering or humiliating pictures or videos to the Internet without permission.” (Patchin, J. W., & Hinduja, S., 2010).

Negative messages sent between people, especially young people, can have highly detrimental effects on the hearer and to some degree on the speaker. According to Patchin and Hinduja, “Experience with cyberbullying, both as a victim and as an offender, was associated with significantly lower levels of self-esteem, even after controlling for demographic differences” (Patchin, J. W., & Hinduja, S., 2010). For this reason, parents, education professionals, therapists, and other adults in a position to help should be looking out for the children. Patchin and Hinduja suggest that “School health professionals can also serve as advocates for those who are cyberbullied by teaching ways to deflect or shrug off minor forms (eg, blocking harassing text messages, logging off when tempers start to flare, not responding to hurtful messages) “ (Patchin, J. W., & Hinduja, S., 2010).

Social media can be a great way to keep in contact with friends and family and even to foster friendships around the world. However, social network services, or SNS, like Facebook, can be very deceiving. “Members typically display content about themselves (including photos, personal updates on their lives), and they can browse the personal content of other members, befriend other users, and interact with them” (Blease, 2015). Of course,  everyone wants to put their best “face” forward, so they only choose the best photos to post and they tend to jazz up their posts with their exciting events, no one wants to post about their trip to the laundry mat. So, the feeds are full of beautiful people, in interesting places living their “best life”. Yet, when we view these posts, we are typically at home, alone, not living our best lives but our often-boring ones. No one wants to see beautiful people with amazing lives when they are sitting in their tiny apartment, in sweatpants, eating Cheetos. Therefore, because life online is so often a lonely venture, these images, and messages, though meant to be inspiring, end up having the opposite effect and causing what has been titled “Facebook depression” (Blease, 2015).

With the ability to friend literally anyone, the option to post your reaction to what other people post, constant status updates, and a litany of life events available to click/post like “in a relationship” or “married”, we run into a situation where we can feel bombarded by the successes of others while wallowing in our own apparent “failures”. Just because we feel our own life doesn’t measure up. What people need to realize is the things posted on other people’s newsfeeds are not their reality either. They like us, have bad days at work or school, they like us have to do the laundry, they like us have to work not just vacation in pretty places. According to Blease, “The greater the exposure a user has to successful others (as evinced by the content of profile images, galleries and status updates), the greater is the opportunity for negative social evaluation.” (Blease, 2015). If we spend all our time looking at the success and apparent happiness of those beautiful “others” we will feel like a failure in comparison.

However, “Facebook depression” is not the only concern for those that spend a lot of time on social media, there is another danger, social media fatigue. According to Dhir, Yossatorn, Kaur, and Chen, “The relative determinants of social media fatigue can be stemmed from psychological and behavioral stress-related conditions, such as information overload and connection overload as well as social interactive activities” (Dhir, Yossatorn, Kaur, and Chen, 2015). This fatigue can be caused by depression over the constant barrage of positive posts, or frustration over differences of opinion in the realms of politics, religion, and countless other things.

Given the amount of time people spend online, along with the number of things they can see and hear online, it is a powder keg situation full of possible triggers, the negative effects are felt by many users.  Dhir and his colleagues concluded, “Despite the various positive outcomes which are beneficial to users in various aspects in life, negative consequences due to excessive social media use are also inevitable Social media fatigue is a prevalent factor which negatively influences users’ mental and behavioral conditions” ((Dhir, et.al., 2015). Considering cyberbullying through digital communications and social media, the deceiving nature of the social media feeds, and the plethora of possible stressors found on social media, and in instant message services and email, it is no surprise that the internet is a minefield for the fragile mind. Internet users should beware of how much time they and their loved ones spend online. Adults should be on the lookout and try to help protect our youth from the dangers there. The real world might not be a picnic, but the online world is even worse.

References

Blease, C. R. (2015). Too many ‘friends,’too few ‘likes’? Evolutionary psychology and ‘Facebook depression’. Review of General Psychology, 19(1), 1-13.

Dhir, A., Yossatorn, Y., Kaur, P., & Chen, S. (2018). Online social media fatigue and psychological wellbeing—A study of compulsive use, fear of missing out, fatigue, anxiety and depression. International Journal of Information Management, 40, 141-152.

Patchin, J. W., & Hinduja, S. (2010). Cyberbullying and self‐esteem. Journal of school health, 80(12), 614-621.

As a person who consumes true crime podcasts like candy, it may be surprising to some to hear that I only recently listened to Serial, the podcast that ushered in an entire wave of true crime junkies like myself, crusading for justice and advocating for victims by telling their stories and soliciting the help of their listeners. I like to think I am interesting, unique, and cool, so of course I tend to go against the grain of mainstream podcasting. However, as I learned with Stranger Things and the Tiger King doc, sometimes stuff is so popular because it is actually good. Listening to the case against Adnan Syed absolutely blew my mind and was something I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs about. As I listened to the podcast, after spending 4 years in the forensic department at my former school, I sat and shook my head because I had reasonable doubt. If I did, why did they not?

That being said, I raise questions about Adnan Syed’s guilt, and more importantly, two concepts that are common in the American justice system: reasonable doubt and witness testimony. First, reasonable doubt in and of itself has some degree of subjectivity to it. Something I find reasonable may not be reasonable to, say, a 17-year-old guy or 65-year-old man. Reasonable doubt does not necessarily leave room for circumstances as it should, and in an article by Picinali (2013), the author stresses the dual meanings of reasonable doubt, and how in a justice system such as ours, the term reasonable doubt does not really fit into the sliding scale we would typically refer to it in. Simply put, there is no real way to define reasonableness objectively and thus this standard should be re-evaluated.

For those who are not familiar with the case, on top of using Adnan’s nationality and religion against him, the prosecution also used the testimony of his friend, Jay. The issue with this, as it stands, is the inconsistencies in Jay’s testimony. Much of the story he told, which essentially was that Adnan strangled his ex-girlfriend in a 3-minute timeframe, then called Jay from a payphone, was inaccurate, or at least the police were unable to corroborate his story. The issue was that the alleged payphone did not exist and the timeframe was impossibly small, even for an able-bodied, athletic male. So much of the trial hinged on witness testimony from a teenager and very little on actual physical evidence. This is what created reasonable doubt for me. It just didn’t add up.

According to Bull, Valentine, Williamson, & Williamson (2009), witness consistency is of the utmost importance to judges, litigators, and legal scholars. So, when it comes to Adnan’s case, why was Jay’s testimony used when it was known to be both inconsistent and full of non-truths? Maybe some biases were in play. Maybe there was more to it. But much like the West Memphis Three (who had to take an Alford plea to even see the light of day!) something in this case stinks – and it certainly doesn’t smell like justice.

You can listen to serial here (Adnan’s case is season one): serialpodcast.org

References

Bull, R., Valentine, T., Williamson, T., & Williamson, D. T. (Eds.). (2009). Handbook of psychology of investigative interviewing : Current developments and future directions.

Picinali, F. (2013), Two Meanings of ‘Reasonableness’. Modern Law Review, 76: 845-875

Can you imagine walking down a dark alley, the fear of seeing a shadowy figure, only to see the police immediately show up and arrest that person. Or could you imagine a bank robber being arrested before they rob the bank. If you are getting vibes of the science fiction classic movie “Minority report” with Tom cruise you are correct. That movie explored the concept of stopping all crime before it was committed. The debate is ongoing if predicting crime before it happens is a viable and ethical solution to help reduce crime. It is also debated what makes an individual more likely to commit a crime if it is a biological basis or environmental. (Gruman) Social psychology theories such as the social-psychological model into criminal behavior suggest that criminal activity is correlated with education level. (Gruman 2016) Those without a high school diploma are more likely to commit criminal behavior. (Gruman 2016)

“Metro 21” is a project in 2017 from Carnegie Mellon University in partnership with the Pittsburgh city police working together to reduce violent crime without increasing arrests. They do so by predicting locations or “hotspots” for criminal activity to take place. (CMU 2019) The project did not include racial, demographic or socioeconomic variables when predicting crime to be void of ethical concerns. The project was molded from a model of prediction that used 911 calls and crimes that involved victims to target areas where crimes were most likely to be committed. CMU researchers found areas that were highly likely according to their algorithm to have violent criminal activity. They compiled both recent and old data from previous years to determine the locations. Police were sent out to these locations completely unaware if anything would happen. The Pittsburgh police changed their patrolling with the recommendation from CMU. During the experiment, those hotspot areas had a 34% drop in serious crime in temporary hotspot locations and 24% decrease in crime in chronic hotspot locations. (CMU 2019) Concerns of racial bias shut down the project in December 2019. Additionally, Concerns that the public was not made aware of the additional patrolling also contributed to shutting down the program. The program was successful in reducing crime in a measurable and quantifiable way. Chris Deluzio, policy director for Pitts cyber and task force said “there should be a public process around any policing algorithm”. Even though the project was successful in reducing crime, anticipation of possible ethical concerns led to a shutdown.

On a personal note, living in the city of Pittsburgh in a crime watch neighborhood, I personally witnessed this program in effect. In my area theft is the most common crime. I remember seeing an increase in police patrolling 3 blocks away from my house and wondering why. During that period of time, the overall crime was much lower. I remember having a conversation with a neighbor telling me it’s been a while since we heard of any home break ins. My community is close and everyone knows one another, allowing us to look out for one another and spread the word. I am fortunate to have that trust with many of my neighbors. But unfortunately, they can do little to prevent crime; However, the physical presence of officers in the area put a stop to a lot of crime.

Currently, there are no plans to reboot the project. For this project to be successful in the future patrol activities must be accepted more in the public community. The project must not use any bias or profiling in the algorithms. Communication between the police community and the general public is essential to have this program return. I believe it would be unethical to execute this program in an area that doesn’t support it. This is the main reason the project was terminated. However, I do not see much cause to oppose a motion that would halt crime and ultimately lead to fewer arrests or jailing. By preventing crime we are aiding both the victims and perpetrators, by saving them from facing the consequences that come after the crime has already been committed. Predictive policing is still a fairly new strategy to deter crime, and I feel it needs more public support. Communities can work together with law enforcement to help reduce crime, so it is mutually beneficial. We are living in a culture where relations between communities and law enforcement are not the most civil. Some call for defunding the police and others call for funding the police further. It is a very polarizing subject dividing Americans as taking any side can spark controversy. I believe a middle ground can be reached through civil dialogue and policy reformation.

Christopher R. Deluzio, JD: Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security: University of Pittsburgh. (n.d.). Retrieved October 15, 2020, from https://www.cyber.pitt.edu/people/christopher-r-deluzio-jd

University, C. (n.d.). Pittsburgh Crime Hot Spot Project: Preventing Crime with Predictive Policing – Metro21: Smart Cities Institute – Carnegie Mellon University. Retrieved October 15, 2020, from https://www.cmu.edu/metro21/projects/reducing-crime.html

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W. , &. Coutts, L.M. (Eds.). (2016). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems 3rd edition. SAGE Publications.

The bystander effect is something that we learn about in school and something that some of us learn about in life as well.  The bystander effect, defined by our textbook, is that “people are less likely to help in an emergency when other bystanders are present” (Gruman, Schneider, & Coutts, 2017).  The bystander effect leads to a diffusion of responsibility in those who are witnessing the crime or accident, and can create confusion as to who should get help.

I have personally been a bystander of two relatively severe car accidents in just the past few years.  Both were previous to my learning of this effect, and I reacted in a very different way each time.  Before I went to college, my parents and I were on our way back from dinner.  We were driving through an intersection where quite literally seconds before, a bad accident had occurred on the other side of the road.  We pulled over, got out of the car, and watched as a young teenager was carried from her car to a grassy area.  The cars involved in the accident were totaled, but there were already people rushing from their cars to help.  We decided that we would be of no help, and we got back in our car, and drove away.  This is a great example of the bystander effect.  We were less likely to help in that emergency because there were other bystanders present.

Another time, I was walking early one morning in downtown State College.  All of a sudden, a car turns when they weren’t supposed to and crashes into another oncoming car, spinning out of control and hitting the light post that was a mere ten feet from me.  In shock, but quickly realizing I was the only one around to have seen what happened, I immediately called 911.  I then ran to the girl stumbling out of her wrecked car and stood with her until the ambulance came.

As one can obviously see, I handled both of these situations very differently.  Was it due to my age? I was a high schooler in the first one and a college student in the last.  Or, was it due to the bystander effect?

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2017). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles: SAGE.

What makes someone at risk to commit a crime?

     Could it be that their peer group is deviant, which could reinforce deviant behavior? Could it be that they lack supervision and or structure in their lives? Could it be their attitudes or beliefs? What if it is all of the above plus additional factors?

     According to Gruman, Schneider, and Coutts, the development of the general personality and social psychological model of criminal behavior was defined by Andrews and Bonta (2017). They had described eight categories of risk factors that can influence the occurrence of criminal behavior as follows:

1. An early age of onset for antisocial behavior
2. Temperamental and personal characteristics that are conducive to criminal activity (e.g. impulsivity, aggressive energy, weak problem solving abilities)
3. Antisocial attitudes, values, and beliefs
4. Association with procriminal peers and isolation from noncriminal associates
5. Negative parenting and family experiences (e.g., harsh and abusive discipline, poor parental monitoring and supervision, low family cohesion)
6. Low levels of school or vocational achievement
7. Poor use of leisure time and low levels of involvement in prosocial leisure pursuits and recreational activities
8. Abuse of drugs and.or alcohol (p. 292, 2017).

So what can one do to prevent criminal behavior? 

