Summary of the Research Article:

The journal article “Happier People Live More Active Lives: Using Smartphones to Link Happiness and Physical Activity” by Neal Lathia, Gillian M. Sandstrom, Cecilia Mascolo, and Peter J. Rentfrow attempted to find if physical activity throughout the day is tied to happiness.

The study used ecological momentary assessment (EMA) in smartphones to collect self-report data and smart-phone technology that measured movement to gather data on physical activity. Participants in the study were anyone who downloaded the app onto their android phones and continued to interact with the app throughout the study. There were over 10,000 participants in the study. The app sent two surveys to the participants between 8 AM and 10 PM, at least two hours apart, to measure emotion and physical activity. Participants’ happiness was measured by having them plot their mood on a graph relating to stress, excitement, depression, and relaxation. Participants also answered questions asking how much an adjective described their mood from 1 to 7, with 1 being the lowest and 7 the highest. Physical activity was measured both through self-report and data recorded by the phone itself. The app would ask what kind of physical activity a user had done in the past 15 minutes a long of what kind of emotions the participants felt.

The study found a positive correlation between physical activity and happiness. This correlation continued both on weekdays and weekends. Happier people tended to start their days earlier and end their days later and participate in physical activity during the entire day. The study also found a correlation between a lack of physical activity and lower levels of happiness. The physical activity measured wasn’t vigorous activity but a more everyday physical activity such as walking, running, or cycling. The researchers say this association between physical activity and happiness is “modest but reliable”, meaning that the correlation was small but consistent. The researchers caution against making extreme conclusions from this study, as it showed a small correlation between physical activity and happiness.

It is important to make the distinction between correlation and causation. The study did not show that physical movement caused happiness or that movement caused happiness. The only study that can show causation is an experiment. This study only showed that there seems to be a relationship between physical activity and happiness, and the researchers actually suggest that an experiment should be done to demonstrate causation.

The researchers assert that their use of phones to collect data may be a great way to collect data in future research studies, but they also caution against some problems arising from cell phone data. Participants are unlikely to have carried their phones and especially during vigorous exercise. It also drains the battery of the phone to continuously collect data. The researchers finally identify that it is hard to know how feedback from an act influences mood or behavior.

Ultimately, the researchers conclude that the study shows that the amount people move during the day is correlated with happiness.

Reflection:

As I was summarizing the article, I felt some sympathy for the journalist who wrote the original news article. It is difficult to relay scientific information while still keeping the article interesting for the general public. It is also difficult to relay scientific information using common words and phrases so the average person can understand it. I couldn’t include how the data from the android on physical activity correlated with the self-report data on physical activity, which showed that the data from the phone was a reliable measure to use for physical activity. I also would have liked to include some more information on how the researchers collected data and what type of questions they asked participants to answer. I decided that these two pieces of information could be sacrificed without severely altering the understanding of the study. I aslo felt that omitting a different section, such as the section on limitations of the study, would have been more damaging to someone’s understanding of the study than the details of how the study was carried out.

My perspective of journalists has definitely changed over the course of these projects. At first, I felt like journalists wrote articles to get views and not really to inform the general public. After reading this news article and trying to summarize the study myself, I have realized that a journalist’s job is a lot more difficult than I originally realized. Journalists have to make an article interesting in order to inform people, and I now think that journalists have a more noble intent in writing than I did at the beginning of this project.

Links:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/well/move/get-up-and-move-it-may-make-you-happier.html?_r=0

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5213770/

Summary of the Research Article:

The journal article “Happier People Live More Active Lives: Using Smartphones to Link Happiness and Physical Activity” by Neal Lathia, Gillian M. Sandstrom, Cecilia Mascolo, and Peter J. Rentfrow attempted to find if physical activity throughout the day is tied to happiness.

The study used ecological momentary assessment (EMA) in smartphones to collect self-report data and smart-phone technology that measured movement to gather data on physical activity. Participants in the study were anyone who downloaded the app onto their android phones and continued to interact with the app throughout the study. There were over 10,000 participants in the study. The app sent two surveys to the participants between 8 AM and 10 PM, at least two hours apart, to measure emotion and physical activity. Participants’ happiness was measured by having them plot their mood on a graph relating to stress, excitement, depression, and relaxation. Participants also answered questions asking how much an adjective described their mood from 1 to 7, with 1 being the lowest and 7 the highest. Physical activity was measured both through self-report and data recorded by the phone itself. The app would ask what kind of physical activity a user had done in the past 15 minutes a long of what kind of emotions the participants felt.

The study found a positive correlation between physical activity and happiness. This correlation continued both on weekdays and weekends. Happier people tended to start their days earlier and end their days later and participate in physical activity during the entire day. The study also found a correlation between a lack of physical activity and lower levels of happiness. The physical activity measured wasn’t vigorous activity but a more everyday physical activity such as walking, running, or cycling. The researchers say this association between physical activity and happiness is “modest but reliable”, meaning that the correlation was small but consistent. The researchers caution against making extreme conclusions from this study, as it showed a small correlation between physical activity and happiness.

