Abstract

Gratitude has been shown to be linked to many positive outcomes for individuals including psychological health and well-being, decreased physical stress, and reduced feelings of loneliness (O’Connell, O’Shea, & Gallagher 2016; Rash, Matsuba, & Prkachin, 2011; Wood, Froh, & Geraghty, 2010). On the other hand, increasing perceived organizational support (POS) and perceived supervisor support (PSS), has been shown to be effective in raising employees’ levels of job satisfaction, reducing employee turnover, and reducing employee absenteeism (Allen & McCarthy, 2016; Chan 2011; Chancellor, Layous, & Lyubomirsky, 2015; Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchison, & Sowa, 1986; Eisenberger, Stinglhamber, Vandenberghe, Sucharski, & Rhoades, 2002). In the present study, we investigated the effects of supervisors’ expressed gratitude and various aspects of employees’ satisfaction. We hypothesized that employees whose supervisors express gratitude more frequently would report greater POS, PSS, affective organizational commitment (AOC), and job satisfaction, and that all four of these relationships would be stronger for older individuals. We used Amazon MTurk to recruit our participants. Participants (147 women, 131 men; M_age= 39.08) all lived in the United States and reported varying employment backgrounds, with 71.9% working for a for-profit company/business, 13.3% working for the local, state, or federal government, 10.4% working for a not-for-profit, tax-exempt, or charitable organization, and 4.7% reported being self-employed. We used five items from Meyer and Allen’s Affective Commitment Scale (Meyer & Allen, 1997; Meyer, Allen, & Smith, 1993) and one item from the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (Mowday, Steers, & Porter, 1979) to assess AOC. The Gratitude Questionnaire-6 (GQ-6; McCullough, Emmons, & Tsang, 2002) was used to measure participants’ feelings of gratitude, and theMichigan Organizational Assessment Questionnaire-Job Satisfaction Subscale (MOAQ-JSS; Cammann, Fichman, Jenkins, & Klesh, 1979, 1983) was used to assess job satisfaction. To assess POS, we used the eight-item short form listed by Rhoades et al. (2001) from theSurvey of Perceived Organizational Support (SPOS; Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchison, & Sowa., 1986, Eisenberger, Fasolo, & Davis-LaMastro 1990; Shore & Tetrick, 1991; Shore & Wayne, 1993), and an adapted form of those questions was used to evaluate PSS (i.e., the word “organization” was replaced with “supervisor” for four of the items). Using hierarchical regressions, we found that those who believed their direct boss expressed his or her gratitude reported greater POS (the model accounted for 40% of the variance, F(1, 275) = 192.10, p < .001), greater PSS (the model accounted for 61% of the variance, F(1, 274) = 564.95, p < .001), greater AOC (the model accounted for 38% of the variance, F(1, 271) = 171.25, p < .001), and greater job satisfaction (the model accounted for 26% of the variance, F(1, 274) = 95.22, p < .001). However, none of the variance was significantly accounted for by age in any of our regression models. Overall, we found that our hypotheses were supported, except we did not find the relationships to be age-dependent, and our results imply that supervisors who increase their expressed support could increase employees’ positive feelings about the workplace and their supervisors.

My report reflected a few clear themes; I’d be best suited to a career in biology, I’m incredibly investigative, and most of my top career fits involved research in some way or another. While the interest in biology didn’t surprise me, nor did the “Investigative” theme, as those were in-line with a career in veterinary medicine, what did surprise me was the tendency for research to pop up multiple times in my results in various forms. I had never thought of myself as someone who could go into research. While I had participated in research in the past, and thoroughly enjoyed it, I doubted that I could make a career out of it. However, as my work in Dr. Hughes’ Positive Psychology Laboratory went on over the semester, and I worked more and more on learning how research is conducted and reported, along with learning about the numerous, fascinating studies conducted on animal behavior during my animal behavior class, I became enamoured with the prospect, especially after realizing that I could go into both research and academia, which had been a long-time goal of mine. My good fit in academia was further highlighted by my SIIR by my “Social” theme, which emphasizes “take a helping or altruistic approach involving teaching, developing, or caring for others” (SIIR, 11). Specifically, hearing the phrasing of the theme is what strengthened in me a desire to go into academia and teach others, to cultivate within them a passion for learning that I’ve found since being in college.

Directly after receiving this report, I started to reassess my career goals. While I was incredibly drawn to a career in veterinary medicine, I realized that what drew me to the field was my passion for animals and animal behavior, as well as helping animals through medicine, enrichment, and conservation. However, I realized that as a DVM, I would be focusing on animals on a case to case basis, almost all on the individual level. The issue for me was that I wanted to make an impact on the world of animal behavior, and I wanted to discover things that could help whole species, whole ecosystems, as opposed to a single patient. While I may never make a big splash in the animal behavior field, I knew that I had a much better chance of doing so with a PhD in Animal Behavior or a related field. 

So, after this deliberation, I decided that I wanted to pursue this degree, and eventually move into academia in a position where I could also do research. After making that decision, I was able to more directly apply the things presented in my class to my career path. Specifically, there were five themes that I took to heart during class; deciding a career path, importance of research, applying to graduate programs, interview skills, and writing a personal statement.

Deciding a Career Path

According to Appleby (2006), there are at least 124 possible career paths for a psychology major, including things like child psychologist, developmental psychologist, and college/university professor. The latter is what interested me in particular, so I decided to investigate this field further. In Wegenek (2012)’s article, I found that many of the suggested characteristics and possible benefits of working in academia lined up with me personally, especially “enjoying an intellectually stimulating environment, having colleagues who share your enthusiasm for your area of study, [and] being able to share your love for psychology with students” (7). While Terre & Stoddart (2000) did not mention animal behavior in their list of “cutting-edge” specialties for graduate study in psychology, this did not deter me from still wanting to go into the field. 

