tagged w/ Bias
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How familiar are people nowadays with the current political system?
Bills are being signed into law such as NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) with zero coverage from media. How important is it to become aware of the political world?
Continue reading on Examiner.com Where Do You Stand? - Jersey City Urban Art | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/urban-art-in-jersey-city/political-awareness#ixzz1rHSeuWyjHow familiar are people nowadays with the current political system?
Bills are being... more
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Aired on RT America on Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2012. Seaman discusses NDAA, SOPA, the media's lack of coverage of these critical issues, and their shameless pro-Mitt Romney bias throughout the GOP primaries.Aired on RT America on Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2012. Seaman discusses NDAA, SOPA, the... more
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Barack Obama, bias, journalism, Katie Couric, Mainstream media, manipulators, Media bias, Misrepresentation, Mitt Romney, MSM, news, Newspaper, Newt Gingrich, Omnipotent Poobah, Politics, Press, Reporter, Romney Flip Flop, Sarah Palin, Sharron AngleBarack Obama, bias, journalism, Katie Couric, Mainstream media, manipulators, Media... more
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The full-cut video of CNN’s contentious interview with Ron Paul has been uploaded to the web.
According to a popular post on the social link-sharing website Reddit and Daily Paul, a site for Ron Paul supporters, CNN’s original aired interview was “edited” and “misleading”.
The full-unedited cut still shows Paul leaving the interview while Gloria Borger is peppering him with questions about his controversial newsletters. But some say that the original cut makes Paul look bad and was unfairly edited.
“By watching the full one, it looks like he refused to answer the question and then walked off,” said user SCope13.
“The edited video was very convincing. I believed he cut and ran. Now that I’ve seen the uncut one though… It gives you an entirely different impression than the one I originally saw,” said user globalvar.
What do you think? Videos at source link:
http://www.mediaite.com/online/did-cnn-unfairly-edit-the-ron-paul-walk-off-interview-watch-the-uncut-interview/The full-cut video of CNN’s contentious interview with Ron Paul has been... more
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This is made for the people! Please share... the music was composed by my son years ago and when I heard it... it broke my heart to know that at 23 he was feeling the depth of a ticking time bomb... his world as he knew it then was certain to fail. He used the sound sample from the movie Network and electonically altered the message... I found myself glued to the images on the internet and was compelled to make this video. Power to the people! Connie M. JohnsonThis is made for the people! Please share... the music was composed by my son years... more
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For centuries thinkers have assumed that the uniquely human capacity for reasoning has existed to let people reach beyond mere perception and reflex in the search for truth. Rationality allowed a solitary thinker to blaze a path to philosophical, moral and scientific enlightenment.
Now some researchers are suggesting that reason evolved for a completely different purpose: to win arguments. Rationality, by this yardstick (and irrationality too, but we’ll get to that) is nothing more or less than a servant of the hard-wired compulsion to triumph in the debating arena. According to this view, bias, lack of logic and other supposed flaws that pollute the stream of reason are instead social adaptations that enable one group to persuade (and defeat) another. Certitude works, however sharply it may depart from the truth.
The idea, labeled the argumentative theory of reasoning, is the brainchild of French cognitive social scientists, and it has stirred excited discussion (and appalled dissent) among philosophers, political scientists, educators and psychologists, some of whom say it offers profound insight into the way people think and behave. The Journal of Behavioral and Brain Sciences devoted its April issue to debates over the theory, with participants challenging everything from the definition of reason to the origins of verbal communication.
(find out more at link)For centuries thinkers have assumed that the uniquely human capacity for reasoning has... more
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By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
On Tuesday, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) unveiled a draft budget resolution for 2012. Ryan’s program would privatize Medicare and gut Medicaid.
“Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, is waging radical class warfare and ideological privatization schemes and selling it as a debt reduction plan,” writes Karen Dolan in AlterNet. Indeed, Ryan’s plan is larded with tax cuts for wealthy citizens and profitable corporations, which according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), would actually increase the national debt over the next decade. The CBO projects that the debt would reach 70% of GDP by 2022 under Ryan’s plan compared to 67% under the status quo.
