Hit me with your best IAT

Taking tests such as the IAT (Implicit Association Test) always make me a little nervous. The IAT, which was developed by Anthony Greenwald and colleagues in 1998, is a test which determines your unconscious stereotypes to a specific group such as age, race, or weight by testing how fast your reflex selections are when separating words or images into groups quickly. In other words, the test recognizes how you relate to concepts to one another. I took two IAT’s: the weight IAT and the gender-science IAT. I will first begin discussing my results on the weight IAT. I chose this particular IAT because I knew that it was relatable to my self schema for weight, a concept developed by Markus and colleagues in 1987. Although I am aware that I do process relevant information in my everyday life that has to do with weight, I never would have thought this would make me bias towards people other than myself. My results stated that I was in the top range, and that I have a strong and involuntary preference for thin people over fat people. As surprised and as disappointed I was to see this result, I noticed that the number of people who ranked the same as me was the second highest group at 25% of participants. This statistic shocked me as well. It is almost terrifying to know that 25% of a given population may prefer a thin person over a heavier person, without even taking their personality into account. I wouldn’t say the IAT test was showing my true beliefs on this, because I believe I am a very open and welcoming person, and I don’t believe I would ever choose to be friends with someone due to their weight, but then again, I have never been presented with that choice either. The weight IAT was a particularly great experience and outcome for me, because although the outcome was not positive, the results make me want to shift my weight schemas towards a more positive light, so that I do not rationally judge others for their physical appearance. I think to do this, I am going to have to work on my judgment of myself a lot as well.

The second IAT I took was on gender-science, and I was sure my influences from Southwestern University’s liberal ways would place me towards women’s equality or even favoritism towards science, but my results differed from expected. I actually had little or no association of men and women towards liberal arts (history, English, philosophy) or science (biology, math, astronomy, etc.) I am actually quite happy with the results, because I interpret them to mean that I have no bias towards what subjects men or women study, as long as they are happy and successful within them. 18% of others who took this IAT scored the same as me, which shows that not many others feel the same as I do. I noticed a large portion leaned towards men pursuing work in science and women in liberal arts, which according to stereotypes is not surprising. I am a psychology/animal behavior major, so being a part of the science community has made me realize how many brilliant females we have at our school in this field. We not only have a large portion of female science based majors, but I believe we have a large portion of female science oriented teachers as well.  Personally, I do not think that either men or women are better at science of liberal arts, I just believe that whichever career path we pursue is influenced by our experiences and culture during youth, and that it follows us through adulthood. Even though my results did not show much prejudice, other results did, and I hope programs such as Southwestern continue to break gender stereotypes such as this. The IAT tests were very eye-opening, and I will be sure to recommend them to others around me. Without the proper understanding of stereotypes, and the backlash they can cause, they will continue to negatively impact society. Test such as the IAT could assist in changing this.

Until next blog,

Your social psychista

Word count - 693

Greenwald A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. K. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1464-1480.

Markus, H., Hamill, R., & Sentis, K.P. (1987). Thinking fat: Self-schemas for body weight and the processing of weight-relevant information. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 17, 50-71.

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

Post-sypmosium blog

Hello all!

This is what I felt like before the symposium

 

This is what I felt like after the symposium

 

It was a very long day! But very much worth it and a lot of fun.

So at the symposium we heard a lot of talk about sexual consent. In order to have a healthy relationship with another person, we must make sure that we are honest to our partners and to ourselves about our boundaries and wishes. Just as you would would not want to be involved sexually in anything you are not cofortable with, or that you do not want to do, your partner may feel the same about other sexual activities, therefore, consent should be obtained from one-another to continue on with the activity, to prevent from any regret or awkwardness in the fututre, as well as maintain an honest relationship.

I am sure most of us have had at least one instance where we were not comfortable with something we did, sexual or not, and even though we were not asked for consent, we proceeded regardless. This can cause an issue with how genuine you were during that task, but not only that, ethical problems can arrise as well. Consent is a term used during many life situations, social psychology research being one of them. In 1974, the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare decided it was time to implement a few regulations to to protect a person's privacy while being a research participant. Now-a-days, there are these boards made up of many people called (IRB'S) or institutional review boards, which makes sure that our privacy, ethical beliefs, and health are protected during any study. The American Psychological Association created an ethical guideline called "Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, and within this code are underlying obigations to protect us. A huge one is call informed consent.

See! There's that word again, consent.

In order to obtain informed consent from a participant, each participant must individually be asked if they are okay to volunteer in the study after they have been told what is required of them during the study, how long the study is for, and after they have been told they are free to withdrawl from the study at anytime if they want. It is important to understand though if the study keeps the participants anonymous, in some cases imformed consent may not be required. One instance of this is during a natural observation. Overall, informed consent is a great addition and important piece of social psychology research because although we want to learn about the individual, the individual has to be willing to tell us that part of their story.

Your social psycista, Abby

(American Psychological Association. (2002). Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct. American Psychologist, 57, 1060-1073.

 

 

 

 

 



Blog Beginnings

Hello to my fellow social-psych classmates!

          I tried blogging once, but never really stuck to it so I guess this class will be my blogging redemption. This is probably the part where I should introduce myself:

1) I'm Abby
2) I'm a senior Psychology/Animal behavior major (Whoop Last Semester!)
3)I have two kids who live with me here! Well..basically kids..

Romeo - 5 yrs old

Rosie - 2 yrs. (on Feb. 2nd!)

 

I know, they get their good looks from me! And their pain in the ass personailites too I'm sure. But you gotta love 'em!

 

Anyways..I know what you are all thinking (because I get asked this ALL THE TIME) but no...I don't want to be like ceasar chavez the dog whisperer. I want to do animal enrichment in captive animals..like this!

Don't panic its less than 2 minutes!

 

And yeah , that's pretty much what I've got for you. So I'm excited to learn a little more about the social pattterns of the individual human, because I believe I will be able to introduce these concepts into my future work as well!

 

Blog to you next week,

            Your social psycista

 

P.S. -ista means "one who does" in Latin. My attempt to be catchy here.