The Reciprocity Experiment
This is fascinating. I get these mailing labels every year from charities I’ve never heard of. I feel so GUILTY not sending them anything – they’ve spent their hard earned money sending me a gift! What to do? This man studied the phenomenon and discovered that we all find ourselves in this dilemma from time to time.
This is from National Public Radio, where I get the best news of things I might never hear about otherwise:
Give And Take: How The Rule Of Reciprocation Binds Us
by ALIX SPIEGEL
In 1974, Phillip Kunz and his family got a record number of Christmas cards. In the weeks before Christmas they came daily, sometimes by the dozen. Kunz still has them in his home, collected in an old photo album.
“Dear Phil, Joyce and family,” a typical card reads, “we received your holiday greeting with much joy and enthusiasm … Merry Christmas and Happy New Year’s. Love Lou, Bev and the children.”
The cards from that year came in all shapes and sizes, but the basic message was the same. The writers wanted Kunz to know that he and his family were cared for, and also they wanted to share their own news. They included pictures of family members and new homes and smiling graduates with freshly minted diplomas.
It all seems pretty normal, except for one thing: Kunz didn’t know any of them.
Kunz was a sociologist at Brigham Young University. Earlier that year he’d decided to do an experiment to see what would happen if he sent Christmas cards to total strangers.
And so he went out and collected directories for some nearby towns and picked out around 600 names. “I started out at a random number and then skipped so many and got to the next one,” he says.
To these 600 strangers, Kunz sent his Christmas greetings: handwritten notes or a card with a photo of him and his family. And then Kunz waited to see what would happen.
In 1974, Phillip Kunz, a sociologist at Brigham Young University, wanted to see what would happen if he sent Christmas cards to people he didn’t know.
Courtesy of the L. Tom Perry Special Collections at Brigham Young University
“It was just, you know, a shot in the dark,” he says. “I didn’t know what would happen.”
But about five days later, responses started filtering back — slowly at first and then more, until eventually they were coming 12, 15 at a time. Eventually Kunz got more than 200 replies. “I was really surprised by how many responses there were,” he says. “And I was surprised by the number of letters that were written, some of them three, four pages long.”
Why would someone send a three-page letter to a complete and total stranger?
Why did so many people write him back at all?
Following Rules
Robert Cialdini is an emeritus psychologist at Arizona State University who studies how our behavior is affected by social rules that we’re only vaguely aware of but which have incredible power over what we do. What happened to Kunz, he explains, is the direct result of one of the rules that most interest him: the rule of reciprocation. The rule, he says, is drilled into us as children.
“We are obligated to give back to others, the form of behavior that they have first given to us,” he says. “Essentially thou shall not take without giving in return.”
And so if someone passes you in the hall and says hello, you feel compelled to return their greeting. When you don’t, you notice it, it makes you uncomfortable, out of balance. That’s the rule of reciprocation.
“There’s not a single human culture that fails to train its members in this rule,” Cialdini says.
This is probably because there are some obvious benefits to the rule of reciprocation; it’s one of those rules that likely made it easier for us to survive as a species.
But what’s interesting about all this is how psychologists like Cialdini can actually measure the way the rule affects how we behave in all sorts of situations.
Exhibit A: those little pre-printed address labels that come to us in the mail this time of year along with letters asking for donations.
Those labels seem innocent enough, but they often trigger a small but very real dilemma. “I can’t send it back to them because it’s got my name on it,” Cialdini says. “But as soon as I’ve decided to keep that packet of labels, I’m in the jaws of the rule.”
The packet of labels costs roughly 9 cents, Cialdini says, but it dramatically increases the number of people who give to the charities that send them. “The hit rate goes from 18 to 35 percent,” he says. In other words, the number of people who donate almost doubles.
You can see the same thing when it comes to tipping.
If a server brings you a check and does not include a candy on the check tray, you will tip the server whatever it is that you feel the server deserves. “But if there’s a mint on the tray, tips go up 3.3 percent,” Cialdini says.
