I recently went to a Butte-Siverbow city council meeting at the courthouse. There is a pretty high profile issue within our community right now concerning Butte-Silverbow county health departments contact with their Chemical Dependancy program. Let me enlighten you, in this county we have a very successful chemical dependancy program. It functions well and makes lots and lots of money for our city. Surrounding counties such as Anaconda, Deer Lodge, Dillion, Powell, and Granite county do not have any success at all and are in serious need of our help. For a long time the employee's of BSB chemical dependancy have been making "pro-bono" trips to these counties to help them out. Just recently in the last year or two our health department developed a program called the Tri-County Addictive Services. This created jobs, and this mildly resolved the problem. Before I go any further I should state that they did this without any contract, they did this because it is what needed to be done. However, other programs such as Family Planning, Cancer Awareness, WIC, and Prevention have been established in these counties for many of years under the supervision of our county with a contract and have been very successful.
Here is the problem, the county health department needs to develop a contract to secure this new bridge they have built with our neighbors. In order to do this the program needs to be proposed to our city council and approved. Our city council has motioned to deny the program; a complete denial of this program would put a stop to the jobs that were created, and more importantly a stop to helping these people in the midst of their recovery. This would open up our county to the possiblity of all sorts of lawsuits.They have motioned a denial of the program even though it would bring $91,796.00 into our community. My question is why?
After attending the meeting to hear an even level of argument I have come to the decision that this is entirely like the example in class concerning the kids that rewarded the ingroup more points than their outgroup. The cities bases for dening this contract is simply based on insurance. They claim that they do not want to be held responsible for insuring the clients that the program would provide for and they do not want to insure employee's from other counties. They claim that this would be to hard to oversee. Wow! I am amazed! Considering we already employ people in these counties for the five other contracts; that the health department already has insurance to cover those people in the other contracts. I do not understand.
"This is a complete ingroup/outgroup situation!" I thought to myself. I looked around the room and like never before the citizens of BSB were all piled into this tiny court room. They were all in favor of this motion. Then I look up and we have twelve elected officials claiming that they are the victims of slander because they have made their decision and they are sticking to it. "Victims? Who is really the victim here?"
Now, the confusing part is who is the ingroup and who is the outgroup. At first, you would think that BSB is the ingroup and these other counties are the outgroup and that is why we choose not to work through the details and not help them, but when you step back and really look it, that is not the case at all. The outgroup is the citizens, all of them from all the counties combined. The ones that need the jobs, the help, the support for their families. The ingroup here is the city council, the local goverment.
In conclusion the mayor, who sits on the city council decided to extend this issue until November 1, 2009 and has asked that the health department take this time to work through the insurance details and propose them to the council at that time. It is my bet that this city council has already made up their minds. They have turned this problem into an "us" against "them".
This is also like the robbers cave study. How do we unify our state like the young boys were unified in the robbers cave study? Do we send our city council members to do arts and crafts with the citizens of our surrounding counties? Do we have to plan a competition against North Dakota so that all of Montana becomes an ingroup? If there was a solution to ingroup/outgroup problems look at the extent the resolution would go. I think it is important to study this and know how it works and what is the resolution.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Weight Bias and Racial Discrimination
Yale University (2008, March 28). Weight Bias Is As Prevalent As Racial Discrimination, Study Suggests. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 20, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2008/03/080327172129.htm
This study, which came from the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obestiy, looked into seeing if discrimination against people who were over-weight was just as common as racial discrimination. They used a sample of around 3,000 adults who were varied in ages from 25 to 74 years old. This sample of people observed instances in their own lives that they ended up viewing as examples of weight discrimination. After the conductors of this study collected this data about people's experiences of weight discrimination, they looked to see how similiar this data was compared to other people's experiences of discrimination that had to do with race and gender.
