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Media Psychology

~ Informing, Educating and Influencing

Media Psychology

Category Archives: Media Effects

Distracted Boyfriend meme is sexist, rules Swedish ad watchdog

26 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by Ken S. Heller in Media Effects, Media Psychology, Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

#MeToo, Advertising, Internet, Marketing, Memes, Sexism, Stereotypes

From The Guardian

Popular image of man ogling another woman deemed degrading and discriminatory

The popular Distracted Boyfriend meme, based on a photo of a man turning away from his outraged girlfriend to stare admiringly at another woman, has been ruled sexist by Sweden’s advertising ombudsman.

The stock image, also known as Man Looking at Other Woman, by Antonio Guillem, a photographer from Barcelona, was named meme of the year in April and was one of the most widely shared memes in 2017, providing comment on anything from music to politics to hit TV shows.

I didn’t know what a meme was, says Distracted Boyfriend photographer

The ombudsman said recruitment advertisements posted on Facebook by the internet services provider Bahnhof, which labelled the boyfriend “You”, the girlfriend “Your current workplace”, and the second woman “Bahnhof”, were gender-discriminatory, the Local reported.

“The advertisement objectifies women,” the ombudsman, RO, said. “It presents women as interchangeable items and suggests only their appearance is interesting … It also shows degrading stereotypical gender roles of both men and women and gives the impression men can change female partners as they change jobs.”

The ombudsman said the image objectified the two women by presenting them as workplaces, but the man as an individual, and added that the “other woman” was clearly a “sex object … unrelated to the advertisement, which is for recruiting salespeople, operating engineers and a web designer”.

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The Swedish advertising industry is self-regulating, meaning that the ombudsman can criticise ads but it does not have the power to impose sanctions.

The ad, posted in April, drew nearly 1,000 comments, many from women who complained it was sexist. “1. You really don’t want to attract women to your company,” one commenter, Susanne Lahti Hagbard, said. “2. You really don’t want to attract sensible guys either.”

Another, Sofie Sundåker, said: “It doesn’t matter if it’s a popular meme. If you do not see how this picture is sexist whatever words are on the people, you are clearly not a workplace for any woman who wants to be taken seriously in her work.”

The company said on its Facebook page that its aim had been “to illustrate a situation that shows Bahnhof is an attractive employer, and that people who have a slightly duller workplace might be interested in us. This was the situation illustrated in this meme.

“Anyone familiar with the internet and meme culture knows how this meme is used and interpreted. Gender is usually irrelevant in the context. We explained meme culture to the ombudsman, but it chose to interpret the post differently”.

If the company should be punished for anything, it concluded, “it should be for using a tired old meme”.

While it frequently features near the top of world gender-equality rankings, a 2016 study found Sweden was the worst of the Nordic countries at combating sexist advertising. This year, Stockholm council voted to bar ads deemed sexist or degrading from the city’s public billboards.

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Tech Titans Dish Advice About Phone Addiction – Great Escape – Medium

24 Monday Sep 2018

Posted by Donna L. Roberts, PhD in Advertising, Media Effects, Media Literacy, Media Psychology, Psychology

≈ Comments Off on Tech Titans Dish Advice About Phone Addiction – Great Escape – Medium

Tags

Addiction, Email, Gaming, Mental Health, Smartphone, Social Media

 

Your phone is training you to be its servant. Here’s how to fight back.

by Clint Carter

Source: Tech Titans Dish Advice About Phone Addiction – Great Escape – Medium

With every Facebook post you like, tweet you send, or question you type into Google, you’re giving the internet strength. Feeding the algorithms. Paying the advertisers. You’re also helping to fill server farms that will ultimately be replaced by bigger server farms, effectively anchoring the internet in the real world. This is all sweet and rosy, if the internet-human relationship is mutually beneficial. But it’s not clear that it is.

In some ways, our nonstop online lives are bringing us closer. But at least as often, the relentless pace of social media, email, and constant pings and beeps only serve to pull us further apart. And all this tech is certainly bad for our health and happiness: Research links social media to depression and high-speed internet to poor sleep. Simply having a phone visible during meals has been shown to make conversation among friends less enjoyable.

It’s probably hard to imagine life without a high-powered computer in your pocket or purse at all times, but it’s worth remembering that you’re still an autonomous being.

That said, these effects aren’t inevitable. Not yet, anyway. It’s probably hard to imagine life without a high-powered computer in your pocket or purse at all times, but it’s worth remembering that you’re still an autonomous being. You can decide how often and in what way you interact with the internet. And if you talk to the researchers, authors, and entrepreneurs who understand digital technology best, you discover that many of them already have.

We reached out to eight digital experts to find out how they maintain a (reasonably) healthy relationship with technology. All agreed that push notifications are evil, so you should go ahead and turn those off right now. Some of the experts even said they keep their ringers and text notifications off, at least some of the time. Beyond that, they all had unique strategies for defending themselves against the intrusive, obnoxious, and possibly destructive effects of technology.


Give Yourself One Honest Hour of Work Each Day

Dan Ariely, PhD

Professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University, author of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

Much of Dan Ariely’s work — including Timeful, the A.I.-powered calendar app he built and sold to Google — focuses on making the most of limited time. One way he does this is by starting each morning in a distraction-free environment. “I think very carefully about the first hour of the day,” he says. “I used to have two computers, and one had no email or browser on it.” That’s the one he used for writing in the mornings.

“The thing is to realize that our time to work is actually quite precious.”

Ariely’s travel schedule forced him to abandon the dual-computer setup, but the experiment was fruitful enough that he now relies on a self-imposed internet ban to get work done. “The last thing I do each day is turn my computer off,” he says. “The next day, when I turn it back on, my browser and email are still off.” And Ariely keeps it that way until he’s powered through that first hour. “The thing is to realize that our time to work is actually quite precious,” he says. “We need to protect it.”


Quit Cold Turkey

Steve Blank

Stanford professor, retired entrepreneur, and founder of the Lean Startup movement

Over the two-plus decades that Steve Blank helped shape Silicon Valley, he ushered eight technology startups into the world. But it was during his tenure at Rocket Science Games, a company he founded in the mid-1990s, that Blank began getting high on his own supply. “I found myself drug addicted,” he says. “I’d be up playing games until four in the morning.”

“The devices started as tools and ended up as drugs for most people.”

