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Michael Scott and authentic leadership: What we learn about leadership from The Office.

A new study published in the Journal of Leadership Studies examines the actions of Michael Scott, self‐proclaimed “World's Best Boss”, to determine how he communicates leadership on The Office. Using Northouse's (2020) definition of leadership, Scott's behavior is content analyzed to establish his particular message transmission tendencies. Further, given Scott's unique management style, George's (2003) dimensions of authentic leadership are used to code Scott's behavior as Scranton's regional manager. Based on a quantitative coding of shows, two main findings are advanced. First, Scott's leadership prioritizes verbal over nonverbal messages. Second, Scott's approach to leadership emphasizes the authentic dimensions of close relationships, clear purpose, and a caring heart most often with his employees. Scenes from The Office are identified that validate these findings and feature authentic leadership theory in action. Pragmatically, the current research offers trainers, managers, and teachers a resource for educating trainees and students on the role of verbal and nonverbal messages in leadership as well as a tool for developing authentic leadership in others. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

Selling Ed Gein

Even after police arrested 51-year-old Ed Gein on November 17, 1957, his Plainfield, Wisconsin neighbours likely failed to realize that their lives would never be the same again.

While Gein had a reputation for being anweird loner, he was still regarded as generally harmless.   In fact, he often served as an occasional babysitter for many of the families living near the 160-acre farm where Gein had been living alone since the death of his mother, Augusta, in 1945.   While one local boy tried to tell his family about he collection of "shrunken heads" that he had once seen in Gein's farmhouse, people generally dismissed what he saw as yet another of Ed's crazy pranks.  If neighbours were put off by his fascination with taxidermy, they largely kept it to themselves.  

But, after police discovered the body of local hardware store owner, Bernice Worden, in a shack connected to Gein's farmhouse, they soon discovered more about their quiet neighbour.  Much more.   

Though the Gein farmhouse was largely dilapidated (Ed only lived in two small rooms and rest of the house was sealed off), police kept making bizarre discovery after bizarre discovery as the searched the farmhouse and surrounding grounds.  Not only had the headless body of Bernice Worden been strung up by her heels, they also found cereal in a bowl made from a human skull, lampshades and wastebaskets formed from human skin, a shoe box filled with vaginas, a belt with human nipples attached, a loose collection of noses, and a human heart.  But their most grotesque discovery was of a "woman suit" made from the sewn-together skins of Gein's various victims which he would later admit to wearing to make himself feel as if he had breasts and female genitalia.   

All told, police found the remains of eleven women though Gein would only confess to murdering two of them, Bernice Worden and a second woman, Mary Hogan, who had gone missing some time earlier.   The other bodies had been taken from the local cemetery, something that came as an unpleasant revelation this fellow townspeople who had no idea that the graves of their loved ones had been desecrated.   Police had trouble believing that Gein could have stolen the bodies undetected.  To bolster their case, they took him to the Plainfield cemetery to show them which graves had been opened (this would be a controversial move when it came out).  

Prosecutors quickly charged Ed Gein with first-degree murder for the deaths of Bernice Worden and Mary Hogan but any hope the locals had of avoiding publicity ended when news of what police found at the Gein farm hit the newspapers.  NEd Gein and Plainfield, Wisconsin become household names with curiosity-seekers descending on Plainfield from across the country.  Many of the locals grudgingly gave media interviews but most of them hoped that things would blow over in time.   As for Ed Gein, he was assessed by doctors at the Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Waupun, Wisconin (now the Dodge Correctional Institution). and soon diagnosed him as a "sexual psychopath".  They also recommended that Gein be kept in hospital for the rest of his life.

