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Vote with Your Eyeballs for Positive Media Content

July 26, 2010 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge Leave a Comment
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Prosocial Augmented Reality: Celebrating Youth Achievement

Where you look matters.  Media producers count eyeballs and show you what you will watch.  Let’s celebrate achievement, such as the fifth grade chorus from Staten Island, instead of spending our time and money consuming media about outliers, like LeBron James’ basketball contract, or irresponsibility and bad behavior, like Lindsay Lohan’s substance problems and jail sentence. It’s time we started exercising our power through viewing choice and putting the powers of emerging media technologies to work promoting the behaviors we want to see in the media for our kids to emulate–not those we can’t help but see or wish we hadn’t.

Let’s use the excitement and engagement of emerging technologies—such as augmented reality—for prosocial ends.

We are long overdue to take some responsibility for the media content we choose to support. Let your eyeballs, remotes and wallets do the talking instead of your mouth. Media has to potential to create images for aspiration and inspiration, not in looks, but in substance. We can choose to support media technologies that affirm what we want to be as individuals and as a society, instead of looking for others to blame for what “media does to us.” Believe me, media outlets pay lots of attention to how you cast your eyeballs.

The August issue of Time Out New York Kids is a perfect example. It celebrates the achievements of the Webby-Award-winning fifth grade chorus from Staten Island with an augmented reality enhancement. By viewing the magazine cover with a mobile device, such as an iPhone or a Droid with Internet access, and the freely downloadable Junaio augmented reality mobile phone app, you can experience a jubilant performance clip of the chorus on video.

This is much more important news to discuss and celebrate than LeBron James’ NBA team choice. LeBron is a great example of hardwork, but the probability of having the right opportunity, work ethic, and genetic talent to achieve at his level is about .01%. That’s not 1%–it’s 100 times LESS than that, or 1 out of 10,000.

Yet, according to a 2008 study of urban youths ages 13-18, 70% planned on careers in the NBA. No big surprise that’s an attractive dream. For the 2009-2010 season, the minimum salary was $457,588 and the average salary was $3.4 million. Each year, 50,000 African American boys play high school basketball, but less than 50 will make the NBA. To put it in perspective, the average NBA basketball arena has approximately 20,000 seats, so imagine that all the seats are filled with basketball players that showed up to play, but they only let 1 player at every OTHER game onto the floor–and he may not even get to start. All the rest get to go home, many unprepared to take advantage of other career opportunities. Celebrating other achievements, such as the P.S. 22 Chorus, emphasizes opportunities that can be available to all kids. Participation is this kind of activity not only teaches about the activity–music, singing, beat, and teamwork in this case– but it demonstrates much more valuable lessons:

  1. learning takes time
  2. it is cumulative
  3. it is about effort not luck
  4. hard work is rewarding
  5. working as a team feels good

Research by shows that when we believe that our abilities can change with efforts, we try harder, and that when we have confidence in ourselves, and believe in our ability to act on our own behalf, we are more resilient and take more risks. Today’s youth are facing a world where change is the rule rather than the exception. They need much more than the ability to read, write and do simple math. They need the emotional resilience and cognitive flexibility to adapt to a changing environment and meet it as a challenge not an obstacle. It’s great that LeBron James has had such success and I’m happy for him, but the kids at PS 22 make much better role models.

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Photo by AWE Photo/Jan Somm-Hammel. Retrieved from http://www.silive.com/entertainment/music/index.ssf/2009/09/ps_22_chorus_scores_30000_from.html

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Filed Under: Augmented Reality, Culture & Society, Positive Psychology Tagged With: , , , ,

How Media Psychology Contributes to Ergonomics

July 22, 2010 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge 1 Comment
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I received the following thoughtful question:

Human factors are investigated under the scientific discipline called Ergonomics for comprehending human cognition, or the brain system, in order to design information systems within human factor limitations.  How are ergonomics and media psychology related?

