Only A Drop In The Bucket

Hiatus for Only A Drop In The Bucket

2010-08-18T14:00:00.000-05:00

After much deliberation I have decided to temporarily take a break from Only A Drop In The Bucket. The school year approaches and I feel that my studies and research are an adequate platter of social psychology for myself right now. I figured I may grow a bit weary of having a blog that so closely mirrors what I study, but I promise that I will return. Over the next year I am going to actually have another blog, in order to still have an outlet for my writing. I may occasionally stop in here and update the blog over the next year, but I can’t promise it will be with any regularity.

Please follow my new adventures over the next year at:

The Year of the Maki

Thanks for all of the support everyone gave Only A Drop in the Bucket! This is not goodbye, I shall return!

Peace,

Alex

Adventures in New Orleans, Part 1

2010-07-04T18:29:00.012-05:00

(for the white background version, please visit here: http://onlyadropinthegreybucket.blogspot.com/)

Well my friends, it has been a very long time coming here at Only a Drop in the Bucket. I feel as if I have a boatload of excuses as to why I have not updated in quite awhile, but really I have just been trying to enjoy the summer a bit.

Anyway, one of the activities I have been up to lately is traveling. I love traveling, though I think I have had my fair share for the rest of the summer. Last week I was down in New Orleans for a psychology conference (SPSSI; The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues), and I thought I would make the next couple of posts about that trip. This first part will just be some random reflections on my time in New Orleans, and next time I will write about my experience at the conference itself. I have been on a bit of a conference circuit tour the past few months, and I would like to report some observations on both this particular conference but also on conferencing-going in general.

Over the years I have had a number of friends who have spent time in New Orleans. After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans it seemed to become a Mecca of sorts for activists, volunteers, progressives, adventurers, and the like. I am fortunate to count many of my friends among members of these groups, and the ones that have ventured south along the Mississippi have conveyed stories of a culture of resilience, of celebration in the face of suffering and adversity, and of good times. These stories had planted in me a sincere desire to visit the region and see it for myself. With much work still to be done in some parts of the city, and the added tribulation on account of the BP oil spill, I knew it would be a very interesting time to visit New Orleans.

The first thing I did before I even stepped foot in New Orleans was attempt to commandeer the services of a tour guide, in hopes that I would have assistance in not only seeing some of the usual sites, but also some of the secrets and gems hidden a little beneath the surface. Well, fate smiled upon me and a brave, local soul offered to show me around the town my first night there. Riki is an adventurer in the true sense of the word. Always looking for new experiences and opportunities to grow and explore. She highlighted attractions, sketched outlines of culture and history, and provided ample opportunity to try new things. I just did my best sidekick impression and attempted to be open to whatever came our way.

The city was warm and welcoming, not entirely what I expected in all honesty. I stayed downtown but spent most of my time in the fabled French Quarters. We ambled around Jackson Square after sunset, taking in the metaphysical artisans, observing tarot readings and palmistry. Niki relayed stories of haunted homes and voodoo traditions (fortunately for me she used to date a tour guide, so she had the inside scoop on everything). We spent a bit of time on Bourbon Street just to see what is was all about. Turned out the swinger’s convention was in town and I was privy to the sight of some bare-chested 50-year-old women. We attended a massive jazz band protest of a law that only recently was being enforced, requiring live music to be off the streets after 10pm. What time did the protest performance begin? 10pm of course. Beautiful.

We also got to spend some time on Frenchmen’s Street, witnessing the local jazz scene in full force. One of my primary goals during the visit was to catch some live jazz, and I came away from my trip with a complete victory in that area. I sampled the local ale, and this Minnesota vegan was even suckered into tasting a little bit of boiled crawfish.

I also hoped to visit the lower ninth when I was in town. Sadly, I did not get enough time to take a trip there. However, I did attend a volunteer project set up by the conference in the upper ninth. A group of around 50 of us headed to a school in the upper ninth that is being reopened in September as a new public school. We then proceeded to paint classrooms in the hot heat. Because of my relative height I was relegated to using some very tall ladders to touch up spots where previous painters had been unable to reach. The heat of New Orleans, lack of air conditioning in the school, and the fact that I was reaching in awkward positions in some tall classrooms made for Alex becoming a sweaty mess. I also somehow managed to get a lot of paint on my shirt and shorts. Despite these challenges, however, I was very excited, and it was very important to me personally, to have the opportunity to volunteer for just a brief amount of time in New Orleans. Also, as someone who studies volunteering and community involvement, I find it vital to find opportunities to stay involved in the issues I study, in order to give me some perspective on the issues, motivations, and experiences volunteers have. Overall it was a good time and I had a chance to meet some terrific people.

