The Social and Persuasive Effects of Crying

I just came across the article Why We Cry: The Truth About Tearing Up
The lowdown on tears: Why some cry easily, others don't cry, and how to handle all those tears, by Kathleen Doheny on WebMD. The article can be found at http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/why-we-cry-the-truth-about-tearing-up.

Interestingly, the article explores why people cry, who cries, the benefits of a good cry,coping with crying, trying not to cry, and the downside of not crying. Overall, crying seems to have a biochemical beneficial effect on humans by releasing stress hormones or toxins from the body while psychologically it allows one to acknowledge one's feelings. While the article discusses how it is good to cry when you can and harmful to suppress emotions the part of the article that really caught my attention was the section on who cries. Women are more often associated with crying and crying is more acceptable of women than of men in society. This is probably directly linked to the idea that women are more emotional, and therefore crying is more acceptable. Yet often crying is associated with vulnerability. Are women really more vulnerable then men? It is true that if you were walking down the street and saw a woman crying as she walked by, you probably wouldn't think twice about it, but instead just assume she was having a bad day. But yet, if you walked by a man crying, you would definitely notice it and probably be so surprised by it that you might say something to your friend. For instance, " That was so strange, I just walked by a man crying." Although it is true that women tend to be more open with their emotions, this does not mean that men do not have them too, they just feel some society pressure to suppress these feelings. However, according to Doheny, it would be better to express them.

Another interesting aspect the article brings up is crying to persuade an audience. The author says, "Lastly, crying has a purely social function, Bylsma says. It often wins support from those who watch you cry. Sometimes, crying may be manipulative -- a way to get what you want, whether you're asking a friend to go shopping with you, your spouse to agree to a luxurious vacation, or your child to get their math homework done." In these situations crying is effectively used as a persuasive element. Crying would contribute largely to the pathos of an argument and cause the audience to empathize with the speaker and want to help him or her. The audience then realizes they can help criers by doing what the crier is asking. Thus the crying is an emotional appeal that has a powerfully persuasive effect. Little children do this all the time, and I am sure adults employ this method occasionally as well. However, using it in an academic field might not be appropriate because of existing social values that do not allow emotion in the workplace, despite the fact that it is an entirely human phenomena.

Is exploration of a new continent really something of the past?

One of my friends is taking a history class on the Latin America. She was explaining some of the early explorations to me today. One in particular was a voyage by Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca. His ship crashed in what is present day Florida. Once he was shipwrecked he was forced to explore the continent and befriend the native Americans that occupied the land. This seems scary, to be on stranded on a foreign country, not knowing the language of the natives, unfamiliar with the culture, and unsure of how to get by. Vaca traveled across the country with the Native Americans and soon enough learned how to survive while exploring the vast continent. Every time I hear stories similar to this one I am amazed and extremely impressed that there were people brave enough to complete these expeditions. My friend and I marveled in the courage that it must have took. We determined that when one saw foreign foods the only to find out if they were eatable was to try them to determine thier effect. We said that we couldn't imagine this.

However, five minutes into our conversation, as we were thinking of all the challenges these voyagers would have had to overcome, we both paused and looked at each other, and realized that these do not sound very different from the experience we had this past summer, when we both lived in Madrid, Spain for a month. We then laughed, because we speak in such a glorified and amazed way about these past explorers but our experience was not remarkably different besides the fact that we knew that there was civilization in the continent we chose to voyage to, and we were able to fly. However, we still needed to adjust to a completely different culture and way of living, different time schedule, different people, different foods, and a different language. After a week or two we had adjusted quite nicely and were able to discern which foods we liked and which ones upset our stomachs, whether the water was alright to drink, were it was clean to buy food, and how to learn how to survive in the bustling Madrid city where everything was in Spanish. The experience was fun and exciting and we learned so much about the Spanish culture and way of life. Besides working and studying during the week, we were able to travel around Spain on the weekends, just like Vaca, learning so much with each footstep we took. Overall, the experience of traveling abroad is not that different from the early explorations. Are we not still exploring a new culture, people, and way of life, that we do not know anything about?

Reflection of my fellow Students blogs

I began the semester not really knowing what a blog was. Now after a few months of blogging and reading my peers blogs in my English 225 class, I have become more familiar with the idea and have really come to enjoy reading the other students blogs. A would like to bring attention to a few that I feel are particularly interesting to read because of the rhetorical techniques they employ.

