The Pebble Mine, a proposed project in Bristol Bay Alaska, has been at the forefront of conservation discussions for the past decade. In 2014, the EPA under the Obama administration blocked the project via the Clean Water Act. Discussions about the planned copper mine resurfaced recently after the EPA under Trump’s administration reversed the decision process by speeding up the “environmental review process” (Blate). The findings of this process, published in August, found that the mine will not cause any serious damage, allowing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to give the mining company permits for the project. Instead, to the surprise of most people following the controversy, the Corps told the mining company that they needed to address the mine’s impacts on the rivers. This declaration followed closely behind public outcry by Donald Trump Jr. and Tucker Carlson (of Fox News) who have both fished in the Bristol Bay (Blate). 

The power of Donald Trump Jr. and Tucker Carlson is particularly problematic when shown next to the decades long attempt by local native populations to stop the digging of the open-pit mine. The Yup’ik, Dena’ina, and Alutiiq people have relied upon the thriving ecosystems of Bristol Bay for thousands of years (Blate) through the healthy salmon fishery and the “intimate connection between the Tribes and their land and water” (Hadley). Although the upset of local communities has been broadcast since the original proposal of this project, the Corps didn’t change their permitting decisions until two influential, wealthy, conservative men, who have visited the bay only for recreation, spoke out against its development. The outcome of the Pebble Mine story is a striking display of power relations in the United States, particularly between native residents and the government who has the final authority over the construction of the mine. It is imperative that these relations are untangled and brought to light as they demonstrate a need to shift some decision making power away from the people and institutions who traditionally hold it. This is particularly relevant to the environmental justice movement, as marginalized communities are often paying the costs of development without reaping any of the benefits. 

How is it that it took a tweet from the president’s son to stop the development of the Pebble Mine when native communities have been speaking out against it since its proposal? 

Michael Foucault’s “The Subject and Power” offers an answer to this question by addressing power and how it works to subjugate people. When analyzing power relations, he argues that five topics must be addressed: “the system of differentiations… the types of objectives… the means of bringing power relations into being…forms of institutionalization… [and] the degrees of rationalization” (792). The system of differentiations refers to the differences between people who hold power and those who are being subjugated by power. Trump’s administration, the EPA, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the mining company hold the power to make decisions about the mine, while local residents, conservationists, and other interested parties don’t have the legal influence to determine the outcome. There are some striking differences between the members of these two groups; those in power (individuals and institutions) are wealthier and hold much more privileged than the people fighting to halt development. 

The types of objectives can refer to several things, one of which is “the accumulation of profits” (792). This mine is for copper, a resource for which many reserves have already been identified. In other words, this mine is not a necessary exploration, as the world has plenty of copper to meet its needs. Rather, the mine is a way for the mining company to make more money, despite its detrimental ecological and cultural effects. The means of bringing power relations into being is how the power is “exercised” (792). The power of the people making decisions about the mine is mainly institutionalized but is also enforced through economic and technological disparities. The government has historical power to make choices, and they also have a huge economic and technological advantage over the poorer and less connected indigenous communities.  Further, the government is connected institutionally to other powerful organizations like the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the mining company who also have lots of money and technological resources. 

Lastly, Foucault describes the degrees of rationalization, which addresses the “effectiveness of the instruments and the certainty of the results” as there are several actions that can be taken (792). The history of the Pebble Mine has complicated rationalization, because on top of the institutional power of the government (which employs effective instruments that led to very certain results), there is also the power of the voices of Donald Trump Jr. and Tucker Carlson, who had a significant influence over the Corps decision to suspend permitting. This power is less structural and harder to identify, which makes the degrees of rationalization less immediately visible. The hidden nature of this power makes it even more important to try and discern. All these influencers did was tweet and speak publicly about their experiences catching salmon out of Bristol Bay, which garnered enough attention and support to change the U.S. Army Corp’s decision. The two men did not employ extensive technology or use lots of money; they simply have enough sway over public opinion that they changed the results of a millions-of-dollars development project, while the voices of thousands of Native Americans were virtually ignored. 