Video games are hardly a Schedule 1 narcotic, but Blank was losing sleep and, he felt, setting a bad example for his children. Emerging research confirms his idea that games and social media can exert drug-like forces over users. A study published in the journal PLOS One even found that digital addictions can shrink the amount of white matter at certain brain sites, creating changes similar to those seen in alcohol, cocaine, and methamphetamine addictions. “The devices started as tools and ended up as drugs for most people,” Blank says. “App manufacturers are incentivized to make us addicted. I’ll contend that a ton of social media is actually a lot like oxycontin.”

When Blank realized that his gaming habit was robbing him of happiness by way of lost sleep and family time, he snapped his CD-ROMs in half (this was the ’90s, remember). Then he threw the pieces into the trash. “I literally went cold turkey,” he says. “And I haven’t played a video game since.”


Create an Email System and Stick to It

Ethan Kross, PhD

Professor of psychology and director of the Emotion and Self-Control Laboratory at the University of Michigan

After studying Facebook — and, more important, after finding that the biggest users were the least satisfied with life — Ethan Kross decided to refrain from any social media use. But he still checks his email more often than he’d like. “It’s a self-control failure from a self-control expert,” he says.

To be fair, the professor is probably selling himself short. The truth is he relies on three solid rules to prevent compulsive emailing.

“So I just try to change my digital environment. We know from research that can be a powerful tool for enhancing self-control.”

First, Kross pushes all fast-moving work conversations to Slack. “That way I can get information from my lab collaborators quickly, and my email becomes less urgent.”

Second, he uses the snooze function, which is available on Gmail and services like Boomerang for Outlook, for any email that isn’t urgent. “If there are 50 things in my inbox, that can be disruptive to my immediate goals,” Kross says. So he snoozes them for a few hours or a few days, depending on the urgency.

Finally, Kross relies on an email-free iPad for reading, so he can’t check his incoming mail even if he wants to. “I don’t like checking my email when I’m in bed, because once every month I’ll receive something that makes me not sleep well,” he says. “So I just try to change my digital environment. We know from research that can be a powerful tool for enhancing self-control.”


Take Weeklong Breaks as Necessary

Jean Twenge, PhD

Researcher and professor of psychology at San Diego State University and the author of iGen, a book about how the internet is changing young adults

In April of last year, Jean Twenge signed up for Twitter. It’s her first and only social media account, and almost immediately she found herself clashing with people who disagreed with her research. “It’s a public forum, and I felt a compulsion to defend my arguments,” Twenge says. “But is that the right response? I don’t know. For my own mental health, I know it’s not.”

“It’s a public forum, and I felt a compulsion to defend my arguments.”

It’s not that she wanted to be on Twitter, but as an academic with a book to promote, Twenge felt like she had to. After six months with the service, though, Twenge noticed that she was increasingly giving in to a compulsion to check up on conversations that were making her miserable. “It completely confirmed why I don’t have social media,” she says. And so she scaled back. Twenge kept the account for promotional reasons and still has periods of time when she’s active, but when she needs a refresh, she consciously steps away for days or weeks.

When asked if she’s tempted to open an Instagram or Facebook account — even if just for research purposes — she replies quickly, “Nope.”


Dock Your Gadget and Walk Away

Erik Peper, PhD

Professor at San Francisco State University and president of the Biofeedback Federation of Europe

As a researcher who explores the impact of excessive phone use (it makes us feel lonely) and the bad posture brought on by constantly staring at a screen, Erik Peper makes a point of keeping his phone at a distance. When he leaves home in the morning, he packs it into his backpack instead of his pocket. And when he returns in the evening, he docks it at the charging station by his front door.

What’s the point? There are two, actually.

“There are very few things that are truly urgent.”

First, the microwaves coming off mobile devices could present a small risk to their owners, Peper says. In a paper he wrote for the journal Biofeedback, Peper cites epidemiological research showing that people who use cellphones for more than 10 years are more likely than nonusers to have tumors on their salivary glands and inside their ear canals. They’re also three times as likely to have certain brain and spinal-cord tumors on the side of their head where they hold their phone. “The data is weak and controversial,” Peper admits. “But I believe in the precautionary principle, which says that you have to first prove something is totally safe before you can use it.”

The second reason is that, simply put, it’s a distraction. “The phone hijacks our evolutionary patterns,” Peper says. “We don’t do good with multitasking, so if you’re writing an article, and every five minutes you pop back to answer a message, you’re much less productive in the long term.” The same logic applies to socializing, he says, which is why his phone is stored out of sight when he’s with friends and family.

Does it matter that he’s a little slow to reply to messages? Or that he occasionally misses a call? “There are very few things that are truly urgent,” Peper says. “It’s different if you’re a firefighter, but beyond that, whether I answer the email this minute, later today, or even this evening — it really makes no difference.”


Eliminate Email on Your Phone

Linden Tibbets

CEO of IFTTT, a service that lets you program your apps and smart devices to carry out rote tasks

Years ago, Linden Tibbets decided he didn’t want to be a slave to his email. Which meant, in short, that he would read and send messages only while sitting at his desk.

“The only time I send email on my phone is if I’m running late to a meeting and there’s no other way to communicate,” Tibbets says. “That’s literally the only time.”

“You can be endlessly entertained with what’s happening in the world around you. You don’t need your phone.”

The upshot, he says, is that he’s able to address his correspondance with better focus. “I would much rather spend an extra hour in the evening responding to email than to be distracted by it off and on throughout the day,” Tibbets says. If it takes a while to reply to people, no big deal. “I just say, ‘Thanks for your patience. I apologize for being slow to get back to you.’”

And if he finds himself with a moment of downtime — standing in line for groceries, for instance — Tibbets considers it rare opportunity for mind wandering. “I play a game with myself where I try not to look at my phone,” he says. “I look at people. I read food labels. I observe things in the environment. You can be endlessly entertained with what’s happening in the world around you. You don’t need your phone.”


Schedule Moments of Disconnection

Adam Alter, PhD

Professor of marketing at New York University and author of Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked

In Irresistable, Adam Alter argues that in some ways, tech addiction may actually be worse than cigarette addiction. Because the web is built on social connections, each new addict makes it harder for the rest of us to abstain. “Addictive tech is part of the mainstream in a way that addictive substances never will be,” Alter writes. “Abstinence isn’t an option.”

“I try to put my phone on airplane mode on weekends.”

So what does the tech critic do to protect his own mental autonomy? He disconnects when the workweek’s done. “I try to put my phone on airplane mode on weekends so I can take photos of my two young kids without interruptions from emails and other needy platforms.”