The first is Amanda's blog, "Amanda's take on Argumentative Writing." I enjoy reading her blog for several reasons. For one her format is always organized which makes it easy to follow. She successfully divides up her arguments into short paragraphs which allow the reader to easily follow her thought process. She also writes in a way that you can hear her voice and understand her opinions and where she is coming from. With each entry she clearly makes her point and provides reasoning and evidence for it. One of her blogs, "Persuade. Yes We Can.", effectively argues for the persuasive elements in one of the campaign's for President Obama, she even inserts the link so everyone can watch and follow along with her blog, very effective. I also find that she effectively incorporates class material and theorists into general everyday ideas, which are both entertaining and insightful. For instance in "The Opposite Claim." Amanda disproves Foucault by discussing the unique history in Catalonia. I find her blogs to be worthwhile to read. Take a look: http://mblog.lib.umich.edu/~apdonnel/

Another blog that I enjoy reading is Heather's. The colors of Heather's blog alone draw the reader's attention. The vivid green is fun and makes you want to read her blog. Heather's blog's are also well organized into small paragraphs that are easy to read and easy to follow with her thought process. She effectively incorporates ideas discussed in class to everyday situations that she encounters when she is not in English class. These blogs show us how the knowledge we are gaining in class can be applied to our everyday lives, which is nice to see. For instance, Heather uses personal experience to write about conflicting identities in her blog "Conflicting Identities," "Identity of a Soldier," and "Connections." She also uses identity theories to explore Alzheimer's patients. These blogs are very interesting and worth reading as well. Her blog can be found at : http://hpat225.blogspot.com/.

Got Milk?

Since we are currently learning about persuasion in my English 225 class, we were assigned to look for a persuasive advertisement. Persuasion is commonly used in the media as a way to convince consumers to take action and buy products or think in specific ways. As I was thinking about advertisements I came across the very popular Got milk advertisements. Got milk? ads have been around since 1993 when fluid milk processors in California agreed to allocate 3 cents for every gallon of milk sold to fund efforts to promote milk consumption through advertising, marketing, and public relations. It has been running since October 1993 and the campaign has been credited with greatly increasing milk sales nationwide.

I think the whole concept behind the got milk campaign was to come up with a catchy phrase in the hopes of embedding this phrase in peoples minds causing them to want to buy milk. This is not specific to any brand or company, but rather milk in general, in order to increase the consumption of milk in the country, they do not care who's milk you buy. With this in mind the goal of these adds would be to make people think about milk and in thinking about milk people would then want to buy milk. They reach this goal by widely distributing the ads and by photographing celebrities with milk mustaches. These characteristics catch people's attention because people find celebrities to be attractive, they are often seen in character appropriate poses, and then they read the ads. Each add has a sentence of two that somehow connects the positive benefits of drinking milk with the person displayed in the picture. For instance, the ad with superman says," Super. That's how milk makes you feel. The calcium helps bone grow strong, so even if you are not from Krypton you can have bones of steel. Got milk?" The ads use catchy phrases such as these in order to describe the beneficial properties of milk which are biologically and nutritionally accurate and then uses them to explain the how awesome the celebrity photographed is. This seems a convincing way to convince someone to drink milk. If milk explains why a person is really good at something than why wouldn't you want to drink milk too? It doesn't even matter who's milk you drink, as long as you drink milk. Other adds focus on increasing awareness of milk’s use in losing weight and staying healthy. The campaign became immensely popular with consumers and “got milk?” became a phrase used in common conversation, proving its effectiveness. Although I would not say when I look at these ads I want to go buy milk, I would say that they are very entertaining and always catch my eye. They don't completely persuade the viewer to buy milk but they do effectively cause the viewer to look at the ads and then think about milk, which may subliminally cause them to buy milk at a later point.

Some fun Got milk ads are: http://www.spreadingjam.com/2009/08/the-case-of-the-missing-cows/, http://phoenix.fanster.com/2007/11/30/nash-has-got-milk/

The Got Milk? has an interesting website: http://www.gotmilk.com/

What were they thinking?

