The fashionably late Cool Paper

Cool is, by definition, elusive. If it was easy to get than everybody would have it, and then, as we all know, it wouldn't be cool. That's how we think of "cool": something ever-changing, something new and different. On the other hand, too different and you're shunned. 'Cool' is a delicate balance between standing out and fitting in-- As Jake says in his blog:

"Part of being a renegade, is also being accepting and nonchalant. Being nonchalant seems to be one of the coolest personality traits that one can have. It puts forth the image that you are capable of something, but choose not to do it. For example, a "nerd" and a smart person differ on the simple principle of appearance. A "nerd" comes across as socially inept, while a smart person can compete mentally with the "nerd", and also maintain a social grace that the "nerd" simply cannot compete with." (Jake F.)

This social aptness is worth a great deal to us, whether we know it or not. We long to fit in, even as we may be claiming the opposite. So deeply rooted is the fundamental desire to fit in with others, to believe their judgments and their ideas, that with only the presence of a strong leader and a devoted group of peers 200 high-school students were turned into fascist soldiers in just four days, and people who would normally assess their situation as an emergency can be convinced to remain calm merely by the presence of a bystander. This essay intends to show that the desire to fit in is rooted far more deeply in the human mental state than we are consciously aware of.

In 1967, an experiment took place. A high school teacher, unable to explain to his class why Germany had been so yielding to the Nazi movement, decided to start his own movement for the purposes of demonstration. He called this movement The Third Wave. He lectured on the strength that came through discipline, community, action, and pride. He gave his students special seating exercises, and assigned each a role. The experiment was designed to show that in the face of a strong leader and a large supporting group, the majority of students would feel somewhat compelled to partake in a fascist system. Instead, 100% of the students, and even some 170 extra that were not in the original class, formed a force for the imaginary cause with such dedication that it took an admission from the teacher and a direct comparison to Nazi Germany to snap them out of it. They had been told that the movement's aim was to eliminate democracy and that they would soon rise up in an attempt to reshape the world. They were fine with that. The teacher, Ron Jones, explains that even he was beginning to succumb to the experiment:

"I was exhausted and worried. Many students were over the line. The Third Wave had become the center of their existence. I was in pretty bad shape myself. I was now acting instinctively as a dictator. Oh I was benevolent. And I daily argued to myself on the benefits of the learning experience. By this, the fourth day of the experiment I was beginning to lose my own arguments. As I spent more time playing the role I had less time to remember its rational origins and purpose. I found myself sliding into the role even when it wasn't necessary." (Jones)

Even he, who knew full well what the experiment was a parody of, found it hard to face the group's overwhelming enthusiasm without becoming swept up in it. Not only the desire, but the instinct to fit in left the group with no option other than to gladly follow the terrible illusion that had been set up for them.

The subjects of The Third Wave's brutal reality check knew full well that they wanted to fit in. They had the feeling of being part of something bigger than themselves, and they relished it. But it turns out that humans are even more susceptible to the opinions of others than that. As it turns out, the reactions of others serve as a major determining factor in the most basic and necessary of our own responses, such as interpreting an emergency. One study on the bystander effect found that while a situation may be deemed hazardous by a person on their own, a group is far less likely to react to it, and when some members of the group were told not to react the naive participant became unlikelier still to take action. The experiment had three conditions: one where the participant was alone, one where there were three participants, and one where there was one participant and two confederates who had already been told how to act. In each condition the participants were told to take a survey, and in each condition smoke was slowly added to the room. When subjects were alone, 75% left the room to report the smoke. When the number of participants increased to three, the number dropped drastically to 38%. Finally, when one subject was joined by two passive confederates, only 10% deemed the situation worth reporting. Say experimenters Latane and Darley: "Most subjects had similar initial reactions. Those that didn't report it all concluded that the smoke wasn't dangerous or was part of the experiment. No one attributed their inactivity to the presence of others in the room." (Latane, and Darley) The subjects were obviously influenced by the presence of others, and yet it did not occur to them that this might have effected their behavior. The subconscious tendency to agree with the judgements of others led subjects to come to a conclusion that could have put their own lives in danger, without even realizing that they were being influenced.

So why exactly are we so susceptible to the influence of others? Why do we care so much if we fit in? What makes a group so appealing that it would shatter a lifetime of conditioning to think the opposite way, why can we be persuaded to unintentionally put ourselves in dangerous situations merely by the presence of a calm bystander? Perhaps this is a good time to remember that human psychology didn't just happen on its own. It was molded and shaped by millions of years of evolution, of dying if we made the wrong choice or upset the group. We come from a long line of creatures that had to fit in to survive, and the complex social structure once thought to be so essentially human may not be unique after all. The chameleon effect (or unconscious mimicry of others), one of the things once studied as being distinctly human, has now been proven to exist in capuchan monkeys (Yong). Furthermore, it seems to play an essential role in their society, as capuchans seem to have a deeper bond with those that imitate them than those that don't. Humans seem to feel the same way, reporting taking a greater liking to those that imitate them. But the article warns against using the method intentionally: "'If a person thinks he is being mimicked, it will backfire," warns Chartrand. "He will like the mimicker less.'" Sounding familiar? 'Cool' is a delicate balance between fitting in and standing out. We strive for it, and ridicule ourselves for doing so. But perhaps 'cool' isn't a societal construct imposed upon us against our will. It seems that in fact, 'cool' was already in our nature.

Works cited:

F., Jake. "Jake's Personal Free Political." Blogspot. 23 Nov. 2009. Web. 23 Jan 2010. .

Jones, Ron. "The Third Wave." 1972. Web. 23 Jan 2010. .