I had a number of other adventures I will not include here, per lack of space. But let me just state that New Orleans was a charming and extremely enjoyable place. Friendly people, wonderful food (at least if you eat meat I reckon), and a culture that you cannot quite find anywhere else. The area has seen hardships unlike perhaps any other area of the country, but the people of New Orleans remain positive and engaged in rebuilding. For example, I was told about a BP/oil spill protest parade that was not an angry, screaming mob but instead featured jazz music and dancing. What a protest!

Next edition will be my thoughts on the conference I attended, as well as some reflections on conference –going in general. Thanks for reading, and consider visiting New Orleans sometime soon!

Does Being An Environmentalist Make You More Selfish?

2010-03-20T12:44:00.015-05:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lucas3d/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

If you prefer to read on a grey background, visit that version of the blog at this address:
http://onlyadropinthegreybucket.blogspot.com/

“Never trust an environmentalist!” – Gimli in The Fellowship Of The Ring

It is always entertaining to watch how a science story is portrayed in different media outlets. For example, findings from a study will highlight the potential role that alcohol intake may play in the development of breast cancer. When various media entities get their hands on these research findings, they have the onerous task of distilling the results into something the general public can understand and appreciate. They have to interpret what is found in the original journal article and pen a comprehensible story out of it. Some news articles will do a faithful explication, whereas other times you will inevitably see headlines in the vein of:

“Stop Drinking Or You Will Develop Breast Cancer!”

Well, this phenomenon seems to happen far too often. In the past few weeks an article came out in Psychological Science that investigated what impact it has on an individual’s psyche and behavior when they choose to purchase “green” household products. Essentially, the researchers (Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong at the University of Toronto) hypothesized that people who decide to buy green products will actually be more likely to behave in an anti-social manner the next time they have an opportunity.

Here is the research in a nutshell. Participants in the study shopped in an online store for household products. Randomly assigned participants were placed in one of two conditions: one store had almost exclusively “non-green” products like laundry detergent that was not biodegradable or batteries that were not rechargeable. The other online store had almost exclusively “green products” such as organic shampoo and compact fluorescent light bulbs. After this purchasing task participants then took part in another laboratory task, one in which they believed to be irrelevant to the first task. Without going into too much detail, people had an opportunity to lie to and steal from the researchers after the second task without fear of repercussion. What was discovered? People that were in the condition where they shopped in an online green store, and thus purchased more green products, were more likely to steal from and lie to the researchers. Participants were supposed to receive $5 for volunteering for the study, but participants were allowed to take more if they wanted without censure. What did participants in the green store condition take on average? $5.83, which is 83 cents more than they should have taken. Though not a ton of money, it was an extremely significant finding (significant = not likely to occur by chance).

Well, what are some people in the blogosphere saying about these results? Hippies are hypocrites! Environmentalists do not actually care about justice or fairness! Greens are unethical liars!

Yawn.

While reading the journal article, I never once saw environmentalists or “greens” or hippies involved in the research. Participants were from the University of Toronto and were randomly assigned to purchasing conditions. I would consider environmentalists those people who CHOOSE to seek out and purchase green products. So we know that we do not have environmentalists all in one condition in the study. And we do not know anything about the personalities of the people in the different groups. The only relevant things analyzed by the researchers were what condition someone was assigned to and if they lied or stole at the end of the second task. It would be interesting to conduct the same study but also measure participants’ environmental attitudes or values. Perhaps those who are environmentalists would not engage in lying or stealing after purchasing green products. Or maybe they would! Who knows, but the bottom line is that we have no evidence one way or the other by drawing on only this study.

