An affair in the air

She entered the economy class area of the airplane with a pink bag-pack around her shoulders and a red trolley-bag in her hands. She looked at the air-steward with a deliberate shyness in her eyes and a sophisticatedly overwhelmed look on her face. She looked around the airplane to locate her seat and resting her quivering eyes when she spotted her seat along the 3^rd row. Her eyes then darted towards the over-head bins to place her red trolley-bag. She tried to lift it, but dropped the bag a little with a muffled “uh.”

The air-steward came right then to her, lifted her bag to the over-head bin, while saying to her, “Your bag is quite heavy mam.” She replied with half a small smile and a deliberate softness in her voice, “I know. I am so sorry that you had to lift that.” She then sat with ease on her newly “empty” first class seat as the air-steward made her comfortable with a glass of juice and candies to receive that half a small smile again.

As the plane took off, she finally sat back and smiled in her nonchalant manner to the evening sky through the window. She was a girl, and a feminist. And she knew that.

East meets the Wesh*t!! :P

So finally a blog after a long time and after I was on a “blogging spree”.. lol

But I am back home in India for the summer break and it feels great to be back- back to the home-cooked meals, back to the crowded streets, back to the dusty evenings, back to the lazy couch and back to the spas!! Lol

But after I arrived here, I heard people asking me questions which at one instance I wish to laugh at, but after having another look at the question, I tend to ponder at the stereotypical norm that exists behind asking such questions.

Stereotypes are generally considered to represent a set of shared beliefs about a group. Stereotypes are defined as “qualities perceived to be associated with particular groups or categories of people” (Schneider, 2004, pg. 24).

Listed below are few of such questions that I had* to answer upon my arrival in India:

a.)    You came back from US?

No. The girl standing before you exists only in silhouette.

( I mean I know you are asking it out of care* but please, don’t)

b.)    Your skin tone is just the same. You didn’t become fair?!

I am so sorry that you still find me brown! I will try* that my kids aren’t. K? (Lol)

c.)     What do you study there?

Liberal arts.

Oh Oh. Pretty fascinating huh?

Yeah

(after a few seconds..)

Umm, what does that mean?

K

d.)    So what degree will you get?

B.A.

e.)    What? You went to US just to get a B.A.? That you can also get in India.
      Yes. I went to US to receive a B.A. Apprently, my parents didn't want me anywhere near them where I could come home in less than 36 hours (by flight) and hence, decided to deport me to US.

f.)     What?? You want to study psychology? So you will be treating insane patients, right?

Yes. I wish to study psychology. And no, I won’t be treating insane patients (except, maybe YOU!)

g.)    Now I will have to behave properly while talking to you, right? You will be able to read me!
      Dudeeeeeeeeeeeee.. cummon!! (As such they haven't yet taught us how to interpret a brain like yours.. )

h.)    Oh, btw, now that you study psychology, tell me what am I thinking right now!!

You can act normal while talking with me. I am not a psychic reader!

i.)      Now you must be finding India to be very boring, right?

You bet! You see, this is my first trip to India. I wasn't born here; I didn't grow up here; I don't have Indian best friends; I don't even hold an Indian passport; and to top that I have apparently been living in US for the past 18 years. Offcourse I find India boring.
DUH :\

j.)      You must be loving America.

(This somehow is not a question but a statement.)

 

k.)    How many years before you finish studying in US?

3 more years till I finish my bachelor degree.

Oh, then you aren’t coming back to India for sure. You will love staying there.

(This also somehow happens to be a statement! )

l.)      Can you still eat spicy food?

Yes I can. I do not have to take Pepto-Bismol even when I eat the road-side pani-puri. GET IT?

m.)  You still haven’t caught the American accent. (Why so?!)

Oh, I haven't? I wonder how I survived in US with my Indian* accent!! :O  

Alright folks, I do not intend to hurt your feelings if you have been one of these people who asked me or were about to ask me these questions. But just that, please understand that it is important to get away from the stereotypical norms- that people become fair when they arrive from US; that everyone* starts loving US and doesn’t want to come back; that after just one year you appetite for Indian food decreases because of the oil and spices; that getting a B.A. from US is not worthy; that everyone* accepts the American accent.