     The Multisystemic Therapy program was quite beneficial to a group of “seriously violent youth” with a comparative 22% recidivism rate compared to 87% of those who did not participate in the intervention program (Gruman, et al., p 296, 2017). According to the U.S. Government website youth.gov on the topic, the program is designed for ages 12-17 and deems the treatment effective (n.d.). 

     This program has interventions targeted to specific needs that play a role in sustaining or reinforcing criminal behaviors and preventing such behaviors. These interventions include modifying parental styles, giving information to the families for the different avenues of community support, individual counseling, and even additional support at school (Gruman, et al., 2017). 

     As you can see, the intervention program is multi-faceted, which incorporates and challenges the many risk factors that tend to lead youth to deviant and criminal behaviors. Each risk factor is addressed, and the benefits do not just impact the individual at risk but also their family and community.

References

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2017). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.

Youth.gov. (n.d.). Multisystemic Therapy (MST). Retrieved October 14, 2020, from https://youth.gov/content/multisystemic-therapy-mst

I recently listened to a podcast about the West Memphis 3 and it left me in shock at how three young boys were falsely accused of a brutal murder in their home town. While reading this chapter in our book “Applied Social Psychology” especially the section of “The Investigative Interview” the story of these three boys popped in my head immediately. I’ll briefly explain what happened with these young boys and some of the strategies police investigators used to basically trick one of the boys into confessing about himself and blaming the other two young men for a murder the did not commit.

“In August 2011, the three teenagers who had been convicted of the grisly killings, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley, Jr., were released from prison after being incarcerated for 18 years. Echols had received a death sentence, and Baldwin and Misskelley were each given life sentences despite an arguably botched police investigation and questionable evidence.” Three 8 year old boys were brutally murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas and since Damien, Jason and Jessie were known as the “outcasts” of their area, fingers were immediately pointed at them. Eventually, the police got a confession out of Jessie, by basically telling him if he said exactly what they told him to, he would be released to his father. The cops then tricked him into confessing to being a part of the murder and making up a story about Jason and Damien’s act in the murders.

In our text, it states “False and possibly incriminating information may be elicited from a suspect in an improperly conducted interviews, particularly if the suspect is vulnerable in some way (e.g., due to young age, low intelligence, or anxious mental state.) It is obvious Jessie was young as he was a teenager at the time of these murders and it was also found that he was of low intelligence. It obviously shows that police fully took advantage of a vulnerable person. They also used the Reid technique on him which includes “repeated accusations and statements of the certainty of the suspect’s guilt; not letting the suspect speak and repeatedly shutting down his or her denials; telling the suspect that there is irrefutable evidence against him or her.” If you read the link below of the interrogation with Jessie and the police, the police basically feed Jessie a story and have him repeat it so that the words come out of his mouth.

This situation isn’t the first and probably won’t be the last. It’s very sad to see three young boys spend a huge chunk of their life in prison due to a hunch that police had. It also leaves a murderer on the loose which is very unsettling. Hopefully in the future there will be stricter laws set in place where these types of things cannot happen.

References:

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. ISBN 978-1-4833-6973-0

Gilligan, Matt. “The West Memphis Three Case: An Evolving Story of Doubt & Misinformation.” Investigation Discovery, www.investigationdiscovery.com/crimefeed/murder/the-west-memphis-three-case-an-evolving-story-of-doubt-misinformation.

Note: This Is a Transcription of the Taped Confession of Jessie Misskelley, Jr, www.dpdlaw.com/JessieFirstStatement.htm.

The lesson this week touched on a lot of different points, but the one that stood out to me was the interviewing tactics utilized by the police. The main tactic used throughout the United States, and most of North America, is called the Reid Technique (Gruman et al., 2017). Now you have seen this technique be used in all sorts of different capacities whether it be in real life or on television. Police have deemed this to be their most effective tactic, but is it morally correct?

In 1996, Kassin and Kiechel conducted a study to research the process of interviewing suspects that would later be known as the Reid Technique (Gruman et al., 2017). This tactic consists of aggressive interrogation tactics such as repeated accusations of certainty that the suspect is guilty, constant interruption of the suspect to not allow them to speak, recusing their denials, and continually stating that there is evidence against them to prove their guilt (Gruman et al., 2017). This technique has been widely criticized as it has been deemed to be coercive, which often leads to false confessions, and sometimes wrongful arrests or incarcerations.

In 1998, a man in Canada was brought in for questioning regarding the aggravated assault of his infant son (Manishen, 2017). The man was subjected to the Reid Technique, and was interrogated for hours. Regardless of his continued statements refuting any involvement in the heinous act, he was eventually arrested after signing a confession of guilt (Manishen, 2017). The police had utilized many facets of this technique to include referring that this man had been abused himself as a child which would have led to his unintentional assault of his son (Manishen, 2017). The judge in Canada presiding over his case decided that the use of the technique had produced a coerced confession and deemed all evidence as inadmissible (Manishen, 2017). So, this brings about the question of whether this technique is morally correct or violates the rights of so many that are subjected to it.

The Supreme Court of Canada has also made decisions in regard to this technique and its moral credibility. In 2016, the Court ruled in the case of R. v. Thaher, 2016 ONCJ 113, that the confession of a mentally ill man accused of attempted murder was coerced and the judge refused to accept it (Manishen, 2017). Another case, R. v. Oickle, 2000 SCC 38, [2000] 2 S. C. R. 3, described this technique as both coercive and as poor police work as the confessions that resulted were false (Manishen, 2017). The last case I will reference, R. v. Goro 2017 ONSC 1236, police had interrogated a man for over six hours and had never told him of his right to counsel, told him that he was free to leave at any time, and utilized the Reid Technique to use his statements against him to tie evidence to him (Manishen, 2017). Justice Dale Fitzpatrick, who oversaw this case, ruled that the Reid technique is inherently coercive, and this confession was also false due to the coercive nature in which it was obtained (Manishen, 2017).

We all have seen this technique be used in almost every crime-based television show as well. The show will show the interrogation and the police are using this very technique to gain either a confession of guilt or to obtain some form of an answer. Does that make it morally correct? After all, it’s just a television show that isn’t real, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen every day. The cases I provided showed exactly how easily police can use this technique, and how easily the case can be dismissed on the grounds of a false confession. This alone leads to the false convictions and incarcerations of many across the country. So, I ask you, is it morally correct to utilize this technique to interrogate a suspect?

Reference:

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. ISBN 978-1-4833-6973-0

Manishen, Jeffrey. (2017, Dec 11). Reid technique is problematic. Law Times. Retrieved from https://www.lawtimesnews.com/archive/reid-technique-is-problematic/262844

Chapter eleven was an interesting assessment about various aspects regarding the application of social psychology to the justice system (Gruman, 2016). It presented a lot of material regarding the psychology of crime and the mechanics of an investigation and jury selection. However, I was slightly disappointed that there was not more discussion of the psychology of police, since this has been a major topic of public concern for decades. More specifically, I have heard of John Wayne Syndrome for most of my life and wanted to learn more about it.

John Wayne Syndrome is a term that has been frequently used, although less in the decades since the actor died, to describe an approach that some newer police officers may develop before they become more experienced (Chandler, 1979). The name is derived from how closely common qualities of the syndrome resemble qualities in many of the characters that Wayne played on screen. His characters were usually tough, heroic, no-nonsense cowboys who showed little emotion or hesitancy when facing dangerous outlaws in the old west. It is also notable that those characters frequently had the moral high-ground and were willing to fight to the bitter end, even if out-gunned and alone. This archetype of the “lone hero” is one that has been associated with John Wayne Syndrome because it mirrors the feelings of isolation associated with the syndrome’s mindset. This attitude “is characterized by over-seriousness, emotional withdrawal, and coldness, authoritarian attitudes, the development of ‘tunnel vision,’ and cynicism” (Chandler, 1979). These qualities seem to be stable as well. Chandler (1979) writes, “these reactions cannot be turned on and off; they continue into officers’ relationships with family members, creating serious problems in marriages.”

Chandler (1979) also found that it takes about 4 years for the syndrome to begin to subside, and newer research by Lafrance (2013) had somewhat similar conclusions. He explained that the syndrome is closely tied to newer officers’ ridged reliance on “standard operating procedure” versus the discretion and intuition that is developed with time and experience (Lafrance, 2013). He also found that the relationship between those two variables is parabolic in nature, and “that it takes an average of 9 years before the priority that an officer places on SOPs stops increasing and begins to decrease. The results show that most officers begin to experience a tipping point between 5 and 13 years.This lends statistical support to the anecdotal evidence that 5 years is when officers start to lose the John Wayne Syndrome” (Lafrance, 2013).

The stress and timing of this condition could be correlated with officer burnout, as the arcs appear to be similar. While I did not find studies that examine the possible relationship between burnout and John Wayne Syndrome among police, I did find one that correlated the two among firefighters. Lourel (2008) found that “it is important to note that the ‘John Wayne’ syndrome (as defined by the fact that some workers hide their feelings and emotions to cope with the hard reality of their missions) is a good predictor of burnout.” Greene (2011) describes burnout as characterized by years in a stressful work environment among those who work with the public. He further describes the symptoms as involving “feelings of  being emotionally exhausted” and depersonalization, which “frequently taking the form of a callous or insensitive response to other people.” He goes on to say that this may result “in a diminished sense of accomplishment” and that the phenomena is not uncommon, as “patrol officers speak of the ‘seven-year syndrome’” (Greene, 2011).

Because of the relationship between John Wayne Syndrome and burnout, it seems that there may be similar ways to help alleviate the effects of both. A sense of choice regarding daily duties, team policing, stress management programs and counseling have helped departments lessen officers’ feelings of stress and isolation (Greene, 2011). However, it will be interesting to see if these methods are still effective in light of current events. The weekly supply of new viral videos showing officers killing unarmed people of color are directly causing the public’s relationship with the police becomes increasingly contentious. Because of the constant stress related to decreasing public faith in the integrity of officers, massive protests, coronavirus, and the seemingly never-ending quarantine, I hypothesize that reports of both John Wayne Syndrome and burnout will increase over the next few years among urban police officers.

Chandler, E.V., Jones., C.S. (March, 1979). Cynicism – An Inevitability of Police Work? Journal of Police Science and Administration, 7(1), 65-68.

Greene, E., Heilbrun. (2011). Wrightsman’s Psychology and the Legal System 7th ed. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Gruman, J. A.,  Schneider, F. W. , &. Coutts, L.M. (Eds.). (2016). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems 3rd edition. SAGE Publications.

Lafrance, C., Day, J. (March, 2013). The Role of Experience in Prioritizing Adherence to SOPs in Police Agencies. Public Organization Review. Dordrecht, 13(1), 37-48. https://search-proquest-com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/docview/1285620550/BE0797197F514A38PQ/2?accountid=13158

Lourel M., Abdellaoui S., Chevaleyre S., Paltrier M., & Gana K. (2008). Relationships Between Psychological Job Demands, Job Control and Burnout Among Firefighters, North American Journal of Psychology, 10(3), 489-496. https://search-proquest.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/docview/197977434/fulltext/657D38434F964E13PQ/1?accountid=13158

The experience of traveling through the various stages of the criminal justice system is a traumatic experience, no matter who you are, where you’re from, guilty or innocent, etc. To be in a position in which you have little to no control of your immediate circumstances is an overwhelming experience, especially when your fate is in the hands of a collection of strangers, selected at random, who are then told by a person who hardly knows anything about you that you must be judged for actions that you may or may not have committed.

Now, imagine that you are a person of color in the United States, accused of committing a crime and you glance at those individuals, who are supposedly your peers, and you are met with a sea of white faces, none of which look remotely like you, have had an upbringing like yours, have a cultural background like yours, etc. Clearly, the potential for prejudice in the decisions of this jury would be extraordinary; however, this is the unfortunate reality that convicted people of color have faced on a routine basis throughout United States history.

Prejudice of jurors can appear in many different ways. For instance, sometimes the high-profile nature of a case can result in normative prejudice, which is when a person feels that they are unable to be impartial due to the societal pressure behind a certain desired outcome of a case. Sometimes the facts of a case somehow intersect with the lives or beliefs of a juror, resulting in a specific prejudice of some sort. When these issues arise, steps are taken to attempt to prevent these prejudices as much as possible, such as sequestering the jury to avoid knowledge of public opinion, declaring a mistrial if a juror is unable to remain partial, etc.

Unfortunately, with the exception of jury selection (which is a prescreening process in which both sides are given time to take their jury pool, and narrow down the members until a jury is selected), there are virtually no protections in place to prevent generic prejudices from occurring for race/culture related reasons, especially if the accused is from a different geographic location than the crime occurs.

This is an unfortunate reality of our time. White juries have been shown time and time again to act with prejudice against people of color, and are 16 percent more likely to convict a black person than they are a white person (Heartsoe, 2012). In addition to this, instances arise all the time in which black people are disproportionately excluded from juries in comparison to white jurors (Equal Justice Initiative, 2018).

It is essential that if we have any hope to eliminate the racial tensions in this country that black people are treated equally under the law. This has been an issue for centuries, and still continues to be to this day. In order to better ensure that this happens, a reexamination needs to be done in regards to the juror selection process to ensure that those accused of committing a crime are subject to a jury of their own peers, rather than a group of people who have often cast judgements upon that person before hearing a single detail of their case.

