Blogger’s Babble: Psychological techniques for enhancing cleanliness in Public places

I’m sure most of us are frustrated about littering in public places and often wish that some parents had put in more efforts in reinforcing cleanliness values in their kids. Not only does it ruin the mood but it also makes you feel bad about how your country is being portrayed to travelers from other countries. I’m from New Delhi, so yeah- loads of garbage and loads of foreigners and i don’t feel so happy with the impression they take with themselves of a ‘third world country’ and this bad impression only reinforces their stereotypes of the country-people. A third, and probably the most important reason why cleanliness behaviour should be increased is that garbage has detrimental environmental consequences and  is as hazardous as it is polluting.

From what little I have learned so far in psychology, I realise that there are many techniques which can be applied to bring about changes. The easiest one is reinforcement.

One can be provided either an incentive to work for the cleanliness cause (positive reinforcement- where the probability of an action increase due to the consequence following the act) or one can be negatively reinforced (where the probability of an action decrease due to the consequence which might follow after the act).

In the above picture, any citizen gets a gift card for stopping a rule-breaking cop which is positive reinforcement- thus the likelihood of a person stopping a rule-breaking police-person will increase (positive reinforcement).

Biological basis of Schizophrenia

As a part of the University of Delhi, Psychology (Honors) course, we are taught Bio-psychology in our second semester, a very wise decision because there are simply too many behaviors which have a biological cause and psychological manifestation.

I’ll start from the basic and use as simple language as I can for those of you unaware of jargon. Our nervous system which is essential for movement, reaction and conveying information to brain is made up of nerves. A neuron is the smallest unit of a nervous system and may be of many types. Their structure depends on their function and they form connections with each other in order to convey messages (which can be movement related, going to the muscles or sensory information, going to the brain). These messages are in the form of very brief electrical impulse called action potential.

The above diagram depicts a neuron forming connections with other neurons. Interestingly, axons and dendrites don’t actually touch. There is a space between them, called a synapse. To “jump” this gap, you could say that the electrical energy changes form.

Maintaining a positive self-concept: Positive Illusions

We are all gifted by God in the ability to take a tendentiously positive view of our-self- which is self enhancement. This blog talks mostly about what we already do to maintain the positive self image and you’d be surprised at what all you do at the subconscious level which makes you look more and more like a Narcissist  (but you’re not- ’cause everyone does this).

Taylor and Brown (1988) gave the term “Positive Illusions” which refers to such biases like unrealistic positive self-evaluation, perception of control, overoptimism etc.Most such strategies often take precedence over long term goals. These can be divided into:

1. Self Enhancement: which operates routinely and regulates the positivity of self concept. it focuses on attaining and maximising self-view.
2. Self Protection: It operates in response to threat to self-concept and focuses on repairing self-view.

Some people possess unrealistic positive self-view: they believe they are better than average (called better than average effect- BTAE; also known as the “Lake Wobegon Effect”) and have far more positive traits than negative ones. They also apply this to persons or objects related to self (like relationships, possession and group)

In defiance of mathematical possibility, about 80% of high school students rate themselves in the top 10% in ability to get along with others. Even people who have been hospitalised after causing auto accidents rate themselves as more skillful than average drivers (Greenberg et al., 1997)