Proper blog 2, environmental attitues (references)

Is there a gap between environmental attitudes and behaviours? If so why and what can be done about it?

Attitudes are global evaluations toward some object or issue and they are formed through the ideologies and beliefs of family members, peers and media exposure while behaviours are influenced by the actual, perceived, imagined or implied presence of others (Baumeister & Bushman 2008). Allport’s concept of the individual’s behaviours is seen as the interaction between the feelings, behaviours and thoughts of the individual in conjunction with this trilogy being a joint function of personal and situational influences. This assertion is central to the debate of whether a person’s behaviour is influenced by attitudes or situations or if it is a consequence of them both and with what portions. One of the areas where there has been a substantial amount of interest recently is that of the environment particularly of climate change and global warming.

Environmental behaviours encompass a wide spectrum of activities and focal points which can leave an individual in a situation where the focus is too narrow and their own activities can be forgotten and therefore conflict occurring between the attitudes and behaviours. An example of this would be if a person volunteers their time and money to an organisation that targets areas of forests that are considered for plantation yet they do not recycle materials at home, they drive a car that uses large quantities of petrol or within their house they have numerous products made from endangered trees.

So to put it frankly although there is probably a small minority of people who do have parallels between their attitudes and behaviours the majority of people do not have consistency between their attitudes and behaviours.

There may also be an issue due to attitude accessibility referring to how easily the attitude come to mind, therefore highly accessible attitudes are more influential. General attitudes can help cause behaviour but only if they are prominent in the person’s conscious mind. The A-B problem identifies the problem of inconsistencies between attitudes and behaviours (Baumeister & Bushman 2008).

There are a plethora of reasons why the behaviours of an individual may differ from their attitudes with the most prominent being opportunities available, time restraints and the influence of the group and its dynamics.

So is the environment that big a deal and particular all this hype with global warming and climate change. Global warming is the observed average temperature increase in the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans and this is sufficient enough to cause climate change. It is a significant issue with a rise of the average global temperature from 13.5°C in 1860 to 14.4°C in 2000 (http://www.designcanchange.org/#issue). This increase in temperature will result in the rising sea levels, increase in frequency of extreme weather, escalating diseases and in the changing of the ecosystem subsequently resulting in the extinction of many species (http://www.teachgreenpsych.com/tg_methods.html) . So although there have reports about this is not a real concern this is not the case with such films as the Great Global Warming Swindle this is not the case (www.abc.net.au/catalyst).

Group dynamics can also have either a positive or negative influence, with either feeling pressure to conform or in a wider situation feeling that the issue is out of their control with everyone else responding and therefore that individual does not need to, such as the emergency situations experiments where they look to others to determine the situation such as the fire alarm experiment or that someone else will help, for example the women who was stabbed and everyone saw but presumed that someone else would take care of the situation (Baumeister & Bushman 2008).

Group pressure can help in a positive way by the need to conform to actual or perceived ideals of the group, so that if you drop a piece of paper and you get a negative reinforcement from the group you are more likely to pick up the paper or at least next time change your behaviour. However, if this is just the groups beliefs and not your own then this will not be a strong belief and therefore it is less likely to remain behaviour for the environment when the group is not around.

This is partly true to with the media’s influence in some cases with at the moment it appears that there is a great proportion of people concerned with the environment due to the celebrities worry and that it is just a fad. This making of the environmental issues trendy is an interesting one for two reasons, firstly is the line between where the environmental issue is becoming materialistic and secondly often the celebrities have major discrepancies between about what they preach and their actual behaviour.

Once a belief is formed then it is hard to change due in part to the fact that information that doesn’t support the belief will be questioned more and justified in terms of the current belief rather than analysing what is actual happening. For example the media portrays “hippies” and environmental “ferals” in a certain way, often unclean with dreadlocks and although mostly calm when something really upsets them, like with APEC or logging in Tasmania then they will protest and kick up a fuss. Therefore if you met an older good looking person, who you knows has a good reliable job and they tell you that they are a strong supporter for the environment you may find this hard to believe due to the pre-exposed conditions and your previous experiences.

Time is a huge factor when discussing people’s environmental attitudes and in addition to this the resources that are available and the accessibility of these resources is crucial when examining the cognitive dissonance between a person’s belief and their behaviour. For example a person may want to help with the environment but there may be no recycling areas for ages or they may need to use transport that is not the most ecologically sound. The government is making this easier to obtain with the change of housing regulation to meet standards and regulations and such projects as able to buy green energy and hybrid cars however politics continues to play a huge impact on an individual's attiudes and behaviours.

