Cinderelly, cinderelly

So I was telling my boyfriend Cody about this class and the blogs I have to write every week, and when he asked me if I had written anything about him and I had to reply no, I felt kind of bad! So I'll dedicate this one out to him. Oh and incase anyone looked at my last weeks blog, here is the video of the kids at DisneyWorld this year..there timing was off, but I think they were really nervous! (I think CJ's back tuck is my favorite part of the whole routine)



 So Cody and I have been doing long distance for about a year now, and it hasn't been easy, but it makes us realize that when we do get to spend time together, it is really special and we try not to waste the time we have together. We are also brutally honest with each other, but that's one of the things I love most about our relationship because we can tell each other anything. Unfortunately for me, the topic of cleanliness comes up every once in a while when he comes into town because Cody is a pretty organized guy, and he picks up after himself really well (his house is SPOTLESS). I kinda admire him for that. So first off to get my point across, I am not uncleanly, I am just really busy and don't keep up with small things such as a few clothes on the floor or a couple of dishes in the sink. Okay..so maybe sometimes it gets a little worse than that with the dog toys on the ground, but hey, like I said I'm busy, and plus the dogs like to play with them while I'm away so why pick them up if they like them out? When I try to explain why I get a little behind on my chores because of my time constraints, Cody tells me its probably more because I'm lazy and unorganized. I think we are suffering from the actor-observer effect here (Jones & Nisbett, 1971). 

According to Jones and Nisbett, actors, or the ones acting out a behavior, attribute the causation of their behaviors to their situation, whereas the observers, or those who are observing the actors behavior, attribute the actor's behavior to the actors personality traits. In other words, the person carrying out the behavior will think the underlying cause of their behavior is due to their surrounding environment while the person watching the behavior will think the underlying cause of that persons behavior is due to their personality (Jones & Nisbett, 1971). An example of this we discussed in Dr. G's class is a child versus a parents view on curfews: If a parent gives a child a curfew, the parent will say they created the curfew to protect their child, because they love them, and because they don't trust others late at night, whereas the child will say their parent created the curfew because their parent is mean, boring, and selfish. According to Dr. Giuliano, there are two reasons the  actor-observer effect occurs: 1) Because we have more information about ourselves than others and we know how we will act in certain situation and 2) we have different perspectives than those around us.

Lucky for me, even with the actor-observer effect in play, the house being a little messy when he comes into town really doesn't bother him, since the important thing is that we get to spend time together. Now if we ever live together and its his floor covered in dog toys, I don't know if it will be the same story!

This is Cody and I at a wedding last summer :)

Until next blog,

Your Social Psychista

 

Jones, E. E., & Nisbett, R. E. (1971). The actor and the observer: Divergent perceptions of the causes of behavior. New York: General Learning Press.

T. Giuliano, Social psychology lecture, February 26, 2013.

Word count - 567

Give me a I.M.P.R.E.S.S.I.O.N., What's that spell?

Being a cheerleading coach is exhausting. I don’t know if any of you guys have noticed, when or if you are exposed to 11-13 year old pre-teen girls, you realize really quickly how not all, but the majority of those children are very much into what’s in style, becoming popular, and doing teenage things. It’s just that age where they are now in middle school, and they think they know everything. Heck, we were all there just 10 years ago, I know I was! Except flip phones were cool and if you could get the high score on snake you were on of the coolest kids around. (I still think flip phones are pretty cool. Although I may be bias since I got a go-phone flip from Wal-Mart for twenty bucks since my iPhones don’t last more than a few months) Anyways, as a coach, I get to spend a few hours teaching the oldest girls (and two guys this past year) in our organization higher level tumbling, dance, cheer, and stunting, but it became apparent within the first day of practice who would be my trouble makers, my leaders, my submissive kids, and my listeners. I was able to form my impressions of the kids pretty quickly and relatively accurate now looking back. Without even realizing it though, I was using “impression formation” which occurs when we use small amounts of visual and physical cues to create big and possibly long lasting impressions of others (Anderson, 1968).

According to Anderson, you can actually place a value onto impressions by using a 7-point scale, and asking participants to rate a total of 555 traits, then averaging the total for each trait. Anderson (1968) called this a trait’s “scale value”. Anderson’s 1968 study showed that traits such as “sincere” are rated highly on the scale, whereas traits such as “liar” were on the low end of the scale, meaning we actually have an unconscious value system for traits, which we use to judge and create our perceptions of others during impression formation. The idea of impression formation also goes hand in hand with the theory of information integration theory (Anderson, 1981). Anderson’s 1981 theory states that the impressions we form of others. This rational theory includes two ideas, 1) That we form impressions based on the temperament we observe and 2) we use a weighted average to determine our impressions, and that the higher the average, the more positive the impression (Kashima & Kerekes, 1994). I was able to use the impressions I had of each of the kids to modify my coaching style dependent upon which child I was addressing, to make my coaching and their learning process more efficient. Dr. Giuliano’s February 19^th lecture made it clear now that impressions are very resistant to change and that all of the other information we receive from a person coordinates with their first impressions. This is probably why my view of the kid’s has not changed much from the first day I met them, although, no matter what their impression trait values, they all still have an equal place in my heart.