Swap Out the Brain-Rot Apps for Ones That Enrich

Ali Brown

Entrepreneurial consultant, host of Glambition, a podcast for women in business

Last year, Ali Brown had a social media reckoning. “It was after the election, when everything was getting toxic and weird,” she says. “I was getting all my news from Facebook, and I felt this sense of unease all the time.”

So Brown did an entirely logical thing that most of us haven’t done: She drained the swamp on her phone. In one heroic moment of full-steam bravado, Brown deleted Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and replaced them with apps from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. “I decided to pay for some really good journalism,” she says. “I’ll use my time to read those instead.”

“Responding to social media all day is going to get you nowhere.”

Once her healthier new phone routine was established, Brown added back one social media app — but just one! “I like Instagram because it’s generally happy and fun,” she says. “I post about my kids.”

Brown is lucky enough to have a team to run her Twitter and Facebook accounts, but she knows there are better uses for investing her personal time. “If you’re here in this life to do great, powerful work, then you need to create some space in your day to be a freethinker,” she says. “Responding to social media all day is going to get you nowhere.”

To her clients — mostly women running seven- and eight-figure companies — Brown generally offers this advice: “Try deleting social media for a week. You won’t miss anything, you won’t cease to exist, and you’ll thank me later.”

Go to the profile of Clint Carter

WRITTEN BY Clint Carter

Writer for publications such as Entrepreneur, Men’s Health, Men’s Journal, New York magazine, and Wall Street Journal.

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How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds

24 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by Donna L. Roberts, PhD in Media Effects, Media Psychology, Psychology

≈ Comments Off on How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds

Tags

Attention, Cognitive Psychology, Intelligence, Smartphone, Technology

Research suggests that as the brain grows dependent on phone technology, the intellect weakens.

Source: How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds

ILLUSTRATION: SERGE BLOCH
By Nicholas Carr     Oct. 6, 2017

 

So you bought that new iPhone. If you are like the typical owner, you’ll be pulling your phone out and using it some 80 times a day, according to data Apple collects. That means you’ll be consulting the glossy little rectangle nearly 30,000 times over the coming year. Your new phone, like your old one, will become your constant companion and trusty factotum—your teacher, secretary, confessor, guru. The two of you will be inseparable.

The smartphone is unique in the annals of personal technology. We keep the gadget within reach more or less around the clock, and we use it in countless ways, consulting its apps and checking its messages and heeding its alerts scores of times a day. The smartphone has become a repository of the self, recording and dispensing the words, sounds and images that define what we think, what we experience and who we are. In a 2015 Gallup survey, more than half of iPhone owners said that they couldn’t imagine life without the device.

We love our phones for good reasons. It’s hard to imagine another product that has provided so many useful functions in such a handy form. But while our phones offer convenience and diversion, they also breed anxiety. Their extraordinary usefulness gives them an unprecedented hold on our attention and vast influence over our thinking and behavior. So what happens to our minds when we allow a single tool such dominion over our perception and cognition?

Scientists have begun exploring that question—and what they’re discovering is both fascinating and troubling. Not only do our phones shape our thoughts in deep and complicated ways, but the effects persist even when we aren’t using the devices. As the brain grows dependent on the technology, the research suggests, the intellect weakens.

‘The division of attention impedes reasoning and performance.’

Adrian Ward, a cognitive psychologist and marketing professor at the University of Texas at Austin, has been studying the way smartphones and the internet affect our thoughts and judgments for a decade. In his own work, as well as that of others, he has seen mounting evidence that using a smartphone, or even hearing one ring or vibrate, produces a welter of distractions that makes it harder to concentrate on a difficult problem or job. The division of attention impedes reasoning and performance.

A 2015 Journal of Experimental Psychology study, involving 166 subjects, found that when people’s phones beep or buzz while they’re in the middle of a challenging task, their focus wavers, and their work gets sloppier—whether they check the phone or not. Another 2015 study, which involved 41 iPhone users and appeared in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, showed that when people hear their phone ring but are unable to answer it, their blood pressure spikes, their pulse quickens, and their problem-solving skills decline.

ILLUSTRATION: SERGE BLOCH

 

The earlier research didn’t explain whether and how smartphones differ from the many other sources of distraction that crowd our lives. Dr. Ward suspected that our attachment to our phones has grown so intense that their mere presence might diminish our intelligence. Two years ago, he and three colleagues— Kristen Duke and Ayelet Gneezy from the University of California, San Diego, and Disney Research behavioral scientist Maarten Bos —began an ingenious experiment to test his hunch.

The researchers recruited 520 undergraduate students at UCSD and gave them two standard tests of intellectual acuity. One test gauged “available cognitive capacity,” a measure of how fully a person’s mind can focus on a particular task. The second assessed “fluid intelligence,” a person’s ability to interpret and solve an unfamiliar problem. The only variable in the experiment was the location of the subjects’ smartphones. Some of the students were asked to place their phones in front of them on their desks; others were told to stow their phones in their pockets or handbags; still others were required to leave their phones in a different room.

‘As the phone’s proximity increased, brainpower decreased.’

The results were striking. In both tests, the subjects whose phones were in view posted the worst scores, while those who left their phones in a different room did the best. The students who kept their phones in their pockets or bags came out in the middle. As the phone’s proximity increased, brainpower decreased.

In subsequent interviews, nearly all the participants said that their phones hadn’t been a distraction—that they hadn’t even thought about the devices during the experiment. They remained oblivious even as the phones disrupted their focus and thinking.

A second experiment conducted by the researchers produced similar results, while also revealing that the more heavily students relied on their phones in their everyday lives, the greater the cognitive penalty they suffered.

In an April article in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, Dr. Ward and his colleagues wrote that the “integration of smartphones into daily life” appears to cause a “brain drain” that can diminish such vital mental skills as “learning, logical reasoning, abstract thought, problem solving, and creativity.” Smartphones have become so entangled with our existence that, even when we’re not peering or pawing at them, they tug at our attention, diverting precious cognitive resources. Just suppressing the desire to check our phone, which we do routinely and subconsciously throughout the day, can debilitate our thinking. The fact that most of us now habitually keep our phones “nearby and in sight,” the researchers noted, only magnifies the mental toll.

Dr. Ward’s findings are consistent with other recently published research. In a similar but smaller 2014 study (involving 47 subjects) in the journal Social Psychology, psychologists at the University of Southern Maine found that people who had their phones in view, albeit turned off, during two demanding tests of attention and cognition made significantly more errors than did a control group whose phones remained out of sight. (The two groups performed about the same on a set of easier tests.)

