the APS Observor caught this nice picture of William James and Me!
(posted by iPad)
The Association for Psychological Sciences Conference is over for this year but has left a powerful impression! Here are a few of the pictures we took while at the convention and in Boston!
Here are a couple of articles that I thought you might enjoy:
‘The study, presented in Boston at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, analyzes data on empathy among almost 14,000 college students over the last 30 years.
“We found the biggest drop in empathy after the year 2000,” said Sara Konrath, a researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research. “College kids today are about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago, as measured by standard tests of this personality trait.”‘
“In the study, published in the current issue of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s arts and sciences journal Leonardo, UBC researcher Steve DiPaola argues that Rembrandt may have pioneered a technique that guides the viewer’s gaze around a portrait, creating a special narrative and “calmer” viewing experience.”
4 Comments
Bianca Vasvani · May 31, 2010 at 10:10 pm
Empathy: college students
I found the article on empathy and college students interesting and relevant. I just did an assessment in my CD class on empathy in preschool aged children and they exhibited high levels of empathy at such a young age. I found it interesting in this article that college kids today are about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago. The article also says that a rise in social media could be a contributing factor. I think that adolescent egocentrism is effecting their levels of empathy as many adolescents are concerned with themselves at this point in their lives.
Sherilyn · June 1, 2010 at 10:02 am
I also read the article on empathy and college students to be interesting. In one of my Psych classes we debated whether the generation was selfish or not and we agreed that some people are selfish and some are not. Most of everyone’s time is spent doing their own thing in school, work, internship, social life, and trying to balance family that others problems seem to not be an issue. It is very sad that college students have so much on their plate that that it is difficult to find time for friends issues.
hannahhd · June 1, 2010 at 4:24 pm
Empathy in college students:
I found this article to be very interesting especially being a college student myself. I did not find the results of the study to be at all surprising, which i believe is very sad for my generation. The term “Generation Me”, is very fitting because today most people, not just college aged people, are extremely self-centered and competitive. However i think that it is especially prevalent in college aged kids because today college, in my opinion, is more focused on fostering competition between the students, than fostering mutual understanding and harmonious learning. Over the past years society has truly shifted its focus from what kind of a person you are, to how much status you have/ can achieve. The concept of being the best has been ingrained into my generations heads since we were born. We are bombarded everyday with where we stand in relation to other people, which increases most everyones competitive drive. I took the test to see where i ranked in comparison with other people on my empathy level and found that i had a higher than average empathy level, scoring higher than 80% of people. I believe that society needs to focus more on the kind of people we are becoming than on how much much we can achieve, in order to help become more empathetic.
kjchin · June 1, 2010 at 11:35 pm
Before even finishing the Empathy article, I was running through my head what could be a possible reason for why college students are declining in empathy. And I though the media probably plays a great role. And later in the article, it mentions that media does play a role in the decrease in empathy. Even devices like the iPhone, when you see people having conversations there may be one person not even paying attention to the other, but rather maybe checking their e-mail or facebook on their phone while “talking” to a person. Also, i think that nowadays, it is very competetive in college. Everyone is trying to be the best of the best. We need to take a step back and be self-less.
Comments are closed.