At TAPPED, Jamelle Bouie predicts that Ryan’s budget plan will become the de facto platform for the GOP in the 2012 elections. Presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty is already gushing about the plan. He notes the irony in Republicans seizing upon a plan to eliminate Medicare when they campaigned so hard to “protect” the program during the fight over the Affordable Care Act.
Attacking Medicare is politically risky. The conventional wisdom is the program is all but invulnerable because it is so popular with the general public, and especially with senior citizens–who reliably turn out to vote in large numbers.
Suzy Khimm of Mother Jones argues that, in order to win this political fight, the Democrats need to emphasize what they’re doing to grapple with the rising costs of Medicare–such as creating an independent board to regulate the reimbursement rates for all procedures covered under Medicare. Republicans have harshly criticized such a board as an example of health care rationing. Their proposed plan, however, would ration care far more severely, based on ability to pay. Ryan’s plan would give seniors a voucher to defray part of the cost of buying private health insurance. The voucher wouldn’t cover care equivalent to that which is offered under Medicare. So, under Ryan’s plan, care would be rationed based on each person’s ability to pay for extra coverage.
In a separate piece, Khimm notes that the GOP is taking a further political gamble by proposing massive cuts to Medicaid. She cites a recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation which found that only 13% of respondents favored major cuts to Medicaid. Republicans may be betting that they can cut Medicaid because they associate it with health care for the very poor, a constituency with little political capital and low voter turnout. But while Medicaid does serve the poor, a large percentage of its budget covers nursing home care for middle class retirees and services for adults with major disabilities–care that their families would otherwise have to pay for.
How to save $15 billion in health care costs
New research suggests that the federal government could save $15 billion by reducing unnecessary emergency room visits through investment in community health centers, Dan Peterson of Change.org reports:
This week, new research, from the Geiger Gibson/RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative, pinpoints just how much we stand to lose in health care efficiency savings if the funding is cut as proposed; $15 billion. Put another way, for every $1 invested in CHC expansion, there is a potential savings in health care costs of $11.50.
Peterson reports that money to expand the CHC program may be cut from the budget. The report explains that if the funding is lost, then CHCs will not be able to serve the 10-12 million additional patients who were supposed to get care through expanded CHCs under the Affordable Care Act. If Congress refuses to allot $1.3 billion for cost-effective primary care, $15 billion in projected savings will evaporate.
If Republicans are serious about balancing the budget, they should happily expand the Community Health Center network.
Danish Antibiotic Resistance Education
D.A.R.E. to keep pigs off drugs. The U.S. hog industry is heavily dependent on low-dose antibiotics to keep its swine infection-free. This practice comes at the cost of increased antibiotic resistance. Sixteen years ago, the government of Denmark, the world’s largest exporter of pork, took the bold step of asking its pork industry to reduce the amount of antibiotics given to pigs. Ralph Loglisci of Grist notes that the experiment has been a huge success: The industry has slashed antibiotic use by 37%, antibiotic resistance is down nationwide, and production has held steady or increased.
Gay-bashed, uninsured
Twenty-nine-year-old Barie Shortell’s face was shattered in an apparent anti-gay attack in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in February. Joseph Huff-Hannon reports on AlterNet on an obstacle in Shortell’s already-long road to recovery:
After blacking out, and spending 10 hours in surgery and five days in the hospital, Shortell is now taking another whipping from one of the insidious antagonists of 21st-century American life—the private health-care system. Shortell, like many of his fellow American twentysomethings, is uninsured.
Up to 30% of people in their twenties are uninsured. The Affordable Care Act should reduce the number of uninsured twenty-somethings, but as Huff Hannon notes, the number of uninsured young adults is expected to continue to rise for some time. The ACA allows young people to stay on their parents’ health insurance until age 26, but this reform is of little help to the millions of families who lost job-linked health coverage during the recession.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
On Tuesday, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)... more
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James O'Keefe, the controversial conservative activist and undercover-video maker, brought down NPR's CEO this week after releasing a "sting" video of an NPR fundraiser meeting with fake Muslim "donors." Now a video editor, having reviewed the full, two-hour film that O'Keefe also posted online, has done a close analysis showing that several key scenes were edited misleadingly, and quotes taken out of context, in the more-publicized short form of the video. Interestingly, the critique came from The Blaze—an online outlet from none other than conservative host Glenn Beck.