References

Equal Justice Initiative. (2018, June 15). Study Finds Mississippi Prosecutors Disproportionately Exclude Black Jurors. Retrieved October 15, 2020, from https://eji.org/news/study-finds-mississippi-prosecutors-disproportionately-exclude-black-jurors/

Hartsoe, S. (2012). Study: All-White Jury Pools Convict Black Defendants 16 Percent More Often Than Whites. Retrieved October 15, 2020, from https://today.duke.edu/2012/04/jurystudy

DNA forensic technology has changed the way we look at case evidence. Today, we cross-check DNA samples to see if the accused is guilty or innocent scientifically. Having DNA leaves less room for someone to be wrongly accused. Before DNA forensic testing, there was a higher chance of being falsely accused of a crime. That is why the Innocence Project has focused on exonerating those who have been falsely convicted. As of today, 375 people have been exonerated of their false convictions (Innocence Project 2020). Kirk Bloodsworth was the first person to be exonerated using DNA evidence and is now the Executive Director of Witness to Innocence. He was convicted of rape and murder of a child then released from his death sentence in 1993 (Witness to Innocence. N.D.). What is often left out of these stories is the aftermath, what exactly happens to them after being released.   

According to the Innocence Project, the average amount of time spent in jail before being exonerated is 14 years in prison. That is 14 years of someone’s life being taken away while also being severely punished, all while innocent. They may lose family, friends, relationships, even the chance to reach their dreams. After that, they most likely have nothing, which is why many are suing the state that wronged them. Not all states require compensation through laws, and not all states have laws to help the wrongly convicted. In Texas, they are compensated $80,000 a year with an annuity set at that amount. In other states, they are let out homeless, jobless, and with a criminal record that may not even be erased. After spending 38 years in jail, Fred Clay fought to get compensation from Massachusetts, where he would qualify for around for $1 million (Burrell 2018). To receive this money, he must sue the state that convicted him. That can become very costly after being locked away for almost 40 years. 

After years of being in the system, many wrongly accused walk out with nothing. If their friends and family shunned them before being exonerated, they have no one left. There is most likely no money waiting for them outside. With no money, no job, and no place to go, they are left to fend for themselves. The state has failed them without even giving them assistance or a place to stay. There are serious legal services needed for their criminal records to be expunged to get a job or an apartment. In fact, a Black person in American is seven times more likely to be wrongfully convicted for murder and three times more likely to be wrongly convicted for sexual assault. That means 222 of the 362 people who were proven innocent by forensic DNA are Black (Innocence Project N.D.). There is even a longer wait to get their name expunged compared to Whites who were exonerated (Chokshi 2017). There are many more Black men and women like Fred Clay, who are left without help after being wrongly convicted for several years of their life. If you want to help stop this cycle, especially for Black Americans, check out https://www.innocenceproject.org/getinvolved. 

Witness to Innocence. (ND). Kirk Bloodsworth. Retrieved from https://www.witnesstoinnocence.org/single-post/kirk-bloodsworth 

Innocence Project. (2020, July 29). DNA Exonerations in the United States. Retrieved from https://www.innocenceproject.org/dna-exonerations-in-the-united-states/ 

Innocence Project. (ND). Exonerate the Innocent. Retrieved from https://www.innocenceproject.org/exonerate/#:~:text=Exonerate%20the%20Innocent&text=To%20date%2C%20375%20people%20in,prison%20before%20exoneration%20and%20release. 

Innocence Project. (ND). Compensating The Wrongly Convicted. Retrieved from https://www.innocenceproject.org/compensating-wrongly-convicted/ 

Burrell, C. (2018, November 30). Fighting For Compensation After A Wrongful Conviction And 38 Years In Prison. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2018/11/30/670180358/fighting-for-compensation-after-a-wrongful-conviction-and-38-years-in-prison 

Chokshi, N. (2017, March 7). Black People More Likely to Be Wrongfully Convicted of Murder, Study Shows. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/us/wrongful-convictions-race-exoneration.html 

     You may not have heard of the names “Kevin Bailey” and “Cory Batchelor”, or the thousands of people like them who have been wrongfully convicted and failed by the criminal justice system. Kevin and Cory served 16 years in prison for a crime they did not commit after being physically coerced to confess to the murder of Lula Mae Woods when they were 19 years old. Batchelor was in the interrogation room for over 24 hours where he was physically beaten, choked, and kicked by detectives until he made a confession. Bailey was interrogated for more than 12 hours and confessed after being threatened and grabbed by his neck by the detectives. Picture yourself in Kevin and Cory’s position; arrested for a crime you did not commit then locked in an interrogation room for hours where you are beaten and the only way to stop it is by confessing. It seems like an inescapable neverending situation and the only way to escape it is by confessing to a crime that you did not commit. 

     How did a coerced false confession lead a jury to convict these two men? In the textbook it states, “Because the idea of a false confession is so counterintuitive (i.e., it is difficult for most of us to imagine why any innocent person would admit to committing a serious and violent crime),confession evidence is very persuasive to investigators, jurors, and judges.” (Gruman 2017). The jury did not know about the physical coercion the two men faced in the interrogation room so they did not doubt the legitimacy of the confession but who would? They were presented a case where a woman was murdered and two men had confessed to killing her so the result of the trial was Batchelor was sentenced to 30 years and Bailey was sentenced to 80 years. A normal person thinks that confessing to a crime means the person did it because who would say they committed a crime when they didn’t?

     Bailey and Batchelor maintained their innocence during and after the trial and eventually sought post- conviction relief. In the text it states, “In addition to the influence that confession evidence has on police officers and courtroom decision-makers, the damaging effect of a false confession is compounded by the corruptive effect it can have on other pieces of evidence.” (Gruman 2017). In this case we saw exactly that, the false and coerced confessions given by these two men led to the DNA found on the scene to not be tested or presented at the trial. With the representation by the Innocence Project, The Exoneration Project, and other organizations, the DNA evidence from the crime scene was tested and concluded to not be a match to either man. The two men were exonerated after serving 16 years. 16 years of birthdays, friendships, relationships, love, joy, and life were stripped away from these men due to a coerced confession. 

     The detectives who beat and coerced the confessions out of Batchelor and Bailey led to two men losing 16 years of their life and for a murder of a woman to go unsolved. What can be done to prevent this injustice from happening again to innocent people? The Innocence Project which is a project that was created to bring justice to people who were wrongfully convicted and prevent future injustice, suggests that every interrogation should be recorded. This would prevent coercive tactics that lead to false confessions and provide transparency to the judge and jury. Hopefully this intervention strategy is implemented so it could decrease the number of false confessions and wrongful convictions. If the interrogation between the detectives and the men was recorded then maybe Lula Mae Woods’ murderer would have been caught and Bailey and Batchelor would have never been in prison. The criminal justice system is flawed and there needs to be more interventions to fix it. 

References:

Gruman, J.A.,Schneider, F.W., & Coutts, L.A. (2017). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

“Kevin Bailey and Corey Batchelor Exonerated Based on DNA and Coerced False Confession During Burge Era.” Innocence Project, 11 Apr. 2019, www.innocenceproject.org/cases/kevin-bailey/. 

In our reading this week, I found the social psychology of crime very interesting. Some of these terms I have learned in previous psychology classes and have discussed or explained to friends who are not even taking the same classes.

The bystander effect is one phenomenon that makes both no sense and also perfect sense at the same time. I’m sure that there are many moments in all of our lives that action needs to be taken but we sit back and do nothing simply for the reason that there is a multitude of people who are engaged in the same stimulus and we just assume that one of the other people will take action. Just the other day my family was sitting down to watch the new Adam Sandler movie when no one could find the remote. My wife stated, “one of us needs to find the remote” to which I replied “yes” and then sat down. This paints me in a bad light I know, however, there were four of us in the room and all of us sat down after the statement was made and nobody actually looked for the remote (including my wife). Even after everyone sat down, nobody talked or looked for about another 30 seconds, still thinking that someone else was going to get up and look for it. To my great credit, I stuck my hand under the cushion and found the remote…. In essence, saving the day. This is a very ridiculous example of the bystander effect. We also did nothing and assumed someone else would take action and help. This story sounds pretty typical for a family and has references that we all have experienced. Why is it then that we are more blown away when this effect happens in a much more serious situation? The case of Kitty Genovese is one I have heard several times and still bewilders me as to how it could happen. Our natural assumption would be that in a serious situation like this people would be more likely to help save a person by even simplifying calling 911. I suppose the reality in cases like this is that people do not want to be involved or cause their day to be inconvenienced when there is so many more people that will do the responsible thing and help the person in need. Whenever I hear this case I try to think, if I didn’t know about the bystander effect would I help that person in need? My immediate answer is yes although, I’m sure that’s what just about every person who did help Ms. Genovese would have said also. If you happen to reply to my post please put what your honest answer would be to this question and we can see what the general consensus on what people’s thoughts are to how they would react when confronted with the bystander effect.

Scott Hensley

Reference

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2016). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications, Inc.

Surely most of you, increasingly so in the last few years, have read news headlines and articles that talk about criminal justice in the legal system. So many different movements have taken form recently that are geared toward criminal justice reform and equal rights among all people. It is ever more apparent that this issue is now at the forefront of everyones minds, especially with the presidential election only a few weeks away.

An article I read by the Drug Policy Alliance dives into the topic of race and its implications in the ongoing war on drugs. The article gives eye-opening statistics of disparity in the criminal justice system, stating “nearly 80% of people in federal prison and almost 60% of people in state prison for drug offenses are black or Latino” and that “black people and Native Americans are more likely to be killed by law enforcement than other racial or ethnic groups. They are often stereotyped as being violent or addicted to alcohol and other drugs. Experts believe that stigma and racism may play a major role in police-community interactions” (Drug Policy Alliance). This article provided me some much needed insight into how critical and important it is to address the issue of race not only in everyday interaction, but consequentially so in the legal system. I found it surprising that while discrimination and stereotypes are receiving more attention than ever, not a lot of people are questioning how these biases originate and how we can mitigate them.

The legal system in America has been scrutinized more than ever this year, and rightfully so, because of biases that exist among all levels of the law. I believe one of the reasons this topic appears so polarizing is because phenomenon such as stereotypes and racism cannot be directly observed. An interesting article I read discusses implicit biases within the criminal justice system. The author, Dr. Michael Pittaro, explains that “these biases are involuntarily initiated, the individual is, therefore, unaware and does not have intentional control, as these biases reside deep in an individual’s subconscious. Unlike known biases, which most individuals conceal for the purposes of social and/or political correctness, implicit biases are not accessible through self-reflection” (Pittaro, 2018). He does note that implicit biases can be both favorable and unfavorable, but when dealing with criminal justice, there should be no room for error. Pittaro goes on to say “everyone has them, even though they might not align with our outward beliefs. This means that implicit biases, particularly racial biases, exist within our law enforcement officers, court personnel, and corrections employees, and such biases can have a profound negative influence on our real-world behaviors” (Pittaro, 2018). I find this information both astonishing and a little frightening. So how does the legal system combat this phenomenon? By bringing awareness to it of course.

Pittaro says that very little has been published on implicit biases and its implications in the criminal justice system. In these most important times, it is crucial that everyone is educated and made aware of how these things can affect the mass public. It is of upmost importance that people understand both sides of the discussion on criminal justice, so that we may put aside our differences and build a legal system that is both fair and leaves no place for any type of bias. Hope to see you at the polls this November!

References:

Pittaro, D. M. (2018, November 21). Implicit Bias Within the Criminal Justice System. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-crime-and-justice-doctor/201811/implicit-bias-within-the-criminal-justice-system.

Drug Policy Alliance. Race and the Drug War. https://www.drugpolicy.org/issues/race-and-drug-war.

Many people just look at a person and think “oh they look like they would be a criminal”. That statement goes so much farther then that. There are many different variables that can contribute to a person becoming a criminal. Many people just scratch the outer layer of why people can become criminals but I am going to go into a little more depth on this topic. There are two different theories that are looked into as to why people are criminals. The theories are biological and sociological.

Biological theories believe that people are more likely to become a criminal based on genetics, psychophysiology, neurological functioning, and biochemistry. The biological theories also found that it is more likely for a male to be aggression then a female. Before birth also plays a role in the biological factors. Exposing the fetus to impulsive, hyperactive, or aggressive behavior can affect that child later on. “For example, a lack of proper nutrients during critical periods of prenatal development, or pre or postnatal exposure to toxic agents may result in mild or severe deficits in cognition and behavior factors that are known to place a child at risk for aggression.” (Gruman, 291).

Sociological theories include social class, poverty, and social inequity. A person’s socioeconomic status is based on education, occupation, income, and neighborhood characteristics. People with a lower socioeconomic status are typically exposed to a higher crime rate environment. The sociological theories make the most sense in explaining criminal behavior. When people are exposed to certain environments it influences their life and behavior. Having low income or living in a bad neighborhood really influences and impacts children as they grow up. Being exposed to a high crime environment will influence others to also commit crimes.

My husband is a police officer in a small town where we live so it’s easy to relate to this topic. My husband does not see or deal with the same things that bigger city officers see or deal with. My husband deals with a lot of car accidents, domestics, and over doses. In larger cities the police officers may deal with burglary, shootings, homicides, or suicides. This example shows that crime is often based off of where you live and the environment you were brought up in.

Gruman, Jamie A., et al. Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. 3rd ed., SAGE, 2017.

How are people wrongly accused and convicted?  There are television shows full of people who are spending time behind bars who claim innocence after confessing to the crime. Why does a person who is innocent confess to a crime they did not commit? Many things can happen very quickly once a person is suspected of committing a crime. The police come knocking on your door and read you your Miranda rights while putting you in handcuffs. Your heart is probably pounding, your confused, scared and before long you are sitting in an interrogation.