Even as prosecutors and defense attorneys wrestled over the question of Gein's sanity, a battle of another kind was already taking place elsewhere.   When an auction house offered up the contents of Ed Gein's house at a public  sale, thousands of people from all over the country came to Plainfield to acquire souvenirs.   Even before the auction began, the auction house offered tours of Gein's house and farm for fifty cents apiece,   Though the outraged families of Gein's victims tried to stop the sale, it still went ahead as scheduled.   The farm itself was sold to a local real estate dealer who announced plans to turn the property into a tree farm.   As for the 1949 truck that Gein used to cart bodies to his farm, it was sold to junk dealer Chet Sales for $215.   While Sales told reporters that he would keep the truck as a souvenir, he later sent the truck on tour with the carnival circuit where it was billed as "Gein's Ghoul Car"/  It would be a familiar sight at carnivals for years afterward.  

Considering the simmering anger that the people of Plainfield had over the industry that had sprung up around Gein and his crimes, nobody was really surprised when the local Volunteer Fire Department was called to a fire at the Gein farm on March 20, 1958.   While no one took credit for setting the fire, just about everyone in town, including the firefighters, simply stood and watched as the sinister house burned to the ground.   And so, with Ed Gein in the hospital where he would remain for the rest of his life and the last physical trace of his life in Plainfield gone up in flames, his former neighbours must have felt some hope that the "Butcher of Plainfield" would be slowly forgotten.

And that might have actually happened had it not been for Robert Albert Bloch...

Already well-known for his work in crime, horror, and fantasy, the Wisconsin-born Bloch had been living in nearby Weyauwega when Ed Gein's crimes were revealed and he followed the case with more than professional interest.   Bloch had long been fascinated by abnormal psychology and he had already written several stories about killers with dissociative identity disorder (known as multiple personality disorder in those days).   Drawing on his research into Ed Gein's life as well as some related cases, Bloch wrote the book that would be forever associated with his name:  Psycho.    Published in 1958, Psycho told the story of Norman Bates, a motel owner-operator who was also an amateur taxidermist with an abnormal fascination with his mother,   Still, while Bloch had no hesitation about depicting Norman as a murderer, it likely says a lot that the bizarre psychosexual urges that inspired Ed Gein were carefully omitted (Bloch knew his audience).   To be fair, Bloch never claimed that his book was based exclusively on Gein but rather on the idea that he represented:  a mass murderer living undetected and unsuspected in a typical American town.   Since its publication, Psycho has since been recognized as one of the great horror classics of the 20th century and, not surprisingly, generated renewed interest in Gein and his crimes.

But the book gained even greater fame when director Alfred Hitchcock managed to secure the film rights for a modest sum (largely by using a fake name, something which Bloch would complain about for the rest of his life).   While the eminent director faced major opposition in getting funding for a full Hollywood production over such a controversial project,  he managed to produce the film for a modest $800,000 by using the production crew from his then-television show.  The screenplay, which was faithful to the book, carefully downplayed any suggestion that Norman Bates was a "sexual psychopath" like Gein despite its b   Filmed in black-and-white due to limited funding, Psycho, released in 1960, was a hit from the very beginning and made a star of Anthony Perkins playing Norman Bates.  Even with lukewarm reviews by critics (some of whom condemned it as a "gimmick film"), Psycho proved to be Hitchcock's most profitable productions and has since been recognized as a movie classic and one of Hitchcock's most memorable films.  

The film appeal came from its shock value, largely because Hitchcock managed to defy censors trying to enforce the Motion Picture Production Code that had been in force in Hollywood for decades.  While the Code was already fraying badly by 1960, the film's bold portrayals of sexuality and violence (including the controversial shower scene) helped  open the floodgates to a host of copycat films that attempted to trade on Psycho's success.   This meant the introduction of "splatter films" which largely focused on violence and gore rather than the bizarre sexual aspects of Ed Gein's crimes.   It would still take decades for Hollywood to "catch up" with Ed Gein with films such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

As for Ed Gein himself, he seemed quietly unaware of how his crimes had influenced American culture.  By all accounts, he was thoroughly content with his new life at the Central State Hospital.  A model inmate, he never required sedation or restraints, and he spent his time reading books, chatting with staff and other patients, and carrying out his chores without complaint.  Aside from his disturbing habit of staring at female staff and avoiding them wherever possible, Gein's life seemed idyllic until his death from cancer on July 26, 1984.   He was buried between his mother and brother in Plainfield Cemetery, not far from the graves he had desecrated decades earlier (which must have horrified the families involved).  