In another study, published in Applied Cognitive Psychology in April, researchers examined how smartphones affected learning in a lecture class with 160 students at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. They found that students who didn’t bring their phones to the classroom scored a full letter-grade higher on a test of the material presented than those who brought their phones. It didn’t matter whether the students who had their phones used them or not: All of them scored equally poorly. A study of 91 secondary schools in the U.K., published last year in the journal Labour Economics, found that when schools ban smartphones, students’ examination scores go up substantially, with the weakest students benefiting the most.

It isn’t just our reasoning that takes a hit when phones are around. Social skills and relationships seem to suffer as well. Because smartphones serve as constant reminders of all the friends we could be chatting with electronically, they pull at our minds when we’re talking with people in person, leaving our conversations shallower and less satisfying.

ILLUSTRATION: SERGE BLOCH

 

In a study conducted at the University of Essex in the U.K., 142 participants were divided into pairs and asked to converse in private for 10 minutes. Half talked with a phone in the room, while half had no phone present. The subjects were then given tests of affinity, trust and empathy. “The mere presence of mobile phones,” the researchers reported in 2013 in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, “inhibited the development of interpersonal closeness and trust” and diminished “the extent to which individuals felt empathy and understanding from their partners.” The downsides were strongest when “a personally meaningful topic” was being discussed. The experiment’s results were validated in a subsequent study by Virginia Tech researchers, published in 2016 in the journal Environment and Behavior.

The evidence that our phones can get inside our heads so forcefully is unsettling. It suggests that our thoughts and feelings, far from being sequestered in our skulls, can be skewed by external forces we’re not even aware of.

Scientists have long known that the brain is a monitoring system as well as a thinking system. Its attention is drawn toward any object that is new, intriguing or otherwise striking—that has, in the psychological jargon, “salience.” Media and communications devices, from telephones to TV sets, have always tapped into this instinct. Whether turned on or switched off, they promise an unending supply of information and experiences. By design, they grab and hold our attention in ways natural objects never could.

But even in the history of captivating media, the smartphone stands out. It is an attention magnet unlike any our minds have had to grapple with before. Because the phone is packed with so many forms of information and so many useful and entertaining functions, it acts as what Dr. Ward calls a “supernormal stimulus,” one that can “hijack” attention whenever it is part of our surroundings—which it always is. Imagine combining a mailbox, a newspaper, a TV, a radio, a photo album, a public library and a boisterous party attended by everyone you know, and then compressing them all into a single, small, radiant object. That is what a smartphone represents to us. No wonder we can’t take our minds off it.

The irony of the smartphone is that the qualities we find most appealing—its constant connection to the net, its multiplicity of apps, its responsiveness, its portability—are the very ones that give it such sway over our minds. Phone makers like Apple and Samsungand app writers like Facebook and Google design their products to consume as much of our attention as possible during every one of our waking hours, and we thank them by buying millions of the gadgets and downloading billions of the apps every year.

A quarter-century ago, when we first started going online, we took it on faith that the web would make us smarter: More information would breed sharper thinking. We now know it isn’t that simple. The way a media device is designed and used exerts at least as much influence over our minds as does the information that the device unlocks.

‘People’s knowledge may dwindle as gadgets grant them easier access to online data.’

As strange as it might seem, people’s knowledge and understanding may actually dwindle as gadgets grant them easier access to online data stores. In a seminal 2011 study published in Science, a team of researchers—led by the Columbia University psychologist Betsy Sparrow and including the late Harvard memory expert Daniel Wegner —had a group of volunteers read 40 brief, factual statements (such as “The space shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry over Texas in Feb. 2003”) and then type the statements into a computer. Half the people were told that the machine would save what they typed; half were told that the statements would be immediately erased.

Afterward, the researchers asked the subjects to write down as many of the statements as they could remember. Those who believed that the facts had been recorded in the computer demonstrated much weaker recall than those who assumed the facts wouldn’t be stored. Anticipating that information would be readily available in digital form seemed to reduce the mental effort that people made to remember it. The researchers dubbed this phenomenon the “Google effect” and noted its broad implications: “Because search engines are continually available to us, we may often be in a state of not feeling we need to encode the information internally. When we need it, we will look it up.”

Now that our phones have made it so easy to gather information online, our brains are likely offloading even more of the work of remembering to technology. If the only thing at stake were memories of trivial facts, that might not matter. But, as the pioneering psychologist and philosopher William James said in an 1892 lecture, “the art of remembering is the art of thinking.” Only by encoding information in our biological memory can we weave the rich intellectual associations that form the essence of personal knowledge and give rise to critical and conceptual thinking. No matter how much information swirls around us, the less well-stocked our memory, the less we have to think with.

‘We aren’t very good at distinguishing the knowledge we keep in our heads from the information we find on our phones.’

This story has a twist. It turns out that we aren’t very good at distinguishing the knowledge we keep in our heads from the information we find on our phones or computers. As Dr. Wegner and Dr. Ward explained in a 2013 Scientific American article, when people call up information through their devices, they often end up suffering from delusions of intelligence. They feel as though “their own mental capacities” had generated the information, not their devices. “The advent of the ‘information age’ seems to have created a generation of people who feel they know more than ever before,” the scholars concluded, even though “they may know ever less about the world around them.”

That insight sheds light on our society’s current gullibility crisis, in which people are all too quick to credit lies and half-truths spread through social media by Russian agents and other bad actors. If your phone has sapped your powers of discernment, you’ll believe anything it tells you.

Data, the novelist and critic Cynthia Ozick once wrote, is “memory without history.” Her observation points to the problem with allowing smartphones to commandeer our brains. When we constrict our capacity for reasoning and recall or transfer those skills to a gadget, we sacrifice our ability to turn information into knowledge. We get the data but lose the meaning. Upgrading our gadgets won’t solve the problem. We need to give our minds more room to think. And that means putting some distance between ourselves and our phones.

Mr. Carr is the author of “The Shallows” and “Utopia Is Creepy,” among other books.

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Las Vegas Shooting News Coverage – A Perspective

06 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by Melissa Chyba in Advertising, Media Effects, Media Psychology, Psychology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Advertising, Cookies, Depression, Facebook, Marketing, Media, news coverage

News Man Pic

Last night I received a text from my mom wondering if we should attend the Bruno Mars concert coming up in November. I bought tickets for her birthday this year and we have been excited about attending. What brought on this sudden second guessing? The news coverage of the mass shooting in Las Vegas of course! What happened in Vegas was truly horrible and many are now second guessing how safe it is to attend concerts and other events. While I scrolled through my news feed and perused Facebook, my friends wondered in their posts how such a horrific event could happen. As expected, proponents for tighter gun laws have been in the news which has started a lively debate in my Facebook feed. This post is not about my political views on gun laws, nor is it intended to downplay what has happened. My heart truly goes out to everyone affected. My aim is to bring to light some food for thought as we all absorb the events and news coverage.