All of the silly “smug environmentalists are truly hypocrites, I knew it all along!” comments just derail the conversation from the interesting (and valid) points that this research brings up. This research, and research in other domains, does seem to suggest that people, generally speaking, seem to have an internal sense of when they have done enough “good.” This study states that most people believe that buying green products is a valuable and correct ethical decision. Most people believe we should opt for the reusable batteries whenever possible. But when we buy these things, it seems we sort of say to ourselves, “well, I have done my quota of green (or good) things for the day, and I am such a great person I can cheat a little here or there and I will still think relatively well of myself.” Nearly everyone likes to have a positive self-image, and for most of us buying organic or green reinforces or strengthens our positive self-image. Imagine self-esteem or your self-image as a scale from 0 to 100, with 0 meaning we hate ourselves and 100 meaning we think we are terrific, amazing people. Perhaps I am feeling like a 50 on the scale, and I prefer to be at least a 60. Well, after school maybe I will walk (+5) to the Co-Op (+5). Outside the Co-Op is an individual asking for donations for Amnesty International, and for some reason I decide to donate a few dollars (+10). At the Co-Op, I opt to buy local and organic food and little or no meat (+20). Well, as I walk home I feel great about myself! My self-image was at a 50, now it is at a 90! Rarely has such an amazing person graced the streets of Minneapolis as I!

When I get home, my roommate asks me to clean up my mess in the kitchen before the night is done. I value a clean kitchen, but since I am feeling so great about myself I decide to neglect our public space (-10). The moral of the story? Humans seem to not require themselves to have a perfect self-image, we are entirely fine with having just a generally-positive self-image. Having a very high moral self-image gives us almost a license to be less moral in an occasion or two in the near future. And it seems plausible that everyone goes through processes like these from time to time. This idea could explain the results found in Mazar and Zhong’s study. This is by no means uniquely my way to interpret the study (the authors use similar ideas themselves), nor is it necessarily the right way to interpret it, it’s just one theory.

The bottom line is that it seems entirely possible that smug environmentalists exist and that some of them are hypocrites. But this research does not address that issue. However, it does bring up some interesting points about how everyone justifies things they do that are not morally praiseworthy. What do you think about the study? Leave any comments or questions you may have below. As always, thanks for reading!

Ah yes, and if you want to read the research article yourself, here it is! http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/03/01/0956797610363538.full.pdf+html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nathaninsandiego/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Quick Post On Environmental Behavior

2010-03-20T09:53:00.003-05:00

Hello everyone, I am hoping to put a new blog post in the next few days, but in the meantime I stumbled upon a very interesting interview with a clinical psychologist that has become a politician. In the interview he discusses the importance of changing our personal behaviors to address global warming. I am not going to write on it, but if you want to read the interview yourself here is the link:

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-03-12-brian-baird-this-is-not-government-mind-control/

cheers!

Are All Human Acts Selfish?

2010-02-13T12:52:00.020-06:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vubui/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Well, a new semester of school has started and I have been unable to find any time to make a blog post. I checked under the cushions of my sofa. In the pockets of neglected jeans. Even underneath my pillow. Nothing. No time. That is, until now! So welcome back, glad you could make it!

I have received feedback from some friends that it might be nice to have a version of the blog with a non-black background. Ask and ye shall receive! I want to keep this black background version because I want to heed my own advice and advocate for less bright backgrounds, which can waste a lot of energy depending on the type of monitor you have. But, I have constructed a grey-background version of the blog for those that would prefer something a bit easier on the eyes. That version can be found here:

http://onlyadropinthegreybucket.blogspot.com

Enjoy!

Anyway, let us get to the topic at hand.

Going all the way back to the dawn of philosophy, people have debated the reasons why we help others. Do we help others because we care and want to see the help recipients left in a better condition? Or do we help because it is of some benefit to ourselves? Are all human acts inherently selfish? Moreover, is it even possible to ever act in a truly altruistic manner?

Imagine this scene. Walter, a man in his mid-twenties, is walking home from a friend’s house one night. As he ambles toward his apartment along side streets, he comes upon a man who has slipped and fallen on the icy sidewalk. The man is groaning and writhing in pain. As Walter crosses the street it is apparent that the man has seriously hurt his back and is in need of help. After Walter ensures that the man is not in imminent danger, he takes out his phone and calls for an ambulance to come pick up the man. Walter waits with the man while the emergency vehicle makes its way to the scene. After the man is loaded into the vehicle and taken away, Walter finishes his walk home.

