My titles suck and we all know it

This semester, my boyfriend of two years decided that he would pledge one of the fraternities here on campus. As one might expect, his pledgeship has provided me with copious, real life examples of social psychology in action. Specifically, I have been able to observe many of the dynamics of group processes. When referring to group processes in psychology, a group signifies a collection of two or more individuals with interdependent goals who interact and influence one another (Meneses et al., 2008; Rutchick et al., 2008). As a part of the pledge class, my boyfriend has had to work together within a small, close-knit group in order to achieve a superordinate goal (i.e., to become “brothers.”) However, the more interesting dynamic has been the process by which he and the other pledges have been socialized into the larger group (AKA the fraternity itself.)

Throughout the semester, the pledges have progressed relatively smoothly throughout the stages of group development (Tuckman, 1965; Tuckman & Jensen, 1977). In chronological order the stages are: forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. During the forming stage, members try to orient themselves and find a place within the group. Next in the storming stage, members become more assertive and attempt to influence the group so that the group best accommodates their individual needs. This stage often results in conflict that is then resolved in the norming stage, in which established norms, roles, and a sense of commitment and purpose begin to develop. Finally, in the performing stage each of the members perform their designated roles and work together to achieve common goals. If you have been reading closely, you will have noticed that I have yet to explain the adjourning stage. The adjourning stage is not a necessary step in development, and only occurs when a member becomes dissatisfied with the group. In the adjourning stage, members distance and disassociate themselves from the group when they no longer think that remaining in the group offers enough benefits.

Unfortunately, I recently provided the fodder for my boyfriend to enter into the adjourning stage in reference to his frat. At a large party, an individual affiliated with the group was rude to me and kicked me out for no reason. Naturally, I bawled hysterically for the rest of the night because my attempt to connect with his new group ended terribly. My boyfriend ended up raising hell about the incident with the other frat members, unbeknownst to me. He made it clear that I was his main priority rather than the frat. To maintain a sense of unity and cohesiveness within the frat and the pledge class, the members were forced to placate my boyfriend so that he would not adjourn from the group. Consequently, they were forced to apologize to me and accept me in to the group as well (in an unofficial fashion.) Luckily, the cohesiveness of the frat and my adorable baby face made it easy for them to respond empathically to my situation. Now the frat boys like me much better than they ever did before, or at least now they’re expressing that they like me.

And that is how I learned that men will do anything to make a girl stop crying.

(n = 537)

_________________________________________________________________________________

Reference

Meneses, R., Ortega, R., Navarro, J., & de Quijano, S. D. (2008). Criteria for assessing

the level of group development (LGD) of work groups: Groupness, entitativity, and groupality as theoretical perspectives. Small Group Research, 39, 492–514.

Rutchick, A. M., Hamilton, D. L., & Sack, J. D. (2008). Antecedents of entitativity in

categorically and dynamically construed groups. Journal of Social Psychology, 38, 905–921.

Tuckman, B. W. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological

Bulletin, 63, 384–399.

Tuckman, B. W., & Jensen, M. A. (1977). Stages of small-group development

revisited. Group and Organization Studies, 2, 419–427.

An Open Book

In his book Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions, Dr. James Pennebaker describes in detail his research on the health benefits of writing. By walking the reader through the various studies that have influenced both his personal thoughts and the direction of his research, Dr. Pennebaker exposes both the strengths and limitations of writing as a coping method. Active inhibition appears to have negative effects on the immune system. Those who experience some sort of trauma but never disclose the event to others commonly experience this phenomenon. However, simply by writing about the event, these individuals can reduce their active inhibition and thereby increase their immune functioning.

Although self-disclosure can result in demonstrable increases in immune functioning, simply the act of writing itself cannot produce these changes. Writing that reflects low-level thinking, such as writing about superficial topics, has no health benefit for the writer. In order for one’s health to benefit, one must engage in critical self-reflection about the topic and the emotions that thinking about the topic raises. In particular, the people who experienced the most health benefits were those who could construct coherent stories when discussing their traumas. What benefits these people experienced were not permanent (physician visits would be reduced for approximately four months and no longer) and were further constrained by the personality and coping styles of the individuals.  Those who already had a “roll-with-the-punches” coping style evidenced no added benefit from writing and those who were low disclosers (i.e., people who become highly physiologically aroused when asked to disclose) experienced more health problems and illnesses in the months after being asked to disclose.

