2.4 American Culture; The Importance of Values

As we wait for students to arrive, please review the readings I assigned last class:

Kohl's Values Americans Live By

Buettner's Thrive

Remember that we were learning how humans are shaped by their society.  Culture is a strong force in nurturing who we are.  We are born into a culture and before we are even conscious, we are shaped by it.  Culture is made up of different components, but values are one of the strongest components in shaping the lives of individuals living within the culture.

Please open the Google Doc and answer questions 1 and 2 individually 

1.  Choose one of the values that Kohl writes about.  How does this value show up specifically in your everyday life?

2.  Look at the list of values that Americans hold.  Identify American values that might complement each other.  These are called value clusters.  

Culture in general and values specifically are not always so easy to define.  Culture is dynamic, constantly evolving.  And sometimes different aspects of a culture conflict.  Culture can be both ideal and real;  that is, culture can contain values that people agree are important but they may be different from values that are actually manifest in everyday life. 

Sociologist Karen Cerulo explains the importance of understanding the complexity of American values in her 2008 essay here:

3.  What cultural values from the Kohl reading might conflict with that you wrote about above? (use the list of values)  (Or look for American values that might contradict the other American values.)  These are called value contradictions.  

The Importance of Values

Values are very strong components of culture.  They shape so much about what we do and how our daily lives are structured.  Below are some studies of values in the U.S. identified by social scientists:

American Values

In 1970, sociologist Robin Williams published his examination of American cultural values.  

In 1985, L. Robert Kohl published a similar examination of values written for refugees like the Lost Boys so that they could adjust to American culture.  

And, in 2015 Sociologists Erik Olin Wright and Joel Rogers published American Society; How It Really Works in which they identify five core social values that most Americans affirm in one way or another: freedom, prosperity, efficiency, fairness, and democracy.

Below is a chart that synthesizes the lists of values from above.  (For more on values see my previous post on Amer-I-can Values)

American Values                          vs.              Other Cultures’ Values

Personal control/responsibility                           Fate/destiny

Change seen as natural/positive/Progress          Stability/tradition

Time and its control                                          Human Interaction

Equality/fairness                                               Hierarchy/rank/status

Individualism/independence/freedom                 Group welfare/dependence

Self-Help/initiative                                            Birthright/inheritance

Competition                                                     Cooperation

Future orientation                                            Past orientation

Action/work                                                     “Being”

Informality                                                      Formality

Directness/openness/Honesty                           Indirectness/ritual/”face”

Practicality/efficiency                                        Idealism/theory

Materialism/Acquisitiveness                               Spiritualism/detachment

Achievement/Success                                       Acceptance/Status Quo

Morality/judgement                                          Consequentialism/situational ethics

Thriving in America? Comparing American values to the ethnographic documentary.

Thrive by Dan Buettner is a cross-cultural ethnographic study of cultural values.  

Using the excerpt from Thrive, answer:

4.  What was one suggestion that Buettner made that was interesting to you - something you had not thought about before?

5.  What is something that Buettner mentions that our culture might make difficult to pursue?  Why does our culture make it difficult? 

6.  Identify values that are contradictory to U.S. values from the film God Grew Tired of Us.

US Value        How does it contradict with the Lost Boys?

Hopefully, you see that culture can shape our lives in numerous ways - especially what we value about community, workplaces, social life, financial life, homes and our self-identity.

My goal is for you to become sociologically mindful about the ways in which culture shapes you, especially in how it leads you to be happy or not.  With sociological mindfulness, we can use research like Buettner's to consciously guide our choices to help us live happier lives.

For more on Thrive:

Here is the Thrive happiness test- it will measure your satisfaction and make recommendations. 

Here is a review of the book from NPR.

You can read a preview of the book from Goodreads here. 

Here is link to an interview with the author on NPR.

Here is the publisher's Thrive website.

