was practicing a jump at a little ice rink near our house (it’s been there for 20 years!). So in the middle of a run, there was a man in a puffy coat jumping with his dog. I was laughing my ass off, but he had no idea what the big deal was. After I finished, I skated a lap or so and he asked me to go skating, so he could show his son how to do a few things.
I kept thinking: “Who the hell is that guy? That could not be him!” If that could be him, what else is going on in there?
I guess the good news is that I have a new respect for people who are like that, but it also makes me realize that when I am sitting on my couch in suburbia, that guy isn’t out there on his own. I am not alone in my little bubble.
This is another way of saying I get out of the house a lot, and the fact that there are other people in the world that do not look like me means a lot, too.
I also agree with the fact that people do what they think is best. I know in the case of the man in the puffy coat that some people may have looked at him a little differently, but I’m sure he thinks what he is doing is OK. We all want to be accepted, and in some ways it’s better to be accepted as normal then to be judged.
“You’ve got a few minutes. I think that this will be just fine. Thanks for understanding.” This is an interesting way to make it through a day. It’s also a fascinating way to explore gender roles and relationships. I recommend everyone check out the trailer, which I’ve posted below. The movie opens in theaters in January.
I was reading an article that was published in USA Today today. The article features comments about a study that reported on how people are more apt to say things that reflect negatively about their in-group than their out-group. I felt like the results would have an impact on the Internet, so I took a look.
Here’s the study: http://www.bcmj.org/content/54/9/1525.abstract. The original study was conducted by Matthew Feinberg. In the study, university students were placed in various conversations with strangers in which one could choose to join or leave a discussion mid-conversation. The people doing the talking, of course, are college students.
As they talked, a hidden camera recorded their conversation and observed who joined and who was excluded. They were also given questionnaires, and the surveyors asked who joined and who left in order to measure the relationship dynamics.
The results were interesting. When the out-group people are outnumbered, they tend to join the conversation and feel a part of the group. On the other hand, the in-group people tended to sit back and think about what they wanted to say next.
“Feinberg’s results show that being in a minority is not the kind of threat that motivates one to speak. What matters is whether one perceives that an out-group member has been speaking. When a member of the majority expresses an opinion, Feinberg found, the majority member will either ignore it or answer in a way that mirrors the expressed opinion.”
There are many implications from this study. It shows that your actions are a form of communication. We usually do not even realize this. Our actions are important in that way. If you are a silent member of a group of people, you are still sending out signals, albeit subtle signals. The fact that we don’t realize that is astounding, but it’s probably that in our silence, we are not perceived as a threat. So it’s in everyone’s best interest to make sure their actions are seen as harmless and non-threatening.
I’m sure some people can probably speak for the in-group and for the out-group and get you to join both conversations. I’m not one of those people. I know from personal experience that I am not likely to be a part of multiple conversations in real time. If I tried, it would cause me to be a giant ball of confusion. My brain can only handle so many things at once. I get a little disoriented, and it messes up my memory.
In this case, the people talking would have to take a wait-and-see approach. It might be a good idea to see who wants to join the conversation, but to sit back and let the conversation develop on its own. Or, perhaps they would need to break things up into smaller conversations that are easier to swallow.
Of course, this is the case in everyday life. This is the same reason I can’t follow along with multiple people in multiple conversations on Facebook, Twitter, or this blog, or text messages or whatever else is out there. It would cause me to be lost for hours. My brain gets confused.
This study also goes against everything we’ve been told about how the brain works. And then I remembered that the brain is the biggest mystery we have, because everything else about the brain was already known when it was named. The researchers are doing actual brain studies now!
These findings are fascinating to me, but I can see where this would be a very difficult thing for people who are forced to take multiple classes or listen to multiple seminars at work. If you have to focus on multiple topics at the same time, you might struggle, even if everyone else is. So if someone told you that the people you interacted with while studying are not really friends, but strangers who just joined the conversation, I bet it would take a while to convince you of this.
As I was reading about the research, I thought to myself that this is so fascinating that I hope the researchers find out more about this. For example, I wonder if what happens to the people who feel like a part of a group when they are a part of a group, and the people who feel like an out-group when they are an out-group are reflected in brain activity.
If it’s any consolation, I’m pretty sure that even in those studies, the in-group and out-group remained in their original place, even after they had been tested. They didn’t become a part of a different group because they were in the test lab. They’re still a part of the out-group and the in-group. This says to me that whatever effect the new interaction has doesn’t last.
As you probably know, last Friday was the day of the inauguration of President Barack Obama. I attended the ceremony, as my school, along with hundreds of other schools from around the country, took a trip to the nation’s capital.
We left home right around noon and arrived to DC about 6:30pm. Upon arriving, my aunt picked me up from the train station, and the rest of the family arrived a few hours later. Since our group was so large, I didn’t get a chance to talk to most of them, but I did finally get to meet my mom’s best friend and her husband, the daughter of my uncle. I didn’t get a chance to visit with them at all, and didn’t even say a word to my mom until around 3pm, after we were walking around.
I was told that the crowd was probably at least 2.5 times larger than the estimated 3 million. I’m not sure about that number, but I do know that the traffic was bad, so I wouldn’t be surprised.
Once we got in, I spent the rest of the day following Michelle Obama and the president. We visited several historic locations, including the White House, Arlington National Cemetery and Jefferson Memorial. Since the weather was pretty crummy, I didn’t see as much as I hoped to see, but I did get to see the Air and Space Museum (which has all the space shuttle models and some space junk), the National Air and Space Museum, and the Jefferson Memorial, all of which were very interesting.
I also learned that I really like ice skating. We stopped at an ice rink (my