The power relations displayed in this debate are one example of the problematic power distribution in the United States. While Fourcault’s writing helps demonstrate how the power of the government, the Corps, and the mining company functions, it is important to go a step further to challenge its pervasiveness. That the decision to suspend the project was made after the outcry of two men who vacationed at the bay, rather than the protests of people whose cultural traditions are reliant on its health is a blatant example of environmental injustice, as local communities livelihoods would be destroyed and they would never see the benefits of the project. In making development plans like Pebble Mine, discussions must be opened to include native people, local residents, and other invested parties who have been marginalized by uneven power distribution in the United States. 

References

Blate, Jessie Thomas. “Army Corps Puts the Brakes on Pebble Mine: Here’s What We Know.” American Rivers, American Rivers, 4 Sept. 2020.

Foucault, Michael. “The Subject and Power.” JSTOR, 1982.

Hadley, Kieran. “North America’s Biggest Mine Threatens Environment & Native Peoples.” The Yucatan Times, The Yucatan Times, 15 Aug. 2020.

Women frequently find themselves in uncomfortable situations where they do not know whether to classify a sexual act as rape. Because I often hear about these episodes from friends, I wanted to explore the nuances of the textbook definition of rape and how straight men would categorize these episodes. I looked at a study published in 2014 by Moorhead and Hinsz in ResearchGate. In this blogpost, I intend to explore why men that perform sexual acts that would constitute rape do not show any hostility towards the women involved.

The sample consisted of a group of 86 mostly white (>90%), male, heterosexual college students with mean age of 21, and standard deviation of 3.6 years. The study aimed to test if there was a significant group of men that would deny raping someone but is more likely to admit to the same when behaviorally descriptive phrases were used, such as “coerce somebody to intercourse by holding them down.” The researchers categorized the men into three groups: men that do not endorse either rape, or intentions to use force, men that deny rape but admit to using force, and men that endorse both. The participants were tested for two indicators: callous sexual attitudes and hostility, to predict group belonging. According to the findings, the researchers were able to establish a relationship between callous sexual attitudes and group membership: the propensity to endorse intention to rape or use force was positively associated with levels of callous sexual attitudes. However, the researchers found that there was an inverse construct of hostility for men that deny intentions to rape but use force.

I thought the study captured a wide range of nuances associated with rape, and successfully provides an alternate to idea that rape constitutes a screaming woman, a villainous man, extreme violence, and sexual purity. Moreover, I also thought that the researchers provided an outlet for women to explore the uncomfortable situations that they shy away from categorizing as rape. However, they do not attempt to explain why men who use force during intercourse to hold down a person would have an inverse construct of hostility, that is, an “affable, trustworthy, and nonreactive” perception of women.

Since the research does get into it, I will attempt to provide some explanations for this observation. First, we are not looking at cases of reported rape, so we do not know the context for sexually aggressive behavior in the encounters the participants are engaging in. Moreover, the inverse construct implies that there isn’t an intention to harm the women involved. This can be explained by the fact that college students that have sexual relations probably know each other outside of the relationship: they might be friends, or romantically involved. So, even though force is being used, the men in this group score low on hostility towards women. More importantly, I think the fact that women in these situations do not get any say in the study is disappointing. Firstly, how would the women classify the act of “coercing somebody to intercourse by holding them down”? Would they, like the researchers classify them as indicators of rape? Additionally, I think it would be interesting to have a study with both heterosexual male and female participants and try to see if there is a relationship between the group of men that admit to using force and women that feel discomfort but refrain from categorizing instances as rape.

There are currently 13 places in the United States that are planning a supervised injection site for intravenous drug addicts. These previously unsanctioned sites would provide users with clean and safe equipment, a monitored location with trained staff, and readily available treatment specialists. Supporters of the sites say that they will keep people alive and give them easier pathways toward treatment, while opponents say the sites promote illegal drug use. However, as drug-related deaths continue to rise to record numbers in the U.S., more injection site proposals are making headway in local and national courts, although the current federal administration is working hard against them. The largest question that government officials are asking is if legalizing these sites and giving people a place and equipment to do drugs will just enable their addiction rather than reduce opioid overdoses.

Over 100 such sites exist throughout Europe, Australia and Canada. At these locations, users can bring in their own drugs, but are provided with a sanitary location, clean needles and other necessary equipment. Staff trained in overdose rescue oversee the users, and are provided with oxygen masks, naloxone, and plentiful information regarding drug treatment and health services. One site that has been open for 15 years lies in Vancouver BC, just a 2.5 hour drive north of Seattle, one of the cities proposing an injection location. The Vancouver location, InSite, has been the subject of numerous scientific studies regarding the promise of these safe places, and is being closely examined as a comparison to Seattle in Washington state’s fight to legalize the concept.

