Thursday, June 12, 2008

Expecting To Be Treated With Prejudice May Be Self-fulfilling Prophecy, Study Suggests

What the study below concludes may be correct. There certainly are self-fulfilling prophecies. But the research below does not prove it. Inzlicht (the principal author) specializes in studying subtle influences on behaviour. But his own thinking is none too subtle. As far as I can see all that his work proves is that bitter women are more likely to behave in bitter ways, which is not much of a surprise. Certainly not groundbreaking.

How does he know that "These prejudice expectations come from actual experiences of prejudice"? He doesn't. Maybe the women concerned are just neurotic. Or maybe they are ugly and blame men for their own defects. It seems to me that Inzlicht is himself just another bitter Leftist Professor determined to think ill of the society he lives in. As far as I can gather, the women he studied were Americans so I think the society he is speaking ill of may actually be America, rather than his home in Canada. Again not much of a surprise -- JR


The groundbreaking study was done using a series of computer-animated male and female faces expressing a range of looks, from rejection to acceptance. Researchers created a slide show where the expressions on the animated faces morphed from looks of rejection to looks of acceptance, and study participants were asked to identify the point at which the expressions changed.

"Those female participants who told us men stereotyped them and treated them with prejudice saw rejection and contempt on the animated men's faces more readily and for a longer period of time than they did on the women's faces," says lead author Dr. Michael Inzlicht, assistant professor of psychology at U of T. "This shows that a person's level of sensitivity to being stereotyped -- their expectation that a person will behave prejudicially towards them -- may distort their perception of reality." On average, female participants who identified themselves as stigma-conscious saw expressions of contempt for a half-second longer on the men's animated faces than they did on the women's faces -- even though both sets of animated faces expressed looks of contempt for the same amount of time.

Inzlicht warns against blaming the victim, though. "These prejudice expectations come from actual experiences of prejudice so it's very possible that the women who are vigilant for rejection are in fact more likely to objectively experience prejudice in everyday life."

Inzlicht said this joint study with University of Washington and University of California researchers is crucial for improving communications between diverse populations. "We've always known that stereotyping by dominant groups can negatively impact communications between groups," Inzlicht said. "This study shows it's also important to consider how the expectations and perceptions of marginalized groups can impact relations. Both sides play a crucial role."

Source

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Israel's strength is not only military

From outside, Israel looks as if it's in turmoil, largely because the entire political leadership seems to be under investigation. But Israel is a weak state with a strong civil society. The economy is exploding from the bottom up. Israel's currency, the shekel, has appreciated nearly 30 percent against the dollar since the start of 2007.

The reason? Israel is a country that is hard-wired to compete in a flat world. It has a population drawn from 100 different countries, speaking 100 different languages, with a business culture that strongly encourages individual imagination and adaptation and where being a nonconformist is the norm. While you were sleeping, Israel has gone from oranges to software, or as they say around here, from Jaffa to Java....

That kind of hunger explains why, in the first quarter of 2008, the top four economies after America in attracting venture capital for start-ups were: Europe $1.53 billion, China $719 million, Israel $572 million and India $99 million, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. Israel, with 7 million people, attracted almost as much as China, with 1.3 billion.

More here

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Brookes News Update

The American economy: Democrats and recessions: The Democrats and those political activists that call themselves journalists are telling Americans that a massive tax increase - the greatest in the country's history - is based on sound economic principles. These are the same economic illiterates that blather about'fiscal responsibility'. But since when have massive increases in taxation and government spending been economically responsible?
The oil price bubble and monetary policy: There are many factors behind the sharp increase in the oil price, but one is usually overlooked: it's a bubble. Where bubbles appear in the market (think of housing and tech stocks) you will find the hidden hand of monetary policy at work.. Recognizing this also helps us make a better judgment concerning the future of the oil price as it relates to overall economic well-being
The Democrats: Party of Defeat: Democrats and the media have spent the last 5 years trying to secure a terrorist victory in Iraq so that they could blame the Republicans for defeat. It is clear that this party is unfit to lead this nation in war. To place it in a position to do so would be to invite a tragedy of epic proportions
The Party of Lincoln vs. the Democrats' hate machine: What is truly depressing about the Democrats is their total absence of common decency, their utter rejection of civil discourse, their contempt for patriotism and their ruthless assault on the truth. Instead of shared principles based on a belief in the righteousness of the American Constitution the Democrats have launched a ferocious and sustained assault on those values
Obama's plan to unilaterally disarm the U.S.: Obama's suicidal plan to gut the US military is frighteningly irresponsible and is based on the vicious leftwing myth that America is the real enemy and not foreign despots. And you can bet your last dollar that he and his corrupt media supporters will do everything they can to deceive the American people as to his intentions
Philip Adams' hypocrisy on child abuse: For the sanctimonious leftwing Philip Adams paedophilia is a political club with which to batter capitalism and Christianity
The truth about oil prices: The US is blessed with an almost limitless capability to produce oil. But the Democrats and environmentalists have deliberately prevented oil companies from developing the country's vast oil reserves. These are the same hypocrites who have the nerve to blame President Bush and the oil companies for high petrol prices

