Mass Media Models... Save Lives?

Every day, we go through great lengths to save a life. Doctors work around the clock, performing surgeries in life or death situations. Soldiers put their lives on the line to protect our country. Firefighters leap into burning buildings to save a small child. Police walk into dangerous situations to save a small family from armed robbers.

You see the efforts that people go through to save lives. If people saw this on television, presented by a major celebrity, we would run with full support to defend the police, the firefighters, the doctors, and the soldiers.

Yet, when placed in the opposite light, our support disappears. The soldiers are shooting at innocents and enemies alike. The doctors make a fatal mistake. The firefighter fails to make it to the child but makes it out alive. The police cause the robbers to shoot the family.

Do we still support them after their failures? Some do, some don’t. People believe what they see.

Mass media models change our perception of life. If they were to change the way things are presented, they could effectively make change to the world. Instead of showing violent conflicts, they could show peace rallies. Instead of showing the innocents who are accidentally killed in war and blaming our soldiers, they could show the hardships and mental fatigue that our soldiers go through.

If we were to look at any recent war, there is so much mass media coverage that promotes patriotism and defending our country and working to save our soldiers. The Vietnam War had tons of mass media devoted to getting more troops out into the battlefield, and of course, since we believe what we see, we could do nothing but support or refuse to support, depending upon what side of the war we saw first. If we had seen the pictures and heard of the horrible events that happen to our soldiers, we probably would refuse to support more troops. If we had only seen the many people we were sending troops to try to save, we would probably support this action. These mass media models change everything.

These mass media models could save lives. If only we could put safety and goodness into the media, instead of violence and corruption, more people would fall into the lure of safety and goodness. This could save countless lives. Instead of showing teenagers that if they choose to be involved in gang violence that they’ll have family, show them that they can create family through friendships and to foster whatever relationships they already have at home. Instead of showing teen suicides on television, show teenagers dealing with their problems and coping in healthy ways.

According to the social impact theory, the likelihood that a person will respond to social influence will increase with strength, immediacy, and number. (changingminds.org, pg. 1). People often follow these mass media models because of the importance of the model, how close the problem is, and how many people are throwing the same message at a person. Bibb Latané has an article called the “Psychology of Social Impact” in which he describes some of the effects and the workings of the Social Impact Theory. In this article, he describes a study in which they set up psychology students to play campus newspaper editors and cover catastrophic events and decide how much coverage to give each event. (Latané, 348). The results showed that the three pieces of the social impact theory can cause strong effects upon people. The more the story was covered and made important, the closer the problem was to people, and how many people were involved with the problem increased the effects of the article.

To save a life, we need to change the way people see life. Using mass media models to change the way people see the world, we could potentially save lives. Less violence, less anger, and greater safety could help save many lives. I propose that mass media models be used by the government to promote safety, health, and general well-being.

Works Cited

Latané (1981), Latané and Wolf (1981), Tanford and Penrod (1984). "Social Impact Theory." Changing Minds. Web. 12 Oct. 2009. <http://changingminds.org>.

Latané, Bibb. "The Psychology of Social Impact." 36.4 (1981): 343-56. American Psychological Association, Inc. Web. 8 Dec. 2009. <http://dionysus.psych.wisc.edu/Lit/Articles/LataneB1981a.pdf>.

Police Violence

When someone attacks you, who do you call? The police. When someone steals from your house, who do you call? The police. When a child goes missing, who do you call? The police. The police are considered trustworthy. They protect us and do what is considered just by the people. They uphold our laws. Yet, who makes up the police? Humans, just like the rest of us. So, when the police mess up, it isn’t justice. However, we could prevent events such as police violence and brutality to save lives, not only of the police and their victims, but also others involved in the crime or riots caused by this violence.