According to Cialdini, the researchers who did that study also discovered that if while delivering the tray with the mint the server paused, looked the customers in the eye, and then gave them a second mint while telling them the candy was specifically for them, “tips went through the roof.”
Servers who gave a second mint got a 20 percent increase over their normal tip.
Many decades ago Cialdini noticed a similar phenomenon when he studied Hare Krishnas in the U.S. He says that in the late 1960s the religion was really struggling financially; it seemed strange to many Americans, so it was hard for them to raise money.
But then they hit on a solution. In airports (and other public places), they would simply give the people passing by what they described as a gift: a flower, a book, a magazine. Then, after the person had the gift in his or her hand, they would ask for a small donation. Cialdini says he spent days in different airports observing these transactions, watching as recipients struggled to come up with the right solution.
“You would see many of them with frowns on their faces reach into a pocket or a purse, come up with a dollar or two, and then walk away angry at what had just occurred,” recalls Cialdini. But they would give, he believes, because of the rule of reciprocation. For years, he says, the Hare Krishna religion raised millions of dollars this way.
Reciprocating Influence
There are really dozens of ways that the rule of reciprocation affects us, some of them good, some of them bad. For example, politicians, like the rest of us, are subject to the rule of reciprocation. And so when organizations or interest groups give them money, though they might believe that money won’t influence their decisions, it’s sometimes hard for them, as it is for us, to be immune.
Cialdini believes you can also see the rule operate in the medical profession.
“You find doctors more willing to prescribe medication based on what gifts, favors and tips they have been given by one pharmaceutical company or another,” he says.
This doesn’t mean that the rule of reciprocation affects all of us all of the time. Cialdini says different situations trigger different people differently.
But it is powerful. One of those invisible powerful things that can subtly shape how we behave even years after someone has given us something.
Consider the case of Phillip Kunz, the sociologist who decided to send Christmas cards to random strangers.
For years his family got cards from the people he contacted in 1974.
“We got cards for maybe 15 years,” he says.
Gene Predicts Your Time of Death
This is absolutely fascinating to me – and no, it does not predict the day you will die, but the time of day that in all probability you will die. It’s fascinating, and you probably don’t even have to take a genetic test to make a good guess as to what time of day you might likely expire. This is from HuffPost Science:
Gene Predicts Time Of Death Down To Hour, Study Suggests
The Huffington Post | By Ryan Grenoble
Posted: 11/19/2012 2:39 pm EST Updated: 11/19/2012 3:05 pm EST
In an study published in the November 2012 issue of the Annals of Neurology scientists studying the body’s biological clock (a.k.a. the circadian rhythm) report the discovery of gene variant that not only determines the likelihood of your being a morning person, but also predicts, with unsettling accuracy, your likely time of death.
The gene typically allows for three possible combinations of nucleotides (the four molecular building blocks of DNA): adenine-adenine (A-A), adenine-guanine (A-G), and guanine-guanine (G-G), according to a written statement released by Harvard Medical School.
“This particular genotype affects the sleep-wake pattern of virtually everyone walking around,” Dr. Clifford Saper, chief of neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, wrote in the statement. “And it is a fairly profound effect so that the people who have the A-A genotype wake up about an hour earlier than the people who have the G-G genotype, and the A-Gs wake up almost exactly in the middle.”
Moreover, investigators realized as some of the 1,200 older subjects in the project died that these nucleotide sequences were accurate predictors of their time of death, within a range of only a few hours. Patients with the A-A and A-G genotypes typically died just before 11 a.m., while subjects with the G-G combination tended to die near 6 p.m.
“So there is really a gene that predicts the time of day that you’ll die. Not the date, fortunately, but the time of day,” said Saper.
The Atlantic reports researchers believe their results may be due to the human body reverting to its more natural, circadian rhythm-induced state as death approaches, instead of the cycle created by social commitments.
