Friendship

How do we chose our friends? What distinguishes a friend from a mere acquantance?
Children are more likely to become friends when they are alike in age, sex, ethnicity, race and interests similar.
In adolescents, as in adulthood, it is similarity in attitudes, life goals, and intelligence that helps us establish a friendship.

Just recently i had a discussion with my friend about things/characteristics in personalities that we didnt like in other people. We ended up talking a lot about friendship and what it means to us, how we find friends and how rare they are.
For example, think your best, best, bestest friend in the whole wide world. How did you meet and how did they become your best friend?
How come we like one person but not another? It's because we look for oursleves in other people. we look for our attitutes and beliefs in our friends. We look for people who share those attitudes and beliefes as they are most likely to support us when it coems down to it. If you think about it, considering we are all different, everyone has the chance to have and make friends even people that you can't stand. Have you ever not been able to stand someone because their beliefs were just too different from yours so that you thought: how can anyone put up with this and be their friend?????

i know i have, not many times but once or twice have i met people that have just the complete opposite view of me and we just never got along. we didnt fight but we just didnt talk. we did our best if we had to work together in classes but that's about it.
I'm sure most of you have had similar experiences. I never qite understod that friendship phenomenon but i guess your clos friends now are close because of proximity and how much tim eyou spent and had to get to know each other. For example i had a best friend in austria before i left, we still send each other letters and keep in touch, keep each other updated in the happenings in our lives, however i do sometimes worry that maybe since i havent seen her in six years she might have become a different person by now. i now i have changed a LOOOT since coming to singapore. it's just very hard to be friends when you are thousands of kilometres apart. so i do think proximity is very important. however i also believe that distance helps establish whether it is real friendship or if it's just an acquaintance. For example, my friend and i have been writing each other letters for six years. there are quite a few people in austria that used to write me but then stopped because maybe it was too muc work to them and i just wasn't worth it. i dont know but i do know that i'll always appreciate my best friend who still writes me because she's my only connection to my home. My point is really, that it if you are still in touch after so many years you must have something special because it would be a lot easier to just go look for another friend. there are quite a few people that i know in singapore but only few that i know i will be in touch with if i leave singapore. there are just always people that you can trust with anything and then there'll be those that you can have fun hanging out with, but nothing more. Interesting.

Altruism vs. Egoism

This time i thought i'd blog about altruism and egoism. After watching American Idol's charity show called "Idol gives back", how many of you were in tears over the kids in Africa that die every 3 minutes of malaria, or maybe the thousands of children in the same part of world who have been orphaned because their parents died of AIDS and many of the kids themselves are HIV positive? How many of you cried? Even if you didn't watch it last week, think of another time you watched a documentary on poor countries and while you're in the moment, watching you cry, feel bad, want to do good. But how many people actually pull it through? How many wake up the next morning even thinking about the show or the documentary that made them cry?

For the few that do wake up with the will do change the world, did you do anything about it? What did you do?

It's very easy to say you want to change the world, you want to make a difference, but how many people actually end up doing life and world-changing things? And how many of those do it because they are philantropists, rather than that it makes them feel good?

I don't mean to attack you but i want you to really think about this:
I'm sure all of you have given spare change to a person in need at some point in your lives. What made you do it? Did you do it because you genuinely wanted to help that person and even after you gave him/her the money you were thinking about what his life must be like and how he must feel asking you for money? And who of you gave him the spare-change simply because you felt bad for the guy? How did that make you feel? Good? If that's the case wouldn't that mean that the reason you gave him the money in the first place, wasn't even to help but really, to make yourself feel better so you don't go home with a bad conscience? Do you think that's at all a possible explanation for your charitable-ness?
If the latter is true that would make this an egoistic motivation for helping where you may still be helping another person but doign it not for the sake of helping but to obtain any form of reward or to avoid punishment. The former would be an altruistic motivation for helping where the helper's end goal is to simply provide some benefit to another.

SO are we all really good people who want to help others or are we, deep down doing it all for self-profit?