With the stage set, we can use this mundane example of helping in a semi-emergency situation to talk about three popular theories regarding why people assist others. I will necessarily be skipping over some theories out there, including what evolutionary psychology and biology have to say about helping behavior. We will miss some interesting and important ideas about why we help. Instead, I will only present three theories in this post, along with how they might explain the helping in the example situation. At the end I will also ponder whether there seems to be such a thing as genuine altruism, which means helping with a complete lack of selfishness.

Theory one is a cost/reward model of helping, which is considered an “egoistic” theory, meaning it stresses that helping occurs for selfish reasons. Specifically, the cost/reward theory states that people help because they seek to either receive rewards or avoid punishments that will result from helping/not helping. Thus, according to this theory, Walter is helping because he either sees a reward in the action (perhaps a payment of some sort or the adoration of friends who hear the story of how he helped the man) or he wants to avoid being punished (perhaps this is a state that has a Good Samaritan law or an equivalent, which says you must help others when you are able to). As the emergency situation becomes more drastic, you can see how the costs and rewards might increase drastically. If you have the chance to save someone trapped in a burning house, you might be on the front page of the local newspaper (reward) or you might possibly lose life or limb (cost).

Well, how does this theory hold up in explaining the behavior of Walter? Given the rather safe context of the helping behavior, it seems like the costs and rewards would be minimal, and honestly it does not seem like a great fit for explaining our example. Would you really expect someone who just hurt their back to give you a reward for calling an ambulance? I could see if you had found someone’s lost dog, but this situation seems like an atypical context to expect a reward. And there would probably not be any punishment for Walter, because no one would know who he is and he could get away without helping. All in all, I do not find this theory particularly suitable for explaining our example. Let us look at the next theory.

The negative state relief model is another example of an egoistic approach to explaining helping behavior. Though it sounds complicated, what it essentially hypothesizes is that we help because it removes negative feelings that arise when we are put in one of these helping situations. For example, when Walter hears or sees the hurt man across the street he will probably have an emotional response, something along the lines of sadness or guilt. As Walter ponders what to do, he knows that if he walks away and does not help he will probably have to deal with these feelings for at least the rest of the evening. So what negative state relief theory says is that Walter will go aid the man just so he can get rid of those feelings of sadness or guilt.

To me, this theory seems like a plausible fit for our example. Perhaps I am just projecting, but I know I would have guilt for quite awhile if I could help in a situation like the example and chose not to. Before declaring this theory the victor, let us consider the final theory.

One hypothesis that states we are sometimes able to act without self-interest in mind is the empathy-altruism theory. With a much more manageable name, the empathy-altruism theory is exactly what it sounds like. People engage in selfless helping behavior because they have a response of empathy (possibly via mirror neurons, look’em up!) that compels them to help. So Walter comes upon the man, has these feelings of empathy (or sympathy, or compassion) that come into consciousness, and says “I want to relieve this person’s suffering or assist them.” Pretty basic stuff, and seems like it is a reasonable fit for our example as well. Walter sees this hurt man and decides he wants to help because he can and he feels bad for the person. Walter wants to see the person helped out of compassion, not some selfish reason such as a reward or to make himself feel better!

Going off of our example, I find the negative state relief model and the empathy-altruism model to be the most satisfactory. If I had to pick one theory to explain Walter’s behavior, I think I would go with the empathy-altruism model. Not to say that the role of rewards and costs do not play a role, but perhaps they play more of a role in drastic emergency situations or long-term helping contexts, such as volunteering. And realistically, these three theories all probably have a role in most situations that require or allow helping behavior. But the key term is most. So then, where does this leave us concerning the question of the possibility of selfless behavior?

It seems plausible that there are some situations and some people for which selfless behavior truly is possible. Of course, we have not considered some theories of helping that are also egoistic theories, such as those found in evolutionary psychology. But still, I maintain there is nothing necessarily impossible about selfless altruism. Someone could jump into a river to save someone from drowning, without ever consciously or unconsciously processing what is in it for them. Someone could donate money to relief efforts in Haiti (visit this link for ideas if you would actually like to: http://www.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/articles/2010/01/14/10-ways-you-can-donate-to-haitian-earthquake-victims.html ) without wanting to get rid of feelings of guilt. That said, this is mostly armchair philosophizing. A lot of research has examined these theories, and others, in both lab and real-world settings. These findings can help inform us of which of the models of helping behavior seem to be correct and if selfless helping is really possible. However, those results must be left for another day.