Along with the films he helped inspire, Ed Gein continues to fascinate true crime buffs, many of whom still descend on Plainfield seeking out physical traces of his crimes.  While the remains of his abandoned farmhouse and the hardware store where Bernice Worden was murdered are still accessible, visitors to Plainfield seeking out Gein's grave might be surprised to find that it is unmarked.  The 150-pound tombstone that used to mark the site was stolen in 2000 and, despite being later recovered by police, was never returned to the cemetery and has been kept in the basement of the Plainfield police department ever since.   There is a noticeable hole on Gein's gravesite (visitors often steal dirt as a souvenir) but little else to mark his existence of Plainfield's most notorious resident and the man whose crimes inspired some of Hollywood's most memorable movie monsters.

 

 

The Psychologist and the Amazon

In November 1920, a prominent Washington, D.C. physician was shot to death in a robbery. After months of investigation, police arrested James Frye who eventually confessed to the crime. Frye later recanted this confession before his trial was set to begin claiming that he had been promised money to admit to the crime. At the request of Frye's attorney, psychologist William Moulton Marston was called in to verify that Frye was telling the truth. Having made a name for himself through the use of systolic blood pressure testing to detect lying (he actually coined the term "lie detector"), Marston tested Frye in a D.C. jail and concluded that he was telling the truth.

In a landmark legal decision, the presiding judge threw out the evidence ruling that the systolic blood pressure deception test has "not has not yet gained such standing and scientific recognition among physiological and psychological authorities as would justify the courts in admitting expert testimony deduced from the discovery, development and experiments thus far made". Frye was convicted of second-degree murder and the decision to exclude Marston's testimony was upheld on appeal. Until the introduction of the Daubert standard in the 1990s, the Frye decision would be the principal standard for admissibility of scientific evidence in courtrooms throughout the United States (and is still used in some U.S. states).

Ever the showman, Marston took his place in legal history in stride. Born in 1893, he earned his LLB and Ph.D. at Harvard University studying under the legendary Hugo Munsterberg. While Munsterberg first proposed the use of experimental psychology methods in forensic cases, it was Marston (with the help of his wife Elizabeth) who developed the systolic blood pressure test of deception as a graduate student. The rationale behind the test was simple enough: when people lied, their elevated autonomic arousal could be measured through systolic blood pressure (later expanded to include galvanic skin response). Over the course of his lengthy career, he would publish research boasting of a 97-99% accuracy rate.

After leaving Harvard, Marston had a varied career. Billing his "lie detector" as "the end of man's long, futile striving for a means of distinguishing truth-telling from deception", he publicized his discovery in different, (and at times outrageous) ways. Following the Lindbergh kidnapping in the 1930s, Marston offered his services to the Lindbergh family and, failing to get a reply, offered to test Bruno Hauptmann to verify his guilt. Although Marston was not the only researcher working on physiological measures of deception, his showmanship gave him a higher profile than anyone else.

Dubbed the "father of the polygraph", he pushed for its use in courtrooms and police work. His work at publicizing the polygraph took him in some strange directions. He was once hired by Gillette to do an advertisement using the polygraph to conduct "scientific shaving tests" to prove that Gillette razors were the best. Not surprisingly, his unconventional conduct and outrageous claims made him a target of serious polygraph researchers. One reviewer of his 1938 book, The Lie Detector Test, wrote that "It can only bring ridicule upon the subject matter and disrespect for its author."

