Technology and Psychology from 1970 to date

If you could go back and live in America during the 1970s would you do it?  Has the United States become a better place to live over the past 40 years or have things gotten worse?  Without a doubt, there are valid arguments that can be made both ways.  For example, who really wants to go back to a time when you actually had to “dial” a phone or rewind a cassette tape in order to find your favorite song?  On the other hand, wouldn’t it be nice to live at a time when virtually everyone could find a good job, when television was not so risque, and when you didn’t have to worry about locking your front door at night.  Some would say that we have come a long way in 40 years.  Others lament how far we have fallen.  So what do you think?  I have listed six of the 28 points of comparison between 1970s America, and America today, posted below. Feel free to share your opinion by leaving a comment at the end of the postings below. I found the comparisons very interesting. I would be just as intrigued to have feedback. Different perspectives are always good and can be in some cases, very educational and informational.

Some things are far better than what they use to be, while others have changed drastically for the worst. I would even say circumstances have changed drastically in both directions, for the best as well as the worst.
The link below will take you to a video that shows the difference in technology released in 1971. As you'll see in the video, there's a vast difference in the way technology works now, from televisions to watches to computers....all innovative ideas and creations still effective to date. People back then were just as excited about the new technology being released at the time, as someone would be today about their cell phones, be it an iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, Blackberry, or Notebook. Not to mention the variety in cell phones, brand,  colors, shapes, which is vast difference from then to now. Back then, when you saw one cellphone, you saw them all. All were flip and huge, but people were just as excited about them. Looking back at them however, its laughable. We couldn't be caught dead with some of the technology released back then.

1. In the 1970s we had Disco.  Today, we have Justin Bieber and Katy Perry.

2. In the 1970s we had Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter.  Today, we have our first black president, Barack Obama.

President Barack Obama & former President Jimmy Carter

3. In the 1970s, Americans fell in love with stupid fads such as mood rings, lava lamps and pet rocks.  Today, we have twerking, “planking”.

4. In 1970, a gallon of gasoline cost .36  Today, the average price for a gallon of gasoline is about $3.27

5. In the 1970s we still had rotary phones.  Today, we have IPhones, Black berries, Notebooks etc...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IEPWIESE34 

iPhone on left Rotary phone on right

6. In the 1970s, presidents were tapping the phones of their enemies.  Today, the government is recording all of our calls.  In fact, the NSA intercepts and permanently stores close to two billion emails and phone calls every single day.

As far as technology goes, things are quite different, vastly so, and for the better from my perspective, as I've demonstrated via videos and pics. Based on what I've portrayed, I'm sure hundreds of thousands would agree, except of course if you're my grandmother, who wishes everything would just go back to the way it was

What Happen to Behaviorism

Behaviorism was intended to make psychology a natural science. During the years when behaviorist ideas were being developed, they were in harmony with the philosophical position of logical positivism being championed in physics and elsewhere. Concepts should be defined by the operations used to measure them, to keep science tightly grounded to observable data, and to remove flights of speculative fancy. 

The decades that followed revealed behaviorism in ascendancy, and the animal learning laboratory was the hotbed of study, the white rat and the pigeon were the organisms of choice (with assumption that all organisms and all behaviors, over similar laws)

Behaviorism is a systematic approach to the understanding of human and animal behavior. It assumes that all behavior are either reflexes produced by a response to certain stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual's history, including especially reinforcement and punishment, together with the individual's current motivational state and controlling stimuli. Thus, although behaviorists generally accept the important role of inheritance in determining behavior, they focus primarily on environmental factors.

Technology and Psychology

The games you play, the mobile phone you use to send text messages, the website where do your online shopping. Technology is all around us, and is an important part of our lives. Too important to just leave it to technologists. 

In Psychology and Technology you learn how technology influences people, and how you can use knowledge of psychology to let people use technology as effectively as possible. But you also learn how you can use psychology to design completely new technology applications such as motivational rehabilitation technology in healthcare, sociable robots or brain-computer interfaces.