When we study leaders in the past who had gained massive followings and had absolute power we usually question how the people living under the regime really fell for the tactics of the leader and how they were brainwashed into following them blindly. It is a valid question, but rarely do we really stop and think what we would do if in the situation. Would we stop and question the strategies and arguments put forth by the leader? Would we try to evaluate why they were gaining so much power and popularity hypothesize about what their goals long term goals are. Would we even be able to hypothesize these goals? Before English class yesterday I had never really considered this concept. When discussing the Holocaust in many years of Hebrew School, I was always in shock that so many Jewish people stayed, and so many Jewish people did not escape when they had a chance. Now, after watching Triumph of the Will, produced by Leni Riefenstahl in 1934 under the funding/guidance of Adolf Hitler, I realize that they probably just didn't realize what was happening. Hitler based his party off the ideas of unifying Germany, taking care of Germans by providing them with food and jobs after post World War I depression, and reestablishing German traditional roots. These goals seem desirable to the people and the Jews did consider themselves German, so why would these claims sound bad to them? How would they have any idea that Hitler's definition of purifying the race meant that German Jews were not German. They couldn't. Because of how Hitlers slowly implemented is killing regimes by the time people began to figure out what was going on it was really difficult to leave.

The movie uses visual and verbal arguments in an attempt to persuade both German people and people around the world that Hitler and his National Party should be respected and listened to. The movie portrays Hitler's wide love and support and how wonderful Germany was under his National Party, with happiness, plenty of food, people supporting each other, advanced technology, and jobs for everyone. Obviously these things look extremely appealing, especially to a post war world where food was scarce and jobs were hard to find. Everything was filmed from the perspective that Hitler made Germany a wonderful place to be and everyone loved him for it. Of course it would though, he guided the producer, which probably means that she was coerced into making it look exactly as he wanted, perhaps with the alternative of death, considering the true Hitler that appears slightly later in history. It would be hard to see through this and see the terrors and horrifying things that Hitler would do 5 years later in 1939. He did not just fool countless German citizens but he fooled great politicians all over the world. Of course we see right through this propaganda now, now with the knowledge of what did happen we can pick up on hints leading to the occurrences. However, living in that time, I feel it would have been almost impossible to see through his lives and trickery. If I lived in Germany at the time and my family members had jobs and food, I would have been grateful and it would have been hard to leave. Even if one family member may have seen right through his political lies it would have been so hard to convince an entire family to leave their homeland at start over somewhere completely new and foreign, while at the same time it would have been hard to just leave by oneself and leave ones family behind. Overall, looking back you question how people could be so ignorant but if you place yourself in the economic situation of the time it is a lot easier to see how these people were thinking. The best ways to really avoid this from happening again are with education and knowledge of argument. If one understands argument, one knows not to blindly follow the masses but to critically explore the discussion and facts and then choose a side. However, when an argument is filled with pathos it is hard to see the argument clearly. It is hard to say what I would have done in the situation. How about you?

Unbelievable Reality of Children Understanding Death

As I was volunteering at the University of Michigan Hospital my supervisor was reporting to me some bad news. He was telling me about some of the little children who had recently passed away on the 7th floor Mott. These were children that I had previously sat with and played games with while volunteering. The news came as a shock to me, and made me think of so many things at once. Over the past few years volunteering on this floor I had never been told when patients passed away, either my supervisor decided not to tell me or the patients and doctors were having good luck. However, this time the reality of my entire experience volunteering finally hit me and put things into a new perspective. Never before did I consider that these children could pass away. I always enjoyed playing with them and trying to keep them optimistic that I seemed to have convinced myself that they would all get better, like I had been trying to convince them. The saddest part of this reality seems to be the fact that most of these people that are passing away are just children, some as young as 3 years old. This just made me question life, why do these poor innocent children have to experience pain and death so young, what does this accomplish. I started to get so frustrated with the idea that I decided to talk to my supervisor, the Activity Therapist of the floor.

He said that with all of his years working on the floor that was the one question that he has spent countless hours trying to figure out. He feels that when this situation arises it is because the children are sent to teach their parents a lesson. He further explained that in more than the majority of cases the families of these children are brought back together by their sick children. The families are reunited and retaught love. I thought this was a nice explanation and a good way to accept the situation. I then wondered if and how doctors tell these innocent children that they are going to die. How would they understand what it meant and why would they tell them. Well the Activity Therapist explained to me that most children just know. They don't say they know they are actually going to die, but rather they see their bodies as different from other children their age, and can feel when they are tired and certain parts of their bodies don't work. They understand in this way that their body is failing and not working. Sometimes doctors explain to them that they are going to be angels, and their parents ask their children to watch over them in heaven. This news seemed both remarkable and a huge shock to me all at once. I don't understand whether or not it is best to deliver such bad news to children and how children accept the news and then focus on bringing their family closer together before they pass away. The whole conversation and experience seems unbelievable and something that has been on my mind. How do you perceive this information?