In the meantime, what do you think about the idea of selfless altruism? Does it seem like a possibility? And what do you think about these three theories of helping behavior? Leave your thoughts and opinions below! Thanks for tuning in, and try not to think about these theories too much the next time you have a chance to help someone. Just do it!

For a more comprehensive overview of these theories, and much more information on the field of helping and prosocial behahvior, consider picking up the book The Social Psychology of Prosocial Behavior by Dovidio, Piliavin, Schroeder, and Penner:

http://www.amazon.com/Social-Psychology-Prosocial-Behavior/dp/080584936X

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sweenpole2001/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Organ Donation and the Issue of Choice

2009-12-29T12:10:00.002-06:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/carbonnyc/ / CC BY 2.0

Hopefully this will be the only time I begin my blog with such a cliché starter such as a statistic, but it feels like a good opener this time. So here we go:

The United States of America’s national organ transplant waiting list has another name added to it every 13 minutes.

There, nothing too over-the-top. But interesting nevertheless. In this country we are failing to make progress in a cause that affects all of us. With over 100,000 people on the list waiting for assistance, only 35% of people in the USA are signed up as organ donors. While a few states are solid contributors, such as Iowa (67%) and Colorado (60%), the nation as a whole is coming up short on a very simple action we all could make to increase the quality and length of lives all across the country.

To be honest, I had a hard time understanding why someone would not want to be an organ donor. Obviously once you a dead you do not have any personal use for your organs. An eye or heart that could be used by someone else serves no purpose in a grave or turned into cremated remains. The only reason I could really come up with that people would not want to donate their organs are those that would want their entire body preserved after death, presumably for religion reasons. Now, while I do not have intentions of arguing religion on this blog, one does have to wonder why God would care if your kidney made it to the pearly gates. I am sure other cultures have had similar views of the importance of keeping the body intact after death. I believe in the importance of being sensitive to cultural beliefs, but on the issue of organ donation it seems like a better purpose would be to donate those organs. However, my concerns about a religious or cultural backlash against organ donation became moot when I ran across this statistic:

90% of Americans support organ donation, but only 30(or possibly 35)% actually take the steps to become organ donors

As someone with an interest in psychology, this makes much more sense in explaining the low rates of organ donation in our country. People are overwhelmingly in support of organ donation, but people do not follow through in their support. The reasons for this could be myriad. It is possible that people do not understand and are confused about the process of becoming an organ donor. With organ donation being an issue dictated by states, there are probably a number of different ways to become an organ donor depending on the state you live in. So part of the problem could be the organ donation system we have in place. Another issue probably involved is that there is a shockingly high disconnect between attitudes people have on an issue and their actual behavior relative to that issue. That is to say, maybe someone thinks fair trade is an extremely important issue (their attitude), but they still do all of their shopping at chain stores they know have items that are from sweatshops (their behavior). And this disconnect is something we are all guilty of. We all have strong opinions and beliefs that we repeatedly fail to act on. This is probably part of the issue as well.

Perhaps another small part of the problem is our cultural obsession with denying and delaying death, and thinking about donating our organs necessarily implies thinking about our own deaths, and this causes endless anxiety. Finally, we probably have some cognitive dissonance that allows for us to come up with any number of excuses to stop us from carrying through with our attitudes. We believe organ donation is important, but we also know that we are not currently organ donors. So, we are in conflict with ourselves. We come up with excuses to explain the disconnect between attitudes and behavior, or we downplay the importance of either our attitude or our behavior. Or we tell ourselves that one person does not make a difference, so it is fine if we do not follow through on our attitudes this time. We find endless ways to explain to ourselves why it is alright that there this disconnect.

Well, how then do we resolve this issue? How do we get people to actually sign up to be organ donors, since we know that we are not lacking in the cultural norm in this country concerning the importance of organ donation? Before we get to a possible answer, I want to draw upon some research that might point toward a step in the right direction.

