Sunday, November 20, 2011
Lunch Observation
What kind of things do you think we will observe during 5th-8th lunch? Make some predictions. Remember the predictions need to be observable and measurable.
Social status
As a student at ACGC, is it hard to move from one group to another? We all get labeled, does that label dictate your social status or does you social status determine you label? Once you are labeled can you change your social status identity?
Monday, November 14, 2011
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Why Kids Bully: Because They're Popular
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
- All Sociology students need to respond to this article!
The text in red below are links to other articles you may want to read before responding
Mean kids, mothers tell their wounded young, behave that way because they have unhappy home lives, or feel inadequate, or don't have enough friends or because they somehow lack empathy. But a new study suggests some mean kids actually behave that way simply because they can.
Contrary to accepted ruffian-scholarship, the more popular a middle- or high-school kid becomes, the more central to the social network of the school, the more aggressive the behavior he or she engages in. At least, that was the case in North Carolina, where students from 19 middle and high schools were studied for 4.5 years by researchers at the University of California-Davis.
Authors Robert Faris and Diane Felmlee interviewed public-school kids seven times over the course of their study, starting when the students were in grades 6, 7 and 8. They asked the students to name their friends and used the data to create friendship maps. They then asked the kids who was unkind to them and whom they picked on, and mapped out the pathways of aggression.
(More on Time.com: The Tricky Politics of Tween Bullying)
What they found was that only one-third of the students engaged in any bullying at all — physical force, taunts or gossip-spreading — but those who were moving up the school popularity chain bullied more as they went higher. Only when kids reached the very top 2% of the school's social hierarchy or fell into the bottom 2% did their behavior change; these kids were the least aggressive.
"Seemingly normal well-adjusted kids can be aggressive," says Faris, whose results are published in the new issue of the American Sociological Review. "We found that status increases aggression."
While the authors are not ruling out psychological or background influences as underlying causes of the bullying, they believe that popularity is at least as important. "It's one of the few times I can recall in social sciences where race and family background seem to make very little difference," says Faris. "Those demographic and socioeconomic factors don't seem to matter as much as where the kids are in the school hierarchy."
(More on Time.com: A Glimmer of Hope in a Bad-News Survey About Bullying)
Faris also found that the more kids cared about popularity, the more aggressive they were. Ironically, that's pointless; hostile behavior did not cause rises in status. "The evidence suggests that overall aggression does not increase status," he says. Then again, it's not whether it works that's important. It's whether the kids believe it works.
Another stereotype the study jabbed at was that males and females bully differently. Boys spread gossip only marginally less often than girls did. And girls were negligibly less physically violent to each other than boys were. Gender-on-gender bullying was more prevalent among girls than boys, but boys were more likely to be hostile toward girls than the other way around.
Gender wasn't entirely a neutral factor, however. If a girl knew a lot of boys, or a boy knew a lot of girls at a school where there wasn't much intermingling of the sexes, those kids' status would go up, presumably because they provided a bridge to contact with potential dates. And, yep, the "gender-bridge" kids, as the study called them, seemed to be more aggressive than others.
If bullying is actually more of a result of hierarchy than of psychology, Faris believes there might be a more effective solution than trying to change the behavior of the bullies. "The majority of kids who witness this, either give it tacit approval or outright encouragement," says Faris. "Those are the ones who give these kids their status. We need to change their minds."
- All Sociology students need to respond to this article!
The text in red below are links to other articles you may want to read before responding
Mean kids, mothers tell their wounded young, behave that way because they have unhappy home lives, or feel inadequate, or don't have enough friends or because they somehow lack empathy. But a new study suggests some mean kids actually behave that way simply because they can.
Contrary to accepted ruffian-scholarship, the more popular a middle- or high-school kid becomes, the more central to the social network of the school, the more aggressive the behavior he or she engages in. At least, that was the case in North Carolina, where students from 19 middle and high schools were studied for 4.5 years by researchers at the University of California-Davis.
Authors Robert Faris and Diane Felmlee interviewed public-school kids seven times over the course of their study, starting when the students were in grades 6, 7 and 8. They asked the students to name their friends and used the data to create friendship maps. They then asked the kids who was unkind to them and whom they picked on, and mapped out the pathways of aggression.
(More on Time.com: The Tricky Politics of Tween Bullying)
What they found was that only one-third of the students engaged in any bullying at all — physical force, taunts or gossip-spreading — but those who were moving up the school popularity chain bullied more as they went higher. Only when kids reached the very top 2% of the school's social hierarchy or fell into the bottom 2% did their behavior change; these kids were the least aggressive.
