One of the most interesting things about altruism is it can often be tricky to motivate people to help each other out. There are two main kinds of motivation for altruism, egotism and empathy, and there is often a great deal over which is more prominent in any given scenario. Egotism-motivated altruism occurs when people seek some kind of personal benefit through helping others. Some examples of benefits include social rewards and lessening guilt or distress. Empathic-motivated altruism occurs out of trying to help people due to actually feeling empathy from perceiving a need in others.

Rather than relate any of this to our current state of affairs, I thought I might reminisce and think back to how some of this related to my summer job as a camp counselor (a situation as far removed from this one as I can think of). One of the things I did in that job was teach sailing on our small lake. It tends to be a fairly popular activity, with a lot of kids with varying levels of experience signing up for it every day. It’s a small camp with a limited number of staff members, though, so often times I would wind up the only adult there with any knowledge of how to use those deceptively simple boats. So to compensate for this, I would enlist the help of the older more experienced campers (who usually were between 13 and 15) in teaching the younger less experienced ones (who could be anywhere from 8 to 12). Teenage boys are not the easiest group of people to motivate, though, so there had to be some kind of system in place to incentivize them to actually try to teach younger kids the basics of sailing. That’s where ranks come into play. There are a series of ranks and awards that the kids receive for showing first that they know the basics, then that they can be trusted to take out boats without a counselor, and further down the line as they get more advanced. These kids tend to love getting these ranks, and they’re made all the more special by the fact that not many kids actually go to the activity enough to earn them. A key component of earning them, however, is paying it forward and helping out the younger kids. I, as the counselor, always made this clear to them, and so most of the time they would assist me in teaching a wider group of people how to sail. This is essentially an example of egotism-motivated altruism, where I (and indeed all counselors before me) rewarded them for helping others.

A stereotype is defined as a belief about the personal characteristics of a group of people. They tend to be overgeneralized, incorrect, and/or resistant to new information. They are a kind of mental shortcut that allows individuals to think about members of a group in terms of the characteristics of the stereotype, whether positive or negative. Particularly when negative but also when positive, stereotypes are one of the key feeders into prejudice, which can be defined as pre-judging people based on the categories or groups that they belong to. It is an attitudinal and affective response to the members of a group. Prejudicial attitudes and practices from both individuals and institutions that discriminate against people of a different race constitute racism, which in its modern form is often defined as animosity, suspicion, or discomfort toward the members of another race.

The American South has often found itself at the center of many debates (and wars) concerning race and racism in America. African-Americans have been oppressed, harassed, or otherwise aggressed in a micro or macro way for centuries at this point. One of the most potent reminders of this is the Confederate Flag. This is the symbol of the side of the civil war that fought to maintain slavery in this country, but many in the South display as a symbol of “southern pride” or “heritage” (though even then it arguably serves as a kind of dogwhistle). This casual use of such a symbol has led to it being used in merchandise and marketing for, notably, many southern rock bands, most famously Lynyrd Skynyrd (whose “Sweet Home Alabama” has some questionable lyrics as well). Another extremely prominent rock band from the south, however, is the Allman Brothers. They were, in both their music and membership, a much more diverse band than Lynyrd Skynyrd. Their songs combine elements of rock, jazz, blues, and country. And forming an interracial band in the south in the late 1960’s was not exactly a commonplace move. Their lyrics took a notably more apolitical route, but the more unifying message that they presented was clear. It was not, however, not clear to everyone. Despite these stark differences between the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd, many fans of the band can be seen in concert footage (in from the 80s and 90s) either wearing confederate flag attire or waving flags at their concerts. This goes dramatically against the intentions of the band, as multiple members time and time again condemn the confederate flag as a symbol of hatred.

Why, then, do many of their fans still display it so proudly at their concerts? I would argue that one reason has to do with stereotyping. The Allman Brothers, despite having intentions that are very far from their more questionable colleagues, are still, essentially, a rock band from the American south, as their clothing, accents, and some of their songs will show. As such, many of their fans view them the same way they view other southern bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd. Despite routinely speaking against Confederate imagery in interviews and generally being a group that is more symbolically antithetical to it, fans at their shows often come waving flags and wearing patches that would seem to indicate otherwise. These fans are essentially viewing all southern rock bands in the same terms and applying the same support for racist symbols to both groups even when it isn’t universally true. So, in a sense, the Allman Brothers are stereotyped as supporters of Confederate imagery and what it represents.