A test of your cultural values:

Try this experiment:

Close your eyes.  Think of someone influential in your life. 

then, click here

For More on American culture:

This link to the US State Dept. provides ways of thinking about American culture: https://www.state.gov/courses/answeringdifficultquestions/html/app.htm?p=module2_p2.htm

This link to Study USA explains American values for foreign exchange students coming to the USA:

https://www.studyusa.com/en/a/1223/six-aspects-of-u-s-culture-international-students-need-to-know

What People Around the World Like – and Dislike – About American Society and Politics, PEW 2021

How Americans’ views of the U.S. compare with international views of the U.S., PEW 2023

Foreigners Reveal 17 Weird Things Americans Do (That We Think Are Normal) 2020

American Themed Parties around the world:

Socimages

Instagram

TikTok

This skit from SNL called Washington's Dream is a funny take on American cultural differences in weights and measurements.

Mindfulness and Values

Let's think with sociological mindfulness for a second about values.  They shape you in so many different ways. And they also shape the entire culture in certain ways.  These values lead to behaviors that we all participate in unconsciously.  These behaviors can have an enormous impact on a culture when you view them as cultural behaviors.  Watch this TED talk by Chris Jordan to see how the behaviors impact our culture:

Research on Digital Devices in Class

There is much research on digital devices including that they:

• Decrease learning for the user
• Decrease learning for those around the user (the secondhand smoke of learning)
• Decrease learning and attention if the device is not on but within sight
• Result in measurably lower grades for the user

From the Guardian, What Happens When A School Bans Smart Phones? (2024)

Trombulak also sees phones as a potential teaching moment for students. “They’re struggling with the phone, but they didn’t invent the phone. They didn’t buy the phone,” he said. “If school is a place you’re supposed to learn how to do things, then safe technology use needs to become more part of the curriculum.”

Providing dumb phones could be part of the way forward, Nina Marks admits, but she wonders if funds at already strapped public schools could be put to better use. “If you think of people as addicts, you have to replace that with something else,” 

It’s difficult to tell how the new phone policy is affecting academic performance because Buxton uses a narrative evaluation system. But culturally, Beck says, the move has been transformative, often in small but cumulatively meaningful ways.

“People are engaging in the lounges. They are lingering after class to chat,” said Beck, who estimates that he’s now having more conversations than ever at the school. “All these face-to-face interactions, the frequency has gone through the roof.” 

From Harvard, 

...the presence of electronic devices in the classroom is not, in and of itself, the problem. Rather, it's the way we incorporate electronic devices into situations in which we are already inclined to pay attention to too many things. Broadly, we are not wired to multitask well (e.g. Mayer and Moreno, 2003), which is precisely the temptation that many students report experiencing when they are in the classroom....

A growing number of studies have found that off-topic device usage—whether on a phone or on a laptop—impedes academic performance (e.g. Glass and Kang, 2019; Felisoni and Godoi, 2018; Bjornsen and Archer, 2015; Demirbilek and Talan, 2018). Several studies have compared students who texted during a lecture versus those who did not. Those who texted typically took lower quality notes, retained less information, and did worse on tests about the material (e.g. Kuznekoff and Titsworth, 2013, and Rosen et al, 2011; Lee et al, 2017). Students themselves are aware that in-class multitasking does not promote learning; in one survey, 80% of students agreed that multitasking in class decreases their ability to pay attention (Sana et al, 2013)....

 In addition, device usage is distracting to neighboring students. In several surveys, students have reported that texting is distracting to nearby students (Tindell and Bohlander, 2011). A study on laptops in a simulated classroom found that students in the vicinity of another student who was multitasking on a laptop during class scored worse on a test than those who were not near multitaskers (Sana et al, 2013). However, a follow-up study found that it matters what one’s neighbors are doing on their computers; a neighbor who engages with off-task content has a more harmful effect on one’s comprehension than if the neighbor is on-task (Hall et al, 2020). 

From Georgetown's McCourt School of Public Policy (2018)

Jean Twenge, psychology professor and adolescent researcher at SDSU:

From her 2017 book iGen,

With generational divides wider than ever, parents, educators, and employers have an urgent need to understand today’s rising generation of teens and young adults. Born after 1995, iGen is the first generation to spend their entire adolescence in the age of the smartphone. With social media and texting replacing other activities, iGen spends less time with their friends in person – perhaps why they are experiencing unprecedented levels of anxiety, depression, and loneliness.

