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)       

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

The Sky’s the Limit, but Not Really: A reflection on the Healthy Relationships Presentation

Earlier this week I attended a presentation on healthy relationships and unhealthy relationships. Discussing the underlying pinning of both healthy and unhealthy relationships is a tall order, so naturally I felt that the presentation was not as in depth as I would have expected or liked it to be.  I also would have liked it if some attention was given to what a person should do if they found themselves in an unhealthy relationship.  It’s all too easy just to say, “Seek help,” so some descriptions of strategies might have been informative.  However, given the time constraint of 1hr I felt that the presentation covered the basic fundamentals or characteristics of both types of relationships fairly well.  A good deal of emphasis was placed on the main factor of a healthy relationship.  Can you guess what it is? To be honest, when asked this question all I could think of was the typical answers such as good communication or trust.  According to the presentation, the key to a healthy relationship is loving yourself and everything that accompanies such love (e.g., respecting yourself or believing that what you want matters).  In hindsight this is not too surprising because we have all probably heard, “If you don’t love yourself, how can you expect someone else to love you.”  However, I think a better saying would be, “If you don’t love yourself, how can you believe you deserve the love of others.”  I think it is very possible that someone could love a person who may have a distorted view of themselves, but it’s very likely that person would have a difficult time believing that they deserve such love. But that is just my opinion.

One topic in this presentation that really seemed relevant to me now was the idea of setting limits in your relationships. The most obvious relationship that this idea seems imperative in is sexual relationships.  Specifically, if you set limits early on in the relationship, you could be saved from having to figure out all the details during a hot moment and risk killing the mood.  However, setting limits can also be applied to other relationships such as friendships and can sometimes safe you from awkward and uncomfortable moments.  For example, I had this friend who was very touchy-feely.  I generally do not consider myself touchy-feely; however, I wanted to be polite so I let her hug me whenever she wanted.  Unfortunately after some other issues in our friendship, I became annoyed and resentful with all the touching and wanted it to stop, but the hugging had already been going on so long that it become extremely awkward when I tried to explain my change in behavior (i.e., she was annoying me).  Ultimately, I’ve learned that I need to need to find the balance between pleasing others and respecting my own limits.

To conclude this reflection I would like to present a fun fact from the presentation: If your intuition is telling you something is wrong when you happen to be walking in the dark and a person is walking toward you, you should stare that person straight in the face.  If you stare at the person’s face, they are more likely to avoid you because you now have a better chance at identifying them.  Moreover, if the person is interested in hurting someone, they will look for someone who appears weak and scared, but by staring at his/her face, you will be seen as unafraid (remember first impressions are made from thin slices!!!). Please note that this is not to say that every person walking in the dark is a murder or criminal, after all, you yourself would be walking in the dark :)

Vanishing into thin air

(Hudson River crash*)

(crash near Talodi; no survivors*)

(crash in Everest region; ~19 killed*)

 

At one time or another most people have heard stories of and seen images of plane crashes, which can contribute to a fear of flying.  Specifically, it’s possible that when people think of flying, these horror stories and horrific images of plane crashes readily come to mind, confirming their belief that they should fear being on an airplane.  As a result of this confirmation, they might avoid flying or might be very apprehensive while flying because they believe that at any moment it is very possible that their plane will crash.  

People are illustrating a cognitive heuristic when their fear of flying in airplanes is rooted in the stories they hear about plane crashes.  In general, cognitive heuristics are rules of thumb that allow us to make quick but reasonable decisions and are our way of trying to balance accuracy and efficiently with the limited cognitive resources we have (Nisbett & Ross, 1980). The “fear of plane crashes” is an example of a specific cognitive heuristic known as the availability heuristic.  According to the availability heuristic, people estimate the probability of an event occurring based on how readily examples come to mind (MacLeod & Campbell, 1992).  Therefore, it seems logical that people would naturally believe that any airplane had a high probability of crashing because of the media attention given to such stories.

I have not fallen prey to the availability heuristic about the safeness of planes; however, the availability heuristic still impacts my life in other ways. The example that readily comes to mind is my mom’s reaction to my desire to study abroad. Once I started high school, I knew without a doubt I wanted to study abroad while in college.  Whenever I would express this desire to or around my mom, she would throw a fit and list all the reasons that I shouldn’t go. I realize that most mothers want to protect their children, but this realization did not stop me from being frustrated with her whenever we had a conversation about studying aboard.  I would get frustrated because her main reason for not wanting me to go was that something bad could happen to me, like getting kidnapped or killed.  Every time she would mention these reasons, I would tell her that there are probably thousands of other people who go abroad and have a perfectly normal time (i.e., they don’t get killed or sold into human trafficking). Despite my counter arguments, my mom did not deter from her opinion a back then or even a few months ago when I was truly considering studying abroad with a close friend.

By only focusing on the likelihood of me not returning home (which would be the case if I was kidnapped and killed), my mom was using the availability heuristic. My mom regularly watches the news and listens to the radio talk shows, so naturally she was bombarded with Natalie Holloway’s story numerous times in 2005. For those of who do not know, Natalie Holloway vanished during a senior high school trip to Aruba; she was officially declared dead in January 2012.  In 2009, her story was made into a Lifetime Movie, and in 2011 there was a sequel that depicting the court proceedings of the man accused of murdering her.  With the amount of media attention focused on this story, it is not too surprising that my mom quickly had red flags waving in the air when I shared my desire to studying abroad.  For my mom, studying abroad or simply going out of the country as a young woman was equated with disappearing in that foreign country to never be seen again because she was able to readily recall Natalie’s story as well as other vanishing sorties that were mentioned when discussing Natalie’s case for 5 ½ years.