A 2014 meta-analysis of 75 studies found that injections sites promote safer conditions for users, reduce overdoses, and increase access to health services. They also contributed to less outdoor drug use, and did not increase crime or drug use in the places they were implemented. However, this has been questioned as the individual studies that this analysis examined were all small enough that they were not considered extremely reliable, and one reviewer stated that the scope of the analysis was too broad for the scope of the individual studies. This being said, InSite has never had anyone die in the 15 years they have been open, and they have provided medical assistance to over 6000 overdoses as well as overseen more than 3.6 million injections.

A separate study conducted in Canada began in 1996, before InSite, and continues today with approximately 1500 drug users monitored in one of the largest and most respected long-term drug use studies in North America. They have followed 1050 drug users from InSite since it has opened and have found no record of the location increasing the amount of drug users in the city, and they have found that the “fatal overdose rate sharply decreased in and around the immediate area of the site.” The study does acknowledge that their research is not completely reliable, since they are unable to complete a randomized study where participants are either given treatment or not given treatment since this would be unethical.

This last study is the only one that is being closely examined as a reliable way to advocate for the legalization of similar sites in the U.S., but even it has some drawback when it comes to its methodology. City and state officials have heralded these places as a necessary way to combat the opioid epidemic that is ravaging the nation, but they have yet to convince the leaders at a national level. With over 40,000 opiod deaths in 2016, more than double that of six years ago, it is quickly becoming a crisis that our healthcare system is so far unable to handle. An extremely low amount of the total studies conducted regarding these facilities have found anything but positive results, which leads to the conclusion that cities and communities experiencing high percentages of opioid addiction should implement these facilities to provide a safe and sanitary experience to their citizens, and begin to guide them towards addiction help.

References:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/07/12/628136694/harm-reduction-movement-hits-obstacles
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/awash-in-overdoses-seattle-creates-safe-sites-for-addicts-to-inject-illegal-drugs/2017/01/27/ddc58842-e415-11e6-ba11-63c4b4fb5a63_story.html?utm_term=.6bd4191f808f
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/threat-of-federal-enforcement-complicates-seattles-proposed-safe-injection-site/
https://whyy.org/segments/lessons-from-vancouver-u-s-cities-consider-supervised-injection-facilities/
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/09/07/645609248/whats-the-evidence-that-supervised-drug-injection-sites-save-lives
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC535533/

The Digital Age has undoubtedly broadened the accessibility of information, and the American education system has begun to evolve accordingly. The Heritage Foundation announced that “online learning is revolutionizing K-12 education and benefiting students” (Lips, 2010, p. 1). The same publication describes that “[a]s many as 1 million children (roughly 2 percent of the K-12 student population) are participating in some form of online learning” (Lips, 2010, p. 1) and cites a meta-analysis from the U.S. Department of Education that found that “students who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction” (U.S. Department of Education, 2010, p. xiv). The Heritage Foundation article repeatedly mentions online learning’s potential to reduce taxes because of its lower cost compared to funding educators. However, by advocating for this cheaper alternative to traditional methods of education, the Heritage Foundation supports the reduction of professional opportunities for women in the education sector. 

Despite making up the majority of the field, women are disproportionately underrepresented in schools’ administrative positions.. While 76% of public and private K-12 teachers are female (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Schools and Staffing Survey, 2012c), women hold only 51.6% of principal positions at public schools (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Schools and Staffing Survey, 2012b) and 55.4% at private ones (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Schools and Staffing Survey, 2012a). When it comes to salary, a study in Pennsylvania found pay gaps between male and female K-12 educators that “actually grow” (Barnum, 2018, para. 6) when controlling for outside factors such as the teacher’s education level and experience. Therefore, not only do women complete most of the work in the education profession, they are undervalued as represented by their underrepresentation in more prestigious positions and unfair remuneration. 