The Hidden Dangers in Baking, Roasting, Grilling, Broiling
This is especially bad news for me; I love broiling and roasting to concentrate flavors. I love those crispy pieces of grilled foods . . . the latest from Bottom Line Publications.
How it’s cooked may increase your risk for chronic illness.
Some of the most serious chronic health problems in the US, including Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, diabetes and kidney and heart disease, have been linked to what we eat—processed foods, fast food, red meat, etc. What may surprise you is that the increased health risks from these foods may be due in large part to how they are cooked.
Dry-heat cooking, such as grilling, broiling, frying and even baking and roasting, greatly increases levels of advanced glycation end-products (AGEs), also known as glycotoxins. Small amounts of these chemical compounds are naturally present in all foods, but their levels rise dramatically when foods are subjected to dry heat, which frequently occurs both in home cooking and in commercial food preparation.
The danger: AGEs are oxidants that produce free radicals, damage DNA, trigger inflammation throughout the body and accelerate the aging process. They also make cholesterol more likely to cling to artery walls, the underlying cause of most heart attacks. Some researchers now believe that AGEs can be linked to most chronic diseases.
A NEW THREAT
A century ago, people mainly ate fresh, homemade foods, such as grains, vegetables, legumes and fruits, with relatively small amounts of meat. The processed food industry was still in its infancy.
However, in the following decades, meat portions grew larger, and Americans acquired a strong desire for the intense flavors, aromas and colors in commercially prepared “browned” foods, such as crackers, chips, cookies, grilled and broiled meats, french fries, pizza, etc. During this time, the rates of heart disease, diabetes and other chronic diseases started to rise. This wasn’t a coincidence—the rich taste, smell and appearance of these foods primarily come from AGEs.
Our bodies can neutralize the small amounts of AGEs that are naturally found in foods (and that we produce as a by-product of metabolism). But our defense mechanisms are overwhelmed with the high amounts that are now very common in the typical American diet.
HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH?
AGEs are measured in kilounits (kU). We recommend consuming no more than 5,000 kU to 8,000 kU per day (see box for examples of kU levels in some common foods). Recent studies have shown that the average American typically consumes more than 15,000 kU daily, and many people eat well over 20,000 kU daily.
Reducing dietary AGEs may be especially important for people with diabetes because high blood sugar levels cause more AGEs to form. It’s also crucial for people with kidney disease because they are less able to remove AGEs from the body. AGEs also are elevated in patients with heart disease, obesity and dementia.
Researchers can measure the amounts of AGEs in the blood, but doctors don’t commonly use this test because it’s not currently available for commercial use. What your doctor can do is measure levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker for inflammation. If your level is high (above 3 mg/dL), you may have excessive AGEs in your blood. If you eat a lot of grilled, broiled and roasted meats, for example, and/or heat-treated processed foods, this also means your AGE levels are likely too high.
AN “AGE-LESS” DIET
Our studies have shown that people who make simple dietary changes can reduce their levels of AGEs by more than 50% in four months. The reduction is accompanied by a similar decrease in CRP levels. Helpful strategies…
Eat less animal protein. Animal protein, especially red meat, is among the main sources of AGEs—and the levels can multiply tenfold when the meat is grilled, broiled, baked or roasted. Helpful: Eat beef no more than three times a week.
Because animal fat also contributes to AGE intake, eat lean meats. They have fewer AGEs than higher-fat meats. Animal fats such as butter also are higher in AGEs than plant fats such as olive oil.
Best approach: Fill three-quarters of your plate with plant foods, such as vegetables, whole grains, legumes and fruits, and leave no more than one-quarter of the plate for animal foods, such as meats and cheeses.
Soups and stews are tasty ways to serve small portions of meat. Also enjoy more meatless meals, such as vegetarian chili or veggie burgers. Nonfat milk and yogurt are low in AGEs and are a good way to add protein to meals and snacks.
Avoid dry-heat cooking, such as grilling, broiling, baking, roasting and frying. High, dry heat greatly increases AGEs. Example: A piece of raw meat might have 500 kU to 700 kU of AGEs. But after the meat is broiled, the level can rise to 5,000 kU to 8,000 kU.
