Week 11: Prejudice and Implicit Bias Test

    For this week's topic, we're talking about prejudice and bias. We watched a TED Talk featuring Dr. Paul Bloom again and he mentioned that prejudice is frequently natural, sensible, and virtuous. In my opinion, I always thought of prejudice as people being ignorant because they come from preconceived notions of some or something. But I get Dr. Bloom's perspective where without prejudice we wouldn't have something to intervene with when something goes wrong. He then goes on to quote a famous philosopher, William Hazlitt, that said, "Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room; nor know how to conduct myself in any circumstances, now what to feel in any relation of life." Again, I see this point of view but I just don't agree with it. I could see how it could be beneficial but I just think going about life through this perspective isn't good.

    Dr. Bloom starts to cite data from recorded experiments done before the 2008 presidential election that people voted for white people to be more American when compared to Barack Obama. One comparison with Barack Obama was the British prime minister, Tony Blair, and without knowing his background people voted for him instead of Obama. In another study in 2015, they tested people's racial biases by putting on eBay baseball cards to sell but one had pictures of a white hand holding the cards and the other sale had a black hand holding the cards up. Results showed that the sale with the black hand got much fewer offers than the sale with the white hand holding up the baseball cards. The last example Dr. Bloom showed was comparing two African American prisoners, but he said that the male who was much darker was voted to most likely commit a crime. I also think this is where colorism stems. Colorism is basically assuming things about someone who has a darker complexion within their own race. 

    This video expands my understanding of the nature and source of prejudice by thinking that some people may live life with constant prejudices judging people right off the bat as being cautious. But me personally, it gives off being closed-minded, ignorant, and a bit racist if you do judge based off of race or skin color.

Implicit Bias Test

    For the Implicit Bias test, I took the one about favoring old people or young people. My results showed that I favored young people over old people. I had a feeling this was going to be my result because I feel like I can relate to young people more and I never really grew up with an older family member in my household so I am not used to them. 

Week 10: Human Relationships

    For this week's topic, we were assigned to watch a YouTube video, "Evolution Explains Kindness - Even When it Kills Us", featuring psychologist Dr. Paul Bloom. The main focus of this video is Dr. Bloom discussing Darwinism/evolution and whether it really affects a living creature's kindness. 

    He talks about two ways that kindness can evolve through natural selection which determines a level of kindness within someone or something. The first is 'kin selection,' where other creatures share your genes and this can be developed through community; a place where everyone is closely related. The second way is called 'reciprocal altruism,' which means that if you're in constant contact with somebody else, it can evolve into a sort of practical kindness where you help them and they help you in return. I can see how both ways can affect how kind someone or something is. A big part of how we act or our habits or beliefs is determined by the environment we grew up in or what we were surrounded by most of our lives. We learn to pick up habits/mannerisms or start talking the same/use the same terms when we hang around the same people a lot.

    We have evolved our brains so much and the way it thinks; to look at the smaller things than the bigger picture in life. Dr. Bloom questions why would some humans completely sacrifice their own lives to save a complete stranger. He then goes on to say, "But we're smart enough to have come to the principle of impartiality, some version of the 'golden rule.' Some notion that, from the standpoint of the universe, one person's life is just as valuable as another. From a gut level, an injustice done to me is so much worse than an injustice for people I've never heard of. But when I think about it, I can appreciate that at the level of principles there's no difference. The injustice done far away is just as severe injustice as if it were done to me. It makes us realize that selfishness and parochialness and racism and sexism and all sorts of biases like that are not inevitable." When Dr. Bloom brought this up, it really got me thinking. For most people, a lot of biases like he mentioned can be overridden if it comes down to saving a person's life and that's fascinating to me. I think people like to take on that superhero role because if the roles were reversed they would want someone to help/save them. 

    You don't have to be directly blood-related or share genes with someone to create a great relationship with someone. Great relationships are something that is nurtured by both people and it depends on them how strong the relationship is. But one act of kindness can go a long way for people. 

Group 3 (week 9)- The Music Industry

    I was in this week's group about the music industry and we showed the class this mockumentary, "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping", starring several famous artists and actors/actresses. We follow the life of "Conner4Real", played by Andy Samberg, who broke away from his boyband, Style Boyz, to become his own independent solo artist. He soon finds out that on the release of his second solo album, it receives a bunch of negative criticism and Conner is on the path to finding his way in the music industry because it's not as easy as it may seem to look.