In research conducted by Eric Johnson and Daniel Goldstein that came out in 2003, organ donation rates were examined in a survey across nations. What they found at first was a bit perplexing. They discovered that nations appeared to hover around one of two extreme poles in the rates of organ donation: either around 20% or 80% of the nation’s population were organ donors. At first, the findings made little sense. But then Johnson and Goldstein dug a little deeper and came to a realization. Countries also have one of two systemic orientations toward organ donation – they have systems that either allow people to opt-in to donating organs, or they have a system in place that enters everyone into the organ donation program and forces people to opt-out of the program if they do not want their organs donated upon death. This simple change in orientation of each nation could on average account for a 60% difference in organ donation between nations! By simply having the default system be that people are organ donors and they must opt-out of the system to not be donors it resulted in far more lives saved and improved. Astounding about this finding was the fact that it was not simply cultural differences that played a role, as countries with similar cultures had vastly different rates of donation, such as Sweden and Denmark (85.9% and 4.25% respectively). Though organ donation is higher in the USA than the low pole average of 20%, this is probably because of the amount of organizations that are solely dedicated to the cause of increasing organ donation, and the amount of money that is spent on the issue. Similar effects can be seen in the Netherlands, where they also spend a lot of money on the cause and have a slightly higher rate than the low pole average.

But how do you think many USA citizens would react if they were told that a new system was being put in place where they were all assumed to be organ donors? Even with a large supportive contingency in this country, I have a feeling that we would hear from more than a vocal 10% that organ donation should be opt-in and not opt-out. We are intoxicated with our freedom in this country sometimes, to the point where even seemingly reducing freedom by having an opt-out national organ donation system would be met with outrage. I have no doubt that even a few people would line up to hurl snowballs in the form of Socialist slurs at those advocating the opt-out system.

In a perfect world, we would raise and educate everyone in this country to be concerned for our fellow human beings. We would not have to try to convince people to save energy because they would know the justifications themselves for why it is important, and they would always act accordingly. In a perfect world nearly everyone would sign up to donate their organs because it is the right thing to do and because they knew the suffering they could reduce by simply making that choice. But sometimes we fall so deeply in love with this image of how everyone should make the right choice all of the time, we forget that people often fail to make the right choice, sometimes for their entire lives. In a culture where we are always espousing the merits of freedom and the importance of autonomy of the individual, we would never dream of taking away someone’s choice (except of course on the abortion issue). We almost always shudder at the idea of taking away a right or changing the choice structure in order to support those who are less fortunate. I say, at least on this issue, we need to do the right thing and not rely on people to make the correct decision for themselves. We need to make organ donation in this country opt-out, not opt-in. Making organ donation opt-out would still allow for the choice to not donate organs, but what it would do is drag everyone that is failing to bridge the gap between attitude and behavior into the organ donor community. We need as many people as possible to become organ donors because actual lives depend on it.

To learn more about organ donation and become one today please visit:

http://www.donatelife.net/

For more information on opt-in verses opt-out systems, the actual study conducted by Johnson and Goldstein, and more organ donation information visit the following sites:

http://lyrishq.lyris.com/index.php/Integrated-Marketing/Behavioral-Economics-Opt-out-versus-Opt-in.html

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/302/5649/1338

http://www.vcstar.com/news/2008/apr/27/collaborative-seeks-to-improve-organ-donation-in/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/visualpanic/ / CC BY 2.0

Liberation Psychology

2009-11-10T18:17:00.008-06:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/albany_tim/ / CC BY 2.0

It should not surprise anyone that in order for scientific research to be conducted there needs to be funding. Doing practically anything in this country takes money, and research often takes a lot. Yes, there is a drastic difference between building and operating the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland and administering a paper-and-pencil survey to undergraduate students on their mental health. Nevertheless, scientists need money.

The question is, where does the money for research come from? Perhaps you might think that we should just be happy with the fact that any scientific research funding is trickling down, considering the political climate we are still scraping ourselves out of. Well, I for one believe that scientists as well as the “everyday person” need to be aware of who is funding research. In the realm of politics, we have qualms about politicians that are supported by corporations because too often those politicians go to bat for the corporations. Similar problems can creep into scientific research. For instance, much of the research that is done on new psychiatric medicine, such as anti-psychotics, is funded by the same drug companies that sell the product. Don’t you think that the scientists conducting the research might be enticed or even coerced into releasing results that only attest to the supposed amazing ability the medicine has to assist those with mental health disabilities?

What about the thousands upon thousands of dollars corporations spend each year trying to get you to buy more of their products? Essentially what these companies are doing is carrying out social psychology research in order to further the science of persuasion and motivation so they can make money off of you. And psychology has a long tradition of scientists using their knowledge of psychological processes to make big money by applying their skills in the for-profit world.