Marston's eclectic interests included his fascination with comic books (he praised their educational potential), and feminist theory. Perhaps feminist is the wrong word to describe Marston's views on women since he focused on their superiority over men in most aspects. He regarded women as being more honest and reliable than men, not to mention less angry and violent. Marston viewed matriarchal societies as the ideal since women could curb male anarchy through their sexuality.

His views on women were reinforced by his unusual private life. While still married to Elizabeth, he became involved with Olive Byrnes, a former student who became his assistant. With his wife's blessing, Olive moved in with them in a remarkable menage-a-trois relationship that lasted until his death in 1947. Even after Marston died, Elizabeth and Olive continued to live together with their children (two by each woman) until Olive's death in the 1980s.

Marston's fascination with comics and his philosophical musings about feminine ideals came together in the early 1940s with his most memorable creation: Wonder Woman. Patterned after Elizabeth and Olive, the heroic Amazon was intended to be a "new kind of superhero" to offset the male superheroes that had dominated comics. It was with a touch of irony that Wonder Woman was equipped with a magic lasso that could compel villains to tell the truth (a fictional alternative to Marston's "lie detector".

Despite the appeal of a female superhero, Wonder Woman faced strong criticism over the years. Feminists disliked the bondage and physical submissiveness themes while Fredric Wertham denounced her as a lesbian in his anti-comics crusade. Wonder Woman has managed to survive (lasso and all) through decades of comic book storylines, a television series, and a hit movie.

As for Marston's other legacy, that depends on who you ask. While the use of polygraph evidence in courtrooms is still controversial, they are commonly found in police investigations, offender monitoring, and employment settings (including security agencies). In addition to standard measures of autonomic arousal, newer technologies include measures of brain functioning, computerized administration, voice stress analysis, and standardized interrogation techniques. Despite the lack of commonly accepted federal standards, polygraph schools (including one founded by William Marston) offer certificate programs in polygraph use around the world.

While supporters of polygraphy have typically reported accuracy rates in the 97-99% range, critics have argued that these numbers have been artificially inflated by flaws in research design. In 2003, the National Research Council released a review of polygraphy that condemned existing validity studies and concluded that "almost a century of research in scientific psychology and physiology provides little basis for the expectation that a polygraph test could have extremely high accuracy" Despite concerns about validity, the polygraph industry seems well-entrenched and the controversy is unlikely to be resolved any time soon.

Remember James Frye? While some accounts state that he was later exonerated when someone else confessed to the crime, this isn't the case. Frye was eventually paroled after serving eighteen years in prison. Leaving aside the question of his actual guilt (and there are still differing opinions on that), Marston's testimony almost certainly helped save Frye from a first-degree murder conviction (and the death penalty).

Just another part of William Moulton Marston's complex legacy.

Do We Really Love Villains?

Villains make for good TV and movie watching.

I'm not talking about movie monsters such as It or the predators in A Quiet Place, I mean those very unpleasant people who seem to populate many of the most popular television and movie dramas that seem to revel in the chaos they cause for everyone around them.   Remember Frank Underwood (played by Kevin Spacey) in the HBO political drama series, House of Cards?   How about Gordon Gecko (played by Michael Douglas), in the hit movie, House of Cards?   And, for those of you of an older generation, there was J.R. Ewing of Dallas fame (played by Larry Hagman) and Alexis Carrington of Dynasty (played by Joan Collins).    Whether or not these characters ever received the comeuppance we felt they deserved, they were inevitably the reason most people kept watching.

Certainly, given the appeal these characters seem to have for viewers, it's hardly surprising that Nthey crop up in so many television shows and movies.   After all, watching movies and television shows are a major part of American culture.   Not only does the average American over the age of fifteen spend three or more hours watching television, but over eighty percent of American homes subscribe to video-on-demand services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu.    While the kind of media content we enjoy changes from one generation to the next, characters that we love to hate continue to exert a strange fascination.

To read more, check out my new Psychology Today blog post. 

 

 

Want to Do An Exorcism? There's an App For That!