According to the “Innocence Project,” a project founded in 1992 by two lawyers, Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck to help bring justice to those wrongly accused and to help put an end to future injustice, they say every interrogation should be recorded. This is done so that the information given during the interrogation is irrefutable and transparent. This also helps to prevent coercive techniques and allows other law officials, judges, attorneys, and juries to gather whether the suspect has any mental impediments. Recording the interrogation also has benefits for the law enforcement agencies.

Why people are wrongfully accused has something to do with the cross-race effect. This means people are more likely to recognize someone of their own race than another. (Gruman, 2017) Another reason could be due to the nature of the lineup. Putting together a lineup without the use of foils, aka innocent people, makes it more likely for an innocent person to be picked out of the lineup also  only one person should come out at a time so the witness does not have to compare all the faces at once with the face they are remembering from the crime.  (Gruman, 2017)

The reasons behind confessing to a crime a person did not commit are many, such as, age, coercion by the investigating officers, bribery, exhaustion… the list continues. Reasons behind people being wrongfully accused are not enough forensic science, eyewitness misidentification, not enough money for a good defense and criminal history. (LaPorte, 2017) According to The Innocence Project’s webpage, 46 percent of the cases they are working on have had improper forensic science. Listed above are the many contributing factors that play a part in wrongful convictions confessions by people who did not commit a crime. Improper forensic science is just a big part of the reason. (LaPorte, 2017

Gerald M. LaPorte, “Wrongful Convictions and DNA Exonerations: Understanding the Role of Forensic Science,” September 7, 2017, nij.ojp.gov:
https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/wrongful-convictions-and-dna-exonerations-understanding-role-forensic-science

https://www.innocenceproject.org/false-confessions-recording-interrogations/

If you are anything like myself, you are not painfully aware of how the judicial system or the supreme court works. It was not until a few years ago (during Brett Kavanaugh’s trial prior to his confirmation as a justice on the supreme court) that I learned that supreme court justices remain on the supreme court either until they retire or die. That seems like a pretty wild concept when you think about the average person living well into their 70s or even longer when you have access to some of the best healthcare in the country. Supreme court justice terms have not changed since the constitution was written. Yes, the constitution that was signed in 1787, when the average life expectancy was more like what we consider to be “middle-aged today”.

The only thing in the constitution regarding the term of a supreme court justice is a portion that states “shall hold their offices during good behavior” (supremecourt.gov). I perceive this statement to mean as long as a supreme court justice upholds “good behavior”, they shall remain on the supreme court until they retire or die. What the opposite of “good behavior” means is vague and can mean something different for different people. The ever increasing life span of humans has brought on pressing concerns regarding the length of time justices serve on the supreme court, especially now that Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat is open.

How does a lifelong term on the supreme court affect citizens? Why should we care? The justices of the supreme court are tasked with “ensuring the American people the promise of equal justice under law and, thereby, also functions as guardian and interpreter of the Constitution.” (supremecourt.gov). Humans are habitual creatures and like to stick to the same routines and behaviors over time. However, everything changes over time, and having someone on the supreme court for over 20 years could create conflict between the past and the present.

With that being said, just a few days ago, democrats in the house of representatives introduced a bill, the Supreme Court Term Limits and Regular Appointments Act, to limit the amount of time that justices can remain on the supreme court to 18 years (Chung, Andrew, 2020). The purpose of the bill is to maintain the court’s legitimacy and to prevent issues when a new supreme court seat is open. With supreme court justices now serving on average 25 years on the court, I believe a bill to limit the terms of supreme court justices would be beneficial. However, legal observers stated that term limits would need to be accomplished through an amendment to the U.S. constitution (Chung, Andrew, 2020). In addition to the Supreme Court Term Limits and Regular Appointments Act, I would change the appointment process to take into consideration the votes of American citizens, similar to regular elections. But this would require having a designated voting day and would likely be lumped in with regular elections, delaying the appointment of the next justice. Do you think supreme court justices should have a limit on the amount of time they serve?

References:

– Chung, Andrews. (2020, September 24). Democrats prepare bill limiting U.S. Supreme Court justice terms to 18 years. Reuters. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-termlimits/democrats-prepare-bill-limiting-u-s-supreme-court-justice-terms-to-18-years-idUSKCN26F3L3.

– Congress.gov. H.R.8424 – To establish a process by which the appointment of Supreme Court Justices can occur at regular time intervals, and for other purposes. Retrieved from https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/8424.

– Ferro, Shaunacy. (2018, September 19).  Why Do Supreme Court Justices Serve for Life?. Mental Floss. Retrieved from https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/557577/why-do-supreme-court-justices-serve-lifetime-terms.

– Supreme Court of the United States. About the Court: Frequently Asked Questions, General Information. Retrieved from https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/faq_general.aspx.

– Supreme Court of the United States. About the Court. Retrieved from https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/about.aspx#:~:text=As%20the%20final%20arbiter%20of,and%20interpreter%20of%20the%20Constitution.

There isn’t a single factor that creates a criminal.  If that were the case, there would be a solution towards stopping criminal behavior and how to prevent it.  It takes a biological, social, and psychological approach, to understand how a person becomes a criminal.

Criminal behavior in adolescence is one of the most important precursor of offending behavior in adulthood.  Early research has suggested that more than half of adolescent offenders will continue offending beyond their teens. (Watt et al., 2004).  The young offenders who continue their criminal behavior into adulthood, are at a higher risk for serious and chronic offending behavior.  Multiple factors have been identified as predictors of offending behavior among adolescents, including individual and contextual factors, such as family, school, and peers.

Theories of criminal behavior from a social psychological perspective considers the influence of both dispositional and situational factors. (Gruman et al., 2016).  Bandura’s social learning theory could be applied to understand the onset and making of a criminal.  It believes the criminal activity represents learned behavior that develop through an individual’s interactions and experiences, within their social environment.

The social learning theory stresses the importance of the solidity of rewards and costs for antisocial behavior, versus the rewards and costs for prosocial behavior.  Offending behavior is more likely among individuals who recognize greater rewards for delinquency, than individuals who see greater rewards for prosocial activities.

Despite an individual engaging in criminal behavior in a situation, it is still partially determined by discriminative stimuli in the situation.  Here, stimuli suggesting that antisocial activity is likely to bring rewards, such as the presence of antisocial peers or an easy target. (Watt et al., 2004).  Stimuli indicating that antisocial behavior is likely to produce greater costs, such as the presence of a prosocial partner, would predict engagement in non-offending behavior.  There are several studies that support the connection between perceived rewards and offending behavior.  Anticipated positive outcomes of violent behavior includes the reduction of aversive arousal, reputation enhancement, and sexual arousal have related to serious violent behavior.

The social learning theory is based on antisocial peers and antisocial attitudes, being the main precursor towards criminal behavior among young offenders.  A change in one of the two predict future offending behavior.

Works Cited

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2016). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications, Inc.

Watt, B., Howells, K., & Delfabbro, P. (2004). Juvenile Recidivism: Criminal Propensity, Social Control and Social Learning Theories. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 11(1), 141–153. https://doi.org/10.1375/pplt.2004.11.1.141

Sexually transmitted diseases, specifically HIV, are becoming increasingly prevalent in today’s society. At the same time, populations of jails and prisons are steadily increasing. Do these statements have any correlation to each other? If so, how do they relate? 

Out of all prisoners, one-fifth to one-fourth of individuals who have an HIV infection have a record of incarceration. From 1990 to the end of 2002 the populations of jails and prisons have been on the rise. The prevalence of HIV in inmates is most common among women. In fact, most individuals who tested HIV positive were from New York, Florida, and/or Texas. Despite the growing population of jails and prisons, the incidence of known HIV has been slowly decreasing since about 1995. This downward trend applies to both men and women.  

The most widely known risk factor of HIV is its means of transmission. HIV is transmitted through sharing needles or coming into contact with contaminated bodily fluid. Most HIV transmission actually occurs in the community. There are high rates among individuals who are becoming incarcerated, but low rates among new infections inside of jail and prison walls. This is because the disease is often contracted through drug use, the use of contaminated needles, or unsafe sex prior to becoming an inmate. One risk involved with HIV in jails is that numerous inmates admit to having more than one sexual partner. In addition to this, they report inconsistent use of condoms, both in jail and after their release, making the spread of disease nearly inevitable. The silver lining is, HIV has a lower rate of transmission than other sexually transmitted pathogens. 

One treatment barrier for prisoners with HIV is currently, testing is only available upon request. If there were voluntary and readily available testing individuals could be safer, and ideally not spread the infectious disease. The absence of knowledge of one’s serostatus is just one barrier in the way of being able to prevent the spread of HIV. Not only this but, limited access to prevention services and lack of implementation of vaccine programs on a large scale also stand in the way of being able to stop the spread of disease. Unsurprisingly, the lack of vaccine programs is due to a lack of public health funding. The list does not stop there. Disease prevention, education, counseling, and testing have yet to become a staple in correctional healthcare. This prevents inmates from being able to be knowledgeable about the risks and prevention of the spread of HIV, and possibly other diseases as well. One issue among men specifically is some consider same-gender sexual encounters in jail purely situational and therefore do not respond to HIV messages that target openly bisexual or gay men. Prisoners are offered some health care relating to HIV needs. If an HIV prisoner enters into a correctional facility they can have the opportunity to access preventative health care, immunization, health education, and more. A few states even offer services of HIV prevention and peer education in prison settings.   

While some attempts to help inmates with sexually transmitted infections are being made there is still a long way to go before a noticeable change is made. With the right education and resources, there is great potential to minimize the spread of HIV to new individuals, inmates, or not. 

References

Dr. Penelope Morrison. (2019). Penn State, Bio-Behavioral Health (150n). Prepared slides & notes from class.

N.a. (2019). Prisoners, HIV and AIDS. Avert. Retrieved from https://www.avert.org/professionals/hiv-social-issues/key-affected-populations/prisoners#footnote1_nq5nzmy

     Let us pretend we are part of a group that is going over how to address a problem that our group faces. The majority of our group members’ discussion focused on one particular area of the problem, but did not address the whole problem. Now, if we were to speak up, we may lose status within the group, a consequence, or we can support the group decision and conform through the normative influence the group presents. Or, we can provide information to the group about the possibility of other issues that need our attention first. This would be an example of informational influence. By gathering evidence and data of the problem we are using information to influence our decisions and group.

     When in a group, individuals tend to be influenced by others within the group. Groups tend to hold pressures to conform, one way is through normative influence (Gruman, Schneider, & Coutts, 2017). Gruman et al. describes normative influence as“…pressure to conform to the expectations of others so as to gain social approval or avoid negative social consequences…”(Gruman et al., 2017, p. 279). So to avoid negative consequences, you support the group by conforming to the normative influence of the group. 

     Another influence within groups is the informational influence, which attitudes or behaviors that are a “result of information obtained from other people that provides evidence about the nature of the social situation” (Gruman et al., 2017, 279). Thus, gathering and fully appreciating all accurate information from the group is informational influence. 

     Groups are complex and dynamic as each individual that is part of that group has different experiences and perceptions. This is just scratching the surface of how groups impact the individual.  

Reference:

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2017). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems (3rd ed.). Los Angeles: SAGE.

It’s 10pm on a Tuesday night. You’ve been up since 5:00am and the numbers on the clock are starting to blur together. Your children are finally asleep after a normal bedtime routine turned into a relentless battle of the wills between parent and child. The last time you checked, there was a pile of dishes in the sink and toys in the living room that needed to be picked up. You’re hoping your spouse helped out, but instead you find them sitting on the couch watching TV. None of the chores are done. In sheer exhaustion you can’t hide your annoyance with them and an argument ensues.

Early the next morning your friend calls and you tell him/her about the argument you had the night before with your spouse.

“He/she was so snippy when he/she talked to me. He/she is such a jerk. I was so tired because I got up early and the kids were relentless at bedtime. I had a right to be crabby, he/she, however, did not,” you say.

Right there, you just fell into the actor-observer difference. Little did you know, your spouse got stuck in traffic on their way home from work after getting reprimanded by their boss for a mistake they didn’t make. Their day was rough, but instead you attributed their lack of helping behavior and snippy attitude to their personality. At the same time, you attributed your own snippy behavior to your frustration with your kids’ late bedtime. The actor-observer difference occurs when we see others’ behavior as a result of internal factors and our own as a result of external factors (Gruman, Schneider & Coutts, 2017). In this case, though both you and your spouse were snippy with each other, you concluded your spouse was a jerk while also concluding that you were just tired.

Another example of the actor-observer difference in daily life is in traffic mishaps. If a person cuts you off you might assume they are a jerk and get angry at their carelessness. You attributed their behavior of cutting you off to be a demonstration of their own internal traits or character. However, are there really any drivers that haven’t made a mistake at least once while driving? Have you ever gotten distracted and accidently swerved into another lane?

The actor-observer difference could easily transpire in the workplace as well. Say you mess up and forget a deadline and you explain to your new boss it was because you had to help another employee with something. This is you, the actor, attributing your behavior to an external factor. Your boss, the observer, might see this missed deadline as you being lazy (internal factor). Sometimes in the workplace, supervisors blame employees for performance issues when they weren’t actually their fault. At the very same time, employees in the workplace can overemphasize situational factors as the cause of their performance issues without taking any fault. This can cause disagreements between employees and management in performance appraisals (Gruman et. al., 2017).

The actor-observer difference can be present in various areas of our everyday lives. It can happen when we are driving to work, when we are interacting with our employer and when we get home and interact with our family. Its bias is a self-coping mechanism that can happen nearly unconsciously. The only way to get ahead of it is to be more aware of the attributions we make in not only our own behavior but in others’ as well. Through awareness, we have the possibility to intervene in our evaluations of behavior long before false judgements take place.