And her article in The Atlantic (2017):

The more I pored over yearly surveys of teen attitudes and behaviors, and the more I talked with young people like Athena, the clearer it became that theirs is a generation shaped by the smartphone and by the concomitant rise of social media.  Psychologically, however, they are more vulnerable than Millennials were: Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011. It’s not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones.

From Hidden Brain Podcast (2017):

https://www.npr.org/2017/07/25/539092670/you-2-0-the-value-of-deep-work-in-an-age-of-distraction

Many of us react to the buzzes and beeps that come from our phones with the urgency of a parent responding to a baby's cry. We can't help but pick up our phone and look at the latest notification. We know this probably isn't the healthiest nor the sanest response to a vibrating hunk of a metal, so we tell ourselves we should be less distracted. We shouldn't be so gripped by social media or the churn of work email.

But Cal Newport, a computer scientist at Georgetown University and author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, says we're downplaying the problems created by constant interruption.

"We treat it, I think, in this more general sense of, 'eh, I probably should be less distracted.' But I think it's more urgent than people realize," he says.

By letting email and other messages guide our workday, Cal says we're weakening our ability to do the most challenging kinds of work—what he calls "deep work." Deep work requires sustained attention, whether the task is writing marketing copy or solving a tricky engineering problem.

Research from London School of Economics and Kent State (2016):

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/04/do-smartphones-have-a-place-in-the-classroom/480231/

The findings of a recent study on student phone access and the achievement gap by Louis-Philippe Beland and Richard Murphy for the London School of Economics and Political Science echoed my concerns. “We find that mobile phone bans have very different effects on different types of students,” the authors wrote. “Banning mobile phones improves outcomes for the low-achieving students … the most, and has no significant impact on high achievers.”

… analyses of other academic metrics seem to support limiting students’ smartphone access, too. Researchers at Kent State University, for example, found that among college students, more daily cellphone use (including smartphones) correlated with lower overall GPAs. The research team surveyed more than 500 students, controlling for demographics and high-school GPA, among other factors. If college students are affected by excessive phone use, then surely younger students with too much access to their phones and too little self-control and guidance would be just as affected academically if not more.

Research from WUSTLE (2015),

The students’ responses to the open-ended questions identified laptop-use by other students as the aspect of the class that was most distracting, followed closely by their own laptop-use.

To better understand the effects of laptop use on learning, Fried used a regression analysis to account for differences in preparation and academic aptitude as measured by high-school class rank and ACT score, respectively. With these controls in place, Fried found a significant, negative relationship between in-class laptop use and course grade. Follow-up correlational analysis also revealed that higher levels of laptop use were associated with lower student-reported levels of attention, lecture clarity, and understanding of the course material.

From Time Magazine (2015):

http://time.com/3855257/cell-phone-ban-school-test-score/

Exam scores climbed by as much as 6% in schools that imposed strict bans on cell phones, according to a new study that cautions policymakers to keep strict cell phone policies in the classroom.

Researchers at the University of Texas and Louisiana State University surveyed cell phone policies across schools in four English cities since 2001, studying how exam scores changed before and after the bans were enacted.

“We found the impact of banning phones for these students equivalent to an additional hour a week in school, or to increasing the school year by five days,” the study’s authors wrote on the academic blog, The Conversation.

Research from Communication Education in Science News (2015):

https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/when-smartphones-go-school

“Texting on things that are unrelated to class can hurt student learning,” Kuznekoff found. Overall, the control and class-related-message groups did 70 percent better on the test than did students that could text and tweet about anything. That control and relevant-message groups also scored 50 percent higher on note-taking.

“You’re putting yourself at a disadvantage when you are actively engaged with your mobile device in class and not engaged in what’s going on,” warns Kuznekoff. His team shared its findings in the July 2015 issue of Communication Education.

From Science Direct (2013):
https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360131512002254
Laptops are distracting in class and detrimental to other's learning - they are the secondhand smoke of learning.

We examined the detrimental effects of laptop multitasking on classroom learning.  Learners who multitasked during class had reduced comprehension of lecture material. Learners in-view of multitaskers also had reduced comprehension of lecture material.  Multitasking or being seated around multitaskers impedes classroom learning.