You can read the full post, with video clips, at The Blaze, but the highlights include:
* A quote in which Schiller seems to respond amusedly to a reference on the fake group's website to promoting Sharia law--"Really? That's what they said?"--is lifted from an entirely unrelated part of the lunch
* The edited video includes Schiller saying that liberals "might be more educated, fair and balanced" than conservatives; but it omits his saying that he used to be a Republican--and is proud of it--and a fellow NPR fundraiser defending conservatives, saying that she knows and went to school with highly educated conservatives.
* A one-minute stretch where the audio goes into a loop while the video keeps playing unaltered may be intentional, perhaps to omit dialogue; says Blaze, it "could be an actual glitch, though not one I've seen like this in 25 years of working with video editing"
* The edited video quotes Schiller saying that the Republican party has been "hijacked" by Tea Party conservatives, who he seems to describe as "racist"; the full video shows that--at least at the beginning of his quote--he is explicitly describing the views of wealthy Republican friends who voted for Obama
More @ linkJames O'Keefe, the controversial conservative activist and undercover-video... more
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A new FAIR study of the PBSNewsHour finds that public television’s flagship news program continues to feature sources drawn largely from a narrow range of elite white male experts. The study, the third FAIR has conducted of the NewsHour since 1990, documents a pattern of failure by the PBS news show to fulfill the mission of public television to provide a broader, more inclusive alternative to commercial news programs.A new FAIR study of the PBSNewsHour finds that public television’s flagship news... more
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Other networks can't get interviews with some conservatives, because FOX owns them. This is the ultimate face of corporate fascism.Other networks can't get interviews with some conservatives, because FOX owns... more
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(follow the link and read the entire article, below is the last few paragraphs)
Science as a contact sport
This is the difference between doing science from the inside and observing it from the outside. We attack each other's ideas mercilessly, and those attacks are not ignored. Sometimes, it turns out that the objection was the result of a misunderstanding, and once the misunderstanding is cleared up, the objection goes away. Objections that are relevant result in ideas being discarded or modified. And the key to this is that the existence of confirmation bias is both acknowledged and actively fought against.
You will note that in the two clear cases of confirmation bias, once it was confirmed, scientists stopped pursuing the claim. Those that continued to try and publish were quickly isolated. In the third case, we see how hard it can be to detect confirmation bias. Nevertheless, the debate surrounding the work remains robust, and new evidence is presented as it becomes available. Critically, neither side of the debate is actively suppressed.
This is why I have been using the term "denier." If you carefully examine the debate in the climate science community, you will find that objections are considered carefully and seriously—even the ones that originate from the likes of McIntyre and McKitrick. However, once a problem is addressed to the point where another problem is bigger, scientists move on.
Deniers, however, do not move on. Even if the objection is shown to be completely spurious—for instance, creationists often falsely claim that evolution is in conflict with the second law of thermodynamics—deniers do not give them up. In effect, this means that anything you say and do to help them understand your work is ignored completely. This is why some figures in the climate debate end up the denier camp and outside the science camp.(follow the link and read the entire article, below is the last few paragraphs)... more
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Why does the Daily Telegraph choose to reuse an image from the 2009 Gaza conflict to inaccurately portray the present day?
Photo bias is one of the most insidious forms of anti-Israel media bias and HonestReporting has addressed a number of recent examples, including AFP/Getty and Reuters wire services. Sometimes, however, the newspapers themselves are responsible for misusing imagery.
The following story and accompanying photo appeared in the UK's biggest selling broadsheet, the Daily Telegraph, on 17 June 2010:
Although there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza and even more aid is pouring in from Israel, the Telegraph's photo gives the impression that Gaza is a warzone.