The likeliness of being killed in a homicide by a firearm is relatively low compared to other potential causes of death. In 2014 there were 11,008 homicide deaths from a firearm in the U.S. This translates to 3.5 people out of 100,000 or a 0.0035% chance (CDC, 2017). However, firearm homicides are dwarfed in comparison to the top 10 causes of death in 2016 which are as follows:

  • Heart disease: 633,842
  • Cancer: 595,930
  • Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 155,041
  • Accidents (unintentional injuries): 146,571
  • Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 140,323
  • Alzheimer’s disease: 110,561
  • Diabetes: 79,535
  • Influenza and pneumonia: 57,062
  • Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 49,959
  • Intentional self-harm (suicide): 44,193 (CDC, 2017)

Looking at the numbers, we should all be more concerned about lifestyles and choices that directly contribute to heart disease and cancer. So why aren’t stories about the leading causes of death receiving the same amount of media coverage? Because media’s #1 job is to create audiences and anything sensational or out of the ordinary does the best job attracting attention (it is like trying to pass a car crash on the freeway and not look). However, creating audiences is much more hyper targeted than it used to be. News Media companies collect personally identifiable information on our viewing and reading habits through cookies, device IDs and set-top box data to name a few. This data collected is then utilized so they can sell their advertisers the best target audiences across their platforms. For example, Apple’s algorithms know I have recently been following hurricanes since I was in Florida right before Irma. On October 3rd in the “For You” section, there was an article from the Miami Herald about the tropical depression moving towards the Caribbean. Right below that article, an advertisement from Wells Fargo (my bank) was strategically placed. Wells Fargo has my personal information and so does Apple, so they can leverage an intermediary to anonymize and match my data between the companies while remaining privacy compliant. From there my anonymized information is leveraged enabling Wells Fargo to strategically target their advertisement in my Apple news feed. Because the targeting is more precise to the audience, Wells Fargo in theory sees a lift in their ROI and Apple commands higher advertising rates.

While media uses sensational headlines and stories to gain more of our attention, the bad news in the media affects our stress levels. A study on news coverage from the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings increased “acute stress” in students at other universities who followed the happenings in the news media. Furthermore, the more news media on the subject consumed the higher the probability the students would respond with higher degrees of stress symptomology (Fallahi & Lesik, 2009). Constant news negativity can exacerbate our own feelings of sadness and anxiety as well as the severity of how we perceive our own situation (Davey, 2012). A big dose of negative news daily can certainly send me into a spin of constant mobile device checking for updates and an overall pessimistic view that day.

Does this mean we should all turn off the news and not pay attention to what is going on in the world? Of course not, as the news media plays a positive role in society as well. We just all need to remember that News Media’s first priority is to create audiences and react accordingly.

References:

CDC. (2017, March 17). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Assault or Homicide. Retrieved October 6, 2017, from National Center for Health Statistics: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm

CDC. (2017, March 17). National Center for Health Statistics Leading Causes of Death. Retrieved October 2017, 2017, from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm

Davey, G. (2012). Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/why-we-worry/201206/the-psychological-effects-tv-news

Fallahi, C. R., & Lesik, S. A. (2009). The effects of vicarious exposure to the recent massacre at Virginia Tech. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice and Policy, 1(3), 220-230. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0015052

 

 

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What Horror Movies Do to Your Brain

25 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by Donna L. Roberts, PhD in Media Effects, Media Psychology, Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Arousal Transfer Theory, Horror Movies, Physiological Psychology

Source: http://www.psychology-spot.com/2016/04/horror-movies-affect-brain.html#.WGUGYA86d_M.facebook

When we watch a movie, we know what we are seeing isn’t real. Yet, sometimes the scenes are so realistic to keep us in suspense throughout the movie, and we seem to experience first hand the feelings of the protagonist.

The movie is a fiction, but the emotions we feel and the reactions they trigger are real. Undoubtedly, it is a very powerful effect that is now being studied in the context of a newborn science called neurocinema, dedicated to study the influence of movies on our brains.

Do you remember when was the last time you jumped on the chair while watching a horror movie? Now we will find out exactly what happened in the brain and how your body reacted.

Scenes of terror directly activate the primitive brain

Usually, watching a movie, we “unplug” the motor areas of the brain because are useless. But sometimes scenes have a strong enough impact to get us through the inhibition of the motor system to make us react.

We bounce on the chair or we cry, because the scene makes us overcome this brain block going to unleash our instincts. It means that content is so strong, under an emotionally point of view, to make us react immediately for protecting ourselves or alert others that are in danger. In fact, shouting we warn those around us, or the characters in the movie, that there is a danger and must save themselves. It is an atavistic reaction.

And all this happens in a matter of milliseconds, we have no time to process what we’re seeing or modulate our reaction. Basically, we react this way because in those few milliseconds, our brain is not aware that it’s just a movie and we’re safe.

If you think about it, this reaction is not surprising since our brain is programmed to assume that everything we see is real. Therefore, it is very difficult to communicate with the most primitive parts, which are those being activated in these cases, that what we are seeing is a fiction. As a result, the body reacts immediately.

In fact, even if isolated cases, there are people who suffered from post-traumatic stress as a result of watching a movie, a problem more common in children, for whom it is more difficult to distinguish the boundaries between reality and fantasy.

In adults, this disorder may be caused by the excessive identification with the characters. In fact, in the case of horror movies the viewer knows as little as the characters, this is why is much easier for him to identify with them. When this identification occurs, the brain may develop deep scars, almost as much as those caused by a real experience. But that’s not all.

3 changes that occur in our body when we watch a horror movie

The reaction to what we see on the screen is not limited to the brain but extends throughout the body. This because the brain sends an alarm signal activating the autonomic nervous system by increasing the production of cortisol and adrenaline, two neurotransmitters that cause some changes at the physiological level.

1. Heart rate increases. A study conducted on a group of young people revealed that watching a horror movie causes an increase of 14 beats per minute of the heart rate. It was also found a significant increase in blood pressure. In addition, researchers found an increase in white blood cells in the blood and a higher concentration of hematocrit, as if the body were to defend against an intruder.