"Seemingly normal well-adjusted kids can be aggressive," says Faris, whose results are published in the new issue of the American Sociological Review. "We found that status increases aggression."
While the authors are not ruling out psychological or background influences as underlying causes of the bullying, they believe that popularity is at least as important. "It's one of the few times I can recall in social sciences where race and family background seem to make very little difference," says Faris. "Those demographic and socioeconomic factors don't seem to matter as much as where the kids are in the school hierarchy."
(More on Time.com: A Glimmer of Hope in a Bad-News Survey About Bullying)
Faris also found that the more kids cared about popularity, the more aggressive they were. Ironically, that's pointless; hostile behavior did not cause rises in status. "The evidence suggests that overall aggression does not increase status," he says. Then again, it's not whether it works that's important. It's whether the kids believe it works.
Another stereotype the study jabbed at was that males and females bully differently. Boys spread gossip only marginally less often than girls did. And girls were negligibly less physically violent to each other than boys were. Gender-on-gender bullying was more prevalent among girls than boys, but boys were more likely to be hostile toward girls than the other way around.
Gender wasn't entirely a neutral factor, however. If a girl knew a lot of boys, or a boy knew a lot of girls at a school where there wasn't much intermingling of the sexes, those kids' status would go up, presumably because they provided a bridge to contact with potential dates. And, yep, the "gender-bridge" kids, as the study called them, seemed to be more aggressive than others.
If bullying is actually more of a result of hierarchy than of psychology, Faris believes there might be a more effective solution than trying to change the behavior of the bullies. "The majority of kids who witness this, either give it tacit approval or outright encouragement," says Faris. "Those are the ones who give these kids their status. We need to change their minds."
Find this article at:
http://healthland.time.com/2011/02/08/do-popular-kids-bully-more/
http://healthland.time.com/2011/02/08/do-popular-kids-bully-more/
How Being Socially Connected May Sap Your Empathy
Friday, October 28, 2011
socially connected is good for you, both physically and mentally, but in a paradox, it may also make you less empathetic to the plight of others.
socially connected is good for you, both physically and mentally, but in a paradox, it may also make you less empathetic to the plight of others.
Numerous studies have established that having lots of social support is associated with longevity and better psychological health, but past studies have also hinted that there's something about the chemistry of connection that inclines people toward unkindness — particularly toward stigmatized groups like those with disabilities or addictions.
The researchers of the new study wanted to explore this issue further by looking at how people who had a strong sense of social support would behave toward those outside their circle. Specifically, the researchers sought to examine whether feelings of connectedness led to increased tendencies to dehumanize others.
"By 'dehumanization,' we mean the failure to consider another person as having a mind," says lead author Adam Waytz, assistant professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, explaining that the idea of "mind" includes the capacity to feel pain and pleasure, as well as to plan and intend.
In one experiment, the researchers randomly assigned 38 participants to write essays: some were asked to write about a time they felt supported by a loved one; others were instructed to write about a person whom they see in daily life but don't interact with, like someone they see in the hall at school or work.
Afterward, the volunteers were asked to evaluate their perceptions of four different groups: rich people, middle class people, those with drug addictions and disabled people. The evaluations had to do with different aspects of mind that they were asked to attribute to the average group member, such as how capable the person would be of "engaging in a great deal of thought" or "doing things on purpose."
The participants who had written about feeling supported were more likely to dehumanize the addicted and disabled people, lowering their rankings of various aspects of mind by about one point on a 7-point scale.
In another experiment, 59 participants were given photos of people they were told were terrorists responsible for planning the attacks of 9/11. Some of the volunteers looked through the pictures with a friend, while others did so with a stranger who was also participating in the research.
Afterward, when questioned, people who perused the photos with a friend were more likely to support the use of waterboarding and the use of greater levels of electric shock on the suspects. On a 450-volt scale, those who'd been with their friends said that 170.6 volts would be acceptable to use on average, while those working with a stranger were only willing to go up to 136.
"We think there are two reasons," says Waytz. "One is that experience of social connection draws a circle around you that defines who is in and who is out. It very clearly delineates who is 'us versus them' and when it is 'us versus them,' people outside appear to be less human.
"The more interesting reason is that social connection is sort of like eating. When you are hungry, you seek out food. When you are lonely, you seek social connection. When the experience of social connection is elevated, we feel socially 'full' and have less desire to seek out other people and see them in a way that treats them as essentially human."
