You can see how the symbol will change overnight and your behavior, too!”. According to the interactionist perspective, Dr. Alia Crum once stated: “Our mindsets matter” while delivering a speech in 2014. She titled her Ted Talk’s presentation as “Change your mindset, change the game”. During her speech, she illustrates so much evidence that proves the way symbolism creates and affects human life. As a consequence, our mindset and faith are changed without our acknowledgment.
Alia Crum is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and the Principle Investigator of the Stanford Mind & Body Lab. She earned her Ph.D. from Yale University and a BA degree from Harvard University. Her research concentrates on how changes in our mindsets, including the assumptions we make about others and things, could change our behavior and psychology.
During the presentation, there are the three most instances that she gave to strengthen her concept of how symbolism affects human behavior and psychology. Firstly, she shows evidence of the way symbolism changes our feelings. During the experiment, the doctor prescribed two patients with the same pain relief. The first patients acknowledge the presence of the medicine but the other one doesn’t. As a result, the first one shows little or no pain after a while while the second one reports that the pain is still there. According to that, our mindset has a huge contribution to our nervous system.
In the next example, her research focuses on some housekeepers that randomly work from different hotels. She divided them into two groups. The first group is shown a 15 minutes long presentation about how their nature of work can help them to burn calories and lose body fat. The second group works as usual without any realization. After a while, the experimental group reports an increase in job satisfaction and a reduction in weight and body fat. However, the control group reports a reduction in job satisfaction and an increase in weight and body fat. Based on the result, symbols indirectly go into our mindset and change our behavior.
Last but not least, she randomly makes an experiment on a group of students. First, she gave them a 140 calories milkshake. After that, they took an IV test and the outcome shows that their Ghrelin, a hunger hormone, has a slight drop. A week later, with the same experimental group, she gave them a 620 calories milkshake. Later on, as they took the IV test, the outcome shows that there is a huge drop in the Ghrelin hormone. Little did they know, there are no differences in the nutrition facts between the two beverages. Because of being informed by different input, which is known as the nutrition facts, the students changed their cognition, which is the drop in Ghrelin hormone, and also their behavior, less eager in eating.
At the end of the presentation, Dr. Crum asked the audiences: “What are our mindsets? And how might we begin to shift them, to alter them, to have them be more beneficial?”. Symbolism is a type of knowledge that needs to be learned and updated regularly. Philosopher Mead once stated, “Without symbols, our social life would be no more sophisticated than that of animals”. The human goal to achieve the highest living standard is to find out a technique that can apply symbolism into small factors that make us live happier, healthier, and wealthier. This is the concept that Dr. Alia Crum conveys through her speech “Change your mindset, change the game”.
Interactionist perspective study about how symbols create, control, and update our social life. Because of that, symbolism is the most essential key in life. Without it, people would not be able to fit and survive. Due to the presence of symbols, we have family and conversation rules, meaningful symbolistic to define things, and concepts in life.
The most important contribution of society is the family. In order to form a family, the role is indispensable. There must be someone who acted like a husband or a father, a wife or a mother, a daughter, a son, and so on. People indirectly create and name the rule for each role. A family should have someone to take care of the other, someone to protect the other, and someone to make someone fulfill their life. Symbols help people to form a connection between person-to-person. Beyond families, there should be someone who voluntarily acts as a leader so that they could bring families together and form a society. In order to maintain society, conversation rules are the most important key. The diversity divides people into three groups, the elder, friends, and the younger. In English daily conversation, diversity is not as clear as in the other language. I was born and raised in a Vietnamese family, my parents always remind me to be careful with the use of honorific phrases while communicating with someone older than me. In this case, the symbol acts as an honorific communication’s skill. This is how the interactionist perspective works on face-to-face interaction.
Secondly, interactionist perspective studies on how symbols help people to define themself and things. Nowadays, people prioritize credit cards instead of cash because of their convenience and protection. At present, if someone hands you a credit card, you tend to keep that card carefully. However, if you hand it to someone, who travels from 200 years ago, he or she would definitely throw that piece of the plastic card away without any notice. This is the way people create and name an object. The other example is the traffic light. When we were young, we were taught that we must stop when the light turns red, pass when the light turns green, and slow down when you notice yellow light. Due to that, color becomes a symbol of a traffic system without the use of words or phrases. This factor is also controlled by culture. In some Vietnamese regions, people believe that crows are an animal that brings bad luck and death. When a crow lands in front of your house, you or your family will receive some bad news in the near future. Because of the presence of symbolism, people can understand objects without explanation and make things become more convenient.
Last but not least, symbols contribute to our concepts in life. Dr. Crum once stated, “Mindsets control our life”. One of her examples shows that if people watch a motivational video before going to work, their stress level would be reduced. Positive information indirectly conveys people's mindset and alters their behavior. Back in the day, people got married so that they can maintain their genes from generation to generation. Nowadays, people get married because they want to have a long term commitment. As a result, there is a huge increase in marriage. At the same time, there is also a huge gain in divorce. Back then, people considered divorce as a failure from not being able to keep a relationship. At the moment, people split up because they don’t share the same voice. This is the third factor that the interactionist perspective analyzes from the way people alter their ideas.
The interactionist perspective analyzes the way people see the world, define themself and things, and face-to-face interaction. Symbols are information that need to be learned and updated regularly. The most essential key to achieve the highest living standard is to find a technique that can apply symbolism into small factors that make us live happier, healthier, and wealthier.
Works Cited
Stanford Profiles, Stanford University, profiles.stanford.edu/alia-crum.
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