Rodney King was apprehended and beaten excessively by L.A.P.D. They not only used TASER guns on him, but they beat him repeatedly with batons to subdue him. This beating was caught on tape by an innocent bystander. This video led to riots all over Los Angeles. Parts of Los Angeles were set on fire and many policemen came under gun fire from random spots around the town. Other individuals were shot at or beaten by the police during these riots. (Gray)

In an experiment called The Stanford Prison Experiment, a group of males were divided into two groups, the guards and the prisoners. As the experiment went on, the guards fell into their roles and became more violent and aggressive, while the prisoners became depressed. A clear example of the frustration-aggression is found in this experiment. In the beginning the prisoners rebelled. Out of frustration, the guards stripped, harassed, and intimidated the prisoners. This led to psychological tactics and brute force being used against the prisoners. The longer they were placed in their roles, the more they became their roles. (Zimbardo)

These two different ideas come together under one theory. Furstration-aggression theory, proposed by Doob, and modified by Leonard Berkowitz, states that as someone becomes more frustrated, the more aggressive they become, and with the modification, that there are certain cues in the environment around people that can set them off. A clear example from the Stanford Prison experiment is the violence the guards experienced being that role of power. (Berkowitz)

If the aggression problems of the police in this case could be analyzed, the brutality to come could be prevented, and riots would never start. This could save multiple lives, on both police and public lives. There are many instances of police violence and brutality, not just this one, that could be prevented and many lives could be saved. I propose that since the role the police are in seems to make them aggressive, all police should be psychoanalyzed and their cases evaluated if there is any sign of aggression. This could help us save lives of many who are beaten and killed by police brutality.

Works Cited

Gray, Madison. "The L.A. Riots: 15 Years After Rodney King." Time. Time. Web. 26 Oct. 2009. <http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/la_riot/article/0,28804,1614117_1614084,00.html>.

Rodney King. Perf. Rodney King, the L.A.P.D. Youtube, 2007.

Staten, Clark. "Three Days Of Hell In Los Angeles." Emergencynet News Service, Apr.-May 1992. Web. 26 Oct. 2009. <http://www.emergency.com/la-riots.htm>.

"The Stanford Prison Experiment." Stanford Prison Experiment. Ed. Phillip G. Zimbardo. 1999. Web. 17 Nov. 2009. <http://www.prisonexp.org/>.

Berkowitz, Leonard. "Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis: Examination and Reformulation." 106.1 (1989): 59-73. American Psychological Association, Inc. Web. 7 Dec. 2009. <http://www.radford.edu/~jaspelme/_private/gradsoc_articles/aggression/frustration%20aggression.pdf>.

Cialdini, Robert B. Influence: Science and Practice. 4th ed. Needham Heights: Allyn & Bacon A Pearson Education Company, 2001. Print.

"You can't always get what you want..."

The phrase “you want what you can’t have” seems to pop up often in everyday life. Who wouldn’t want what they know is impossible to have? That expensive car, the brand new dress from Alexander McQueen, the perfect partner that is dating your most hated enemy. These are all things that people can seem to want but think they will never have. Whether they can attain these things or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that they believe that these things are scarce.

The scarcity principle states that we, as human beings, want what we’re afraid we will never be able to obtain. As things truly become scarce, we really fight for what we want. Sometimes, as this drive to attain these scarce items increases, death becomes inevitable, as one side must completely dominate to win.

In the Battle of the Little Big Horn, the Native Americans made a stand to protect their sacred lands. The United States Army, however, had other ideas. Not only those sacred lands were at stake, as the United States in general had been trying to take Native American land for themselves. The United States fought the Native Americans over this land, because land was scarce and the Native Americans “owned” (I use the word loosely here, because Native Americans believed the land was free, not owned by anyone) many portions of land that the United States wanted. This battle, however, did not leave the United States in a winning position. The Native Americans, fearing the loss of their scarce, sacred land, fought and massacred a large amount of the United States military fighting against them.