In all science, and perhaps especially psychology, the people funding research often have an overt and covert say in what research will be done. And to boot, the researchers are almost always representative of the groups in power. The early history of psychology to even the present day is mostly a tour of straight, rich white men (though not always American) and their ivory-tower theories of how everyone else acts. In my opinion it is rather amazing that one of the early areas of research in social psychology to really take off was concerning the phenomenon of prejudice. But even there, whose role do you think researchers chose to investigate? The role of the oppressor, the role of the person that is acting with discrimination. It took a long time before psychologists started to pay attention to the subject of discrimination, the recipient of racism or homophobia or ableism. Even now many researchers ignore the experiences of those who are oppressed. The history of research in prosocial behavior is a similar story. Scientists looked at “Who helps?” but only recently have people really started to ask in a scientific framework, “How does it feel to be a helpee?” “What impact does power play in the volunteer relationship?” “What helping might actually lead to empowerment instead of dependency?”

All of this is a roundabout way to get at a relatively new development in the area of community psychology. Liberation psychology follows the lifeline of liberation theology. The main idea of both is that certain institutions should be utilized (community psychology for the former, and religion, more specifically often Catholicism, for the latter) to ensure the empowerment and inclusion of those that are oppressed and un- or underrepresented in society. For me, the notion of liberation psychology runs both with the idea of the purpose of psychology (as an institution) as well as counter to it. It adheres to the goals of many psychological organizations by attempting to “better the human condition.” But I think the idea of liberation psychology would rub many psychologists the wrong way because it seems intrinsically political. I am not so sure it is intrinsically political, but I have the same feelings about research conducted in both many corporate laboratories and university offices. Funding is inherently a political venture.

Another reason I find liberation psychology interesting, and this is definitely something it has in common with its parent discipline of community psychology, is its inherent desire to find applications for theoretical research done in universities and colleges across the world. It is a testament to the psychologist George Miller’s belief that we should “give psychology away.” Obviously those that are economically poor and lack power in our society do not have the thousands and millions of dollars to pour into the research institutions of social scientists. They cannot selectively cut a check or supply a grant to anyone willing to slightly alter their research interests and address issues the funders demand. Liberation psychology is partially about saying that researchers should try to find ways to assist communities of color, empower undocumented immigrants, and lend a voice to those of underrepresented or nonexistent spiritual beliefs.

So what is the role of liberation psychology? Two of the goals are:

- Use statistical knowledge and research experience to improve programs that aim to provide services to those in marginalized groups, ensuring that assistance is empowerment-based, not dependency-based

- Using research and surveys to gather compelling arrangements of the beliefs, feelings, and experiences of those that are oppressed, as well as finding effective ways to convey this information to the public and people in power

But the true goal of any liberation psychology should not be set by those in power. This would obviously be to place the foundations of the discipline in not only the exact same place the whole of social science is currently in, but in a direction that entirely contradicts the logic of liberation psychology.

How does the idea of liberation psychology strike you? Scientific idealism or commie propaganda? What about the issue of funding in science? Take the opportunity to drop a comment below!

For a quick read on liberation psychology, as well as one of the founding figures in the area, check out:

http://www.compsy.org.uk/vivarev1.pdf

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wili/ / CC BY 2.0

Environmental Psychology

2009-10-15T17:38:00.012-05:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gmacorig/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

It All Depends On How You Frame It

Welcome to another delectable slice of Only a Drop in the Bucket. It has been a while since my last post, chalk it up to still getting used to grad school. I think I have a few new strategies for my blog posts to make sure I get one posted every other week or so. However, this one might be a bit old hat still. I am aiming to get the posts much shorter, and the next few should accomplish that. However, I did want to establish some themes for the blog, and thus the longer posts seemed necessary to create those foundations. This edition’s post is the last of those foundational pieces, this time being on environmental psychology.

Environmental psychology is what is mostly sounds like. Psychology being the study of the mind and human behavior, and the environment being, well, the environment! Of course the “environment” has a few interpretations, and really they all relate to what environmental psychology is. So following strands of this blog, the environment obviously means the natural habitat. In that sense, environmental psychology is about how the natural environment, like trees and flowers and all those pretty things, influence us. It also concerns itself with how we treat the environment and why we do things such as recycle or buy organic food.