 

2. You start to sweat. Skin conductance is one of the first indicators of emotional arousal. In other words, when you are afraid you sweat. Researchers at the University of Wollongong have analyzed the response of a group of people in front of violent and horror movies and noticed how those who are more empathic tend to sweat more when watching these movies, and show no signs of addiction.

3. Muscles contract. Once the primitive brain has detected a threat and given the alarm signal, it is difficult to stop it, especially if the horror scenes follow one after the other and are accompanied by a chilling soundtrack. Researchers at the University of Amsterdam found that in these movies music generates what is known as “alarm reaction”, a simultaneous response of mind and body to a sudden and unexpected stimulus that leads to contraction of the muscles of arms and legs. That’s why when watching a horror movie we always tense our muscles.

But then, why do we continue to watch horror movies?

At this point it is clear that most of us do not enjoy watching a horror movie. Yet despite all, many continue to suffer the “charm” of these obscure characters. Why?

The Arousal Transfer Theory indicates that negative feelings created by these movies intensify the positive feelings we experience when at the end the hero triumphs. Basically, we like these movies because watching them is like getting on an emotional roller coaster.

Another theory hints at the fact that horror or violent movies help us manage our own fear. In practice, these films would have a cathartic effect, helping us develop our most ancient and hidden fears.

Or maybe it could just be a morbid curiosity fostered by our innate need to keep us safe from dangers that can threaten us.

Sources:

Bos, M. et. Al. (2013) Psychophysiological Response Patterns to Affective Film Stimuli. PLoS One; 8(4).

Mian, R. et. Al. (2003) Observing a Fictitious Stressful Event: Haematological Changes, Including Circulating Leukocyte Activation. Stress: The International Journal on the Biology of Stress; 6(1): 41-47.

Barry, R. J. & Bruggemann, J. M. (2002) Eysenck’s P as a modulator of affective and electrodermal responses to violent and comic film. Personality and Individual Differences; 32(6): 1029–1048.

Invert     Jennifer Delgado Suárez

Psychologist by profession and passion, dedicated to to string words together.

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What Is a Constant Cycle of Violent News Doing to Us?

06 Saturday Aug 2016

Posted by Donna L. Roberts, PhD in Media Effects, Media Literacy, Media Psychology, Psychology

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Behaviorism, Cognitive, Influence, Media Effects, Media Literacy, Psychological Effects

Nothing good. Experts suggested limiting your exposure to violent imagery and social media.

Source: What Is a Constant Cycle of Violent News Doing to Us?

By KATIE ROGERS        JULY 15, 2016

It has been a rough year.

By now, our violence is down to a pattern, and there is a choreography to our reactions.

A killer seeks out a nightclub, a church, an airport, a courthouse, a protest. Someone is shot on video, sometimes by the police, and marchers fill the streets. An attack is carried out in France, America, Turkey, Bangladesh, Lebanon, Tunisia, Nigeria, and then claimed and celebrated by a radical terror group.

Our phones vibrate with news alerts. The talking heads fill air over cable news captions that shout “breaking news” in red. Rumors and misinformation abound. The comments erupt on Twitter, Facebook and news sites.

Journalists create multimedia stories that focus on videos, photos and graphic accounts from victims and witnesses. The experts give interviews, and the latest tools of immediacy are put to use. After the deadly terror attack in Nice, France, The Times invited grief counselors to be interviewed on Facebook Live. Within days, attention had turned to a shooting in Baton Rouge that left three law enforcement officers dead.

So, what is this doing to us?

It depends on the individual, but living in a digitally linked world where broadcasts of violence are instantaneous and almost commonplace means that many of us are becoming desensitized, Anita Gadhia­ Smith, a psychologist in Washington, said Friday.

“With the frequency of shootings and terror attacks there is a sense of anxiety that’s building in people,” she said, “a sense of vulnerability and powerlessness.”

Dr. Smith added: “There is a heightened alarm, but there can also be some desensitization that’s happening.”

The constant stream of news on social media can also be traumatic. A team of researchers at the University of Bradford in England told a British psychology conference last year that exposure to violent imagery on social media can cause symptoms that are similar to post-­traumatic stress disorder, defined as a persistent emotional reaction to a traumatic event that severely impairs one’s life.

In an analysis conducted by the Bradford researchers, 189 participants were shown images and provided with stories of violent events, including the Sept. 11 attacks, school shootings and suicide bombings.

The researchers’ analysis showed that 22 percent of those who participated were significantly affected by what they saw.

The study also found that people who view violent events more often were more affected than people who saw them less frequently, and that people who described themselves as extroverts with outgoing personalities were at a higher risk to be disturbed by the images.

What can we do about it?

The self­-care advice hasn’t changed. It is natural to want to follow along with incremental updates on social media and in the news. But it’s important to know that this can heighten your anxiety.

Anne Marie Albano, a clinical psychologist and the director of the Columbia University Clinic for Anxiety and Related Disorders, said in an interview after the 2015 Paris attacks that it might be a good idea to limit your exposure to social media.

Designating times to plug into the news — checking Twitter in the morning over coffee, but not listening to the radio while driving your kids to school, for instance — can help you manage anxiety if you are feeling stressed.

“This will help you balance a realistic and credible threat with information that is sensationalized,” Dr. Albano said, “or a rush to report something or talk about something that doesn’t have the impact that you would think it has.”

If you’re feeling anxiety about a possible attack, compare your fear with the facts.

When you fear the worst, it’s hard to remember that, say, a flight or a train ride has extraordinarily high odds of being safe. But you have to try.

Humans are bad at assessing risk, Martin Seif, a psychologist who specializes in treating anxiety disorders and the fear of flying, said in an interview late last year.

“Every single anxiety­ management technique is based on the premise that your reaction is out of proportion” to the likelihood of danger, Dr. Seif said.

Also, remember to take a breath.

A guide to dealing with terrorism released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation encourages closing your eyes and taking deep breaths to feel calmer.

Taking a walk or talking to a close friend can also help.

The guide also recommends avoiding alcohol and drugs, exercising regularly and eating healthy foods — basic self-­care guidelines that help reduce stress.

Make sure you have a plan to contact your family if something happens, especially if cellular networks are overloaded or transportation is disrupted, but remember that you most likely will not need it, experts say.

If you have children, the American Psychological Association recommends asking them how they are feeling about the news. Keep in mind that it is possible for children to be influenced by news reports and the adult conversations around them.

Lastly, keep your daily routine.

Dr. Albano said that a primary worry in the field of psychology is people “going out of their way to be so safe that it shrinks their world.”

“Terrorists thrive on this kind of thing,” she added. “They want to see the population change their practices.”

