Contaminating the Commons

Even though pollution and global warming are two very serious environmental issues, many people seem not to take it too seriously. In fact, some people even ask, “How does it affect me?” In Los Angeles, the air pollution is so abundant that there is a constant smog over the city. More than half the people living there live in an area that has an unhealthy amount of air pollution. How did we let the world get this bad?
This phenomenon can be explained by the commons dilemma. It’s also known as the tragedy of the commons. This is when a society uses up or ruins their collective resources. The environment is something that everyone lives in. Some people may live in different types of environment, but at the end of the day, we only have one planet Earth. However, people tend to believe that even if they promote environmentally-friendly behavior by recycling, avoiding sprays that are harmful to the environment, and things like that, it won’t make a difference in the overall “health” of the world. So people continue to deplete the earth’s resources, believing that their actions will not affect the world, when really, the collection of people doing the same thing are causing the world’s natural resources to decrease.
So if you’re in favor of living another day, and living pollution-free, remember: your actions do matter, both in the long run and in present day.

Going against the Brain.

Susan Boyle. 47, a little dumpy-looking, socially awkward Susan. She made her first appearance on the TV show “Britain’s Got Talent.” Now, I don’t know if you’ve seen the pictures, but Susan Boyle does not look like a hit singer. She’s no Beyoncé or Leona Lewis. Anyone’s first impression of her is that she’s another average/below average-looking woman who thinks she can sing. However, once she opens her mouth and actually starts singing, she makes people eat their words—and their first impressions.
Unfortunately, Susan is a victim of automatic processing. Part of our mind is unconscious. That unconscious part sometimes makes snap decisions. It also does the simple operations—like sorting through sounds to make them understandable. Unfortunately, the automatic part of our minds makes quick decisions and evaluations of people. The automatic part of our minds categorized Susan Boyle before we were even aware of what’s going on.
Fortunately, our nifty conscious system has the power to override the automatic system. This is to help maintain social order, and to make sure that we don’t cause chaos in society. This would be considered a conscious override. After Susan Boyle started singing, our brains did a double take. Our instinct to boo her off of the stage subsided. The conscious part of our brain made us give her a second look. And it was a good thing too; she became a hit!
Oh Susan Boyle. You make our conscious go crazy.

Can't beat that mere exposure effect!

Spotted: Dev Patel and Freida Pinto together, participating in a romantic lunch... together. (If you didn’t get the Gossip Girl reference, all is lost.)
It appears that Dev and Freida Pinto have finally come forth and admitted to having a romance off-set, despite their previous protests against the accusation, for lack of a better term. It was obvious to anyone (except them, supposedly) what was going to happen: because they worked so closely together, for a long period of time, they were bound to get together.
Those of us deeply immersed in psychology lore would call this the mere exposure effect. It happens when a person is exposed to an object or another person repeatedly over time. As the person—let’s just call him Dev Patel—is repeatedly exposed to the object or other person—we’ll call her Freida Pinto—he grows to like her more and more. However, this only happens if:
1) The first person has a neutral or positive reaction to the second person or object
and
2) The first person doesn’t have a negative reaction to the second person or object

If Dev was to have a negative initial reaction to Freida, repeated exposure to her would’ve just made him dislike her even more. Evidently, though, this was not the case.
Not only do Dev and Freida have the mere exposure working to their benefit, they also have the matching hypothesis on their side. This hypothesis states that, “people tend to pair up with others who are equally attractive” (Baumeister 334). Dev Patel captured the hearts of girls everywhere from the moment he graced their movie screens. Similarly, my boyfriend admitted that the initial reason he went to go see “Slumdog Millionaire” is because of how attractive he believed Freida to be. It’s safe to say that both of them are equally attractive and desirable; is it any wonder that they paired up? I mean really, who else could they be with?
So girls around the world, it’s time to find another man to swoon over. This one is so obviously taken.

All in Favor of People as Cultural Beings…!

Something is happening in South Carolina. It’s something so distinct that it’s giving a large amount of evidence to those who view humans as more cultural animals than just social animals.

After putting up a billboard that told all of Charleston that if they didn’t believe in God they weren’t alone, the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry group received an overwhelmingly positive response from the town. There wasn’t that much hostility, if any; it was quite the contrary. People showed up to support the group’s public symposium. Many people had finally found a group that they could identify with, where they could be with people who thought like them. It makes people who typify humans as simply social animals stop in their tracks. Apparently, we’re not just social animals—we’re something more.

Cultural animals have “an organized, information-based system” and “[use] language and ideas to organize social interactions into a broad network that includes many people, including some who are not related to each other” (Baumeister 39). If humans were only social animals and nothing else, it wouldn’t matter to non-believer parents that there were no family-oriented programs for non-believers and their children—they’d simply be happy to be in a society with other people of the human race, regardless of religion. They would always look for a connection between themselves and others in their environment, and they’d most likely find some sort of link. However, just living, working, and playing with other humans is not enough; humans want to use a uniform way of doing things, as well as shared beliefs (such as atheism), not just any beliefs. And aren't atheist parents using language to try to establish social interactions into a broader network--to encompass as many non-believers as possible, even though they aren't related?