It is important to make the distinction between correlation and causation. The study did not show that physical movement caused happiness or that movement caused happiness. The only study that can show causation is an experiment. This study only showed that there seems to be a relationship between physical activity and happiness, and the researchers actually suggest that an experiment should be done to demonstrate causation.

The researchers assert that their use of phones to collect data may be a great way to collect data in future research studies, but they also caution against some problems arising from cell phone data. Participants are unlikely to have carried their phones and especially during vigorous exercise. It also drains the battery of the phone to continuously collect data. The researchers finally identify that it is hard to know how feedback from an act influences mood or behavior.

Ultimately, the researchers conclude that the study shows that the amount people move during the day is correlated with happiness.

Reflection:

As I was summarizing the article, I felt some sympathy for the journalist who wrote the original news article. It is difficult to relay scientific information while still keeping the article interesting for the general public. It is also difficult to relay scientific information using common words and phrases so the average person can understand it. I couldn’t include how the data from the android on physical activity correlated with the self-report data on physical activity, which showed that the data from the phone was a reliable measure to use for physical activity. I also would have liked to include some more information on how the researchers collected data and what type of questions they asked participants to answer. I decided that these two pieces of information could be sacrificed without severely altering the understanding of the study. I aslo felt that omitting a different section, such as the section on limitations of the study, would have been more damaging to someone’s understanding of the study than the details of how the study was carried out.

My perspective of journalists has definitely changed over the course of these projects. At first, I felt like journalists wrote articles to get views and not really to inform the general public. After reading this news article and trying to summarize the study myself, I have realized that a journalist’s job is a lot more difficult than I originally realized. Journalists have to make an article interesting in order to inform people, and I now think that journalists have a more noble intent in writing than I did at the beginning of this project.

Links:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/well/move/get-up-and-move-it-may-make-you-happier.html?_r=0

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5213770/

Summary of the Research Article:

The journal article “Happier People Live More Active Lives: Using Smartphones to Link Happiness and Physical Activity” by Neal Lathia, Gillian M. Sandstrom, Cecilia Mascolo, and Peter J. Rentfrow attempted to find if physical activity throughout the day is tied to happiness.

The study used ecological momentary assessment (EMA) in smartphones to collect self-report data and smart-phone technology that measured movement to gather data on physical activity. Participants in the study were anyone who downloaded the app onto their android phones and continued to interact with the app throughout the study. There were over 10,000 participants in the study. The app sent two surveys to the participants between 8 AM and 10 PM, at least two hours apart, to measure emotion and physical activity. Participants’ happiness was measured by having them plot their mood on a graph relating to stress, excitement, depression, and relaxation. Participants also answered questions asking how much an adjective described their mood from 1 to 7, with 1 being the lowest and 7 the highest. Physical activity was measured both through self-report and data recorded by the phone itself. The app would ask what kind of physical activity a user had done in the past 15 minutes a long of what kind of emotions the participants felt.

The study found a positive correlation between physical activity and happiness. This correlation continued both on weekdays and weekends. Happier people tended to start their days earlier and end their days later and participate in physical activity during the entire day. The study also found a correlation between a lack of physical activity and lower levels of happiness. The physical activity measured wasn’t vigorous activity but a more everyday physical activity such as walking, running, or cycling. The researchers say this association between physical activity and happiness is “modest but reliable”, meaning that the correlation was small but consistent. The researchers caution against making extreme conclusions from this study, as it showed a small correlation between physical activity and happiness.

It is important to make the distinction between correlation and causation. The study did not show that physical movement caused happiness or that movement caused happiness. The only study that can show causation is an experiment. This study only showed that there seems to be a relationship between physical activity and happiness, and the researchers actually suggest that an experiment should be done to demonstrate causation.

The researchers assert that their use of phones to collect data may be a great way to collect data in future research studies, but they also caution against some problems arising from cell phone data. Participants are unlikely to have carried their phones and especially during vigorous exercise. It also drains the battery of the phone to continuously collect data. The researchers finally identify that it is hard to know how feedback from an act influences mood or behavior.

Ultimately, the researchers conclude that the study shows that the amount people move during the day is correlated with happiness.

Reflection:

As I was summarizing the article, I felt some sympathy for the journalist who wrote the original news article. It is difficult to relay scientific information while still keeping the article interesting for the general public. It is also difficult to relay scientific information using common words and phrases so the average person can understand it. I couldn’t include how the data from the android on physical activity correlated with the self-report data on physical activity, which showed that the data from the phone was a reliable measure to use for physical activity. I also would have liked to include some more information on how the researchers collected data and what type of questions they asked participants to answer. I decided that these two pieces of information could be sacrificed without severely altering the understanding of the study. I aslo felt that omitting a different section, such as the section on limitations of the study, would have been more damaging to someone’s understanding of the study than the details of how the study was carried out.

My perspective of journalists has definitely changed over the course of these projects. At first, I felt like journalists wrote articles to get views and not really to inform the general public. After reading this news article and trying to summarize the study myself, I have realized that a journalist’s job is a lot more difficult than I originally realized. Journalists have to make an article interesting in order to inform people, and I now think that journalists have a more noble intent in writing than I did at the beginning of this project.