It is now safe to say that I will not be studying abroad anytime soon, but for medical reasons rather than my fear of vanishing into thin air.  However, my mom and I were able to come to a compromise, and she agreed to taking a summer family vacation somewhere out of the country. All I can say now is here’s hoping that she doesn’t hear any real-life Hostel stories before we are able to take our trip. 

           

(n= 712)

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MacLeod, C., & Campbell, L. (1992). Memory accessibility and probability judgments: An experimental evaluation of the availability heuristic. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 890-902.

Nisbett, R. E., & Ross, L. (1980). Human inference: Strategies and short-comings of social judgment. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

* All picture taken from Goggle images, plane crashes and plane crashing and burning

It Could Always Be Worse

This week’s class was a continuation of the social self.  Because I have recently re-injured my foot, I have decided to dedicate this post to a self-enhancement strategy that I have become found of because of such injuries.

According to Taylor (1989), we have a fundamental desire to maintain a positive viewpoint about ourselves and our circumstances, and in order to protect this positive viewpoint we use self-enhancement strategies.  The strategy that I use most often consists of making a downward social comparison.  This type of comparison involves comparing yourself to others who are worse off than you are.  For example, if people’s self-esteem is threatened, they are likely to compare themselves to people who are less than they are (e.g., less successful or less fortunate) as a way to protect their own self-esteem (Hakmiller, 1966).  Furthermore, downward social comparisons allow people to maintain a positive outlook on their life (Aspinwall & Taylor, 1993).  

Downward social comparisons have noticeably become more important in my life since my foot injury on July 4, 2008.  On this day, I accidentally hit my foot on a desk leg, and the desk leg slid between the last two toes on my left foot.  Naturally, a week later I found out that I had broken the bones in that area, but I was told that everything should heal within 4-6 weeks.  After the sixth week, I still could not move any of my toes or my ankle, and the pain was spreading up my leg.  In February of 2009, I found out that I had actually developed a nerve disease when I had initially hit my foot and it was now spreading up my leg.  This nerve disease is called Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD) and is a life-long condition, meaning there is no cure.  Because of RSD, I had lost 95% mobility from my ankle down, and it hurt to do simple things such as walk, shower, and wear socks.  Because I had limited mobility, I was also forced to quit marching band (I had to be on the side lines) and to step down as section leader for my last two years of high school.  It is safe to say that I was not a happy camper during this time.

Although I cried myself to sleep most of the time (because of the pain and the frustration), I kept telling myself: “Things could be worse.”  In fact, I knew that things could be worse because the doctor who helped me with my pain management told me a story about a woman who got a paper cut on her thumb, developed RSD, and then the RSD spread from one arm to the other arm before she was able to get any type of treatment.  So at this point although I was in a lot of pain, I was thankful that we had identified the problem before the RSD had spread to both legs.  In a similar vein, two years ago my mom was watching one of those mystery medical shows (the ones where the person didn’t know what was wrong with them, but by the end of the show we find out what was wrong with them).  This particular episode was about a woman who was on bed-rest for 14 years because she was in horrible pain.  During this show, my mom was shocked to realize that the woman’s symptoms matched my symptoms but to a greater extent.  At then end of the episode, my mom’s suspicions were verified in that this woman did end up having RSD.  After hearing about this episode from my mom, this woman’s story became part of my downward social comparison because at least I wasn’t force to stay in bed for 14 years because I was experiencing unimaginable pain. 

Since 2009, I have had various block injections in a main nerve located on my back.  These injections paralyze the nerve to decrease their sensitivity and firing.  I also did physical therapy as a way to get more mobility and strength in my foot.  Right now, or at lest before my re-injury a couple of weeks ago, the pain as become more manageable, showering doesn’t hurt, and I can wear socks and shoes you can lace.  But walking is still a day-to-day challenge, my dancing is limited, and I do not think I will ever be able to run or jump ever again because my foot does not do well with impact force.  It is very frustrating not being able to do things that I loved to do before my accident and not being able to do things that I might not have liked but at least could still do if I wanted to or needed to.  In all, I have had to drastically change certain areas of my life.  I also now have to be careful in general not to injury my foot because the RSD will be triggered even more each time, which is unfortunate because for the first time since 2008, I re-injured my foot and am now dealing with even more RSD symptoms.  Hopefully, the doctors and specialists here in Georgetown will be able to help me in the coming weeks. But hey, at least the nerve damage hasn’t spread past my left leg or hasn’t caused me to be on bed-rest and miss all my classes and flunk out of school, so I’m hopeful to an extent!

P.S. Here is a link to webMD that does a good job a describing RSD or Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) http://www.webmd.com/pain-management/guide/crps

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Aspinwall, L. G. & Taylor, S. E. (1993). The effect of social comparison direction, threat, and self-esteem on affect, self-evaluation, and expected success. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 64, 708-722.

Hakmiller, K. L. (1966). Threat as a determinant of downward comparison. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (Suppl. 1), 32-39.

Taylor, S. E. (1989). Positive illusion: Creative self-deceptions and the healthy mind. New York: Basic Books.