The Native Americans having scarce, sacred land is not based only on the idea that the land was just sacred, but any land they had was scarce, as the people of the United States were attempting to expand. The fact that the land was sacred just pushed the Native Americans even harder to fight for this land. As it so happens though, this scarcity principle pushed the people of the United States to fight harder to take the land and claim it as their own. The scarcity principle works on both sides.

One of the reasons why this happens, according to Robert Cialdini in his book, Influence: Science and Practice, is because of a secondary power of the scarcity principle. This power is that we hate to lose freedoms, and the freedom to own something in this case is what prompts the attacks. (Cialdini, 208).

This happens over and over again throughout history, where some leader or some country wants what they can’t have, so they attempt to take it with as much force as necessary. If people could realize that the fear of losing these scarce items is often somewhat irrational, many lives would be saved, because this brute force wouldn’t need to be used.

To fix this issue, I propose that people become educated about this need, perhaps in high school classes, when the brain is developed enough to understand the problem and what can be done to fix it. If people could understand this problem, they could prevent themselves from committing some horrible act to attain certain goals.

Works Cited

"The Battle of the Little Big Horn, 1876." Eyewitness To History. Ibis Communications. Web. 9 Nov. 2009. <http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/custer.htm>.

Cialdii, and Brehm. "Scarcity Principle." Changing Minds. Web. 9 Nov. 2009. <http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/scarcity_principle.htm>.

Cialdini, Robert B. Influence: Science and Practice. 4th ed. Needham Heights: Allyn & Bacon A Pearson Education Company, 2001. Print.

The War for Resources

The war for resources wages on day to day in every country across the world. People fight for food, water, arms, land, or any other items of value. Some people fight out of sheer need, others out of greed. These resources may be scarce or they may be something just out of reach. The problem is that some people will do anything to attain these resources, including murder.

Resources are so valued by human kind that we are willing to do anything to get them, including the death of others. These resources cause war, because for that country or group, the resource is so valuable that the death of some is needed. An example of this is Darfur. The resources there, especially oil, were wanted by others, so the militia group, the Janjaweed, took the resources in whatever way they could, specifically through armed conflicts. The people of Darfur were slaughtered over the resources they had. Murder, rape, genocide, all words we attribute to what happened in Darfur, but we only see that side of the story. The other side is the oil and other resources that the people of Darfur lived on and around. Yet, what do we do to prevent this from happening again?

Some would say this comes down to need. According to the realistic conflict theory developed by Muzafer Sherif, when there are limited resources, conflict ensues. (McLeod, 1) However, we often think we need things, even though we just want them. If everyone could be more open with resources, the loss of life wouldn’t be necessary. By opening up for more trade, we could avoid this war over resources. According to Klare’s article on the resource wars, “As Reid’s speech and the 2003 Pentagon study make clear, the greatest danger posed by global climate change is not the degradation of ecosystems per se, but rather the disintegration of entire human societies, producing wholesale starvation, mass migrations and recurring conflict over resources.”(Klare, 1) Could the environment be blamed for this fighting? Or because of this, should countries ban together to pool resources and search for a better outcome? The answer to these questions lies in both science and every human being on this planet. To save the lives of others, we should be willing to seek out alternatives to our current way of life.

The loss of life is not worth the winnings of a war for resources, especially if there is an easier way. This conflict to attain what we feel we may need will only end up harming mankind. Sooner or later, something needs to change.

Bibliography

Klare, Michael T. "The Coming Resource Wars." TomPaine.com, 7 Mar. 2006. Web. 7 Sept. 2009. <http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/03/07/the_coming_resource_wars.php>.

Grice, Andrew. "Darfur: the evidence of war crimes." The Independent, 7 Aug. 2007. Web. 7 Sept. 2009. <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/darfur-the-evidence-of-war-crimes-459922.html>.

"Genocide in Darfur, Sudan." DarfurScores.org. Web. 4 Oct. 2009. .

McLeod, S.A. (2007) Simply Psychology [On-line] UK: Available: http://www.simplypsychology.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ Accessed:October 6, 2009