With stereotypically desi love :D

Nupur

P.S. I don’t mind coming back home for every break (if my dad agrees to pay for the ticket i.e.) even if that means that I have to face each of these questions and probably more of these every time that I am back home. I am pretty sure that each one of you would agree that home is where the heart is J <3

It is a good thing to think sometimes, you know! :D

Have you ever had a friend or someone you know do something utter stupid which makes you question, “What a numskull he/she is! Does he/she even realize that humans were born with an organ named Brain?” There was once a man, who went to a liquor store, pointed the gun at the clerk and demanded all the money. He then asked for a bottle of whiskey. When the clerk refused to give the bottle of whiskey saying that the man was presumably a minor, the robber showed his driver’s license to the clerk as a proof that he was an adult. Offcourse the robber was arrested after two hours because the clerk called the police and gave the robber’s address and name that he got from the driver’s license.  A stupid fellow the robber was, right?

Psychologists call this kind of a behavior when people seem to forget to use their brains or use them utterly less, as a state of cognitive miser. Just as a miser is reluctant to use money even for his/her own good, a cognitive miser is reluctant to do much extra thinking (Fiske & Taylor, 1984, 1991).

Though humans’ capacity to think is greater than most other animals, it isn’t laziness always that makes it hard for people to give extra thought to a problem. Thinking takes effort. There is ample evidence to suggest that when thinking is already preoccupied, people tend to take more shortcuts to reduce the further need for thought ( Gilbert, Pelham, & Krull, 1988). But there are always examples of people who think at great length about things that are fascinating to them, like Albert Einstein who published 258 articles during his lifetime and changed the way we perceive science today. I love Daniel Radcliffe and have read and given ample thought to all the Harry Potter books.. lol

But as the theory of the duplex mind suggests, not all the thinking is equally difficult. Since automatic thinking is less strenuous than conscious thinking, people tend to conserve effort by relying on automatic modes of thought whenever they can. And though the automatic mind can give rough estimates and close to correct answers, it is necessary to employ conscious thinking in order to fully understand the problem and solve it logically.

So folks, the next time you meet a numskull and think of him/her as a new human species devoid of brain, please don’t degrade them by saying thus. They just need to get out of their cognitive miser mode and start using their brains a little more :D  

Still thinking (I guess ;) )

Nupur

It is your OWN fault!

Many times we hear people saying, “Oh, it was her own fault that she deserved such a pitiful state of affairs”, or “she deserves what she got” or “She should have known better than to have got herself in this situation in the first place”. People who say these things hold the victim accountable for whatever that happens (mainly the bad things that happen) in the victim’s life, even when it isn’t the victim’s fault!

Psychologists refer this phenomenon as Belief in a Just World (Furnham, 2003; Lerner & Miller, 1978; Lerner & Simmons, 1966). Belief in a Just World refers to the assumption that life is essentially fair and that people generally get what they deserve and deserve what they get. People believing in such a belief tend to blame the rape victims for their outcome, tend to blame the sick people for not taking care in the first place and tend to think that poor people are lazy and hence they are poor. They strongly and almost adherently believe that if you are good, no bad things will happen to you.

People who believe that the world is just will help others in need only when they feel that the helper deserves their aid (Zuckerman, 1975). These people are not helpful towards those victims who they believe are responsible for their own outcomes (which is most of the times, for the just world believers always seem to think that the victim is to be blamed). However, one positive side of withholding such a belief is that sometimes the helper tries to help others for he/she wishes to have good outcomes after helping others. Hence, this results in kind of a superstitious belief that when you perform good or helpful acts, you can expect that you will be rewarded later.

One study aimed at indicating this superstitious helping by students. Students at one college were asked to volunteer to do a good deed, such as serving as a reader for blind students to doing extra psychology experiments (Zukerman, 1975). During the routine part of the semester, volunteer participation was low and it didn’t matter whther the student had high or low belief in the just world hypothesis. But if this volunteer action was provided during the exam time, more students were willing to participate. These students believed at some level that their good deeds would be rewarded as a better luck and a better graded on exam. I performed such an act of believing in the just world hypothesis during the final match of the Cricket World Cup, 2011. India and Sri Lanka were playing to become the cricket world champions (and btw, cricket is a religion in India :D ). At one point, it seemed like India would lose and I made a pact with Lord, that if He allows India to win, I will do a week long volunteer service at the Rape Crisis Centre (Stupid deal right? I mean I should have had more faith in the Men in Blue that they would bring the cup home! ). I believed that if I do something good, something good will happen to me. And see, the Indian Cricket Team won the World Cup (the BCCI should sooo thank me in helping to bring the Cup home after the 1983 win..lol)