Human physiology and cognition are obviously central issues to ergonomics and they take into account human development across the lifespan from that perspective. Media psychology also looks at the experiential aspects of human interaction with objects and environments across the lifespan. It extends the usability to the perceptions of self and self-reflection, such as, identity, self-efficacy (competence), engagement and flow (in contrast to attention), persuasion, qualitative perceptions of aesthetics, and attribution or the meaning we give to our interactions.  For example:

  1. Did this experience make me feel competent or incompetent?
  2. Did I feel able to make a good decision as a decision-maker?
  3. Did I feel engaged at an appropriate level–not to hard or too easy–so that I feel effective and energized?
  4. Was the lay-out or design aesthetically pleasing contributing to my overall mood?
  5. How do I feel about using technology?  What do I think is the ‘normal’ way of doing this action?
  6. Do I trust the experience or information?

Since humans often attribute actions of others and situational context as reflecting back on themselves, these are important considerations that impact not just whether a person is able to use something, but if they will use it or be productive and effective using it.   Media psychology will look how the physical usability impacts these types of experiences, drawing on positive psychology, social cognition, learning theory, multiple intelligences, individual strengths,  developmental psychology, and cognitive mapping and schemas in addition to the cognitive and biological issues that ergonomics address.

Filed Under: Cognition, Positive Psychology Tagged With: ,

Media Psychology: What It Is and Why You Should Care

June 15, 2010 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge 5 Comments
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Media Psychology is a new and emerging field, so the early entrants have the excitement and burden of defining the path.

What is media psychology? It’s a field with no consensus definition, no clearly-defined career paths, and no easy answers. In spite of that, it can add value anywhere human behavior intersects media technologies. Here’s why:

  1. Media technologies are everywhere
  2. People of all ages use media technologies a lot
  3. Young people use them most
  4. Older people worry about younger people
  5. Technology is not going away
  6. We all worry if this is good or bad or somewhere in-between
  7. Psychology is the study of people of all ages

Media psychology is using #7 to answer #6 because of #1 through #5

Psychology is key to understanding the implications of technology. Consequently, it seems like it should be pretty straightforward to define media psychology. For some reason, though, it’s not. I have had discussions with colleagues for hours (or at least it seems like it) about what constitutes media, mediated communication, and technology and what we mean by psychology in the context of media—and we’re not even philosophers. In this and the following two posts, I will discuss my definition of media psychology and why I think media psychology is so important.

Both media and psychology have made major contributions to western culture throughout the 20th century. Can you imagine The New Yorker without Freudian references or Jason Bourne without operant conditioning? The term “media,” however, used to be confinable to a bucket labeled “mass media.” Our awareness of media, however, has reached the collective consciousness, as if we all woke up yesterday, awakened by our programmable alarm with the iPod attachment, and over our coffee made automatically by our coffeemaker, checked our blackberry for emails and headline news and then looked up shocked to see that our kids are doing much the same. This awareness is leaving people clamoring for a new level of understanding. There is an infiltration of media applications and information technologies into nearly every aspect of our lives. What does it all MEAN? Just like Mighty Mouse (or maybe Underdog), media psychology emerged in a time of need.

The goal of media psychologists is to try to answer those questions by combining an understanding of human behavior, cognition, and emotions with an equal understanding of media technologies. Unlike some types of media studies, media psychology is not just concerned with content. Media psychology looks at the whole system. There is no beginning and no end. It is a continual loop including the technology developer, content producer, content perceptions, and user response. Just as Bandera describes social cognitive theory as the reciprocal action between environment, behavior, and cognition, so does media psychology evaluate the interactive process of the system. There is no chicken, no egg to this system. They all coexist and coevolve with each other.

There is no consensus among academicians and practitioners as to the definition or scope of media psychology. This is because the field must be representative of not only the work currently being done, but also the work that needs to be done. This is a field that changes every time iTunes releases a new mobile app.

The interests of the person doing the defining often drive definitions of a field. However the fact that both ‘media’ and ‘psychology’ are themselves broad and prone to misconception contributes to the definitional confusion. In spite of our awareness of media everywhere, when someone mentions media the metaphor we fall back on is often mass media. It’s a field where you must continually define your terms. Does ‘media’ mean television or does ‘media’ include computer interfaces that facilitate information management and distribution? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Psychology, Social Media & Networks Tagged With: ,

Pursuing a Career in Psychology, Education, and Interactive Media

October 25, 2009 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge 2 Comments
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I always enjoy getting questions from people interested in integrating media applications into their field of study or in pursuing a career in media psychology. The questions come from around the world and are always full of enthusiasm for learning, the potential of media technologies, and making a positive contribution to society. It is always a chance for me to remember not only how much I love the field of media psychology, but why I think it is so very important.

