The Psychology of Star Trek vs. Star Wars Live at WonderCon 2013

Image via marsrioting.

Boldly go where no one has gone before and explore a galaxy far, far away! Join me, fellow psychologist Andrea Letamendi, and genre experts Larry "Dr. Trek" Nemecek (The Con of Wrath, Trekland: On Speaker) and Hugh Sterbakov (Robot Chicken, City Under the Moon) at WonderCon March 29th in Anaheim, California! We'll engage in an epic sci-fi battle throwing down the science behind the heroes, villains, galactic governments, and even the fandom of Star Trek and Star Wars. Join a side and cast your vote as we crown one the winner of WonderCon 2013! Refereed by Brian Ward (Shout!Factory).

3/15/2013 Update:  Our panel will take place Friday March 29 from 1:30pm - 2:30pm in room 213 at the Anaheim Convention Center. Check out the official program schedule for more information.

5 Reasons Why Jocks & Geeks Are Really the Same People

Tomorrow's Super Bowl has me thinking a lot about jocks and geeks. We see both in opposition to each other - strong versus weak, stupid versus smart, cool versus awkward. These stereotypes often lead to fear and hate. As a freshman in high school, I have a vivid memory of a football player mocking me while I read a magazine about Star Trek at a bookstore. I was angry and wanted to do something to change my geeky image (this was before I was "out" as a geek). I joined the wrestling team to prove that I too could be a jock. The experience wasn't what I expected. It taught me that jocks and geeks aren't really that different. In fact, they share almost all of the same qualities.

Here are 5 facts about jocks and geeks that show how similar they really are.

1) Loving Data

Moneyball is a movie about how data is a part of sports.

The definition of a geek is someone who has "an eccentric devotion to a particular interest". Usually these interests are non-mainstream like computers, video games, comic books, science fiction, and fantasy. Geeks devote extensive time to understanding every detail about their interests. For example, knowing all the plots from Batman comics, constantly optimizing computers just for the fun of it, and engaging in intellectual debates about who would win in a fight - Kirk or Han Solo?

Jocks get ragged on for being dumb, but the reality is many love information just as much as geeks do. Whether as an athlete or a fan, jocks consume statistics about sports. Knowing batting averages, net yards per passing attempt, and rebounds per game are key to understanding baseball, football, and basketball. Jocks also love knowing all the details of an athlete's career, understanding the rise and fall of a team, and engaging in hypothetical crossovers debates (e.g. who would win in a match - the 1994 San Francisco 49ers or the 1976 Oakland Raiders?). 

2) Engaging in Fantasy

Geeks and jocks enjoy pretending to be a part of the worlds they love. Geeks do this through role-playing games (e.g. Dungeons & Dragons) while jocks play fantasy football (or baseball, hockey, etc). But it's simpler than that - young kids might wrap a blanket around their neck and pretend to be Superman flying around their home or make believe that they've just hit a home run in the World Series. The point is that when both groups let their minds wander, they tend to imagine being right next to their favorite characters and athletes.

3) Playing Dress Up

Left image by Doug Penner via Getty Images; Right image by Rizwane. 

Probably because of #2, geeks and jocks often dress up. Geeks call this cosplay while jocks just call this game day. Cosplay can be as simple as wearing a Captain America t-shirt or as elaborate as creating a Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess from scratch. Similarly, on game day jocks might wear a jersey of their favorite team or completely paint their bodies in their team's colors. Both serve the same function - publicly showing your devotion to something that means a lot to you. 

4) Getting Together

New York Comic Con is one of my favorite places to meet geeks.

Contrary to popular belief, geeks are very social people. We love getting together at comic-book stores, movie screenings, and conventions. Jocks do the exact same thing, though it's usually at sports bars, Super Bowl parties, and tailgates. Whenever you go to these events, whether geek or jock, you can immediately connect with someone you've never met before and dive right into a detailed conversation about something you both feel passionate about. That's a really cool (and incredibly rare) experience.    

5) Becoming Pop Culture

Image by drsethery.

Both geeky and jockey things have transcended their niches and become pop culture. Just look at the data - sports and geeky films continue to dominate TV ratings and the box office. Tomorrow's Super Bowl will be one of the most watched events on TV. If you look at the top 5 movies of 2012 (Avengers, Dark Knight Rises, Hunger Games, Skyfall, The Hobbit), all but one came from geeky origins. This isn't a contemporary phenomenon; it's a pattern that's existed for a long time. Going back to the 1960s, half of the most watched televised events were Super Bowls. Adjusted for inflation, the second movie of all time is Star Wars (#1 is Gone with the Wind). It turns out that most people enjoy consuming geeky and jockey things (though in a more casual, less intense way).

Why Don’t Geeks and Jocks Get Along?

Movies like Mean Girls highlight the ingroup bias in high school cliques.