Links:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/well/move/get-up-and-move-it-may-make-you-happier.html?_r=0

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5213770/

Summary of the Research Article:

The journal article “Happier People Live More Active Lives: Using Smartphones to Link Happiness and Physical Activity” by Neal Lathia, Gillian M. Sandstrom, Cecilia Mascolo, and Peter J. Rentfrow attempted to find if physical activity throughout the day is tied to happiness.

The study used ecological momentary assessment (EMA) in smartphones to collect self-report data and smart-phone technology that measured movement to gather data on physical activity. Participants in the study were anyone who downloaded the app onto their android phones and continued to interact with the app throughout the study. There were over 10,000 participants in the study. The app sent two surveys to the participants between 8 AM and 10 PM, at least two hours apart, to measure emotion and physical activity. Participants’ happiness was measured by having them plot their mood on a graph relating to stress, excitement, depression, and relaxation. Participants also answered questions asking how much an adjective described their mood from 1 to 7, with 1 being the lowest and 7 the highest. Physical activity was measured both through self-report and data recorded by the phone itself. The app would ask what kind of physical activity a user had done in the past 15 minutes a long of what kind of emotions the participants felt.

The study found a positive correlation between physical activity and happiness. This correlation continued both on weekdays and weekends. Happier people tended to start their days earlier and end their days later and participate in physical activity during the entire day. The study also found a correlation between a lack of physical activity and lower levels of happiness. The physical activity measured wasn’t vigorous activity but a more everyday physical activity such as walking, running, or cycling. The researchers say this association between physical activity and happiness is “modest but reliable”, meaning that the correlation was small but consistent. The researchers caution against making extreme conclusions from this study, as it showed a small correlation between physical activity and happiness.

It is important to make the distinction between correlation and causation. The study did not show that physical movement caused happiness or that movement caused happiness. The only study that can show causation is an experiment. This study only showed that there seems to be a relationship between physical activity and happiness, and the researchers actually suggest that an experiment should be done to demonstrate causation.

The researchers assert that their use of phones to collect data may be a great way to collect data in future research studies, but they also caution against some problems arising from cell phone data. Participants are unlikely to have carried their phones and especially during vigorous exercise. It also drains the battery of the phone to continuously collect data. The researchers finally identify that it is hard to know how feedback from an act influences mood or behavior.

Ultimately, the researchers conclude that the study shows that the amount people move during the day is correlated with happiness.

Reflection:

As I was summarizing the article, I felt some sympathy for the journalist who wrote the original news article. It is difficult to relay scientific information while still keeping the article interesting for the general public. It is also difficult to relay scientific information using common words and phrases so the average person can understand it. I couldn’t include how the data from the android on physical activity correlated with the self-report data on physical activity, which showed that the data from the phone was a reliable measure to use for physical activity. I also would have liked to include some more information on how the researchers collected data and what type of questions they asked participants to answer. I decided that these two pieces of information could be sacrificed without severely altering the understanding of the study. I aslo felt that omitting a different section, such as the section on limitations of the study, would have been more damaging to someone’s understanding of the study than the details of how the study was carried out.

My perspective of journalists has definitely changed over the course of these projects. At first, I felt like journalists wrote articles to get views and not really to inform the general public. After reading this news article and trying to summarize the study myself, I have realized that a journalist’s job is a lot more difficult than I originally realized. Journalists have to make an article interesting in order to inform people, and I now think that journalists have a more noble intent in writing than I did at the beginning of this project.

Links:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/well/move/get-up-and-move-it-may-make-you-happier.html?_r=0

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5213770/

PTSD is one of the most talked about mental disorders today.  Unfortunately, it is a well-known disability to many of our service members.  However, a new study shows support of a possible vaccine.  The new study, conducted on lab mice, shows that ketamine (more well known for its use as a high strength tranquilizer) given at the right times before experiencing trauma may mitigate the onset of symptoms.

This study conducted at Columbia University Medical Center stated that since ketamine is so powerful general use would not be a viable option to the general public.  However, certain people that are a given to encounter psychological trauma, such as police officers or members of the armed forces, could benefit from being given ketamine at a certain time before the trauma occurs.

PTSD is a disorder that has shown very little in the way of treatment that would actually work and it is a disorder that is fairly common.  This new study that shows potential involved giving the mice doses of ketamine at different intervals.  The most effective interval is giving the mice ketamine one week before trauma.  If trauma can be somewhat predicted this could be a game changer for military members experiencing trauma.  Another promising finding was giving mice ketamine one hour after the trauma seemed to help also meaning onset of symptoms could be prevented if timed well.

http://www.deccanchronicle.com/lifestyle/health-and-wellbeing/090217/ketamine-vaccine-may-help-prevent-post-traumatic-stress-disorder.html

Neuropsychopharmacology advance online publication 22 March 2017; doi: 10.1038/npp.2017.19