Media psychology is a broad field. Recently I received a question from a new graduate in the Middle East about how to follow a path that integrates psychology and education using interactive technologies, particularly for special needs populations. I am posting my response since many people may have similar questions and this is a good way to get a conversation going.

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You can learn how to actually build the interactive programs by studying gaming and software development or how to implement them by studying education and curriculum development—either way, you must learn how and why they are effective and when their use is appropriate. The latter is particularly important if you are working with a clinical population such as handicapped, mentally-challenged, or psychologically distressed, either from pathology or trauma. In order to serve that population adequately and ethically, you will need clinical background that involves the study of psychopathology, personality development and disorders, cognitive and developmental psychology and an understanding of physical and mental handicaps. An alternative route is to pursue what in the U.S. is referred to as special education. It is a track within an education degree that focuses on teaching special needs kids. It is more about learning and educational pedagogy than psychology.

But the really important thing to clarify is your goal. Media technologies are just tools to get something done. The tools change very quickly. First figure out what you are trying to do and then you can learn the reasons why different technological tools work (or don’t) in achieving the goal Tools to help humans must be designed in a human-centered way. I know that seems obvious, but you’d be surprised how many things are designed with no apparent thought to human use. (Check out The Design of Everyday Things).

Once you have decided on your emphasis (the technology, the education, or the psychology), you will be better able to decide your path.

As a psychologist, my bias is toward understanding the how and why and letting someone with good technical skills build the media. As a media psychologist, I have input into the development process but do not do any of the engineering, programming or physical generation of the tools. I will be looking at things like developmental appropriateness, the experience of using the tools (such as whether or not the child not only learns something but feels positive about the learning in a way that supports their self-confidence and motivation), and the cognitive and emotional aspects of the interface such as perception of objects, attention, and engagement.

Another approach to media education, such as public education through mass media, public service announcements, programs that appear as entertainment but are embedded with lessons and values.  These are more general and do not target individual users as much as a group who might benefit from the information, such as teens learning about smoking, alcohol abuse, or drug use.

If your interest is in the use of interactive programs to support special needs children, however, I would recommend either pursuing a masters in education or clinical psychology and taking additional classes in media development—not media studies about content analysis but about the ways people interact with and are influenced by media. There are very few programs that officially integrate media and psychology (or media and education, for that matter) so you may need to build your own curriculum in whatever program you choose.

At the master’s level, most programs in the U.S. will demand a good command of written English because scholarly writing has more rigorous standards at the master’s level than at the undergraduate level. This is also true of the program where I teach at Fielding Graduate University, the Master’s Degree in Media Psychology and Social Change. You may find it interesting to look a the website and curriculum to get ideas about what sounds interesting so you can further hone your search.  The New School in New York is doing some very exciting work in gaming, for example.

You might also want to read:
Gee, J. P. (2004). What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Brown, J. S. (2000). Growing Up Digital: How the Web Changes Work, Education, and the Ways People Learn. Change, March/April, 10-20. Retrieved August 29, 2007 from http://www.usdla.org/html/journal/FEB02_Issue/article01.html.

Buckingham, D., & Burn, A. (2007). Game Literacy in Theory and Practice. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 16 (3), 323-349.

The following article in online and breaks down some of the theoretical bases of different aspects of interactivity:
Sims, Rod. (2000) An interactive conundrum: Constructs of interactivity and learning theory. Australian Journal of Educational Technology. 16, (1), p. 45-57 http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet16/sims.html

I wish people great success pursuing their passion for media psychology. If you have other questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Filed Under: Education, Psychology Tagged With: , ,

The Positive Psychology Of Entrepreneurship

July 16, 2009 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge 3 Comments
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A version of this post appeared in my blog Positively Media on Psychology Today.

