Psychology Today Blogs - Young Americans

Little Greedheads

David Anderegg, Ph.D. — Sat, 10 May 2008 15:02:21 -0700

I recently carried out a fascinating little exercise in my developmental psychology class. We were talking about models of moral socialization, or how children learn to do the right thing. To make it more concrete, I asked my college students to share the earliest transgression they remembered: what they did wrong, what happened to them, and how they felt about it. This is an interesting, if somewhat risky, undertaking: some college students still feel humiliated and/or angry about how they were treated for relatively minor transgressions- and really, what major transgression can a three- or four-year-old accomplish? We shared stories of all kinds of misdeeds and a wide range of corrections, including a surprising amount (for a progressive college) of corporal punishments. But the really interesting part was the theme of greed as an integral part of most of these misdeeds. A majority of the stories of childhood misdeeds were all about children being driven mad with greed, usually as a result of watching television. One young man pitched a fit in the grocery store because he had to have the sugary cereal he saw so alluringly portrayed in a television ad. A young woman lied her way to a hotly-desired Barbie. Another broke into the Christmas presents early to get her hands on her dream doll (which she desperately wanted because she saw it advertised on television). And on and on and on. It is not news, of course, that little kids want attractive toys. Those of us of a certain age all studied an endless stream of "delay of gratification" experiments in which snazzy toys were always the bait for kids who just couldn't keep their hands off them. But my little experiment pointed out to me the enormous role of advertising in the felt snazziness of those toys. My students remember that their very first sins were driven by media-induced desire. One can only feel for their parents, forced to defend their familial values ("Son, we don't eat Sugar Googoo Flakes for breakfast") against the onslaughts of market-tested commercial pitches aimed directly at their kids' pleasure centers. Was it ever thus? Have kids always, throughout history, experienced such unrelenting greed? The Ten Commandments tell us not to steal or covet, but the things enumerated as covet-worthy were useful things, like thy neighbor's ass. God didn't name Barbies or Sugar Googoo Flakes as things we should not covet, but then, the ancient Israelites didn't have TV to contend with. Lucky them.

This Nip Is Not a Bite :)

David Anderegg, Ph.D. — Sat, 03 May 2008 14:40:50 -0700

This week, the Associated Press reported something every college professor already knows: young people increasingly use informal language in what is supposed to be formal writing. The study, a co-production of the Pew Internet and American Life Project and the National Commission on Writing at the College Board, noted that 50% of kids sometimes fail to use proper capitalization in formal writing. They are also inclined to use the informal language of instant messaging, like "lol" for "laughing out loud" or emoticons like :) or :( to indicate how a statement is to be understood. The developmental psychologist in me, says "And why shouldn't they?" Scholars of play in non-human primates and in young children spend tons of time studying metacommunicative devices, those faces and vocalizations that indicate how a message is to be understood. Monkeys, when playing, use very specific facial expressions to indicate that "this nip is not a bite," just as children indicate to each other the differences between play fighting and real fighting. These face-to-face interactions use metacommunication to increase clarity and avoid confusion. Emoticons might be seen as a carryover into written language of precisely this kind of metacommunication: by adding a :) or a "lol," kids clarify for each other (and sometimes for their professors) how a statement is meant to be understood. What's wrong with that? Well…the writer in me says, everything is wrong with that. Using words to reduce ambiguity is what good writing is all about. The writer in me says using emoticons is lazy as well as childish. Language changes, as we know, and it may be that in two generations everyone will be using emoticons. But those of us who grew up without them will always see them as a cheap shortcut and a distraction from the simple elegance of clear prose. And that's only half the problem. The other half is that prose is sometimes meant to be ambiguous, and metacommunicative devices can spoil the delicious mystery of what the writer intends. Imagine if Jonathan Swift had used emoticons in his famous 1729 satirical piece "A Modest Proposal For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being Aburden to Their Parents or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to The Public." Swift might have written, ”I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled :) " No one would have said, "How outrageous!" or "He can't be serious!" or "That man should be locked up!" They would have been certain he was "lol." What a dreary world. The writer in me says, in the emoticon world, all that :) adds up to one big :( .

