Psychology 409a, October 21, 2005
My Second Outline of Assigned
By Yu Takebayashi
Changing of Behaviors and Attitudes
Reference: Peter Rothe, Editor, Jeffrey
Nash & Gary Brinker (2002). Driving
Lessons: Exploring Systems That Make
Traffic Safer. (
Instructions
for this activity are found at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy23/409a-g23-oral.htm
Instructor: Dr. Leon James
Concept
1: Language, Culture, and Car
A.
Using the word accident
is a problem because it makes it seem like it was something that could not have
been helped, and frees everybody from being responsible. In many news stories or police reports, it
does not say “the teenager was responsible because he was not paying
attention”, it would say “the road conditions were poor and the car swerved
into a tree.”
B.
When people are killed in a collision, the
newspapers focus on the pain and suffering rather than responsibility. Since many of these collisions are seen as
“accidents”, the driver who was involved does not blame himself for being a
poor driver. They just think “well, it
was an accident, so there was nothing I could have done!” Most of the time they could have. This way of thinking makes people
irresponsible for their actions; we need to change these language problems to
“alter people’s perceptions and their notion of responsible use of the car.”
C.
Sometime last year, there was a collision in the
Ala Moana area involving two teenagers that were racing while being drunk. They died and also killed someone in a car
they hit while racing. In another story,
a teenage boy was trying to drift and crashed into a telephone pole. His girlfriend, who was in the car,
died. In both stories, the drivers made
poor decisions (racing, driving drunk, drifting) but not once did I hear anyone
say “they were so stupid, they shouldn’t have done that.” There were only comments about how it was
such a sad and painful “accident”, although this clearly was no accident. By choosing to take those risks, these
drivers were responsible for their own deaths.
Concept
2: Driving as Communication
A.
“The car is not a means of transportation; it is a
means for communication.” The book says
that for many people, the use of an object is boring if it is not attached to
an imagined dimension, as in children’s play.
Some drivers, when asked, said the thing they dislike most about driving
are the “bad drivers” and people who are not courteous. Most drivers put the blame on the other
driver to make room for themselves to continue on with their way.
B.
The reading gave an example of how smoking used to
be seen as glamorous. Now it is seen as
something negative and isn’t encouraged for the most part. It is not seen as something “cool” or
something you’d look up to (at least once you’ve passed your teenage/young
adult years.) To see a significant
improvement in the way people drive, we need to first start altering their
perceptions about driving. Although the
media isn’t the cause of all of it, it does contribute a lot when it comes to
the ideas that speeding and doing illegal things is cool.
C.
I agree that we need to start with changing the
way people view driving. I see way too
many people speeding or taking fast turns because they think it’s cool or will
impress others. Just yesterday I saw a
Volkswagen Golf speed through a red light at a pretty high speed in
Concept
3: Understanding and Acting
A.
“Understanding is a cognitive process; acting is a
social process.” First, you have to
understand a concept, then adopt it, then finally act upon it. The idea has to have an effect on people’s
knowledge, attitude, and behaviors for them to successfully adapt to it.
B.
Like what Dr. James has been saying all this time,
we need to acknowledge that we are aggressive drivers before trying to be less
aggressive. Some people who are put in
jail or therapy could stop what they were doing, but if they do not understand
that what they are doing is wrong, their habit will never truly stop.
C.
Examples I can think of for this concept are the
eating disorders many people deal with in our society. Sometimes, the people suffering the disorders
are put in therapy by their parents or doctors.
They can be forced to eat, or even learn to eat correctly there. However, if they do not realize that this is
a problem and they need to change it, once they are released they will go right
back to starving themselves again. We
all need to acknowledge what our problems are, and THEN finally be able to act
upon it.
My
Homepage: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/409af2005/takebayashi/home.htm
G23
Class Homepage:
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy23/classhome-g23.htm
Related
Web links:
http://www.ipromiseprogram.com/links/Crash%20not%20accident%20-%20Glasgow%20Daily%20Times%20-%20Glasogow%20KY%20-%20Oct%2002.htm the word “accident” seems like crashes are a
matter of fate, when more than often they are not
http://www.lssmn.org/inserts_PDF/wellness-add.PDF site about addictions, but says that
acknowledging our problems is the first step in fixing anything
http://www.unece.org/trans/roadsafe/rs4aggr.html
the media can portray aggressive driving, but they have the power to show it
negatively to change people’s thoughts