So folks, the victims are already in a state of depression thinking over the sorrowness that surrounds their life. Please don’t aggravate their feeling of sadness and helplessness by blaming them for their own outcomes. Many times people aren’t in control over the results of the events that happen in their lives and it is best that we support them who are in need of help, irrespective of whether we believe that they are responsible for their sorry state of affairs or not. Let’s spread a little more tolerance and love in the world J

Still believing,

Nupur

Aaaarrghhhh!! Ohkay, it will be kk.. aaarghhhh.. No, I should be in control, I am going to be fine!

How many times have you heard yourself repeat the title over and over again when something bad happened to you? Plenty, right? At least I have used this pretty recently. I had a test on Monday due at 11 pm. I thought that the test was due on Monday at 11 pm of the coming week. I got to know this at 5:30 pm the day that the test was due. I double checked then to make sure that the news wasn’t correct when in fact I should have done this earlier to make sure that I had the correct test date in mind. I freaked out (obviously!) I hadn’t studied as much as I had thought I should (obviously again, who studies a week before the test is apparently due?!) but I had to give the test. All the way back to home from the classes, I told myself that I will be fine and will do great on the test (false belief, I know..lol) but it helped me keep my calm, study for a couple of hours and give the test.

So how do psychologists explain the term “coping”? According to them, coping is the general term that people use to deal with trauma and go back to functioning effectively in life. People have different strategies which they use to cope with situations that turn out to be bad. And coping with the disturbed emotional state of affairs is important to be able to deal with reality in a coherent manner. Sometimes when someone’s house is robbed or a wallet is stolen, people aren’t as much affected by the financial loss incurred as much as they are affected by their dissonance in the world beliefs. Ronnie Janoff-Bulman (1992) calls such beliefs, assumptive worlds- the view that people live in social worlds based on certain beliefs (assumptions) about reality.

According to Janoff-Bulman, assumptive worlds theory consists of three kinds of assumptions that people live with:

1.)    The world is benevolent: people are good, surroundings are good, good things will happen to me.

2.)    The world is fair and just: the world is fair and if you treat other people fairly, they will treat you in the same manner.

3.)    I am a good person: I am someone of value and therefore deserve to have good things happen to me.

When something bad happens, like your wallet is stolen or like me if you mistake the date of the test, these beliefs are disrupted. And in order to ensure effective coping, one tries to figure out how to explain the misfortune while still believing in the assumptions. One tries to attribute the misfortune to oneself (Bulman and Wortman, 1977). This can be a pretty effective technique if there is a clear distinction made between blaming oneself for actions as opposed to blaming oneself for being a bad person. When I mistook the test-date, I attributed the mistake to myself saying that if I take proper care the next time, this won’t happen again, instead of saying that I am bad (btw, I know that I am good.. most of the times..lol) and thus only bad things should happen to me and that world is no more a good place to live in!

So folks, bad things happen, misfortunes occur and our hearts are broken sometimes, but the world isn’t all that bad you know?! It has some amazing people and things worth living for <3. Just taking few corrective measures, can make us live happily with those people and things J

Still believing in the world around me,  

Nupur

Offcourse, I love my utterly boring life :\

Have you guys ever faced a situation that required you to do something utterly boring with no apparent rewards, but when the time came to tell others about the boring job that you were doing on a beautiful Sunday morning, you said that you actually loved the job? Many of us have done this even in important situations. We have lied that we loved doing the work that we were doing though internally, we could have died of boredom.

Psychologists say that this kind of a situation reflects the cognitive dissonance theory. Cognitive dissonance theory states that inconsistencies between behavior and attitudes produce psychological discomfort which leads people to either rationalize their behavior or to change their attitudes. Psychological research in the 1950s, focused on persuasion techniques and adherently believed in the operant conditioning theory. But in 1959, Leon Festinger and J. Merrill Carlsmith, published a classic experiment to demonstrate the presence of cognitive dissonance. According to them, the dissonance theory suggests that if a person is given a small reward in exchange of doing work that he/she dislikes, most attitude change will occur as compared to the traditional reinforcement theory which suggests that bigger the reward, more the attitude change in the person doing the job.

