The Money Hungry Tobacco Industry and Child-Praising: How Low is Society Willing to Go?

This week’s post focuses on my comments to two other blogs in the blogosphere. These blogs deal with different topics that are recent in the field of psychology. My first comment is towards a post that involves the effects of praising on children. According to recent research, there is evidence that praising children on their intelligence causes them to under perform, which is the opposite of what parents believe. “Praising Your Kids Might Lead to the Unintended” provides more information on this interesting topic. The second comment is directed towards a post titled “Big Tobacco Targeting the Homeless, Mentally Ill” which explains a controversy involving the tobacco industry’s new market. Statistics show that over 75% of the homeless smoke cigarettes and nearly one-half of American tobacco purchases are made by the mentally ill. It is no wonder the tobacco companies are taking advantage of the opportunity to reach out to this group of individuals. The following are the comments to these fascinating topics.

My Comment on "Praising Your Kids Might Lead to the Unintended":

Being a parent is a heavy responsibility that entails a great deal of love and comfort in order for the child to develop a secure bond and help development. Praising is viewed by parents to be a positive form of encouragement. I firmly agree with the parental wisdom that has been around for ages. I believe that praising is a way to get a person, not just a child, to try their best. The praise inflicts an extra boost of confidence and an increase in self-esteem. The added self confidence can propel the child to new heights and widen his or her perspectives. I somewhat agree with the point that the praise puts too much pressure on the child because if the parents tell the children that they are “smart,” then the children might feel as though they have let the parents down if they come home with a bad grade in school. However in that situation, I believe that the children would bounce back and succeed due to the parental support. In my experiences as a child, I feel that praising does more good than harm and it is an important aspect in the life of a child.

My Comment on "Big Tobacco Targeting the Homeless, Mentally Ill":

The big tobacco companies are always finding new ways to market their products and target certain groups of individuals but this time they have certainly crossed the line. In my opinion, targeting the homeless and mentally ill can be compared to selling cigarettes and tobacco products to young children. Those individuals lacking mental health have a resemblance to children in that they lack the ability to make the right decisions at times. All of this just adds more fuel into the fire when it comes to the tobacco companies and their money making strategies. Sure everybody in the world needs to make money and companies need to compete for business, however this move by the tobacco industry is not right. The tobacco industry’s heartless antics wreck people’s lives as they just sit back and reap the benefits. As a non-smoker and non-supporter of the tobacco industry, I feel anger and disgust towards this ridiculous method of money-making that should be stopped before it is too late.

The Mozart Effect: A Good Money Maker?

In the field of psychology, researchers and experts spend a tremendous amount of time conducting studies and experiments in order to uncover some new helpful information on child development. Many theories and tips on how to properly raise a child from the time the fetus is in the womb to the stage of adolescence have been presented. One of the most absurd theories dealing with development is the “Mozart Effect,” which is a term created for the theory that an increase in brain development occurs in children under the age of three when they listen to the music of the great composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The idea originated at the University of California, Irvine with physicist Gordon Shaw and Frances Rauscher. They began studying the effects of listening to the first ten minutes of the Mozart Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major on a few dozen college students. Next they conducted the Stanford-Binet Intelligence test and they found a temporary enhancement of spatial-temporal reasoning. Since the original findings were presented, the "Mozart effect" phenomenon has been widely discussed in both the scientific community and media.

There have been various attempts to replicate Shaw and Rauscher’s original findings, however they have been unsuccessful. This fact has caused many in the scientific field to deem the theory false and that there is no evidence that shows a correlation between listening to the music of Mozart and cognitive development. One of the primary rules of psychology and the scientific method is to enforce the results of an experiment or study by conducting similar experiments and coming up with similar results. If the results are not duplicated, then there is really no significance to the findings. In this situation, there should have been no claims that Mozart tunes causes an increase in brain development if the results were not significant because they were not reproduced.

The media is to blame for the small claim to be spread to the entire nation. They took the invalid results of one particular study and exaggerated the implications. The media caused society to believe that children would gain a great deal of intelligence if they were exposed to the music of Mozart during the first three years of life, especially while in the womb. The media reports also distorted the original findings with the college students and generalized the effect towards children, none of which are true. This media outburst has caused an opportunity for individuals to make money and new programs to be implemented. The governors of Georgia and Tennessee started new programs that give a Mozart compact disc to every newborn. Florida’s legislature also passed a law that requires every state-funded childcare to play classical music daily. Suddenly, there has also been a tremendous amount of books, tapes, and compact discs that deal with the Mozart Effect. Along with the production of these materials comes the money as more parents are becoming sold on the Mozart claims. Individuals are increasing the size of their wallets by making a fool out of caring parents. Kenneth Steele, associate professor of psychology at Appalachian State University, stated “the Mozart Effect is pretty much on the wallet of the parents buying the CDs, there’s no special effect on the baby.” Could the money used to establish these programs and buy the tapes, compact discs, and books be better spent? The answer is a definite yes.

Our Children: The Many Problems Faced Today

As we advance through our lives, there seems to be a growing number of problems that society must deal with as a whole. Out of the many problems, I encountered two in the world of psychology. Statistics show that the rates of suicide for children have risen over the past few years. During 2003-2004, there was an 18% increase in the number of suicides among people under 20. Is there an end in sight for tragedies that cause families devastation and grief? Another problem that has been lingering in the field of psychology is the “off label” dispute. Should children under the age of 3 be allowed to take the same mental health medication as adults do? There is no real connection between doctors and the research evidence to support clinical decisions. For this week’s post, I decided to explore the blogosphere to find out some recent topics in the psychological realm. Below are my comments on two blogs that talk about these issues.

My Reaction to: “Can a 3 Year Old Be Accurately Diagnosed?”