A similar psychology may affect our everyday interactions. "People talk about being overextended, having too many dinner dates, coffee dates, meetings. They feel depleted," says Waytz. "We think this plays into our findings. Even though you are extremely socially connected, at some point, it comes at the expense of the ability to consider the full humanity of those around you."
While Waytz doesn't suggest people should limit their feelings of genuine connectedness, he does think there are bounds to our ability to be truly present for others. "Empathy is a fixed resource and when we are spending it on those close to us, we simply have less to spend on others whom we feel less close to," he says.
But that doesn't preclude us from rationally recognizing the tendency to dehumanize outsiders, he says, and relying on our moral principles to avoid behaving dishonorably. "I think expanding the circle of empathy has been good for humankind," he says. "But that's only part of the story. Another part is [using moral guidelines] like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."
Waytz' research also suggests that we might reconsider the way we characterize people with addictions. Although the notion of addiction as brain disease may absolve addicts of some of the blame for their affliction, it also suggests that they are not operating under free will. Since dehumanization itself involves seeing people as having "less mind" and a reduced ability to plan or control behavior, that view may increase the stigma of the condition, not reduce it.
The paradoxes of human nature make these issues much more complicated than they initially seem.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sports
This year is the 40th anniversary of Title IX - legislation that was to bring equality to girls & women in the area of athletics at both the high school and college level. Have we come far enough or do we have work to do? In 1977 only about 1 in 10 females participated in athletics, today it is up to 1 in 3. In 1977 about 90% of the head coaches of female athletics team were female, today the numbers are down under 10%. Why have we seen the gains in participation but the dramatic drops in coaching and administration?
Below is an article from the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sports at the University of Minnesota
In July, The Nation magazine devoted a special issue—"Views from Left Field"—to the role and impact of sports in U.S. culture. In the wake of Title IX a significant part of that sport culture now includes females. To illuminate an important issue pertaining to female athletes, TC Director and Professor Mary Jo Kane was invited by editors at The Nation to address how and why sportswomen are covered in mainstream sport media. A central focus of Kane's article was whether a "sex sells" strategy is the most effective way to increase interest in and respect for today's female athletes.
This question is better answered within a broader context of what sport media scholarship has revealed. Over the past four decades, scholars have examined media coverage of women's sports and discovered two patterns of representation. First, female athletes, compared to their male counterparts, are significantly underrepresented in terms of amount of coverage, where they receive only 2-4% of all sports reporting. This lack of media attention ignores the reality of women's overall level of involvement: They represent 40 percent of all sport participants nationwide and approximately half of all those involved in intercollegiate athletics. The second pattern is that athletic females are routinely presented in ways that emphasize their femininity and heterosexuality versus their athletic competence and grace-under-pressure performance.
Trends related to amount and type of coverage have been remarkably resilient and universal. They can be found in print and broadcast journalism, at different levels of athletic involvement (Olympic, college, and professional sports), and regardless of time period with respect to Title IX. In sum, sport media routinely highlight the athletic exploits of males as opposed to the physical—and sexualized—appearance of females.
A major consequence of such media coverage is to maintain women's status as second-class citizens in one of the most powerful social, political, and economic institutions on this planet. One premise of sport media scholarship is that media play a significant role in relegating sportswomen to the sidelines because they systematically underreport and trivialize women's athletic achievements. Scholars have investigated why these particular patterns of representation dominate media coverage—not to mention marketing techniques—surrounding women's sports. A commonly held belief among those who cover and promote women's sports is that the most effective way to generate fan interest is to present sportswomen in ways that reaffirm conventional notions of femininity and heterosexuality. This taken-for-granted assumption explains the desire to portray sportswomen as traditionally feminine rather than as physically powerful. It also explains why, when athletic females appear in ads as product endorsers, they often do so in sexually provocative poses.
In spite of such deep-seated beliefs and practices, there is virtually no research to support the effectiveness of such a "sex sells" approach to the coverage and promotion of women's sports. To fill this void, Kane and colleague Dr. Heather Maxwell conducted a ground-breaking study in which they examined the widely held notion that "sex sells" women's sports. Key findings from this study, Kane's broader critique of how (and why) sportswomen are represented in both image and narrative form, and evidence for what does sell women's sport, can be found in The Nation's special issue. Additionally, a slide show of exemplar images of the six categories of how female athletes are portrayed in sport media—from athletic competence to soft porn—can be viewed on our Web site.
The key takeaway from Kane's research and her primary argument?—Sex sells sex, not women's sports.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Bringing Up Baby in the Digital Age
By age 2, 92% of American children have an online footprint. What does that do to their psyches?