References

Gruman, J.A.,Schneider, F.W., & Coutts, L.A. (2017). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

I found these chapters, especially chapter ten to be very interesting, especially when comparing the social structures of typical groups to those of new religious movements and extremist groups. To me, they are examples of the most extreme version of groupthink and group cohesion (Gruman, 2017). When I was in 7th grade, I remember seeing the aftermath of the Heaven’s Gate mass suicide on television and wondering how in the world so many people were persuaded to do that. I soon learned about the events of Jonestown and the hundreds of men, women and children who tragically died there. The fact that one person could construct a situation in which followers were willing to commit mass killings and mass suicide seemed to go against every law of nature. I have always found these groups to be disturbing, yet fascinating. I have often wondered how they initialize, organize, expand and collapse. As with studying serial killers, I believe learning about them is the best way to prevent horrific events like Jonestown in the future.  

Galanter’s Cults: Faith, healing, and coercion (1999), is the most comprehensive book I have read on the subject. It provides histories of several new religious movements and contrasts and compares the structures of each. Galanter is a psychiatrist, but he ties together theories and models from various sciences. It is an enlightening mixture of perspectives from Sociology, Anthropology, Biology, Psychiatry, and Psychology. It is heavily influenced by Social Psychology and, even though there are no attempts at interventions involved, many other concepts are discussed. Chapter 2 is even completely devoted to group cohesiveness. The book explores how and why some groups directly commit or radicalize individuals to commit acts of terrorism as well. The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Tokyo Subway Sarin Attack are examined. A new edition has not be published to include the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York. However, I hope Galanter updates the book soon to include a thorough examination of this tragedy as I would venture that extremist groups have a very similar structure to new religious movements. 

Some researchers theorize that new religious movements have structures not unlike world religions, corporations, sports teams etc. Their members frequently consider themselves part of an in-group and that helps them construct their collective identity, especially when they project a firm identity onto an out-group (Galanter, 1999). Part of their cohesiveness revolves around a shared system of beliefs and goals. Like many nations in the eastern part of the world, they usually have a collectivist outlook where individuals evaluate the goals of the group above their own (Gruman, 2017). However, these groups often take the concept to an extreme and there are sometimes tragic consequences. As with many organizations, roles are normally defined by a social hierarchy with central leadership. Like many corporations, information is often filtered and flows from the top leaders to the followers (Galanter, 1999). 

Of course, new religious movements differ from most groups in very distinct ways. A key difference is that with these and other extreme groups, psychological and philosophical boundaries coincide with the physical territory the group occupies and the physical boundaries that isolate it, as exemplified by the Branch Davidians and Jonestown (Galanter, 1999). Although many typical groups meet in a familiar place, they are not usually confined there against their will, unlike new religious movements. The physical and psychological abuse characteristic within these groups is also not encountered frequently in the modern place of worship or work. Many groups use abuse to control and to set an example to other members of the group of what happens when one attempts to deviate from the hierarchy or the plan (Galanter, 1999). Sometimes, even simply questioning or challenging the collective maxims that support their groupthink is met with severe punishments, as this threatens group cohesion at the core. Another way the hierarchy exudes influence and control is by encouraging members to frequently be in altered states of consciousness, often by using sleep deprivation, drugs, meditation, etc (Galanter, 1999). There are few workplaces that would encourage this. I think it is safe to say that very few employees would characterize their CEO as “divine” and “all knowing.” Even fewer would kill or die for the company they work for.

I hope that more research is being conducted to break down how these groups work, especially in the age of the internet. It seems that acts of domestic terror are on the rise again as young, most often white, men are being radicalized online. The violent alt-right gang, The Proud Boys, have grown exponentially since its inception in 2016. The group’s rapid growth was due in no small part to its frequent and widespread decimation of information via social media. Substituting white nationalism and misogyny for religion/spirituality, the members and their leadership have an outlook and structure very similar to that of the groups I described earlier. However, sometimes people are radicalized by people they have never and will never meet. As in the case of mass murderer Dylan Roof, he became self-radicalized after reading white supremacist writings on various websites before committing a terrorist attack at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church that killed 9 people in 2015. Since there was little or no social influence, his particular case defies the traditional school of thought regarding how a person becomes engaged with acts of terror. Clearly, in an age heavily dominated by technology, we need to gather more data on what factors precede these events. It is imperative to continue learning about new religious movements, terrorist organizations, white supremacist groups, neo-nazis, gangs, militias, etc. as their structures and tactics are continually evolving. I also feel that it is important to examine the social influence and psychology behind other groups and institutions like the police, military, legal system, political parties, etc. These are all increasingly important topics as we debate the direction America should take in the future.

Galanter, M. (1999). Cults: Faith, healing, and coercion. 2nd ed., Oxford University Press.

Gruman, Jamie A., et al. (2017).  Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. 3rd ed., SAGE.

Have you ever felt worried you wouldn’t get hired because of your looks? This phenomenon is called the halo effect and can cause serious bias during the hiring process. This bias is caused by employers pushing their feelings about an attribute onto the individual (Nielsen & Cardello, 2013). Many different reasons trigger this, such as race, gender, and even appearance. Looks alone can cause this halo effect skewing the individual’s chance of getting a job. This bias is a worry that affects many minorities and those who aren’t an ideal weight. It can be terrifying to enter the workforce when you know you’re not up to society’s standards on looks. It can be made even worse by the similar-to-me effect if the employer wants to hire those with the same physical attributes. Having an interview with a more “attractive” boss and some employees can make you worry about what they really think of you.   

Appearance causes a person to be perceived as something they may not actually be. A tall man in a well-fitted suit could be seen as intelligent and wealthy, while a woman dressed down and overweight may be seen as lazy. There is no link between appearance and intelligence or even wealth. In fact, this is something that highly affects the workplace and hiring process. According to a study done on facial attractiveness evaluation, people make immediate impressions on others based on the appearance of their face (Han et al. 2018). These biases can create a large gap in the type of employees hired and their actual qualifications. The stereotype of attractive people is often related to financial status or intelligence. These biases can cause the similar-to-me effect where the employer may hire those who look the same. Ever walk into a high-end store and find that the employees are tall, skinny, and attractive? The employer may want employees similar to them when it comes to appearance and attributes (Grant 2018). Or even worse, employees prefer working with people who look and act just like them (Chamorro-Premuzic).   

Not only does this create a discriminatory problem, but it could affect the business itself. Hiring based on first impressions allows fewer individuals who are more qualified for the job. If the employer hiring is attractive yet selfish and stubborn, they may hire others who are the same. This is where the similar-to-me effect comes in, people want to be around others like them. If you’ve ever worked a job where many long-term employees were rude, that may be why your boss is rude too. The halo effect can create an issue with the type of employees being hired. They may praise those who they find attractive and easily fire those who aren’t. Even if it means letting go of employees who are more qualified for the job (Chamorro-Premuzic 2019). This is why it is so hard to tackle discrimination and lack of diversity in the workforce. Employers think they are hiring those who are most qualified, yet forget to ignore looks, name, race, and gender. One way businesses are trying to combat this is by using AI technology that puts the qualifications first and looks after. Using this type of technology could combat the halo effect and reduce biases in the workforce (Chamorro-Premuzic 2019). 

Nielsen, J., & Cardello, J. (2013, November 9). The Halo Effect. Retrieved from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/halo-effect/#:~:text=The%20halo%20effect%20is%20a,to%20other%2C%20unrelated%2C%20attributes. 

Han, S., Li, Y., Liu, S., Xu, Q., Tan, Q., & Zhang, L. (2018). Beauty is in the eye of the beholder: The halo effect and generalization effect in the facial attractiveness evaluation. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 50(4), 363-376. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.3724/SP.J.1041.2018.00363 

Grant, G. (2018, August 7). Similar-To-Me Bias: How Gender Affects Workplace Recognition. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/georginagrant/2018/08/07/similar-to-me-bias-how-gender-affects-workplace-recognition/#7fcb7479540a 

Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2019, July 17). It’s Time To Expose The Attractiveness Bias At Work. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomaspremuzic/2019/07/17/its-time-to-expose-the-attractiveness-bias-at-work/#5dce6bb31324 

Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2019, October 31). Attractive People Get Unfair Advantages at Work. AI Can Help. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2019/10/attractive-people-get-unfair-advantages-at-work-ai-can-help 

Scott Hensley

PSYCH 424

Lesson 7 Blog Entry

While reading chapter 6 for this week’s lesson I identified with parts of the chapter. The opening story talked about the rowing team in Oxford and how they overcame inner turmoil and were able to beat Cambridge. I had a high school experience that was very similar. I grew up in a small town in eastern Colorado that was surrounded by other towns of similar size that all competed against each other in sports. Since we were little me and my friends always performed well in basketball however were not quite as successful once at the high school level due to competing against more schools. Throughout high school, however, we maintained a winning record and as seniors gained some extra players. These three players came from surrounding schools because of our winning percentage and wanted to go further for their senior year than they had in years past. These additions were difficult at first because these three players (who were very good) were our main competition since the third grade. Despite this hurdle, our new team was able to be successful.

Our coach anticipated this difficulty to work together and before the season started began having get-togethers. These get-togethers were aimed at all of us going to his house to watch moments in NBA history and eat food together. Quickly we started to come together as a team and began hanging out outside of structured get-togethers. We were high schoolers so parties were a regular thing and something we all did together allowing us to bond outside of a school setting. We were able to bond on our mutual dislike of a team named ECA as well as hobbies outside of sports. Although our coach brought us together there was a mutual dislike of him (autocratic) which (ironically) helped us bond even more. This multidimensional team cohesion made us all not only want to play together but also spend our time outside of school together as well. The three players that came to us also filled much-needed roles on the team such as outside shooters and point guard so that inner competition was not a problem.

Our regular season started and we immediately began winning all of our games boosting our confidence greatly. We were also given a huge team confidence boost by beating in overtime our arch-rival ECA who all members of the team had always lost to and hated due to their poor sportsmanship. The individual attributes that each player brought to the team also boosted confidence by knowing we have someone to fill every niche on a good basketball team.

We set goals for ourselves which we met. The first goal was to beat ECA which we did in a dramatic fashion and the second goal was to make it to state. To our excitement we met both of these goals and made all the way to the state playoffs in another city.

All of these things that the chapter explained and more helped succeed mentally to become a very good basketball team. If you are still reading (and I am laughing as I typed this) a horrible twist of fate befell us during the state playoffs. You see, ECA, although in our lineup always in the regular season was in a different division so they made it to state as well. We lost to them in a spectacular fashion and they went on to win the state championship. We were still happy with our performance though and never could have gone as far as we did had we not came together so closely as a team with our new players. On a side note, one of the players that came to us senior year is still my best friend at 33 years old.

Reference:

Gruman, Jamie A., et al. (2017).  Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. 3rd ed., SAGE.

If you were involved in any sports, throughout your life, can you think about a coach that you had a great relationship with. Not, only was this your coach, but you felt as if they were more. You may even still keep in contact with that person. Let’s face it, coaches set the dynamic of the sport’s team. The relationship of the coach between the athlete allows for a successful team.

Coaching involves an optimal climate of the developmental and encouragement between individual athletes (Kleinert, J., 2020). This improves team building in sports, which is needed in order to successful. Working with the coach, has potential to evaluate and enhances perceptions of the coach and athlete relationship (Kleinert, J., 2020). This brings closeness, commitment and complementarity. The main concept in this involves an open line of communication.

Reflecting back on my middle school, cheerleading coach she was the definition of a true leader. She was always on top of us, pushing and motivating us to perform and do better. However, aside from being a coach, she was also a genuine person and cared about each of her athletes. She would remember birthdays, special events, and talk to us on a personal level. We truly got to know her, as she got to know her athletes. We felt trust, compassion, and care amongst her. This helped define our team, and we were a strong team.

Therefore, when a team has a coach that sets the dynamic  of team this leads to a successful team. We all felt comfortable, and committed in our team. This also allowed us to push ourselves harder, because we did not want to let our coach down. We knew winning, made her happy, and we strived every time too give it 100% when we were performing. And alongside, throughout the whole journey, there was our coach, our leader of the pact. Overall it can be predicted if teams have a coach that is driven and builds relationships with their team, above a coaching level the team will be successful and driven to win. I believe all coaches should take this into consideration, when planning a game plan. Because honestly, the leadership starts with them, first.

References

Kleinert, J., Ohlert, J., Carron, B., Eys, M., Feltz, D., Harwood, C., Linz, L., Seiler, R., & Sulprizio, M. (2012). Group Dynamics in Sports: An Overview and Recommendations on Diagnostic and Intervention, The Sport Psychologist, 26(3), 412-434. Retrieved Oct 8, 2020, from https://journals-humankinetics-com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/view/journals/tsp/26/3/article-p412.xml

Teamwork to me, means more than most things. Teamwork in times of dire stress is an important factor in overall survival. I have seen the affect that teamwork in this capacity can truly achieve. Now I know that the lesson spoke more of sports teams and the effectiveness of team cohesion, and I played organized sports, so I got to experience this as well. Those times were great, and I wouldn’t change them for the world; however, I got to experience more teamwork and more overall camaraderie in the United States Army than I ever did in any aspect of organized sports.