With all of the turmoil and chaos happening in the world right now, it’s often very helpful to turn away from all of it and just watch some TV shows. This past week, I watched the very popular new miniseries “Tiger King,” which is full of some of the craziest people and most outlandish stories I have ever seen in a documentary. One of the more minor characters in this show is a man who calls himself Mahamayavi Bhagavan “Doc” Antle. Antle runs a safari park in Myrtle Beach, Florida, which has been accused of various animal welfare violations over the years. Beyond all of this however, he uses persuasive tactics to essentially create a cult among the people who start out as his “volunteers” and then become his wives (there are several of them, it’s really weird). The show does not spend very much time dwelling on this (it turns out there’s no shortage of other crazy things going on in the big cat breeding world), but the extent of this cult caught me quite off guard and I decided that I wanted to analyze it a bit more.

Cults are usually characterized by distinctive rituals and beliefs devoted to someone, isolation from the outside world, and a charismatic leader. They tend to force conformity and compliance through foot-in-the-door persuasion tactics, where they start by making minor requests and gradually work up to larger ones. Often times, they are targeting younger more impressionable people, as they tend to be easier to convince. In this vein, the leader is usually someone very charismatic who can be confident enough to convince all of these people. Isolation is then key in order to prevent the members from hearing any counterarguments. Dissent tends to punished and compliance tends to be rewarded. As a result, more people will go along with whatever the leader wants. The more people are complying, the more additional people are likely to join in as well.

Doc Antle’s reserve is worked by live-in volunteers. These tend to be exclusively young women, who are initially there under the pretext of doing volunteer work with animals in exchange for room and board. When they first arrive, they are worked very hard and forced to live in horrible conditions, such as sleeping in animal pens. After a fair amount of time experiencing this, Doc Antle subtly begins to hint that their conditions would improve if they slept with him. As horrifying as this is, many of these women take him up on it and immediately are allowed to live much more comfortably and work much less. As such, they associate him with this comfort (even though he had previously made them sleep in animal pens) and are willing to do whatever he wants. He has them run his park wearing various animal costumes and has them agree to be his “wives” (other sources in the show speculate he has around 5-7 wives). All of these women when interviewed express nothing but love and devotion to Antle and don’t mind the fact that they aren’t alone. The only person who does not share these sentiments is a woman who left the park after a couple years of living in squalor and never slept with Antle. This whole situation is horrifying, and it is a wonder that the man has not faced any criminal charges about this considering how widely known it seemed to be even before the release of this documentary.

Depending on context, compliance can be beneficial, neutral, or detrimental to an individual or a group. It is a key concept within social influence, or the ways that people impact each other’s behaviors, beliefs, or feelings. People often conform, or change their behaviors or beliefs, as a result of some kind of real or imagined social pressure. Compliance specifically is usually defined a branch of conformity where people publicly act according to an implicit or explicit request. This can happen in a number of contexts. An act as simple as crossing the street within a crosswalk is a type of compliance. Due to factors such as the size and unanimity of a group or perceived expertise or status in the person making a request, people often wind up complying with requests that they privately disagree with. However, people often resist social influence. According to reactance theory, people find threats to their free will to be unpleasant, and often they will act against requests that they see as counter to their free will. This is why people sometimes feel a desire to do the exact opposite of what they are told.

A key example of reactance theory and noncompliance came from New York in the mid-1960s. The experimental rock band the Velvet Underground, headed by Lou Reed and John Cale, were in the middle of a two week residency at a club in Greenwich Village. Their sound was extremely different from the rest of the rock music coming out around that time. Where bands like the Beatles had songs with rich harmonies and lyrics about love (though increasingly about psychedelia and Eastern philosophy), the Velvet Underground had an extremely dissonant and abrasive sound with much darker and stranger lyrical content. To that end, one of the most abrasive songs they had was called “The Black Angel’s Death Song,” which is dominated largely by a scratchy sounding electric violin, feedback, and fairly creepy lyrics that were chosen for their sound as opposed to any meaning. It is extremely avant-garde for a rock song of the mid-1960s.

After playing it at this club, the manager immediately told them not to play it again. They responded to his request by playing it again louder, and the manager fired them. This is a prime example of reactance theory driving noncompliance. The manager had a request that they perceived as a threat to their free will, and they responded by doing the exact opposite of what he asked. In the long run, it only helped their reputation, as Andy Warhol eventually took them under his wing, allowing them a platform to change music forever.