    In my group's presentation, we discussed capitalism, privilege, racism, sexism, fame, and mental health aspects of the music industry. The section that I covered was racism and I talked about how the Grammys has a long history of showing bias or racism towards their nominees. Only eleven black artists have won the Album of the Year award. From 2012-2020, statistics showed that black artists received only 26.7% of nominations for the award show while they represented over 38% of all artists on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. A good example of the Grammy's failure to nominate a popular artist was The Weeknd and his popular 2020 album "After Hours" and its single "Blinding Lights". This received a lot of backlash because the track set numerous records, including spending 40 weeks in the top 10 in the US, 4 of which the song was at number one, and spending 28 weeks in the top 5. When I was researching this topic, the most surprising fact that I found out was that Frank Ocean's "Channel Orange" lost to Mumford and Sons. This was shocking to me because I feel like if you ask anyone, they'll know at least more than two songs by Frank Ocean from "Channel Orange" compared to asking about songs by Mumford and Sons.

Capitalism, Creativity, and the Crisis in the Music Industry

    This article is about capitalism in the music industry. The article mentions a lot about how the musicians in the music business are the losers and the listeners are the winners. The author writes, "A commodity always depends for its status and its value on its relative scarcity; once the reproduction and distribution of that commodity become effectively free, then it necessarily loses that value and that status. This is great news for consumers of music, but for producers, it means, quite simply, that they suddenly have nothing of value to sell." This reveals that artists barely make a lot when they release new songs so they promote it so much to make a lot of people stream their music on repeat. For example, Spotify only pays its platform's artists $0.003 to $0.005 per stream. Other ways that artists make money is by selling their own merch or they sell tickets for concerts.

We Need to Talk About Money: Musicians without Financial Privilege are Being Pushed Out

    This second article, it talks about how musicians who weren't rich before their musical careers, have connections to big names in the industry. This basically talks about nepotism babies, which by definition are those with the power or influence of favoring relatives or friends. They are only big and well known because of their connections and I think a great example of a nepotism baby is Clairo. Clairo had the rags-to-riches story by posting music on YouTube before signing to a label, but it turns out that her father was the co-founder of the label that signed her. The author says, "We have created a field where instead of reliably being paid for your work, you need something external to allow you to afford to work in it. And so the people we lose are, often, those from lower socio-economic groups - those without a financial cushion, without spouses or significant others to lean on, with dependents needing additional care and resources, without family that might provide in extreme circumstances a temporary alternative to homelessness (or at least the freedom to not worry about homelessness and instead devote that time to building a creative career)." In my opinion, if you don't have the right connections, if not a lot of people know about you or your music, or if you invest so much time and effort into music/merch that doesn't even sell; you're not going to make it big. It would be impossible to be financially stable from doing music alone. You would need income from non-music-related things.

Fitter Happier: The Psychological effects of Fame on the Creative Process

    This last article talks about if the psychological effects of fame like pressure can affect an artist's or celebrities' creative process. This change in lifestyle of being famous has its pros and cons. Yeah, you become famous with all the money and get invited to special events, but at what cost of being paranoid all the time if someone is following you/stalking you, not being able to go anywhere you like without being recognized, and paparazzi taking your picture and making up drama for the tabloids/media. Plus the added on pressure for constant approval from their label, management, and fans because they have expectations to be met once you get this famous reputation. The article talks about Nirvana, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Radiohead. The author writes, "While for the Red Hot Chili Peppers notoriety represented a spur to evolve their music style, both Nirvana and Radiohead were under the impression that their creativity was threatened by the higher expectations on their follow-up albums. This suggests that fame constitutes a noteworthy component in the creative process of popular artists. This contribution increases the understanding of the relationship between popular musicians and compositions." Nowadays anybody's song could go viral through social media like TikTok or Instagram, which can be the determining factor for aspiring artists. Some psychological issues following fame that celebrities can experience are isolation, de-personification, self-awareness, creative anxiety, and damage in their relationships. I feel bad for children who are born into the spotlight because of their parents or family, like the Kardashians, because they'll never experience a normal life like the rest of the population.