This assignment was highly enlightening for me.  Being a veteran, PTSD is one of the things I struggle with daily.  Due to this struggle I wanted to look into something that would possibly be useful information to help with my issues.  I wound up finding an article from the Deccan Chronicle showing that ketamine may help with the situation of combat veterans having PTSD.  I was absolutely fascinated by this and went to writing.  It was a struggle because I wanted to write so much but had to remain analytical for the purpose of the paper.  I struggled with the critique and must say I had some bias at this point because I was very hopeful that the article was completely accurate.  Once I began to read the scholarly article, my hopes were quickly confirmed and I was also left with more questions than answers.  I wanted to know how this would be ethical to test on humans.  I also wanted to know if there was any more they could have expanded with ketamine in regards to treatment because I wanted it to be an option not just for the future, but for the present as well.  Once I moved on to this final leg I once again found myself in the struggle of detaching myself from the work.  I found it highly difficult to look at the study as a journalist because I wanted to remain as unbiased as possible.  However, I was enlightened by this study despite all of my struggles during the process

Are you a white person? Do you play violent video games? Do you enjoy shooting and running over random people in the virtual streets? Have you ever played grand theft auto or saints row with a black avatar? If this sounds like a good time to you, then I have some shocking news that you must hear. Break all of your violent video games today and never use a black avatar again! You’re turning yourself into an aggressive racist! A recent study constructed and executed out of the Ohio State University lead by Dr. Brad Bushman has tested the effects of playing violent video games as a black avatar on white people and the results are shocking to white people everywhere. The psychologists reached their assumptions from the results of two different experiments. The first experiment randomly chose participants to play saint row as a black or white avatar and complete either a violent or non-violent task. The violent task being escape from a prison, and the non- violent being locate a church. After the tasks were completed the researchers implemented an implicit negative attitudes test. In this test the participants were required to associate different white and black faces with good and bad words. The results showed an increased connection between the black faces and bad words amongst the participants who completed a violent task with a black avatar. The second experiment was designed to not only show increased negative attitudes towards blacks but also an increase in aggressive behavior. Participants were again randomly selected to play as either a white or black avatar. Participants then played the violent video games “WWE Smackdown V.S Raw” or “Fight Night.” After playing the games participants completed another implicit negative attitude test. The test had black and white male and female faces paired with either weapons or harmless objects. To no surprise to the researchers the results showed an increased in negative pairings amongst the participants who had played with black avatars. To examine the increase in aggressive behavior the participants were then given one more test. The participants were given the ability to feed hot sauce to an imaginary person that did not like the sauce to begin with. The participants who had played with a black character forced the imaginary partner to consume 115% more hot sauce than those who had played with a white avatar. Dr. Bushman has exclaimed that the results of the research is outstanding proof that the portrayal of blacks as violent in all forms of media increases racial tendency and aggression in whites.

research article:

http://spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/03/20/1948550614528008

News article:

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/03/20/video-games-may-reinforce-racist-stereotypes-study-finds​

Rewriting this article was pretty simple. Anyone can summarize an experiment. The tough part about writing this article and continuing this project is my lack of interest in this subject. I care a lot about the racial divide in our world today, but I am increasingly tired of it. I find that no matter what you do there are going to be racist tendencies in some people. Some people flat out don’t want change. Hate is such a powerful emotion. I feel like the race issue is prominent in my everyday life. This debate has caused me to feel defeated and lost. I don’t believe one day prejudice will be extinct. Research like this I find obviously shows that almost everything shines a light on the natural tendency of racism in people. I find it unfair to blame a video game for the increased aggression and racist tendencies in the white participants. Maybe people are just inherently stereotypical and prejudice. That seems to be the truth, and that is why the race debate is killing me on the inside. I feel that no matter what I think because of my skin color I am assumed to have some natural feeling of supremacy towards other races. I have a typically black name and I grew up in a family and community that was mostly Mexican and black. I know I’m not the only one who has the same feelings of dejection, but being a white person who is so accustom to accepting other’s for their culture and skin color to the point that it isn’t acceptance it is just the way I am, I feel defeated that my skin color throws my true identity into the trash. This project has increased my disgust for the media and the way ideas are portrayed by journalists and researchers. When I read the news or listen to it I pretty much just do so to take in something and get an idea of what is going on but I never allow a news outlet to determine my feelings on a scenario. Pretty much just goes in one ear and out the other. I left out a lot of intricacies that I did not find important to summarizing the research. I also left out a lot of the discussion because I feel like the general idea is easily summarized with one or two sentences.

For many kids and parents, it is a question that lingers: is there a right time to begin having sex?

Although there is quite a bit of stigma surrounding the thought of when someone should have their first sexual experience, majority of young people begin having sex in the U.S. well before what is considered to be adulthood. In a psychological study conducted in 2012, there was standards put on participants debuting them to be classified as “early” if their sexual experience began before the age of 15, “normative” if it occurred between 15 and 19 years old, and “late” if it occurs after 19 years of age. The study went through “waves”: Wave I, Wave II, Wave III, and Wave IV. Each wave was conducted at different periods of times for the participants; they were asked about their sexual experiences at each increment of time.

This study arises the question: does the age of when you begin to have sexual experiences complicate later life experiences? To answer this question, a study reported in Developmental Psychology highlighted the pros and cons of having sex at different stages or “waves”.

