This last year (or this last decade, or century depending on how far you want to go) has been rife with debate, concern, outrage over surveillance and security. The headlines over the summer blasted us with stories specifically dealing with the trial of Bradley Manning over Wikileaks and the revelations about the NSA by whistleblower Edward Snowden. Well, I'm not going to get into all the questions, politics, and constitutionality of any of this. I honestly haven't figured out for myself how I feel or what I think about these specific topics.
BUT.... I did see this article about How Surveillance Changes Behavior
The article discusses some recent research dealing with surveillance monitoring software tracking theft and productivity in restaurants.
The impact, the researchers say, came not from firing workers engaged in theft, but mostly from their changed behavior. Knowing they were being monitored, the servers not only pulled back on any unethical practices, but also channeled their efforts into, say, prompting customers to have that dessert or a second beer, raising revenue for the restaurant and tips for themselves.
“The same people who are stealing from you can be set up to succeed,” said Mr. Pierce of Washington University.
As a business owner, specifically of an IT company, as well as a lifelong student and instructor of Social Psychology, I found these results extremely interesting.
I thought about observer effects and reactivity. Observer effects refer to changes that the act of observation will make on a phenomenon being observed. Reactivity occurs when individuals alter their performance or behavior due to the awareness that they are being observed.
I thought about how we are now constantly being monitored. Like ALL THE TIME! Cameras are every where. I suspect my students probably record parts of class on their phones, I don't know for sure, but I assume it's a possibility. I'm so damn transparent anymore I'm pretty sure I've reverted back to my three year old self, before I developed a theory of mind, and just assume everyone knows everything I know, so there is no sense in hiding anything. And I wonder, am I the only one that feels this way or has started to think this way?
Are we going to become so accustomed to constant observation that observer effects and reactivity no longer develop? Will this in turn completely change not only our expectations of privacy but the very definition of privacy? Now that has massive repercussions in our political, ethical, legal, industrial, and other aspects of our social worlds and world views.
ADDENDUM!
And right after I post this, I read another little article about why someone shouldn't post anything on facebook about their kids! Because of datamining and lack of privacy before you are even an adult. Interesting viewpoint, and one to definitely ponder!
Recent research suggests that rituals may be more rational than they appear. Why? Because even simple rituals can be extremely effective. Rituals performed after experiencing losses – from loved ones to lotteries – do alleviate grief, and rituals performed before high-pressure tasks – like singing in public – do in fact reduce anxiety and increase people’s confidence. What’s more, rituals appear to benefit even people who claim not to believe that rituals work. While anthropologists have documented rituals across cultures, this earlier research has been primarily observational. Recently, a series of investigations by psychologists have revealed intriguing new results demonstrating that rituals can have a causal impact on people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
The article then goes through discussing several experimental research studies dealing with ritual behaviors. Quite interesting!
The second one was about how rituals actually make food taste better! It briefly describes a recent study that revealed this effect. They also discovered that personal involvement in a ritual was a necessary component. Observing someone else's ritual did not affect the taste, only when performing a ritual themselves did they perceive the food or drink tasting better.
Rituals provide comfort in a confusing world, a semblance of order amid chaos. Shared rituals amplify these feelings of comfort. When an individual performs a simple private ritual, they feel some relief from anxiety, when an entire group perform a shared ritual, the resulting relief is amplified throughout a community, maybe even further, because emotions can spread like a wildfire or contagion.
The bottom line, rituals make us feel better.
For example, when I was diagnosed with MS and started taking Copaxone (a daily injection), I started making a ritual out of my "injection time". I did this for several reasons: 1) to reduce my anxiety at having to give myself a shot while I'm afraid of needles. 2) to make sure that I did it everyday (my past record of remembering a daily medication can be proved by my second born child, lol). 3) to reduce the chances of being interrupted. and 4) to give myself a sense of control over a disease that has no known cure and no real predictable course (relapse can happen at any time and manifest in any form that has to do with the central nervous system).
Many treasured memories center around family rituals. Rituals help us identify who we are both as an individual and as a family; they provide something constant, stable, and secure in a confusing world; they help us make life cycle transitions; and they help us come together
during times of crisis. Rituals also help to create an awareness of our connection with our ancestors and those who will follow after us. Rituals can range from eating meals together on a regular basis, to attending football games, or sitting with family and friends at a large Thanksgiving dinner. According to Harrar (2003, p. 28), family rituals make people “feel happier, better loved, and more strongly a part of families.”
The brief fact sheet continues on to briefly overview the six stages of the family life cycle and the rituals common for each one.
Of course, there is also a dark side of ritual, when it become debilitating rather than helpful. This is most often seen in OCD and Schizophrenia type disorders. Here's a short video about OCD and Religion that's pretty interesting, from 2002 (in other words a younger Dr. Sapolsky, as he's a bit older in the video series I reference further down.
To understand more about this, I saw a series of lectures on Human Behavioral Biology, including topics such as Language, Schizophrenia, and Individual Differences by Dr. Robert Sapolsky from Stanford University on Youtube. Extremely insightful!
Here's a link to a full
25-lecture Course: Human Behavioral Biology (Stanford BIO 250)
This is a biology course presented by Stanford University. It covers how to approach complex normal and abnormal behaviors through biology. How to integrate disciplines including sociobiology, ethology, neuroscience, and endocrinology to examine behaviors such as aggression, sexual behavior, language use, and mental illness.
The course is taught by Robert Sapolsky. Sapolsky is a Professor of Biology, Neurosurgery, Neurology & Neurological Sciences at Stanford University.