@MartinLindstromNovember 4, 2011Last year, the Internet security firm AVG reported that 92% of American children have an online footprint before the ripe old age of 2 years old. Their digital presence often begins with their first image — a sonogram — being posted online. Each subsequent shot, from birth to birthday party, is shared on social networks. In fact, 7% are born with a pre-established email address, and a further 5% have a social network profile. On the one hand, this means that you are no longer forced to politely page through proud parents’ photo albums. But what does such visibility from such a young age do to both the kids and their parents?
As Peter was showing me around his bedroom, I noticed some small black lines drawn on the back of his bedroom door. They were kind of like the old tallying system — four small vertical lines, crossed by one horizontal. Peter was obviously keeping a record of something. I was curious but not quite prepared for his answer. He patiently explained that each line represented an occasion where he’d been allowed out of the house on his own over the past year. There were only seven lines, and it appeared that the most recent outing was already two months old.
In order to seek answers to this question, I decided to spend at least 48 hours in the homes of 10 different families. First on my list was Peter, a 10-year-old, who lived with his mother, father and younger sister in a small suburb on the outskirts of Charlotte, N.C. These young parents were so delighted with the prospect of their first child, that they had uploaded the image from Peter’s first sonogram on their own website.
Two days later I moved on, joining Michael and his family in Louisville, Ky. The story was somewhat similar but, in this case, the invasion of privacy — and the attendant dangers — had moved indoors. Michael had built a Lego castle in the corner of his bedroom, and he was happy to guide me through the design. As he pointed to the perimeter, he explained, “Here’s the first wall protecting me and my family.” He went on, talking me through the second wall, the third wall and finally the fourth. At the very center of this walled bastion was a small bedroom. “This is where I live,” he casually stated. Cameras, microphones and a few guards were positioned around the room. I was a somewhat taken aback when I noticed there was no inside handles on his door. In other words, he could only leave his room if someone opened the door from the outside. One of his direct contacts with the outside world could possibly be via the email address his parents had set up for him before he was born, or his Facebook account, which is extremely active.
As I dug deeper, I realized that Peter’s parents were not afraid of him running away. Nor were they afraid of him falling outside and hurting himself. Rather, having lost all sense of privacy and sure that every move of Peter’s could be tracked, their primary fear was abduction. And as a result of their concern about the dangers of the outside world, they’d focused on making the world inside their home as entertaining as possible. Peter had free access to his computer and every kind of game — there was a Gameboy, a Wii, an NDS as well as a library full of DVDs. This was not a world exclusive to a boy and his toys; Peter was welcome to have friends over to play as often as he wished.
Over the next month, as I visited home after home, I realized how dramatically different life had become since I was a 10-year-old. I grew up on the suburban streets of Denmark, mingling with all the other neighborhood children. It’s hard to imagine what courage it took for my parents to allow me, as an 8-year-old, to walk to school alone. What were they thinking when I turned 15 and they let me borrow their boat to go ocean sailing with my two best friends?
But in a strange twist to this tale, if my parents had been asked to share images of me that would give shape to something called my digital footprint — pictures of me in the womb or taking my first steps or smiling my first smile — I’m pretty sure they’d have rolled their eyes and thought, “Is this person mad?” Fast-forwarding to 2011, I am pretty certain that parents of today would be equally aghast if their neighbor’s child was allowed to walk to school or sail the seas alone. They would undoubtedly roll their eyes and possibly say to one another, “Are they mad?” But I’m not entirely sure which family would be right.
Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2011/11/04/bringing-up-baby-in-the-digital-age/#ixzz1cyazjRFT
The Awakening
The Awakening – by Benjamin Pritchard
Like everybody else, the boy was struck by the beauty of the woman. His secret pleasure was to hang back and look on as the woman collected the money from the passers by. She was attractive, beautiful almost, but it was the dog that drew them in. After all, how often do you see a 3 legged dog? Especially one so well taken care of by a beautiful woman.How and where the woman and the dog lived, no one knew. But day in and day out, sitting on the curb, they sat together. The woman would pet the dog or scratch his neck, and occasionally she gave him a morsel of food.
“Look how good she is to that pathetic dog!” the passers-by would say.
“Why, a beautiful woman like that, she could have any dog she wanted! But just look how she loves that thing, even though he is crippled and very old.”
With these sentiments in their mind, most people wouldn’t think twice about dropping a few dollars in the woman’s jar, especially because the woman was beautiful after all. And what is a few dollars to help a one so beautiful who takes such good care of a crippled dog?