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Utterly unlike women, men do not experience a surge of the cyclic peptide bonding ("love") hormone oxytocin during orgasm (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5f/Oxytocin.svg/300px-Oxytocin.svg.png) which is the exact hormone that bonds mothers to babies during pregnancy. An unmentioned secret in medicine is that women often experience very intense orgasms during child-birthing.

I am an active bachelor and member of a grass roots, utterly non-academic, and yet very much peer-reviewed group of discussion forum members who refer to themselves as 'The Community'. As thousands of individual "field reports" are posted, dozens, up to hundreds of other bachelor (or all out serial womanizers) relate both theory and common experience, often pointing out mistakes in strategy that were made. These guys are sophisticated readers, who give presentations in person to large groups of other members.

A few "rules of thumb" have appeared and passed the peer review process despite many eventual bitter pill doubters of the body of folk wisdom that has been produced on female psychology that have appeared and then had to admit they were wrong.

The rating scale is HB1 to HB9 (a "Hot Babe 10" is a sort of ideal that is best described as HB9.5, since nobody is a perfect 10 in desirability). However, a few IRONIC rules of thumbs, laws of female nature if you will, have become part of the knowledge base that new members study up on.

One is that ugly, unattractively fat, and angry go together and these are often jokingly referred to as UGs ("Ugly Girls"), CBs ("Cockblocks"), or just "fatties." And the ironic part of the equation has surfaced: that such women, when young, often have very nice breasts, and are expert at seducing men with them in the dark drunken arena of a nightclub, but that in the harsh light of a sober morning, after she has to some degree, often neurotically intense, she has hormonally pair-bonded with the man, and now wants to develop a relationship.

UGs thus often indeed become very bitter when a man fails to pair-bond back, at all. Even the nicer guys who do accept folds of fat that hide her belly button and *do* start seeing the seductive girl a few more times, eventually stop due to the very common experience of the bitter girl feeling safe and friendly enough with the man to start long sessions of MASSIVE MAN BASHING. To us men, this literally feels psychotic and dangerous, not just a little bitter, and invokes not sympathy, but a strong sense of self-preservation and desire to buy a new cell phone.

Eventually, UGs lack of ability to hold on to normal men makes them nasty-acting when you first meet them in public, and HBs often *use* them as a form of body guard to fend off hoards of drunken men from making crude passes at them. Dozens of strategies for dealing with such "cockblocks" exist, the two most popular being to either initially focus on the fatties and IGNORE the HB target, so then the HB feels ignored and denied her usual "alpha female" status, or two have a "wingman" come in with you to strategically distract the attention of the fatty by asking inane questions about local tourism or telling long boring stories as they physically turn the bodies and thus eyes of the fatty away from the HB who the other wingman then gets to talk to alone.

The finally ironic edge to this slice of the knowledge base is that HB8s on up are both easier to seduce and easier to then befriend because they are not social misfits when you discover their real personality, but most importantly they are not so because in the morning light, any man will want to see her again for purely physical reasons. The one problem is that such women often have several "free dinner" men they date, who they are not having sex with, so it can take some time, if you are not rich, to have her to yourself on weekends....which is why, our folk scientists study up on sexual technique, to get those bonding hormones to do the work for them.

To be attractive to men, average women need to hit the gym and learn to dress with figure enhancing outfits, use makeup and perfume, etc.

To be attractive to women, average men need to hit the books, and learn a few acting (including voice and body language) skills.

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I wonder when will the chattering academic class start calling women's unembarrassedly loud fascination with height, status, and wealth as "prejudice"?