When being sucky turns into being a BAMF: The two sides to social facilitation

After reading the chapter for this week, the concept that I could readily illustrate with a personal, vivid experience was social facilitation.  According to Zajonc’s (1965) Social Facilitation Theory, the presence of others increases an individual’s performance on tasks that are easy or have been mastered but decreases an individual’s performance on tasks that are difficult or novel.  Specifically, the presence of others elicits arousal in an individual, which then facilitates a dominate response.  In turn, this dominate response can either lead to an increase or a decrease in performance levels depending on the ease of the task the individual is trying to complete (Zajonc, 1965).  That is, if the task is generally easy for everyone or is specifically easy for you (i.e., you’re a bossat it), your dominate response is to do well on that task.  Therefore, you perform even better in front of a crowd because the presences of others heightens this dominate response.  By contrast, when a task is considered to be generally difficult or is specifically difficult for you (e.g., you just started learning a new skill), your dominate response is to not do so well on the task.  As a result, you tend to perform poorly in front of an audience because the presences of others heightens this dominate response (Zajonc, 1965).

One of my behaviors that I think illustrates the two sides of this theory is my participation in the school band from sixth grade to twelfth grade.  In sixth grade, there was a morning and an afternoon class for band.  I was placed in the afternoon class, which was fine with me.  However, when we chose the instrument that we would be learning to play, I quickly realized that I was the only flute player in my class period.  Being the only flute player didn’t become a problem until our director made me play a certain scale or part of a song in front of everyone.  The director usually had everyone play a part individually at some point, but it was worse for me because I had no one else to share in my misery as a flute player.  During these moments, I was a nervous wreck.  My breath came out all shaky, my hand would sort of tremble as I played each note, and I could feel myself becoming flushed as I progressed through my piece of music.  I never experienced these types of responses when I practiced at home, alone in my room; therefore, I knew that they were caused by having to play in front of my peers.  Furthermore, because I had never touched a flute before the sixth grade, I wasn’t the greatest flute player, so not being able to play very well was my dominate response to this task.  Taken together, these factors created the perfect condition for social facilitation such that the presence of my band peers caused me to become physiologically aroused, which then elicited my dominate response of not being able playing well.  In other words, during these moments I generally did not play loudly enough or I played a certain rhythm wrong because I was performing a somewhat novel task in front of an audience.  The worst part of these experiences was that the director would never take pity on me.  Instead, I was required to play a specific part until I got it right or I played loudly enough.


I realize now that this wasn’t some form of torture, but rather techniques that the director needed to use in order for me to become a better flutist.  Interestingly enough, during the later years of my band experience, I became less of a nervous wreck when the director had us individually play a piece of music.  In fact, during my sophomore year in marching band, I played the piccolo and had a duet with a saxophone in the song, ‘Summer Loving’, from the motion picture Grease.  The adrenaline rush I got from playing in front a lot of people continued to increase every football game, so that by the time we performed our show at the marching band competition, I gave the best damn performance of my life.  We ended up receiving 1s on our show from all of the judges, which is the best score a marching band can receive.  Now, I’m not saying that we got a high score solely because of me, but I do know that our score was partly due to the fact that I didn’t suck.  Had I performed poorly the judges would have made specific comments on their score sheet about the piccolo player; however, their comments reflected that fact that they enjoyed the duet (i.e., I did not suck).  In the end, I am thankful that I was able to overcome the somewhat negative side of social facilitation and benefit from the more positive side of the theory.

n = 813   
 ____________________________________  

Zajonc, R. B. (1965). Social facilitation. Science, 149, 269-274.   

Homer or Spock? Find out which one you are!

Irrational

Hyperrational

   

        <----------------------------------------->  

The book I chose to read for my Tradebook Blog was Dan Ariely’s (2010) The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home.  Ariely has earned a PhD in cognitive psychology and business administration.  With that being said, the premise of the book revolves around the idea that many times we let our intuitions lead us astray, resulting in irrational behavior (Ariely, 2010).  One analogy that Ariely uses to illustrate human thinking involves Spock and Homer Simpson (see above).  Specifically, Ariely believes that if people were placed on a spectrum with Homer at one end and Spock at the other, most people would be closer to Homer in most situations.  However, Ariely also highlights the ways in which our irrationalities contribute to our humanness.  That is, because of our irrationalities we are able to adapt to a variety of situations, learn to trust others, love the ones we are with, and enjoy effortful labor.  Throughout the book, Ariely (2010) provides empirical evidence to support the duality of irrationality. Specifically, we are able to learn how compensation impact performance, why we come to value what we create, and why our ideas are better than others’. We also gain a better understanding of adaption and learn the harsh truths of assortative matting (think of the number on the forehead game that Dr. G. had us play).  Furthermore, we are able to gain insight into why people feel compelled to help one person but not many.  Lastly, Ariely (2010) emphasizes the need for the experimental approach when individually making important decisions and in areas such as business and public policy because it is the best way to learn about what really works.

