Apologizing to Avoid a Jail Sentence?

Is Saying Sorry Better Than Prison?

http://www.good.is/post/is-saying-sorry-better-than-prison/?gt1=48001

One of the things we discussed in class was that one of the goals of incarceration is rehabilitation. According to the article a group of young people that are arrested in Northern Ireland are given the opportunity to say they are sorry to the people they affected the most with their crimes and they often have to work to offset any pay/damages.

38% under this program reoffended, however under a more harsh standard of incarceration reoffended 71% of the time. Not only are there benefits economically by not putting more tax dollars into the prison system, the offenders actually are acting better for society after their crimes.

One reason may be that the offender may become more self-aware to the crimes they have committed. They see how it affects the other people that are the victims. They are less likely to conform to a life of crime due to their new found self-awareness.

Now is this unfair to the victims? Not according most of the victims who actually support this more than just locking kids up. This allows kids to get over their crimes in a more efficient way and they will not have the social stigma of being incarcerated. This allows them to be able to work and be effective members in society.

Can Poor Leadership Lead Workers to Have Bad Health Problems?

Karolinska Institutet (2009, November 11). Poor Leadership Poses A Health Risk At Work. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 12, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com? /releases/2009/11/091102121626.htm

This was a cool study that came about recently that examines the effect that possible bad managerial leadership can have on workers' long term health. They also examined the relationship that possible bad managerial leadership had on workers taking more time off for sick leave. This study was conducted by the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet in which they got their results from 20,000 employees from such countries as Germany and Poland as well as most of Sweden's working population. These employees worked at various places like hotels. Once they got the results back, the conductors of this study looked at different people's stress levels, the number of sick leave that they took, and their different health problems that they had as well as other things. The conductors related this to how these people viewed their manager's leadership whether it was good or bad like how supportive he or she was. Through all of the results, they found out that possible poor managerial leadership actually did have an effect on a worker's long term health as well as the increased number of days that people were on sick leave from work due to poor managerial leadership. The conductors also found out that workers who viewed their managers as being good leaders, that those people had spent less days on sick leave from work.

I think that one factor that really wasn't mention that could make the employees view their managers as being poor leaders could be the leader's style. The employees might prefer a more relationship-oriented leader rather than a task-oriented leader or vice versa. Even though this is definitely not considered to be bad leadership, some employees might view this as being bad leadership. I also feel that some of the employees might view their leaders as being poor leaders based on things like their leaders showing a little favoritism towards the other employees. Those workers might end up having a dislike for their boss and end up viewing this as poor leadership which is another example that might not be considered by others to be poor leadership. I also agreed with the results that came about from this study. I think that employees who feel that their bosses are good leaders are more likely to live happier and healthier lives now and down the road. I think that this also can lead employees to enjoy their work more.

Monogamy as Evolutionary or Social Function?

http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/science-of-sex-appeal-is-monogamy-the-answer.html
http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/science-of-sex-appeal-is-monogamy-the-answer.html

These videos described the reasons for monogamy in humans. In recent decades, I think people's view of monogamy has changed greatly. Maybe this is due to an increasing feeling that life-long monogramy isn't necessary or practical. With half of all marriages ending in divorce and women's changing roles in society, it isn't really surprising that monogamy isn't seen as a necessity to building a prosperous family. Today, women can engage in one night stands as easily as men and with less worry about consequences than ever before. They also aren't dependent on men as providers anymore. So is monogamy still a good option?

These videos showed that although women throughout evolution wouldn't have benefitted from straying from her partner, women seem to have a tendency to desire different traits at different times of the month. They still desire good fathering traits in their long term partners; however, they may stray if their partner doesn't have the good genes needed to be passed on to offspring. These "good genes" can be recognized by attractiveness and may tempt women into cheating, especially when their liklihood of getting pregnant is high.
Both men and women were found to have chemicals in their brains that support monogamy. These were vasopressin in males and oxytocin in women.

