I felt that this song really related to this weeks blog post so with that being said The song of the week is...*drum roll*
LOVE THE WAY YOU LIE
Oh and because I deleted every picture of my ex and I, I'm going to ad pics from ad campaigns aimed at helping women in abusive relationships
I kind of talked about my past and being in an abusive relationship in a previous post, but I was having a hard time relating the lesson to my life other than this. For those of you who didn't read my previous post here is a brief synopsis...when I was younger and living in Hawai'i I was dating this guy who used to beat the crap out of me on a regular basis. It took a long time for me to tell someone and an even longer time for me to leave him. That takes us to what today's blog post is about...
A lot of people don't understand why many times those in an abusive relationship don't leave, why the keep going back, why they still love that person that is causing them so much pain. But, you can chalk up much of why the "victim" stays to effort justification, that is that we love what we suffer for (according to the definition given to us in class by Dr. Guiliano). This paradigm of cognitive dissonance (to what extent our behavior affects our attitudes (Festinger) ) basically says, that when we suffer more for or because of something, that we tend to change our attitude so it becomes more of a positive. In the case of abusive relationships, and particularly my situation, my ex had even gone as far as to try and kill me so I was terrified to leave, that lead to me starting to focus on the good attributes that he did have and soon I truly believed that I was still in love with him. He meant so much to me, that I began to justify his abuse and in my head, because I had stayed instead of leaving, I figured I really did love him, that that was what love was. It took a while before I finally told someone, and even more time before my friends convinced me to leave and showed me that that wasn't love
When I first heard this song (Love the Way You Lie) I seriously felt like I was listening to someone sing/rap about my relationship. I seriously began to justify what was happening to me by telling myself that I liked it.
Effort Justification does not only apply to abusive relationships but as
I said earlier, it was the one thing that kept popping into my head as I
thought of topics for this weeks blog.
Word Count=435
Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press
I couldn't really think of a song that went well with this blog post so y'all get to listen to what I am listening to as I write this..(and since it is a longer post, I'll post multiple videos throughout the post)
So for my participant observer blog I chose to be a different person for a day.
For those of you who know me pretty well know that I am not usually a "shy" person nor am I usually a "quiet" person, so for an entire day I altered my usual behavior. I chose this particular aspect of my life to alter for the day because it is so different from how I usually am around people I know and even some people I don't know all that well and I knew that this was probably my best shot at getting a reaction.
So how did I become "shy" and "quiet"???? First off, I made sure to kind of separate myself in social situations, that is, I would make sure to stand at least 3 feet away from the people congregating in front of the commons before it opened at lunch and dinner, I also sat towards the back and at least 2 feet from everyone at chapter that day. I would never start a conversation, and if someone were to approach me to say hi or something I would avoid making eye contact, I spoke quietly and avoided long responses on my part. If someone were to touch me (as in a hug or putting their hand on my shoulder) I would shy away and just keep looking away. I basically kept to myself the whole day, and did not seek out social interaction. I would walk around with my head down and made sure not to make eye contact with anyone just walking by and made sure not to keep eye contact for more than 3 seconds at a time when people approached me. Not only was this hard on my part (at first at least), but it really worried a lot of people, as in someone talked to my RA and had them come check on me!!!!
The hardest part of this experience for me was basically choosing to be alone an entire day. I know that shy doesn't mean you spend a lot of time alone, but by shying away from social interaction, especially "fun" interactions I felt incredibly lonely. I do not have a roommate so usually lunch, dinner, chapter, and Thursdays in general (I have no classes that day) are when I get to just hang out with friends and its kind of a stress reliever. So, for me, the fact that the only conversations I was having that day quickly went from "Hey! How are you!?" to "Are you ok!?" and then I would say that I was in fact ok.....but NOBODY listened. It actually got quite annoying after the first 5 times. I also started feeling incredibly sad. This is an example of self-awareness theory (Duval & Wickland 1972). This theory states that when you are focused on yourself (in this case focusing on my behavior) leads to you noticing self-discrepancies, which leads to wanting to escape that self-awareness or change in behavior, and also often leads to a negative mood. I also found that because I was so focused on self-regulating when I was focusing on making sure that I was "shy" and "quiet" that I was unable to control myself in other ways. The biggest being anger. The more people kept asking me if I was OK, the angrier I got. This concept was first discovered by Muraven and Baumeister in 2000 when they stated that there is only one "reservoir" in which our self-control is stored and that the more you use it, the harder it becomes and the less effective it gets until it has a chance to "replenish".
