All Posts Tagged With: "society"

There is a mildly irritating sentiment in our society which (though I have no evidence of this) seems to be growing healthily among even liberal members of my generation that stereotyping social groups is okay because most stereotypes generally hold some truth to them. “They are stereotypes for a reason,” after all. A new study coming out of the University of Chicago goes some way toward refuting that mentality.

Psychologists at the university gave female students a math test followed by a non-mathematical test. Some of the female students were casually reminded before they took the test that men consistently do better than women at standardized math tests, while some of the female students were not given such a reminder. The female students who were given the reminder did more poorly on not only the math test, but the non-math-related test afterward. This led the psychologists to some interesting conclusions about brain power, as they determined that the stereotype reminder didn’t simply reduce the women’s expectations for themselves, but rather took up valuable space in their brains that could have otherwise been used to process the test questions. Even women who did not buy into stereotypes performed more poorly because they were thinking too much about how they didn’t want to be one of the women to perform poorly and thus grant support to the stereotype.

This is another in a long line of studies which demonstrate that reminding students of negative stereotypes of groups to which they belong makes them perform more poorly on tests. Even just being asked to fill in a bubble saying what your race or gender is (which pretty much every standardized test on the planet does) causes blacks and women to perform more poorly. Another study asked students seemingly benign questions like whether they lived in co-ed or single-sex dorms, and even this triggered thoughts of gender stereotypes and affected the students’ performances. The principle can work the other way, too, as when students were asked why they chose to attend a private liberal arts college, activating what one psychologist called the students’ “snob schema,” making them think about how smart they are and thus causing them to perform better on the test.

None of this, of course, proves that there is no truth to stereotypes (though in many of these cases the performance gaps normally cited between genders or races are almost entirely eliminated by not triggering thoughts of stereotypes). It does, however, go a long way in demonstrating the way in which stereotypes are often times self-fulfilling prophecies, that whether they are accurate or not may not have all that much to do with the natural abilities of a given gender or race but rather with the way the stereotypes themselves have disadvantaged women and minorities. And this, of course, would lend support to the position that while stereotypes do not hold any great degree of truth, those who believe they do are in fact contributing to their damaging effects.

I think most people would agree with this conclusion when it comes to racism (I don’t know of many people who still argue that whites are the naturally superior race), though I suspect many do not adhere to it when it comes to gender. There are, of course, at least some minimal natural differences between men and women due to genetics and hormones, but I personally am of the belief that the wide gulf that has been created between the genders is almost entirely socially constructed. These studies are another reason to maintain that belief.

Not to beat a horse until it is well past dead, but Christopher Hitchens today wrote in Slate the best response-to-the-response-to-Virginia-Tech that I have read thus far. I strongly encourage you to read it. It is provocative, honest, as cynical as Hitchens always is, and absolutely correct. An awfully long excerpt to get your attention:

The grisly events at Virginia Tech involved no struggle, no sacrifice, no great principle. They were random and pointless. Those who died were not soldiers in any cause. They were not murdered by our enemies. They were not martyrs. But—just to take one example from the exhausting national sob fest of the past few days—here is how the bells were tolled for them at another national seat of learning. The president of Cornell University, David J. Skorton, ordered the chimes on his campus to be rung 33 times before addressing a memorial gathering. Thirty-three times? Yes. “We are here,” announced the head of an institution of higher learning:

for all of those who are gone, for all 33. We are here for the 32 who have passed from the immediate to another place, not by their own choice. We are also here for the one who has also passed. We are one.

For an academic president to have equated 32 of his fellow humans with their murderer in an orgy of “one-ness” was probably the stupidest thing that happened last week, but not by a very wide margin. Almost everybody in the country seems to have taken this non-event as permission to talk the starkest nonsense. And why not? Since the slaughter raised no real issues, it was a blank slate on which anyone could doodle. Try this, from the eighth straight day of breathless coverage in the New York Times. The person being quoted is the Rev. Susan Verbrugge of Blacksburg Presbyterian Church, addressing her congregation in an attempt, in the silly argot of the day, “to make sense of the senseless”:

Ms. Verbrugge recounted breaking through the previous week’s numbness as she stopped on a morning walk and found herself yelling at the mountains and at God. Though her shouts were initially met with silence, she said, she soon was reassured by the simplest of things, the chirping of birds.

“God was doing something about the world,” she said. “Starting with my own heart, I could see good.”