Additionally, the people whose health did benefit from writing in the months after the experiment actually became more depressed and sickly in the first few days/weeks after writing. This is not to say that writing should not be utilized as a therapeutic method. As compared to other self-expressive therapies such as art and expressive movement, writing produces gains in both immune function and the cognitive understanding the patient forms of their trauma. The act of translating events or traumas into language appears to have health benefits beyond simple self-expression, because writing requires the individual to reflect on their emotions as opposed to simply experiencing them.

Out of the diverse selection of books I could have chosen from to write this blog, I picked Opening Up specifically because I had previously read one of Dr. Pennebaker’s scientific articles on the subject. As a professor of Psychology at University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Pennebaker is indisputably both an expert in health psychology, and the leading researcher in the therapeutic effects of writing. His book is especially credible and scholarly in that it is a chronicle of the largest scientific findings he has made in this area of research. I believe that it was a good choice of book for me, if for no other reason than my personal interest/investment in the practice of health psychology. In fact, I believe the best audience for this book would specifically be health psychology students, whether they are at the undergraduate or graduate level. Although this book could be potentially useful for anyone who has ever experienced trauma or illness, the focus of the book is so narrow and Dr. Pennebaker’s writing style so academic that I cannot imagine this book holding laypersons’ attentions for very long.  In fact, many psychology students with no interest in health could easily become bored with this book as well, despite its obvious scientific and practical value. There is very little overlap between this text and our social psychology course (there is some discussion of ironic mental processes in avoiding traumatic thoughts and belief in a just world as both protective and damaging when searching for meaning in events), and this book could be an interesting source of information for anyone interested in learning about some of the different ways social psychology can be implemented in other fields.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), because of my personal health problems I found this book especially applicable to my everyday life. Where I grew up, I was always surrounded by the traumas of others. Whether I was hiding out a friend at my house because a biker gang was threatening to shoot up her house, listening to yet another girl disclose to me how her stepfather had molested her, or helping pick out clothes to send to drug dealers who were trying to turn their lives around with my mom’s help, there was always something. And whatever that something was, it always took its physical toll on me.  I was born premature and have been prone to sickness my whole life, but my immune system became especially poor after my first depressive episode. So, at twelve some part of me intuitively understood that to stay well physically and emotionally I would have to write. Writing became my only emotional release in a town where I knew my problems were nothing compared to…well, the problems of every other person I encountered.  As long as I had a roof over my head, three meals a day and a family who loved me, I had no right to complain. I was experiencing the social cost of my friends’ disclosures about their lives to me. As I was always the listener, I experienced the physiological arousal that the discloser was relieved of when they lowered their inhibitions to confide. To continue as a confidante, I had to find a way to lower my own inhibition or I risked becoming burnt out and losing friendships. Writing provided a safe, emotional release for me so that I could act as more than just a repository of others’ traumas.

Years later, in the early stages of my Lyme disease, writing became my only means of understanding the changes that were happening in my body. I had notebooks full of my rage at the doctors who dismissed my pain, full of self-loathing and feelings of worthlessness, and full of the fire that was burning me alive with every synapse. My immune system stayed intact until the words eventually stopped flowing. The cognitive fog had finally claimed the only method I had to understand the world I was slipping into. Once the words stopped coming, the constant infections crept back. Upon choosing to read this book, I decided to fight back again. Those of you who have read some of my other blog posts will have noticed they can be brutally honest. I decided to use these blog posts as a means of forcing myself to shed my inhibitions in hopes I could change what has been one of the worst periods of immune functioning in my life. I can’t attest to any change in my immune functioning (except perhaps in a negative direction) but I can attest to the emotional benefits of disclosure after experiencing the initial pain of writing. Perhaps I am a low-discloser and this project has actually harmed my immune system. I can’t be sure. I can be sure, however, that constructing my life experiences into stories has helped me put those experiences into perspective. I tend to think of myself as weak, but realizing that I have seen and been through more at 21 than many people will experience in a lifetime helps me understand what I’m truly capable of. My story is a painful one, but maybe it will be worth listening to someday.

What I enjoyed most about Opening Up, was the very practical guidelines that Dr. Pennebaker set forth so that the reader could potentially try to implement the findings of his research in their everyday lives. However, the largest strength of the book in my opinion was that although he set forward these guidelines, he made it perfectly clear that writing is not some cure-all, magic bandaid. There are obvious limitations to who benefits from writing and the extent to which they will benefit. Writing is not a substitute for counseling or medicine; it is primarily a preventative practice to help protect the immune system from the cumulative effects of stress or trauma.