There is really no correlation between an adult's organism and a child’s organism in handling certain types of medicaments and medications. It is expected that any adult meets the criteria to take a certain dose of medicine, however, it is recommended that he or she prevents from participating in their regular activities because there might be side affects. A child's immune system is weaker and it can not defend itself from such side affects, therefore it is unethical to make such a comparison. Unlike an adult's body a child body is not yet fully developed. The medications intended for an adult body can affect a child’s body development and can cause a great deal of harm. Professionals should not risk patients’ lives because they have based their decisions on text. In order to make moral decision they should base their prescriptions on studies and their results. With today’s technology there is no necessity to expose anyone’s life to death. The only thing that would be left to ask is how many more children would have to die before someone puts their foot down on this situation.

My Reaction to: “Suicide Rates Rise for Children”

Suicide is a problem that should be addressed in the school system. As the government cuts down education funds, the only ones getting affected by this are the children. The schools should implement better programs that help children with any problems they are having. Teachers should also receive training in dealing with serious issues such as suicide. School officials should make the children feel comfortable by showing trust and letting them know that it is ok to talk about any trouble they are having or what not. In some cases children feel safer trusting people outside of their family with their problems because they either have no one they can go to or the problem is found within the family. There are numerous amounts of children who have abusive family members and they feel embarrassed to tell anyone in the family what is occurring because they are afraid this person will not believe them. There needs to be more concern over suicide and more help needs to be available to reassure students that there are bumps in life but they can be conquered.

The Depriving Sporting World: Athletes Lives in Shambles

The sports world is based on athleticism, money, fame, and, most importantly, passion. The world’s best athletes are bred to be passionate about their favorite sports almost from the moment they begin to walk. They spend every spare minute practicing and playing while their parents eagerly cough up the money needed to foster this passion. Throughout their childhood they prepare to become varsity athletes in high school and scholarship athletes in college, with every hope and dream aimed toward one day reaching the last step of becoming a professional athlete. Even a fan’s passion is vital to creating the environment of the sports world. Fans are willing to fill ten thousand seat basketball arenas, forty thousand seat baseball fields, and seventy thousand seat football stadiums. They too grow up loving a specific team in their favorite sport and never forget the passion with which they followed that team. They become loyal adult fans and spend their whole lifetime passionately cheering for the same team. Later they pass this fanaticism down to their offspring and breed a new generation of devoted sports aficionados. All of these factors create a setting in which the professional athlete is idolized and catered too. They are “routinely hounded by autograph seekers.” Everything they could ever want is bought for them and brought to them. They never have to worry about doing anything except playing their game. These athletes have great lives during their short-lived careers, which usually last less than ten years and rarely go past fifteen years.

In any sport, it is easier to find 10 athletes who failed to make a post retirement life for themselves than 10 who succeeded.

When their contracts end and their careers fade away, those athletes who got used to living on a cloud above everyone else now realize that they must come down to earth and return to reality. Cristina Versari, head of sports psychology at San Diego University for Integrative Studies stated that "there's a developmental arrest. When an athlete retires, it takes four to eight years to adjust to a new life.” Without the catering they have lived with during their professional careers, athletes have to live their own lives and do things themselves. Sometimes they even have to earn extra income at a real job. The pedestal the athletes are placed on, causes their egos to skyrocket and later in life when retirement comes knocking on the door, athletes feel like they are above the rest of society therefore they should attain “better” jobs just because they are who they are. But since they spent their whole lives as athletes, many of them cannot handle the pressures of normal everyday living. The only problems professional athletes face are, for example, getting traded from New York to Los Angeles or giving up four runs in an inning. Those are not typical problems real people face everyday. Their inability to handles “typical” problems cause some to have mental breakdowns, turn to alcoholism and drugs, or maybe even tragically commit suicide. A few even exhaust all of their money and are left homeless. Take for example J.R. Richard, a former Houston Astros ace. Richards, pictured delivering a pitch, was a great hurler during his short career and was destined to have a place in Cooperstown among the best. After his career in 1980, he was found homeless living under a bridge. These athletes do not succeed after retirement because the upbringing that bred them for professional sports did not prepare them for everyday life.

The fans should receive most of the blame for this frequent letdown following the end of an athlete’s career. It is the fans’ over-the-top adoration of the athletes that make them willing to pay outrageous prices to buy a seat at a sporting event, even as greedy owners raise those prices in order to pay the inflated contracts of the players. The fans also worship the athletes enough to buy any product with their favorite player’s name painted or embroidered all over it. The enticement of these huge contracts and massive endorsement deals also leads the athletes to leave college early or skip college entirely in order to become a professional much more quickly than otherwise. Without a degree, it becomes more difficult for athletes to begin a second career after retiring from sports. Also, without the college experience athletes do not develop the social skills necessary to landing a normal nine-to-five job.

The media is also to blame for many of the emotional difficulties that retired superstar-athletes face. They go from seeing their names in headlines almost everyday to receiving little or no attention. They go from the “pinnacle of adulation, excitation and the confirmation of worth to nothing." However, this can also be blamed on the ridiculous fanaticism of many sports buffs. Newspaper editors write their articles to sell to these same fans. If they know that the fans do not want to read about an old, washed-out player than they will not include that player in their publication. It can be depressing for an admirer to see his or her favorite sport star go from billboards and trading cards to rehab and CourtTV, but it is the fans who are at fault and it is the fans who can correct this endemic. If fans stop raising top-performing athletes to the highest pedestals and stop filling their bank accounts with seven, eight, and nine figure balances, then maybe athletes will grow up more humble and modest. Maybe then athletes will be willing and able to work blue-collar jobs after they reach the inevitable end to their careers in the respected world of sports.