If geeks and jocks are so similar, why is there so much opposition between the groups? The psychology of ingroup/outgroup bias provides a simple explanation - people consistently prefer their group to others. Even when psychologists randomly assign individuals to groups for no reason at all, people will really like the group they are in and dislike outside groups. This finding is stronger when you belong to a group you believe to be less powerful than others (lots of geeks think they are smaller in number compared to jocks while jocks might see their team as an underdog compared to their competition). For many geeks and jocks, our identity is strongly linked to our groups and we react very strongly when we think our group is being attacked by others. This gets back to the self-serving bias (a theme within social psychology), which helps us feel better about our ourselves and the identities we belong to.

Joining the wrestling team forced me to face my own ingroup/outgroup bias and helped me realize how many of my stereotypes about jocks just weren't true. Honoring our similarities, rather than focusing on our differences, not only helps geeks and jocks get along, but all groups of people who believe they are in opposition to each other.

Millennials Are Actually Very Creative People

Browsing through my RSS feeds today, I came across this AMAZING homemade Star Trek Into Darkness trailer.

The creator, Dustin McLean, used household items for props, created his own a capella score, and filmed the entire video on an iPhone (without any post-production effects). The result isn't just a shot-for-shot recreation, it's a hilarious commentary on film trailers.

Videos likes this remind me of how innovative Millennials are. We're digital natives who flourish in cultures of creation (like blogs, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter). Technology didn't make us dumb, it made it easier for us to make stuff to share with the world. 

Millennials are written off as narcissistic, apathetic, spoiled kids who expect great things to be handed to them. Yes, we're assertive, value flexibility, and criticize policies that don't make sense, but that's only because we believe there's always room for improvement. Nothing is sacred, which is why we love tinkering with the status quo.

Unfortunately, we're also the generation that produced internet trolls and online bullying. Unlike Baby Boomers, teamwork doesn't come easy to us. We're also too trusting of social media and could use some Generation X skepticism. But we're a work in progress and just like everything else (should be), we're open to change.

Gattaca Explains the Psychology of Cheating

After a particularly long day of clinical work last week, I came home and watched 1997's Gattaca. Science fiction, whether good, bad, or ugly (I'm looking at you SyFy channel original films) calms me down and helps me unplug from work. I'm sure it was a cognitive bias (availability heuristic?) resulting from Lance Armstrong's widely publicized interview with Oprah, but I realized that Gattaca is actually a story about cheating.

Unfair competition

Gattaca takes place in a word that has perfected genetic engineering. Families (who can afford it) select the genes of their children, optimizing intelligence and physique while eliminating genetic diseases. After being born, the purity of one's genome is quantified and ranked.

Gattaca's genetic ranking classifies individuals as "valid" or "invalid". 

Though genoism (genetic discrimination) is outlawed, schools, colleges, and employers use genetics in their selection process by sampling saliva from envelopes, skin cells from handshakes, or using an otherwise legal drug screening. The main character, a man born without the aid of genetic engineering, states:

"I belonged to a new underclass, no longer determined by social status or the color of your skin. No, we now have discrimination down to a science."

The story follows his quest to impersonate an individual with superior genes and fake his way into Gattaca - an elite space agency.

The culture of competition in Gattaca is the same type of environment that leads to cheating in our world. Environments where students or employees believe that even a small gain will give them a competitive edge cultivates cheating. This is especially true when individuals see little importance in their work (e.g. students aren't focused on learning and think they are doing busy work, employees don't see the harm in fudging numbers). Factor in the belief that everyone around you is cheating (as was the case at Stuyvesant High and Harvard), and you've created an environment where it's hard not to cheat.

What's brilliant about Gattaca is that you end up cheering for a character that breaks all rules and cheats his way into an exclusive institution. Why? Because there is no way to succeed in Gattaca without cheating, which is usually what cheaters say when they get caught. 

Who's to blame?

Would you give your children genetic enhancements like additional fingers if it helped them become elite musicians? 

Who's responsible for what seems to be an epidemic of cheating? I can't point at any one person - students, parents, schools, universities, athletes, and the private sector are all facing very high expectations for achievement. In every domain of our lives, we've become very good at measuring success and that's created fierce competition. Yes, there are individual reasons why people cheat (like preparation, perspective, and personality) and I've singled out environmental causes here, but we're all at fault, which of course means no one group is responsible.

Fighting cheating

The research is clear - the best way to limit cheating is by:

1. reducing competition
2. fostering a culture of integrity and learning
3. enforcing rules vigilantly and equally

Despite extensive security, "borrowed ladders" allowed non-genetically engineered humans to fake their way through society.

This is all easier said than done. I'm guilty of plagiarizing in middle and high school (and that was before Wikipedia). One of my teachers even caught me red-handed, yet I faced zero consequences. While I never cheated in college or grad school (at that point I cared about what I was learning and feared strict university enforcement), I remained silent when I saw someone cheat in a class because I didn't want to be a "snitch". A friend of mine once confessed to cheating on her engineering tests because of strict curved grading. I've heard similar stories from law students, whose final rankings determine job prospects and salaries. Even as a professor, I was once asked by a colleague not to confront a student for cheating because that student "may start a lawsuit against the university". On both sides, it's very hard to uphold academic integrity.