So could monogamy be nothing more than the balance of hormones? I think that even though monogamy today might not be as necessary as it was before, it is still necessary for future generations. Two parent households seem like they would be ideal in raising children. This way the children have both a male and female perspective guiding them and they often grow up with more stability.
Studies like Buss's Strategies of Human Mating show that men think short-term dating is more important than women. I understand that this could be because it is the easiest way to ensure they mate. However, I think that from an evolutionary standpoint, the offspring of a male who wasn't present for their upbringing would have less of a chance of surviving. This is possible for several reasons such as a lack of protection and no one to provide for the family. There would also be a chance that the child would have no male to teach it hunting or other important skills. Then in this way wouldn't the offspring of an absent male be less adaptive and less likely to mate? All-in-all I think that although monogamy isn't essential today, it is still important in raising successfull offspring in most cases. And although short-term mating may be the easiest way for males to reproduce, it might not have given their genes the best chance of being carried on through future generations.

1. http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/science-of-sex-appeal-attractive-facial-features.html

2. http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/science-of-sex-appeal-signals-of-the-flesh.html

I found this first short video after I read the assigned reading from Lemley; "Isn't She Lovely?" I was looking for an example of what the "hyperfeminized" faces from the reading looked like. It elaborated on what the reading had already said and gave some helpful visuals.

The second video is a related study that I thought was pretty interesting. College students were asked to judge photos of small patches of skin on the attractiveness that their owner probably possessed. After a short period of time the students were able to distinguish and rate what they thought were the most attractive people based on the sample photo of skin given to them. Why is such a small glimpse of a person all that's needed to assess their attractiveness?
It is guessed that in evolution, parasites were particularly prevalent in the success or failure of humanity. Therefore, the easiest way to indicate that a potential mate may not be a good choice, would be to analyze their skin color and texture. This would be a good representation of the general health of the other. It would be especially useful in determining their hormonal health because an imbalance in hormones is quite often the cause of irregular complexion and blemishes.

I thought that this attempt to delve into more detailed theory of visual attraction seemed pretty reasonable. It's kind of amazing that without even thinking about the smaller details in summing up someone's appeal, you are subconsciously analyzing all these finer points.
I wonder how people will adapt from here on out. Today, you can't assume someone is healthy just by seeing the tone of their skin. Actually, you can assume that if a woman's skin is too evenly colored and her cheeks are rosy, that she is wearing make-up. An attractive all-over tan is also a good indicator that this person may use tanning beds. Many cosmetics contain checmicals known to cause cancer, and by now everyone knows that tanning beds do as well. So in the future will an even skin tone, rosy cheecks and colored lips be considered unadaptive rather than indicators of good physical health? Maybe that's too much to assume being that nearly everything is supposed to cause cancer. However, I do think it's interesting that what we do to appear attractive to mates, seems to be making us less desirable mates.

Did equal rights for women hurt education

A hundred years ago teaching was dominated by women. Teaching was one of the few jobs open to women that did not involve menial labor. By 1940 about 55 percent of teachers were women.

According to the authors of the book Super Freakonomics. When the Equal Pay and Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed it caused a shift in the perception of women’s roles in the work place. Enabling more women with a chance for an education, they looked at professions that had previously been off limits to women: law, medicine, finance, and business.

These profession offered women higher wages and attracted the best and the brightest women. In the past many of these women would have taken up teaching in the past.

As a consequence, of these women choosing the higher paying jobs the teaching profession experienced a brain drain. In 1960 40 percent of women scored in the top quintile of IQ and other aptitude tests. Within twenty years fewer than half as many women were in the top quintile, with more than twice as many in the bottom. Falling wages for teachers in relation to other jobs is seen as at least partially to blame. The chancellor of New York City’s public school system said, “The quality of teachers has been declining for decades.”