It is an essential part of a person’s beginning sexual experiences to recognize the potential risks of sexual interactions such as pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases. The first encounters a person has can be a point in their lives which establishes what they consider to be normal sexual relations and pairings; research consistently shows that those who are sexually active before the age of 15 are much less likely to use a form of birth control than those who are in the “normative” or “late” groups. It is also documented that those who fall into the early group are also more likely to have a history of emotional issues and substance abuse. However, this study does not determine the correlation between substance abuse and/or emotional problems with sexual debuts. The waves that are recorded are merely snapshots of a person’s life; it does not provide determination for the association between the cross-sectional observances.

In regards to gender, early starter males are more likely to show aggressiveness as well as display antisocial behavior than later starters. While as early starting females are more prone to depression than late starters, and display more shame and guilt than males tend to. Although these are all negative attributions towards having sex early, most males and females tend to view their first-time sex as a positive experience.

Providing such information, what is the positive side of adolescent sex? There is an extended amount of studies that show adult sexuality provides psychological benefits such as stress relief and positive health benefits. Yet, extending these types of studies into the adolescent age group is quite controversial. To take a closer look at the positive and negative features of first-time sex in adolescents, the study published in Developmental Psychology observed a group of 200 tenth-grade students – 100 males and 100 females – for 18 months. These students were selected carefully to best represent the racial and ethnic distribution in the United States.

Those being observed in the study conducted by Rachel Lynn Golden had taken standardized tests which measured individuals drug use, self-worth, and mental health status as well as completing questionnaires about their dating history, sexual behavior, dating satisfaction, and sexual satisfaction. To ensure their honesty as well as more objective viewpoints, the participant’s mother and a close friend chosen by each participant were asked to evaluate their (the participant’s) psychological competence, substance abuse, and romantic appeal. Participants that had still not begun to be sexually active after 18 months were dropped from the analysis, as well as participants who dropped out of the study. In this longitudinal study, researchers had the advantage of analyzing how participants behavior – whether they were considered to be early, normative, or late – all seemed to steady off and disappear in differences following five or six years after high school.

As Golden and her coauthors discuss in her study, it is not clear whether the early introduction to sexual experience during adolescence influences how an individual will develop throughout their life or influence choices they make, such as substance abuse or displaying antisocial behavior.

From this study, results showed that early sexual debuts had tended to be correlated with a higher risk of emotional problems such as depression, antisocial behavior, loneliness, and increased aggression. It also showed association of adolescence being more likely to have a substance abuse problem. However, early sexual interactions also had positive relations such as greater romantic appeal, greater sexual satisfaction (for males), and greater dating satisfaction (for males). Females in this study showed little to no difference in sexual and dating satisfaction among early, normative, and late sexual encounters. It can be theorized that females do not have the same results as males because of the general social beliefs about female sexuality.

A definite result that this study suggests is that adolescents who delay their first sexual experience towards the “normative” or “late” stages tend to make more mature decisions regarding the use of contraception and overall protection. This result highlights the importance of sex education programs; the more information given to adolescence regarding to sex, the better they are equipped to make better decisions in protecting themselves by acknowledging the possible risks of sex. It is important for young people to be equipped with the appropriate knowledge so that they can make their own (informative) decisions when the time comes.

Media Production Reflection

When writing this paper, I found it to be very challenging to rewrite a new summary of the research article. Whenever I was critiquing the article originally, one of the things I seemed to highly criticize about their flaws within their paper was how much information they left out in their summary. However, I seemed to have the same problem. With a word limit put on the research article being published, it is difficult to include all the aspects the original study that was issued. Because of the limitations, it appears that my article and the news article that was published over the research article is very similar in what is believed to be the most important aspects discussed in the study. There was much more data and other analyzed areas within the original research that was left out because of the word limit. This information includes how there was a sibling comparison of first sexual intercourse, the dating involvement being observed, demographics that were in consideration, how individuals were later rated on physical attributes, and the satisfaction rates of relationships, marriage, and overall life based on their first sexual encounters. In a journalist’s perspective, there are more obstacles a person must take under consideration when they are critiquing their published work. It is difficult to include all parts that deem to be important within the original published document in their own because of the limitations that is put on their writing. However, it should be assumed that they are relaying the information out of the research article to their audience that they reason to be the most important.

REFERENCES:

Harden, P. K. (2012). Psychological Science. True Love Waits? A Sibling-Comparison Study of  Age at First Sexual Intercourse and Romantic Relationships in Young Adulthood. Retrieved May 8, 2017, from http://pss.sagepub.com/content/23/11/1324

Vitelli, R., Ph.D. (2016). Is There a Right Age to Begin Having Sex? Retrieved May 8, 2017, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/media-spotlight/201611/is-there-right-age-begin-having-sex.

Media Production Project

There has been a lot of discussion recently, especially in light of the recent United States election, about normalization and the definition of what is normal. When most people think of normal, they think of what is typical or what is average, but what if that’s not really how people perceive what is normal?