Because the majority of K-12 educators are female, the online learning movement, which seeks to replace educators with technology and software, reduces professional opportunities for women. This report from the Heritage Foundation promotes online learning by emphasizing its low cost; specifically, the author cites Terry M. Moe and John E. Chubb’s Liberating Learning, where the authors “estimate that a school could reduce its teaching staff by approximately one-sixth if elementary school students spent one our per day learning electronically” (Lips, 2010, p. 5). Ideologically, replacing educators with digital systems represents a lack of respect for teaching as a profession, and this movement paints teaching as formulaic and mechanical. 

The Heritage Foundation advocates for replacing teaching staff, of whom the majority are women and facing a gender pay gap, with online learning systems. This notion continues to resist the view of teaching as a profession and, if enacted, would mainly disadvantage women instead of men in the sector, who are more likely to hold more powerful positions. 

References

Barnum, M. (2018). Chalkbeat. In female-dominated education field, women still lag behind in pay, according to two new studies. Retrieved from https://chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2018/06/15/in-female-dominated-education-field-women-still-lag-behind-in-pay-according-to-two-new-studies/

Lips, D. (2010). The Heritage Foundation. How online learning is revolutionizing K-12 education and benefiting students. Retrieved from https://www.heritage.org/technology/report/how-online-learning-revolutionizing-k-12-education-and-benefiting-students#_ftn5

U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Schools and Staffing Survey. (2012). Average and median age of private school principals, and percentage distribution of principals, by age category, sex, and affiliation: 2011-2012. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/sass1112_2013313_p2a_002.asp

U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Schools and Staffing Survey. (2012). Number and percentage distribution of public school principals by gender, race, and selected principal characteristics: 2011-2012. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/sass1112_490_a1n.asp

U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Schools and Staffing Survey. (2012). Total number of select public and private school teachers and percentage distribution of select public and private school teachers, by age category, sex, and selected main teaching assignment: 2011-2012. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/sass1112_20170221001_t12n.asp

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning Evaluation, and Policy Development. (2010). Evaluation of evidence-based practices in online learning: A meta-analysis and review of online learning studies. Retrieved from https://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf

Towards the beginning of class, we read Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari. In his book, Harari describes the idea of data-ism and the idea that all data should be open and within the public domain. His argument for this centers around a data-oriented utility theory, saying that the gathering and publicizing of incredibly large data sets will allow the human race to evolve socially and technologically at an accelerated rate. Reading his book left me thinking about the vaste data collections that modern tech-giants have amassed. It seems to me that keeping the data you collect privatized is a huge economic advantage, especially with regards to your competitors. If you know your market better than anyone else (as a result of careful data collection through your service), you have a better chance of maintaining control in that market. However, some companies still choose to release more and more information about their data. This could be in response to social pressures in an increasingly data focused political environment. Regardless this line of thinking has brought be to ask, should companies release their data sets?

I read this article to get me started. The article talks about Netflix choosing to release more of its viewership data and is summarized as follows: Previously Netflix has been very secretive about their viewership data, only releasing tidbits at a time, if at all. In December 2018 they announced “that more than 45 million accounts watched its horror movie Bird Box within the first seven days of its release”. The article goes on to explain that Netflix will lean into being more transparent “quarter by quarter”, and argues that this transparency will be a good thing for Netflix, stating as evidence the fact that the company has faced considerable criticism for combining secrecy about its ratings with occasional self-aggrandizing claims.

The article seems hopeful that Netflix will release all of its data into the public domain, but skeptical that the release will not just be limited to a few select titles. While I think this piece makes some interesting points, I am not fully convinced that full data disclosure is the correct route for Netflix to follow, and I think the company likely agrees with me. It seems like Netflix is slowly releasing more data as a response to social pressures, perhaps in response to criticisms of their groundless viewership boasting. The reason they been secure and sensitive in their data handling thus far is that it is advantageous to horde and protect that information. Thinking about Harari’s argument, Data-ists would want the full data-sets released and within the public domain. But I would claim that the data has ownership by Netflix, and that they have no true obligation to provide it to anyone.

While this article does not answer my original question at all, it is helpful to explore its implications in light of that overall question. Do companies need to release their data? The articles author would likely take the position that transparency is more trustworthy and perhaps builds a more stable business model when appealing to consumers. I think the advantage of hoarding data is in strong contention to that point. I would tend to disagree with data-ists on the matter that the information should belong to everyone, because I think it should belong to the people who work so hard to collect it in the first place.

