Belif in a Just World Almost Made Me Los My Mind

2 things about this post:

1. Excus me if it has a lot of speling probleems (this concusion is realy messing up my speling at times)
2. This post may be hard for some people.

Song for post:

 

This is me when I was sixxteen:

 I like to think I was (still am) a good perosn, I voluntered, I didnt break cufew, I didn't party, drink, or do drugs. Not that I was perfect, but yeah, I was a good kid, espeially for wher I lived. 

When I was 16 I met Jay. Jay treted me lik a princes for the first couple months....then he got on steroids. 

Soon, I would haave a new bruse or brokn bone (usualy ribs) daily. At first peole didnt give it any attenion, I played water polo, we were all always hurt (its a visious sport). But once season was over and the bruises didn't stop people got concrned. It was a girl in my clas who firsst noticd. She grabed my hand after schooll and asked me wher the bruises were comeing from, and wher the old me had gone. I looked at her, wantin to tlel her eveything, I was just so scared, so I used the age old excuse, I fell down the stairs. That's when Jay came to take me to swim practive. He saw me talkin o Kaity and he got pretty pissed off. He smaked me acros my fac (HARD) in fron of everyone. Not one person said anything, not one person tried to help, not evn Kaity. 

The nex day the whol school was talkin bout how I was in an abusive relationship, and the wors part, the I DESERVED it. It was the perfect example of Melvin Lerner's theory of Belief in a Just World which states that "people need to view the world as a jus plave in wich we get wat we desrve and derserve what we get". 

The way people acted, and treated me, ad saidd abou me adn hwo I desrved bein abused because "if I realy was upset, if it realy was that bad and I hadnt left yet, that I deservd it. The wors was the girls who didnt know me at all and would say "She must desrve it, she mus be a bad person" or "Karma" (I got that one a lot). 

At the time, I dint realize exactly why peole were sayin that. It wasn't until las year avtually when Kaity and I wer talking and Jay was brought up. She apoligzed to me for never saying anythin when he hit me, and for not helpin me when I neded it. When I asked her why, why she didnt help when sh knew what was goin on? She said, that she "jad to beleive that somehow I deserved it, because if somethin like that could happen to someone lik me, what did that say abot what could hapen to her".

Before that covo, that whole thing had been a sore sot for me. It wasn't that I felt like they needd to help me, becuse I felt that was somethin I needed to so on my own, it was the remark about how I deserved it. 

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Lerner, M.J. (1980). The Belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. New York: Plenum

 

Dont't Judge a Book By It's Cover

This song doesn't actually go with this blog post, but I couldn't think of a song that really did so instead, I decided just to post the song that I am listening to as I write this :)

 

"Don't judge a book by its cover." We have all heard this saying many times throughout our lives, and yet we still do, whether it is a conscious action or not, that is how we as human's operate. Everyday we make judgements about those we encounter. These judgements are based off many different factors including appearance, the way someone dresses, as well as non-verbal cues and their behavior. All these work together to help us form an impression of someone.

This is me in high school:

I was a 2 sport Letterman (swimming and water polo). I was in all honors or AP classes and...I hung out with the "skater kids". (Not what you would expect I know, but that is kind of the point.) People would always look at me funny when they saw me hanging out with my friends at school because here I was the clean cut, smart, "jock girl" hanging out with a bunch of kids that were seen as "stoners" and had facial piercings and multicolored hair. I had friends from my team or other friends who were in sports who would always point out how I "didn't belong with that group" or that I "was better than them" or a mixture of the two. The thing is, is that the only reason that it was a big deal was that I didn't fit in with those people's group schema (stereotype) of what "skater kids" were.

These are some of my best friends from when I lived in Hawai'i (yes that is actually how you spell Hawai'i) 

Not one of these kids smoked weed, in fact Taylor (on the left) has Cystic Fibrosis (a lung disease) and absolutely hates the idea of smoking of any kind, Vanessa (in the middle) graduated in the top 5% of her class, Brett (the only guy) is a christian and plays the drums in his church's worship group, and Aerial (in the hat) is married and expecting her first child. But because of the way they looked, people judged them and associated them with "stoners" because of those peoples' group schema about what "stoners" were 

This leads me to the implicit personality theory. This theory ( Bruner & Tagiuri, 1954, Sedikides & Anderson, 1994) is a network of assumptions people make about the relationships among traites and behaviors. Because my friends had piercings, tattoos and dressed a certain way, people associated them with "stoners". And because people knew me as an athlete with a good gpa and because I didn't have piercings and tattoos and so forth, people didn't see how I could be friends with them. In all actuality we all had a lot in common.

Maybe, if we actually listened to that years old adage "don't judge a book by its cover", we would realize that there is more to people than what meets the eye. 

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Who am I?

Recently found this artist and I thought this cover that he did fit very well with this topic

One of the most difficult times in most peoples' lives is middle/high school. This time is when the pressure to fit in is at it's highest. We deal with peer pressure to listen to certain music, to dress or act a certain way, to things that can be harmful (drinking, smoking, even drug use). This is where self-presentation comes into play. Self-presentation is the process by which we try to alter the way people think of us and we think of ourselves (Shlenker, 2003) 

For instance, my freshman year of high school, I hung out with the "popular" kids, and I would dress a certain way, I listened to certain music and I drank when I was with them. I didn't like how I dressed and I certainly didn't like the music I was listening to or that I was drinking, but I felt that I had to do all of that to keep my "friends". I was practicing the self-presentation strategy of ingratiation (ingratiation (according to the textbook) is a term used to describe acts that are motivated by the desire to "get along" with others and be liked) It wasn't until late in my junior year that I finally realized that I didn't want those people as my "friends". I started to be more true to myself and soon became ostracized in the group and found a new group of friends to hang out with.

I had a friend who hung out with the skater kids so I soon started to hang with them. My group of friends had piercings, tattoos, and multi-colored hair and listened to rock and screamo and what not. And, while I didn't change how I looked (I was the "jock" who was hanging with the skaters and therefor got many MANY strange looks from people who saw us hanging out) part of me did change because I was hanging out with them. I started listening to the same types of music as they did (for example). Looking back on it now I realize I was unconsciously using ingratiation with this new group of friends and while it wasn't as bad as it was before, it still happened. 

Everyone at one point or another will feel the need to fit in, whether it be with friends, sports teams or work or wherever, it is going to happen good or bad. Sometimes ingratiation can be good, but it can also be bad and sometimes you even lose sight of who you truly are. Like the song says, stay true to yourself because there is nobody like you!

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Schlenker, B. R., & Wowra, S. A. (2003). Carryover effects of feeling socially transparent or impenetrable on strategic self-presentation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 871-880.