Sherry Turkle, social science professor and researcher at MIT:

Turkle's 2011 book, Alone Together. Here is a summary:

Consider Facebook—it’s human contact, only easier to engage with and easier to avoid. Developing technology promises closeness. Sometimes it delivers, but much of our modern life leaves us less connected with people and more connected to simulations of them.

In Alone Together, MIT technology and society professor Sherry Turkle explores the power of our new tools and toys to dramatically alter our social lives. It’s a nuanced exploration of what we are looking for—and sacrificing—in a world of electronic companions and social networking tools, and an argument that, despite the hand-waving of today’s self-described prophets of the future, it will be the next generation who will chart the path between isolation and connectivity.

Here is an excerpt. 

Mindfulness and Focus; Manage your Attention not your Time

From Stanford,

0. In lecture-style classes where computers are not essential to the material, the sustained use of laptops during lecture is potentially so distracting as to hinder a student’s performance and distract their fellow students. Sustained laptop use is not recommended, although some evidence suggests that brief, occasional browsing sessions are not as likely to hamper learning.

For Teachers:

James Lang offers advice about various issues surrounding tech distraction.

https://www.chronicle.com/specialreport/The-Distracted-Classroom/120?cid=RCPACKAGE

Every day in class, faculty members wage a constant battle with cellphones and laptops for the attention of students. In this series, James M. Lang explores the impasse over how to cope with those unwanted digital distractions.

A Qualitative Study of March Madness

A 2019 study by Dr. Ray and Dr. Foy provides a great example of how social institutions can reinforce racial biases.  Dr. Ray and his co-author Dr. Steven Foy, of the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley, transcribed 52 men’s college basketball broadcasts, including 11 championship games. They were looking at the ways broadcasters talk about players of different skin tones, and whether racial bias was at play.  Dr. Ray and Dr. Foy found that the institution of media (specifically broadcasters) can reinforce racial stereotypes using different language for white players and black players.  This use of language is also a great example of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and how language can produce and reify stereotypes.  

The original research article from U of Chicago is called Skin in the Game: Colorism and the Subtle Operation of Stereotypes in Men’s College Basketball and is published in the American Journal of Sociology 2019.

'Crafty' Vs. 'Sneaky': How Racial Bias In Sports Broadcasting Hurts Everyone is a summary of the research from Public Radio where you can listen to Ray and Foy talk about their research:

"That’s a tough matchup for JJ Redick on the glass. Redick not known as a rebounder. Tasmin Mitchell much stronger, bigger and more athletic."

"I mean, of course, we can highlight some of these bigger comments that most people would consider to be racist," says Dr. Rashawn Ray, who teaches sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. "But instead, what we were highlighting, in many ways, is implicit bias and the subtle ways that race actually operates, when it comes to talking about some of these historical stereotypes, about what it means to be Black and physically superior and, at the same time, intellectually inferior, and, on the other hand, what it means to be lighter-skinned or white." 

As you watch the games, be mindful of how the announcers talk about the different players and how that can affect society's stereotypes of different categories of people.

What examples can you here in the broadcast?

Reviewing Soc Structure

 Review for Social Structure

Spring 2022

nature

nurture

socialization

Genie and Danielle

self

agent of socialization

culture

culture shock

ethnocentrism

cultural relativity

material culture

non-material

norms

language

values

fishbowl metaphor

family

Dweck

changing families

school

peers

media

3SocStructure Lesson 13: Debriefing Social Dilemma

Resources from the Movie:

Social Dilemma Documentary website (https://www.thesocialdilemma.com/)

Full, unedited Social Dilemma Transcript available here.