An NPR article written by Blake Farmer explores a university’s way to improve end of life care for nursing students. The new technology they are using are actors portraying death and verbal cues that students usually do not hear with robot simulations. They also use actors to emulate dying patient’s family members. Nurses often have to confront patients and their family members with bad news, so by using actors as an education tool, hopefully students focus on how to communicate bad news with more empathy and compassion. The NPR article mentioned studies were conducted that conclude many nurses feel unprepared to give end-of life care. Because I am a nursing student who will probably give end of life or palliative care, I am curious to know where the educational gaps are for end of life care in nursing?

In 2011, the Department of Health Administration and Nursing at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center sought to find gaps in end of life care in continuing education. They surveyed 2,530  nurses from the Oncology Nursing Society among four states, who had been interviewed before in 1990 where the nurses were asked open ended questions about gaps in education for end of life care. The second most current survey asked fewer open ended questions. For example, they ranked end of life core practices from 1-12 of how important they are in nursing practices. Each nurse was mailed a survey and emailed a survey that was identical to the mailed one. Out of 2,530 surveys, only 714 were deemed acceptable to use in analysis, therefore limiting the sample size.  Surveys were conducted and found that “twenty-five percent of the respondents do not believe they are adequately prepared to effectively care for a dying patient”( White 2011). Symptom management and how to talk to patients and family members was rated one on the top competency inadequacies. Symptom management among what comprises palliative care, and communication about death and dying are some core companies under ‘end of life care’.

This study tries to find the educational gaps in end of life care education by surveys to a limited population that are all made up of oncology nurses.This study did not break down ages or experience levels, and instead gave the average age and experience number.  The average age for people conducted in this survey is 48.5 years, and the average number of years since becoming a nurse was 21.3 years. These statistics make sense, because they were re-conducting a survey done to the same population a decade later. The population of nurses in this study were of all different ages and experience levels, which contributed to different rankings of importance for the top three core competencies. For example, nurses in an older generation were more likely to select the meaning of palliative care more important than symptom management. Because the surveys were only conducted on nurses who had already been practicing, the study did not address the educational gap in end of life care for student nurses, as the NPR article suggests. The findings of the study explained there may be educational gaps in work learning settings, because the nurses that said they are confident in their end of life abilities may have been educated outside the workplace, such as conferences. However where the nurses received education on this subject was not measured, so it would be hard to conclude where the gaps in education are, based on these limitations. This study gave a view into where there might be gaps in education for oncology nurses already practicing based on age and speciality level, however because of the small sample population and how specific this study is, it does not represent where educational gaps might take place in the nursing field.

Works cited:

White, K. R., & Coyne, P. J. (2011). Nurses’ Perceptions of Educational Gaps in Delivering End-of-Life Care. Oncology Nursing Forum, 38(6), 711–717. doi:10.1188/11.onf.711-717

https://www.npr.org/2019/01/19/686830475/morphine-and-a-side-of-grief-counseling-nurses-learn-how-to-handle-death

Modern society has an inequality problem that spans across (arguably) every industry. Healthcare is towards the top of the list not only because it perfectly demonstrates the issue of inequality, but because it is an essential part of human health and well being. In the United States, it is no secret that racial minority groups receive lower quality healthcare than dominant groups. However, as new technologies develop through the analysis of big data, the healthcare field is making huge strides towards expanding public health. As the capabilities of the healthcare industry increase, we would hope that the benefits of these new technologies would be shared with everyone. But are these new, Big Data healthcare technologies really improving the health of all people?

One of the new technologies in healthcare that utilizes big data is called PRS, or Polygenic Risk Scores. These scores are used to predict the risks for people developing certain diseases and to suggest preventative measures accordingly. One study, published in Nature genetics, demonstrates that risk predictions from the PRS are far more accurate for people of European descent. The risk prediction of the PRS is most accurate when there is minimal genetic divergence between the person having their risk tested and the genetic data being used.

Figure 1: This figure demonstrates the differences in predictive power of the PRS technology between different racial groups. Each color represents a different racial group, labeled on the x-axis. The y-axis shows the predictive accuracy of the PRS for each group, or how well the technology can predict the risks of people of different races developing diseases. The plot is a violin plot, which means that is displays the distribution and the probability density (shape and area of each group) of the data. The varying width of each shape represents the frequency of the values of that predictive accuracy (the value on the y-axis) for each racial group. So, for the African population, the width of the shape towards the bottom of the y-axis indicates that the prediction accuracy for a majority of this population is between 0.15 and 0.2.