There seems no doubt that exorcism is a growth industry these days.

Not only are exorcists working for the Catholic Church reportedly overwhelmed with all the exorcism requests they have been receiving, but most mainstream churches are reporting the same.    Fundamentalist religious leaders worldwide are also claiming to cast out demons supposedly responsible for a wide range of complaints, including physical disease and homosexuality.   And then there are the "demonologists" (yes, that is a thing), who claim to be able to cast out demons without having any formal religious credentials.    As I said, it's a growth industry these days with nothing that even remotely resembles government regulation.  

To keep up with the demand, and to help avoid the often-hefty fees many exorcists charge for their services, some enterprising developers have come up with digital apps that allegedly allow users to cast out demons on their own.   According to a new report by the business website Compelo, there are already four apps that can be downloaded for use on iPhones and Android phones and more are likely already on the drawing boards.  With more than 66,000 downloads so far, there's no disputing their popularity.   Here are some of the leading candidates:

• Exorcism - certainly the most popular exorcism app with more than 50,000 downloads, Exorcism was created by a Spanish developer and already boasted a 4.5 rating with hundreds of reviews attesting to its effectiveness.   Along with information on exorcism and a litany of prayers to be used against demons, this app also contains an image of a St. Benedict's medal.  According to the description given, "this application introduces us to the world of exorcism and its basic concepts and provide protection prayers."    While the reviews fail to provide real details, the barrage of 5-star reviews attest to the satisfaction of its users (no word on actual effectiveness given, though).
• Exorcism and Deliverance -  Billed as a "FREE Catholic Android app providing info on how to handle demonic attacks", this app isn't quite as popular as Exorcism but still boasts over 10,000 downloads and a 4.5 rating on the Google store site.   Along with various deliverance prayers to be used by priests and the laity for defense against evil, it also features what is allegedly the formal Rite of Exorcism used by Catholic priests as well as information about "signs/symptoms of demonic attacks" and tips about how to "prepare for the spiritual battle."   While the reviews are generally positive, a few reviewers warn about the dangers of using the exorcism rite without proper authorization.  
• Exorcism Against Supernatural  -  Obviously not written by a native speaker of English, the description of the app says it can "help you performing real Latin exorcism with audio and text tips.   Professionally recorded high quality Latin pronunciation of the exorcist with mysterious music background from our studio".   Despite a 4.2 rating, this app has only been downloaded 1,000 times and the reviews are generally not that informative.  
• Ghost- Detection and Protection -  While not an exorcism app as such, the description states that the app "contains all information about ghosts.  You can be a Ghost detector after reading this app.  You can protect yourself from ghosts by this app."   Offering "the best from the world of astrology and darkness,"  the app is said to feature "tricks to save you from ghost evil spirits, their detection and protection in emergency situations.    Despite a 4.1 rating, 1,000 downloads, and generally positive reviews, some reviewers express misgivings about this app (including disappointment that it doesn't feature a "ghost detector").   

As you can see, exorcism and demonology apps seem to be popular these days and there are many more that aren't as highly rated.   While apps such as these aren't likely to put professional exorcists out of work any time soon they do reflect the very real fears about demonic possession and spiritual attack that people seem to have.   Fueled by the numerous exorcism movies and television shows that continue to present these possessions as real, the demand for exorcism services, both from professionals and wanna-bes, is only going to increase in the years to come.

 

 

 

The Mary Hart Problem

r Dianne Neale, it all began during the mid-1980s  when she started experiencing recurring episodes of mental confusion and abdominal pain that apparently struck at random.   After two years of these episodes, she also started experiencing frequent blackouts as well. Though she had no idea of what was happening, the ultimate cause of those episodes, and the media reaction that would follow, would soon earn her a rather bizarre claim to fame.