There were a couple of things that they found in their results that I thought were fascinating. First, they found that discrimination against people who were over-weight was just as common as racial discrimination. I think that this is true, because a lot of us hear many examples when people feel that they were discriminated against based on being over-weight. One of these examples, for instance, is like when a thin person and an over-weight person go up against each other for the same job in which the thin person ends up getting the job despite being the one less qualified for that job. There still obviously is racial discrimination going on today, but it isn't quite as bad as it was in the past. There was an interesting comment after this study had been conducted regarding weight discrimination by one of the authors of this study who said that weight discrimination is still considered to be socially acceptable. One of real world example that possibly shows this was when the United Airlines put in a rule to make people who were considered to be over-weight to buy two seats on their planes as well as for them to wait for the next flight if there were no more empty seats. With weight discrimination being socially acceptable, I think that some people view that weight is a controllable thing and that some people choose to be over-weight based on bad nutrition and lack of exercise. Even though at times, it isn't true especially with some people being over-weight based on their genes. Also, they were able to find in this study that women were more likely than men to experience weight discrimination for being over-weight. I think that this finding can definitely be attributed to the idea of men having a stronger prejudice towards over-weight people that we learned from in the studies in class.
This study, which came from the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obestiy, looked into seeing if discrimination against people who were over-weight was just as common as racial discrimination. They used a sample of around 3,000 adults who were varied in ages from 25 to 74 years old. This sample of people observed instances in their own lives that they ended up viewing as examples of weight discrimination. After the conductors of this study collected this data about people's experiences of weight discrimination, they looked to see how similiar this data was compared to other people's experiences of discrimination that had to do with race and gender.
There were a couple of things that they found in their results that I thought were fascinating. First, they found that discrimination against people who were over-weight was just as common as racial discrimination. I think that this is true, because a lot of us hear many examples when people feel that they were discriminated against based on being over-weight. One of these examples, for instance, is like when a thin person and an over-weight person go up against each other for the same job in which the thin person ends up getting the job despite being the one less qualified for that job. There still obviously is racial discrimination going on today, but it isn't quite as bad as it was in the past. There was an interesting comment after this study had been conducted regarding weight discrimination by one of the authors of this study who said that weight discrimination is still considered to be socially acceptable. One of real world example that possibly shows this was when the United Airlines put in a rule to make people who were considered to be over-weight to buy two seats on their planes as well as for them to wait for the next flight if there were no more empty seats. With weight discrimination being socially acceptable, I think that some people view that weight is a controllable thing and that some people choose to be over-weight based on bad nutrition and lack of exercise. Even though at times, it isn't true especially with some people being over-weight based on their genes. Also, they were able to find in this study that women were more likely than men to experience weight discrimination for being over-weight. I think that this finding can definitely be attributed to the idea of men having a stronger prejudice towards over-weight people that we learned from in the studies in class.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Attitudes on Campus: Applying a Theory, Outgroup Homogeny Effect
Even though Tech is a campus comprised of mainly engineers there seems to be a lot of attitudes about one type of engineering versus the other. I think that this is because early on our education we are encouraged to spend time with people in the same major from joining clubs to partnering in class for homework assignments. This seems to form ingroups. And while the ingroups aren’t necessarily particularly click-ish there definitely are some attitudes from one type of engineering to another.
I did a short survey for a Technocrat article on what the attitudes where from various majors on campus. I sent it to as many people as I could and tried to get some feedback from every major at Tech. What I found was that although students think that they work as hard as other students and they feel that their major is as important as others, they aren’t given equal respect. For instance non-engineering students whether two year, four year, or graduate degree earning majors all felt that they were treated as second-class citizens by students in engineering majors. Among engineering majors there were also just as many conflicts with those ingroups. Petroleum Engineers were reported to have insulted the most students, whether by touting the income they would earn one day or reducing fields such as Environmental Engineering to nothing more than a “glorified clean-up crew.” The thing is, I suspect that once out of Tech, if these same separated students were to meet up, their actions would be much different. For example, if two different engineering majors met at a bar one night after being in the workforce several years I think you would find that past ingroup biases would be forgotten and they would feel as though they were both part of either an engineering or Montana Tech ingroup.
Either way, although most engineers have similar interests and intelligence, there still seems to be some need to form ingroups. People tend to think either their group is superior or at least equal to that of others. While they see people in their ingroup as separate indiviuals, they reported seeing other groups as similar. This was proved when I asked them to use several words to describe their own majors versus that of others. They had a hard time generalizing their own ingroups but then used specified, often negative statements to describe others. For example, other majors were “greedy,” “approval-seeking,” or “slackers.” Out group descriptions were short and simple while ingroup descriptions were longer and more varied and emphasized diversity in character.