A Rising Tide Sinks All Boats

David Anderegg, Ph.D. — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:30:40 -0700

If you read today's New York Times, you might have noticed that this week is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the report on our nation's schools entitled "A Nation at Risk."

The country went all wobbly in 1983 about what the report described as the “rising tide of mediocrity” in educational achievement: people got really worried about what our kids didn't know.

As a response to that wave of national concern, then-President George Bush signed an heroic resolution in 1990: "By the year 2000, United States students will be the first in the world in mathematics and science achievement." Given the dismal results of the last 25 years, it is probably not surprising that no heroic resolutions seem to be forthcoming from any quarter. Other than failed educational initiatives, what’s new in the last 25 years? Is there anything that might account for our kids’ continuing incompetence, especially in science and math?

Well, let’s answer that question with a question. Have you seen “Beauty and the Geek”? If you’re not a devotee of “reality” television, you may have missed this lovely little show. It’s the one where young Americans are portrayed as coming in exactly two varieties: smart and hideously unattractive, or beautiful and dumb as a box of rocks. The “geeks” are labeled with identifiers under their names, like “Perfect SAT scores,” or “Biomechanical engineer” as if these factoids were enough to establish what the show goes on to demonstrate: people who excel in science and math have no hope of getting a date. (This week, the show actually televised one of the "geeks" picking his nose.) The “beauties” come off just as poorly, shamelessly reifying every blonde joke you’re ever heard. The "geeks" are usually guys, and the "beauties" are girls. But one thing that is new in the last twenty-five years is that kids of both genders face relentless pressure from contemporary media to be “hot, ” and they face relentless vilification if they are “not.” If math and science are the royal road to nerdity, as “Beauty and the Geek” so baldly states, why would any kid ever want to go there?

Of course, anti-intellectual prejudice doesn’t stop real intellectual achievers: presumably the “geeks” on television persist in their careers despite the disparagement they encounter. The real damage from nerd and geek stereotypes might be to those middle-of-the-road kids, the kids who might take an interest in math or science but who, because they watch too much television, think that math and science are social poison.

As pediatric studies have conclusively demonstrated, television watching is inversely proportional to grades in middle and high school. Maybe it’s not just about time for homework: maybe it’s the constant drumbeat of stereotyping that tells kids they must be “beauties” or “geeks,” but they cannot be both.

Etymologists of slang tell us that the term “nerd” first appeared in print in 1953, but it did not gain national currency until it was repeated over and over by none other than “the Fonz” on the popular sitcom “Happy Days.” The show ran from the years 1974-1984, right around the same time the “rising tide of mediocrity” started lapping at our kids’ ankles. Is there a connection? You do the math.

The Desperate Season

David Anderegg, Ph.D. — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:40:37 -0700

Psychologists who study the irrational- whether we call it intuition, the unconscious, "automatic" knowledge or the "unthought known"- can only love the last two weeks in April. This is the season when high school seniors have been admitted to the colleges of their choice, and have to make The Big Decision. Now, we know there are kids who have no Big Decision: some have only been admitted to one college, or unequal financial aid packages offered by several colleges make the decision a no-brainer. But for many kids, this time of year is when they have to make a seemingly life-altering choice. On what basis do they make it? Up until now, the process has seemed oh-so-rational. Kids use guidance counselors and parents to select colleges that seem to be a good fit in terms of size, courses of study, geography, costs- and then apply to these rational choice colleges with great and systematic effort. And now…three out of the five, or two out of the six, said yes. Now what? Suddenly, irrationality kicks in. All those rational choices devolve into things like "I liked the girl that gave the tour," or "The tuna melt they served was a little sketchy." One college admissions officer tells of a high school senior who declined his school because "they don't have any trees." But she had visited in November, when the numerous campus trees were bare: she changed her mind and decided to go after all after a second visit in leafier mid-April. Some of the reasons given are potentially disastrous, like "Another kid from my high school is going so it will be just like home." But most of these intuitions are rationalizations for something deeper that might be understood if one had the time- which one doesn't, because the decision has to be made in two or three weeks. What's a parent to do? Don't despair. If the original set of choices was rational, the final choice will have to be sound as well, even if your child's explanations make him sound a little too…intuitive. And if all else fails there's always the transfer application. Then your kid will have a whole new set of choices to make at this time next spring.