A long-time resident of Albany, New York, the 45-year-old hospital employee's episodes baffled her family doctor and she was eventually referred to Dr. Venkat Ramani, a neurology resident at the Albany Medical Center Hospital and a prominent authority on epilepsy.  Though his client appeared to be suffering from some form of epilepsy, determining what was happening in her case wasn't easy.   Not only did a standard neurological  fail to turn up any sign of pathology, but MRI scans of the head and electroencephalographic  (EEG) recordings of her brain activity show no problems either.

To try getting a better understanding of what was happening, Dr. Ramani arranged for his patient to undergo a series of video EEG monitoring sessions.   Video EEG monitoring involves measurement of brain activity while simultaneously recording patient behaviour on video.  This allows technicians to link EEG activity to specific changes in behaviour that might be triggering seizures.    In Dianne Neale's case, it took four prolonged testing sessions before technicians discovered that seizure activity linked to her temporal lobe was consistently triggered by her listening to a video recording of a specific television show: Entertainment Tonight.

Intrigued by this discovery, Dr. Ramani and his staff carried out systematic testing to determine what it was about the recording that could be triggering the seizures.  After ruling out other possibilities, including the theme music, background noise, and voices of the other members of the cast, they found that the seizures only occurred when the patient heard the voice of the show's female host, Mary Hart.   Even when she listened to the voices of other female hosts on other shows, it was only hearing that one voice that seemed to act as a trigger.  Though Dianne Neale was offered the option of attending behaviour therapy aimed at desensitizing her to that one voice, she declined and simply stopped  watching the program instead.  Since a two-year follow-up showed that the seizures were under control, this solution seemed to work just fine for her.

And that's where things might have ended if Dr. Ramani hadn't published a letter on the case in a 1991 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.  Titled, "Audiogenic Epilepsy Induced by a Specific Television Performer,"  the letter described Dianne Neale's case in detail and presented it as a unique example of audiogenic epilepsy.    Unfortunately, the bizarre elements of the case caused it to gain an unintended media following  after news stories reporting on Dr. Ramani's letter spread rapidly.   Even prominent comedy hosts such as David Letterman and Johnny Carson began including jokes about Dianne Neale in their monologues.  Though the original letter contained no information that could be used to identify Ms. Neale, she still felt personally humiliated to hear all the humour at her expense.  Not only did she feel that the jokes demeaned her, but also epileptics in general.  

Finally deciding to go public about her case, she called a press conference in August, 1991, just one month after Dr. Ramani's letter came out.  Blasting Letterman, Carson, and other comedians for spreading misinformation about epilepsy, she also insisted that there was nothing funny about her condition.  "I want to make sure that people understand that I am not 'crazy' and that people with epilepsy are not dangerous or mentally ill but have  a physical problem,"  she said.  "It is no funnier than someone being in a wheelchair or having a heart condition."   

Unfortunately, despite her attempts at educating the public about epilepsy, revealing her identity made Dianne Neale more vulnerable than ever.  It also led to a bizarre incident that occurred within a few days of the press conference.   According to newspaper reports, another Albany resident named Deanna Neale (no relation), later filed a complaint about two men whom she was forced to chase off her property with a rifle.   The men, apparently wanting to play a prank, had brought a tape player and a video recording of Entertainment Tonight but found the wrong house by mistake.   According to Deanna Neale, "they wouldn't leave so I got my rifle and made sure they left."   No charges were laid.

Despite the negative publicity, there were a still a few positive developments, including a public apology from Mary Hart over the trouble Neale was experiencing due to her condition.  Even the jokes subsided with time.   Not that her problems were over since she was also engaged in a lawsuit over job discrimination relating to her condition.   As she revealed during her press conference, her employer, a community hospital in Cobleskill, New York, had removed her from her former job as a Medicaid biller in 1988 and demoted her to a cashier position due to concerns about her epilepsy (around the time she began seeing Dr. Vermani).