My decision to choose this book was partially based on the book reviews that I had read on Amazon.com.  A lot of the reviews I read were very specific when describing why they enjoyed Ariely’s book so much.  Therefore, I felt that I was able to get a good understanding of what the book was about.  Another reason I decided to choose this book was because I visited Ariely’s official website (it’s actually his personal blog).  By reading his posts, I was able to get a good sense of his ‘voice’.  Now that I have completed reading this book, I full heartedly believe that it was a great choice to make.  Through the experience of engaging with this book, I was truly able to critically think about some of my own behaviors and about the way that I have chosen to live my life.    
        

Now I would like to give you a bit more information about Dan Ariely.  Ariely (2010) is currently a Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University, and you can find some of his work in the Wall Street Journal and Scientific American.  I am hesitant to call anyone an expert on any subject.  I will say though, that he seems well verse in the field of psychology and behavioral economic such that he has reviewed the literature and has conducted numerous studies using diverse populations.  What I find most compelling about Ariely is his personal story that got him interested in the field of behavioral psychology.  At the age of 18, a magnesium flare exploded next to him, causing third-degree burns on 70 percent of his body.  Then, after being admitted to the hospital, he contracted hepatitis from an infect blood transfusion.  He experienced a very emotional journey as he adapted to the new restraints placed on his body and tried to figure out where he fit into society (especially the dating scene) (Ariely, 2010).  It’s at this point that he began wondering about the social processes that drove us toward other people as well as away from other people, leading to a study years later on how aesthetically challenged people adapted to their looks when it came to the dating.  Overall, based on his educational background and his work in the field, I found this book to be very credible.  Moreover, I would say that this book could be seen as scholarly in the sense that he has provided a great deal of empirical evidence with citations at the back to support his claims.     

It is now time for me to decide who should and should not read this book.  In general, I think a person without a background in psychology would do just fine with this book.  Ariely’s layperson language makes for a very easy read.  Should my fellow social psychology peers wish to read this book as well, I would simply give them a word of caution.  That is, the content within this book does overlap with some themes from a social psychology course.  However, I personally did not find the overlap annoying, rather I was excited that I knew the official scientific terms such as affective forecasting :).  If I were to try to describe the best audience for this type of book, they would definitely need to be receptive to new ideas that may contradict their intuitions because a good chunk of this book contradicts long-held beliefs about human behavior.  For example, many people believe that if you give people more money, their performance will increase, but research shows that end-of-the-year bonuses actually lead to a decrease in performance (Ariely, 2010).  However, Ariely acknowledges that there are cases in which bonuses may work in increasing performance.  Therefore, it’s also important that the audience be able to take all the findings in the book for what they are; they are aggregates that depict how most people behave in most situations.  If you are one of those people who are constantly saying, “I know someone that did the opposite”, then this book is probably not for you.  Lastly, I believe that people who do not like behavioralists should not read this book, because it will probably make them even angrier that once again a behavioralist is sitting on their high-horse, telling them how to live their lives.  If you don’t believe me, here is an excerpt from an article titled We are not all Homer Simpsons by Daniel Ben-Ami:

“…behaviouralists…imagine they are capable of understanding the world but they believe the rest of us, with our apparently Homer Simpson like dumbness, cannot. Instead of trying to reshape the world for the better [their]… main project is to manipulate our behaviour…they have created an elitist justification for interfering in our lives.”  http://danielbenami.com/2012/10/01/we-are-not-all-homer-simpsons/

I believe the reason I enjoyed this book so much was because there were a lot of theories and findings that I could relate to my own life and decisions.  I have chosen a few examples from my life to help illustrate some of the topics/theories that Ariely focuses on in his book.  Ariely (2010) begins his book by introducing the concept of procrastination, stating that it is probably one of the most frequent, illogical behaviors that we exhibit.  Logic states that we should engage in behaviors that have immediate negative effects for the sake of long-term positive effects; therefore procrastination is illogical because we are avoiding behaviors that have immediate negative effects even though they will lead to long-term positive effects (Ariely, 2010).  According to Ariely, one way to rectify procrastination is by setting up an incentive such that once you have completed the negative task, you can enjoy an activity associated with immediate pleasure as well as reap the long-term benefits when they came around.  For example, when I had to complete study hours at the library for my sorority, I made a deal with myself.  On Fridays, if I studied diligently from 9:45am to 1:45pm with a small break in the middle, I allowed myself to spend the rest of the day watching TV shows on Hulu.  Therefore, by adding an immediate incentive to an undesirable behavior (i.e., studying), I engaged in the undesirable behavior, which helped me in the long-term (i.e., passing my classes), and I got to watch a lot of shows without feeling guilty.    

 

This was me in HS. I've gotten better now.