In a recent study, Adam Bear and Joshua Knobe were able to show that what people see as normal may actually be a combination of what is typical and what is ideal. This study begins by introducing normality and raising the question: how is it that people come to regard certain things as normal and others as abnormal? They believe that normality is more complicated than it may first appear, and that people’s judgements on normality are a middle ground between what they consider to be the actual statistical average, and what they consider to be morally ideal. The study identifies two possible hypotheses: The first says that normality is influenced by both the ideal and the average, and the second states that normality is not just influenced by both, but falls directly in between them.

To better understand the implications, one can consider the number of hours that a person watches TV per day. Most participants said they thought that about 4 hours per day was the average for an average American. Interestingly, when asked what they thought the normal number of hours per day were, the participants did not give the same value as they did to the first question. Here they said that about 3 hours per day were normal for the average American. Finally when they were asked what was ideal, they responded with 2.5. This suggests that people see what is normal as different from what they see as typical or average. Furthermore, they see normal as different in the direction of what they see as morally ideal, or the way they think it should be.

To further test this idea, three tests were performed. The first test was to examine how people’s intuitions about average and ideal amounts relate to what they think are normal amounts. This study includes the example above discussing the hours of television watched per day, where Bear and Knobe set a specific list of domains such as behaviors and activities and asked participants what they saw as average amounts of that behavior or activity. A second group was asked what they thought were ideal amounts of the same thing, and a third group was asked what they saw as the normal amount of that thing. This was done with 20 different domains.

A second test was then done where participants were asked where they thought the average, ideal, and normal amounts fell on a graded scale (larger/smaller). Finally, the third study was done in a similar fashion, and participants were given a random list of examples from a category where they were asked: to what extent they believed this thing to be either an average, good, ideal, prototypical, or paradigmatic example of that thing. Good, prototypical, and paradigmatic here are all representations of normal. In all three studies involving different categories, Bear and Knobe found that the participants’ notions of what was normal fell in between what they thought was average and what they thought was ideal.

What if all the categories and objects within these categories are things that the participants were familiar with, then they would already have developed a notion of what they believe to be normal. If this were in fact the case, it might be true that when given objects they were not familiar with, normal might not fall between average and ideal as it has thus far.To determine how people learn what is normal, Bear and Knobe did two studies each involving a fictional hunting tool they invented called a stagnar. In the first study, they found that 73% of participants said the normal lengths were in between the ideal and the average, which suggests it was not by chance. The final study was done similarly where the participants were to rate the stagnars on degree of largeness or smallness. Again the data showed that the normal stagnar was in between the ideal and the average. This showed that a person’s sense of normal is innately learned as being in between average and ideal, a finding with profound implications in society today. This suggests that it is possible to predict what people will view as normal, and also sheds some light on normalization. If the average amount of racist things said increases, for example, people may begin to think that saying racist things is more normal.

Reflection

Writing this summary posed more challenges than I initially expected it to for multiple reasons. The first reason was that I thought that my summary should include more of the procedures of how the study was conducted, because, as a reader of the original article, I was wondering about it the most while reading. This ended up being a problem because it was difficult to remain within the word limit while also trying to be explicit enough to answer all the questions that I had while I was reading the pop culture article. The second big challenge I had was to try and write a well-structured and coherent article that I thought was an improvement of the original. I commented in my evaluation of the pop culture article that the author did a very good job with his use of language and his summarization skills, while still explaining in enough detail for the reader to understand the study. This made it difficult for me to improve upon the article in terms of language and summarization skill, so I focused mostly on trying to include more of the procedural detail that seemed like it shouldn’t be left out. Luckily for my word limit the original article was not only a summary of the research paper, but also talked about Trump and normalization in a social context. This leads me to the differences between my summary and the original.

My summary cut out some of the social implications and social examples in order to accommodate the additional procedural information. I still included some possible social implications of the study, as I thought the application was equally as important as being able to understand the study. It seems that my summary is not as well written as the original which can mostly be attributed to the fact that the original was written by the author of the original research study, and the fact that he is just a better writer than I am. I do not profess to be a prodigious writer, nor even notable, however I was appreciative of the struggles that journalists face when attempting to get articles published as my sister is a rather talented writer who publishes articles every once in a while. Upon writing this article I did not gain more or less appreciation for what journalists go through, but gained context with which to appreciate their efforts. It is very difficult to write over something and have to remove yourself from your writing enough to be able to relay studies objectively and in a coherent and logical way. In academia, with either scientific papers or English analysis papers, one can simply write their paper up to their own potential and for the most part not have to worry if the general populous will be able to understand the material. Journalists have to be the link between the world of academia and the general population who may not have enough education to understand the study the way it was initially presented. Further it is the job of the journalist to get the information out to the public, and therefore requires that they fully understand the study in order to accurately represent the findings.

The links to the original research article and the pop culture article are shown below.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/opinion/sunday/the-normalization-trap.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FPsychology%20and%20Psychologists&action=click&contentCollection=health&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=collection&_r=0

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027716302645

Media Production Project

There has been a lot of discussion recently, especially in light of the recent United States election, about normalization and the definition of what is normal. When most people think of normal, they think of what is typical or what is average, but what if that’s not really how people perceive what is normal?