Better approach: Cook with moist heat—stew, poach, steam, boil or microwave. A piece of chicken that’s poached or boiled, for example, will have about 1,000 kU. The same piece of chicken will have about 5,000 kU when it’s broiled.
If you have a desire for grilled or roasted foods, vegetables and fruits are better choices than meats. These foods have far fewer AGEs than meats and fats when cooked with dry heat.
If you do cook with dry heat, marinate first. The eventual formation of AGEs is reduced by about 50% when raw meats are marinated in acidic ingredients, such as vinegar or lemon juice. For each pound of meat, use the juice from two lemons or an equivalent amount of vinegar or lime juice plus enough water to cover the meat (about one cup). Add some garlic and/or herbs for extra flavor. Avoid commercial marinades since they’re usually high in sugar and/or oil, which will increase AGEs.
Reheat gently. Microwaving is a good method for reheating meats and other foods. Be sure to include plenty of liquid and reheat to a safe temperature to prevent the possibility of food-borne illness due, for example, to E. coli or salmonella.
Soups, sauces and gravies should be brought to a boil. Leftovers such as meats and casseroles should be reheated to 165°F.
Don’t eat certain foods together. Consuming meats with foods that are high in sugar—for example, having a slice of cake after eating a hamburger—allows existing AGEs in the meat to interact with the sugars in the cake, creating higher levels of AGEs.
Similarly, eating meats with very high-fat foods, such as a hamburger topped with bacon and cheese, will produce far more AGEs than consuming these foods by themselves.
Focus on fresh foods. Because processed foods have high levels of AGEs, fresh foods and foods that have been minimally processed are a much better choice.
A serving of rice, for example, will have almost no AGEs, but the same amount of crispy rice cereal will have 600 kU. Avoid takeout and convenience foods, such as fast-food burgers, fries and pizza.
Warning: Any food that has been browned or crisped, such as cookies, crackers, chips, etc., will be high in AGEs.
Sources: Sandra Woodruff, RD, a registered dietitian and nutrition consultant based in Tallahassee, Florida, and Helen Vlassara, MD, an endocrinologist and professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, where she directs the Experimental Diabetes and Aging Division. They are coauthors of The AGE-Less Way: Escape America’s Overeating Epidemic. (www.TheAGE-lessWay.com)
Smell More, Eat Less
This is another great find from Bottom Line Secrets; we often read things from them that haven’t yet hit the headlines or the TV news:
You probably associate delicious food aromas with wanting to eat more of whatever you’re smelling, whether it’s the scent of fresh-baked cookies or bacon sizzling in the skillet.
But a new study suggests that powerful food smells actually may help you eat less… and lose weight in the process.
SMELL MORE, EAT LESS
René de Wijk, PhD, is a Dutch sensory scientist who studies how people react to the look, feel, taste and smell of food.
He wanted to explore whether the smell of food influences how big a bite we take, because previous studies have shown that when we take smaller bites, we feel full on fewer calories than when we take bigger bites.
Dr. de Wijk hooked 10 volunteers to machines that pumped a custard dessert directly into their mouths. (I know—I wish that I could have participated in this study, too.)
At the same time, the subjects were randomly exposed to either a slightly detectable aroma of natural cream…or a moderately detectable aroma of natural cream…or no aroma at all. During the experiment, the participants could press a button whenever they wanted to stop the flow of custard, which determined their “bite” size. The key result? People pressed the button more quickly—in essence, took smaller bites—when the aroma was stronger.
What surprised Dr. de Wijk was the fact that it didn’t take an overly strong scent to influence his subjects’ bite size. “Even the relatively weak aroma was associated with a smaller bite size. Most of the subjects were not even aware that an aroma had been presented—the decision to take a smaller bite was largely subconscious,” he said.