According to Neale, her former job required her to talk frequently to her clients on the phone.   Since this job involved frequent listening to electronic voice transmissions, her employers were apparently concerned that her condition made her especially vulnerable to seizures.   She said that the demotion occurred due to an incident in November, 1988 when she accidentally offended a client, something she said occurred because she felt a seizure coming on.   Though the hospital insisted that she resigned from the position voluntarily and that the incident wasn't involved with her condition,  the case would later be settled for an undisclosed amount.

While Dianne Neale unusual condition would become largely forgotten with time, her name came up again in 1997 during news stories about a bizarre seizure epidemic in Japan.  When an episode from the popular TV show "Pokemon" featured a scene with rapidly flashing light from a character's eyes, hundreds of  children, aged three to twenty, experienced symptoms ranging from nausea to full convulsions requiring hospitalization.  Though mass hysteria was initially suspected, reruns of the show triggered the same response forcing television stations to cancel the segment.   Still, some medical experts in Japan expressed doubt that epilepsy could have been responsible for the epidemic. 

Toshio Yamaushi, an epilepsy expert at Tokyo's Saitama University of Medicine was particularly skeptical given that similar broadcasts had occurred in the past without any problems developing.  Instead, he suggested that the symptoms were due to a one-time attack triggered by optical stimulus rather than classic epilepsy.  Similar problems some Nintendo video games also led to the company posting warning about possible seizures on their videos.    Dr. Yamaushi urged government agencies to develop better guidelines for television program productions in future.   

While audiogenic and visually induced seizures are relatively rare (at least so far), the popularity of mass media and digital devices will likely mean more cases in future.  We aren't likely to see a return of the Mary Hart syndrome but, well, stay tuned.

 

 

 

 

 

After the Utoya Massacre

 On July 22,  2011, a car bomb near government buildings in the city of Oslo, Norway.   The massive explosion could be heard more than four miles away and created a shock wave that started fires in many of the nearby streets and filled the streets with glass and debris.  Eight people were killed outright in the blast and 209 others were injured, some seriously.  Witnesses reported that the driver of the van in which the bomb had been placed had been dressed as a policeman and had a gun in his hand.  Though several people called the police and reported his suspicious behaviour, he was still free to leave the van unattended and walk several blocks to where he had a second car parked.  But that bomb blast was only the beginning.

Two hours later, as police were still cordoning off the site of the Oslo blast, the driver of the van, a 32-year old right-wing extremist named Anders Breivik, boarded a ferry to Utoya Island not far from Oslo.  Breivik was still dressed as a police officer and carrying official identification giving his name as "Martin Nilsen" of the Oslo Police Department.  At the time, the island was the site of the annual youth camp hosted by the Norwegian Labour Party's Worker's Youth League.   About 600 teenagers were attending any nobody had any idea about the horror that was about to strike the camp.  

When Breivik arrived, he claimed to be a police officer conducting a security check following the Oslo bombing.   When staff members became suspicious, Breivik shot them to death and then asked people to gather around him before pulling weapons out of his bag and firing indiscriminately into the crowd.   Survivors later described what followed as a scene of terror as Breivik shot anyone he could find and then shot at people in the lake trying to swim for safety.   The mass shooting lasted for 90 minutes before Breivik calmly surrendered to a police task force that had arrived on the scene.   In all, 68 people were killed outright (one died later of his injuries) while another 110 people were wounded.   Most of the victims were teenagers with the youngest being fourteen years of age.    It was the deadliest attack in Norway since the end of World War 2.

Afterward, Breivik told police that the purpose of his attacks was to save Norway from a Muslim takeover.  His long and rambling manifesto had been released to the Internet that same morning.  Breivik had targeted the youth camp because Norway's Prime Minister had been making a speech there that same day though she had already left by the time he managed to reach the island..  Breivik's killing rampage, both the bombing and the mass shooting, sparked a media firestorm that lasted for weeks.  Along with calls for tighter security, the families of the victims found themselves under intense public scrutiny as they grieved their losses.  

 

To read more, check out my new Psychology Today blog post.