I did a short survey for a Technocrat article on what the attitudes where from various majors on campus. I sent it to as many people as I could and tried to get some feedback from every major at Tech. What I found was that although students think that they work as hard as other students and they feel that their major is as important as others, they aren’t given equal respect. For instance non-engineering students whether two year, four year, or graduate degree earning majors all felt that they were treated as second-class citizens by students in engineering majors. Among engineering majors there were also just as many conflicts with those ingroups. Petroleum Engineers were reported to have insulted the most students, whether by touting the income they would earn one day or reducing fields such as Environmental Engineering to nothing more than a “glorified clean-up crew.” The thing is, I suspect that once out of Tech, if these same separated students were to meet up, their actions would be much different. For example, if two different engineering majors met at a bar one night after being in the workforce several years I think you would find that past ingroup biases would be forgotten and they would feel as though they were both part of either an engineering or Montana Tech ingroup.
Either way, although most engineers have similar interests and intelligence, there still seems to be some need to form ingroups. People tend to think either their group is superior or at least equal to that of others. While they see people in their ingroup as separate indiviuals, they reported seeing other groups as similar. This was proved when I asked them to use several words to describe their own majors versus that of others. They had a hard time generalizing their own ingroups but then used specified, often negative statements to describe others. For example, other majors were “greedy,” “approval-seeking,” or “slackers.” Out group descriptions were short and simple while ingroup descriptions were longer and more varied and emphasized diversity in character.
Social Loafing: Applying a Theory
In our readings for this week, I thought that Latane’s “Many Hands Make Light the Work” study was really interesting. I had noticed social loafing at my work this summer based on how many people showed up to work to plant to trees at the Superfund. It was a large-scale planting job and so depending on what phase of the work we were in there could be anywhere from 30-80 workers onsite during the day. We had several crews working at a time and the crews could have anywhere from 8-20 people on them depending on the day. Each person working was given a quota of trees to plant every day. Although there wasn’t any repercussion for not planting this many, by the first week into the job most people didn’t have any trouble meeting the quota.
My boss and I were talking one day when production was unusually good and we noticed there were fewer workers than normal but individual production was up above any other day that summer. We noticed this again several days later. After that we started trying to predict how good the production would be based on how many workers showed up. The interesting thing was there seemed to be a maximum production per worker when the crew was smaller. Crews around 9 people seemed to plant the most versus a larger crew of around 15. It seemed that when the entire crew was present, the workers felt less motivated knowing that the other worker would pick up the slack and if they didn’t, there would be many others to blame besides themselves. When smaller crews got together, there was less talking and also more focused work. Everyone knew their production for that day mattered more and so they worked harder.
It was really interesting to see that actual studies have proved this phenomenon as well.
My boss and I were talking one day when production was unusually good and we noticed there were fewer workers than normal but individual production was up above any other day that summer. We noticed this again several days later. After that we started trying to predict how good the production would be based on how many workers showed up. The interesting thing was there seemed to be a maximum production per worker when the crew was smaller. Crews around 9 people seemed to plant the most versus a larger crew of around 15. It seemed that when the entire crew was present, the workers felt less motivated knowing that the other worker would pick up the slack and if they didn’t, there would be many others to blame besides themselves. When smaller crews got together, there was less talking and also more focused work. Everyone knew their production for that day mattered more and so they worked harder.
It was really interesting to see that actual studies have proved this phenomenon as well.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Reducing Prejudice in Children
Reading Friendship Stories can Change Children's Attitudes Towards Stigmatized Groups
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/51982.php.
I thought that this was an interesting study that looked into trying to reduce kids from having a negative prejudice towards a person or others in a particular group. This study was primarily looking at children who were from the ages of five to eleven years old. I thought this was crucial for the study to use this age group, because this age group isn't quite as familiar with the world around them. If these kids find someone that is or others that are different from themselves like their skin color, those kids might do certain things like avoid them or make fun of them. This could show a negative prejudice that those kids might have about that person or others that belong to a certain group. I also think that these negative prejudices that these kids might have could have come from prejudices held by their parents. Most kids view their parents as role models in which these kids might reflect the same attitudes, like negative prejudice against a certain group, that their parents might have without the kids being aware of it.
