In a recent thought piece titled, “Racing Safely to the Finish Line? Kids, Competitions, and Injuries,” Sociologist Hilary Levey, reflects upon the reaction to the recent death of thirteen-year-old Peter Lenz this past Sunday. Peter was killed in a motorcycle accident at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway during a practice session.

Levey explains that it would be an error for the public to be caught up in the type of accident that occurred and we should instead use this tragedy as an impetus to consider the dangers of increasingly competitive youth sport.

Youth racing shouldn’t be alone in getting a closer inspection. This tragedy could have happened to any girl on a balance beam or any boy in a football tackle last Sunday. We should not be distracted by the fact that Peter was in a motorcycle race.

Despite the risk of serious injuries, like concussions, and even death, millions of kids compete in almost any activity you can imagine. Did you know that there are shooting contests for young Davy Crocketts, a racing circuit for aspiring Danica Patricks, and a youth PGA for those pursuing Tiger Woods’ swing? When did American childhood become not just hyper-organized but also hyper-competitive?

Levey shows that youth sport should be examined as the culmination of a century long trajectory of increased competitiveness.

Initially the organized activities served as a way mitigate deviant behavior by reducing the amount of unmonitored idle hours.

In 1903 New York City’s Public School Athletic League for Boys was established and contests between children, organized by adults, emerged as a way to keep the boys coming back to activities and clubs. Settlement houses and ethnic clubs followed suit and the number of these clubs grew rapidly through the 1920s.

However, the level of competitiveness continued to ramp up as the 20th century progressed. National organizations were introduced after World War II and the by the 1970s, for-profit organizations were common.

And, by the turn of the twenty-first century, a variety of year-round competitive circuits, run by paid organizers and coaches, dominated families’ evenings and weekends.

Parents tried to find the activity best suited to turn their children into national champions, even at age seven. As competitive children’s activities became increasingly organized over the twentieth century, injuries increased — especially overuse injuries and concussions. More practice time, an earlier focus on only one sport, and a higher level of intensity in games create the environment for these types of injuries.

Peter Lenz’s death is indicative of an increasingly competitive and organized American childhood. Levey argues that as a society we have the responsibility to make sure the training and safety regulations keep up with the increased pressure and risk of injury. This should include greater monitoring of safety equipment and higher standards for coaches.

While catastrophic accidents like Peter Lenz’s will happen, we can work to better protect all competitive children from more common injuries like concussions and overuse injuries. Kids want to win whatever race they are in and be the champion. Adults should make sure they all safely cross the finish line.

A recent feature in the University of Minnesota’s UMNews report documents Rebecca Krinke’s most recent public art creation. Krinke, an associate professor in landscape architecture, explores how memories and emotion become attached to specific spatial locations. In doing so she blurs the line between geography, sociology, urban studies, emotional exploration, and art.

The map has turned into a sociology experiment of sorts and a sounding board for people’s emotions: hope and despair, contentment and anger, love and hate.

Krinke began with a giant laser-cut map of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Beginning in late July, Krinke started taking the map to public spaces in Minneapolis and St. Paul and inviting passersby to use the colored pencil of their choice—gold for joy and gray for pain (or both)—to express their memories of places.

The map soon was filled with color – some representing memories of excitement and wonder, others representing tragedy and grief.

One man was sharing his tale of overdosing on heroin in Minneapolis when another chimed in and said, “Yeah, that happened to me, too,” Krinke says. “And they looked at each other like, ‘Well, we made it.’”

Fortunately, the map still radiates more than its share of good times and golden memories. Of fish caught in Minneapolis lakes. Of trails hiked and biked over and over again. Of sports venues old and new.

The overwhelming reaction to the piece has inspired Krinke to look for ways to continue, and expand, the project. It also points to some sort of underlying desire to make public emotions that rarely see the light of day.

As artists and designers, “there’s a lot of potential here,” she adds. “Maybe we’re the witnesses. Maybe that’s why they like talking. It’s like testifying in a way. I guess [it’s] a deep fundamental human need to be heard.”

USA Today recently reported on a controversial new study that surveyed 642 heterosexual adults in Chicago and found that casual hook ups can lead to rewarding, long-term relationships.

University of Iowa researchers analyzed relationship surveys and found that average relationship quality was higher for people who took it slowly than for those who became sexually involved in “hook-ups,” casual dating, or “friends with benefits” relationships.