In a recent study, Adam Bear and Joshua Knobe were able to show that what people see as normal may actually be a combination of what is typical and what is ideal. This study begins by introducing normality and raising the question: how is it that people come to regard certain things as normal and others as abnormal? They believe that normality is more complicated than it may first appear, and that people’s judgements on normality are a middle ground between what they consider to be the actual statistical average, and what they consider to be morally ideal. The study identifies two possible hypotheses: The first says that normality is influenced by both the ideal and the average, and the second states that normality is not just influenced by both, but falls directly in between them.

To better understand the implications, one can consider the number of hours that a person watches TV per day. Most participants said they thought that about 4 hours per day was the average for an average American. Interestingly, when asked what they thought the normal number of hours per day were, the participants did not give the same value as they did to the first question. Here they said that about 3 hours per day were normal for the average American. Finally when they were asked what was ideal, they responded with 2.5. This suggests that people see what is normal as different from what they see as typical or average. Furthermore, they see normal as different in the direction of what they see as morally ideal, or the way they think it should be.

To further test this idea, three tests were performed. The first test was to examine how people’s intuitions about average and ideal amounts relate to what they think are normal amounts. This study includes the example above discussing the hours of television watched per day, where Bear and Knobe set a specific list of domains such as behaviors and activities and asked participants what they saw as average amounts of that behavior or activity. A second group was asked what they thought were ideal amounts of the same thing, and a third group was asked what they saw as the normal amount of that thing. This was done with 20 different domains.

A second test was then done where participants were asked where they thought the average, ideal, and normal amounts fell on a graded scale (larger/smaller). Finally, the third study was done in a similar fashion, and participants were given a random list of examples from a category where they were asked: to what extent they believed this thing to be either an average, good, ideal, prototypical, or paradigmatic example of that thing. Good, prototypical, and paradigmatic here are all representations of normal. In all three studies involving different categories, Bear and Knobe found that the participants’ notions of what was normal fell in between what they thought was average and what they thought was ideal.

What if all the categories and objects within these categories are things that the participants were familiar with, then they would already have developed a notion of what they believe to be normal. If this were in fact the case, it might be true that when given objects they were not familiar with, normal might not fall between average and ideal as it has thus far.To determine how people learn what is normal, Bear and Knobe did two studies each involving a fictional hunting tool they invented called a stagnar. In the first study, they found that 73% of participants said the normal lengths were in between the ideal and the average, which suggests it was not by chance. The final study was done similarly where the participants were to rate the stagnars on degree of largeness or smallness. Again the data showed that the normal stagnar was in between the ideal and the average. This showed that a person’s sense of normal is innately learned as being in between average and ideal, a finding with profound implications in society today. This suggests that it is possible to predict what people will view as normal, and also sheds some light on normalization. If the average amount of racist things said increases, for example, people may begin to think that saying racist things is more normal.

Reflection

Writing this summary posed more challenges than I initially expected it to for multiple reasons. The first reason was that I thought that my summary should include more of the procedures of how the study was conducted, because, as a reader of the original article, I was wondering about it the most while reading. This ended up being a problem because it was difficult to remain within the word limit while also trying to be explicit enough to answer all the questions that I had while I was reading the pop culture article. The second big challenge I had was to try and write a well-structured and coherent article that I thought was an improvement of the original. I commented in my evaluation of the pop culture article that the author did a very good job with his use of language and his summarization skills, while still explaining in enough detail for the reader to understand the study. This made it difficult for me to improve upon the article in terms of language and summarization skill, so I focused mostly on trying to include more of the procedural detail that seemed like it shouldn’t be left out. Luckily for my word limit the original article was not only a summary of the research paper, but also talked about Trump and normalization in a social context. This leads me to the differences between my summary and the original.

My summary cut out some of the social implications and social examples in order to accommodate the additional procedural information. I still included some possible social implications of the study, as I thought the application was equally as important as being able to understand the study. It seems that my summary is not as well written as the original which can mostly be attributed to the fact that the original was written by the author of the original research study, and the fact that he is just a better writer than I am. I do not profess to be a prodigious writer, nor even notable, however I was appreciative of the struggles that journalists face when attempting to get articles published as my sister is a rather talented writer who publishes articles every once in a while. Upon writing this article I did not gain more or less appreciation for what journalists go through, but gained context with which to appreciate their efforts. It is very difficult to write over something and have to remove yourself from your writing enough to be able to relay studies objectively and in a coherent and logical way. In academia, with either scientific papers or English analysis papers, one can simply write their paper up to their own potential and for the most part not have to worry if the general populous will be able to understand the material. Journalists have to be the link between the world of academia and the general population who may not have enough education to understand the study the way it was initially presented. Further it is the job of the journalist to get the information out to the public, and therefore requires that they fully understand the study in order to accurately represent the findings.

The links to the original research article and the pop culture article are shown below.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/opinion/sunday/the-normalization-trap.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FPsychology%20and%20Psychologists&action=click&contentCollection=health&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=collection&_r=0

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027716302645

Media Production Project

There has been a lot of discussion recently, especially in light of the recent United States election, about normalization and the definition of what is normal. When most people think of normal, they think of what is typical or what is average, but what if that’s not really how people perceive what is normal?