My point really came up after watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and the episode where Phoebe tries to find a self-less good deed, but can't. can you think of one?

Comments?

Prejudice and Discrimination (against Overweight Women)

Someone made a comment today that prompted me to write this week's blog entry about prejudice and discrimination against overweight women.

Firstly I'd like to point out that I am pretty happy with my body; even so, when someone makes a negative remark it can be quite upsetting and make me quite self-conscious. Someone was looking at a picture of me today and told me (even though i never asked for his opinion) that my arms looked "flabby". Why is it that that comment upset me? it might be because the media has taught us that being bigger built or flabby are undesireable characteristics in a woman. however i think the main reason why it upset me is that it's bad enough if strangers judge you but you'd think that your friends wouldn't because they are your friends for different reasons. I just know that i never notice if any of my friends gain or lose weight. and it's not because i dont care about them but because i just don't find their outer appearance of importance. Unfortunately there seem to be people who do care about their friend's outer appearance.

Given the profound negative connotation of obesity for women, it is not surprising that even normal weight women tend to be very concerned about their weight.

Why are so many women unhappy with their body-shapes and sizes?
One reason is that they are constantly exposed to unrealistic standards of thinness.

I remember the first time i heard that Madonna (the singer) doesn't allow her children to watch tv or read newspapers/magazines and how i felt sorry for them. (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=7&entry_id=1341)
I have to admit that by now I completely understand and i respect her for being so strong with her children. they might still grow up in the spotlight but they won't be (so) affected by the media in so many ways.
They will not grow up thinking slim in beautiful, they will make their own decisions and maybe not even stereo-type (as all of those ideas are formed by the media too, since the media likes to focus on negative news). For example, the only time mental illness comes up in the news it is usually portrayed in a negative light, thus the steroetype that the mentally ill do bad things.

Most parents try to shield their children from the world but fail by the time their children become adolescents. It is not even such an extreme action to be taken, but the same way cigarrette ads were banned from tv and news-papers, slimming ads should be banned too.

Am i getting off point here? I just want to add one last point. Singapore is especially bad when it comes to slimming ads and whitening ads. Telling their own country-men that they need to be whiter and slimmer to be considered beautiful. What is up with that? Telling your own people? I'd never seen slimming ads in Austria and even there I was aware of being a bit biger built so I cannot imagine growing up in a country like Singapore where the ideal body is advertised at bus-stops, on tv, in magazines and you are always given a brochure when u walk down Orchard Road. There is just no way of escaping from it.

It's just so sad.

Bystander Effect

There is a visually handicapped, middle-aged man (Let's call him Mr. X) that usually takes the same bus as me when i go home.
In July 2006 I the bus interchange at Boon lay MRT station was changed. It was moved entirely from the one side of the MRT to the other side. I am not aware of SMRT making it an easy transition for the the visually handicapped but i know what i saw that disturbed me that time. I was as usual on my way to the bus stop when from afar I saw Mr X walking in the right direction (my bus stop) but having trouble finding his way around new obstacles such as the shape of the bus interchange. it used to be a square and easily to walk around whereas now it is more of a paragon where the corners are not easily identified.

http://www.sbstransit.com.sg/images/news_2006jun_14-1_poster.jpg

I was astonished and shocked to find that people saw poor Mr X stumbling around, clearly not knowing his way around and did nothing about it. By the time I got to him he was leaning against the wall, clearly exhausted and in dispair. I walked up to him, grabbed his hand, started talking to him and led him to the bus stop.

What is the bystander effect?
According to Wikipedia, the bystander effect is when someone is less likely to intervene in an emergency situation when other people are present and able to help than when he or she is alone.