This was how they put together this study in which they looked at kids in U.K. The people who put together the study decided to use stories that showed friendships between English kids and refugee kids, who are a part of this group that some in this area have negative prejudices towards. These kids were put into small groups in which they read these stories for once a week for six weeks for twenty minutes. What the researchers discovered from the kids who read these stories for those six weeks was that the English kids developed more positive rather than negative attitudes towards refugee kids. They also found out that most of these kids wanted to be friends with the refugee kids. I think that in the future when most of thes English kids are around refugees, they will more likely have an automatic positive attitude towards them rather than an uncomfortable and automatic negative attitude.
This study really reminded of an example that was used in one of our readings. This example was the one when a small number of people who were white participated in diversity education in which those people ended up having less anti-Black attitudes and having more friendships with black people as well as other things. The study and this example were similiar, because they both had people go through an experience which ended up changing their attitudes towards a certain group.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/51982.php.
I thought that this was an interesting study that looked into trying to reduce kids from having a negative prejudice towards a person or others in a particular group. This study was primarily looking at children who were from the ages of five to eleven years old. I thought this was crucial for the study to use this age group, because this age group isn't quite as familiar with the world around them. If these kids find someone that is or others that are different from themselves like their skin color, those kids might do certain things like avoid them or make fun of them. This could show a negative prejudice that those kids might have about that person or others that belong to a certain group. I also think that these negative prejudices that these kids might have could have come from prejudices held by their parents. Most kids view their parents as role models in which these kids might reflect the same attitudes, like negative prejudice against a certain group, that their parents might have without the kids being aware of it.
This was how they put together this study in which they looked at kids in U.K. The people who put together the study decided to use stories that showed friendships between English kids and refugee kids, who are a part of this group that some in this area have negative prejudices towards. These kids were put into small groups in which they read these stories for once a week for six weeks for twenty minutes. What the researchers discovered from the kids who read these stories for those six weeks was that the English kids developed more positive rather than negative attitudes towards refugee kids. They also found out that most of these kids wanted to be friends with the refugee kids. I think that in the future when most of thes English kids are around refugees, they will more likely have an automatic positive attitude towards them rather than an uncomfortable and automatic negative attitude.
This study really reminded of an example that was used in one of our readings. This example was the one when a small number of people who were white participated in diversity education in which those people ended up having less anti-Black attitudes and having more friendships with black people as well as other things. The study and this example were similiar, because they both had people go through an experience which ended up changing their attitudes towards a certain group.
Obama Effect on Stereotype Threat
Begley,S. (2009, January) An 'Obama Effect' on Blacks' Test Scores. Retrieved October 12, 2009, from http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/labnotes/archive/2009/01/23/an-obama-effect-on-blacks-test-scores.aspx
The Obama effect on African American students suggests that the stereotype threat was lowered after the nomination and election of Obama. Ray Friedman of Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management thinks that Obama will do more for black scholastic achievement than anything since Brown v. Board of Education.
The study tested at four times in 2008 ( in August just before the Democratic Convention; just after Obama accepted the nomination; in early October; and again right after Obama was elected), the study asked around 102 college students to take an online test of 20 questions from the Graduate Record Exams (GREs). (Over the four periods of the test, 84 black students and 388 white students that were matched for education levels participated.) The students were told the test was made up by the Massachusetts Aptitude Assessment Center, and is being used to assess verbal problem solving skills. The test was meant to activate the black stereotype that blacks do not perform as well as whites on aptitude tests. The students were also asked to indentify their race before taking the test as to activate the stereotype threat.
Before the convention and in early October the score gaps were as wide as ever; white students did better than black students. However, just after the conventions speech by Obama and after Election Day the scores became statistically equal. The rise in scores is attributed to Obama breaking the stereotypical mold.
This rise in test scores only happened with students that watched the acceptance speech then it vanished. The black students that did not watch the speech scores were same; they never did score as well as the white students. However, Joshua Aronson of New York University, one of the researchers on the stereotype thought the study made some sense. According to Aronson studies have shown even a small intervention like Obama’s Denver speech can help with the stereotype threat. Then there is the possibility the students who chose to watch Obama and who chose to be the study are the type of people who would find Obama inspiring and that their test scores would get a boost from thinking about his accomplishments.
Many of the experts have the same idea as Aronson’s that the Obama effect will only inspire a sub-population of African Americans. More experiments are needed. However the idea that Obama could inspire the next generation is fascinating
The Obama effect on African American students suggests that the stereotype threat was lowered after the nomination and election of Obama. Ray Friedman of Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management thinks that Obama will do more for black scholastic achievement than anything since Brown v. Board of Education.