In the United States Army, cohesion is everything. The mission success is more achievable when the overall unit is one cohesive and effective group. The unit that I served with on my first deployment in 2014 to the Middle East was by far the most cohesive and effective unit that I ever served with. This unit of soldiers from all walks of life were more than just a group, we were a family. We ate together, we trained together, we grew together, and there was not one thing that we wouldn’t do for one another. Cohesion is defined as a dynamic process which is reflected in the tendency for a group to stick together and remain united in the pursuit of its objectives and for the overall welfare of member affective needs (Gruman et al., 2017). From the leadership at the very top all the way down to my soldiers that I led, we all had each other’s overall welfare at heart, and we knew that we could rely on one another to achieve overall success. This overall success led to our survival and allowed us to return back to our families.

The Conceptual Model of Team Cohesion helps to best explain how my unit was able to turn mission success into guaranteed survival. The first aspect of this model, individual antecedents, allows a group to learn personalities and demographics. In my opinion, this was the most detrimental part of my success as a leader. I was able to learn the personalities of my soldiers, which in turn helped me to learn their demographics. This allowed me to better understand my soldier’s needs, and how I could better serve them. As a leader, I was ineffective and useless without the soldiers under my command. This leads me to the next aspect, social antecedents, which relies on leadership and roles. I cannot stress enough that leadership is ineffective without the soldiers under their command, and that trust is huge among the Army. The command team that I had on this deployment was greater than I could’ve ever imagined. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind within my company that they did not have our back. My commander made it a mission to walk around daily and talk to each and every one of us. This showed us that when she spoke to us, that she did actually care, and she held all of our interests at the utmost importance Our first sergeant was the most approachable senior enlisted leader that I have ever served with. If you had an issue, he was respectful, would gather all information, and then would help you to formulate an effective plan of action. I never left his office feeling inferior or that I wasn’t valued. Both leaders had their roles achieved and created standards that far exceeded anyone’s expectations. Roles are defined as a set of behaviors expected of a person in a particular social position or setting (Gruman et al., 2017). Everyone knew their role within that unit, and we all were better soldiers because of these leaders. We are had role clarity, our roles were clearly defined (Gruman et al., 2017), we accepted those roles, and our performance in those roles far exceeded anyone’s expectations. These two aspects together led to the vast cohesion that we all shared, again we were truly a family and were the most effective unit that I ever was honored to be part of.

This level of cohesion led to huge confidence in one another. You could rely on anyone in that company to help you whenever you needed it, no questions asked. This level of confidence was achieved due to the cohesion and led to our overall performance. Our company regularly would compete in battalion events to further raise camaraderie, and we very seldomly lost. We achieved great things while we were overseas, and all of this was due to teamwork and excellent leadership. I got to appreciate it this more later on in my career when I returned overseas in 2016 to Korea, this time with a completely different unit. This unit was also a good one, but it was nowhere close to the level of cohesion that I had in my first unit. I could rely on a few of my counterparts, but I couldn’t trust a lot of them either. I never had that problem within my first unit, and our performance suffered. I noticed lots of small mistakes within training that was detrimental to survival, and upon trying to correct them I was told to “stay in my lane”. I was told that it was not my job to question training, but as a leader that was exactly what my job was to ensure my soldiers overall welfare. This correction took place in front of my soldiers, which led to their distrust in my leadership abilities. Cohesion wasn’t at the utmost importance in this unit, and we all were affected. Communication was nonexistent, and often we found out what was going to happen or needed to happen after it was already too late. This was not a problem in my first unit, and this led to a lot of distrust in overall leadership in my second unit.

As I stated throughout this post, teamwork is one of the most important aspects in anything any group can achieve. If there is no cohesion, then there is no confidence in one another, and when there is no confidence there is no effectiveness. I would like to thank my leadership from my first unit for exhibiting to me just what leaders should be and how they should lead. I strived to embody these morals throughout my career, and lead in their example. Cohesion is important to any group, and without it overall success will be affected. Cohesion is what makes teamwork affective, and teamwork is what truly made that unit a family.

Captain Butler, your leadership stayed with me and I never doubted anything you ever said. I would’ve walked through fire for you and I know confidently that you would’ve done the same, and for that, I truly thank you. First Sergeant Ballard, your outstanding mentorship made me the effective leader that I became. Your lessons on listening to soldiers and putting their needs above my own helped me to strive to follow in your footsteps and be the best leader that I could be to them. To my first unit, Bravo Company of the 101^st Brigade Support Battalion, thank you for showing me what a unit should be and showing me the power of a cohesive unit. You all accepted me and had my back, and I still would do anything for any of you to this day. You all are family, and to me will always be my family.

Reference:

Gruman, Jamie A., et al. (2017).  Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. 3rd ed., SAGE.

When I was reading this chapter after reading the module’s I was so surprised to learn all these different things about groups and teams. While learning all of these things I could really relate to each topic from different experiences in my life. The topic that stood out to me was Tuckman’s Developmental stages. This topic stood out to me because I could relate to it in my softball teams, my friend group, my coworkers and my marriage.

Tuckman’s Developmental stages consist of forming, storming, norming, performing and later added 5th stage of adjourning. Forming is the first stage that starts with everyone not really knowing each other and everyone is very polite. There is a lack of trust during this stage because of people not knowing one another. Leaders are often sifted through during this stage. The second stage is storming which is the team getting to know each other a little more. The storming stage sorts out the leaders and the different roles within the group. Conflict usually comes to the surface in the storming stage. The roles, leaders, and norms are figured out in this stage and after that they move into the next stage. The next stage is the norming stage. The norming stage is when the roles and norms are more set in stone but changed if needed. In the norming stage people often back out if they do not fit into the group they are in. The next stage is performing. The performing stage is when the group or team is it’s strongest. There is no longer any conflict in this stage and often the goals are starting to be met. The added 5th stage is adjourning. Adjourning is the end of the group/team and often the goals are all met by this stage. In this stage the whole cycle can start over with new groups/teams or new goals for the already formed group or team. I think it’s good that they added this 5th stage because it occurs a lot.

I can relate to these developmental stages when I played softball, when I started new jobs, in my current 8 year relationship, and friendships. The example that I can relate most to this is my workplace. I started at my current job a year ago. I didn’t know anyone when I first started there. There are 9 different classrooms in the building consisting of 1 or 2 teachers. When I started I was introduced to everyone and then that was it. I was in my classroom with my co-teacher and didn’t have any communication with the other teachers in the building. We have training days 2 times a year, which was the forming stage for us. During those training days we started with an activity to get to know one another and team building that expressed everyone’s concerns. After that training day I still felt like I had no friends and it was very difficult to make them while being stuck in my one classroom. The forming stage was very difficult to get through at this job. Finally we started rotating classrooms and I got to know everyone even more, which started the storming stage. The storming stage usually finds a leader but in this case there was no leader, we were all our own leaders of our own classrooms. There was conflict that was sorted out related to not even knowing each other but forming opinions and judgements prior. The norming took place when everyone knew who was permanently in what classroom with a co-teacher. The performing started after my work team started hanging out outside of which which occurred in the storming/norming stage. We all started performing and doing very well in our classrooms while also having good relationships with our co-workers. The adjourning has just started because my place of work is currently struggling and losing a lot of employees. The new cycle will begin when they hire a whole new set of teachers.

I believe the forming stage and teams building goes hand in hand. This stage and team building is very important. It’s important to focus on these stages because it’s like setting the foundation for the team. I don’t think forming and team building is focused on enough and then people question why their teams/groups aren’t working or going as they planned. “To a considerable extent, team building interventions typically are directed towards improving a team’s internal social dynamics (i.e., chemistry).” (Gruman, 149). The social dynamics of a group/team are very important and often tell how a team/group will run and how efficient it will be. If I could change anything about these developmental stages it would be more focus on the forming stage.

Gruman, Jamie A., et al. Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. 3rd ed., SAGE, 2017.

Teamwork is one of the best and worst ways to accomplish big things. In school, in society and the workplace team efforts are essential for so many things in life. Whether it is a team effort to build a new network of agents for a community, or it is a team effort as a family to tackle a big project, team efforts touch every part of our lives because we are social creatures. One of the biggest struggles in a team effort is finding the right mix of members for the effort. Team members should have complementary skill sets, respect for others, and a willing spirit, but these three things are not always easy to find. This is when the no jerk rule, as proposed by Sutton, becomes especially important. Sutton discovered the no jerk rule when he was working at Harvard, “we started talking in earnest about how to keep demeaning and arrogant jerks out of our group. From that moment on, when discussing whether to hire faculty, it was legitimate for any of us to question the decision by asking: ‘The candidate seems smart, but would this hire violate our no asshole rule?’ And it made the department a better place.” (Sutton, 2007).

Imagine how much smoother workplaces would run if they all invoked the no asshole rule, now let us extend that to teams, and clubs, and friend groups. It has long been said that one bad apple can spoil the barrel and we know there are a lot of bad apples out there. According to Sutton, two things can help you spot the jerk in your midst.

• Test One: After talking to the alleged jerks, does the ‘target’ feel oppressed, humiliated, de-energized, or belittled by the person? In particular, does the target feel worse about him or herself?
• Test Two: Does the alleged jerk aim his or her venom at people who are less powerful rather than at those people who are more powerful? (Sutton, 2007).

Jerks in your midst can interfere with productivity, morale, a hostile workplace, and they can make the difference between success and failure.

According to Sutton, there are two types of work jerks. The first are those that are open about their actions, “People who loudly insult and belittle their underlings and rivals are easier to catch and discipline.” (Sutton, 2007). The second is more subtle and include, “Two-faced backstabbers like my colleague, those who have enough skill and emotional control to save their dirty work for moments when they can’t get caught, are tougher to stop – even though they may do as much damage as a raging maniac. (Sutton, 2007).

Kerfoot reported that the behavior of such employees “Toxic behavior can range from the very serious bullying and sabotage of very destructive people to the annoying and hard to cope behavior of just plain jerks.” (Sutton ,2007). This type of employee, boss, or CEO is that they create disharmony and create drama that interferes with those workers and CEOs that are trying to handle business. This behavior undermines confidence and breeds’ discontent. Kerfoot reminds us that “Civility is not just a nice concept to have at work. It is necessary for the orderly functioning of our organizations.” (Sutton 2007). This is especially important in jobs in the fields of medicine, psychiatry, and psychology. Jobs in such fields are already high-pressure situations, we don’t need any jerks making it harder to provide proper patient care.

In the healthcare industry, whether it is physical health or mental health that brings a patient to seek treatment, it is imperative that they are given the level of care necessary to help them get back to a healthier life. This is most often accomplished with a team of healthcare workers from nurses and attendants, to doctors and chiefs that oversee their care. These teams take on the most important task in that patient’s life, caring for that patient’s life. Working in groups can be difficult, O’Neil and McLarnon, reported that given that conflict is common, inevitable even, wherever interdependencies occur, such as the interdependencies of a team, this, unfortunately, means that conflict can be, and usually is, a regular occurrence. (O’Neill, 2018). Some conflict in a team can be beneficial, according to O’Neil and McLarnon,  “Theory and conventional thought suggests that task conflict can be beneficial for team effectiveness because it promotes discussion and exploration of different ideas, and stimulates in-depth analysis of alternative courses of action.” O’Neill ,2018).  However, the conflicts created by workplace jerks is neither helpful nor constructive, it is demeaning and destructive.

In a teamwork environment, there is a higher degree of personal responsibility, we are responsible for not only the patient but our other team members. According to Barker, an expert on teamwork, participative organizations must ask their workers to give more of themselves to their work: to give more time, to give more energy, to identify strongly with their goals and the needs of their organization.” (Barker, 1999). We cannot expect the team members to give so much of themselves while being torn down from within. Barker further reported that “a participative work culture continuously creates meaningful knowledge about “how to do teamwork” (Barker, 1999). Barker also suggests that the key to teamwork, or a participative organization, is the consequences and rewards that team members encounter.

Consequences come in two forms, those that punish and those that reward. The consequence of proper or positive teamwork is a more peaceful work environment and smoother operation of the team, as well as more willing efforts by team members which helps support and achieve the goals of the team. The consequences of negative teamwork are more serious. Negative teamwork, and negative participation breeds discontent, unmanageability, hostile environments, and overwhelming obstacles in trying to achieve team goals. Work jerks create negative feels of team participation, hostile work environments, and undermine the confidence of the team. Such team members should first be warned about their behavior and if it continues, they should be removed from the team and possibly even suffer the harshest of work consequences, unemployment.

Teamwork is essential in the healthcare industry, including the realm of applied social psychology. Teamwork is the most effective way to provide patients with the level of care needed to help them recover. If we must work in teams, we certainly don’t need any work jerks on our teams, because as Kerfoot reminded us “There are jerks in this world. There are jerks at work.” (Kerfoot, 2008). We cannot escape them entirely, so it is our job to not be one of the jerks and try to make the workplace a better place to be. However, as Kerfoot said, “Patient safety cannot be compromised because we allow jerks to create chaos.” (Kerfoot, 2008). So, to put in bluntly, “we need to have a no-jerk rule”, it is also paramount that we take the concept to heart and use it to create a more compatible and more harmonious working environment. In this way, both the workers and the patient’s benefit from the environment that surrounds them.

In conclusion, it could be said that regardless of the field that you work in, teamwork is essential to success, and there is some reliance in managing teams to prevent obstacles. Social psychology is one effective way to help manage those teams, and to understand some of the dynamics that occur between team members. Whenever people work together, there is bound to be friction, and interaction that results in people acting like “jerks.” However, by understanding these behaviors, and using psychology to understand them, we can make the workplace both more pleasant and safer by preventing chaos.

References

Barker, J. R. (1999). The discipline of teamwork: Participation and concretive control. Sage Publications.