Portrait of store ownerThere’s a lot of buzz about entrepreneurship right now. This is especially obvious if you hang out on LinkedIn, Twitter, or cruise the Ning social networks. It is not surprising, given the amount of people looking for jobs due to cutbacks and restructuring and a few bankruptcies thrown in for good measure. So far, the government plans to promote economic growth have tried to stimulate a lot of things, but stimulating entrepreneurs doesn’t seem to be one of them. It’s important to encourage entrepreneurship and not just for economic reasons. Entrepreneurship is the ultimate exercise in developing the attributes that we know from positive psychology to be essential to having a good life: self-competence, optimism, engagement, and resilience.

I’m against government stimulus the way it’s usually done for the same reasons that I’m for entrepreneurship. Sending people checks in the mail may give them money to spend–and I’m not saying that’s not fun–but they might as well print a card to stick in the envelope with the check that says: “You can’t do it yourself, so we have to help you.” There is no indication that anyone in government from either side of the aisle thinks we can take care of ourselves. There is no encouragement to start a business or suggestions about how do it with or without the stimulus checks. There are no messages about how starting a business is way to turn one dollar into two. Or even how important it is for everybody’s morale if you just get busy and make or do something. We don’t even teach it in schools unless you make it all the way to an MBA. For a country founded on initiative and pioneer spirit, this seems totally out of character. The stimulus program is a message about powerlessness and consumption. And worse, this type of stimulus is promoting consumption without any ties to an individual’s effort. Every parent knows that’s a recipe for disaster. Aside from what that kind of incentive does to someone’s work ethic, it is even worse psychologically because it undermines people’s belief in themselves.

When someone starts a business, it’s just the opposite. It draws on your passion and energy, your creativity and innovation, your resourcefulness and your guts. You do not have to start the next Apple or IBM to have the satisfaction of making a positive contribution. And if you’re even remotely successful, you’ll also give someone else a job. Do you have a passion for making scented soap? Can you keep somebody’s books, build a website, knit a sweater, wash a dog, tutor kids, repair cars, mow a lawn, or teach someone how to use their computer?

From a practical standpoint, thanks to media and communication technologies, some of the major hurdles to starting a business are incredibly low. With the Internet and social media, you can research legal issues, apply for licenses, get supplies, and launch marketing campaigns all on a shoestring budget. With the Internet, service jobs can be done without having to drive your car or put on a tie. If geography matters to what you want to do, then you’ve got Craig’s List or EBay. Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland put on a show in their father’s barn. You can start a business in yours. If you don’t have a barn, how about the garage or the basement?Woman entrepreneur

However, the logistics of starting a business are not the point.

It isn’t what business you do, or how you do it that brings psychological value. It’s that you are doing something. Once you have a plan, you are engaged. You take action, figure out problems, try things, and your belief in yourself grows. Those feelings are self-reinforcing; they build on each other and it’s empowering, if not slightly exhausting. In the recent issue of Psychological Science, Park and Peterson (2009) review what it means to live well according to the positive psychology literature. From Freud to Seligman, the recurring themes include autonomy, competence, initiative, environmental mastery, purpose in life, personal growth, engagement, meaning, and the balance of skills and challenges. Sounds like the manifesto of an entrepreneur.

Positive psychology gets a bad rap because many people think it’s just about being “happy” and, aside from our moral ambivalence about happiness, many construe that as a fairly shallow construct. If all we–or the economy–needed to feel better was money, the government stimulus checks would really be doing the trick. But that approach misses the point. Positive psychology is about the attributes that make you feel good, which is a different thing. It’s about feeling like you matter, that what you do has meaning, and that you believe in your ability to get stuff done. (Psychologists like to call that ‘self-efficacy’.) When you feel like that, you also feel more optimistic and hopeful which makes you more willing to take risks and try other new things. If you don’t believe me, read Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus‘ “Banker to the Poor” in which he describes how microlending (lending people small amounts of money to start businesses) has positively transformed the lives of people around the world, lifting them out of both poverty and helplessness. Or go to Kiva and read about their social network approach to financing small business ventures.

This is the kind of stimulus we need. Let’s at least focus a couple of initiatives on creating the opportunity to achieve some autonomy, meaning, independence, and engagement through entrepreneurship. It would be nice if the government could show us they have faith in us, too. We could stand a little more optimism all around.

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Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2009). Achieving and sustaining a good life. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(4), 422-428. Retrieved July 15, 2009. from http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pps/4_4_inpress/park.pdf

Photos: istockphoto.com

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