When I can find their competition video from this year I will post it! :) For now...here is a photo of Allyson (my roomate) and I putting Liz in a one hand prep. This photo is when they won fist place at regionals November 2012. They went on to Nationals hosted by ESPN at Disney World Florida and placed 6th in the nation this past December. Most of them are moving on to all-star teams, but I was a proud coach and enjoyed the season.

Until next blog,

Your Socia Psychista

WORD COUNT: 606

Anderson, N. H. (1968). Likeableness ratings of 555 personality-trait words. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9, 272-279.

Anderson, N.H. (1981). Foundations of information integration theory. San Diego, CA. Academic Press

Kashima, Y., Kerekes, A. R. Z. (1994). A distributed memory model of observing phenomena in  person impression formation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 30, 407-455.

T. Giuliano, Olin building lecture, February 19, 2013.

Marley and Scaredy Cat Me

       Last week, Walmart was having a sale on movies (1 for 5$) AND they were actually good movies, so I couldn’t resist but buying a couple. One of the movies is titled “Marley and Me”, and if you want a 30-minute tear jerker, this one is for you. The movie is about a couple who buy a yellow lab, and it shows that even though the dog (Marley) is a hot mess, he was always there for them through all of the years. Long story short in the end the Marley passes away from his stomach twisting, which is almost irreversible, especially in older dogs, therefore creating a very emotional passing for the couple and their three children who all grew up with Marley by their side.

Here is a clip to show you that it's not ALL sad, this part was actually quite funny. 

Of course, I cried like a baby cuddling Romeo and Rosie as if the same thing would happen to them tomorrow. So of course, being alone and anxious at this point, I started to think, what IF that happened tomorrow. What IF something happened to them tomorrow? And then I started thinking more, what about my parents? Or a close friend? It can all happen so quickly. And lastly, I began to worry…what about me? As my dog’s continued to stare at me confused as to why I was in a panic, I was going through my head not only all of the things in life that I still want to do, but the things I have already done. If something did happen to me tomorrow, would I be happy with who I have been, would the views I have of myself be positive or negative? That last question describes the concept of self-esteem (Coopersmith, 1967).
        As social beings, we strive to live our lives to the fullest and by doing this, we also may stress ourselves out that every day could be our last, and that we want to live our lives with no regrets and with high self-esteem. The terror management theory is one which explains how we may deal with the stress of our own imminent death (Greenberg et al., 1997). According to Greenberg and colleagues (1997), we create views of the world which help lessen the blow of death such as religiosity, scientific explanations for the world’s existence, and even more fairytale reasons such as having your “happily ever after” or believing in things which we cannot explain such as ghosts UFO’s. Creating these views lessens does lessen our anxiety of the inevitable, but it also increases our drive for high self-esteem.
        Shortly after I read this chapter, I knew that I had produced my own kind of terror management because of my actions after the movie had ended. As soon as it was over I called my boyfriend (Cody) after having all these negative thoughts on death, and to relieve my anxiety, we discussed positive ideas of what we think is after death, and if we would be happy with ourselves were we were today. During my discussion with Cody, I realized that I don’t think I would look back with completely positive evaluations of myself, therefore, I knew it was time to build up my self-esteem. I think I will be able to achieve higher self-esteem by realizing it is necessary to live a positive lifestyle. Pyszcynski and colleagues (2004) describe self-esteem in relation to the terror management theory as emotional protection against those things in the world we cannot control including the idea that death really is the end of life, and there is no other purpose for it. As scary as it is to think about, I think the best thing to reduce the anxiety I have over death is just to work on being the best me I can, and wanting to see myself in a better light. You cannot control the inevitable but you can control you actions and opinions of your self.

Until next blog,
             Your social psycista


Coopersmith, S. (1967). The antecedents of self-esteem. San Francisco:Freeman.

Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., & Pyszcynski, T. (1997). Terror management theory of self-esteem and cultural worldviews: Empirical assessments and conceptual refinements. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 29, 61-139.

Pyszcynski, T., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Arndt, J., & Schimel, J. (2004). Why do people need self-esteem? A theoretical and emperical review. Psycological Bulletin, 130, 435-468.


Word Count - 647