In their experiment, Festinger and Carlsmith, asked participants to perform utterly boring jobs like (kind of like the ones that college students sometimes do to fend for pocket money.. lol) spending the first 30 minutes taking 12 little wooden spools off the tray, one at a time, putting back in the place and repeating the process over and over again. In the next 30 minutes, each participant had to turn 48 square pegs a quarter turn clockwise and again keep repeating it over and over again. The experimenter then said that the experiment was to actually motivate people to do such mundane tasks (this was false knowledge). The participants were informed that another previous participant (actually a confederate) who was supposed to tell other participants how cool the job was so that other participants would be motivated to do the job (this was in conjunction with the false knowledge) did not turn up and will they be willing to do the same job instead?

The participant was given either $1 or $20 to perform the task of telling other people how interesting the job was. This was obvious lieing, because the participants knew that the job was utterly boring. After they told another participant (another confederate) how enjoyable the task was, each participant was asked how much they enjoyed doing the task. As predicted by Festinger and Carlsmith, participants who received $20 to lie about the otherwise dull job, did not report enjoying doing the job. But those participants who received only $1 to lie that they liked doing the job, reported that they actually enjoyed doing the job. People who received $1 were in a state of cognitive dissonance. Since they did not receive a substantial amount to lie in the first place and since they knew that they would never lie about doing something (I mean common, even the criminal in the court says that he never lies, these are at least innocent, normal people! ), they changed their attitude towards the job. By attributing their behavior- saying to other participant that the job was enjoyable to actually liking the job they performed, they overcame the cognitive dissonance that they were undergoing.

So folks, cognitive dissonance can be a great tool if used properly to get people to change their attitude about something, without them even realizing it consciously! But I wonder sometimes that why this theory never seem to work with my papa when I give him lower results and still expect him to love me more! Somehow he stops talking to me :D

In a conscious state of dissonance,

Nupur

OMG, I could have killed myself if that didn’t kill me!

“OMG, I am such a stupid girl!” I would often say when I forget to wish my friends for their exams or birthdays (and few of them will actually vouch for me saying this.. lol). Haven’t we all, on numerous occasions displayed behavior that wasn’t appropriate? Sometimes, we wish that we would have done something completely opposite to what we have actually done and that too after knowing better ways to have dealt with the situation!

Psychologists call these actions as a part of Self-Defeating behavior- a behavior in which people bring failure, misfortune of suffering upon themselves. This theory seems paradoxical for those rational souls out there who ‘always’ do something rational and something that is beneficial to their core being. So how does one account for such a behavior? Matina Horner (1972), president of one of the most prestigious women’s colleges (Radcliffe), suggested that many women suffer from fear-of-success. This theory suggested that many women believed that if they become too successful in their work, they would eventually land up being lonely and rejected and will not find any romantic partners. And because of this fear, many women curtailed their otherwise highly successful careers! (I bet that they might have found benevolent sexist partners! Lol)

So there are two main outcomes of the research done to know the reasons for people engaging in self-defeating behaviors. One is that sometimes the good and the bad outcomes are linked together and in order to procure the good, one has to take the bad (Now, I am not repeating what our grannies told us years ago, that you have to take the good with the bad.. lol; but now I seem to wonder whether our grannies actually know about this theory before psychologists found it?? :O ). For example, I love brownies, and can eat them at any hour of the day or night. Eating brownies is good (that is what I tell myself when I accidently read the amount of calories they possess! Lol) , but what does one do about all the fat that accompanies them? Or getting tanned is completely fine if you do it the right way, but what about the peeling skin and redness of the face that happens a few days after getting tanned? Recently, many students from Trinity went to the beach for a weekend, and many of them forgot to take the sunscreen with them :O (I mean come on guys, we are in Texas and looking at your peeling faces with blotches all over isn’t a happy sight to watch! Lol)

Other reason is that people rely on faulty knowledge and on strategies that do not work. If I continue in the granny-like manner, sometimes people do not understand the world or themselves correctly, and hence, do activities that result in their downfall. Remember those times when you say that coffee makes you work better (ohkay, I usually use this excuse for drink more coffee.. lol). People who work under the effect of drinks rich in caffeine have disturbed sleep patterns and become irritable when they have high amounts of caffeine in their body, resulting in poorer work performance.

So folks, it is okay to defeat others and to protect yourself from others, but do not to handicap yourself under the disguise of Self-Defeating behavior- even the name sounds stupid! ;)  

Stupidly stupid,

Nupur