Beings who are only social don't care about non-related organisms in their culture as much as their own kin. So much for humans as social beings.

All in favor of humans being recognized as cultural animals, not just social animals, say I!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

People everywhere are being hit hard financially, but the state of the economy isn’t only affecting our pockets. It’s also affecting our self esteem.
The New York Times talks about the men who’ve been laid off from their financial-industry-based jobs in one of their articles. It mentions that these men face the pain and shame of being laid off, and it hits their self-esteem hard. A lot of men feel that their self-esteem is tied to success in their professional life. So what happens when that professional life goes down the drain?
These men might feel like they are failing their family and their peers. As a result, they might reach a higher level of self-awareness; in fact, they might become too self-aware. If they become too self conscious about “looking bad” in front of others, they’ll try to escape that heightened sense of awareness. It’ll be a way to avoid the reminder of their supposed failings. Some men in these hard financial times may up and leave their families because they are ashamed for failing them—for not being the breadwinner, for losing their jobs. And then again, some might not.
Who would’ve known that economic hardships would cause so much psychological drama?

What can you do for yourself?

Being an African-American student myself, it’s safe to say that most of us are aware of the huge, crater-sized achievement gap between “us”—the black students who try hard to get the good grades but seem to still fall behind—and “them”—our peers who seem to be breezing through their education career without a hitch. Many of “us” have been aware of this discrepancy for a while, but could not figure it out. It didn’t seem to be linked to covert or overt racism, but were we missing something? Was there any connection between our race and our grades?
As it turns out, there is a connection. However, it’s not racism. In fact, we are sabotaging ourselves, mostly by the stereotype threat. Stereotype threat is defined as, “the fear that one might confirm the stereotypes that others hold” (Baumeister 434). Even if I happen to be the only African-American student in an honors-level course, I may fear that I’ll live up to the stereotype of black students: that we’re lazy, and because of our laziness, we’ll never get ahead in life. I might feel the pressure to perform, but as a result of self-defeating behavior—actions that cause people to fail, suffer, or bring misfortune on themselves—I might perform worse than I would have, had I known that the odds were not against me, nor for me. Even when there’s no reason I should do any worse than my White-American peers, I probably will still do worse due to stereotype threat.
So how do we get rid of stereotype threat? Easy. Here are a two very helpful tips for people who are teaching:
1. Make sure that the students know that no one has an advantage over anyone else. Okay, so this isn’t as easy as I tried to make it seem. In order for a student to believe that there are no stereotypes involved in the making or grading of a test, the student has to trust you, and your intentions. For black students, it may be something like telling them that black students score just as high on the test as white students. For girls, it could be telling them that girls have the same average on the test as boys do. It depends on the situation, the stereotype involved, and the people who are affected.
2. Three words: standards and assurance. The students under stereotype threat are less likely than other students to remember that teachers have high standards for their students, and that the teachers believe that the students can reach those standards regardless of race. Students who face stereotype threat need to be reminded of these standards, and also of the teacher’s confidence in the student achieving these standards.

The teenagers and adults at the Harriet B. Webster Task Force Teen Summit were on the right track. Unfortunately, they missed one key element: it’s not how a student dresses, but what they think others are going to think about how they dress that’s going to make the difference.

Fighting our sexual nature.

Regrettably, teenage pregnancy and sex seems to be a huge concern for the United States. People were in an uproar about the Sarah Palin incident and the fact that Bristol Palin is now a teenage mom. The madness doesn’t stop there. Schools in Texas are promoting an abstinence-only sex education, only to see that this approach is failing them. Why, exactly, is this approach failing them?
It could be a number of reasons. One reason is that there is a correlation between self-esteem and a whether or not the person is sexually active. It’s the reverse of what people think, actually—the more self-esteem a person has, the more likely they are to have sex. Maybe the abstinence-only approach isn’t failing because have a low self-esteem and therefore need knowledge to boost it—maybe these teens have too much self-esteem in general. Teaching them about abstinence probably won’t lower their self-esteem and, therefore, won’t help much on the no-sex front.
Another reason that teaching about abstinence is failing is because the schools in Texas are treating the issue of sex as if it’s only a cultural issue. Sex is both a nature and culture issue. Sex is natural. It’s what all the animals of the wild kingdom do. This doesn’t change for humans. At the very least, the Texas education system should have acknowledged that their teens are fighting against both the sex culture AND their instincts to reproduce.
Alas, the solution to teen pregnancy is still out there. Will we find it? Hopefully we will. We might have to enlist the help of a social psychologist though.