Changes in Marital Status

Lucas, R., Clark, A., Yannis, G., Diener, E. (2003).
Reexamining adaptation and the set point model of Happiness:
Reactions to changes in marital status.
Retrieved November 20, 2009, from:
http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/psp843527.pdf


I found this article to be very interesting. One often hears the statement that your never happy alone, or life is always better with a partner. I found a study that was done with 12,000 residents in private households of Germany. These residents were contacted over the phone or face to face, and given a survey about their marital status and happiness.
The results showed that people who were married were just as happy and satisfied as those who were single. Everyone has life changing experiences such as getting married, winning a large amount of money, or getting a promotion. Although these times make one very excited and raise self-esteem dramatically, overtime these high levels of happiness return right back to normal. In the end one's life satisfaction will remain about the same from day one until life is over.
I believe this study should be looked at again with a range of different cultures. The meaning of marriage, and beliefs about marriage change between cultures. This study should also be done with different age groups. It would be interesting to see if young couples are happier than older couples. Kepping in mind the younger couples are still working along with many other activites, therefore would recieve many breaks from one another. The older retired couples seem to be around each other a lot more on a day to day basis. I wonder if these time frames would change the level of happiness in a couples relationship.
Marissa Steele

Internalization of Stigmas

I originally went on a search for information about the effects of the obesity stigma but I got a little sidetracked. On this website, http://xnet.kp.org/permanentejournal/sum03/stigma.html, I found this: "It is important to note that the stigma of obesity is somewhat unique from that of other marginalized groups, in that obese people internalize societal anti-fat and pro-thin biases. Obese people agree with society's assessment that an imperfect body represents an imperfect person." The word "internalize" jumped out at me like a bright yellow flower in a wide-open range of rolling green fields. Naturally, I wanted to see what has been said about when this internalization takes place. That's when I found this website: http://www.obesity.org/information/weight_bias.asp. "Research shows that children who are targets of weight stigma internalize negative attitudes and engage in self-blame for the negative social experiences that they confront." One other bit of information is that results from a survey about relationship satisfaction showed that overweight participants who were overweight at or before age 21, attributed relationship struggles to their weight and that overweight participants who were not overweight until after age 21 did not attribute their weight to any struggles in personal relationships. I couldn't find very much more about when the threat of internalization is highest or if there is a time frame for internalization to take place. My hypothesis is that internalization happens at a young age(before the age of 18). Therefor, I propose a study spanning the continental US(simply because I think that differing cultures may naturally have different stigmas). The study would focus on different ranges of ages. The study would combine naturalistic observation of the different age groups and a series of daily journals(participants would not be told what the purpose of keeping a daily journal is or what it is we're looking for) over a period of a year. Initial surveys would be performed to find out who had become classified as obese and when so that we may divide groups according to how long they had been living with the stigma and then determine when, if at all, the stigma was internalized. Researchers would look for specific interactions with peers or coworkers in the observation phase and then look for how, if at all, the participant referred to it in their daily journal. For example, a mention of the specific interaction may or may not even get mentioned in the journal and this would show a great deal about how the incident affected the participant. Any sudden changes in the reactions to specific incidents would indicate a change in the way the participant is perceiving the interactions.

Awareness of Racism Affects How Children Do Socially and Academically

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091113083301.htm

I found this article very interesting and easily related back to things we have discussed in class. This article discusses that children develop an awareness about racial stereotypes earlier in life than we thought. The study looked at children in elementary school and asked them questions to determine their ability to understand another person's stereotypical beliefs. Researchers found that children between age 5 and 11 become aware of stereotypes, including stereotypes about academic ability. When children become aware of stereotypes about their own racial ethnic group, it can affect them academically. The idea being that if a child is of a ethnic group that has a stereotype that they are not that intelligent, the student will do poorer on tests and in class to confirm the stereotype.

This relates to what we studied in class about stereotypes affecting people and people living up to their stereotypes. I would think that if a certain race had a stereotype, that they would want to do the best they can and prove that the stereotype does not apply to them. Instead, this study proves that people continually go along with stereotypes because it is what is expected of them.

So how do we change this? The article suggests that there is a need for educational policies and programs to reduce stereotypes and their consequence early in children's school careers. I would have to agree. If we can get rid of children developing these stereotypes, then every one has the ability to preform at the best level they can, not be help back by stereotypes. Does anyone have any other ideas of how to stop this?

Twittering the Student Experience

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091116103840.htm

There was an experiment done by researchers on a campus to find out if Twitter would help education or not. Researchers set up a system where students in their first term would communicate by tweeting. This was an effective experiment and tweeting was not used for social communication, but more for peer support tool and a student-staff communication tool.

This article discusses how a University used Twitter as a communication tool for their courses. It helped students in studying for exams, setting up meetings, and bringing more clarity of the material by asking the professor questions. Students updated their status to let other students know if they needed help or that they were wiling to help others. Twitter proved to be more effective than email and phone calls because it was more immediate. It also helped students open up more to other students and be available to help each other more.

I thought this was a very interesting phenomenon. I have never used twitter myself because I have always thought of it as just a social network to know what people are doing every second of every day. I would never have thought of using Twitter as an outlet for education. The article briefly discusses how students found it useful and helpful in communicating about courses they were taking and assignments/exams.