The study tested at four times in 2008 ( in August just before the Democratic Convention; just after Obama accepted the nomination; in early October; and again right after Obama was elected), the study asked around 102 college students to take an online test of 20 questions from the Graduate Record Exams (GREs). (Over the four periods of the test, 84 black students and 388 white students that were matched for education levels participated.) The students were told the test was made up by the Massachusetts Aptitude Assessment Center, and is being used to assess verbal problem solving skills. The test was meant to activate the black stereotype that blacks do not perform as well as whites on aptitude tests. The students were also asked to indentify their race before taking the test as to activate the stereotype threat.
Before the convention and in early October the score gaps were as wide as ever; white students did better than black students. However, just after the conventions speech by Obama and after Election Day the scores became statistically equal. The rise in scores is attributed to Obama breaking the stereotypical mold.
This rise in test scores only happened with students that watched the acceptance speech then it vanished. The black students that did not watch the speech scores were same; they never did score as well as the white students. However, Joshua Aronson of New York University, one of the researchers on the stereotype thought the study made some sense. According to Aronson studies have shown even a small intervention like Obama’s Denver speech can help with the stereotype threat. Then there is the possibility the students who chose to watch Obama and who chose to be the study are the type of people who would find Obama inspiring and that their test scores would get a boost from thinking about his accomplishments.
Many of the experts have the same idea as Aronson’s that the Obama effect will only inspire a sub-population of African Americans. More experiments are needed. However the idea that Obama could inspire the next generation is fascinating
Indirect Detection of Deception: Looking for Change
I could do that better.
http://www.uiowa.edu/~grpproc/crisp/crisp14_9.pdf
Indirect Detection of Deception: Looking for Change
This study used indirect methods to detect liars. College students (53 males and 51 females) were asked to watch a video in which half of the people told some lies and half were entirely truthful. They were asked to detect the liars in the video and whom behavior, mannerisms, or speech changed. The participants were from psychology classes and were all given extra credit in the courses in exchange for participation. The people for the interview were asked questions about themselves, half were asked to lie and the other half were asked to tell the truth. The results were that the direct detection of lying resulted in poor accuracy. Yet the indirect method resulted in more accuracy, because they were told to look for changes in behavior.
I think this study was interesting and that it did find that people look more at how people act when lying versus trying to just figure out if the information was true. This is important in the studies of deception that they let the participants know what lying is and what exactly they were hoping to get from the study. I think it could have been done better if the people in the video had to lie about something that was meaningful to them, something that they cared to lie about. Just lying about basic information, the people had nothing they were trying to gain from it. The lies were not important to them. If the study had been done where the lying meant something to the video people, I think there would have been more reaction when the video people lied, because it was meaningful to them. The participants would have been able to pick up more on the lying because it was meaningful lying. I think it would have made the study a little more accurate.
-Megan Hopkins
http://www.uiowa.edu/~grpproc/crisp/crisp14_9.pdf
Indirect Detection of Deception: Looking for Change
This study used indirect methods to detect liars. College students (53 males and 51 females) were asked to watch a video in which half of the people told some lies and half were entirely truthful. They were asked to detect the liars in the video and whom behavior, mannerisms, or speech changed. The participants were from psychology classes and were all given extra credit in the courses in exchange for participation. The people for the interview were asked questions about themselves, half were asked to lie and the other half were asked to tell the truth. The results were that the direct detection of lying resulted in poor accuracy. Yet the indirect method resulted in more accuracy, because they were told to look for changes in behavior.
I think this study was interesting and that it did find that people look more at how people act when lying versus trying to just figure out if the information was true. This is important in the studies of deception that they let the participants know what lying is and what exactly they were hoping to get from the study. I think it could have been done better if the people in the video had to lie about something that was meaningful to them, something that they cared to lie about. Just lying about basic information, the people had nothing they were trying to gain from it. The lies were not important to them. If the study had been done where the lying meant something to the video people, I think there would have been more reaction when the video people lied, because it was meaningful to them. The participants would have been able to pick up more on the lying because it was meaningful lying. I think it would have made the study a little more accurate.
-Megan Hopkins
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