The way in which the environmental message is presented is important and effects our response rate, with human’s being more responsive to people they like, are handsome, who have their information from a credible source and appear in a non-threatening manner but offer just a little shock value. In addition to this people who are reinforced positively with actions that help the environment and negatively to those that disadvantage it are more likely keep responding in a positive manner, even if it just through smaller reinforcements such as praise (Baumeister & Bushman 2008).

Knowledge is a powerful tool so it is crucial that all of our generation but particularly the younger children are being taught about the environment so in years to come they can help maintains it for a world that can exist.

Therefore there is high cognitive dissonance when concerned with environmental behaviour and these are mainly due to time, resources available and relatively poor ideas and beliefs. The individual is subsequently put into a position where they must change their beliefs or their behaviours. Increasing resources available should help people cut down there time and therefore make them more likely to conform to environmental benefiting behaviour while having the message spoken from a credible source and through people we like would also help improve environmental efforts. It is important that we are not negatively swayed by the media and that we recognise group effects, and that they can be both positive and negative and finally that we do have more of an open mind, try and ban stereotypes and try to improve behaviour for everyone.

References
Baumeister & Bushman. (2008). Social Psychology and Human Nature Thomson Wadsworth Belmont CA USA.
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst retrieved on the 23 October
http://www.designcanchange.org/#issue retrieved on the 25th October
http://www.teachgreenpsych.com/tg_methods.html

technical difficulties

hi james, am having difficulties getting on to wilderdom, so will try and properly submit the blog soon, hope that is ok

blog 2

Is there a gap between environmental attitudes and behaviours? If so why and what can be done about it?

Attitudes are global evaluations toward some object or issue and they are formed through the ideologies and beliefs of family members, peers and media exposure while behaviours are influenced by the actual, perceived, imagined or implied presence of others. Allport’s concept of the individual’s behaviours is seen as the interaction between the feelings, behaviours and thoughts of the individual in conjunction with this trilogy being a joint function of personal and situational influences. This assertion is central to the debate of whether a person’s behaviour is influenced by attitudes or situations or if it is a consequence of them both and with what portions. One of the areas where there has been a substantial amount of interest recently is that of the environment particularly of climate change and global warming. Environmental behaviours encompass a wide spectrum of activities and focal points which can leave an individual in a situation where the focus is too narrow and their own activities can be forgotten and therefore conflict occurring between the attitudes and behaviours. An example of this would be if a person volunteers their time and money to an organisation that targets areas of forests that are considered for plantation yet they do not recycle materials at home, they drive a car that uses large quantities of petrol or within their house they have numerous products made from endangered trees.

So to put it frankly although there is probably a small minority of people who do have parallels between their attitudes and behaviours the majority of people do not have consistency between their attitudes and behaviours.

There may also be an issue due to attitude accessibility referring to how easily the attitude come to mind, therefore highly accessible attitudes are more influential. General attitudes can help cause behaviour but only if they are prominent in the person’s conscious mind. The A-B problem identifies the problem of inconsistencies between attitudes and behaviours.
There are a plethora of reasons why the behaviours of an individual may differ from their attitudes with the most prominent being opportunities available, time restraints and the influence of the group and its dynamics.

So is the environment that big a deal and particular all this hype with global warming and climate change. Global warming is the observed average temperature increase in the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans and this is sufficient enough to cause climate change. It is a significant issue with a rise of the average global temperature from 13.5°C in 1860 to 14.4°C in 2000. This increase in temperature will result in the rising se levels, increase in frequency of extreme weather, escalating diseases and in the changing of the ecosystem subsequently resulting in the extinction of many species. So although there have reports about this is not a real concern this is not the case with such films as the Great Global Warming Swindle this is not the case.

Group dynamics can also have either a positive or negative influence, with either feeling pressure to conform or in a wider situation feeling that the issue is out of their control with everyone else responding and therefore that individual does not need to, such as the emergency situations experiments where they look to others to determine the situation such as the fire alarm experiment or that someone else will help, for example the women who was stabbed and everyone saw but presumed that someone else would take care of the situation.
Group pressure can help in a positive way by the need to conform to actual or perceived ideals of the group, so that if you drop a piece of paper and you get a negative reinforcement from the group you are more likely to pick up the paper or at least next time change your behaviour. However, if this is just the groups beliefs and not your own then this will not be a strong belief and therefore it is less likely to remain behaviour for the environment when the group is not around.