Latane, B., and J. Darley. "Latane, B., & Darley, J. Bystander "Apathy", American Scientist, 1969, 57, 244-268.." Web. 23 Jan 2010. .

Yong, Ed. "Monkey do, human do, monkey see, monkey like ." ScienceBlogs. 13 Aug. 2009. Web. 24 Jan 2010. .

Barco, Tony. "We're All Copycats." Psycology Today 1 Nov. 1999: n. pag. Web. 25 Jan 2010. .

Triangle partner help

For Amber (sorry it's kinda late)

Thesis rewrite: I'm not exactly sure what your thesis is, but it sounds like it could be something like "In our attempt to be cool we claim to be different, but in actuality we only adapt the ideas of others to our own needs."

Paragraph: Sorry, I don't have a lot of evidence to contribute to this. An idea though: Going with the re-written version of the thesis it would make a pretty convincing historical example if you could talk about copycat art. I would say that a forgery would make a good example, except that forgers take pride in their mimicry.

Suggestions: the main thing I was confused about in your paper was exactly what your thesis is. To make the focus clearer, you could:
-State your thesis and your arguments in the beginning of the paper, just so we know what we're expecting.
-make sure your arguments relate directly to a strong central point. Your writing is good and I understand each paragraph individually, but I'm not sure what they have to do with the reworking of things already deemed cool you talked about in your intro.

Otherwise, nice paper, I'm sorry if this doesn't help!

A cool outline

My thesis or central idea is that the human desire to fit in is rooted far more deeply in the human mental state than we are consciously aware of.
Intro:
-how people typically think of the desire to fit in (It is important to fit in, but to look like you're not trying (Jacob's blog, HW 25 pt 2 paragraph 4)
-but in fact the instinct to fit in is far more fundamental to us than we may realize (mention points)
Body 1:
-THE WAVE (article)
++with only the presence of a strong leader and a devoted social group, a school full of typical high-school students were transformed into fascist soldiers in just four days. The sense of belonging and purpose the movement offered them was overwhelming, and they were unable to think poorly of the experiment despite the fact that they were suddenly going against everything that they were conceptually committed to.
Body 2:
-THE BYSTANDER EFFECT (where there's smoke, there's (sometimes) fire)
++despite the presence of something considered by 75% of people with no outside influence to be potentially dangerous and worth reporting, the overwhelming majority of people could be convinced that it is not worth paying attention to merely by the presence of two other people who do not seem to care about it.
Conclusion:
-Why do we do it?
++Evolution (capuchins and the chameleon effect)

The cool pose

The question that I found most interesting in the Cool Pose assignment was 'should we blame the people that make bad choices, or try to give them new choices?'

I personally think (as I almost always do) that this is a much more complex issue than meets the eye. Typically, however, I feel that people are being too absolute in their thinking with too little evidence to support it; while on this issue I believe that the base human decision making mechanisms aren't really enough to consider all the factors at play here.

Let's say someone has committed a crime. Let's say they killed someone. What now?

One typical view is that when someone does something wrong they should be punished. When people are asked why they think this they will probably answer that the person needs to understand what they've done, or that they just plain deserve it. The other side will point out that the criminal is just the product of their society, and what they really need is to be re-educated and given more opportunities, so that they can become a better person.

So let's say we go with the more thought out of the two, and try to change them. And it might work, they might decide that what they did was wrong and try to make up their debt to society (or something like that). But it might not. They might not just be a product of their society, they might be a made-to-order assembly line part. To them, these losers trying to change them are funny. What now?

So, you go to the source. You try to start with the youth, you give them better opportunities, and fund their schools and afterschool specials, and bring in important people to tell them they should go to college. But when they go home their parents beat them for wanting to spend the extra money, and less important but more famous people on TV and the radio and billboards tell them that they should be proud of being part of a subculture where people aren't given opportunities. You've changed the landscape, but the map is still the same, and that's what they'd rather follow. What now?

What now?

Tattoo

For this assignment I decided to talk about tattoos as a form of self expression vs social expression.

I think, on some level, a tattoo has elements of both forms of expression. Let's take, for example, the tattoo that I would get if I were to get one (which I won't, because the fact remains that it's quite bad for you). The tattoo that I would want would go down the front of my lower leg, with the text "kaze ni omoi no tsuki ni nagai wo/chikaru aru kagiri ikitekunda kyou mo" (in kanji, not romanji (english letters)). It is a lyric from my favorite song, Asterisk, meaning roughly "try to convey your feelings to the wind, your wishes to the moon, and continue to live as long as you have the strength".

That obviously relates to my oft-pointed-out taste community, the Japan/anime obsessed (aka otaku) crowd. It's in Japanese, from a Japanese song, that I only know about because it was a theme song to one of my (debatably) favorite anime. But, despite that, it actually has a good deal to do with me as a person. One of the reasons that is my favorite song is because of that quote, and the reason I like that quote is because it deals with my personal love of life and feelings about the importance of connecting with others.

If I did elect to get a tattoo and chose that one, it would have been greatly influenced by my likes and dislikes (in turn affected by my personal perception of cool), but after that I am still the primary deciding factor in exactly what it is. There are so many variants on cool out there that even if you throw the same exact slips of paper into a person's hat they'll still pull out something slightly different each time.

I think it's the same way for most people. There are some people whose thought process was something like "this is in right now, I think I'll make a permanent modification to my body based on it", but on a whole I think most people have a society-influenced but overall personal connection to their tattoos. Taste communities go far beyond just cool, after all; they seep into your psyche and influence everything, from your likes and dislikes to the way you walk. But once you accept that influence as an unavoidable factor, it's still possible to see the different outcomes of the same equation.