This may be effective and helpful to students, but I wonder if it would eventually affect the way people communicate? If all campuses go to this form of communication, there will be no need for face-to-face interaction. The essence off communication will be lost- nonverbal cues, voice cues, etc. I am interested to see what other students think about this!

Balloon Boy Hoax

The Heene family appeared on a popular reality show called Wife Swap about a year ago. The father, Richard, is some kind of scientist who works on inventions all the time. He and his wife have been said to sleep in their clothes in case they need to jump out of bed to chase a storm. They have three boys, the youngest one, named Falcon, being 6 yrs old. Here is a link to the story in case you aren't familiar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_balloon_incident. The most recent news says that the parents are pleading guilty to the charges against them and that the prosecutor is recommending probation. Jim Watkins, a news anchor, wrote a pretty strongly worded article in regards to the exploitation of the children called Falcon's Aftermath: The Danger Was on the Ground. You can find it here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-watkins/falcons-aftermath-the-dan_b_324442.html. This situation pertains to so many of the things we've been discussing in our class so far. For instance, the impact that the news has on how we perceive and feel about things, what they report, and how they report it. Originally, the only information anybody had was one of the boys brother's saying that he saw him climb into the balloon. This country obviously loves reality TV and I would argue that the news has turned into just that. We get what we ask for I think. Based on ratings, they know exactly what to give us and they won't change it until we ask them to. I believe it to be pretty individualistic, among other things, to pull a stunt like this without considering the consequences that may effect their own children and the society around them. What impression have these people gotten that they think nothing will happen as a result of this except that it might better their chances at the reality TV show they had previously pitched to the same network responsible for Jon and Kate + Eight. I think these kids should have some rights to their own autonomy. I know it's hard to define exactly what that means for a child but I really do think that their is something wrong with having the right to subject your kids to reality TV, hoax's to get the attention of the media, and maybe even acting in general. I don't know where to even begin to draw the line though. I would propose a study to map the effects of exploiting kids in the media except that it would completely contradict my notion that children should have some rights because it would have to be done over a long period of time in which several different families were involved in different types of media. There's obviously some idea of what parent's have the right to subject their own children to. We can decide to include them in media entertainment but we can't sell them, send them to work in factories, or beat them. My point is, how do we know what damages are/are not caused by or correlated with, the entertainment industry? Young Falcon reportedly vomited on the sets of both Today and Good Morning America.

The E-spot

If it's easy access that really makes you click, log on here.

With the prevalence of E-Harmony commercials, it's amazing that I hadn't realized just how ordinary internet relationships had become. I knew that cybersex had been around for a long time, I guess I just never thought about the impact that it has on the traditional idea of how people "should" form relationships. The article bounces back and forth between discussing cyber relationships and cybersex. I think they are two different things so I'm going to pick one to talk about. I bet you can't guess which one...

Okay, so I went and found some information on cybersex addiction. Our class reading mentions fantasy being addictive and that cybering is similar to taking drugs. I became immediately curious about whether or not this was defined as a specific addiction or mental disorder or whether it had been recognized at all. This is what I found: http://www.nationalreviewofmedicine.com/issue/2005/06_15/2_feature05_11.html. This particular review is from 2005 and talks about the DSM-IV, The American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, which does not specifically include cybersex addiction as a disorder. It usually gets lumped into the category of "sexual disorder not otherwise specified." This site however, http://www.netaddiction.com/, does mention that Internet addiction is a serious disorder and is being considered for inclusion in the upcoming revision of the DSM-V. My first reaction to this was laughter. I'm ashamed to admit that because I have always been one to take addiction seriously. After bouncing around a couple different web sites dedicated to people who are addicted to cybersex and reading their personal stories, I realized how real the whole thing is. Marriages have indeed been destroyed, internet abuse is attributed to 30% of lost productivity in the work place, and people are neglecting their own children in order to be cybering. A psychiatrist named Dr Jennifer Schneider calls cybersex addiction the crack cocaine of sexual addictions. Essentially she's saying, it's cheap, easy to obtain, and it's extremely powerful in the way it effects the body, therefore people who may not have had issues with addictive sexual behaviors before, might become so when introduced to cybering. I'm curious what the rest of you think about this.

What your Facebook profile says about you.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33796525/ns/technology_and_science-science

I think this article is very interesting since it is about a social profiling site and how you can persuade other people based on attractiveness. We actually talked about this in class where it can be based on their audience, likability, and physical attractiveness.

"In an age dominated by social media where personal photographs are ubiquitous, it becomes important to understand the ways personality is communicated via our appearance," said study researcher Laura Naumann of Sonoma State University. "The appearance one portrays in his or her photographs has important implications for their professional and social life."

I believe that with facebook and other social networking sites we focus more on the Peripheral Route Processing instead of Central Route Processing. Instead of analyzing the message being conveyed we are more likely to see someone be more likable if they are more attractive

Another thing I find fascinating is that it tested many different things such as: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, openness (open to experience), likability, self-esteem, loneliness, religiosity and political orientation.

If there is one thing you can take away from this it comes back to the basic argument of representative heuristics. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it's probably a duck. If you want to be seen as a friendly person you need to show that in your pictures on facebook and real life as well.