In my own courses, I've decided to change the way I measure success. Instead of asking for facts, dates, and vocabulary, I test my students' ability to apply and critique information they have learned (something they can't scribble on a cheat sheet). Gattaca suggests a similar solution - assess one's perseverance, dreams, and contributions to society. Perhaps a larger discussion about what success really means is one way we can begin changing our culture of competition and cheating.

What has your experience been with cheating? What do you think can be done to stop it?

Cultural Change Goes Both Ways, Just Like on Joss Whedon's Firefly

Many people have never heard of Firefly. The TV show premiered in 2002, but was cancelled after 11 episodes (Fox set it up for failure by showing episodes out of order). Developed by Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Avengers), Firefly stars some familiar faces including Nathan Fillion (Castle, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Desperate Housewives), Morena Baccarin (Homeland, V), and Summer Glau (Dollhouse, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles). While the premise is familiar (a crew of renegades fight for survival on the outskirts of civilization), what makes Firefly truly a gem is its unique depiction of cultural change.

Firefly is a blend of American & Chinese culture

The Alliance flag is a literal combination of cultures. 

Firefly takes place in a future where the U.S. and China have merged into one diverse superpower called the Alliance, resulting in a combined Chinese and American culture. Everyone is bilingual in Mandarin and English, but each is used in different situations. For example, people swear exclusively in Mandarin, which conveniently let Joss Whedon get away some very colorful metaphors including 笨天生的一堆肉 (stupid inbred stack of meat), 真沒耐性的佛祖 (extraordinarily impatient buddha), and 羔羊中的孤羊 (motherless goats of all motherless goats). The Alliance government, values, and beliefs borrow from both the U.S. and the People's Republic of China. Dress, food, and entertainment are influenced by Eastern and Western tastes. This fusion results in a nation that has traces of both America and China, yet remains unique. This is exactly how cultural change happens in real life.

Cultural change has many outcomes

Mal's "browncoat" is a symbolic rejection of Alliance culture.

Most people think assimilation (individuals accept a new culture, reject the old) is the only outcome of cultural change. But that's just one possibility in acculturation – the process of change that results when two or more cultures come into contact with each other. Acculturation can also result in in separation (original culture is completely maintained), marginalization (original culture is lost and there is no contact with the new culture), or integration (elements of both the original and new culture are maintained). Acculturation changes individuals entering a culture as well as that society’s culture. The development of jazz, everyday use of the Yiddish “klutz”, and the global popularity of pizza all occurred because individuals from different cultures influenced society through acculturation.

Circumstances often influence the course of one’s acculturation. Captain Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds fought (unsuccessfully) against the imperialism of the Alliance and was forced into its rule. He separated from many parts of Alliance culture (Mal refuses to dress like the Alliance, gets into fights with those celebrating Alliance holidays, and stays away from the geographical center of the Alliance), has integrated other aspects (he speaks both English and Mandarin and eats Alliance cuisine), and has become marginalized in one key area (after the Alliance took over his home, Mal lost faith in his religion). Mal shows us that acculturation doesn’t lead to uniformed change in a person. Instead, people change differently across many parts of culture depending upon their circumstances. Dr. Simon Tam, a man who grew up in the center of Alliance civilization, presents with a very different acculturative experience than Mal (one that is far more assimilated with the Alliance). Neither experience is right nor wrong, they’re just different.

Acculturation & Firefly helped me understand myself

Dr. Lau introduced me to acculturation and helped me understand the impact it had on my life. 

Learning about acculturation as an undergrad had a big impact on me. As a child born and raised in California to immigrant parents, the experience of “culture clash” was a big part of my life. I dressed in jeans and t-shirts but my face didn’t look like most Americans. That juxtaposition didn't make me feel like I fit in. I remember being told to "go back where you come from" (the guy didn’t realize I was born in the neighboring suburb) while others criticized me for being too "white-washed" (which usually meant they wanted me to listen to more Tupac and less Nirvana). My psychology professor, Dr. Anna Lau, helped me realize that my identity wasn't exclusively one thing, but a mixture of many things. I spoke English and Urdu, adopted Western and Eastern values, craved kabobs and burgers. Pigeonholing me into just one category and judging me only on my appearance, as I did to myself and others did to me, ignored the richness of my experience. 

Maybe that's why I love Firefly so much. The show can't be classified into one category. It's a combination of science fiction, western, and horror genres. Seeing a show that celebrates the diversity of acculturation and is itself a blend of multiple influences helped me feel a little less strange and a little more unique.  

How has Firefly and/or acculturation influenced you? Sound off in the comments below. Haven't seen Firefly? Watch it instantly on Netflix, Amazon, or iTunes.