Kerfoot, K. M. (2008). Leadership, civility, and the ‘no jerks’ rule. Urologic Nursing, 28(2), 149-150.

O’Neill, T. A., & McLarnon, M. J. (2018). Optimizing team conflict dynamics for high performance teamwork. Human Resource Management Review, 28(4), 378-394.

Sutton, R. I. (2007). The no asshole rule: Building a civilized workplace and surviving one that isn’t. Business Plus.

     Have you ever felt pressured to do something while you were part of a team or group that led to a flawed decision? In January of 1986, the orbiter Challenger exploded 73 seconds after the launch due to that exact reason. Decision Makers and top echelons at NASA and Morton Thiokol cared more about satisfying and entertaining its major customer, the American people rather than the safety of the launch and its crew members. America was becoming disinterested in spaceflight and NASA saw the dwindling popularity and excitement in their space shuttle program. Groupthink theory could help explain how leaders and decision makers played a major part in the disaster that occured in 1986. 

     Groupthink is defined as “a process of flawed decision making that occurs as a result of strong pressures among group members to reach an agreement”. (Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M., 2017). After the explosion, the Rogers Commission examined the causes of the explosion and one of the “potentially catastrophic” elements was a rubber part called an O-ring. In the article, Challenger Explosion: How Groupthink and Other Causes Led to the Tragedy it states, “The O-ring was known to be sensitive to the cold and could only work above 53 degrees. Temperature on the launch pad that morning was 36 degrees.”. With this knowledge that NASA and Morton Thiokol had, how did the launch get approved for launch? Was it a lack of communication amongst the groups, a way to chase publicity that the companies saw was dwindling, a result of major pressure the group had internally and externally, or all three?

     There was national, group, and political pressure on NASA and Morton Thiokol, the company that built the solid rocket boosters to have the Challenger launch on time. NASA had averaged five missions a year after the projected frequency of the space shuttle program was 50 flights a year. How could they keep America’s interest if they weren’t having as many missions as originally promised? They diversified the astronaut crews with women, people of color, and scientists but that proved to not be enough to keep the country’s attention. President Ronald Reagan was also announcing the launch at his Union address that night. The only option that NASA and Morton Thiokol felt they had was to continue with the launch as scheduled. As we know, that faulty decision making led to seven people losing their lives. 

     The effects of groupthink could be small or big but regardless of the impact of the flawed decision, it is important for people to know about it while trying to prevent it. “Janis (1983) proposed a set of prescriptions for preventing groupthink. The prescriptions generally focus on helping a group carefully examine all relevant information and courses of action to ensure that it does not rush into making a poorly informed and reasoned decision”. Maybe if NASA and Morton Thiokol followed Janis’ set of prescriptions for preventing groupthink or examined all of the information before rushing into the launch due to pressure they felt, the outcome of that day could have been different. The Challenger tragedy led NASA to focus on a safer future in space by fixing communication and the management of safety at the organization. Next time that you are part of a group, consider ways to prevent groupthink to stop any flawed decisions from being made. 

References:

Gruman, J. A.,  Schneider, F. W. , &. Coutts, L.M. (Eds.). (2016). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems 3rd edition. SAGE Publications.

Teitel, Amy Shira. “Challenger Explosion: How Groupthink and Other Causes Led to the Tragedy.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 25 Jan. 2018, www.history.com/news/how-the-challenger-disaster-changed-nasa. 

I have worked in a lot of different rolls across many organizations. In those roles, I have seen teams work well…and not so well together. In order to make organizations and teams work more effectively, methods within social psychology were applied. As I now research these principals I can, in hindsight, see more easily what was accomplished by these methods. 

One example of this was when I worked in a hospital with the nursing staff. There were certain clicks within the organization and what I found was that communication was not great and the teams seemed disjointed at times. They did not have clear direction. If I look at some principles of organizational psychology, I can see how the corrective actions that were put in place were applied and helped.  

Within the article I read, I found that performance improvement seems to be a central idea associated with applying organizational psychology. (Donaldson et al., 2011) In the case I described at the hospital, we saw a poorly performing team due to poor communication. The resolution to this was to first meet with the team to understand what they needed and wanted in reference to daily and shift communications. Next the feedback was reviewed, a daily communication report was developed that went to all teams and allowed for comments to be added so the document was a living and breathing document. Along with the communication, regular start and end of shift meetings were put in place and this further reinforced that:

• the same information was given to all team members each day 
• If a person was unable to attend the meeting the document / shift email was available, so the team had the ability to be informed. 

Through this effort communication improved and, in the end, performance improved as the communications eliminated a lot of guess work that was going on. Specifically, tasks that were noted as needing to be done were getting accomplished and the oncoming shifts knew what had to be done and what was already complete. In the end, the team went from disjointed to very effective thus reinforcing the idea that applying ideas of organizational psychology does help improve performance. 

Donaldson, S. I., Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Nakamura, J. (Eds.). (2011). Series in applied psychology.Applied positive psychology: Improving everyday life, health, schools, work, and society. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group. 

In the past 10 years or so, remote and online work has grown in popularity. Many customer service providers now help customers through web-based chats, some marketing companies have allowed their employees to work from home, and even some medical professionals are embracing telehealth services. After the COVID crisis, even more jobs have moved to being online, and this trend doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. But how does this compare to traditional face-to-face work culture?

In traditional workplaces, employees are expected to show up in person and stay on the job until a certain time. They are frequently monitored more often than not in order to “ensure productivity,” and in some cases, they may also have to deal with toxic co-workers. It’s not always terrible, though: many people make friendships at work, and enjoy working with teams of other like-minded people. Regardless of whether one’s experience is a positive or negative one, in a traditional workplace, an employee is surrounded by people for most of the day. A culture is established based on the constant interactions between employees and supervisors and the relationships that result.

With online work, interaction may very well still be frequent, but it’s not in-person (even if it’s over video), which can change dynamics significantly. In fact, a study by Collins, Hislop, & Cartwright (2016) found that the experience of and need for social support is impacted by working from home: instead of having to deal with all their coworkers on a regular basis as in the traditional workplace, employees who work from home are better able to focus on the more positive relationships with coworkers and distance themselves from the more negative ones, leading to stronger feelings of social support and greater cohesion when working together with the coworkers they get along with. However, over time, this inclination can potentially lead to more insularization and negatively affect the collective identity of the team as a whole as tight-knit groups split off.

Although online work is growing fast, it’s still in its infancy. There is a lot we still don’t know yet about its effects on employees, work relations, teamwork, and more. However, it seems that while avoiding negativity can certainly be a good, and sometimes necessary, thing, if an online workplace wants to promote overall team cohesion, it’s important that a balance is found between avoiding all negativity and letting it run rampant. Increasing isolation between employees who would otherwise have to learn how to interact with each other in person may prove harmful to the group in the long run if not addressed quickly.

References:

Collins, A.M., Hislop, D. & Cartwright, S. (2016), Social support in the workplace between teleworkers, office‐based colleagues and supervisors. New Technology, Work and Employment, 31: 161-175.

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.

The world of politics seems a bit crazy. Especially since this is an election year. But it is becoming more and more evident that our two-party system is failing the United States. Each side (Democrat or Republican) thinks they are doing things the right way. However, neither side seems to want to work with the other to come up with more effective plans or to meet on some middle ground. As psychology majors, I think most students can see a clear social psychological phenomenon happening in politics.

To help explain the social-psychological aspects of American politics, I will use the groupthink theory described in Applied Social Psychology, 3rd Edition: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems (Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M., 2017). Groupthink is described as “a process of flawed decision making that occurs as a result of strong pressures among group members to reach an agreement”. (Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M., 2017). Immediately you can see how groupthink would affect politics.

We often see decisions being made that have a nearly unanimous agreement. I think it is a bit unusual for groups to always agree. Surely there would be other ideas from other group members. Groupthink influences group members to come to an agreement regardless of whether everyone agrees. This happens because of pressures within the “in-group”. Within these groups, a social norm is established and when someone tries to stray from the social norm, they are usually met with intense pressures to return to the norm so as to not disrupt the comfort of the group, even if that person disagrees.

In a harsh atmosphere like politics, this pressure is probably much more intense than say a chess team or a school club. In an article from The FL Orlando Sentinel, David Broder (2007) gives us two examples from the republican side and the democratic side. When republicans saw the risks of military failure in Iraq, they did not offer any new ideas. They chose to stick to the status quo and remain loyal to Bush-era policies regardless of how much support they had. On the other side, Democrats have no plan for illegal immigrants other than allowing them to refuge in the united states. They only find fault in plans that were supported by President Bush.

These effects of groupthink in politics create a failing system that will likely take decades to repair. Possibly longer if we do not accept changing politics and come to some agreement on important policies any time soon. Politicians on both sides (at the time of the aforementioned article) seemed to be blatantly unaware of how quickly and how much politics would change. Compared to the past, politics in the 21^st century became and likely will become more diverse and dynamic compared to previous decades. (Broder, David. 2007). With this in mind, I think it is important to be aware of groupthink and think outside of the box, even if it doesn’t agree with your group’s current beliefs.

References:

– Broder, D. (2007, June 7). Pandering, groupthink from both sides – A dispiriting display from Democrats, Republicans. Orlando Sentinel, The (FL), p. A13. Available from NewsBank: Access World News: https://infoweb-newsbank-com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/apps/news/document-view?p=AWNB&docref=news/119A03A7632C97C8.

– Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2017). Applied social psychology, 3rd Edition: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles: SAGE.

When you hear about someone who has died due to complications of childbirth it may seem as though it is a rare occurrence – happening significantly less often than it once did in the past. Unfortunately, this is not the case for Black women in the U.S. One woman’s story that I will share via NPR News is the one of Shalon Irving. Shalon Irving was an epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She was studying how structural inequality, trauma, and violence could make people sick. Three weeks after giving birth to her baby, Shalon became part of her own studies when she died due to complications after birth related to high blood pressure.

There is a significant racial disparity in the deaths related to pregnancy and/or childbirth. The CDC reports that Black mothers die at 3 to 4 times the rate of white women (CDC 2011-2013). In other words, Black mothers are 243% more likely to die from childbirth than white mothers (CDC 2011-2013). The racial disparity is not limited to childbirth, however. Black women are 22% more likely to die from heart disease and 71% more likely to die from cervical cancer (CDC 2011-2013). Shalon is among hundreds of Black women with horror stories related to health care. So why is this the case?

Firstly, we need to recognize the United States’ long history of racism and the lasting racism that is prevalent today. Racism often comes in the form of microaggressions and stereotypes in the medical field. One stereotype that is prevalent in the medical field is that Black people have “thicker skin” and “less sensitive nerve endings”. Over 50% of medical trainees believe this. This stereotype is likely born from indoctrinating racism/prejudices. Unfortunately, this stereotype leads to discriminatory behaviors such as rating Black people as feeling less pain than they report or deciding that Black mothers’ concerns while in labor are less important than the concerns of white mothers.

I believe the best way to intervene in this situation would be to implement interpersonal conflict management (Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M., 2017). Specifically addressing the “concern for others” dimension. If we use the integrating style of conflict management (problem-solving through the exchange of information), we can educate health care personnel on the stereotypes and biases that affect the care that Black people receive in hospitals and clinics in an attempt to lower the rates of Black people receiving poor care due to internal bias. We can further strengthen this intervention by including the obliging style of conflict management (making adjustments to satisfy others), which would give health care personnel the incentive to place a higher concern for the patient and their needs. Using this style of conflict management would challenge health care workers to reflect on racial differences and focus on patient complaints rather than falling victim to stereotypes.

References:

– Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2017). Applied social psychology, 3rd Edition: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles: SAGE.

– Martin, Nina. Propublica. (2017, December 7). Black Mothers Keep Dying After Giving Birth. Shalon Irving’s Story Explains Why. NPR News. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2017/12/07/568948782/black-mothers-keep-dying-after-giving-birth-shalon-irvings-story-explains-why

– Sabin, Janice A. (2020, January 6). How We Fail Black Patients in Pain. Association of American Medical Colleges. Retrieved from https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/how-we-fail-black-patients-pain

The United States prides itself on being a highly individualist nation. In individualist cultures, more importance is placed on the individual, as the name implies.  Group goals can be important, but ultimately, the objectives and preferences of the individual are given greater weight than any group or organization they may be a part of. In the workplace, this can be seen as competition and in extreme cases, workaholism.

On the opposite end are countries such as China and India, who are very collectivist. These cultures put an emphasis on the goals and needs of the group over the individual. This isn’t to say that individual needs are ignored, but they are considered secondary to the needs of the team (Gruman, Schneider, & Coutts, 2017). Collectivism in the workplace may include deeper friendships with colleagues, but fewer opinions put forward by employees afraid to “rock the boat.”

It’s important to note that neither individualism nor collectivism is inherently “better” or “worse” than the other; they are simply different cultural values. Each have their pros and cons. When it comes to infectious diseases, one of the cons of a collectivist society, according to a 2013 study by Cashdan & Steele, is that pathogen prevalence tends to be higher, possibly due to the fact that families in collectivist cultures are more likely to take care of friends and family when they are ill, thus contracting the illness themselves. This study was done 7 years ago, so it hasn’t been applied to COVID-19 yet, but if true, it could potentially explain why COVID-19 spread so rapidly in collectivist China before safety measures were taken to slow its spread.

