THIS IS A SECTIONFROM THE TEXT BOOK : Holtzman,L., Sharpe, L. (2014). Mediamessages: What film, television, and popular music teach us about race, class,gender, and sexual orientation. (2nd ed.) Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.
The Processes of Selection As we investigate our informaland formal experiences and media messages about human diversity, some of thematerial will seem familiar and consistent with what you have already learnedand “know,” and that is likely to feel fairly comfortable. At other times, theinformation not only may be unfamiliar but also may challenge some of yourlong-held beliefs and values and feel fairly uncomfortable. This discomfort iscalled cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is the emotional or psychologicaldiscomfort that occurs when we receive information that is inconsistent withattitudes and beliefs we have held to be the “truth” (Baran and Davis 2009,146). According to the theory of selection, this psychological discomfort isoften so difficult that many of us seek a way to relieve the tension and returnto a more comfortable consistency in our beliefs.
One of the ways people seek a more comfortable position isthrough selective exposure . Through this process, people frequently makechoices about how they spend their time and with whom as well as the media theyconsume. Generally, most of us do our best to expose ourselves to informationand messages that are consistent with our preexisting attitudes and beliefs(Baran and Davis 2009, 146). Leon recalls a summer job he had as a teenagerworking with a pair of school custodians, Mr. Chambers and Mr. Jones. The twoof them always listened to the local jazz radio station as they worked. Atfirst, Leon hated the music. He preferred rhythm and blues, pop, Motown, Stax-Volt,anything but the horrible stuff the custodians liked. But outnumbered andpowerless, he became a captive audience to this unfamiliar genre. One humidafternoon toward the end of a particularly grueling day of moving furniture andcleaning floors, Leon was sent to the school library to unpack a large shipmentof books. As he headed down the hall, he heard the sound of an acoustic bassthumping out the hypnotic rhythms of “A Love Supreme,” by John Coltrane. One ofthe custodians had left his radio in the library. Leon reached for the radioknob so he could switch to one of the R&B stations he liked, but he couldnot bring himself to do it. There was something so enthralling about what hewas hearing that he had to keep listening. It was as though the music wasspeaking directly to him, calling him by name. For the rest of the afternoon,he worked to the sounds of drums, bass, piano, and saxophone played in waysthat he had never heard them played before. When he got home that evening, helay across his bed tired and a little sore, but instead of falling asleep, hetuned in to the jazz station and listened deep into the night. He continued tolisten to it the next day and the day after that. By the end of the summer hehad developed what would become a lifelong love of jazz. Leon did not realizeit at the time, but in that brief period during his formative years he had gonethrough an experience that created sufficient cognitive dissonance to disrupthis pattern of selective exposure and permanently alter his musicalinterests—expanding his capacity to appreciate a diverse range of musicalgenres.
Another clear-cut example of selective exposure involves thetelevision news programs people choose to watch. In the age of cable andsatellite TV, viewers have an almost endless variety of options for newswatching. During the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, it becameincreasingly clear that people who were politically conservative leaned in thedirection of FOX News and people who were politically liberal or left were muchmore likely to get their news from MSNBC. The news programs they watched were likelyto provide selected information and a spin on big news stories that werecompatible with the viewers’ political beliefs, allowing media consumers toremain comfortable.
Another one of the selective processes is selective retention,in which what we remember the most and the longest are the things that eitherare consistent with our beliefs or are the most important to us (Baran andDavis 2009, 147). Most of us don’t forget breakups of major relationships inour lives, because they were significant to us. However, our brains seem tocooperate with the desire for consistency and allow us to forget things we haveread, viewed, or experienced that offer a plausible, reasonable, and crediblechallenge to our own beliefs. Selective perception is a strategy we use toreduce the psychological discomfort when our beliefs are challenged. Throughthis process we actually change the meaning of the information or messages we receiveso that they are compatible with our own ideas and convictions. Linda remembersquite clearly an incident of selective perception that occurred when she wasteaching second grade in a school in which all the students were black and shewas one of three white teachers. One of her seven-year-old students came infrom recess crying. After some incoherent words in between tears, Linda piecedtogether what happened. Wanda said that another little girl had taunted her andteased her by saying that Linda was white and Wanda hit her, starting a fight.Linda said, “Wanda, you know I am white,” to which Wanda replied, “No, you’renot, Ms. Holtzman. You’re not white, you’re light.” Wanda preferred to thinkthat Linda was a light-skinned African American woman. Wanda really loved herteacher, yet in her short life span most of her experiences with white peopleand most of the things she had been told about white people were negative orhurtful. Wanda’s selective perception was to make a translation in her own mindthat allowed her to reconcile her affection for Linda and her distrust of whitepeople—she just changed her teacher’s race.
The selective processes can be very powerful, but they arenot foolproof or beyond our own conscious will. The extreme discomfort ofcognitive dissonance can set off an automatic launch sequence into selectiveretention, perception, or exposure, or we can try something different when wefeel this dissonance. We can pause. We can lean into the discomfort and allowourselves to feel it. We can recognize that we do not need to make a choice ofwhat to believe right in that moment. This pause can give us the chance to useanalytical thinking to evaluate the discomfort and to consider the two sets ofinformation with an open mind and an open heart. This process can move us froman automatic mode toward a process that encourages us to stay awake enough toevaluate the credibility of the contradictory information and to make a solid,independent decision about what we believe.
Cognitive dissonance is a concept and an analytical toolthat is used in both human diversity theory and in media theory. If we are notaware of the process of cognitive dissonance, we will not have theconsciousness to observe our resistance to new information and ideas, nor willwe have the wherewithal to make independent decisions. If we are aware of ourpsychological discomfort and resistance to new ideas and images of diversity,we are no longer going down the highway on cruise control; we are in much morecontrol in the driver’s seat.
THE INSTRUCTIONS:
- Examine possible criteria for defining modernpopular culture.
- Reflect on how modern popular culture (and its texts)contribute to your sense of identity.For example, what elements doyou accept, reject outright, or struggle to reject? (One way to addressthe final option is to expose one or more of your guilty pleasures– popular culture texts that you enjoy but wish you didn’t for somereason.)
THE ASSIGNMENT:
- Compose a 1- to 2-page paper in which you do thefollowing:
- Determine a criteria for defining modern popularculture.
- Describe how popular culture has in some way definedyou, or describe how you “refuse” to be defined by popularculture.
- Support your assertions by making at least 2references, in proper APA format, to your course readings.