Articles/Publications:

• Our Brains Are No Match for Our Technology by Tristan Harris, New York Times

• The Dark Psychology of Social Networks by Jonathan Haidt, The Atlantic

• Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff, Harvard Business Review

• The Truth About Algorithms by Cathy O’Neill, RSA

• Want to Work for Google? You Already Do. by Joe Toscano, TEDx Talks

• Free Speech Is Not The Same As Free Reach by Renée DiResta, Wired

• Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier

• Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil

  
  
  

Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab

Stanford University Behavior Design Lab

Stanford U. Persuasion Through Mobile Design Lab is run by BJ Fogg, behavior scientist at Stanford, https://www.bjfogg.com/

In 2006 we created a video to warn the FTC (and others) about problematic areas related to persuasive technology. See the video here: https://vimeo.com/117427520

(BJ’s quick note: This video above has a slow pace, and it’s not my best look, with the shaved head and all. However, do listen to what I was predicting and warning people about. At least go to minute 10 and see what I say about the political use of persuasion profiles. We recorded this video in 2006 to warn policymakers of the impacts persuasive technology could have. Remember, this message was recorded in 2006 not 2016 and the message rings true more and more every day.)

Simone Stolzoff from Wired (2018) explains in The Formula for Phone Addiction Might Double As a Cure

Ten years ago, a Stanford lab created the formula to make technology addictive. Now, Silicon Valley is dealing with the consequences.

"IN SEPTEMBER 2007, 75 students walked into a classroom at Stanford. Ten weeks later, they had collectively amassed 16 million users, $1 million dollars in advertising revenue, and a formula that would captivate a generation.

The class—colloquially known as "The Facebook Class"—and its instructor, BJ Fogg, became Silicon Valley legends."

False News Travels Faster Than True Stories On Twitter

2018 Research from MIT

Research project finds humans, not bots, are primarily responsible for spread of misleading information.

“We found that falsehood diffuses significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth, in all categories of information, and in many cases by an order of magnitude,” says Sinan Aral, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and co-author of a new paper detailing the findings."

Here is an article from Slate explaining the research. My full movie notes are available here.

Google Form for this lesson.

Debrief Questions:

1.  As we finish the movie, what are your general thoughts about the film?  What is your biggest takeaway?

2.  What did you think of the cast of commenters? Was their experience compelling?  Click here for the list of people.

3.  What do you think the claim/thesis of the film was?   Click here for a summary of the film's section "What's the Problem?"

4.  What are the effects of the problem/ the evidence for the claim above?  Click here for Part 3 Summary: The Evidence and Effects

5.  If you have a cell phone that monitors usage, check your usage - how many hours do you spend on it on average?

Actions You Can Take:

From the documentary website: https://www.thesocialdilemma.com/take-action/

Here is a summary of the individual actions you can take today:

• Uninstall apps from my phone that are wasting your time such as social media apps and news apps.
• Turn off notifications. Turning off all notifications. I’m not using Google anymore, I’m using Qwant, which doesn’t store your search history.
• Never accept a video recommended to you on YouTube. Always choose. There are tons of Chrome extensions that remove recommendations. 
• Before you share, fact-check, consider the source, do that extra Google. If it seems like it’s something designed to really push your emotional buttons, like, it probably is. Essentially, you vote with your clicks. If you click on clickbait, you’re creating a financial incentive that perpetuates this existing system. 
• Make sure that you get lots of different kinds of information in your own life. I follow people on Twitter that I disagree with because I want to be exposed to different points of view.

6.  What action above might be beneficial to you the most?

Research and Effects of Digital Devices on Students

Besides being good for society, democracy, and living in a world with a shared reality, there are more personal and practical reasons for being mindful of social media.

See this post for a list of research-based conclusions why digital media is bad for your learning and your grades

7.  What research from the post/link above seems like it is either most compelling or most applicable to you?  Why?  Do you think it is doable?

Big Data and YOU:

• Have you ever stopped to think about what social media knows about you?  Think about the last time you bought something at a store.  If the salesperson was a stranger, would you tell them everything that your social media knows about you?  Look at this post from Tech News and the chart that they included from clario (below):
  

8.  Is this surprising?  What apps that you use have the most data on you stored? 

Google and Varied Realities

Below are a few Google searches that I started.  How does Google fill in the same query when you type it in?  Are your search results different?

9.  Are any of the three Google Searches above different for you?  How?

From the movie:  How should we respond to this problem?  What can we do? 

Click here for Part 4: How to fix the problem. 

What questions do you still have about socialization and the media?

Watch slam poet Marshall Soulful Jones perform his poem called touchscreen.   Here are the lyrics.