People and Technology

Teaching staff and students of Psychology and Technology program deal with a wide range of different subjects, all of which focus on the relationship between people and technology

Robot house assistant

• Robots that help in the household

• Intimate technology for showing affection at a distance
• Online auctions you can trust
• Intelligent street lighting adapts to movement by pedestrians; dims when there is no movement
• Lighting that makes you healthier and smarter
• Avatars that saves you energy



Energy Avatar 

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Innovative Technology at its Very Best

Intelligent Street Lighting

Psychology during the 1970s and to date

What Technologies Advances are Affecting Psychology Studies

From the psychological effects of electronic games to new mobile apps geared at improving mental health, the impacts of technology and psychology are profound. Whether you choose to pursue a career in industrial-organizational psychology or to become a counseling psychologist, the technology people use and emerging technical possibilities will greatly affect both your preparation and your practice in the field of psychology.

Texting and Psychology

Since the birth of modern psychology, popular methods of communication have influenced psychotherapy sessions. In the early days, a handwritten letter to a client might be shared with the therapist. In therapeutic sessions, recollection of conversations and things have people have said to the client have always played an important role. As more people use texting and mobile devices to communicate, many therapists find that their clients like to refer directly to their text history to work through issues in therapy. This can be especially helpful in working with adolescents on interpersonal relationship issues. Rather than relying on the client's memory of an interaction, the client and therapist together can look at what was actually said during the interaction. Often the client will have forgotten, or mentally skewed the recollection of his/her part in the conflict, but the phone's history helps to clarify the involvement of both parties. This tool can help clients identify destructive or inappropriate interactions, and psychologists can work with them to change these behaviors.

Advances in Industrial-Organizational Psychology

The fastest growing specialization in the field of psychology today is industrial-organizational psychology. Psychologists in this specialization work with employers to improve employee retention rates and productivity. Many people in this career work closely with computer programs. Some collaborate with others to improve the employment experience. They may also work to assess the usability of human resources applications. The more that technology is used in a particular company, the more that technology effects the career of an IO psychologist employed by that company.

Technology and its relationship to IO psychology has expanded so much in recent years that some institutions of higher learning are recommending students complete secondary courses of study in computer programming or other technology-related field in preparation for becoming IO psychologists.

Computerized Technology

Changes in testing have significantly changed many aspects of psychology. Personality assessments and IQ tests that were once completed with pencil and paper are now completed on computers. As computer technology has developed, tests have developed as well. Test takers using computers can be fed different questions based on their answers of previous questions. Research psychologists and diagnosticians take advantage of this to create more accurate assessments.

Computerized testing also comes with disadvantages. Technical difficulties can skew results as can vision issues such as color blindness in test takers. Today’s psychologists need to understand the potential problems with computerized testing and address them in order to more accurately diagnose disorders or identify personality traits.

Many exciting things are happening today in the world of technology. Psychologists are influenced by technological advancements in many ways, however the impacts of technology on psychology can be both beneficial and detrimental. As technology develops, clinicians, counselors, researchers and human resources specialists must all be prepared to handle both the good and bad issues created by technology.

Blog 3 1940-1969

Gender and Power:

Women in the Workplace

So far, we have seen women progress in the workforce; they have gone from having no rights at all to being relied on during the wars. This progression continues in the 1940's. The start of the 1940's began with the attack on Pearl Harbor which resulted in the United States going to war with Germany. This put an enormous amount of pressure on the government and the American people. In 1942 the war became so big, women weren't only needed in the workplaces, they were needed in the armed forces. The Women's Army Corps (WAC) and Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services (WAVES) were established. So, not only were millions of men volunteering to serve in the armed forces or help out on the home front, millions of women were as well. This was big for women because all of a sudden women were not depending on men, the roles had turned and now it was the United States and men who were depending on women going out into the workforce.

During World War II, some 350,000 women served in the U.S. Armed Forces, both at home and abroad. They included the Women’s Air force Service Pilots, who on March 10, 2010, were awarded the prestigious Congressional Gold Medal. Meanwhile, widespread male enlistment left gaping holes in the industrial labor force. Between 1940 and 1945, the female percentage of the U.S. workforce increased from 27 percent to nearly 37 percent, and by 1945 nearly one out of every four married women worked outside the home.

WOMEN IN THE ARMED FORCES

In addition to factory work and other home front jobs, some 350,000 women joined the Armed Services, serving at home and abroad. At the urging of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and women’s groups, and impressed by the British use of women in service, General George Marshall supported the idea of introducing a women’s service branch into the Army. In May 1942, Congress instituted the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps, later upgraded to the Women’s Army Corps, which had full military status. Its members, known as WACs, worked in more than 200 non-combatant jobs stateside and in every theater of the war. By 1945, there were more than 100,000 WACs and 6,000 female officers. In the Navy, members of Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) held the same status as naval reservists and provided support stateside. The Coast Guard and Marine Corps soon followed suit, though in smaller numbers.