Another theory that I enjoyed reading about was the IKEA effect (think effort justification) (Ariely, 2010).  The IKEA effect states that people come to love the things they create to the point that they overvalue their creations (e.g., the build-it-yourself furniture from IKEA).  My personal IKEA effect involves my authentic dream catcher versus the one my mom bought me from a store.  During my freshman year, I made my very own dream catcher. I was very proud of my creation, and I thought it was the most awesome thing I had ever seen.  Over the summer, my mom bought me another dream catcher that was accented with purple string and beads.  Unfortunately, I felt nothing toward this new dream catcher.  In fact, I remember thinking that it looked tacky with its purple string.  Now, had I not already had a dream catcher that I made myself, I think I would have loved the one my mom bought me.  Unfortunately though, I feel prey to the IKEA effect and came to value my own creation so much that I could not really appreciate another version of my piece. Below are pictures of both dream catchers. Objectively speaking, I can see how the purple-one is pretty to look at, but it’s too perfect (I’m just saying).    

This is mine :)

This is the store-bought

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a somewhat awful experience with printing a poster for SWPA at the ITS printing center, I knew that I had to touch upon the topic of revenge.  Ariely (2010) argues that revenge and trust are two sides of the same coin.  That is, when we feel that someone has broken our trust (e.g., treated us unfairly) we seek revenge, which can be rewarding and pleasurable.  Although me and my research partner did not seek revenge against ITS, we came close.  We had paid $50 to print our poster, so we were thoroughly displeased to discover a blemish on the paper that caused the ink to not catch in two places.  When we brought the blemishes to the attention of the student workers, they were not that helpful.  The guy suggested that we get a maker and just color the spots in.  The girl kept saying things like “that’s unfortunate”, but after some probing from my awesome research partner, the girl went to talk to the woman in charge and we were able to print a new poster without any extra charges.  After we left, we joked that had they not let us reprint the poster for free, we would have made a poster saying “ITS printing sucks”.  Then, printed it at ITS and put it up for everyone to see.  Although we were simply joking, our immediate reaction to make this poster illustrates how easy it is to feel it’s necessary to seek revenge when someone breaks your trust.  That is, we paid ITS a good sum of money in expectation of receiving a good product; however, they did not provide us with that product.  Furthermore, if they had charged us again, we would have felt even more peeved.  Ultimately, because ITS would have broken their side of our ‘deal’, we would have felt justified in seeking revenge.  Luckily, we did not have to release our vengeful sides…this time. 

I wonder what this person did? 

This must have been a shocker to the owner

The last idea I want to touch upon is the fact that people are less willing to help the statistical victim (Ariely, 2010).  In other words, people tend to care more about the individuals than the masses.  In turn, they are more likely to help individuals than they are to help a collective group suffering from illnesses or social disparities.  We tend to be more inclined to help individuals because of the identifiable victim effect.  That is, once people are able to connect a face to a tragedy, their sympathies and money will follow (Ariely, 2010).  By contrast, reading a bunch of statistics about poverty and illiteracy rates does not garner much action form people who are not in the immediate vicinity.  Ariely proposes some methods to combat the statistical victim problem.  On method deals with diminishing the ‘Drop-in-the-bucket effect’, or becoming discouraged because you don’t believe that you can single-handedly help the victims of a tragedy.  To counteract this effect, he suggests changing your perspective about the magnitude of the tragedy (Ariely, 2010).  On way that I have already used this suggestion is during my volunteer work with the San Antonio Youth Literacy Council.  While in high school, I volunteered to help second-graders develop their reading and compression skills.  I knew that illiteracy was a problem in our country, but most of the time I felt helpless in aiding the cause. However, this volunteer opportunity narrowed the problem to a small subset of people that I could help.  Specifically, my reading group consisted of the same five students throughout the year.  Therefore, by participating in this program I was able to help the cause and optimize the impact I made.                        

Based on the amount of details and praise I have given about this book, I think it’s clear that I am a bit biased.  Despite my biasness, I do believe that this book has a couple of weaknesses.  First, the book can be a bit wordy at times when Ariely is describing the design of a studying.  Although, I think I found such descriptions wordy because I am used to reading things such as “a 2 x 2 within-subject design”.  Another potential weakness is the lack of using scientific terms to label some of the theories.  Ariely does a great job and relaying the definitions in ‘terms that grandma would understand’, but I think the audience losses out if they aren’t told at least the proper name for certain psychological effects.  Lastly, the thing that annoyed me the most about this book was the use of the pronoun ‘you’.  I think Ariely successfully draws the reader in by having them image themselves into a certain situation.  However, I found it a bit tedious because if felt like I was being told to imagine a situation every other page. 

