My summer job consisted of dressing in a Hawaiian T-shirt, listening to the same IZ cd everyday, and handing out smoothie samples. I was working for a coffee and smoothie shop my mom's friend owned that was located in an H.E.B. A large part of the job was handing out samples when the store was slow since it was relatively new and a lot of H.E.B shoppers were unaware it existed. Of course the owner had a plan in mind by handing out the samples. She didn't do it just to give me an extra thing to do (even though it felt like it at times),but instead she hoped that by giving people something for free they would be inclined to want to be nice back and purchase a drink.
The idea that people feel like they should return acts of kindness is know as the norm of reciprocity(Gouldner, 1960).In other words, my boss hoped she would appeal to a social norm of treating others how they treat you. She was also good about giving people discounts when I was training if I took to long to make a drink. This way when people took our free samples they felt obligated to buy a drink, and if they received a discount they felt obligated to come back and buy one full price the next time.

Gouldner, A. W. (1960). The norm of reciprocity: A preliminary statement. American Sociological Review, 25, 161-178

Hell in Heels

Comfortable and high heels are rarely used in the same sentence. I have one favorite pair of black heels that I absolutely love that were decently expensive for my budget and that tear apart my feet. However, I have worn them to pretty much every formal or semi formal outing I have gone to since I bought them. They hurt like hell but I'm convinced every time that they look great and that the pain is completely worth it. I've even gotten so much use out of them that I think it's time to get rid of them but the thought makes me sad.

The idea that we love what we suffer for is called effort justification (Aronson & Mills, 1959). That is, I love these awful, expensive, painful heels so much because I want to justify spending so much money and causing my self pain time and time again. Because of course I wouldn't pay money for pain unless I absolutely loved the shoes and knew at the end of the day that the suffering was worth it.

Aronson, E., & Mills, J. (1959). The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59, 177-181.

Daddy's Little Angel Mommies Little Devil.

My mom always had to play bad cop when my sister and I were growing up because my dad had to travel alot with work. Although I know it's been a tough position for her to be in we have had many argument because of differences in opinion and all that jazz. My mother is pretty conservative and very controlling on what my sister and I were exposed to (we couldn't even watch power rangers, and I am still yet to see any Austin powers or American Pie movies) additionally she liked to control how we thought about things. It seems now in every area we are opposites, she's pro-life I'm pro-choice, she believes in waiting until marriage I believe it's ok to have premarital sex in committed relationships, she thinks love is between a man and a woman and I believe there shouldn't be any regulations on who people chose to love... I'm sure you get the point. It is possible the passion behind my beliefs began because of psychological reactance, meaning I chose to think the opposite of my mother on many topics because I was reacting to my mother wanting to control how I thought about these topics ( Brehm & Brehm, 1981). An example of my psychological reactance happened on my sixteenth birthday. I had just been ungrounded from a two week grounding after some argument her and I had. In Scotland where I was living at the time you could get body piercings without parent consent at sixteen. Knowing how my mom felt about body piercings I decided to go get a nose ring to show her I was in control of my life and not her and assert my newly regained freedom. It ended up taking her two days to realize but needless to say my freedom didn't last long :s

Brehem, S. S., & Brehem, J. W. (1981). Psychological reactance: A theory of freedom and control. New York: Academic Press.

IAT

We are all prejudice on some level because certain ideals are so systemically embedded in our culture and society. I am currently in a feminist studies class so I believed I wouldn't have any unconscious biases towards women in the work place. However, i took an Implicit Associates Test (IAT) that revealed I have a slight bias towards associating women with family and men with careers.

Development of the IAT is credited to Tony Greenwald, Brain Nosek, and Mahzarin Banaji. An IAT is a computerized test that is designed to detect unconscious biases. It uses 4 categories, in this case typically male and female names and career associated words and family associated words. On the left side of the screen it will say men and on the right it will say women. The test begins by asking you to classify names into the male or female categories by hitting the e key and the i key on the keyboard. The e key means you believe the word presented belongs in the category on the left and the hitting the i key means you believe the presented word belongs in the right category. After this initial test female is presented on the left and male is presented on the right and you repeat the test. Next the test gets more complicated. Words are displayed that are either male or female names and career or family words. Two categories start on the left, family and women and the other to start on the right men and career. The test is completed in the same manner using the keys e and i to classify the words into their appropriate catergories. Finally the categories are rematched so women and career appear on the same side and men and family appears on the other. The test judges how quick you assign the categories to the correct side and how many errors you make in the process, It is believed that you will be quicker to assign the words to the categories you are most comfortable with or favor(Greenwald, Nosek & Banaji, 2003).

In addition to the gender IAT i also completed an age IAT revealing that I have an automatic preference for young people compared to old people. I feel the results of both of my tests were accurate. Although, i would consider myself a feminist I feel our society is still influenced by the women with family and men with careers norm. I actively try to think otherwise but I believe the stereotype is still somewhere in the back of my mind. In addition, I feel as though it is way more exciting to be young. There are more things that I am able and willing to do at this age than I feel like there will be when I am 60.

I was interested to see if I could trick the IAT and change my results. I re-took the age IAT and attempted to take a little more time to consider which category the displayed word belonged in. I got the exact same results.

The gender IAT was mind opening because it shows that what I consciously think and what I unconsciously believe are not consistent, and that I too am influenced by social norms I try so hard to avoid. Additionally, my unsuccessful attempt to change my score showed me that my unconscious is not easily duped.

Greenwald, A. G., Nosek, B. A., & Banaji, M. R. (2003). Understanding and using the implicit associations test: I. An improved scoring algorithum. Journal of Personal and Social Pyschology, 85, 197-216.

From the ingroup to the outgroup

Belonging to a high school sports team is a big part of someones identity during high school. For the most part your team mates are your friends and you hang out on and off the court/field. It also seems everyone believes their sport or their team is superior to the rest, they work harder, are more fit, or their sport requires more skill than the rest. I was a member of both soccer and cross country in high school and girls from both teams were not necessarily fans of each other.

I started out my freshman year running cross country. My sister had joined the team two years before me so I already knew most of the team members as they were all good friends and became my friends also. In addition to the core cross country members, some of the girls on the team were only in cross country so that the could be in an athletics class first semester so their schedule wouldn't change the second semester when their primary sport began. In this instance their were quite a few soccer players running cross country. The majority of the cross country team were die hard runners. They felt cross country required more endurance and over all fitness than it did in soccer (disclaimer: as a member of both I think they are both great sports and both require extreme physical fitness, the focus of training is just obviously different soccer requires more speed and control and distance running focuses endurance).

As the majority of the team were runners they created the ingroup, that means they felt a closer connection with runners and formed a group where runners were believed to be overall more friendly and more fit. The random soccer team girls were few and far between so they were the outgroup in this situation, the group the runners felt no sense of connection or belonging with. Additionally, no one took the time to get to know them because they assumed they were all bitchy and not interested in the cross country team, this is know as the outgroup homogenity effect (Linville & Jones, 1980), believing members of an outgroup are all the same.

Unfortunately for me, when soccer season rolled around I became the outgroup. The soccer girls who had been in cross country thought I was just a snobby cross country bitch and we did not much get along. It was an interesting experience going between both teams and witnessing discrimination from both sides.

Linville, P. W., & Jones, E. E. (1980). Polarized appraisals of outgroup members. Journal of Personality and Social Pyschology, 38, 689-703.