To address how predictive the PRS technology is for each racial group, the researchers used a well-powered genome-wide association study (GWAS). The genetic data for this study came from the UK BioBank. The usage of genetic data from the UK BioBank limits the generalizability of the results of this study and is not addressed by the authors. While the researchers conclude that the PRS is much more reliable for people of European descent, they neglect to specify their conclusions to the UK BioBank. Because the genetic data for the study came from a UK BioBank, it makes sense that the risk predictions would be more accurate for people with European ancestry. The authors should have specified their conclusions to be about the PRS results using genetic data from a particular biobank, or included data from other countries’ databases. If the study had included genetic databases from other countries, the PRS risk predictions might have been more accurate for people of other races and the conclusions of the study would have better addressed the global problem of inequality in genetic data.

That being said, there is a lack of genetic data from a lot of countries, which does limit people’s access to useful PRS scores. According to the study, 79% of genetic data comes from people of European descent, when they represent only 16% of the global population. Because of this overrepresentation of European descendants in genetic research, the PRS risk predictions for people who are not of European descent are not very accurate and therefore not very useful. Even if all countries with genetic data had been included in this study, there would have been missing data for a lot of racial groups (see Wikipedia’s  list of countries with a genetic database).

These PRS tests cost only about fifty USD per person and can be very helpful in educating people about preventative healthcare measures. However, these technologies, if further developed in the same way, will only exacerbate the inequalities that already plague modern society. Further, they are useless to a majority of the global population if we don’t work to ensure that all racial and ethnic groups are well represented during the collection of genetic data used to map these types of predictions. If Big Data in the healthcare industry is to be used in a socially just way, it must be taken for all groups; this process would ensure that the healthcare benefits that accompany new technologies are felt by people of every race.

References:

“DNA Database.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 5 Apr. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_database.

Egede, Leonard E. “Race, Ethnicity, Culture, and Disparities in Health Care.” Journal of General Internal Medicine. Blackwell Science Inc, June 2006. Web. 29 Mar. 2019.

Martin, Alicia R., Masahir Kanai, Yoichiro Kamatani, Yukinori Okada, Benjamin M. Neale, and Mark J. Daly. “Clinical Use of Current Polygenic Risk Scores May Exacerbate Health Disparities.” Sci-Hub. Nature Genetics, Apr. 2019. Web. 29 Mar. 2019.

“Violin Plot.” Violin Plot – Learn about This Chart and Tools to Create It, datavizcatalogue.com/methods/violin_plot.html.

My friend and I were talking about how students get athletic scholarships to get into colleges when he remarked how easy it is for women players to get such scholarships. He claimed that women  don’t even have to be that good or work as hard as boys because there isn’t enough competition. I think that it is generally true that fewer women than men participate in organized sports. This I believed was due to the fact that women growing up aren’t placed in situations where they need to engage in playing a sport, or aren’t encouraged as men are. However, Vaughan, Madigan, and Carter claim that a particular personality trait called the Dark Triad might be imperative in being good at a sport. Especifically, they claim: “It is possible that the Dark Triad facilitate successful sport performance by increasing competitiveness.” In this blogpost, I want to explore what the study’s finding might suggest.

The Dark Triad consists of: 1. Narcissism defined by grandiosity, entitlement, and superiority, 2. Machiavellianism defined by manipulation, self-service, and deceit, and 3. Psychopathy defined by impulsive, unempathetic, and anxious individual.

I looked at their study on the presence of the Dark Triad in men versus women, athletes versus non-athletes, and individual players versus group players. The sample they looked at consists of 1,258 participants with an even combination of elite players, amateurs, and non-athletes, men and women, team and individual players. Because the study has a good sample space, and the tests conducted seem to be established in the field of psychology, I thought the study was a thorough and informative. However, the researchers are very careful not to claim any implications from the results, but only report the findings. For instance, they found the participants in the groups men, elite athlete, and individual player scored higher on the Dark Triad than women, non-elite, and group players. The researchers suggest that elite players might have higher confidence and are assertive, hence they score higher. However, no explanation is given for the difference in gender for DT scores. If male athletes have more of the dark factor in their personality, does this indicate that men and women might be inherently different? Or is there a difference in the scores because women athletes don’t have a high self-perception of their sport performance as men do? At one point, the researchers suggest that the difference in scores between men and women might be because of higher levels of testosterone in men, however they never go into why this would affect the DT scores.