Despite my criticisms, I believe this book has many strengths.  The most important strength would have to be the fact that Ariely uses personal examples to illustrate almost every theory he discusses.  By using personal examples, this book really does read like a blog, which makes the text easier to engage with.  Furthermore, Ariely is able to create a bond between him and his readers because he shows that he is willing to be honest and frank.  Another strength is that he doesn’t include any statistics when presenting research results, which I think makes the text really accessible to people who get put-off when they see a bunch of numbers. What I particularly enjoyed about this book was him stating numerous times that he is not perfect; he makes the same irrational mistakes that we make, which I think humanizes him even more.  Moreover, I found his suggestions on how to combat the negative effects of our irrationalities to be very useful, because without them, some of these chapters would paint a very depressing picture of human behavior.  Lastly, I do feel that other people may benefit from Ariely’s attempts at getting the readers to put themselves in a position where they can visualize a study or why a particular outcome occurred in a certain situation.         

Taking into account everything I have learned in this book and the way Dan Ariely seems to feel about the positive and negative effects of human irrationalities, I would conclude that the ‘take home’ message is to view our behavior in terms of a cost-benefit equation (Ariely, 2010).  That is, we should actively look for ways to maximize the positive effect of irrationality while finding ways to minimize the negative effects.  Untimely, if we are able to find the optimal balance between positive and negative, our behaviors would be more effective, which would lead to a more effective society.  However, it’s difficult to convince people such politicians, bankers, CEOs to change the behaviors that benefit them but not other people.  Therefore, this change should start at the personal level.  Then hopefully, there will come a time when people in power will be willing to listen to empirical evidence.

n = 2,702 

________________________________

Ariely, D. (2010). The upside of irrationality: the unexpected benefits of defying logic at work and at home. Harper.

The Glorified Secretary

Toward the end of my junior year in high school, I had come to the decision to leave the high school band (marching and concert band).  After my injury the previous summer, I had to step down as section leader.  I was also unable to march the entire fall semester and unable to attend many of the practices we had for our spring concert competition, which mean that I was unable to participate with the band in our competitions for the entire year.  Throughout the year, going to band class became a chore because I was always on the sideline, hence my decision to not register for the class in my senior year.  However, by some magical force, my director persuaded me to stay in the band and become a student aide for the director. 

During that summer and the fall my senior year, I was dubbed the “band assistant”.  I was in charge of making over +1000 copies of our marching music and of our show designs, as well as putting together and stapling the packets with our show designs in order.  In addition, to making various copies, I took attendance, called parents when members did not show up for practice in the summer, filed/found music pieces and member documents, and I was one of the people who was in charge of using the bottle of spray paint to mark the members’ marching spots on our practice lot.  What is important to note about this situation, is that I was an assistant for a class that I really had no desire to be in (at least at the beginning).  In other words, my attitude towards this class was that it was not worth my time anymore. I wanted to march, but I couldn’t, so what was the point of staying in the class.  Yet, I did stay in the class and become a secretary, which is a far cry from marching on a football field.

This contrast between how I felt about this band class and deciding to remain in the class created the perfect condition for cognitive dissonance to arise. According to Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance Theory (1957), inconsistencies between our attitudes and behaviors create unpleasant psychological and/or physiological tension that we are usually motivated to reduce by changing our attitudes.  Based on this theory, in my particular situation, I should have been motivated to change my attitude (i.e., I dislike this class) in order to justify my attitude-discrepant behavior. Put another way, because I willing decided to remain in band (despite my dislike for the class) without receiving a large incentive to do so, I had an insufficient justification for my behavior (Festinger, 1957).  Therefore, I should have been motivated to change my attitude to reduce my psychological tension that was caused by making a decision that I logically should not have made given my attitude about the matter. 

It will come as no surprise that I did in fact change my attitude about the band class. In order to justify my attitude-discrepant behavior, I convinced myself that I must really be attached to the “band family”, which wasn’t to difficult to do considering that I had spent five years in band.  I also came to love my position as band assistant because I realized that I had power and privileges that the other members did not have.  For example, even though I had to make a thousand copies by myself and lug them from the main building to the band hall, I was the only student who was allowed in the teachers’ copy room.  Furthermore, during the summer when we were marking sets, I was one of the few people who were worthy of wielding the can of spray paint.  Lastly, I was the only student allowed in the director’s office, which meant that no other student could enter unless the director or I were in there.  Given the various activities I was allowed to do that others were not, I obviously was special, and who doesn’t like feeling special, right?  

n = 674

__________________________________________

Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

                  

For only 80 cents a day…

Spokesperson for the Christian Children's Fund with Michelle 

I remember constantly watching a 1 hr Christian Children’s Fund (now called ChildFund International) TV program when I was 10 years old.  This program, along with the short commercials, was designed to convince people to sponsor a child by donating 80 cents a day. With this donation the child would receive food, clothes, and necessary medical treatment. During the 1 hr program the audience was guided through the lives of two or three impoverished children by a voice-over (i.e., the voice of the man in the above picture).  For example, I remember being shown that the little girl in the above picture spends her days collecting cans and plastics at a landfill as a way to earn a few cents to help her family.  I also remember seeing a story about a little girl, who lived with an ailing grandmother and who had to walk miles to get water and to go to school all while not having shoes to wear and having minimal food to eat.  Of course, being the empathetic 10 year old I was, I was thoroughly moved by these children’s plight; I kept wishing that I had the money to donate.  In fact, one time I asked my mom if we could donate, and I remember being so angry when she said, “No”.  She then tried to explain to me all the logical reasons that we could not donate.  For example, we were struggling financially and we could not be sure that all the money was going to the children or even if they were really going to get the resources they needed. 

