Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

Violence in media is something that has become a cornerstone of the belief amongst some people as to how the society nowadays is more decadent and violent than what it was a few decades ago. One of the reasoning people give is that the amount of violence on TV and in media is increasing because people are getting desensitized to it and want more. Most of the research into this phenomenon agrees that there are both short-term and long term impacts of watching violence in Media. For example, we have a study that uni-vocally claims that there are significant short-term effects of violent media in adults and long-term effects in children after exposure to violent media. (Bushman & Huesmann, 2006)

Media violence scholars have identified several basic psychological processes involved. Short-term effects are those that occur immediately after exposure. The main ways that media violence exposure increases aggression in the short term are:

• Direct imitation of the observed behavior
• Observational learning of attitudes, beliefs and expected benefits of aggression
• Increased excitation
• Priming of aggression-related ways of thinking and feeling

Basically, the more normalized a particular behavior becomes the more people will think and act in that way. For example, in a lot on Indian movies there is a theme of the boy falling in love with a girl who does not love them back. The hero then proceeds to stalk, harass the girl who then falls in love with him and they live happily ever after. There have been a few instances where college kids tried the same approach in real life not realizing that this is not appropriate behavior. In essence, for at least a brief period after viewing or playing violent media, the exposed person thinks in more aggressive ways, feels more aggressive, perceives that others are hostile towards him or her and sees aggressive solutions as being more acceptable and beneficial.

The short-term effects typically dissipate quickly. However, with repeated exposure to violent media, these short-term lessons are learned in a more permanent way and the person comes to lean towards more aggressive solutions to conflict. There also is growing evidence that repeated exposure to blood, gore and other aspects of extremely violent media can lead to emotional desensitization to the pain and suffering of others. If a person is already mentally leaning towards violent behavior or socially maladjusted, they will get more influenced by the violent depictions on screen and be tempted to try it out in real life. However, in other people it has been found that watching violence on screen or in video games acts as a sort of pressure release and allows them to channel the anger and hurt in a way that does not harm actual people.

Habituation is a form of non-associative learning in which response to a stimulus decreases after repeated or prolonged presentations of that stimulus. Basically, it means that if someone is exposed to a stimulus (like violence in media) repeatedly there is a decrease in their response to the stimulus. For example, if a new sound like a loud is happening next to you it will draw your attention initially and be very distracting but if it keeps happening then a person becomes accustomed to the sound and pay less attention to the noise reducing their response to it. I have seen it happen with people living next to airports, over a period of time they do not even notice the sounds of the planes landing even though visitors to their house comment on it.

Cultivation theory on the other hand suggests that people who are exposed to media regularly over a prolonged period of time will start to perceive the world as presented in the media they consume. For example, if someone is constantly consuming far-right videos and talking points about how the immigrants in the US are the cause of most of the country’s problems and how they are violent and lazy they will start thinking this is real and behave accordingly in the real world as well. There have been documented cases of people attacking immigrants in the US because they believed that their way of life is under threat from them. The fact that this may or may not be true does not come into the picture as they are conditioned to believe in this ‘fact’.

Media has a tremendous power to change the public perception and that is why people are worried about the amount of violence being depected in it. Movies like the Joker and similar movies normalize the violent behavior and that is what scares most physiologists.

– Suramya

PS: This essay was originally written for my Social Psychology class. Hence the really more formal writing style.

In research, specifically psychological research there is no unambiguous, right or wrong answer. A study that could psychological or physical discomfort to participants might lead to discoveries that benefit the participants and increase the sum of human participants. Rosenthal and Rosnow (1984) talk about the potential costs of failing to carry out certain research. Historically, many experiments have been conducted with major violations of the ethical considerations. For example, in the famous obedience experiment by Milgram the subjects were convinced that they were delivering painful and possibly life-threatening electrical shocks to another person (Milgram, 1963). Another experiment where ethics were ignored is the Stanford Prison Experiment (Haney et al., 1972). These controversial psychology experiments played a major role in the development of the ethical guidelines and regulations that psychologists must abide by today. These codes are designed to protect the safety, privacy and interests of the participants as well as protecting the psychologists.