Now the boy didn’t much care for the dog; his gaze was all for the woman. How beautiful she was! Though he didn’t dare to speak to her, and he had no money to give, still the boy hung around the woman towards the back of the crowd. Day in and day out he did this, and over time — even though his focus was mostly on the woman — he came to notice that her dog was not doing very well.
The boy watched, and each day, the dog seemed to be growing older, and he was no longer taking pleasure in the morsels that the woman gave him. But something else bothered the boy. To the boy, something didn’t seem right.
As he continued to observe the beautiful woman and her three legged dog, the boy started to notice that the woman’s behavior toward the dog was rather peculiar, and more-and-more something about this continued to bother the boy.
He noticed for example that the dog wasn’t feeling well, and was obviously in pain. But the woman didn’t seem to notice this, which was strange. He also noticed that yes, the woman would pet the dog, and even give him a morsel of food, but only at opportune times — like when the passer-bys drew near.
The boy then grew suspicious of the woman, and eventually he started to hold in contempt those passers by who were so enchanted by the woman and her dog.
“What is wrong with these people?” thought the boy. “Surely they can see that the woman doesn’t love that dog at all! Why, she is just using it!”
But even as the boy’s perception regarding the woman and her dog changed, the perceptions of the passers-by stayed the same. Over and over men would walk by, be struck by the woman’s beauty and obvious good nature because she took care of the dog, and drop money in her jar. The woman would smile at the men who did this, and lightly touch their hand, and the boy started to see that the men didn’t care about the dog either: as it lay there so pathetically, obviously dying, the men’s attention was only on the woman.
Again and again the boy returned, and each day, the dynamic between the beautiful woman, her crippled dog, and the passer-by continued to play out as it always had… until one day, the woman was alone, and the boy quickly ascertained from the conversation of the men that her dog had died.
The boy was suspicious of the woman by this point, and noticed right away that the woman continued to touch the hands of the men who put the money in her jar, and though she was talking about her dog dying, it seemed to the boy that her story was belying the fact that she didn’t care about the dog at all: it was her own misery at being forced to watch her dog die that she lamented to the men.
But the woman was crying, and the boy started to forget about the irregularities he noticed in the woman’s behavior toward her dog. After all, the woman looked so beautiful sitting there, and she was crying after all.
But something happened next that the boy will never forget. As he stood there watching the woman, one of the men who had been by earlier came back carrying a small puppy in a blanket.
“Here,” the man said, “take this puppy; his youth and vigor will make you feel better, and no longer will you have to be burdened by an old crippled dog.”
As the woman took the dog, and hugged it to her breast, a deep-rooted revulsion came over the boy, and at that moment, the boy vomited. He knew full well the reality that the men could not see.
And he was right. The next day when the boy returned to observe the lady, she had the puppy with her, who was now crippled with a crushed paw.
And the reactions of the passers-by in no way surprised the boy, as they expressed their admiration for such a beautiful woman who would care for a pathetic crippled dog.
Here is a story, not by a sociologist or a sociology student, by a high ranking computer geek. It may not be coming from a Sociologist, but it sure points to how sociology can transform our perceptions of the world. One moment we are comfortable focusing at the surface of social phenomenon, put at ease by our reminiscent illusions, and the next we are thrust beneath the surface to a reality that may not be as pleasant as had originally seemed. What was once “obvious” and straightforward is now obtuse and complex. The world has been turned on its head! The Sociological perspective. Is it a blessing, is it a curse? Only you can decide.
Post Count - Do Not Respond
This is the count as of Sunday November 6th @ 6:30pm
Twizniz - 4
Southernboy - 5
Candylemons - 3
Blondie10 - 55+
Boots - 55+
BellaDancerella11 - 8
Zebra19 - 23
Bobbersboy - 14
Kat - 6
Mouse - 3
DaBoss - 5 but they are weak post!!!
Chamslin94 - 3
Twizniz - 4
Southernboy - 5
Candylemons - 3
Blondie10 - 55+
Boots - 55+
BellaDancerella11 - 8
Zebra19 - 23
Bobbersboy - 14
Kat - 6
Mouse - 3
DaBoss - 5 but they are weak post!!!
Chamslin94 - 3
100
points - 50-55
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90
points - 45-49
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80
points - 40-44
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70
points - 35-39
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60
points - 30-34
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50
points - 25-29
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40
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30
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19 post
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Make sure you are blogging or working on your current events notebook on Tuesday. Remember Big Brother is Always Watching
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