I'm new to posting here (altho I've been lurking for a while), so maybe someone can explain to me exactly what in my previous post qualifies as "flamebait", defined in the slashdot FAQs as "comments whose sole purpose is to insult and enrage."
I am sorry if anyone felt insulted or enraged by a brief outline of some research on media violence and aggression. However, I assure you that this was not the sole purpose of my posting.
I am against censorship on principle, and I would like to believe that media violence and real violence are totally unconnected. However, reality unfortunately does not always bend to my principles.
According to New Scientist April 2007, the link between media violence and aggression in children is less conclusive than that linking active tobacco smoking to lung cancer, but more conclusive than that linking passive smoking to lung cancer! This evidence comes from two types of study:
1. Controlled short-term studies: Show one group of children a video of someone beating up a doll, and another group some more anodyne video. Then leave the children alone with the doll. Group one is far more likely to beat up the doll, in some cases using the same actions and words as the actor in the video.
2. Environmental longitudinal studies: Compare the amount of violent media viewed in childhood to the rate of violent crime or domestic violence in adulthood. These studies show a moderate-to-strong correlation.
Of course these studies are not perfect. Type 1 effects may not be long-term, and type 2 effects may not show causation (e.g. maybe people predisposed to violence are more attracted to violent tv). The "perfect study" (keeping two groups in long-term isolation and controlling for all factors except exposure to violent media) is impossible for both logistical and ethical reasons.
However the evidence as it exists does not point to a "violent media = harmless" message, much as we would all like it to.
"Politically incorrect" is a way of warding off criticism. Anyone who disagress with you is "politically correct" which is of course a Bad Thing. Well, let pick on just the first item in this list of "truths" and run the risk of "political correctness".
According to Psychology Today, men are attracted to the Barbie type: "small waist, large breasts, long blond hair, and blue eyes". Since they provide no qualifier (such as "North American men" or "men in my bowling club") we must assume that they mean the majority of men across all or most times and places. But many of these claims don't stand up to the slightest scrutiny.
Small waist, sure, in a relative manner. Americans North and South, Europeans, Southeast Asians, sub-Saharan Africans, and New Guinea Tribesmen all agree that a waist-to-hip ratio is of about 0.7 is ideal. It signifies both fertility and lack of pregnancy, so this could be the lucky lady to carry your child. But a 21" waist with a 30" hip has the same 0.7 ratio as a 35" waist and a 50" hip; the actual preferred sized depends on culture. Women as varied as Kate Moss, Marilyn Monroe and the Venus of Willendorf have WTHRs of about 0.7.
Large breasts - umm. There is no universal preference for large breasts. It may not even be a majority preference in the world today. In Continental Europe anything more than a handful tends to be seen as a waste (apparently the ideal size in France is the champagne glass) while in Latin America women are more likely to request butt rather than breast implants. If this were published in a Brazilian equivalent of Psychology Today, there would likely be some theory about how men prefer a large ass to a small one because large asses sag faster. But since it is a North American rag, it is of course all about the big titties.
Blonde hair - fergodssake! "Lustrous, shiny hair" IS preferred to dull hair, perhaps because it signifies health and youth. Note, however, that hair COLOUR is not that important. Before modern transport and media the vast majority of humanity only saw one hair colour (black). Blond and red hair are recent mutations which only crop up in a few areas of the world, possibly due to a "founder effect". According to Jared Diamond in "The Rise of the Third Chimpanzee", New Guinea Highlanders found blonde hair revolting, "like a poisonous snail". The Japanese of the 18th century made similarly stinging comments about the coloured hair of Westerners.
Blue eyes - well, a recent study found that blue-eyed women were preferred, but only by men with blue eyes themselves! Brown-eyed men (the majority of the world's population, remember) had no eye-colour preference. If the reason were that "blue-eyed people are considered attractive as potential mates because it is easiest to determine whether they are interested in us or not", why do brown-eyed men care so little about such signs of interest? The explanation in the original study is that blue-eyed men wanted blue-eyed mates because this made it easier to be sure of paternity (because of recessive genes, two blue-eyes parents must have a blue-eyed child, so if she had a brown-eyed baby he'd know to check the milkman's irises).
And they missed symmetrical faces (signifies good genes), smooth skin (signifies health and youth), and relative hairlessness (signifies femaleness) which ARE recognized as signs of feminine beauty across many cultures.