In a recent study, Adam Bear and Joshua Knobe were able to show that what people see as normal may actually be a combination of what is typical and what is ideal. This study begins by introducing normality and raising the question: how is it that people come to regard certain things as normal and others as abnormal? They believe that normality is more complicated than it may first appear, and that people’s judgements on normality are a middle ground between what they consider to be the actual statistical average, and what they consider to be morally ideal. The study identifies two possible hypotheses: The first says that normality is influenced by both the ideal and the average, and the second states that normality is not just influenced by both, but falls directly in between them.

To better understand the implications, one can consider the number of hours that a person watches TV per day. Most participants said they thought that about 4 hours per day was the average for an average American. Interestingly, when asked what they thought the normal number of hours per day were, the participants did not give the same value as they did to the first question. Here they said that about 3 hours per day were normal for the average American. Finally when they were asked what was ideal, they responded with 2.5. This suggests that people see what is normal as different from what they see as typical or average. Furthermore, they see normal as different in the direction of what they see as morally ideal, or the way they think it should be.

To further test this idea, three tests were performed. The first test was to examine how people’s intuitions about average and ideal amounts relate to what they think are normal amounts. This study includes the example above discussing the hours of television watched per day, where Bear and Knobe set a specific list of domains such as behaviors and activities and asked participants what they saw as average amounts of that behavior or activity. A second group was asked what they thought were ideal amounts of the same thing, and a third group was asked what they saw as the normal amount of that thing. This was done with 20 different domains.

A second test was then done where participants were asked where they thought the average, ideal, and normal amounts fell on a graded scale (larger/smaller). Finally, the third study was done in a similar fashion, and participants were given a random list of examples from a category where they were asked: to what extent they believed this thing to be either an average, good, ideal, prototypical, or paradigmatic example of that thing. Good, prototypical, and paradigmatic here are all representations of normal. In all three studies involving different categories, Bear and Knobe found that the participants’ notions of what was normal fell in between what they thought was average and what they thought was ideal.

What if all the categories and objects within these categories are things that the participants were familiar with, then they would already have developed a notion of what they believe to be normal. If this were in fact the case, it might be true that when given objects they were not familiar with, normal might not fall between average and ideal as it has thus far.To determine how people learn what is normal, Bear and Knobe did two studies each involving a fictional hunting tool they invented called a stagnar. In the first study, they found that 73% of participants said the normal lengths were in between the ideal and the average, which suggests it was not by chance. The final study was done similarly where the participants were to rate the stagnars on degree of largeness or smallness. Again the data showed that the normal stagnar was in between the ideal and the average. This showed that a person’s sense of normal is innately learned as being in between average and ideal, a finding with profound implications in society today. This suggests that it is possible to predict what people will view as normal, and also sheds some light on normalization. If the average amount of racist things said increases, for example, people may begin to think that saying racist things is more normal.

Reflection

Writing this summary posed more challenges than I initially expected it to for multiple reasons. The first reason was that I thought that my summary should include more of the procedures of how the study was conducted, because, as a reader of the original article, I was wondering about it the most while reading. This ended up being a problem because it was difficult to remain within the word limit while also trying to be explicit enough to answer all the questions that I had while I was reading the pop culture article. The second big challenge I had was to try and write a well-structured and coherent article that I thought was an improvement of the original. I commented in my evaluation of the pop culture article that the author did a very good job with his use of language and his summarization skills, while still explaining in enough detail for the reader to understand the study. This made it difficult for me to improve upon the article in terms of language and summarization skill, so I focused mostly on trying to include more of the procedural detail that seemed like it shouldn’t be left out. Luckily for my word limit the original article was not only a summary of the research paper, but also talked about Trump and normalization in a social context. This leads me to the differences between my summary and the original.

My summary cut out some of the social implications and social examples in order to accommodate the additional procedural information. I still included some possible social implications of the study, as I thought the application was equally as important as being able to understand the study. It seems that my summary is not as well written as the original which can mostly be attributed to the fact that the original was written by the author of the original research study, and the fact that he is just a better writer than I am. I do not profess to be a prodigious writer, nor even notable, however I was appreciative of the struggles that journalists face when attempting to get articles published as my sister is a rather talented writer who publishes articles every once in a while. Upon writing this article I did not gain more or less appreciation for what journalists go through, but gained context with which to appreciate their efforts. It is very difficult to write over something and have to remove yourself from your writing enough to be able to relay studies objectively and in a coherent and logical way. In academia, with either scientific papers or English analysis papers, one can simply write their paper up to their own potential and for the most part not have to worry if the general populous will be able to understand the material. Journalists have to be the link between the world of academia and the general population who may not have enough education to understand the study the way it was initially presented. Further it is the job of the journalist to get the information out to the public, and therefore requires that they fully understand the study in order to accurately represent the findings.

The links to the original research article and the pop culture article are shown below.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/opinion/sunday/the-normalization-trap.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FPsychology%20and%20Psychologists&action=click&contentCollection=health&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=collection&_r=0

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027716302645