Between 1967 and 1980 U.S. test scores fell about 1.25 grade-level equivalents. Education researcher John Bishop called this decline, “historically unprecedented,” arguing that it will put a serious drag on national productivity well into the twenty first century.

Levitt, S., & Dubner, S. (2009) Super Freakonomics. New York: HarperCollins.

Making Progress in Lessening Racism: Prom Night in Mississippi

We had a little discussion in class about a month ago where we looked at the question if we have progress in the last fifty years in lessening racism. We listed a few examples that showed this progress. But, there was one thing afterwards that I thought of regarding this question. I thought of the documentary, Prom Night in Mississippi, that I watched this past summer. This documentary, which was filmed in 2008,talked about a high school in Charleston, Mississippi, where there was two separate proms, one prom for the white kids and one prom for the black kids. In 1997, actor Morgan Freeman, who lived in Charleston, made a proposal to the school board that if they had just one prom instead of separate proms, that he would pay for it. But, this proposal was rejected. But for the 2008 prom, Morgan Freeman decided to do the proposal again and this time, the proposal was approved. He also told the kids that he would pay for the prom if they put together an integrated prom. They gladly accepted this. But when the idea of an integrated prom came about, many of the white parents were furious and spoke up about their racist views that they held for their entire lives. Some said that integration of any kind didn't allow for individuality, and some said that they wouldn't change their views for nobody. Some of the white parents were trying their best to push their kids away from the integerated prom and pushing them to go to the parents' proposed separate white prom. Even, one kid, when he was interviewed for the documentary, had to have his face covered so that his parents, who were racist, didn't find out about his true views. Many of the kids ended up becoming furious with how the parents were acting. The kids said things like that the white parents had to get over this racism and that it was so stupid that the parents were making such a big deal out of this. With all of these things, this showed that the racism was definitely bad in this town. When looking at the different forms of racism that were discussed in one of our readings, it seemed to me that most of these parents, who were racist, held old-fashioned racist views. I can't recall if there were parents who held aversive racist views, but there might have been. Even through all of the parents bickering as well as other people in the town, the kids had a very successful integrated prom.

This documentary also related to the studies that were conducted in one of our readings, "Change of Heart." It definitely related to its studies about the generation gap which said that younger Americans were more likely to accept other races than the older Americans. This is definitely shown in the documentary with racist parents being furious over an integrated prom while many of the high school kids feeling that an integrated prom is a good thing. This could based on the kids being taught in school that interacting with people of a different race is a good thing as well as some of the students already dating someone from a different race. This documentary as well as the reading gives us an eye-opener that racism is still a big part today. Even though, I do agree that we have done many things throughout the years to lower racism. But like the documentary and the reading shows us, that there is still some progress that needs to be made in order to keep lowering racism.

Genes May Influence Popularity, Study of College Students Finds

Genes May Influence Popularity, Study Of College Students Finds
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081222074607.htm

This is a very interesting article that goes off of our recent and current class discussions of groups and group behavior. In class we have looked at group structure and how people fit in certain groups. We recently were asked to create models of how people are accepted into a group, stay in a group, hierarchy in a group, why people leave the group, etc. Students in class discussed more in terms of certain traits that make people accepted into groups. What I was interested in was what made people popular in certain groups or if there was a real reason for a hierarchy in groups.

This article was very interesting in the sense that I didn’t think there could be a certain gene that made people more popular than others. The idea that the article discusses is that a gene predisposes you to a certain behavior and those behaviors get different kinds of social reactions from others. So, the genes are in some way directing your social experiences. The particular gene that they have found is one that predisposes males to rule-breaking behavior, which makes them more popular in their groups. If you think back to high school, the rule-breaking kid always was more popular because they were exciting and not afraid to break rules.

This is the only gene they have found so far, but gives an interesting insight to group behavior. I do not think that genes decide where we stand in groups and what groups we are in, but they apparently do play a small role. Does anyone else find this fascinating or have opposing opinions?