Most people became "worried" that something was wrong based on my behavior, with many of them thinking that it had something to do with my concussion (one of my friends even told me to go to the ER). Others thought that I was just really sad and that something bad had happened. There also is the whole getting my RA involved and having my RA check on me because I was "acting really strange". Many of them tried to console me and would attempt to give me a hug, which when I pulled away REALLY worried them. People were trying to make sure I was OK all day, and as stated earlier, it got really annoying. Because I had changed my self-presentation, and my non-verbal behavior ( behavior that reveals a persons feelings without using words) and no longer fit into people's idea of who I was, they assumed something was wrong. Self-presentation is defined as strategies people use to shape what others think of them (Pontari & Schlenker 2000).
I did not like being "shy" and "quiet", even though it was just for a day, I did not feel like I was myself, I felt strange all day, and I got incredibly sad and lonely that day. The biggest thing that I took away from that day was that even the smallest of behavior changes can really affect how not only we see ourselves but how others see us as well. I also learned that (at least in my opinion) self-concept is pretty stable. While I was able to change an aspect of my self-concept it was actually incredibly difficult for me to do so. I constantly felt myself fighting myself to actually act "shy" and "quiet", and by the day I was mentally exhausted. I like who I am. I am a social person who loves social interaction. I did not like how being "shy" and "quiet" made me feel and do not believe I will ever actively work on changing to become more "shy" and "quiet".
n= 991
Duval, S. & Wickland, R.A. (1972). A theory of objective self-awareness. New York: Academic Press
Muravan, M. & Baumeister, R.F. (2000). Self-Regulation and depletion of limited resources. Does self-control resemble a muscle? Psychological Bulletin, 126, 247-259
Pontari, B.A. & Schlenker, B.R. (2000). The influence of cognitive load on self-presentation: Can cognitive busyness help as well as harm social performance? Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology. 27, 975-986
*ALL DEFINITIONS WERE PROVIDED AND ARE NOT THE IDEA OR DEFINITION OF MYSELF, I JUST COULDN'T FIND THE REFERENCE FOR THE DEFINITION*
And the song of the week is....*drum roll please*....
Now that THAT is established, on to the important stuff
Are you prejudicial? Do you hold on to certain stereotypes? Most people, would say no. We as a society like to answer in a socially acceptable way so of course we would say no. The thing is, is that is not entirely true, most of us whether it be consciously or unconsciously are both prejudicial and have certain stereotypes that they hold on to. That's where the IAT or Implicit Associates Test comes in.
The IAT was developed by Greenwald and Banaji and is used to uncover our unconscious feelings, preferences and beliefs. The IAT is taken online and participants are told to categorize words into 2 different categories. For example one of the tests I took was on Gender and Careers. The first task was to categorize names by either male or female by pressing E for girl or I for a male. Then, they switched it and E became male and I became female. Next you had to categorize words into either career (E) or family (I). Then like the male and female categorization, they switched. The next one had you press E for female OR career and I for male OR family. Finally they changed it so E was male or career and I was female or family. I also took the Skin Tone IAT which used the same format as the Gender and Career one, however used pictures of dark skinned faces and light faces and Good or Bad.
For the Gender and Career Test I got "little or no association between Female and Male with Career and Family" For the Skin Tone Association Test I got "slight automatic preference for light skin compared to dark skin." The results for the Gender and Career test I felt were pretty consistent with my conscious beliefs. I have never been one to associate certain careers with male or female connotations or believe in the whole "men work, women stay home" idea. Even as a kid (kindergarten) I would walk around saying how I was going to be an astronaut when I grew up and actually got in trouble that year for smacking a boy (his name was Miles) who said I couldn't. And unfortunately I realized that I do have a slight preference towards light skin faces. I have always grown up in relatively "white" communities and due to events in my past that I would rather not put into detail on the internet that has lead to intense PTSD, I have a hard time not being afraid if I see a guy with darker skin (darker as in any shade darker than me) at night. Looking back, I probably should have done different IATs that I didn't already know the answer to, because these two really didn't show me anything about myself that I didn't already know. Overall, I think that this is a really interesting test and I will definitely use it in the future. n=508 Website where the IAT is https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html
It took a while before I finally told someone, and even more time before my friends convinced me to leave and showed me that that wasn't love