Dr. de Wijk theorized why the smell may have worked. “A cream aroma is associated with calories, and we regulate calories via bite size,” he said. Or, it could also be that we have an innate tendency to try to moderate intense sensations of any kind, so we take smaller bites as a protective measure. (Dr. de Wijk’s work has also shown that we take smaller bites from highly textured foods.)
CHOOSE FRAGRANT FOODS
“I would think that any foods that have intense flavors—and therefore intense scents—would result in smaller bite size and, therefore, you’d need less food to feel full,” he told me. So creamy aromas aren’t the only ones that might help you eat less. For example, aromas that are strongly spicy, meaty, buttery, fishy, vinegary, lemony, garlicky or oniony—anything other than bland—might also do the trick. And whatever the aroma, eating your food warm or hot might help you eat less than eating it cold, since warmth brings out aromas more strongly. Heat up those leftovers!
Source: René A. de Wijk, PhD, senior sensory scientist in the department of food and biobased research at Wageningen University and Research Centre, The Netherlands, and lead author of a study published in Flavour.
Big Brother Exploring Crowd Control
I find this terrifying, on the lines of those loud, destructive aliens in that Tom Cruise movie about an invasion from outer space. Have you ever heard a noise so loud you couldn’t think? Couldn’t hear? Now imagine that noise in your mind! The potential applications for this technology whether for crowd control or warfare are appalling.
Microwave Ray Gun
Under a research contract from the U.S. Navy, microwave ray guns are being developed by Sierra Nevada Corp. that are designed to beam sounds directly into people’s heads at a distance of up to several hundred yards away. The device—dubbed MEDUSA (Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio)—exploits the microwave audio effect, in which short microwave pulses rapidly heat tissue causing a sound effect “loud” enough to cause discomfort or even incapacitation. While
supposedly intended for non-lethal use in crowd control, future military uses for this type of technology are sure to arouse the imagination.
Male Castration Increases Life Expectancy
I’m sorry, when I read this article, I couldn’t help laughing. I don’t think I know a single man who would choose a longer life at the cost of castration.
By: Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
Published: 09/24/2012 12:16 PM EDT on LiveScience
Castration & Life Expectancy: Eunuchs Live Longer Than Other Men, Study Shows
It’s a life-extending strategy most men probably won’t want to pursue, but new research suggests eunuchs live longer than non-castrated guys.
Historical Korean eunuchs — men who had their testicles removed in order to secure high positions in the palace hierarchy — outlived their non-castrated counterparts by as much as 20 years, the study finds. The results will be published tomorrow (Sept. 25) in the journal Current Biology.
In animals, castration tends to lengthen life span, likely because male sex hormones aren’t great for the health. Testosterone is an immune-system suppressor, for example, and can also increase the risk for cardiovascular disease.
But in humans, results have been mixed as to whether castration lengthens life span. One study on patients in a mental hospital found that it does, while another on castrated and non-castrated male singers found that it does not. Nevertheless, researchers have theorized that testosterone’s effects may be the reason women outlive men on average. Other research has suggested a genetic explanation for this life-span gap. [7 Ways to Live Past 100]
In the new study, Inha University researcher Kyung-Jin Min and his colleagues scoured the historical records from Korea’s Chosun (or Joseon) Dynasty, which ran from 1392 to 1910. Until 1894, castration was a way for men to gain access to political power and prestige in the dynasty. Eunuchs could achieve official ranks and marry and adopt girls and similarly castrated boys in order to maintain a family lineage. Eunuchs and male royal family members were the only men allowed to stay overnight in the royal palace.
In fact, eunuchs were used in many ancient empires to guard royal harems, given that they could not impregnate an emperor’s queen or mistress, according to “Hidden Power: The Palace Eunuchs of Imperial China” (Buffalo NY: Prometheus, 1990). Without children of their own, eunuchs were also thought to be more loyal and less likely to attempt to establish their own family dynasties.
By comparing an 1805 genealogy of eunuchs and their families with other court documents, Min and his colleagues were able to determine the life spans of 81 eunuchs. They then compared those life spans with those of non-castrated men of similar socioeconomic status living at the same time. These men were members of three prominent families, most of whom were martial officers or civil administrators.