Moral hypocrisy is something pretty much everyone grapples with in at least some minor way fairly frequently. People often manage to justify actions that are at odds with their own attitudes and morals. Moral hypocrisy is usually defined as a motivation to seem moral while failing to actually act in a moral way. It’s also been described as avoiding the “cost” of being moral in situations where being immoral provides a kind of easy way out, such as cutting a line. Generally speaking, people generally consider themselves to be moral and and will often advertise that sentiment in what they say. There is, however, often a decent chance that people might behave in a contradictory way if there is some kind of benefit to them. Furthermore, another phenomenon of moral hypocrisy is that people might perceive the same behavior in other people as immoral while continuing to engage in it themselves.

While the world of American politics is a massive black hole of moral hypocrisy right now, the main example I decided to discuss here comes from a few years ago. I only just learned about this figure, so while he is not news, he was news to me and the story certainly stands out. This is former Oklahoma state senator Ralph Shortey.

So aside from not looking like the nicest person, he is an interesting example of moral hypocrisy. His attitudes were never, in my opinion, particularly moral. During his time in office, his main claims to fame were voting on measures that allowed discrimination against gay and transgender people in addition to taking hard stances against gun control and abortion. However in his extremely discriminatory and prejudiced policies toward transgender people in particular, his justification was that he wanted to “protect children.” Now regardless of the complete lack of logic in that line of reasoning, an extremely stark moral hypocrisy came into play in 2017 when he was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of child sex trafficking and child pornography. This is as far from protecting children as any person can possibly get, and as such he is currently serving a 15 year prison sentence. While he claimed to have been protecting children with the policies he supported, he certainly was not with any of his actions.

I’ve been playing music for the majority of my life, but that has almost exclusively been on guitar. As a college-level music major, I have to take two semesters of piano lessons for the piano proficiency requirement of the major. I’ve learned to play a couple other guitar-like instruments like bass and banjo, but this is the first time since I was five years old that I’ve needed to start completely from scratch on an instrument where very little of my prior knowledge can help me.

Now to be fair, this is not just a senseless and useless hoop that music majors are made to jump through for no reason. The piano is an incredibly versatile and fairly neutral instrument. This makes it one of the best ones for visualizing and hearing music theory concepts, and, in fact, throughout my music theory courses I’ve cursed myself for not learning how to play basic piano sooner. So whenever I can, I head to a little practice room in the music building and practice stumbling my way through my scales and etudes.

The main problem here is that I can hear myself and assume that other people can hear me. Frankly, I sound bad. The book my teacher has me using has a little box in the corner of the cover that says “For the Older Beginner,” and true to the intended purpose of this book, I sound like an 12 year old just starting out (i.e. a bit more coordination than the 7 year old starting out, but still no real idea what I’m doing). The problem with starting an instrument comparatively late in my musical studies is that I already understand most music theory and know fully well how simple all the pieces are. Equally frustrating is the fact that I could probably play almost all of these on the guitar without much effort. A very important part of improving on any instrument is starting by sounding bad and working up to sounding better, but when you haven’t had to sound bad on simple things for this long, motivation is not easy to come by. But beyond comparing my piano skills to my guitar skills, it seems that whenever I practice either one I can hear someone in another room flawlessly making their way through some virtuosic classical piano piece.

This is where social comparison ties in. Social comparison theory holds that people tend to evaluate their own traits and abilities by comparing themselves with others when there is no objective standard to compare to. I would argue that in this particular situation, there is not an objective standard since music is a subjective art form. So as a result, I am judging my own beginner-level piano skills based on the extremely skilled people I hear in the rooms nearby and the other people in my classes. Because piano is presented from the very beginning as such a basic and necessary skill for all musicians, lacking that and needing to learn is frustrating. Most good musicians I know play piano, so I ought to as well. Having to start from scratch has been a humbling experience. Beyond sounding bad in isolation, I sound worse than the people that I want to be like. And because the skill is so fundamental in music, it extends further and makes it feel as if I am so much worse as a musician on a fundamental level than those around me despite the fact that I’ve been doing it for so long. Now, of course, this isn’t true. This is one single aspect of music. But social comparison is a powerful motivator and demoralizer especially in music. I am both motivated to try to improve and frustrated by the fact that improvement is slow. The solution? Reward myself for practicing piano by practicing guitar immediately afterward. I might still be fumbling my way through basic scales on piano, but if I balance that by following it up with something more complex on guitar I remind myself that it will take time to get where I want. And it also plays another powerful social comparison tool. While my piano chops are still at 12 year old level, my guitar chops are at a higher level. I can remind myself why I love music that I’m pretty good at it. In balancing upward and downward social comparisons for piano and guitar, I can maintain my own sanity and improve both skills.