We weren't convinced. Unable to locate this AP photo in searches of recent images from the wire services in Gaza, we dug a little deeper until we found the very same photo with its original caption taken on 14 January 2009 during Operation Cast Lead .
With all of the photo images from Gaza available from the wire services on a daily basis, including those featuring well-stocked supermarket shelves and markets brimming with fresh food, why did the Daily Telegraph decide to recycle the above image?
This is just the latest case of another attempt by a media outlet to create an inaccurate and anti-Israel bias to suit an agenda and fit the news frame of suffering Gazans.Why does the Daily Telegraph choose to reuse an image from the 2009 Gaza conflict to... more
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Decades after U.S. schools were desegregated and more than a year after the election of the country's first black president, both black and white children show a bias toward lighter skin, according to a new study commissioned by CNN.Decades after U.S. schools were desegregated and more than a year after the election... more
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Study: White and black children biased toward lighter skin
May 14, 2010 4:24 p.m. EDT
[See the results of the CNN-commissioned study on children's racial beliefs, attitudes and preferences, and see the children as they take the test on a special "AC360°" in front of a live studio audience, tonight at 10pm ET[
(CNN) -- A white child looks at a picture of a black child and says she's bad because she's black. A black child says a white child is ugly because he's white. A white child says a black child is dumb because she has dark skin.
This isn't a schoolyard fight that takes a racial turn, not a vestige of the "Jim Crow" South; these are American schoolchildren in 2010.
Nearly 60 years after American schools were desegregated by the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling, and more than a year after the election of the country's first black president, white children have an overwhelming white bias, and black children also have a bias toward white, according to a new study commissioned by CNN.
Renowned child psychologist and University of Chicago professor Margaret Beale Spencer, a leading researcher in the field of child development, led the study. She designed the pilot study and led a team of three psychologists: two testers to execute the study and a statistician to help analyze the results.
Her team tested 133 children from schools that met very specific economic and demographic requirements. In total, eight schools participated: four in the greater New York City area and four in Georgia.
Full doll study results
In each school, Spencer tested children from two age groups: 4 to 5 and 9 to 10.
Since this is a pilot study and not a fully funded scientific study, the sample size and race selection were limited. But according to Spencer, it was satisfactory to yield conclusive results. A pilot study is normally the first step in creating a larger scientific study and often speaks to overall trends that require more research.
Spencer's test aimed to re-create the landmark Doll Test from the 1940s. Those tests, conducted by psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark, were designed to measure how segregation affected African-American children.
The Clarks asked black children to choose between a white doll and -- because at the time, no brown dolls were available -- a white doll painted brown. They asked black children a series of questions and found they overwhelmingly preferred white over brown. The study and its conclusions were used in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case, which led to the desegregation of American schools.
1947 Doll Test results
In the new study, Spencer's researchers asked the younger children a series of questions and had them answer by pointing to one of five cartoon pictures that varied in skin color from light to dark. The older children were asked the same questions using the same cartoon pictures, and were then asked a series of questions about a color bar chart that showed light to dark skin tones.
The tests showed that white children, as a whole, responded with a high rate of what researchers call "white bias," identifying the color of their own skin with positive attributes and darker skin with negative attributes. Spencer said even black children, as a whole, have some bias toward whiteness, but far less than white children.
"All kids on the one hand are exposed to the stereotypes" she said. "What's really significant here is that white children are learning or maintaining those stereotypes much more strongly than the African-American children. Therefore, the white youngsters are even more stereotypic in their responses concerning attitudes, beliefs and attitudes and preferences than the African-American children."
Spencer says this may be happening because "parents of color in particular had the extra burden of helping to function as an interpretative wedge for their children. Parents have to reframe what children experience ... and the fact that white children and families don't have to engage in that level of parenting, I think, does suggest a level of entitlement. You can spend more time on spelling, math and reading, because you don't have that extra task of basically reframing messages that children get from society."
Spencer was also surprised that children's ideas about race, for the most part, don't evolve as they get older. The study showed that children's ideas about race change little from age 5 to age 10.