Yet, according to sociologist Anthony Paik, having sex early in the relationship did not cause the disparity.

When he factored out people who weren’t interested in getting serious, he found that those who became sexually involved as friends or acquaintances and were open to a serious relationship were just as happy as those who dated but delayed having sex.

To measure the quality of the relationship, the respondents answered questions about how much they loved their partners, their satisfaction with intimacy in the relationship, the relationship’s future, and how their lives would be different if the relationship ended.

While the study did suggest that rewarding relationships were possible for couples who delayed sex, Paik noted that:

It’s also possible for true love to emerge if things start off with a more Sex and the City approach, when people spot each other across the room, become sexually involved and then build a relationship.

The BBC recently reported on new research that documents the way young boys are negatively affected by gender stereotypes.

Girls believe they are cleverer, better behaved and try harder than boys from the age of four, research suggests.
By the age of eight, boys had also adopted these perceptions, the study from the University of Kent found.

Social psychologist and lead researcher, Bonny Hartley, presented children between the age of four and 10 with a series of statements describing children as being hard working, clever, and timely in the completion of the work. They then chose the silhouette of either a boy or girl depending on which gender they thought the statement most accurately described.

On average, girls of reception age right through to Year 5 said girls were cleverer, performed better, were more focused and were better behaved or more respectful, the study found.Boys in reception, Year 1 and Year 2 gave answers which were equally split between favouring boys and girls, but by Year 3 their beliefs were in line with those of the girls, the researchers said.
Ms Hartley said that children of both genders thought, in general, that adults believed that girls did better than boys at school.

Hartley also documented the immediate impact that gender expectations may have on test performance.

In a separate investigation, she tested two separate groups of children in maths, reading and writing. The first group was told that boys do not perform as well as girls, but the other was not. Boys in the first group performed “significantly worse” than in the second group, which Ms Hartley says suggests that boys’ low performance may be explained in part by low expectations.

The study demonstrates the power of socialization and speaks to the need for teachers to be particularly cognizant of vocalizing any gender-based expectations, as they may create self-fulfilling prophecies.

She also warns against the use of phrases such as “silly boys” and “school boy pranks” or teachers asking “why can’t you sit nicely like the girls?”

The birth rate in the United States hasn’t been this low in 100 years, leading social scientists to speculate on the role the Great Recession might be playing in family planning. The Associated Press reports:

The birth rate dropped for the second year in a row since the recession began in 2007. Births fell 2.6 percent last year even as the population grew, numbers released Friday by the National Center for Health Statistics show.

“It’s a good-sized decline for one year. Every month is showing a decline from the year before,” said Stephanie Ventura, the demographer who oversaw the report.

The birth rate, which takes into account changes in the population, fell to 13.5 births for every 1,000 people last year. That’s down from 14.3 in 2007 and way down from 30 in 1909, when it was common for people to have big families.

A sociologist explains how the falling Dow might relate to declining birth rates:

“When the economy is bad and people are uncomfortable about their financial future, they tend to postpone having children. We saw that in the Great Depression the 1930s and we’re seeing that in the Great Recession today,” said Andrew Cherlin, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University.

“It could take a few years to turn this around,” he added.

The birth rate dipped below 20 per 1,000 people in 1932 and did not rise above that level until the early 1940s. Recent recessions, in 1981-82, 1990-91 and 2001, all were followed by small dips in the birth rate, according to CDC figures.

Despite this trend, there is no need to panic.

Cherlin said the U.S. birth rate “is still higher than the birth rate in many wealthy countries and we also have many immigrants entering the country. So we do not need to be worried yet about a birth dearth” that would crimp the nation’s ability to take care of its growing elderly population.

Laughter fills our world.  We laugh when we’re happy, when we’re nervous, or when we hear a really funny (or really bad) joke.  Beyond these emotional reactions, laughter can also play a key role in group dynamics and communication, even during events as sobering as a murder trial.

Joann Keyton and Stephenson Beck recently studied the full transcript of jury deliberations in a 2004 Ohio murder trial, and Science Daily shared the results.

“We’re interested in how people communicate within a group in order to accomplish a task, and we saw this as an opportunity to explore the role of laughter in how people signal support — or lack of support — for other people’s positions within a group.” Keyton notes that there is very little research on the role of laughter in communication, particularly when divorced from humor.

They learned that laughter is often used as an intentional, strategic tool to control communication and group dynamics.