Why do I get the feeling they just wanted to say that "men prefer white skin" but that was TOO "politically incorrect"?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm new to posting here (altho I've been lurking for a while), so maybe someone can explain to me exactly what in my previous post qualifies as "flamebait", defined in the slashdot FAQs as "comments whose sole purpose is to insult and enrage."
I am sorry if anyone felt insulted or enraged by a brief outline of some research on media violence and aggression. However, I assure you that this was not the sole purpose of my posting.
I am against censorship on principle, and I would like to believe that media violence and real violence are totally unconnected. However, reality unfortunately does not always bend to my principles.
According to New Scientist April 2007, the link between media violence and aggression in children is less conclusive than that linking active tobacco smoking to lung cancer, but more conclusive than that linking passive smoking to lung cancer! This evidence comes from two types of study:
1. Controlled short-term studies: Show one group of children a video of someone beating up a doll, and another group some more anodyne video. Then leave the children alone with the doll. Group one is far more likely to beat up the doll, in some cases using the same actions and words as the actor in the video.
2. Environmental longitudinal studies: Compare the amount of violent media viewed in childhood to the rate of violent crime or domestic violence in adulthood. These studies show a moderate-to-strong correlation.
Of course these studies are not perfect. Type 1 effects may not be long-term, and type 2 effects may not show causation (e.g. maybe people predisposed to violence are more attracted to violent tv). The "perfect study" (keeping two groups in long-term isolation and controlling for all factors except exposure to violent media) is impossible for both logistical and ethical reasons.
However the evidence as it exists does not point to a "violent media = harmless" message, much as we would all like it to.
"Politically incorrect" is a way of warding off criticism. Anyone who disagress with you is "politically correct" which is of course a Bad Thing. Well, let pick on just the first item in this list of "truths" and run the risk of "political correctness".
According to Psychology Today, men are attracted to the Barbie type: "small waist, large breasts, long blond hair, and blue eyes". Since they provide no qualifier (such as "North American men" or "men in my bowling club") we must assume that they mean the majority of men across all or most times and places. But many of these claims don't stand up to the slightest scrutiny.
Small waist, sure, in a relative manner. Americans North and South, Europeans, Southeast Asians, sub-Saharan Africans, and New Guinea Tribesmen all agree that a waist-to-hip ratio is of about 0.7 is ideal. It signifies both fertility and lack of pregnancy, so this could be the lucky lady to carry your child. But a 21" waist with a 30" hip has the same 0.7 ratio as a 35" waist and a 50" hip; the actual preferred sized depends on culture. Women as varied as Kate Moss, Marilyn Monroe and the Venus of Willendorf have WTHRs of about 0.7.
Large breasts - umm. There is no universal preference for large breasts. It may not even be a majority preference in the world today. In Continental Europe anything more than a handful tends to be seen as a waste (apparently the ideal size in France is the champagne glass) while in Latin America women are more likely to request butt rather than breast implants. If this were published in a Brazilian equivalent of Psychology Today, there would likely be some theory about how men prefer a large ass to a small one because large asses sag faster. But since it is a North American rag, it is of course all about the big titties.
Blonde hair - fergodssake! "Lustrous, shiny hair" IS preferred to dull hair, perhaps because it signifies health and youth. Note, however, that hair COLOUR is not that important. Before modern transport and media the vast majority of humanity only saw one hair colour (black). Blond and red hair are recent mutations which only crop up in a few areas of the world, possibly due to a "founder effect". According to Jared Diamond in "The Rise of the Third Chimpanzee", New Guinea Highlanders found blonde hair revolting, "like a poisonous snail". The Japanese of the 18th century made similarly stinging comments about the coloured hair of Westerners.
Blue eyes - well, a recent study found that blue-eyed women were preferred, but only by men with blue eyes themselves! Brown-eyed men (the majority of the world's population, remember) had no eye-colour preference. If the reason were that "blue-eyed people are considered attractive as potential mates because it is easiest to determine whether they are interested in us or not", why do brown-eyed men care so little about such signs of interest? The explanation in the original study is that blue-eyed men wanted blue-eyed mates because this made it easier to be sure of paternity (because of recessive genes, two blue-eyes parents must have a blue-eyed child, so if she had a brown-eyed baby he'd know to check the milkman's irises).
And they missed symmetrical faces (signifies good genes), smooth skin (signifies health and youth), and relative hairlessness (signifies femaleness) which ARE recognized as signs of feminine beauty across many cultures.
Why do I get the feeling they just wanted to say that "men prefer white skin" but that was TOO "politically incorrect"?