Ironically, I can’t really get into detailed discussion right now because I’m literally walking to my social psych class I teach, lol.

To the first point though, take a step back and understand that more recent studies have shown empathy to be the normative state of humans. Humans, like most pack animals, need strong intuition and empathy to survive with both their own tribe and others.

That has limitations, of course, as we’re most empathetic to people we identify with or find similarities to. People fight for their kin, not necessarily their neighbor.

I recall a study… I forget the name (author name sounds like Nier) but they found that folks even cooperated more when wearing similar sports paraphernalia, even bridging racial divides. The stakes weren’t huge; just signing a petition, but you can’t necessarily ask for more from an academic paper.

As to the point of being on offense, that’s probably outside the realm of social psych but I’ll try with what I know. I know helping behaviors tend to get stronger when people feel they have the agency to do so. Studies are quite a bit more tame than taking arms or something, but the Good Samaritan study kinda shows this. People running late aren’t willing to help someone clearly in need, but people running early are. Imagine the parallel to society-- who has the money, the time, and the energy to help?

Edit: the comment on walking to class is real and not a flex, btw. T-minus 15 min now, though it’s only undergrad and we’re teaching love and friendship today, which is totally unrelated, lol.

Well, no, putting people through distress in this manner isn’t a necessary step to producing empathy, nor is hardship a way to reliably produce empathy. I thought so for a while, too, except there’s far too many people who suffer hardship only to turn it around and want to cause it to others.

What is shown to be effective is an educational approach, as learning about power dynamics and injustice tends to reduce obedience. Authoritarians fear education because it creates that kind of person, hence why “colleges are woke” and such persist. That, and finding common ground with “outgroups”, as people are much more empathetic to those they identify with.

Most ethics boards cap how far you can go, since the original caused participants distress. It’s not too hard to replicate the effect without being a monster.

I’ve been tempted to! I’m not sure how well I’d do though, it’s a weirdly religious part of LA and I’m very not. But I think I could run for school board when my own personal life settles down a bit more and I have money to run, though.

Valid point, haha. Also I’m still voting anyway, my local city has pretty awful choices though for some reason.

Only for the presentation itself, there’s a written part that has a rubric. With presentations, the social aspect is enough to get people to do as well as they can because most people prefer not to look like an idiot in front of the class.

I’m unfortunately in one of the cities in LA with its own local government so no go on being able to vote on this… which is unfortunate given how much of an impact it’ll have on us.

At one point, I saw 99% and laughed. I knew we were in for bad polling.

Vote early if you can, too.

Correct, it’s somewhat rare but for example, the city of Santa Ana was in the news sometime in the last year for allowing non-citizen voting in local elections. It makes sense for them, although it I’m being honest, it makes sense for any long term residents to be allowed to vote if they’re paying taxes.

When it happened to one of my students at least I was able to play it off and make fun of Windows instead of embarrassing them. But I also give full credit on presentations regardless of how bad they go.

That said, woe is you if it’s literally anything else, like a conference or a business meeting. Lol

I think of those things as additional challenges, but it kind of depends on the game. RTS, Dune 2 definitely hasn’t aged well compared to Starcraft, for instance. To be fair, Dune 2 is like the first major RTS, though. Lol

But that’s partly what I meant by my post, True Random time with my friends is more of a “suffering is content” moment, haha. Playing an FPS with tank controls is infuriating!

I’m personally looking forward to RetroAchevements adding support for MSDOS sometime in the next year, though, because I like the challenge of jank ass games. I’ll probably play Dune 2, after I finish all Heroes of Might and Magic 1 and 2, haha.

It’s a very good collectathon but I had more fun doing it alongside RetroAchevements. One advantage was the comments on the specific mini games helped because there was sometimes a trick to it (one was literally unplayable on my version, you had to abuse pause to win).

I’m glad someone mentioned survivorship bias. I used to do a fun little “True Random” roulette with some rom packs I had (basically every game ever made prior to PS2) and a vast majority were pretty awful. The challenge we had was to play at least 30 minutes, but that was so rough sometimes.

And with a third child on the way, no less!

I’m a simple user. I go with an All feed with 6hr filter, then just check regularly. I usually get bored around the time I’m hitting the posts with 20 to 30 net positive votes, but sometimes go all the way if I’m killing time a lot that day. Gives a lot of pretty interesting stuff without getting too crazy or upsetting.

All this is to say, a single user posting four times a day with enough up votes to push it up to 20 net positive up votes and I’ll probably see it. But I only ever comment and upvote, so it’s not as good as getting a secondary poster or lifelong community member.

There are a few conflicting frameworks, plus what I describe is normative behavior rather than people with diagnosable conditions (depression in abnormal psychology tends to be more a dysfunction of the brain). I teach social psychology to undergraduates, so I’m familiar with the other frameworks at a fairly broad level-- the one the person you responded to is a bit of an older perspective, but the direction you’re taking I’ve heard discussed.

Still, it’s difficult to get into the details in a Lemmy comment on a shower thoughts thread.

None the less, I mostly don’t like the fragile/secure ego approach because it’s harder to measure something like that, meaning there’s less evidence that’s what’s going on.

I will say more generally though, our brains seek out acceptance and avoid rejection, much like we do physical pain (fMRI confirms it’s the same part of the brain). That includes good things, like behaving cooperatively, and bad things, like confirmation bias. Self-esteem, similarly, cuts both ways-- it makes us feel better without needing external sources of esteem, but it also rejects external threats to that self esteem.

I simply worry that excess of anything leads to bad outcomes, like certain politicians we’re dealing with now. But now we’re getting more into my opinion and less about the research.

If you’re curious, the textbook I use is open source. https://opentextbc.ca/socialpsychology/

It’s not perfect, though. I find it covers the topic well enough not to need to force my students to buy a text.

There’s a few studies that link low self esteem and depression with accurate understanding of the world and oneself. Lookup depressive realism. It’s actually mildly depressing!

Incidentally, using high self esteem may also lead to looking down on others, defensiveness, inability to critically analyze oneself, among other things. That’s just kinda how it goes when you think highly of yourself…

They’re probably the same people who consulted in 2024 to work with the GOP and avoid Gaza. Consultants are literally the worst part of the party.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll probably do the drop box too. Urban areas have plenty. But for everyone else, it’s good to know you can get verification.

This is the correct reply. AM is trash, but we even have highway signs that mention AM stations for certain road condition alerts and stuff. Most places don’t rely on it, but when you’re in the mountains it’s useful.

Hell, even here in CA we only barely started getting cell signals in places like Malibu pass and the like. I can usually get cell service and FM on the 5 or PCH but the moment you leave those, all bets are off.