Author: jbenton

Back in the day, I took a psych course called “The Psychology of Persuasion.” (I’m paraphrasing.) In part, I remember it because it was the first class I went to in my first semester of freshman year — a fairly memorable circumstance.
But I really remember it because I found the subject fascinating. It was all about how propaganda works, how social education campaigns work (or don’t), how crowds turn into mobs, and so on. All that classic Zimbardo/Stanford prison experiment stuff.
Anyway, my column in Monday’s paper is about a sector of social psych, so I’ve been doing some reading on the Pygmalion effect:
In 1971 Robert Rosenthal, a professor of social psychology at Harvard, described an experiment in which he told a group of students that he had developed a strain of super-intelligent rats that could run mazes quickly. He then passed out perfectly normal rats at random, telling half of the students that they had the new “maze-bright” rats and the other half that they got “maze-dull” rats.
The rats believed to be bright improved daily in running the maze — they ran faster and more accurately. The “dull” rats refused to budge from the starting point 29% of the time, while the “bright” rats refused only 11% of the time.
Rosenthal concluded that some students unknowingly communicated high expectations to the supposedly bright rats. The other students communicated low expectations to the supposedly dull ones. But this study went a step further.
According to Rosenthal, “Those who believed they were working with intelligent animals liked them better and found them more pleasant. Such students said they felt more relaxed with the animals, they treated them more gently and were more enthusiastic about the experiment than the students who thought they had dull rats to work with.”
Rats not good enough for you?
In another classic experiment, Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson worked with elementary school children from 18 classrooms. They randomly chose 20% of the children from each room and told the teachers they were “intellectual bloomers.”
They explained that these children could be expected to show remarkable gains during the year. The experimental children showed average IQ gains of two points in verbal ability, seven points in reasoning and four points in over all IQ. The “intellectual bloomers” really did bloom!
How can this possibly work?
In ‘Pygmalion in the Classroom’ (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968), Rosenthal replies: “To summarize our speculations, we may say that by what she said, by how and when she said it, by her actual facial expressions, postures and perhaps by her touch, the teacher may have communicated to the children of the experimental group that she expected improved intellectual performance.
“Such communication together with possible changes in teaching techniques may have helped the child learn by changing his self concept, his expectations of his own behavior, and his motivation, as well as his cognitive style and skills.”
There was no difference in the amount of time the teachers spent with the students. Evidently there was a difference in the quality of the interactions. The teachers also found the “bloomers” to be more appealing, more affectionate and better adjusted. Some students gained in IQ even though they had not been designated as “bloomers,” but they were not regarded to be as appealing, affectionate or well-adjusted.
Apparently, the bloomers had done what was expected of them and the teachers were comfortable with them. The other students who did well surprised the teachers; they did the unexpected and the teachers were not as comfortable with them. It may be that they were thought of as overstepping their bounds or labeled as troublemakers.

While I’m busy mooning over the lineups of California music festivals, I might as well talk up Noise Pop at the end of this month. (I happened to be in S.F. during the festival back in ’98 and got to see the world premiere of Kurt & Courtney. As recently as a couple weeks ago, I was half considering heading out there again at month’s end.)
Among the bands performing: British Sea Power, Call & Response, Neko Case, the Decemberists, Earlimart, Gold Chains, Kelly Hogan, Low, the Minders, Pedro the Lion, Preston School Of Industry, Rilo Kiley, The Stills, the Stratford 4, Super Furry Animals, Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players, The Unicorns, John Vanderslice, the Velvet Teen, Visqueen, and the Wrens. And of course the return of the mighty American Music Club.

I’m not normally one to promote the work of competing Dallas media, but KTVT-11 has a good jailhouse interview with John Battaglia, one of the most pitiful human beings imaginable. (He’s the accountant who, seeking to get back at his ex-wife, shot and killed his two daughters while on the phone with his ex. A seriously evil man.)