Yes, it’s always about you, isn’t it? (By the way, I’d watch that habit of yelling at mountains and God in the greater Blacksburg area if I were you. Some idiot might take it for a “warning sign.”) When piffle like this gets respectful treatment from the media, we can guess that it’s not because of the profundity of the emotion but rather because of its extreme shallowness. Those birds were singing just as loudly and just as sweetly when the bullets were finding their targets…

[big snip]

…One should express a decent sympathy for the families and friends of the murdered, a decent sympathy that ought to be accompanied by a decent reticence. Because Virginia Tech—alas for poor humanity—was a calamity with no implications beyond itself.

About a year ago I got flamed by several people and groups with whom I am generally in strong agreement when I wrote that the Danish Muhammad cartoons that caused so much trouble should not have been reprinted in the Daily Illini out of sensitivity to the Muslim community. It was one in a series of events that led to me developing a reputation for being anti-free speech.

In recent days we have all been reeling from the massacre at Virginia Tech. We have also been fascinated and repulsed by the video of the killer that NBC released (and, with the type of cynicism characteristic of a massive media conglomerate, branded with the NBC peacock to force free advertising on other news outlets carrying the video). Spokesmen from NBC, from Nightly News anchor Brian Williams to the president of NBC, have defended the airing of the video as essentially newsworthy, or at least newsworthy enough to air over the objections of police officials and family members of the victims.

The airing of the video is, of course, exactly what Cho wanted. More importantly, the airing of the video and the media bonanza that the Virginia Tech massacre spurred are exactly what future killers will want for themselves. Nothing, of course, will prevent these sorts of events from ever happening again. But it is probable, if not a certainty, that copycat killings will occur as a direct result of the mountain of attention Cho received for his acts.

Consequently, I must live up once again to my reputation and join those arguing that, as a matter of journalistic responsibility, NBC should never have aired Cho’s video. Indeed, it seems sensible even for journalistic outfits, as they report on these tragedies, to not report as little as possible about the killer. Journalists will like to portray the issue as an ethical dilemma, but what really have we gleaned from Cho’s video that can be described as so newsworthy that its airing is worth the future loss of lives and the future anguish of families of victims? What have we gleaned from seeing his face or knowing his name? Why should we give this man a microphone and thereby encourage other psychos to emulate his violence? Is it really worth it?

A List of Those Who Agree With Me (At Billy Joe Mills’ Request)

• Peggy Noonan thinks Billy doesn’t have common sense: “It is only common sense that if a person like Cho leaves a self-aggrandizing, self-celebrating, self-pitying video diary of himself to be played by the mass media, the mass media should not play it and not publicize it, not make it famous. Common sense says that won’t help.”
• Mickey Kaus thinks Billy doesn’t have a brain: “It seems less like an ‘ethical challenge’ than a no-brainer. Why encourage other potential Cho’s to try for a similar publicity bonanza?”
• ABC News thinks Billy’s views are a social catastrophe: “This is a social catastrophe. Showing the video is a social catastrophe.”
• The National Review thinks Billy wants copycat killings: “Surely they know it will spawn copy-cats. So are they showing it because they would rather enjoy copy-cats?”
• The National Review also thinks Billy is sending a bad message: “But NBC News is about to give Cho an audience of around 10 million people for his deranged rantings. What kind of message does this send to other isolated, disturbed and angry youths who entertain the same violent thoughts as Cho?”
• The Huffington Post thinks Billy has no possible explanation for himself: “What is the possible journalistic explanation for splashing Cho’s self-dramatizing poses and self-justifying bullshit over network and cable air?”
• MSNBC thinks Billy is disrespectful: “Airing the video ultimately was disrespectful to the victims and their families. It also was exploitative of Cho’s condition and that of all severely mentally ill people.”
• A guest on Andrew Sullivan’s blog thinks Billy will cause more mass murders: “In the next few weeks and months, even over the next few years, expect to see copycat killings inspired by Cho’s actions. The more saturated the media coverage, the more such events we are likely to get.”
• Our very own Daily Illini thinks Billy has poor judgment: “Better judgment should have been used, especially considering that the images that have been aired cannot possibly be used for a greater understanding of this seriously disturbed individual or the havoc he wrought. What has happened this week has only helped to immortalize this murderer.”

That’s all I’ll list for now, but not because there isn’t a wealth of other people who share my view. Oh, two important groups I forgot: the families of the victims and the police officials involved in the case.

Anything else, Billy?

New column’s up today (I switched days with Jon since the school board election I’m discussing happens tomorrow and we wanted it to be timely): “Banning Kurt Vonnegut and Other Sins Against Man.”

New column here.

Everything you need to know is in the title. ;)

For the record, Billy, the best part of Field of Dreams is actually when the little girl chokes on a hot dog. I’m also evil, though, so there’s a degree of bias at hand.