"The fact that there were no differences between younger children, who are very spontaneous because of where they are developmentally, versus older children, who are more thoughtful, given where they are in their thinking, I was a little surprised that we did not find differences."
Spencer said the study points to major trends but is not the definitive word on children and race. It does lead her to conclude that even in 2010, "we are still living in a society where dark things are devalued and white things are valued."
CNN's Jill Billante and Chuck Hadad contributed to this report.Study: White and black children biased toward lighter skin
May 14, 2010 4:24 p.m.... more
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Fox News has been roundly criticized for selectively citing poll data to make it look like Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to Democratic-led health care reform. Now its sister network, Fox Business, has gone a step further, inviting them to participate in an online poll whose outcome is all but preordained thanks to the laughably biased menu of responses.
The question itself, posted on foxbusiness.com, is straightforward enough: "Will the passage of the health-care reform bill impact your vote in the mid-term elections?"
It's the answers that are a problem. Readers have a choice of saying that either they are more concerned about other issues, find the bill "too expensive and intrusive," or will decide in November.
Notice anything missing? How about the lack of any option for respondents to say passage of the bill will influence them to vote in favor of those who supported it?
That option might come in handy, seeing as, according to a Gallup Poll last week, "Nearly half of Americans give a thumbs-up to Congress' passage of a healthcare reform bill last weekend, with 49% calling it 'a good thing.'"
With no available choice reflecting that position, an apparently commanding 73% of poll-takers elected to criticize the bill. "Not a scientific poll" indeed.
A Fox Business executive, Ray Hennessey, says it doesn't matter a great deal how the responses were worded since the results of polls like this aren't used in news gathering. "These are nonscientific surveys, not polls, and readers who find them biased can simply choose not to make their opinions heard," says Hennessey. "We do different ones every day, and they are simply user-engagement tools."
Fair enough. Maybe the next poll -- sorry, "nonscientific survey" -- will even seek to engage users who favor health care reform.Fox News has been roundly criticized for selectively citing poll data to make it look... more
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Little Rock, AR, USA—December 10, 2009—On the anniversary of the 2008 General Election, author Mark A. Anderson releases a controversial and thought provoking book titled, In the Tank—A Bound Blog: How the Media Political Machine Used Conveyance of Toxic Information to Become the Latest Political Force to be Reckoned With. In his premier title, Anderson takes a critical and in-depth look at the questionable tactics used by the most prominent of the American news media to both openly support as well as hinder candidates involved in the race to become the nation’s 44th President.
Political junkies, pundits, and scholars alike will enjoy the compelling arguments and points of discussion raised as Mark shares his personal blog posts, citing brazen bias and extreme irregularities in the manner of media coverage provided to candidates during the height of the 2008 primaries and leading up to the general election.
Anderson declares, “By actively engaging in a clandestine campaign to put a drag on and derail the campaigns of several of the ’08 election season’s top candidates…..the news media freely exercised a power and authority over the election process never before witnessed by the nation’s citizens.” Anderson provides numerous indisputable cases of blatant bias against some presidential candidates, and unabashed favor for others to the point that a significant effect on outcome of several primary elections and perhaps even the general election itself cannot be denied.
In the Tank—A Bound Blog, confronts the reality of a rogue media that has traveled far from its original and charted course and threatens the very foundation of a government of and for the people. “The uninhibited audacity that the most prominent agents and organizations within the news media community displayed while openly campaigning for and against candidates and their campaigns….reflected the determination of a once trustworthy pillar of this society to wrestle the reins from the hands of the people and exercise supreme authority over our country’s national election process,” Anderson contends. The book is written like a running blog with thoughtful essays throughout that expound upon the most critical points of this contribution to the analysis of the democratic election process. The purpose of the book is to promote the sustainment of independent thought and freedom as well as to expose the dishonorable actions of the nation’s news media during the most recent presidential election.