While women worked in a variety of positions previously closed to them, the aviation industry saw the greatest increase in female workers. More than 310,000 women worked in the U.S. aircraft industry in 1943, representing 65 percent of the industry’s total workforce (compared to just 1 percent in the pre-war years). The munitions industry also heavily recruited women workers, as represented by the U.S. government’s “Rosie the Riveter” propaganda campaign. Based in small part on a real-life munitions worker, but primarily a fictitious character, the strong, bandanna-clad Rosie became one of the most successful recruitment tools in American history, and the most iconic image of working women during World War II.

In movies, newspapers, posters, photographs, articles and even a Norman Rockwell-painted Saturday Evening Post cover, the Rosie the Riveter, campaign stressed the patriotic need for women to enter the work force—and they did, in huge numbers. Though women were crucial to the war effort, their pay continued to lag far behind their male counterparts: Female workers rarely earned more than 50 percent of male wages.

As the war continued and ended women were not at all about to stop there. More women were rising up and more were becoming successful. Before, birth control was illegal and the only people to use condoms were prostitutes so of course nobody would be spotted with a condom. But, Margaret Sanger was a women who wasn't going to let abortions be the only choice women had of not having a baby. She wanted a cost effective, safe, and contraception, that women can choose to take. Lastly after finding someone competent enough to do the research, even better, someone who was interested, and committed in this research, Envoid was FDA approved. Not only were women fighting in the war, they were changing the laws, for the better. Although there were some skeptics over this pill many, many, many women were taking it and abortion rates were decreasing rapidly. This was a tremendous victory for women.

the hard skilled labor of women was symbolized in the United States of America by the concept of Rosie the Riveter, a woman factory laborer performing what was previously considered man's work. With this expanded horizon of opportunity and confidence, and with the extended skill base that many women could now give to paid and voluntary work, women's roles in World War II were even more extensive than in the First World War. By 1945, more than 2.2 million women were working in the war industries, especially in ammunition plants. They participated in the building of ships, aircraft, vehicles and weaponry. Women also worked on farms, drove trucks, provided logistic support for soldiers and entered professional areas of work that were previously the preserve of men. In the Allied countries thousands of women enlisted as nurses serving in the front-line units. Thousands of others joined defensive militias at home and there was a great increase in the number of women serving for the military itself, particularly in the Soviet Union's Red Army.

Several hundred thousand women served in combat roles, especially in anti-aircraft units. 

The U.S. decided not to use women in combat because public opinion would not tolerate it. However 400,000 women served in uniform in non-combat roles in the U.S. armed forces; 16 were killed by enemy fire.

Many women served in the resistances of France, Italy, and Poland, and in the British SOE and American OSS which aided these.

Other women, called comfort women were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army before and during World War II.

Approximately 2 million Jewish women in the Holocaust were killed, and the Nazis also killed other women who belonged to groups they were committing genocide against, such as women with disabilities and Rom women.

 The end of the sixties ended with the formation of the National Organization for Women. Also, the first Miss America Beauty Pageant. In my personal opinion, it gave young girls something exciting to look forward to. Unfortunately, this was not good news for all women. The National Organization for Women, a feminist group, unsuccessfully protested the pageant for Miss America. To date, it is still one of the most recognized pageants in the country. The National Organization for Women felt the pageants gave young girls a false sense of what beauty is, citing there were no women of color allowed as  finalists. They protested the pageant was plagued with sexist and racist undertones. The women's movement gained momentum and the media increasingly took it seriously. The Miss America pageant telecasted and was one of the highest rated programs of the year.

Human Rights

First World War and its effect on rights

The advent of the First World War and its immediate aftermath had an impact on several areas concerning 'rights'. This impact was particularly noticeable in relation to Ireland; the extension of votes for men and the inclusion of women in the general franchise.

Struggle for Ireland

The Irish Home Rule bill (proposing an independent Ireland) had been postponed upon the outbreak of war. This was the background to the Easter Rising in 1916. Members of nationalist organisations the Irish Volunteers and the Citizens' Army took control of key public buildings in Dublin. The Citizens' Army was led by James Connolly, a radical trade unionist who had founded the Irish Socialist Party in 1896. Another of the rebellion leaders, Patrick Pearse, read a declaration of independence on behalf of 'the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic' at the General Post Office. The rebellion was defeated after a week of fierce fighting and 15 of its leaders were executed.