Personally, I found his discussion of the social cost of disclosure to be the most useful. When you disclose intimate problems to love ones, often they reach a point at which they can no longer bear the stress of listening to your problems. The result is that when you most need support, your social support system often rejects you out of discomfort. Reading about this issue made me realize that my friends here haven’t abandoned me because I’m inherently worthless or unlovable. They’ve done it because they’re a bunch of fucking assholes who just don’t know what to say to me anymore. They want to be around someone who will make them feel at ease instead of someone who is in pain and wants to form a real human connection with them. So, fuck ‘em. I realize that this section of the book was probably meant to make people undergoing hard times realize that this is a normal human reaction and that they should empathize with the people who can’t relate to them. I don’t like that interpretation. The interpretation that my friends are dicks because that can’t overcome a simple cognitive aversion so that they could help a person in need is a much more useful interpretation for me. Just reiterate: fuck those fucking assholes.

Someone who is not as angry or petty as I am would most likely find Dr. Pennebaker’s discussion of the fundamental human drive to find meaning most useful. Although most of us would most likely consider a drive towards meaning an overwhelmingly positive endeavor, Dr. Pennebaker does a fantastic job of pointing out how that drive can lead us to erroneous thinking, such as victim blaming. Trying to find a simple cause and effect relationship where there is none can cause irrevocable damage, which is why we should learn to accept the limitations of our understanding.

The one thing I disliked about the book and found to be its largest shortcoming was the very complicated and confusing relationship that emerged from Dr. Pennebaker’s use of the words trauma and illness. At times, the two words almost become interchangeable. This tendency is present in my discussion of his work as well. I will fully admit that in trying to discuss this topic, it becomes nearly impossible to disentangle the two terms. The problem most likely stems from the divide between the actual topics of Dr. Pennebaker’s research (i.e., asking people to write about trauma) and the applications of his research (i.e., potential benefits for the chronically ill and disabled.) Although living with illness can have the same emotional impact of certain traumas on certain people, it is problematic to assume that illness itself is a trauma. Traditionally, traumas refer to specific, discrete events with long-lasting emotional impact. Illness is not an event in itself. Illness is a part of your body and a part of you, right down to the microcellular level. How can my body be a trauma? Unfortunately, I have no way of conceptualizing a response to this question. From personal experience I know that living with illness can feel like a trauma, but if doctors begin to consider the body as a trauma, how might this affect the self-concepts of the chronically ill?

Finally, the one thing I would consider the “take home message” of this book is that you should always listen to your body. Never take for granted that an infection is just an infection. There can be very complicated psychological factors in play that you are not fully appreciating. Always think to yourself, “Have I been under any particular stress that might have impaired my immune system, leaving me susceptible to catching this infection?” Don’t take any changes in your body for granted.

(n = 1,975)

References

Pennebaker, J. W. (1990). Opening up: The healing power of expressing emotions.

New York, NY: The Guilford Press.

Kasey's Strange Love, or How I Learned to Quit Worrying and Embrace the [insert gang name here]'s

If you’re like me, then learning about conformity and dissent could make you think of nothing else than the awkward, hormone-fueled mine field that is junior high. Conformity, or the tendency for people to match their perceptions, opinions and behavior to reflect group norms at either an internal or external level (Sherif, 1936), is the main goal of many sweaty preteens who are usually more concerned with the prospect of “social suicide” than the content of their next exam. That’s not a value judgment, because I was there too once, just like the rest of you. I was short, pudgy, pimply, shy…ok, yes, screw you guys. I know there’s not much of a difference between then and now, so let’s pretend you never noticed any of those things about me and let’s move on.

Although twelve-year-old Kasey was nonexistent on the social map, she was still a bit of a bad ass. The one place I ever had dominion in that bizarre, gangster/hick abomination I called a hometown was the classroom. I had very little influence in the social sphere of school life, but when it came to intellectual or academic sphere I became the deciding minority influence (De Dreu & De Vries, 2001; Hollander, 1985; Maass & Clark, 1984; Moscovici et al., 1985; Mugny & Perez, 1991). As a minority influence, I would actively voice my dissent from whatever the popular opinion of the group seemed to be and in so doing I began to produce change from within the group itself. First, the teacher would pose trick questions with only one correct answer to the class and I would be the only one to disagree with the class’ answer. Originally, this would earn me hateful glances until about the sixth or seventh time that I was correct. Then others began to take notice.