When conducting research, the overall benefit should be weighed against the cost of conducting the experiment. There is a lot of debate about the ethical guidelines that should be followed but most researchers and institutions agree that the following key components should be followed during the experiment.

Voluntary Participation

The researchers should ensure that none of the participants in the study/experiment are forced to participate and are willing participants. In the past we have seen prisoners and poor people used in experiments without getting proper approvals.

Informed Consent:

All participants should be told about the procedures and any potential risks of the study. According to the American Psychological Association’s Ethics Code psychologists conducting research should inform the participants about:

• The purpose of the research
• Expected duration and procedures.
• Potential Risks or adverse effects.
• Participants’ rights to decline to participate and to withdraw from the research
• Incentives (if any) for participation.

There is certain research where giving the participants details about the experiment can influence their responses and in these cases the use of deception is allowed. However, this is only in cases where it would be impossible to conduct the research without the deception. It is expected that the participants are debriefed about the purpose of the experiment after it is completed.

Participant Confidentiality

Confidentiality is an essential part of any ethical psychology research. None of the identifying information and individual responses should be shared with anyone outside the study.
The above listed guidelines give some generic standards for research but as each study has unique challenges most colleges and universities have an Institutional Review Board that oversees the research conducted by their faculty members and students. This ensures that the research being done is ethical and does not pose unnecessary risk to the participants.
 
– Suramya

PS: This was originally written as an essay for my Social Psychology class. Hence the really more formal writing style.

I recently saw the news that UK is honoring Alan Turing, Pioneering Computer Scientist And Code-Breaker by putting his image on their new 50 pound note. It made me think that this is something a lot of nations do to honor people who were famous, or contributed in a major way to society or the country issuing the note. Here’s a brief overview of Interesting Famous People on Banknotes around the World. It is a great way to honor people and ensure people know more about them.

That made me think that it would be great if we did the same thing in India. As far as I know none of the currency notes in India have ever had an image of anyone other than Gandhi. I mean, yes he is the father of the nation and we should honor that, but I feel we should also honor some of the other famous people like our Freedom Fighters, Scientists, Artists etc. I would love to see a new note with the photo of Sardar Vallabhai Patel, Bhagat Singh, Sarojini Naidu or Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose on it. We have so many people who sacrificed their lives for the country, can’t we even put their photo on a note?

Others who should be considered are the world famous scientists like CV Raman, Homi Jehangir Bhabha or Srinivasa Ramanujan. These are Nobel prize winners who changed the world but are hardly known in India. We should also look at famous artists/actors/musicians/poets etc like Rabindranath Tagore etc. Definitely not proposing to put any politician’s photo on the notes because that is a can of worms we don’t need to open. Every political party in India will start screaming if their party’s candidates don’t have their photo on the notes 🙂

I know that stamps that were released to honor a lot of people, but nowadays not many people still send physical letters so the gesture is not as significant as what it used to be. I would still recommend releasing new notes with other people’s photos on them.

If you agree with this, please share on Social media, tag the PMO accounts and media outlets.

– Suramya

Earlier today, I was just lazing around and started thinking about why I am finding it harder to write blog posts or rather why I have not been blogging more frequently over the past few years. Part of it has been due to the workload and time that I need to spend on personal stuff, but I feel that the main issue is due to my use of Twitter. Let me explain why I think that is the case.

If you see some of my earlier posts they are about a site I found or a news item that I saw and wanted to share my thoughts about. Other posts were more detailed but are not what I am concerned about here. When I would find something interesting I would put it in my drafts folder on the Blog and later add a few lines/paragraphs about it before posting it. However, now when I see something interesting I post about it on Twitter most of the times with a few lines. That gets it out there with my immediate thoughts about the topic so there is little incentive for me to write a more detailed blog post about it. Obviously there are exceptions but a lot of the time I see myself doing this. For example, There was an article about Documenting a possible pre-Christian burial site as it is literally about to disappear under lava. It was very interesting and I posted about it on Twitter. So I didn’t have it in my list of articles to talk about when planing my next Blog post.

There is no solution for this, I feel that I just need to consciously decide if a tweet could be better as a blog post and if so save it as a draft on WordPress instead of tweeting about it.