They found that the average life span for a Korean court eunuch was about 70 years, plus or minus 1.76 years. That was 14.4 to 19.1 years longer than their average non-eunuch contemporaries, who tended to live between 50.9 and 55.6 years.
The differences couldn’t be explained by a cushy palace existence, the researchers wrote, because most eunuchs only went to the palace when on-duty and lived outside it. In fact, male members of the royal family, who spent all their time in palaces, had the shortest lives, making it to about 45 or 47 years of age on average.
Teachers’ Expectations Evoke Life-Changing Achievement
Yes, this is a long article from National Public Radio, but it’s important. I want you to read it, and if you have the time, go to the website – you can click on the blue type above – and listen to it yourself, because it is life changing for us, and for how we treat our children, too.
Do it at a time when you have time to listen. It caught me by surprise, but I was so enthralled, I stayed for the entire segment. Children with the greatest challenges can succeed, if they are nurtured and mentored. Any child can be a success; there are no losers. This is powerful stuff. 🙂
by ALIX SPIEGEL
In my Morning Edition story today, I look at expectations — specifically, how teacher expectations can affect the performance of the children they teach.
The first psychologist to systematically study this was a Harvard professor named Robert Rosenthal, who in 1964 did a wonderful experiment at an elementary school south of San Francisco.
The idea was to figure out what would happen if teachers were told that certain kids in their class were destined to succeed, so Rosenthal took a normal IQ test and dressed it up as a different test.
“It was a standardized IQ test, Flanagan’s Test of General Ability,” he says. “But the cover we put on it, we had printed on every test booklet, said ‘Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition.’ ”
Rosenthal told the teachers that this very special test from Harvard had the very special ability to predict which kids were about to be very special — that is, which kids were about to experience a dramatic growth in their IQ.
After the kids took the test, he then chose from every class several children totally at random. There was nothing at all to distinguish these kids from the other kids, but he told their teachers that the test predicted the kids were on the verge of an intense intellectual bloom.
As he followed the children over the next two years, Rosenthal discovered that the teachers’ expectations of these kids really did affect the students. “If teachers had been led to expect greater gains in IQ, then increasingly, those kids gained more IQ,” he says.
But just how do expectations influence IQ?
As Rosenthal did more research, he found that expectations affect teachers’ moment-to-moment interactions with the children they teach in a thousand almost invisible ways. Teachers give the students that they expect to succeed more time to answer questions, more specific feedback, and more approval: They consistently touch, nod and smile at those kids more.
“It’s not magic, it’s not mental telepathy,” Rosenthal says. “It’s very likely these thousands of different ways of treating people in small ways every day.”
So since expectations can change the performance of kids, how do we get teachers to have the right expectations? Is it possible to change bad expectations? That was the question that brought me to the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, where I met Robert Pianta.
Pianta, dean of the Curry School, has studied teachers for years, and one of the first things he told me when we sat down together was that it is truly hard for teachers to control their expectations.
“It’s really tough for anybody to police their own beliefs,” he said. “But think about being in a classroom with 25 kids. The demands on their thinking are so great.”
Still, people have tried. The traditional way, Pianta says, has been to sit teachers down and try to change their expectations through talking to them.
“For the most part, we’ve tried to convince them that the beliefs they have are wrong,” he says. “And we’ve done most of that convincing using information.”
But Pianta has a different idea of how to go about changing teachers’ expectations. He says it’s not effective to try to change their thoughts; the key is to train teachers in an entirely new set of behaviors.
For years, Pianta and his colleagues at the Curry School have been collecting videotapes of teachers teaching. By analyzing these videos in minute ways, they’ve developed a good idea of which teaching behaviors are most effective. They can also see, Pianta tells me, how teacher expectations affect both their behaviors and classroom dynamics.
Pianta gives one very specific example: the belief that boys are disruptive and need to be managed.