However, when it comes to slowing the spread of an infectious disease such as COVID that has already taken hold in a population, research by Biddlestone, Green, & Douglas (2020) suggests that more individualist cultures, such as the United States, have actually had lower rates of social distancing and self-quarantining than collectivist cultures, leading to the individualist nations having higher rates of COVID among the population overall. (Interestingly, this same study also found a correlation between individualism and the likelihood of believing in COVID-related conspiracy theories, though this will need to be studied further in order to draw any specific conclusions.) It’s not specified why collectivist cultures have tended to flatten the curve more than individualist countries in general, but it could potentially be similar to workplace attitudes—individuals don’t want to “rock the boat,” so they follow government recommendations and regulations in order to promote greater harmony amongst the group and avoid social ostracization.

When the world finally comes out on the other side of the pandemic and is able to look at the data, perhaps we’ll find that a balance between individualism and collectivism is needed when it comes to illnesses. Caring for sick friends and family members is noble, but greater safety precautions should be taken. And although social distancing and self-quarantining are not always “fun,” sometimes it is better to put personal desires aside and just do it anyway for the good of the population as a whole.

References:

Biddlestone, M., Green, R., & Douglas, K. M. (2020). Cultural orientation, power, belief in conspiracy theories, and intentions to reduce the spread of COVID‐19. British Journal of Social Psychology, 59(3), 663-673.

Cashdan, E., & Steele, M. (2013). Pathogen prevalence, group bias, and collectivism in the standard cross-cultural sample. Human Nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.), 24(1), 59-75.

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

Nearly 150 years ago the Irish came to America as refugees fleeing Ireland in the wake of a famine. They were not embraced by the American public or looked at kindly. They were called undesirables who wanted Americans jobs, spoke differently and who practiced a different religion. This threatened the norms of American society. Long before the prejudice and discrimination against the Irish, was the prejudice and discrimination against the Jews called anti-Semitism. Since biblical times, the Jewish people have been poorly treated because they have their own beliefs and religion separate from those who came in and conquered their lands. They were made to live in groups, apart from the rest of society. They were forced to wear an identifiable garment so others would know they were Jewish and eventually they were taken from their homes and forced to live in concentration camps where they would be starved, experimented on, gassed and killed. This is all because they were looked at as different.

In the wake of all the rioting and unrest in the United States right now and in the past couple of years with the hate crimes, we have seen groups of people come together and embrace and lift up those people who are apart of cultures and backgrounds different from our own. An example would be the shooting at the Emmanuel AME church in Charleston, SC. A young man named Dillon Roof walked into a church where he studied and prayed with a few members of the congregation before opening fire killing nine people. This was a crime of hate that took place just after the shooting and later rioting in Ferguson, Missouri. Charleston did not see rioting and further hate being spread. Instead the community came together as one. A peaceful walk was organized to show support for the community and the entire country heard about the way Charleston handled such a terrible atrocity.

Prejudice and discrimination has been around as long as humans have been on the earth. We have our social groups we’re apart of and of whom we want to be favored by. The need for social identity and being a part of our in-group accounts for prejudice and discrimination. (Bourhis 2020) Those of whom are in the out-group are seen as competitors for the things we need or want. Books and manuscripts on how to effectively decrease such tensions have been written. One such book is called “Race, Prejudice and Education” by Harold Cyril Bibby. This book was written to help school teachers teach about racism and prejudice and how to use the information in a real life situation. Bibby informs us that most prejudices are acquired during adolescence. He also explains that each country experiences different types of prejudices and therefore the manuscript needs to be altered according to each countries need.

Bourhis, R. Y. (2020). A journey researching prejudice and discrimination. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne, 61(2), 95.

When I was a little girl I used to want to be a writer. I often told that to my musician father who would reply that I was destined to be a singer who wrote her own songs. I was spunky and sassy and incredibly independent as a child, and my greatest dream was to have a fulfilling career. Flash to me now, and I am a 33 year old mom of two who is just now getting my career goals in order. I am not saying that I don’t love the choices that I have made in my life, but what I am saying is somewhere along my journey I completed changed course. Somewhere along my journey, being a wife and mother became my only goal.

Sexism is when a person is treated differently based on their sex (Gruman, Schneider & Coutts, 2017). There are many areas of sexism all throughout our lives. How about when a woman swears that she got out of a speeding ticket by flirting with a cop. Do cops really give women more of a break on the road than men? If they did, that would be sexist. Typically when we think of sexism we think of what is referred to as hostile sexism. Hostile sexism is when negative attitudes towards women are expressed (Gruman et. al., 2017). However, there is another type of sexism that often goes undetected and that is benevolent sexism.

Benevolent sexism is when positive yet stereotypical views of women are expressed that reaffirm their weaker position in a male dominant world (Hamilton & DeHart, 2020). Though benevolent sexism is perceived to be less harmful than hostile sexism, research has shown that women respond similarly to both forms (Hamilton & DeHart, 2020). In a study done on college women, women who received a hostile or benevolent sexism treatment in the lab went on to drink more that night than women who did not (Hamilton & DeHart, 2020). This is indicative that benevolent sexism can be just as harmful as hostile sexism (Hamilton & DeHart, 2020).Taking a look into the hidden influence of benevolent sexism on women is important because it can have a detrimental affect on their health (Hamilton & DeHart, 2020).

Benevolent sexism lies undetected in society because it is seemingly kind. Gruman et. al. notes that a simple business conversation in which a male coworker comments on a female executive’s outfit is benevolent sexism because it places an emphasis on the traditional stereotype that women should be seen for their beauty and not their brains (2017). Sometimes when I take a look at my own life, I am not sure how my morals and traditions changed so much over the course of my ten developmental years through adolescence. Was there a buildup of benevolent sexism that made me feel as though being a mother was my only option in life? It’s hard to say. Either way, I am happy to be where I am, but learning about benevolent sexism really opened my eyes to the roles we follow as a society. Maybe it’s time those roles change.

References

Gruman, J.A.,Schneider, F.W., & Coutts, L.A. (2017). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Hamilton, H. R., & DeHart, T. (2020). Cheers to equality! both hostile and benevolent sexism predict increases in college women’s alcohol consumption. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1007/s11199-020-01140-2

I have lived with the anxiety of stereotype threat since I was a small boy. I am originally from the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee and was raised by a single mother. We never had much money, but we always had a television. From the time I was a child, I noticed that there is a persistent narrative in works of fiction and non-fiction that Appalachian people are uneducated, fervently religious, violent, racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and poor. We are often portrayed as what Gruman 2017 defines as deserving poor with individualistic leanings who are content with being lost causes. Willfully ignorant and lazy, the deserving Hillbilly is granted no sympathy because he is the author of his own plight. Many times, he is a methamphetamine addict or alcoholic. 

Knowing this, I worked for many years to craft my presentation and personality in a way that would not exemplify those stereotypes and made conscious efforts to eliminate any discernible traces of mountain heritage. In elementary school, children would ask me where I was from. I would reply, “I’m from here, just like you.” Seemingly bewildered, they would often shake their heads and mutter, “No…” Part of the question was based on the fact that I attempted to use a non-regional dialect when speaking. I studied people on live television, especially the news, and emulated their speech to the best of my ability. I also tried to use their vocabulary instead of the colloquial words/phrases that were common in the area. For many years, I even intentionally mispronounced the word “Appalachian” to include a long a sound in the third syllable and a sh sound in place of the ch. I also avoided talking or learning about any stereotypical topics of interest that were commonly associated with the area like Country music, Nascar, Professional Wrestling, fishing, etc. Maybe they wanted to talk like hillbillies, but I certainly did not.

In many portrayals, Appalachians are visually depicted as perpetually dirty, people with missing and/or rotten teeth and unkempt hair. To combat this stereotype, I was vigilant about ensuring I was always clean and put together. I spent an hour getting ready every day to ensure my teeth, hair and nails were presentable. I remember a friend’s mother compared me in a positive light directly to her son and described me as polite and never having a “hair out of place.” That memory is probably from 5th grade and I have never forgotten that Mrs. Jeffers said that about me. This was very gratifying as I made constant efforts to be clean, mannerly and cultured.

I moved to California when I was 19 years old to obtain more exposure to diverse groups of people and experience what it was like to live in a large city. I wanted to see if Los Angeles was the horrible place so many teachers and preachers had described. However, I also found living there had become exhausting in some ways. The constant code switching between family who knew my origins and acquaintances who had no preconceived notions of me, had grown tiresome. I had no intention of conforming to their cultural expectations or committing to their way of life. I thought a change of scenery would help and provide a great opportunity to start over.

I soon found myself fighting a losing battle. It was even harder to hide my mountain qualities in California, especially my accent which stuck out like a sore thumb. Going to college here was tough as well. My accent is not synonymous with academia, in fact it is often portrayed and the antithesis. Although I knew a few professionals with graduate degrees growing up, most had moved to the area from somewhere else, usually out of state. Looking back, I now realize that I did not personally know anyone with a Bachelors degree that was actually from my hometown. However, to fight the stereotype, I always placed a high value on education. My mom, who has her Associates, made sure of this. She taught me that education would present an opportunity that few Appalachians had at that time: the chance to get out of the mountains and live somewhere else.

As a child I was very religious. I attended multiple Southern Baptist churches and loved it. We took the Bible literally and were quick to denounce those who did not. For whatever reason, I was proud to exemplify that stereotype. After moving to California and going to college, that all changed. One philosophy course was all it took. I quickly realized the reasons why faith had been waining for years and that feelings were not facts. This helped open the door to a deeper form of introspection that allowed me to examine my apprehension and resentment of my heritage. Learning about psychology, sociology and media effects research has helped me understand that I have been suffering with sterotype threat for most of my life. I realized that I was as prone to stereotype people with my area as anyone could be. I decided that I would work to accept them and, therefore, myserlf. Over time, I have learned to make peace with who I am and even grow more comfortable in exhibiting more qualities prevalent in the people of the Smoky Mountains. I do not code switch quite as much and have attempted to let my natural accent flow more freely. I also do not avoid using colloquial phrases or topics of conversation that relate to common interests of the area. I now realize that being Appalachian does not have to mean all of the negative things I once believed and that stereotypes are not always true. Take me from me, a sober, liberal, middle class, Appalachian atheist, living in California and completing my undergrad in psychology. 

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. ISBN 978-1-4833-6973-0

Sexism in the workplace has always been an issue, but it has come a long way from the 1950s. Men had higher positions, and to be complemented by the boss meant something positive. If anything, it said he liked you and may favor you. Yet, in 2020, we are still battling sexism in the workplace. It has been a long time since men in the workplace being allowed to say and do what they want. Now, it has severe consequences, and it has created such tension between men and women in the workplace. Men don’t understand how their benevolent sexism isn’t appreciated. A compliment that you think shows good intent doesn’t show harmless flattery, it shows how you truly view the person (Tannenbaum 2013). Since I started working again, I have experienced compliments that hurt my view of how I work and my value by customers.

If you identify as a woman and work in a male-dominated field, you most likely have experienced benevolent sexism. The idea of a good compliment may be seen as positive, but it is damaging, making it a more subtle version of sexism. Simple minimum wage jobs are full of compliments that don’t leave you feeling good. Social axioms lead people to believe these compliments are meant to be good because they think the thought behind it is obvious (Gruman et al. 2017). Just because someone feels their intentions are obvious doesn’t mean the context is correct. Compliments can be great in specific contexts and situations. Telling your coworker who is serious about her job “you are prettier when you smile” is sexism. Validating your daughter that she does, in fact, look pretty when she smiles after getting braces is different. Your coworker doesn’t need you to tell her how she looks. Your daughter may need a little confidence boost the first week of getting braces. Context matters with compliments, and that doesn’t make women sensitive.

Compliments, even subtle, can create issues because the context and intention behind it are layered. They can have long-lasting adverse effects in different situations (Satow 2020). The compliment may seem straightforward, “You look very good with your new haircut,” but what context is it under? Are you saying it to your mother, your son’s teacher, or your boss? The relationship with the person changes these layers. It can go from complimenting your mom to sexualizing your son’s teacher. Do you genuinely think the haircut fits their face structure, or do you think it makes them more attractive? Saying “You changed up your hair, it suits you” is different than saying,” your haircut makes you look good.” If you want to compliment, your actions aren’t always obvious. If they are apparent, they may not be welcomed.

Lastly, complimenting your boss on her looks isn’t a simple compliment. If your boss was a man, you most likely wouldn’t tell him his new pants look good on him without being prompted. Instead, you would compliment him on closing his deal or that you see how hard he worked during that business meeting. You also wouldn’t tell a coworker his outfit looks great today unless it was a relationship where the norm is to compliment outfits. This is where the relationship with the person and the context of the situation comes in. You can tell your boss she held a very informative meeting that you took a lot from. You can tell your coworker she did a great job closing that difficult deal. You don’t need to remind the women at your work about their appearance, I’m sure they are aware of how they look. You can tell your close work friend that the new outfit she was telling you about does look as good as she described it. Context, relationship, and the situation are always crucial to avoiding benevolent sexism.

Tannenbaum, M. (2013, April 2). The Problem When Sexism Just Sounds So Darn Friendly… Retrieved from https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/psysociety/benevolent-sexism/?fbclid=IwAR3dHI7fv8-ZhEZn1OA0HPUq7wbd8U8sm73qwDb1PDM7BDpT6fQ0_dbkvko

Satow, R. (2020, January 15). Does “Benevolent Sexism” Cause Harm? Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/life-after-50/202001/does-benevolent-sexism-cause-harm

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2017). Social Axioms Approach. In Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems (pp. 390-396). Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.

Glick, P., & Fiske, S. T. (2011). Ambivalent Sexism Revisited. Psychology of women quarterly, 35(3), 530–535. https://doi.org/10.1177/0361684311414832