This is partly true to with the media’s influence in some cases with at the moment it appears that there is a great proportion of people concerned with the environment due to the celebrities worry and that it is just a fad. This making of the environmental issues trendy is an interesting one for two reasons, firstly is the line between where the environmental issue is becoming materialistic and secondly often the celebrities have major discrepancies between about what they preach and their actual behaviour.

Once a belief is formed then it is hard to change due in part to the fact that information that doesn’t support the belief will be questioned more and justified in terms of the current belief rather than analysing what is actual happening. For example the media portrays “hippies” and environmental “ferals” in a certain way, often unclean with dreadlocks and although mostly calm when something really upsets them, like with APEC or logging in Tasmania then they will protest and kick up a fuss. Therefore if you met a older good looking person, who you knows has a good reliable job and they tell you that they are a strong supporter for the environment you may find this hard to believe due to the pre-exposed conditions and your previous experiences.

Time is a huge factor when discussing people’s environmental attitudes and in addition to this the resources that are available and the accessibility of these resources is crucial when examining the cognitive dissonance between a person’s belief and their behaviour. For example a person may want to help with the environment but there may be no recycling areas for ages or they may need to use transport that is not the most ecologically sound. The government is making this easier to obtain with the change of housing regulation to meet standards and regulations and such projects as able to buy green energy and buy hybrid cars.

The way in which the environmental message is presented is important and effects our response rate, with human’s being more responsive to people they like, are handsome, who have their information from a credible source and appear in a non-threatening manner but offer just a little shock value. In addition to this people who are reinforced positively with actions that help the environment and negatively to those that disadvantage it are more likely keep responding in a positive manner, even if it just through smaller reinforcements such as praise.
Knowledge is a powerful tool so it is crucial that all of our generation but particularly the younger children are being taught about the environment so in years to come they can help maintains it for a world that can exist.

Therefore there is high cognitive dissonance when concerned with environmental behaviour and these are mainly due to time, resources available and relatively poor ideas and beliefs. Therefore increasing resources available should help people cut down there time and therefore make them more likely to conform to environmental benefiting behaviour while having the message spoken from a credible source and through people we like would also help improve environmental efforts. It is important that we are not negatively swayed by the media and that we recognise group effects, and that they can be both positive and negative and finally that we do have more of an open mind, try and ban stereotypes and try to improve behaviour for everyone.

ENERGY FROM WITHIN?

as im drinking my new favourite drink, superman, wondering what the long term effects will be of peoples increased need of energy drinks. Not only are there long term health risks such as heart problems and increase risk of such illnesses as diabetes and general health problems including tooth decay due to over consumption but also short term risks. These are dramaticaly increased also by the mixing with alcohol, to the point where in certain places such drinks as vodka red-bull and jagerbombs were banned. However lollywater drinks where vodka is mixed with sugar and a caffine/taurine/guarana concotion are still particularly popular. Often people went out clubbing they were being dehydrated due to dancing vigorously throughtout the night and sculling their energy drinks as if they do only contain sugar, leading to a high number of emergency casualties. In europe, particularly in France it is very hard to find the much loved red-bull drink.

Originally used to cure jetlag this drink has now become such a label and phonomenon that they now sponser huge sporting and adrenalin events particularly snowboarding, skateboarding and air racing.

This has influenced our culture, particularly amongst young people and their university work, with a significant amount of students exceeding the recomended intake by a big amount. It is just now thought of as the way to do the work or in some cases taking such stimulants as no doze with their caffinated drinks.

So what are the effects on our behaviour with it having such slogans as give you wings and energy of a hero for the new superman drink? although partiuclarly drinks that advertise the guarana aspect such as V for increased concentration over consumption can increase hyperactivity and have a negative impact on concentration. It can also lull you into a false sense of security with the quality of work being produced, not only academically but within the greater community network with these drinks being relied on in conjunction with the good old coffee to keep people who work night or long hours awake.

So where are they heading, they keep pushing the boundaries not only with product placement but through the quanties of the ingredients that are allowed in the drinks, and the current climate and trends suggst that people are going to at least for the next little while keep grabbing the cans of goodstuff! what is perhaps more worrying is that young kids are gettin addicted, although the drink doesnt recommend consumption for under 16s there is a high majority of children as young as 8 drinking this stuff regularly, could be a contributor or have negative effect on ADHD sufferers and those medicated for it.