“Say I’m a teacher and I ask a question in class, and a boy jumps up, sort of vociferously … ‘I know the answer! I know the answer! I know the answer!’ ” Pianta says.
“If I believe boys are disruptive and my job is control the classroom, then I’m going to respond with, ‘Johnny! You’re out of line here! We need you to sit down right now.’ ”
This, Pianta says, will likely make the boy frustrated and emotionally disengaged. He will then be likely to escalate his behavior, which will simply confirm the teacher’s beliefs about him, and the teacher and kid are stuck in an unproductive loop.
But if the teacher doesn’t carry those beliefs into the classroom, then the teacher is unlikely to see that behavior as threatening.
Instead it’s: ” ‘Johnny, tell me more about what you think is going on … But also, I want you to sit down quietly now as you tell that to me,’ ” Pianta says.
“Those two responses,” he says, “are dictated almost entirely by two different interpretations of the same behavior that are driven by two different sets of beliefs.”
To see if teachers’ beliefs would be changed by giving them a new set of teaching behaviors, Pianta and his colleagues recently did a study.
They took a group of teachers, assessed their beliefs about children, then gave a portion of them a standard pedagogy course, which included information about appropriate beliefs and expectations. Another portion got intense behavioral training, which taught them a whole new set of skills based on those appropriate beliefs and expectations.
For this training, the teachers videotaped their classes over a period of months and worked with personal coaches who watched those videos, then gave them recommendations about different behaviors to try.
After that intensive training, Pianta and his colleagues analyzed the beliefs of the teachers again. What he found was that the beliefs of the trained teachers had shifted way more than the beliefs of teachers given a standard informational course.
This is why Pianta thinks that to change beliefs, the best thing to do is change behaviors.
“It’s far more powerful to work from the outside in than the inside out if you want to change expectations,” he says.
In other words, if you want to change a mind, simply talking to it might not be enough.
7 Ways Teachers Can Change Their Expectations
Researcher Robert Pianta offered these suggestions for teachers who want to change their behavior toward problem students:
Watch how each student interacts. How do they prefer to engage? What do they seem to like to do? Observe so you can understand all they are capable of.
Listen. Try to understand what motivates them, what their goals are and how they view you, their classmates and the activities you assign them.
Engage. Talk with students about their individual interests. Don’t offer advice or opinions – just listen.
Experiment: Change how you react to challenging behaviors. Rather than responding quickly in the moment, take a breath. Realize that their behavior might just be a way of reaching out to you.
Meet: Each week, spend time with students outside of your role as “teacher.” Let the students choose a game or other nonacademic activity they’d like to do with you. Your job is to NOT teach but watch, listen and narrate what you see, focusing on students’ interests and what they do well. This type of activity is really important for students with whom you often feel in conflict or who you avoid.
Reach out: Know what your students like to do outside of school. Make it a project for them to tell you about it using some medium in which they feel comfortable: music, video, writing, etc. Find both individual and group time for them to share this with you. Watch and listen to how skilled, motivated and interested they can be. Now think about school through their eyes.
Reflect: Think back on your own best and worst teachers, bosses or supervisors. List five words for each that describe how you felt in your interactions with them. How did the best and the worst make you feel? What specifically did they do or say that made you feel that way? Now think about how your students would describe you. Jot down how they might describe you and why. How do your expectations or beliefs shape how they look at you? Are there parallels in your beliefs and their responses to you?
Arousal Trumps Ick Factor When Women Have Sex
First, who funds these studies??? LOL, how do they think up the test criteria? Found this morning on AOL News/Huffpost:
How Arousal Overrides Disgust During Sex: Study
Sex may be one of life’s great pleasures, but it also involves a lot that normally might gross people out — sweat, bodily fluids and body odor, for starters.
A small Dutch study, released Wednesday, set out to identify the psychology that leads women to willingly, and even enthusiastically, engage in sexual activities despite the ick factor. The results, published online in the journal PLoS ONE, indicate that arousal overrides feelings of disgust and facilitates a woman’s desire to do something that a woman who is not aroused might find flat-out repulsive.