One flaw with the study is that they never specify ethnic origin or socio-economic status of the participants, which I think would bring a whole new dimension to the study. The relationships that are established between the DT score of different group might be completely changed if there variables were considered.

Going back to the claim made by the researchers that a higher DT score might be important in a successful sports career, I think it is worthy exploring how a person’s DT score can be increased even though it is a negative personality trait. Additionally, how does the DT score compare with having Carol Dweck’s growth mindset? Is it possible to have a high self-perception of one’s performance, want to do better yourself at the expense of others, and still have a learner’s view of the world? Though I think that the growth mindset measures one’s ability to get back up from a setback, and the Dark Triad is an overall approach to goals and interpersonal relationships, I think it would be interesting to explore how the two co-exist. And maybe that’ll be my next blogpost. 😉

Resource(s):

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330224264_The_Dark_Triad_in_Male_and_Female_Athletes_and_Non-Athletes_Group_Differences_and_Psychometric_Properties_of_the_Short_Dark_Triad_SD3?_iepl%5BviewId%5D=I7oGuCmPRJVIW854HtG49BPe&_iepl%5BsingleItemViewId%5D=7upFZBEyW2Y2YuIeF11HscrT&_iepl%5BpositionInFeed%5D=1&_iepl%5BhomeFeedVariantCode%5D=ncls&_iepl%5BactivityId%5D=1091474829746176&_iepl%5BactivityType%5D=service_add_recommendation_publication&_iepl%5BactivityTimestamp%5D=1554669081&_iepl%5BrecActVar%5D=similar_publications_by_very_recent_publication_interaction_v1%3Esimilar_publications_by_very_recent_publication_interaction_v1&_iepl%5BrecScore%5D=7.5091285705566&_iepl%5Bcontexts%5D%5B0%5D=homeFeed&_iepl%5BtargetEntityId%5D=PB%3A330224264&_iepl%5BinteractionType%5D=publicationTitle

In a 1968 speech, Robert F. Kennedy said that “[GDP] measures everything… except that which makes life worthwhile.” I think this statement was, and is, still deeply relevant. Both here in the U.S. and across the world GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is often used as a metric of a country and its citizens’ well-being. And it seems almost hardwired to associate a high GDP with a good economy and a good life. But what exactly is GDP and what might be some alternatives to it?

In technical terms, GDP measures the total value of final goods and services produced within a country’s borders and is defined as the net consumption by households, investments by businesses, government purchases, and purchases made by foreigners (Kurtzleben GDP). GDP is generally what people refer to when they say that one economy is larger or smaller than another. When an astute economist posits “the Chinese economy will surpass that of the United States by 2050” they are probably referring to growth as increase in GDP. I don’t pretend to think anyone believes that GDP is a perfect measure of a nation’s well being, any good data miner/harvester/observer knows that any attempt to measure something as large as the “health of an economy” will miss something. And for what it is supposed to measure, the GDP is great.

Returning to RFK’s statement from above, I wonder if measuring the material output of a nation isn’t the most important to measure. I mean, if the entire workforce of the U.S. was replaced by advanced humanoid robots with no need for food, sleep, or a living wage, I bet the GDP would be pretty high but it wouldn’t account for the millions of people who would be left destitute. So what are some alternative ways of measuring the well-being of a country?

One of the more prominent alternatives to GDP is what is referred to as Gross National Happiness or GNH. GNH is a metric used by Bhutan since the 1970s (Kurtzleben Proposals) to measure the mental, rather than material, well-being. Unlike GDP, GNH is not something that is calculated with objective analytics of economic output. Instead, the government of Bhutan issues a national survey that measures the well-being of its citizens across several areas from education to satisfaction with the government (Kurtzleben Proposals). This data is then supposed to be drive the nation’s policy (GNH Survey Report). I think this approach is really ambitious and falls quite neatly in line with measuring things that “make life worthwhile”. That said, I can imagine there might be some logistical and statistical issues in interpreting data that could be very subjective. Bhutan is, after all, a fairly small country. For the U.S. government, with its sprawling landmass, dozens of local education systems, disparate socio-economic classes, and population of over 300 million, a GNH would be an absolutely daunting task. In my opinion, this type of metric would be better implemented on a state level.