Going out of your way to avoid interacting with strangers — by refusing to take mass transit, for example — can stoke fear and anxiety in children, she said.

The best way to help children cope with acts of violence is to start by listening to them, Sean Rogers, a psychotherapist who works with children and teenagers, told The Times on his Facebook Live appearance.

”Listening is curative,” he said. “It is the basis of all therapies.”

Madison Mills contributed reporting.

© 2016 The New York Times Company

Additional Reading “It’s a Mean World, Or Is it?“

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How TV Affects Brainwaves

05 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by Ken S. Heller in Media Effects, Media Psychology, Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Cognitive, Psychological Effects

Nice clip from TVSmarter’s Terry Severson and worth understanding.

tvSmarter

Here’s an excerpt from my new brainwave page.

Please let me know if you have any questions, suggestions for improvements, etc…

Also, this is just an excerpt, for more complete information please go to:

http://www.tvsmarter.com/documents/brainwaves.html

How Does TV Affect Brainwaves?



View original post 766 more words

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Attention, Students: Put Your Laptops Away

08 Sunday May 2016

Posted by Donna L. Roberts, PhD in Media Effects, Media Psychology, Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Cognitive, Digital Immigrants, Impact of ICT, Learning

Researchers Pam Mueller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer found that students remember more via taking notes longhand rather than on a laptop. It has to do with what happens when you’re forced to slow down.

Source: Attention, Students: Put Your Laptops Away

April 17, 20166:00 AM ET
Heard on Weekend Edition Sunday

 

As laptops become smaller and more ubiquitous, and with the advent of tablets, the idea of taking notes by hand just seems old-fashioned to many students today. Typing your notes is faster — which comes in handy when there’s a lot of information to take down. But it turns out there are still advantages to doing things the old-fashioned way.

For one thing, research shows that laptops and tablets have a tendency to be distracting — it’s so easy to click over to Facebook in that dull lecture. And a study has shown that the fact that you have to be slower when you take notes by hand is what makes it more useful in the long run.

In the study published in Psychological Science, Pam A. Mueller of Princeton University and Daniel M. Oppenheimer of the University of California, Los Angeles sought to test how note-taking by hand or by computer affects learning.

“When people type their notes, they have this tendency to try to take verbatim notes and write down as much of the lecture as they can,” Mueller tells NPR’s Rachel Martin. “The students who were taking longhand notes in our studies were forced to be more selective — because you can’t write as fast as you can type. And that extra processing of the material that they were doing benefited them.”

Mueller and Oppenheimer cited that note-taking can be categorized two ways: generative and nongenerative. Generative note-taking pertains to “summarizing, paraphrasing, concept mapping,” while nongenerative note-taking involves copying something verbatim.

And there are two hypotheses to why note-taking is beneficial in the first place. The first idea is called the encoding hypothesis, which says that when a person is taking notes, “the processing that occurs” will improve “learning and retention.” The second, called the external-storage hypothesis, is that you learn by being able to look back at your notes, or even the notes of other people.

Because people can type faster than they write, using a laptop will make people more likely to try to transcribe everything they’re hearing. So on the one hand, Mueller and Oppenheimer were faced with the question of whether the benefits of being able to look at your more complete, transcribed notes on a laptop outweigh the drawbacks of not processing that information. On the other hand, when writing longhand, you process the information better but have less to look back at.

For their first study, they took university students (the standard guinea pig of psychology) and showed them TED talks about various topics. Afterward, they found that the students who used laptops typed significantly more words than those who took notes by hand. When testing how well the students remembered information, the researchers found a key point of divergence in the type of question. For questions that asked students to simply remember facts, like dates, both groups did equally well. But for “conceptual-application” questions, such as, “How do Japan and Sweden differ in their approaches to equality within their societies?” the laptop users did “significantly worse.”

The same thing happened in the second study, even when they specifically told students using laptops to try to avoid writing things down verbatim. “Even when we told people they shouldn’t be taking these verbatim notes, they were not able to overcome that instinct,” Mueller says. The more words the students copied verbatim, the worse they performed on recall tests.

And to test the external-storage hypothesis, for the third study they gave students the opportunity to review their notes in between the lecture and test. The thinking is, if students have time to study their notes from their laptops, the fact that they typed more extensive notes than their longhand-writing peers could possibly help them perform better.

But the students taking notes by hand still performed better. “This is suggestive evidence that longhand notes may have superior external storage as well as superior encoding functions,” Mueller and Oppenheimer write.

Do studies like these mean wise college students will start migrating back to notebooks?

“I think it is a hard sell to get people to go back to pen and paper,” Mueller says. “But they are developing lots of technologies now like Livescribe and various stylus and tablet technologies that are getting better and better. And I think that will be sort of an easier sell to college students and people of that generation.”

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How Positive Media Can Make Us Better People

30 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by Donna L. Roberts, PhD in Media Effects, Media Psychology, Psychology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Cognitive, Media Effects, Pro-Social Media, Psychological Effects

Research sometimes suggests that movies and other media are a negative influence to rein in. But new studies highlight their potential to spread goodness on a wide scale.

Source: How Positive Media Can Make Us Better People

Deadpool is the highest-grossing film in the United States so far this year—and one of the most controversial. Though the film has scored points with critics and audiences for its irreverent take on the superhero genre, its extreme gore has raised some familiar questions and objections about the role of violence in films.

But look at the highest-grossing film of 2016 internationally, and you’ll find a different type of movie:Zootopia, a family-friendly animated film that has been praised for its positive messages about the harm of stereotypes and prejudice.

How does consuming these different types of films impact us as individuals and as a society?

For a long time, media researchers focused almost entirely on the harmful effects of media, including the effects of media violence on aggression, the media’s role in increasing racial and gender stereotypes, and its potential to shape people’s perception of the world as a dangerous place. Indeed, since the dawn of talking movies in the 1930s, debates have raged about the potential anti-social effects of media.

However, more recently, scholarship in media psychology is starting to look at the flip side: the positive effects media can have when it’s more uplifting and inspiring. In the last few years, studies have illustrated how, just as some films, TV shows, and other media can foster anti-social behavior, media with positive images and messages can make us want to become better people and help others—to become more “prosocial,” as we researchers put it. I’ve conducted several of these studies myself, and I think the implications of this research are very exciting: Rather than simply seeing media as a negative influence to rein in, we’re beginning to understand its potential to spread goodness on a wide scale.