Why Are We Offended by Media Violence?

Even for many die-hard fans of the long-running AMC drama, The Walking Dead, the gruesome violence of the Season Seven premiere, including the brutal deaths of two well-liked characters, proved to be too much to handle.  According to one fan reporting afterward on social media, “I consider myself well versed when it comes to horror and violent movies and shows in general but this was just something else,” they wrote. “I found this episode a too disturbing even for TWD standards.”   But other fans praised the opening episode and declared it to be one of the best ever seen on the show. 

Media representations of violence are certainly common enough.  According to some estimates,  average television and movie viewer will have seen 20,000 violent deaths or more over the course of a lifetime.   For many producers of movies and television, the shock value provided by violence often means increasingly graphic deaths to draw in viewers.   Even in video games, we are seeing a rise in extremely violent content including games such as Manhunt in which players murder, maim, and torture victims to score points.  Despite efforts to rein in violent content, including the use of rating systems to warn potential viewers, researchers are still concerned over the possible desensitizing effects of media violence and the impact it might have on aggression in the real world.

To read more, check out my new Psychology Today blog post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One aspect of media violence largely neglected by researchers up to now deals with

Dissecting Sheldon Cooper

There's no denying that I have feelings for you that can't be explained in any other way. I briefly considered that I had a brain parasite, but that seems even more far-fetched. The only conclusion was love.  Sheldon Cooper, The Big Bang Theory.

If you've seen even a single episode of the hit sitcom, The Big Bang Theory, then you're familiar with Dr. Sheldon Cooper.   Played to perfection by Jim Parsons, the tall, brilliant, Sheldon has always seemed bizarre (and that's saying something considering the other characters on the show).  Even fellow genius Leonard once described his friend and roommate as being "one lab accident away from becoming a supervillain."  When faced with frequent speculations about his mental stability, Sheldon typically responds that "my mother had me tested"  though his autistic personality,  asexuality, and  general weirdness does little to reassure his friends.

In may ways, Sheldon fits in with the general stereotype of the eccentric genius so often seen in other shows and movies.  Examples include Dr. Gregory House (star of the medical show of the same name), the OCD-racked Adrian Monk, and Dr. Emmet Brown of Back to the Future fame.   The popularity of these characters seems to tie in with our own fascination with creative types who are often seen as paying the price for their genius with assorted mental quirks that separate them from the rest of us.   But what does this fascination with characters like Sheldon Cooper, or the popularity of shows like The Big Bang Theory,  say about our own attitudes about creativity and mental illness?

To read more, check out my new Psychology Today blog post.

 

 

 

Is Television Turning Us Into Narcissists?

What kind of impact does daily exposure to television have on us?

There's certainly no question that we are all television junkies.   According to data from a 2014 Nielsen report, Americans watch an average of five hours of television a day and that rises sharply as we grow older.  For people over 65, that rises to over seven hours a day and those figures have remained fairly stable over time.  For all that we worry about the effect of television watching on children, they actually spend less time watching television than adults do (since they have more outside interests to draw them away from the tube). 

According to cultivation theory,  the amount of time we spend "living" in the reality shown on television increases our willingness to believe what we are seeing.   This implies that television watching "cultivates" how we perceive reality.   So, perhaps it's not so hard to believe that "reality television" has become so popular.  Cultivation theory was first developed by the late George Gerbner, who also established the Cultural Indicators Research Project in 1968.   According to cultivation theory,  the power that television has comes from being fundamentally different from all other forms of mass media.   You need to know how to read to be influenced by books or newspapers and you need money to see a movie or a play.  To go online or play a video game, you need to have a fair degree of technological savvy.  With television however, all you need to do it sit there and watch.  The universal nature of television means that everyone can watch the same television programs and take in the same kind of media messages.  This gives us what Gerbner called "a centralized system of story-telling" and a shared way of seeing the world. 

To read more, check out my new Psychology Today blog post.