So really what im asking is what are your thoughts on these drinks, as a student, as part of the Canberra and Australia at large community and is the government fairly regulating them. Do you think that there are real risks or is it just a lot of hype, any personal experiences you wish to share would be fantastic :)

multi-tasking

hey just wondering what your thoughts are on multi-tasking and its effectiveness and when it is and isnt appropriate. What are the benefits and what are the disadvantages? can it actually have a big difference in our lives or is it just something that we should do or not do automatically as the case may be. What about the men versus women in terms of their ability to do it? Do you think that males are more capable of doing it more than they are given credit for? Has the introduction of technology, the increase in time limits and the need it now attitude changed the need for multi-tasking and therefore is it being used more these days? Do you think that significant errors are that are being made frequently and is there really that much time being saved in the long run.

Your thoughts would as always would be greatly appreciated :)

Stress

with exam upon us was having a bit of a brainstorm about stress. now i know that stress is often talked about but realistically why is it that we get so stressed in the modern days and what methods do people use to deal with it. So from past psych classes we all should pretty much know that a little bit of stress can be useful if we are doing tasks that we have done before or that we are good at that dont require a great deal of cognitive thought, it also depends on whether we have an audience and whether we enjoy the task. Stress can also be good to actually get us studying before exams so we stop procrastinating, although if we have too much pressure it impacts the quality of what we are encoding in addition to leading us to "burn out."

So how do we procrastinate and why do we do it! sometimes we justify it by lowering the predicted work imput that is needed, sometimes often we know that we are only kidding ourselves but we still prioritise other things. Often it is the most boring or stupidst things we do such as doing a MASSIVE clean of everywhere possible or pairing together all our socks, or else we do things that will calm us down, primarily drinking or watching television.

So why is it that some of us can only work under pressure, i know that i can only do good work when there is not a great deal of time left as long as i have all the resources at my disposal. Others let there stress take over and this is not good particularly in the long run. Stress decreases quality of life in numerous aspects including health, particularly heart, decreases general enjoyment of activities and people that are normallywell liked and increases bad moods and anger in different environments such as when driving.

We also like to blame others for our unsuccesful approaches to tasks so that we dont feel as responsible for our actions. Anyway, will keep this one kind of short (and maybe sweet!) and hope that people are not stressing for their exams and goodluck, not that you need it, remember study can be FUN!!! :)

Anymore thoughts about stress, if you want to procrastinate am interested in what you guys think!

SO HOT!!!

hey seeing it is so hot today it started to get me thinking about how different people deal with the heat and other uncomfortable situations in general. So just a bit of brainstorming about the different things that may effect what people perceive as hot. so where they are from can sometimes effect it but not always, i know people who have all their life lived in the cold and felt comfortable but when they came into the hot they loved it! perhaps maybe a bigger influence could be how people are conditioned by those they grew up with to deal with the heat, often people whose parents love the heat will love the heat too and vica versa.



The expectation of whether it is going to be hot plays into people's strategies, if you know it is hot then you may be able to make precautions, on the other hand if you know it is going to be hot and you dont like the heat then maybe knowing it is going to be really hot will make you on the lookout for heat in a negative way, so already in a bad mood and complaining about it.



Such physical conditions as age and health could help determine a persons resistance. So what other things, if you are tired the heat will often make you feel more irritable or sleepy when if you have slept sufficently the night before there is an increase in the ability to deal with the situation. Also how long the heat lasts is important because we may love the heat at the start but if it is after over a week of high 20s/low 30s then it may just wear away at the person until they crack.

So what are the main things that happen when people get too hot, often their current mood is exacerbated, for example if they are feeling a little bit hyper they will probably act even more hyperactive than normal, or if they are cranky they will be even more cranky than usual.

So when people do think of hot they think of such things as sunning themselves by the beach, and when they think of cold they think of snow up a mountain. However this sunning can lead to such negative consequences as skin cancer, while if enjoying yourself at the beach you also have to be careful when swimming. You think of lazy days with a cocktail or having a barbie rather than rugging up with hot chocolate in front of the fire, often people have alot more social activities in the warmth.

Anyway enough banter, just wondering what your thoughts are on people's and animals reactions to weather :)