After today’s lecture, I realized that the contrast between my response and my mom’s response to the program could be viewed in term of the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM).  The ELM states that there are times when people are motivated to process messages carefully, and there are times when people are not motivated to do so (Petty, 1983).  This processing of messages falls on a continuum of elaboration in which level of personal involvement is one moderating variable.  Specifically, people who are low in involvement and elaboration are likely to take the peripheral route to persuasion (i.e., they are more influenced by superficial cues), whereas people who are high in involvement and elaboration are likely to take the central route to persuasion (i.e., they are more influenced by the quality of the argument) (Petty, 1983).

When applied to my experience with the TV program, I would argue that I was low in involvement and in elaboration, whereas my mom was high in involvement and in elaboration.  When watching these programs I took the peripheral route to persuasion in that I was immediately persuaded to help these children simply because I saw their ‘sob-story’ (i.e., a peripheral cue), and I never once considered the validity of such a program.  Furthermore, despite wanting to donate, I personally did not have the financial means.  Therefore, I went to my mom who was my financial mean for a donation.  It was at this point that level of involvement came into play, such that, I was low in involvement when it came to the actual process of donating because it wasn’t necessarily my money that was being donated.  However, because it was my mom’s money, she would be considered as being high in involvement for the process of donating.  Because she was high in involvement, my mom took the central route to persuasion.  That is, compared to me, she critically analyzed the quality of the program’s argument/agenda before making her decision.  I will admit that once I began earning my own money, I also became very critical of programs such as ChildFund.  However, till this day, I have to change the channel every time one of the commercials appears because there is still a small part of me that is tempted to call and ‘sponsor a child’.

n = 649                                                                 

_____________________________

Petty, R. E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Schumann, D. (1983). Central and peripheral routes to advertising effectiveness: The moderating role of involvement. Journal of consumer research, 135-146. 

A reflection on my day of compassion

Growing up I had to learn how to accept the fact that my life was different from the lives of a lot of other people. My house didn’t look like their houses, my family didn’t look like their families, and we always seemed to be struggling more to make ends meet.  However, I learned to be grateful for the fact that at least I had a home, a family, and food on the table, things that so many people in the world and in my surrounding community seemed to lack.  I believe my grateful attitude interacts with my heightened ability to sympathize/empathize with others, creating my compassionate nature.  Although tackling social issues such as education and domestic violence is important to me, planning for a Day of Compassion made me realize that at times I may be blind to the struggles that some of the most important people in my life are going through.  I certainly feel that most of the time I can discern on a superficial level when friends and relatives are fighting a battle in their life.  However, at times I don’t think I really understand how much these people are hurting until the inevitable emotional/mental breakdown occurs.  It is because of this somewhat lack of awareness that the target of my assignment was my roommate.

For the past two months I have been limited to only attending necessary functions such as classes and meetings, but even these activities are physically painful because of my nerve damage.  As a result of my limited physical mobility, my roommate has taken on the bulk of our house chores and has “taken care” of me when things get bad.  Although this shift was necessary, I feel sad that she has to take care of the apartment in addition to being president of our student club and be a full-time SU student (we all know how that is). My decision for my roommate to be my target was strengthened after having a conversation with her about her own heightened stress levels caused by juggling various school and professional activities.  My conversations with her led me to define compassion as engaging in behaviors that minimized disruptions during my roommates’ work (school and professional) and/or that maximized her enjoyment during disruptions in her work.

Consistent with my definition of compassion, I completed acts what would be considered small acts of kindness.  To begin the day, I did acts that I considered as minimizing disruptions and alleviating her workload around the house.  For example, I cooked us brunch rather than relying on her to make us lunch.  We have not had breakfast or brunch since fall semester because I am the primary cook and usually take the initiative to plan certain meals, so I thought it would be a nice treat for that day.  After serving brunch, I knew she forgot to get a napkin, so I brought one to her before she was about to get up again to get one.  Aside from cooking brunch and napkin giving, I loaded the dishwasher and unloaded it after the washing was complete.  As late afternoon approached, I engaged in behaviors that maximized her enjoyment during disruptions.  For example, she wanted to watch movies while she worked, so I let her choose all three movies we watched.  This may not seem too significant, but I realized that I tend to be the one who dictates what movies we watch most of the time (I can only handle Robin Hood Men in Tights once every three months), so at least this time I knew for a fact that she would really enjoy watching all the movies.  I think the best act I did that day was finally baking the spice cake we bought weeks ago.  My roommate loves sweets and always gets excited when I make us desserts.  Therefore, I thought she would enjoy being able to indulge in her sweet tooth when she took breaks during her work.  What I was unprepared for was her level of excitement when it came to the process of the cake being done.  The first time the oven timer beeped, the cake needed more time in the oven so I put it back. I then realized by my roommate’s pout that she wanted to check the cake, so the second time the timer beeped I let her check the cake; she had the biggest grin on her face. I also let her frost the cake, which she enjoyed doing as well. In the end, I was able to give my roommate an enjoyable activity to work on between doing her other assignments. She got to frost her cake and eat it too; all I had to do was get the process in motion.