As per BBC, 17 years ago the greatest show ever was resurrected when Christopher Eccleston was announced as the Ninth Doctor in Doctor Who’s return to the TV screens. I am a big fan of the show and I remember being super excited when the first episode ‘Rose’ was leaked on the web and then watching the full season. It was disappointing when they regenerated to the 10th Doctor but then again Matt Smith was brilliant in the role so there’s that. This was the first time I watched Dr Who as the older Doctor Who episodes were not available widely. I had however, read every single Target adaptation multiple times along with most of the other novelizations.

I recently did a re-watch of the entire series starting with the 9th Doctor as I was feeling nostalgic and I got all the way up to the 11th Doctor’s second season before stopping. I loved the 9th & 10th Doctor but didn’t really like the 11th (Matt Smith) & 12th (Peter Capaldi) at all. Matt was too hyper and Peter was too dour and grumpy all the time for my liking. Though they did have some great companions: Clara Oswald, Amy Pond and Rory Williams and some of the stories were nice. I didn’t like River Song much though, her character was a bit annoying at first and then they made it too meta and confusing.

After I got tired of the 11th Doctor, I stopped the re-watch but then saw a clip about Sarah Jane’s Smith’s introduction to the show. That made me realize that I had never watched all the episodes of the first three doctors. So I started watching the show from the 1st doctor onwards. Though, to be honest I didn’t like the 1st Doctor much as he was too arrogant and rude. Couldn’t watch the 2nd Doctor because most of his episodes were lost when BBC decided to discard/overwrite the tapes with the episode’s. (Thankfully a majority of episodes starting with the 3rd Doctor onwards survived.) So for the past few months I have been watching the 3rd Doctor’s episodes and I really like them. I mean the special effects and the costumes are hilariously bad but the stories are fun to watch.

I still like the 4th Doctor the best from the original series and the 10th from the new one. Overall I would rank them as follows: 10th Doctor (David Tennant), 4th Doctor (Tom Baker), 13th Doctor (Jodie Whittaker), 9th Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and the 3rd Doctor (Jon Pertwee). The others are ok, but not my favorites. I know a lot of folks don’t like the 13th Doctor because it is played by Jodie but the stories in her arc have been some of the most interesting ones since the 10th Doctor and their acting has been superb. For a lot of the 12th Doctor stories I fast forwarded through them but the stories from the 13th Doctor were so interesting I hardly had to forward through any of them.

Waiting for the next season of the show to be released but till then I have a lot of old Who episodes to finish watching.

Well, this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

The Justice League Snyder’s cut came out earlier this week, I was initially on the fence about watching the movie as I had really disliked the original Justice League, but then the reviews came out and I saw that most people really liked the movie, so I decided to give the movie a shot. When I started watching I wasn’t aware that the new movie was over 4 hours long which is ridiculously long for a movie, even Hindi movies are shorter and usually max out at 3 hours long.

However, in this case the 4 hours was worth it and I loved the movie. It felt more like an extended mini-series than a movie, especially with the chapters in the movie. The new movie made a lot more sense watching it and the scenes flowed into each other rather than stand alone shots that were stuck together for some reason. Each of the characters was given a proper storyline in this version and that made a whole lot of difference in how the movie played out. I still don’t like the Flash in the movies as opposed to the TV series but he was less annoying this time around than the previous version.

Zack Snyder’s Justice League

There are a lot of changes, cut scenes, new scenes in this version and you can check out The 45 biggest differences between ‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League’ and the 2017 theatrical version, if you are interested (There are spoilers here. Obviously. )

The one downside of the 4 hour movie was that I couldn’t see the full movie in one sitting. I mean I could have, but I needed to study for my exams so that forced me to take breaks. That also contributed in making the movie seem like an mini-series rather than a feature film.

The epilogue of the movie was a bit confusing, but I feel that might have been setting up the stage for future movies. Let’s see… After this release I can honestly say that I am looking forward to the next iteration in this universe which wasn’t the case so far. I mean Aquaman and the Wonder Woman movies were good, but then we had Wonder Woman 1984 which was pretty bad. So I wasn’t that excited about the next movie in the series, but that has changed a bit after this movie.

– Suramya