At the end of the war the Home Rule Bill was passed. Fighting broke out in 1919, and by 1920-21 the country was engaged in a vicious, bitter and brutal undercover war between Irish nationalists and the British Army. After a long guerrilla campaign against the British Army, Ireland was granted partial home rule. This resulted in two Home Rule acts: one for the six counties of Northern Ireland and a second forming the Irish Free State of the 26 southern counties. Michael Collins, who had signed the Treaty for the Irish Free State, was assassinated during the civil war between the Free State forces under his control and the Irish Republican Army that refused to accept the partition of Ireland.

Not until 1949, with the repeal of the External Relations Act, would Ireland leave the Commonwealth as the Republic of Ireland.

 


Extension of the vote for men

One of the popular promises that came with the close of the First World War in 1918 was 'homes fit for heroes'. This began to symbolise much more than 'a home', and was taken to include the right to a better and secure standard of living. However the post-war boom was short. By the early 1920s unemployment and economic problems were holding back the ideal. Politically this set the scene for the first (minority) Labour Government in 1924 and the run up to the General Strike in 1926.

Strikes had been illegal during the war and a number of socialist activists were imprisoned. Trade unionism revived in 1919, but the defeat of the General Strike in May 1926 saw a downturn in trade union activity. Miners however held out until October when the hardships and poverty forced men back to the mines. Many claimed to have been victimiszed and remained unemployed for years. Those in employment had to accept longer hours and lower wages.

Unemployment

Unemployment remained at or above 1.25 million throughout the 1920s. The economic downturn prompted by the Wall Street crash in 1929, increased this from 1.5 million to 2.9 million between 1930 and 1935. Mass unemployment seriously undermined not only Labour Party aspirations, but also the trade union movement's ability to secure a greater standard of living. The post-war period was punctuated by a series of hunger marches designed to draw attention to the plight of the poor and unemployed. Some of these were led by the communist-run National Unemployed Workers' Movement. The most well known of the marches was the 'Jarrow Crusade' of 1936 when 200 unemployed men marched from Jarrow to London.

Enfranchisement of women

The achievement of the parliamentary franchise for women came in stages. The 1918 Representation of the People Act granted the vote to all men over 21 (in order to overcome the residence requirements which the vote still placed on men who had served abroad) and to women over 30, who were graduates or who met, or whose husbands met, certain property requirements. However it was not until the 1928 Equal Franchise Act that women were finally granted the right to vote on the same footing as men.

View this extract from the Deputation from the Equal Political Rights Campaign Committee to discuss the enfranchisement of women in 1927.

 
 'From cradle to grave'

Broader social rights were planned and some implemented during World War Two. The right to free secondary education was secured by the 1944 Education Act. Perhaps one of the most important domestic social decisions of the war was to commission the economist William Beveridge to produce a report into how post-war Britain should be rebuilt. Beveridge's report, published in 1942 recommended that the government should fight the five 'Giant Evils' of 'Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness'. Following their landslide general election victory in 1945, the Labor Party, under Clement Attlee, announced the creation of the welfare state, as outlined in the Beveridge Report, as its associated benefits. These included the establishment of a National Health Service with free medical treatment and a national system of benefits to provide 'social security'; social rights from the 'cradle to the grave'.

In today's society, much have changed, as expected than it was back then. For example, all women have the right to vote. Women have come very far in terms of equal rights. Women still do not receive equal pay for same work, but I think one day we will get there. Women take a more active role in the workplace in providing for the family as well. Many homes are single parent home, run by women.

The last sixty plus years have seen the numbers of women in the workplace increase hugely since they entered the economic system to supplement the male earning capacity lost to two world wars. 

Complex social movements have contributed to this change, the feminist movement, equal opportunities legislation, the expansion of the service sector and the knowledge economy, the ever increasing cost of living and increased access to ecucation. 

The rise in numbers has resulted in women entering a much broader range of occupations, from mainly supportive, nurturing roles such as teaching and nursing to every walk of occupational and professional life.

Therefore, women are now found in occuations, industries and roles previously regarded as the sole prerogative of men