MARK A. ANDERSON is a native of central Arkansas, and currently resides in Oklahoma. He earned both a Bachelors and Masters Degree in history and political science respectively. He is a commissioned officer in the United States Armed Forces who served faithfully in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He is the recipient of both the Bronze Star Service and Joint Service Commendation Medals for his wartime service.
In the Tank—A Bound Blog is currently available in perfect bound soft cover and hard cover form with worldwide distribution through Barnes and Noble.com at link:
http://books.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.aspx?WRD=In+the+Tank+by+Mark+A%2E+Anderson&box=In%20the%20Tank%20by%20Mark%20A.%20Anderson&pos=-1 ,
Amazon.com at link: http://www.amazon.com/Tank-Bound-Blog-Conveyance-Information/dp/1440162832/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259280993&sr=8-1 , and Amazon.com (UK) at link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tank-Bound-Blog-Conveyance-Information/dp/1440162816/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259726490&sr=1-7 .
For more information or to coordinate an interview, contact Mark Anderson at markandersonwrites@gmail.com , mark.anthony.anderson1@att.blackberry.net or 501-337-2622.
In the Tank—A Bound Blog: How the Media Political Machine Used Conveyance of Toxic Information to Become the Latest Political Force to Be Reckoned With by Mark A. Anderson
ISBN 978-1-4401-6281-7
# # #Little Rock, AR, USA—December 10, 2009—On the anniversary of the 2008... more
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The late Peter Jennings believed Stossel's brand of libertarian advocacy journalism was a blot on the ABC escutcheon. Jennings refused even to look at him when they passed in the halls. "Peter felt he was upholding the objectivity of ABC and I was violating that, I was bad for ABC."
--
This one's for you, Shanklin.The late Peter Jennings believed Stossel's brand of libertarian advocacy... more
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Although often seen as an inconsequential feature of digital technologies, one's self-representation, or avatar, in a virtual environment can affect the user's thoughts, according to research by a University of Texas at Austin communication professor.
In the first study to use avatars to prime negative responses in a desktop virtual setting, Jorge Peña, assistant professor in the College of Communication, demonstrated that the subtext of an avatar's appearance can simultaneously prime negative (or anti-social) thoughts and inhibit positive (or pro-social) thoughts inconsistent with the avatar's appearance. All of this while study participants remained unaware they had been primed. The study, co-written with Cornell University Professor Jeffrey T. Hancock and University of Texas at Austin graduate student Nicholas A. Merola, appears in the December 2009 issue of Communication Research.
In two separate experiments, research participants were randomly assigned a dark- or white-cloaked avatar, or to avatars wearing physician or Ku Klux Klan-like uniforms or a transparent avatar. The participants were assigned tasks including writing a story about a picture, or playing a video game on a virtual team and then coming to consensus on how to deal with infractions.
Consistently, participants represented by an avatar in a dark cloak or a KKK-like uniform demonstrated negative or anti-social behavior in team situations and in individual writing assignments.
Previous studies have demonstrated these uniform types to have negative effects on people's behaviors in face-to-face interactions. For example, Cornell researchers Mark Frank and Tom Gilovich showed that dark uniforms influence professional sports teams to play more aggressively on the playing field and in the laboratory. Peña's research demonstrates how these effects operate in desktop-based video games, and sheds light on the automatic cognitive processes that explain this effect.
"When you step into a virtual environment, you can potentially become 'Mario' or whatever other character you are portraying," said Peña, who studies how humans think, behave and feel online. "Oftentimes, the connotations of our own virtual character will subtly remind us of common stereotypes, such as 'bad guys wear black or dress up in hooded robes.' This association may surreptitiously steer users to think and behave more antisocially, but also inhibit more pro-social thoughts and responses in a virtual environment."
According to Peña, these findings can be particularly useful to video game and combat simulation developers.
"By manipulating the appearance of the avatar, you can augment the probability of people thinking and behaving in predictable ways without raising suspicion," said Peña. "Thus, you can automatically make a virtual encounter more competitive or cooperative by simply changing the connotations of one's avatar."
Source:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091110211037.htmAlthough often seen as an inconsequential feature of digital technologies, one's... more
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