Throughout the day I knew my roommate noticed a change in my behavior because she would ask me how my foot was feeling and how my back was feeling (I had injections there a couple of days before).  Based on these questions, I don’t think she noticed I was being extra considerate but rather that I was being slightly more mobile.  Each time I did a kind act she would smile and say, “Aww.”  At one point, she said, “Aww, you’re so sweet”.  Based on that one statement, I can conclude that one some of my more overt behaviors she made a personal attribution (Heider, 1958).  That is, she attributed my behaviors to an internal characteristic of my personality (i.e., sweetness or kindness).  The most logical reason for why she would make this attribution is that I’m generally a kind person, so she’s previously experienced my kindness toward her and witnessed my kindness toward others.  Furthermore, there was no way she could have made a situational attribution because she was unaware that I was conducting a Day of Compassion and all of my actions took place in our apartment.  According to Heider (1958), people have a tendency to attribute behaviors to people’s personalities because the individual becomes more salient than the situation that surrounds them.  Therefore, because our apartment is a setting we always inhabit, it faded into the background and left only me and my actions as salient. 

Despite being intrinsically motivated to be considerate of others, I will admit that being reminded that this assignment required me to be compassionate for the whole day gave me extra motivation to continue my attempts at showing consideration for my roommate.  Furthermore, I kept reminding myself of how stressed I get at times.  I remembered the few times I realized I skipped a meal because I was so overwhelmed with the work I needed to get done.  I also remembered the many times when I tried to rush through a meal or was aggravated in a meeting where only three people showed up because I could be using that time to work on other projects.  As I reflected back on this remembering process, I realized that my thoughts reflected findings that show that people have a tendency to help similar others, specifically members of one’s ingroup (e.g., Xu et al., 2009).  Although I still had quite a bit of work to do myself and was in a bit of pain, I was able to put aside my own problems and focus on being considerate to my roommate because I could relate to her based on a similar shared SU/college experience.  

My brief internal struggles during this day hint at possible psychological costs of behaving compassionately.  A decrease in physical and mental health is the most prominent psychological cost of behaving compassionately that I have witnessed and have heard stories about.  However research shows that negative effects on health are more likely to occur when behaving compassionately involves constant and exhausting demands (Fujino & Okamura, 2009).  For example, when my grandpa developed colon cancer, my mom was the one who gave him his medication, cleaned his bed sheets, and cleaned his colostomy bag.  When I got older and spoke to her about it I realized that taking care of my grandpa was emotionally and cognitively draining for her.  Another psychological cost of helping others is that you could unintentionally do more harm than good to the person you are helping.  That is, research has suggested that when stigmatized groups receive help from nonstigmatized groups, especially unsolicited help, members of the stigmatized group may feel worse about themselves (Blaine et al., 1995).  Aside from these two psychological costs, there are also psychological benefits to behaving compassionately.  In general, helping others (e.g., volunteering) is associated with feeling better about yourself as well as with positive increases in mental and physical heath (Dillard et al., 2008; Piliavin, 2003).  I can attest to feeling good when helping others because just seeing how happy my roommate was when she was able to frost and eat our spice cake, made spending time making the cake worth it.  When contemplating both sides, I personally believe that the psychological benefits outweigh the psychological costs of behaving compassionately because I have internalized the idea that helping and being considerate of others is the right things to do.  Therefore, I think in most situations and with time and guidance it’s possible for people to learn how to set limits and not overexert themselves in their quest to alleviate others’ suffering.  In addition, I cannot help but think of the numerous non-psychological benefits that result from being compassionate toward others (e.g., the abolishment of slavery in the U.S.), so I am definitely biased when it comes to the idea of helping those who are in need and/or who are actively seeking help.