For example, one juror was very vocal and made it clear early in the case that she was opposed to the death penalty. In one instance, when that juror agreed with other jury members, one of the other members said “She’s so smart,” resulting in laughter from other members of the group. “That had the effect of further distancing her from the rest of the jury,” Keyton says.

The jurors also used laughter as a way to reduce tension.

…at one point the jury was unclear on whether a sentence related to one of the charges was for 30 days or 30 years. This confusion led to widespread laughter. “The laughter allowed the jurors to release some tension, while also allowing them to acknowledge they had made an error – so they could move forward with that error corrected,” Keyton says.

“Laughter is one way of dealing with ambiguity and tension in situations where a group is attempting to make consequential decisions and informal power dynamics are in play….There are very few opportunities to see group decision making, with major consequences, in a public setting,” Keyton explains. “It is usually done in private, such as in corporate board meetings or judicial proceedings. But laughter is something that occurs frequently, and not only because something is funny. Nobody in the jury was laughing at jokes.”

Contrary to more pessimistic societal assumptions, research has shown that old age often correlates with increased happiness. A recent Washington Post story reports on studies that seek to explain this trend.

One factor that may lead to increased happiness is the emotional and cognitive stability that grows with old age.

Laura Carstensen, a Stanford social psychologist, calls this the “well-being paradox.” Although adults older than 65 face challenges to body and brain, the 70s and 80s also bring an abundance of social and emotional knowledge, qualities scientists are beginning to define as wisdom. As Carstensen and another social psychologist, Fredda Blanchard-Fields of the Georgia Institute of Technology, have shown, adults gain a toolbox of social and emotional instincts as they age. According to Blanchard-Fields, seniors acquire a feel, an enhanced sense of knowing right from wrong, and therefore a way to make sound life decisions.

Wisdom, while long associated with age, has always remained a murky term. Ipsit Vahia, a geriatric psychiatrist at the University of California at San Diego, explains

“[wisdom] involves making decisions that would be to the greater benefit of a larger number of people” and maintaining “an element of pragmatism, not pure idealism. And it would involve some sense of reflection and self-understanding.”

The source of this wisdom and happiness remains subject to debate. Some emphasize neurobiological changes.

An MRI scan cannot isolate a part of the brain associated with wisdom, says Elkhonon Goldberg, a neuropsychologist and author of “The Wisdom Paradox.” Still, he says, the aging brain has a greater sense of “pattern recognition,” the ability to capture a range of similar but nonidentical information, then extract and piece together common features. That, Goldberg says, “gives some old people a cognitive leg up.”

While others attribute the change to social and emotional factors such as the ability to regulate emotions. Psychologist Susanne Scheibbe cites a pragmatic basis for cognitive change.

“Old people are good at shaping everyday life to suit their needs,” explains Scheibe. By carefully pruning their social networks or looking at life in relative terms, older adults maintain cognitive control. And although multiple chronic illnesses that cause functional disability or cognitive decline can affect well-being, most older adults are able to tune out negative information into their late 70s and 80s.

So perhaps there is something to that whole ‘respect your elders’ thing. Or as the Washington Post story concludes

If older adults are predisposed to wisdom, perhaps a graying population means a wiser one.

Nearly one in five Americans think President Obama is a Muslim, according to ABC News:

The new poll from the nonpartisan Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 18 percent of those surveyed wrongly identified Obama as Muslim, up from 11 percent in March 2009. At the same time, the number of Americans who knew correctly that Obama is Christian has declined from 48 percent in March 2009 to 34 percent today. But 43 percent of Americans now say they don’t know what Obama’s religion is at all.

The finding has even prompted a response from the White House.

“The president is, obviously, he’s Christian. He prays every day,” White House spokesman Bill Burton said today aboard Air Force One.
“He communicates with his religious advisor every single day,” Burton said. “There’s a group of pastors that he takes counsel from on a regular basis. His faith is very important to him, but it’s not something that’s a topic of conversation every single day.”

Burton said the president has talked “extensively” about his faith in the past and “you can bet he’ll talk about his faith again.” But “making sure Americans know what a devout Christian he is” is not the president’s top priority.

Despite such statements, sociologists have reason to doubt such misperceptions can be so easily overcome.

“I think the reality is that false beliefs spread like gossip more than actual information,” said Andrew Perrin, an associate professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Perrin’s research has shown that a false perception can spread quickly if people’s friends and neighbors also have heard or believe a similar idea.