Eventually, I came to be accepted as an influential figure on intellectual questions that had no clear answer as well. The process was slow, and depended entirely upon the style in which I presented both my answer and myself. It’s a very tricky business to dissent from hormonal preteens, many of which were in the process of being beaten into gangs or were already running drugs by that time. Things can turn very violent, very quickly if someone so much as THINKS they perceive an insult. My style was effective because I was quiet but always firm and confident in my own answer without being judgmental of others. I would concede what good points so-and-so had made, present counter evidence that was factual but supported my own opinion, and end with “what do y’all think?” The trick was to be consistent in the style of my answer (being correct when possible always helped), modest (but never to the point of self-effacement or I would seem insincere), and play to my strengths (use the baby-face to play up how sweet, shy and genuine I am.)

Try my fool-proof method, and maybe someday you too can manipulate gang-bangers in to loving you for disagreeing with them.*

*Snooty, intellectual, hipster types please don’t try this. If you do, know that I warned you and am not responsible when you get yo’ ass beat.

(n = 535)

References

De Dreu, C., & De Vries, N. (Eds.). (2001). Group consensus and minority influence:

Implications for innovation. London: Blackwell.

 

Hollander, E. P. (1985). Leadership and power. In G. Lindzey & E. Aronson (Eds.),

Handbook of social psychology (3rd ed., Vol. 2, pp. 485–537). New York: Random House.

Maass, A., & Clark, R. D., III. (1984). Hidden impact of minorities: Fifteen years of

minority influence research. Psychological Bulletin, 95, 428–450.

Moscovici, S., Mugny, G., & Van Avermaet, E. (Eds.). (1985). Perspectives on minority

influence. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Mugny, G., & Perez, J. A. (1991). Social psychology of minority influence. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Sherif, M. (1936). The psychology of social norms. New York: Harper.

Past, present, future...screw it all man

Today I’m going to break from precedent and discuss something that’s currently happening in my life rather than an event that happened in my not-so-distant past. But first, we’re going to need to talk a little bit about cognitive dissonance theory. According to cognitive dissonance theory, when our attitudes are not consistent with our behavior, it induces a state of physiological arousal that we are motivated to reduce (Festinger, 1957). Generally speaking, the easiest way to reduce this physiological tension is to change your attitudes so that they are once again consistent with your behavior. 

One situation in which cognitive dissonance regularly occurs is when an individual is faced with a choice between two equally attractive alternatives. This situation is commonly referred to as the free choice paradigm. In the free choice paradigm, the negative aspects of the option you choose and the positive aspects of the unchosen alternative create a state of cognitive dissonance in the individual faced with the difficult choice (Brehm, 1956). In order to reduce this state of tension, the individual accentuates the positive aspects of the chosen option and devalues the unchosen alternative. Essentially, as soon as you make a difficult choice you begin the process of convincing yourself that it was the right choice.

Recently, I have been faced with my own difficult choice and have experienced the effects of the free choice paradigm. As a result of a variety of factors (otherwise known as massive health issues) I have been forced to reevaluate my plans for after graduation.  My choice consisted of either trying to find a full-time office job or trying to get into a graduate school program unrelated to my hard-won psychology major. Although each option is equally valid in that they are equally unrealistic relative to my physical abilities, when I made the decision to pursue a new academic field I immediately began downplaying the merits of working full-time. I told myself “There was no way I could handle the stress involved in a full-time job anyway, and even if I could the job market is so terrible that no one would hire me.” I also began inflating the desirability of pursuing philosophy by saying things like “Philosophy is a disability-friendly endeavor” and “My abstract reasoning is one of the few things unaffected by my neurological problems, therefore I should pursue an area like philosophy that focuses on abstract thought.” My behavior (choosing to enter a graduate-level philosophy program) was inconsistent with my attitude that both options were equally desirable. Therefore, to reduce the state of discomfort related to dissonance, I changed my attitude to be consistent with my behavior. In this case, I changed my attitude so that I believed the philosophy program was the superior option.

(n = 458)

References

Brehm, J. W. (1956). Post-decision changes in desirability of alternatives. Journal of

Abnormal and Social Psychology, 52, 384–389.

Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford

University Press.