Were I to try and encourage others to conduct their own Day of Compassion, one social psychological concept I would rely on is the good mood effect, which is the idea that helping behaviors increase when an individual is in a good mood and has been supported by a growing body of research (e.g., Aderman, 1972; Forgas et al., 2008) .  Therefore, I could attempt to put others in a good mood by offering them help when they need it, epically when other people around them are not being helpful.  Lately, I have also received forwarded emails from a friend that include cute pictures of baby animals, pictures with funny or charming captions, and short inspirational stories that give a person hope for humanity.  I always have a smile while reading these emails and generally feel in a better mood after, so it is possible I could help put my friends and relatives in a good mood if I actually continue the forwarding chain on of these days.  Then based on the good mood effect, my friends and relatives may feel more inclined to help others that day.  Although the good mood effect is effective, it would only allow me to potentially get others to increase their helping behaving in general.  To specifically encourage others to behave as I did, I would rely on priming.  It has been shown that when primed to adopt another individual’s perceptive, people were more likely to help that individual despite potential costs and being given the choice not to help (Baston & Powell, 2003).  I would apply this idea to others through conversation about their roommates’ current situations and activities.  If people mention something that is stressing their roommate, I would guide the conversation to focus more on how the roommate is feeling as a way to highlight the feelings and difficulties that roommate is going through. I would then probably mention how when either I or my roommate is feeling stress the other makes cupcakes for the one who is stressed and maybe there is something similar that they could do for their own roommate.  Hopefully by emphasizing how the roommate must be feeling and giving them an example of how roommates can help alleviate each others’ stress, other people may attempt to actively help alleviate their roommate’s own stress.

As I have reflected back on my entire experience during my Day of Compassion in this blog, I truly do believe that one month from now my behavior will be changed from what it was at the beginning of the semester because of this one day.  Specifically, seeing my roommate all excited about our baking of the spice cake as shown to me that we need to actively make time to bake like we did last semester.  We both find baking lethargic, but for whatever reason we just have not found the time and keep putting the baking off this semester. Therefore, I am now even more motivated to have baking sessions at least twice a month until the end of the school year.  Moreover, my Day of Compassion really emphasized how there is now an imbalance of work between my and my roommate.  Although there is a good reason for this imbalance, I have become more motivated to take advantage of the few times that I do not feel like I am in such a bad state physically. For instance, I am going to try and slowly start to make more dinners during the weekend because from Friday to Saturday I tend to move less, so sometime I’m not in so much pain.  Lastly, I will make a conscious effort to tolerate Robin Hood Men in Tights at least once every two months instead of every three months; after all we will be rooming together our senior year.  In the end, I do not regret my decision to actively and consciously be considerate toward my roommate, especially because I have been blessed to have her in my life and in that she is willing to help me in my darkest moments. The least I could do is try to be just as good of a friend to her.

(n = 2,281)        

___________________________

Aderman, D. (1972). Elation, depression, and helping behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 24, 91-101.

Baston, C. D., & Powell, A. A. (2003). Altruism and prosocial behavior. In T. Millon & M. J. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of psychology: Personality and social psychology (Vol. 5, pp. 463-484). New York: Wiley. 

Blaine, B., Crocker, J., & Major, B. (1995). The unintended negative consequences of sympathy for the stigmatized. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 25, 889-905.

Dillard, A. J., Schiavone, A., & Brown, S. L. (2008). Helping behavior and positive emotions: Implications for health and well-being. In S.J. Lopez (Ed.), Positive psychology: Exploring the best in people: Vol. 2. Capitalizing on emotional experience (pp. 101-114). Westport, Ct: Praeger.

Forgas, J. P., Dunn, E., & Granland, S. (2008). Are you being served…? An unobtrusive experiment of affective influences on helping in a department store. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38(2), 333-342.

Fujino, N., & Okamura, H. (2009). Factors affecting the sense of burden felt by family members caring for patients with mental illness. Archives of Psychiatric Nursing, 23(2), 128-137.

Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York:Wiley.

Piliavin, J. A. (2003). Doing well by doing good: Benefits for the benefactor. In C. L. M. Keyes & J. Haidt (Eds.), Flourishing: Positive psychology and the life well-lived (pp. 227-247). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Xu, X., Zuo, X., Wang, X., & Han, S. (2009). Do you feel my pain? Racial group membership modulates emphatic neural responses. Journal of Neuroscience, 29, 8525-8529.                       

(Dis)abled persons are equal, but secretly I’m scared of white people

There as been a growing body of research that has focused on the concept of implicit racism or racism that occurs unconsciously (Banaji & Greenwald, 1994).  To systematically measure an individual’s level of implicit racism, Greenwald et al. (1998) created the Implicit Association Test (IAT).  Specifically, the IAT measures the extent to which an individual associates two categories or concepts.