“False beliefs propagate when people think others believe them and when they have a supportive source that wants them to hold it,” Perrin said.

Perrin has found that even direct denials of the false information do not always solve the problem.

“In my own research, when [people] get reliable information that discounts these beliefs, they tend to cling to those beliefs more,” Perrin said.

Here in the U.S., we are obsessed with weight.  It’s hard to even go one day without seeing an advertisement for the latest diet or a news story about a celebrity who shed some pounds or put on a few too many.  While this obsession is due in part to our focus on physical appearance, many of us link obesity with poor health outcomes, including death.  However, a recent social epidemiological study highlighted in Miller-McCune examined the factors that lead to early death; and obesity did not make the list.  Instead, those eager to prevent early death should avoid cigarettes, sedentary lifestyles, and even living in poverty.

This does not mean the lead author of the aforementioned study, Paula Lantz, is proposing we all relax and pig out. The University of Michigan social epidemiologist fully recognizes obesity as a national health problem. But her research suggests our current focus on weight is a bit (ahem) narrow and at least somewhat misleading.

Instead, we should look to what causes and exacerbates obesity, such as sugary sodas and our reliance on cars. And, while personal choices factor in, social class also plays a role.

It’s hard to take personal responsibility if you don’t have the money to join a gym and you have no access to healthy food in your immediate neighborhood. The place where you can get the most calories for the least money is McDonald’s. Their food is dirt cheap on a per-calorie basis.

In other words, being poor is hazardous to your health.

Stress processes probably play a role. Chronic stress is not good for immune function. [Difficulties with] housing, transportation, income security — all those factors can produce stress.  Do you have friends and family — people who can actually help you get to the doctor? Is your community organized in such a way that it provides the resources you need?

So, while a focus on obesity is important, we should start focusing on less prominent culprits like poverty.  And, in the meantime, exercise!

Oliver Wang from The Atlantic recently wrote about the complicated relationship between sociologists and the media, an issue at the heart of this Citings and Sightings endeavor:

Here’s an age-old beef between scientists (social or otherwise) and journalists: the former tend to be exceptionally careful about drawing conclusions from their research. It’s one thing to argue, “Data X and Data Y show a relationship,” it’s another thing altogether to actually argue, “Data X is the cause of Data Y.” This is what’s known as the correlation vs. causality distinction and it is absolutely fundamental to any kind of responsible research methodology and discussion.

The problem is, journalists—or perhaps better said, editors—aren’t such big fans of that kind of nuance. They want an attention-grabbing headline that definitively states to the casual reader, “X causes Y.” A headline reading, “X and Y show a relationship but future research is needed to prove a causal link” is not so sexy. And hey, I work in journalism, I understand the importance of a sexy headline …but sexy + responsible are not always soul mates.

One example of this is the post-ASA media interpretation of a study presented by sociologists Bill McCarthy and Eric Grodsky. The eye-catching titles include:

“Study: Teen Sex Won’t Always Hurt Grades” (Time)
“Sex in romantic relationships is harmless” (Times of India)
“How Teen Sex Affects Education” (BusinessWeek)
“Teen sex not always bad for school performance” (AP)

Wang wonders, however, what nuances these intriguing titles may ignore:

Of this batch, all of them insinuate a direct relationship between teen sex and school performance. But you read the actual articles themselves, you get practically no useful information about the study except what the headline implies. Most of these articles are very short, just a few hundred words (if even that) and most barely include anything from the actual researchers (the Time post, for example, has nary a quote), telling the reader what conclusions they’re actually drawing and why. The one article that actually bothers to do any of this is the BusinessWeek post but it too is still relatively short.

Here’s the thing: I’m not saying this study is being reported wrong, i.e. that the headlines actually misinterpret the study. But if I had reported on this, the very first thing I would have done is contact the two lead researchers, UC Davis’ Bill McCarthy and U-Minn’s Eric Grodsky and ask, “couldn’t it be the case that students with high grades are more likely to pursue stable sexual relationships vs. students with low grades are also more likely to engage in casual sex?” In other words, maybe grades and relationship types are linked by some third factor: personality type, home stability, parental oversight, etc.

Now that’s journalism with a sociological eye. The article goes on to take an in-depth look at the research findings from the recent Contexts feature article on “hooking up”. Read the rest.