I had a friend back in high school. His name was Alan.

EVERYBODY loved Alan.

You ask someone in the hallway. "Hey, you know Alan?" "Yeah! I know Alan! He's a cool guy!"

Pretty much everyone would say that. No matter what you defined as "cool," Alan would fit that description.

Now, being one of the guys that knew Alan a little closer than most people, perhaps I should reveal something.

ALAN WAS THE BIGGEST POSER YOU EVER MET.

Okay, that'snot being fair to the guy. Lemme explain.

Oh, yeah. Deep Down he was a nice guy really. He was good at sports and he was smart enough to keep making good grades, but perhaps his greatest talent was just how good of a self-monitor he was. The fact is, while Alan really did enjoy soccer and movies and video games and computers, deep down what Alan liked most was to be liked by other people. 

Not that he was really lying. That's not true. The fact is that what Alan liked... what the REAL Alan liked, was spending time with friends. It didn't matter how he spent it with his friends, but if he was spending time with friends he was having a blast. But he presented himself a little differently. He would come across as enjoying "Magic the Gathering" almost as much as he was enjoying the people he was playing it with. Or he would come across as having enjoyed the movie he was discussing more that simply the act of discussing the movie. To an extent, it seemed as though, when you got right down to it, Alan enjoyed everything.

And yeah, Alan seemed to always make the best of everything he did, but really what he was doing was watching himself and always making sure that he came across to people the best he could so that he could keep up the many friendships he had made.

Actually looking back, I can't imagine how tough that must've been...

Anyway, I'm tired and my bed is calling. Hopefully my next blog will be a little better thought out. See y'all later. 

(/Self Handicapping... but that's a different story altogether)

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Snyder, M. (1987). Public appearances/private realities: The psychology of self-monitoring. New York: Freeman.

Snyder, M. (1974). The self-monitoring of expressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30, 526-537.

My Stained, Crooked, Ugly Teeth and Me

Humans are weird. 
I think we've pretty much confirmed that against all logic and reasoning, we, as human beings, are always going to have our weird little oddities that just make no sense, even when faced with truth and logic.


People who know me closely know that there is one thing that I actively try to do as rarely as possible: If I can avoid it, I try my very best never to smile. Oh I'm not saying that I don;t like being happy, and the corners of my mouth curl upwards fairly often, but if I can help it, then I do whatever I can to never part my lips and show my teeth. Why? Well, because to be fully honest, I have very bad teeth.


Aside from simply eating far too much sugary food throughout my life, and having not used proper brushing and flossing habits throughout probably the first 14 years of my existence, I was also subjected to numerous antibiotics when I was only a year old after having suffered a particularly nasty infection. Antibiotics that had a side effect of staining teeth in young children, mind you. And to top all of this off, I have never had braces. In fact, I only had my very first orthodontist's appointment about three weeks ago now.


Suffice to say, my teeth aren't exactly pretty. If I look at them objectively then they aren't the WORST teeth I've ever seen. After all, I used to visit my aunt in the Arkansas boonies every year. But they're a very pale grayish yellow, with varying and seemingly random thicknesses and they certainly aren't straight. in fact, some of them even seem to fold over onto one another.


They certainly aren't the pearly white teeth you see on Hollywood movie stars that everybody aspires for. In fact, it's almost painful when one of those commercials comes on that says "What is the most attractive part of the body that makes you look the youngest, happiest, and healthiest? A bright pearly smile!" Makes me want to punch the spokesman. Because the worst part about all this is that for the past four years or so I've been working overtime with special toothpastes and numerous dentist's visits to try and get my teeth to whiten, but alas, it just doesn't seem to be working.


And to me, it feels like every time I part my lips and show these oral bones to the world, a million pairs of eyes suddenly turn my way. Watching... Judging... Whispering behind my back...


That being said, the rational part of my mind knows that I am overreacting. The logical part of my mind tells me that there is no reason for me to keep my lips closed and to refrain from smiling and laughing among other people. I know for a fact that I am falling victim to the spotlight effect. (Gilovich, Medvec,  Savitsky, 1998)


The spotlight effect. A horrible quirk of the mind where one believes that their flaws are out in the open for everybody to see and everybody points and laughs... despite the fact that nobody even really notices.


Because truthfully? I don't think I've ever had anybody comment on my teeth. I don't think I've ever had somebody bring up that I need to take better care of my teeth if I hadn't brought it up first. Nobody's ever asked me to "please close my mouth" or said anything like "why don't you go to the dentist once in a while?" Honestly, I really am fooling myself.


But alas, humans are silly creatures. And here I am, still keeping my lips closed. And despite the fact that I know all of this in the logical center of my brain, the rest of me just can't seem to get over these teeth. I wonder how long it'll be before I can finally get over myself?


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References:
Gilovich, T., Savitsky, K., & MEdvec, V.H. (1998).  The illusion of transparency: Biased assessments of others' ability to read our emotional states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 332-346.

This Movie Sucks!

I like to think of myself as something of a storyteller. I enjoy reading. I enjoy writing. I enjoy watching movies. To put it quite simply, stories are something of my world.

Which of course means that I am always looking for new stories to read/see/watch. I tend to look for both "good" and "bad" stories to take in. You can learn a great deal, perhaps more so from a bad story as you can from a good story. Effectively, this has made me something of an amateur critic or reviewer.

To those that review things, you probably may realize that it is virtually impossible to be completely unbiased in a review. outside factors and prejudices will always affect how we perceive the stories we take in. However, it is important to try and remember never, if you can avoid it, to read someone else's review before taking in a story; because if you do, your review is very likely going to wind up compromised by a self fulfilling prophecy.

The thing is, when one reads an in depth, or even just a fairly short review of any movie or book before you watch/read one yourself, your perceptions have already been colored before you get into the story. If you read a full review of a movie that claims that there are numerous plotholes or inappropriate or misplaced elements or character issues in a movie, you will actively try to look for them. When you sit down in that movie theater and watch that movie then you will be already expecting the movie to suffer from a ton of problems, and even if the review you read totally over-analyzed or took its words too far, you will actively seek out the issues in the movie. It doesn't matter if the movie is great or not. In fact, to use Back to the Future as an example... a great movie and perhaps my favorite movie... there was a review on cracked.com that panned it after over-analyzing it to the point of ridiculousness and considered it a creepy, all around depraved movie. Odd certainly. But what was weird was the number of people in the comments who said they rewatched it and said "OMG ur right!" After actively looking for the issues they pointed out in the review, thanks to belief perseverence, they found what were really minor if even existent issues and their perceptions were majorly colored.

The same holds true for the opposite. If you read a book that got a glowing review, no matter how many problems the book may suffer from, you will likely be blinded to them because you're actively looking at the good aspects of the story. This just goes to show how affected we are by our prejudices and our peers influence.

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References:

Rosenthal, R. & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom: teacher expectation and pupils' intellectual  development. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.