“Women [who] were sexually aroused were more willing to touch and do initially disgusting tasks,” study co-author Charmaine Borg, a researcher in the department of clinical psychology and experimental psychopathology at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands, told The Huffington Post.
Borg and her colleagues separated 90 female university students into three equal groups: one watched “female friendly erotica;” one watched a video of extreme sports meant to get them excited, but in a non-sexual way; and one watched a video of a train, meant to elicit a neutral response.
The women were then given 16 tasks, most of them unappealing. They were asked to take a sip from a cup of juice that had a large (fake) insect in it, to wipe their hands with a used tissue and to take a bite from a cookie that was sitting next to a living worm. The women were also asked to perform several sex-related tasks, like lubricating a vibrator.
Women in the “aroused group” said they found both the unpleasant tasks and the sex-related tasks less disgusting than women in the other groups. They also completed the highest percentage of the activities, suggesting that sexual arousal not only decreases feelings of disgust, but directly affects what women are willing to do, the study shows.
Daniel R. Kelly, an associate professor of philosophy at Purdue University and author of the book “Yuck! The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust” who was not involved in the study, explained that disgust is an “extension of our immune system” that helps prevent people from getting infected by making them wary of things, like bodily fluids, that potentially carry disease or make people vulnerable.
“Disgust is an emotion,” he explained. “What it’s there for, primarily, is to protect us against eating things that might poison us, or coming into close physical proximity to things that might carry infections. That’s its mission.”
David Buss, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas Austin and author of “Why Women Have Sex,” called disgust a “huge issue for women.”
“Women show far more disgust and especially sexual disgust, than men,” he said.
Buss concurred with Kelly that the findings are evidence of what “is very likely an evolved psychological defense.”
“It helps to protect women from having sex with the wrong men, such as men who might communicate diseases, men who show signs of a high ‘parasite load,’ men who have poor hygiene and so on,” he said.
What is interesting about the new Dutch paper, the two experts agreed, is that it suggests the mission to avoid the potentially “dangerous” parts of sex takes a backseat when women are aroused. “Sexual arousal can override disgust,” Buss said.
That not only suggests a potential reason why a woman might engage in behaviors that she wouldn’t if she weren’t turned on, it might also provide insights into how low-sexual arousal feeds sexual dysfunctions in women, the study’s authors argue.
“These findings indicate that lack of sexual arousal may interfere with functional sex, as it may prevent the reduction of disgust and disgust-related avoidance tendencies,” Borg explained, saying she hopes the findings prompt further research in this area.
Trial Run: Lessons Learned
We have most everything put away now, a real pain in the neck, but we keep in mind that it is not as much a pain in the neck as losing everything, or having to hack a hole in your own roof to escape a flood which completely ruins a house so you have to rebuild and live somewhere else while you are rebuilding. It’s even a lot easier than having a window or roof or garage breached, and the resulting damage from wind-driven rain, or just sheets of rain.
Today has had higher gusts of wind and frequent showers, and an occasional breakthrough of Pensacola sunshine.
We know how long it takes to put on our window protection – and take it off. We know how long it takes to clear all the potential flying objects out of our backyard. We know a couple vulnerable points, and that it’s going to be expensive to get a fix big enough to give us complete protection. It’s a gamble.
Here is something else I know, very valuable.
I know that I can keep hot coffee and hot water HOT for five days.
This great thermal jug from Qatar had coffee still warm after five days – not hot, but warm.
This little thermos from Starbucks kept coffee very warm, but not hot:
And this is a large thermos/ server I found in Kuwait and used for three years for large groups of ladies. Six years later, it is still working great. I poured boiling water into it on Sunday night, and on Thursday afternoon, it was still almost boiling hot. It was hot enough you can use it to make soup, which is just what you need to be able to do when you have no electricity and need to fix something that can warm you up.
The WINNER!
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