For example, a 2012 study by one of the seminal scholars in the field, Mary Beth Oliver of Penn State University, identified the power of films that elicit “elevation,” the warm, uplifting feeling we get when we watch someone perform deeply moral acts, such as acts of gratitude, generosity, or loyalty. In this study, Oliver and her colleagues asked 483 students to recall either a particularly meaningful or a particularly pleasurable movie they watched recently and to indicate the degree to which they felt joyful or elevated from watching it. When the researchers analyzed the content of these movies, they found that, sure enough, the meaningful movies depicted altruistic values, such as social justice and care for the weak, significantly more often than the pleasurable movies did.

They also found that the meaningful movies elicited greater feelings of elevation among respondents, which was expressed in a distinct set of emotional and physical sensations: feeling happy and sad at the same time, a lump in one’s throat, tearing up, a rising or opening of the chest, and chills.

What’s more, these feelings of elevation, in turn, were associated with a greater motivation to become a better person and do good things for others; the pleasurable movies, by contrast, motivated people to enjoy themselves and seek popularity.

Research also suggests that movies can influence not only our desire to do good but also the way we perceive the world as a whole. This research builds on earlier findings that the amount of TV people watch correlates with the degree to which they will see the world as a dangerous place, also known as “mean-world syndrome.” Research on inspiring media, by contrast, suggests that exposure to elevating media may have the potential to shift our perception of the world toward a “kind-world syndrome.”

For example, a 2011 study led by Karl Aquino of the University of British Columbia found that people who experienced elevation from reading a story about uncommon goodness became more likely to believe that there is good in the world. The more people experienced elevation, the more they perceived the world to be full of generosity and kindness. And research suggests there might be concrete benefits to this mental shift: Studies indicate that holding a cynical worldview—to only expect the worst of people—is actually bad for your health; however, seeing humanity’s positive potential can make us feel good (we experience positive emotions), which, in turn, can lead to anupward spiral of well-being.

Research that my colleagues and I have conducted points to social benefits of meaningful films as well. We asked 266 students to identify films that are meaningful to them; their responses generated a long list of movies, with the most popular ones being Remember the Titans, Forrest Gump, andEternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

We found that these films are more likely than pleasurable films to depict values of love, kindness, and connectedness, and to elicit elevation. In addition, experiencing elevation from such movies made the participants feel more connected to dear friends and family, as well as to the transcendent, spiritual aspects of life—which, in turn, inspired a host of prosocial motivations. Specifically, watching a movie such as A Walk To Remember or The Blindside made them feel a general sense of compassionate love for people, made them want to help people less fortunate than themselves, and generally made them want to be kind and good to fellow human beings, even strangers.

Our findings highlight that elevation not only makes us feel more connected toward people we know but also makes us feel compassionate toward people we don’t—even to the point that we’re motivated to make sacrifices for strangers. The study suggests that the elevation we get from films can help us transcend our egocentric bias and forge more compassionate connections to others.

Of course, making these positive changes stick is not something that happens overnight. Nor is it enough to see portrayals of moral beauty, kindness, and generosity only every once in a while. For positive media to have strong, lasting effects on us individually or collectively, I believe we need to consume it consistently, over time, just as eating right only once a week does not make us healthier.

But it is encouraging to see that these effects are possible, and that our media consumption patterns can be a force for good in the world, not just a way to make media companies rich. The research on positive media is still evolving (and I will be covering more of it in future Greater Good articles). But so far, it suggests that when we select inspiring content on TV, in films, or through social media, we’re not just making ourselves feel good in the moment. We’re nurturing our instincts for compassion and kindness.

About The Author
Sophie H. Janicke, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in media psychology at Chapman University, studying the power of new and traditional media to inspire consumers to become more prosocial and happy. Follow her on Twitter,Facebook, and on her blog.

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Zuckerberg’s Dream of Connecting the World: What Can We Expect? (Part 4 – The Findings)

20 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by Ken S. Heller in Media Effects, Media Psychology, Psychology

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Facebook, ICT, Impact of ICT, Influence, Internet, Internet.org, Media Effects, Mobile Computing, Mobile Phones, Persuasive Technology, Social Change

Recapping the previous posts on this topic, Mark Zuckerberg’s new non-profit consortium of information and communication technology (ICT) corporations would like to connect the remaining 5 billion inhabitants of the planet to the Internet who are not now connected (Internet.org, 2013). Many of the five billion people in question will most likely come from collectivistic non-western cultures. This post examines the results of studies conducted on a reduced scale involving the distribution of laptops in Ethiopia during which the researchers claim to have found the “first systematic evidence that usage of Western ICT can instigate cultural change in a traditional developing country” (Hansen N. , Postmes, van der Vinne, & van Thiel, 2012, p. 230).
Continue reading →

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  • Lifelong learning is made possible by recycling of histones, study says 03/07/2015
  • Synthetic Love: Can a Human Fall in Love With a Robot? – 24/06/2015

RSS Changing Minds

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RSS Media Smarts

  • The Family Group Chat 02/02/2023
    The Family Group ChatSubmitted by Rebecca Stanisic on 02 Feb 2023.Recently, my youngest got a new phone that has data and the ability to text anyone. We’ve been texting with my eldest for some time now too. But after years of communicating this way, it finally happened: We, the parents, were invited into a family group chat. This means that we can quickly se […]

RSS Adam Curtis

  • HYPERNORMALISATION 11/10/2016
    Adam Curtis introduces his new epic film

RSS Media Psychology Blog

  • does resurge work : Resurge weight reduction supplement is a... 10/04/2020
    does resurge work : Resurge weight reduction supplement is a distinct advantage program that would bolster your ascent to control. It will change you and make you more grounded than at any other time with improved wellbeing that can assist you with getting away from heftiness. This Resurge audit tells how the Supplement will help your lack of sleep and weigh […]

RSS The Psych Files

  • When Good People Do Bad Things 20/05/2020
    For years, the Stanford Prison Study has been used to tout the idea that putting any individual in a position of absolute control brings out the worst in them (and in a more general sense, that people conform to the roles they’re placed in). An article appearing in Scientific American (Rethinking the Infamous Stanford Prison Experiment) includes new informat […]

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  • And He Knew All the Words 24/11/2014
    Stuart Fischoff pioneered Media Psychology. He was a TV talk-show shrink—until it got too rowdy even for him. He knew all the words to Sondheim. And now he's gone.

RSS The Media Psychology Effect

  • The Nature and Benefits of Earning an Ed.D. Degree 21/12/2022
    The Doctor of Education (Ed.D) degree is ideal for working professionals and leaders planning to advance their careers in education, business, politics, media, and communications.

RSS On The Media

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