The Happy Planet Index, a project by the New Economics Foundation, is similar to the GNH. It is a measure of “sustainable well-being” comparing how efficiently the residents of a country use natural resources to achieve lives with high well-being (Happy Planet Methods). The HPI is calculated by comparing life expectancy, multiplied by experienced well-being as reported via survey, and the inequality of outcomes, all of which is divided by the country’s ecological footprint. This approach, combining both hard statistics and subjective survey responses, seems like it might be able to produce a more holistic summary of a country’s well-being and might be easier to conduct on a national scale.

If it wasn’t clear by now, I am fairly opposed to a reliance on measures of material production for reporting the well-being of a country. GDP is a measure of economic growth and it would be nice to have alternative measures more commonly reported. I find myself drawn especially to metrics that attempt to account for the inequities in life expectancy and self-reported happiness as there is a better chance this might better represent a greater proportion of the population. No metric is perfect, but I certainly think something like the Happy Planet Index has potential.

Sources Accessed

“What does GDP measure?” – Danielle Kurtzleben

“Are there other proposals for better ways to measure the economy?” – Danielle Kurtzleben

Gross National Happiness

Happy Planet Index Methods

Dancing full-out requires a lot of energy. Dancers often do what is called “marking” to conserve their energy for when they will perform or show movement more seriously later on. Marking is a way for dancers to reveiw movement and imagine it happening in their heads with few physical movements and low effort. It’s not always allowed or supported in a technique class and is typically frowned upon in a professional performance setting, like when a choreographer is giving movement to the group.

Being a more professional dancer now that I’m studying it in college, I have recently felt as though I need to put maximum or nearly maximum effort into each “run through” of a movement phrase, even when learning it for the first time. It’s crucial to pick movement up quickly and be able to reproduce what was shown as clearly as can be. Due to these high expectations, it appears logical that I would put maximum effort into each step of learning movement for maximum output. I have physically practiced to the level that I want to achieve when showing or performing and I won’t risk giving less than I possibly can. After all, athletes and peformers are always told to “practice like you play/perform”. I question the necessity of pressure from teachers to always put in full effort and to practice like one performs. Can it be beneficial to mark a dance instaed of going full-out? If so, how does this change current class philosophy and expectations?

Research by University of California and Claire Trevor School of the Arts faculty claims that marking is actually more cognitively beneficial to dancers than always going full out when rehearsing. When comparing the performance of dancers after using their full energy or going full out versus marking, the marking rehearsal method resulted in better performance (Warburton et al, 2013). Perhaps moving slowly through movement would give the brain time to attach meaning to each movement and therefore retain it in a more permanent memory storage space than if it were quickly and effortfully performed. This would mean that marking could be used as a method to retain movement or memorize it, something that going full out doesn’t provide time to do. While there aren’t many other studies that exist that are similar to this one and can provide more strength to the claim given, this is still a profound finding with major implications.

If more people are exposed to this idea that marking is more beneficial than going full out, professors, teachers, choreographers, and artistic directors would perhaps no longer hold performers to such high standards of effort and perfection during rehearsal time. Dance pedagogy would shift from stressing heavily on immediately translating replicated movement into the body to a new philosophy of working through and slowly understanding movement while using less physical and more cognitive energy. This transformation of philosophy would alleviate a lot of stress that dancers feel because it would give them time for more movement exploration and detail gathering and allow each performer to feel completely comfortable with movement before fully executing it. By allowing dancers to put more cognitive effort into their learning, it might actually help more with movement retention and leave less stress on the body. It would be very difficult for the negativity surrounding marking to disappear, but challenging current popular ideas such as practicing like you perform definitely helps to at least change the way that people see their methods of teaching and learning.

References

Warburton, E. C., Wilson, M., Lynch, M., & Cuykendall, S. (2013). The Cognitive Benefits of Movement Reduction. Psychological Science,24(9), 1732-1739. doi:10.1177/0956797613478824

Bergland, C. (2013, October 1). Why Is Dancing So Good for Your Brain? Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201310/why-is-dancing-so-good-your-brain