Seriously, the lineup for Coachella is getting downright insane. I mean: Belle & Sebastian, Mogwai, Ash, the Rapture, Death Cab For Cutie, Stereolab, The Black Keys, DJ Danger Mouse, Pixies, Radiohead, Kraftwerk, Wilco, Flaming Lips, Broken Social Scene, Kinky, the Cure, Air, Dizzee Rascal, !!!, and Prefuse 73. That’s just nuts. It’s like the CD Mix of the Month Club come back to life.
Almost makes the thought of flying out to California sound like a worthwhile investment. Or perhaps it’s time for that long-rumored crabwalk.com American Southwest Listening Tour, in which my trusty 1996 Mitsu braves the elements for a little 2,600-mile round-trip road trip.

“My nipples look forward to your stomach.”

Here’s my story from today’s front page, on the role alumni interviews play in the college admissions process.

I absolutely love the idea behind these upcoming shows at Rubber Gloves in Denton:
Friday, February 13-
GOTH VALENTINE’S DAY (SAD VERSION) on FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH with
Jetscreamer
Faux Fox
Record Hop
Nightgame
$6
smiling is optional, wearing black is not.
Saturday, February 14-
VALENTINE’S DAY MAKEOUT PARTY (HAPPY VERSION) w/
Matt Cheney
Prince William
Jackson 8
Blueprint Sea
$5
The best part: The sad people have to pay an extra buck.

Two new MP3s of note:
– Ladies and Gentlemen, It’s Time, the first new track from this site’s namesake American Music Club in nine years.
– Born in ’72, the latest preview from Travis Morrison‘s upcoming album.
I can’t say I’m in love with either of them, but one song leaves me very happy and one grumpy. The Morrison is the grumpster — it shows him falling farther into novelty (as previously feared) and away from the sort of smart college-boy funk-punk he used to produce. I’m fearing the new album more and more.
The AMC track is solid but not great. But it does have two things working in its favor:
1. Jeezumpete, it’s a new American Music Club track! Nine years, people!
2. It actually sounds like the AMC of old. The same jazzy bass, the loose drumming, the airy sound that manages to be loungy but not kitschy. There’s even a verse featuring that most classic of AMC images, the bartender-as-savior (“Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time / The bartender is looking you right in the eye / He says someone will replace all that thin blood with my wine / You can live with the truth, you can live with a lie”).
Mark Eitzel’s vocals are a little strained, but then again, he did turn 45 last week — I can excuse the high-register misfires. And George W. Bush isn’t mentioned even once, which I’d feared from Eitzel’s recent statements that the new AMC record would be “political.” All in all, it makes me think the new album, whenever it comes out, might be a return of the ol’ AMC magic. Or at least it might not be the earth-shaking disappointment you’d expect from a former favorite band reforming after a decade.
In other AMC news, they’ll be playing two shows at SXSW next month. Unfortunately, I will have just driven back from Austin three days earlier and been through the traditional pre-SXSW concert gorge.
(Tons of bands headed for SXSW Music play Dallas along the way. In the three nights after I get back from SXSW Interactive, there’ll be Dallas shows by the Decemberists, Calexico, Broken Social Scene, Sonic Youth, Trans Am, John Vanderslice, and NERD. Seriously, it’s just not fair to make a man live through months of concert drought and then make him choose between Calexico and Broken Social Scene on the same night.)
And I no longer have a dependable place to stay in Austin. And there’s the whole wristband/access crap of SXSW Music to deal with. We’ll see if I make it down for AMC or not.

Low-res samples of DJ Danger Mouse’s upcoming The Grey Album — his matching of lyrics from Jay-Z’s Black Album with music from the Beatles’ white album. I particularly like the “What More Can I Say”/”While My Guitar Gently Weeps” combo.

I was kinda excited to see the new Bernardo Bertolucci “Hey, it’s the ’60s! What’s wrong with a little incest among the children of French poets” movie The Dreamers. (Just seeing the preview made me want to break out some old Hendrix for the first time in years.)
But then I read this review about its NC-17 rating:
This is one of those movies where the lovers show how uninhibited they are by eating the sleep out of each other’s eyes….
Um, eating the sleep out of each other’s eyes? Ewww. Triple ewwwwwwww.