The first test I completed was the Disability IAT. My result showed that I had little to no automatic preference between disabled persons and abled persons.  In other words, I responded at a similar speed when abled persons images and good words were paired together as when disabled persons images and good words were paired together. Overall, I would say this result is consistent with how I consciously view and behave toward people in both groups, particularly toward people who could be considered disabled.  In the past, I’ve actively sought out situations where I would have to interact with both abled and disabled persons.  For example, I was part of the marching band which emphasized psychical able-ness or ability.  By contrast, I coordinated an event at our regional Special Olympics where children with various physical disabilities participated in typical field-day activities. However, I cannot think of many instances where I interacted with people who are disabled or heard many derogatory references about them.  Therefore, it is possible that I do not have an automatic preference because I do not consciously or unconsciously think about them as good or bad; they just are. Another possibility for my result could be that I’ve learned to associate good words with people who are disabled because both my grandparents have documented disabilities and have the handicap sticker (the blue sign that allows you to park in a handicap spot).  Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents and saw them use the sticker, and because I think my grandparents are amazing, I may have equated their good personality traits with other people who are disabled.  Regardless of why I show little to no preference between these groups, I will admit that I was a bit relieved with this result because consciously I know there is no difference between them with it comes to being good. 

The second test I took was the Weapons IAT. My result suggested that, when compared to Black Americans, I had a slight automatic association of White American with weapons.  In other words, I responded quicker when White American were paired with weapons than when Black Americans were paired with weapons.  I don’t believe that this result is consistent with my conscious beliefs about the association between races and weapons because I realize that people of all races commit crimes with all sorts of weapons.  In fact, I thought I would have been primed to associate weapons with Black American simply because almost all the stories in the media are about people of color committing crimes.  With that being said, maybe I got this result because I am aware of the stereotype surrounding people of color with weapons and I unconsciously overcompensated, which resulted in an associate between White Americans and weapons.  Another possible explanation could be that as a woman of color, I am unconsciously threatened or scared by White Americans because of the racist acts I’ve seen and heard of.  Put another way, maybe on some level I think I am more in danger when around white people than when around non-white people because of the color of my skin.  Overall, this Weapons IAT (more so than the disability IAT) as made me think of how my own race and gender interact to influence how I may implicitly view others, particularly those in the majority.  That is, the stereotypes and prejudices I learn could be completely different than those that an upper/middle class white female or male may learn.       

        

n = 644 

_______________________________

Banaji, M. R., & Greenwald, A. G. (1994). Implicit stereotyping and prejudice. In The psychology of prejudice: The Ontario symposium (Vol. 7, pp. 55-76). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. K. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1464-1480.

One time at band camp

I've had some people tell me they don't know what a flute looks like, so here is a pic just in case.

Every summer before the school year started we had band camp to learn our new marching show and music.  One day there was a big commotion amongst some of the band members.  This type of behavior was typical; however this time our director was involved, which of course meant something bad (or good if you like drama) happened.  During the commotion I was only able to hear the director asking one of our flutists if he had washed his mouth out.  A few moments later I found out that one of my fellow flutists (Mr. K) played a prank on another flutist (Mr. G).  Can you guess the prank? In turned out that, Mr. K had peed on and in the head joint (see above image) of Mr. G’s flute, but that was not where the prank stopped.  Mr. K and some other band mates then decided to let Mr. G play his flute.  As soon as he began playing, Mr. G noticed something was off, which is when Mr. K decided to tell him that he had urinated on the head joint. Thus, concluding the prank.

Up until this point, I had not really interacted with Mr. K to know anything substantial about him. But after hearing about this ‘prank’, I was appalled and immediately wrote him of as a jerk (among other negative adjectives), especially since Mr. G was a friend of his.  After today’s lecture about attributions theories, I learned that by making this personal attribution of Mr. K being a jerk I was using the theory of correspondent inferences.

According to Jones and Davis’ (1965) theory of correspondent inferences, people try to determine if other’s behavior corresponds to a stable characteristic of their personality.  Because people are attempting to link observed behavior to a person’s personality, they are essentially making a personal attribution.  There are three factors that allow people to make such personal attributions (Jones & Davis, 1965).  The first factor focuses on the extent to which the person had a choice because freely chosen behavior is more informative in determining a person’s personality than is assigned behavior or not freely chosen behavior.  The second factor is the expectedness of the behavior.  Specifically, behavior that is unexpected is more informative than behavior that is expected.  The last factor is the consequences of the behavior. That is, acts that have more positive consequences tells us less about a person’s personality than do acts that have one positive consequence. 

During my attribution of Mr. K, I relied on the first and second factor.  First, Mr. K willing chose this route as his prank when there were tons of other routes that he could have taken.  According to the first factor, his free choice in urinating on the flute should be informative to me.  Secondly, not taking sexual fetishes into consideration, it is typically not socially acceptable for people to urinate on other people’s private property, especially property that will be going near a person’s mouth.  Furthermore, we were expected to behave like respectable young adults while in band.  Therefore, because Mr. K’s behavior deviated from what one would expected, his behavior should be informative to me as I attempt to make an attribution.  Taken together, Mr. K’s choice in pulling this prank and his breaking of norms lead me to make the attribution that he was a jerk and disgusting, an attribution that did not really diminish with time.

(n = 572)       

_____________________________

Jones, E.E., & Davis, K. E. (1965). From acts to dispositions: The attribution process in person perception. Advances in Experimental Psychology, 2, 219-266.