Possible causes of the bystander effect is the idea of diffusion of responsibility. People walk by thinking that someone else will surely take care of it or attend to the person. The problem with this is that if everyone thinks this way how will anyone ever help? Luckily there are people that are leaders and not followers.
There are types of diffusion of responsibility:

• groupthink: action taken by a individuals in a group which they wold never do when alone
• bystander effect: if no action is taken to help another individual
  
• hierarchical organizations: someone else tells them to do or not do something which makes it less personal and easier

Examples of Diffusion of Responsibility taken from Wikipedia:

• In a firing squad, one of the shooters may be randomly issued a weapon containing a blank cartridge rather than one with a bullet. This allows each of the members of the firing squad to believe that he did not fire a fatal shot.
• In some electric chairs there are many switches, only one of which is connected. The executioners may then choose to believe that they pulled a non-functional switch.

Interesting? I think so. So, next time you see someone who needs help be the one to act. Be a leader and not a follower! I'd also like to make a quick last point and encourage everyone to start putting themselves in another's shoes. For example if you see someone with an epileptic fit, there are other people tending to that person and you know there is nothing you can do, walk on. This would not be considered the bystander effect because someone is already helping. By walking away you are showing consideration because imagine you have such a fit (which you cannot control) and you wake up to find 30+ people starring at you and realize they just saw you at your most helpless. What a horrible feeling!!

Look up the case study of Kitty Genovese who was died because 38 people (who witnessed) didn't call the police for help when she was being murdered by a serial killer in 1964.

References and interesting articles to check out:

http://psychology.about.com/od/socialpsychology/a/bystandereffect.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/10/01/genovese.ap/index.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/aug/04/ukcrime.features11

http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=198120&Disp=12&Trace=on

Conformity

For my first blog entry I thought I'd like to write about Conformity since it's a very big concept in the world and effects everyone every single day; whether they know it or not.

I found this very short but interesting insight on this topic in an online journal:
http://www.fergusfallsjournal.com/news/2008/mar/13/time-change-results-conformity/

Firstly, what is conformity?
Conformity is any change in behaviour or attitude caused by another person or group.

Do we all conform or is it only the "weak" ones that do?
Do you tell time and use it in your everyday life? Do you queue up in line to order food? Do you follow laws and social norms?
If you answered any of these questions with YES, you have already conformed.
What would we do without time? What would we do without speed limits? What about our laws?
We all conform to a certain extent, like the link suggests, we all conform to time. Someone invented time to make it easier for us but what if you didn't want to conform? If you ended up going to work/school whenever you felt like it; drove on the other than usual side of the road where other cars are coming towards you; what if you drove at whatever speed you wanted, wherever you wanted; what if you greeted the queen with "what's up, yo"; what if you went to school in a bikini; what if you relieved yourself in the middle of the street?
If you think about it, we wouldn't be a very civilized bunch if we didn't conform to the social norms that have been established and even changed over time.
This, of course, doesn't mean that those who stick to social norms are very civilized all the time. Let's take a look at the famous Jonestown Massacre. Read an article here and tell me what you think.
For those who don't know the Jonestown Massacre happened in 1978 in South-America and is a great example of conformity at it's worst. The leader of a small religious community convinced his 900 followers to commit suicide but not before killing their children and the elderly first. Altogether, 914 people died, 276 of those were children.
To understand this Massacre, i thought i'd bring up Asch's length judgment studies where the subject conformed to a completely and obviously wrong answer because the other people in the room were all giving that answer too. What does that tell us about Human Nature?

According to Turner (1991) there are three main reasons why people conform.
1.) People like to think their perceptions and attitudes are accurate and valid. That means that most people will change their opinions or rethink their attitudes if other people disagree with them.

• Asch's Experiment on length judgment
  

2.) People like to be liked and approved of by others and therefore do not like to stand out as different, particularly when in the physical presence of other people.

• Asch's Experiment on length judgment
  

3.) People feel a sense of belonging with the group defined by the norm.

• The Jonestown Massacre in 1978
  

So, what do you think about conformity? Can you give other, more recent examples of conformity or maybe even an experience you had?
Let's learn by sharing. Conform and you shall get all your points for this tutorial. ;-)
If you have the time do something good by playing a game that is free but your playing will feed the hungry. Click HERE - I wonder how many of you will conform. ;-)

Turner, J.C. (1991). Social Influence. Milton Keynes: Open University Press