Environmental psychology also deals with the environment in a more general way as well. Our environment can be anything from a rural farm to a cubicle to a prison (cubicles and prisons are technically different things).So how does one feel living on a farm versus living in a prison cell? What is it about those different settings, those different “environments” that cause us to have different emotions, develop different attitudes, and perform different behaviors? Those and similar questions are ones that environmental psychology troubles itself with.

Other examples of topics in the area include the effects of noise pollution, how we develop an attachment to a place (such as "home"), how we find our way from one place to another, and how architecture affects a person. As evident by all of these topics, environmental psychology encompasses a vast array of issues. In this blog we will mostly be focusing on the aspects of human behavior that relate to the natural environment.

To give a taste of some of the research and theorizing that takes place on the conservation side of environmental psychology, I want to quickly highlight a few studies conducted by the researcher and social psychologist Robert Cialdini and his colleagues. Cialdini has carried out a large number of intriguing studies that are relevant to the topic of discussion today, but I want to point out just a couple.

Cialdini has done a lot of work in influence and persuasion, and much of his environmental psychology research has utilized social norms to bring about behavior change. Social norms are simply the rules that a group uses to determine what is appropriate and inappropriate in a situation. For example, going to a Vikings game at the Metrodome in Minneapolis carries the social norm that you should probably wear a Vikings jersey or at least something purple to the game. If I were to wear my Steelers jersey to the Vikings home game, I would be violating the social norm by cheering against the home team. Because I am not conforming to the social norm, I might be subject to ridicule during the game or even threats after my Steelers get done demolishing the lowly Vikings.

So with social norms and Cialdini in mind, our first setting is a forest. The specific forest was the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. When visitors were welcomed to the forest, they passed a sign that read “Your heritage is being vandalized every day by theft losses of petrified wood of 14 tons a year, mostly a small piece at a time.” Now, is that not a message that would warrant you to get upset that so many people are taking precious wood from the forest? Seems like a good idea to have that sign up in the forest, right?

Well, think for a second what the sign is implying, especially keeping in mind social norms. What is the sign telling us is a relatively normal behavior in the forest? The sign is essentially stating that A LOT of people who visit the forest are stealing. It does not exactly make it seem like an unpopular thing to do, does it? Cialdini and colleagues wanted to test the difference between having a sign that reinforces the idea that many people are stealing, as opposed to a sign that simply asks people not to steal and states why it is important that the wood be left alone. Cialdini and collegaues left pieces of wood that were secretly marked near trails in the forest to determine the amount of stealing of wood with the two different types of signs in place.

And what did they find? They found that having a sign that stated how much people were stealing led to more stealing than a sign that simply asked people not to steal. The sign with the social norm of stealing actually led to 4.5 times as much stealing as the other sign!

One more quick example of Cialdini’s environmental work, this time using the social norm in a different way. They developed different signs for hotel bathrooms asking patrons to reuse their bath towels. One of the signs simply asked people to reuse their towels because it was good for the environment. Another bathroom sign said:

“Almost 75% of guests who are asked to participate in our new resource savings program do help by using their towels more than once. You can join your fellow guests to help save the environment by reusing your towels during your stay.”

And what was the effect this time? This time, since the social norm was framed in a way that expressed the idea that almost everyone was reusing their towels, it was able to outperform the environmental concern message, by around 10% more towel reuse. The total reuse percent for the social norm message was an almost 50% reuse rate for towels!

A few take-away messages from these research studies. First, we need to be mindful of both the explicit and implicit messages we are conveying when we craft messages in order to get someone to conserve energy or recycle. If we are implying that most people are not doing anything, we are decreasing our effectiveness by putting our efforts up against very strong resistance. We need to know when to avoid social norm information, and when we can use it to create the change we are looking for. Second, even though the social norm message in the second study only created a 10% increase over the protection message, that is still a huge change in the grand scheme of things! If every hotel in a city, state, or a nation increased their reuse of towels by 10%, that would make a gigantic difference in energy and water use (not to mention a large money-saver for the hotel).

That is all for now, hope you all enjoyed the post! Leave a message below, nearly 75% of the readers of this blog leave a post at one time or another (doing my best to heed my own advice!).

Cialdini, R.B. (2003). Crafting normative messages to protect the environment. Current directions in psychological science.

http://courses.washington.edu/pbafhall/599C/599%20Readings/cialdini%20environment.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_psychology

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=1762

http://www.flickr.com/photos/amydianna/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0