Importance of Research

Shah, Savage, Ortiz, & Lai (2018) wrote about the man valuable skills undergraduate students can gain from doing research, and I have found a lot of the claims made in the article to be true. Undergraduate research experiences can provide you with research experience, opportunities for recommendations from your supervisors, and the chance to expand your interests. Lai, Margol, and Landoll (2010) also bring up many tips for getting the most out of a research experience, including knowing what questions to ask during an interview, clearly laying out your role in the lab, and learning about what opportunities are available to you.

However, Grover (2006) emphasizes research as a necessary part of graduate school applications, and urges readers to get involved, as research experience can mean the difference between acceptance to and rejection from grad programs. After learning about the importance of research experience both in class and from this article, I made sure to include enough time to be involved in at least one research lab per semester, and to make it my goal to get as much experience as possible before I started grad school applications. Currently, I’m a part of Dr. Hughes’ Positive Psychology Laboratory, I’ve joined Dr. Perdue’s Cognitive Neuroscience and Animal Behavior (CNAB) Lab for my capstone in the Spring, and I’m considering applying to more research labs should I not get an internship with Zoo Atlanta. I also want to participate in a Summer REU if possible, something I wasn’t going to do before in favor of getting some classes out of the way during the summer.

Applying to Graduate Programs

Once I realized I no longer wanted to pursue a DVM, I was tasked with learning all about applying to graduate schools. According to Norcross (2011), acceptance rates for graduate schools have been up from 2008. Escoto (2011) also provides a few graduate school admissions tips, including getting a jumpstart on planning, taking required classes early, and diversifying the schools I plan on applying to (public vs. private, east coast vs. west coast, etc.). Judson and Orchowski (2010) laid out some specific tips for the next generation of young psychologists, and many of them were the same. However, one particular item they highlighted was the fact that it is ok to take a break between finishing your undergraduate degree and applying for grad school. While I don’t personally plan on taking a break, it is nice to know that the option is there should I need it.

Interview Skills

I was able to learn a lot about internship skills and how to improve my impression on interviewers this semester thanks to both the mock interviews held by the Office of Internship and Career Development, but also the handouts they provided to our class. “A Student Guide to Informational Interviews – 2018-2019”, “A Student Guide to Acing the Interview – 2018-2019”, and Longnecker (2016) all brought up very similar points that I took to heart when preparing for both the mock interviews and other interviews I completed during my application to various capstone placements. These points included being enthusiastic, grateful, reducing filler language, and putting a positive spin on things when you can.

Writing a Personal Statement

Lastly, the theme that I struggled the most with, but that I feel like I also improved upon the most during the semester, was the effective writing of a personal statement. I’ve never been particularly good at bragging about myself, but the material we learned in class really helped me write a compelling, excellent self-portrait. The “Preparing​ ​to​ ​Write​ ​a​ ​Personal​ ​Statement​ ​or​ ​Application​ ​Essay” handout from the Center for Writing and Speaking brought up mentioning exciting courses, volunteer experiences, and creating a timeline of events in your life. Both Bottoms and Nysse (1999) and Sleigh’s (2009) articles outlined the importance of revision and peer review, which I took to heart. I’ve never been the type of person to share drafts with others for review, but I sent my personal statement to family members, friends, and family friends in academia to see if they had any tips for me. I feel like this really helped refine my personal statement and my understanding of the need for peer review.

All in all, this course has been incredibly helpful to me in redefining and understanding my new career goals, as well as all the new requirements that come with that goal. I know for sure that I will use my new acquired skills in areas like interviews, personal statements, and graduate school applications, and I look forward to putting these skills to the test up to and during the time I start to apply to graduate school for real.

Most of the constructive feedback I received was about the speed of my speech, my use of filler words, and ideas on ways to make my resume more focused. In reference to the last point, specifically, the interviewers said that because I have such a varied background (psychology, music, biology, chemistry, leadership, community service), I should make sure to figure out ways to apply all of my experience to the job at hand so it seems like I’m well-rounded instead of indecisive.

 My experience with race has been a complicated one because of repeated shifts in my racial and geographical environments during my early childhood.  For the first four years of my life my family, consisting of my mother, father, and myself, was economically middle-class, living in an almost entirely White town in rural Texas.  This negated my need to investigate how my skin color differed from others. 

However, at the age of four, my parents divorced and I was raised by a single mother who moved us often from town to town.  Four years later, in second grade, we moved to urban Austin and I was placed in a diverse school with no racial majority in place.  I remember realizing at this time that others were different, but because of the lack of any racial majority, and due to the privilege of my skin preventing me from experiencing any race-based discrimination, I simply noted the difference and lived my life without critically examining that difference.

My first notable understanding of race, specifically Whiteness, as “my race” and “others” as opposed to uncategorized differences in race came in third grade when my mother moved us to her suburban hometown, an area that was predominantly upper-middle class and White.  I bring up this difference in class along with race because it affected my identity within this community greatly.  My mother was still poor, but she indicated to the school district that I lived in my grandparents’ house located inside the district.  I was instructed by my mother to keep our real address and financial status as a secret.

The school district had a program that allowed a select group of students from the city to attend the schools within my district.  Most of these students were Black identified, living in low-income neighborhoods like I did.  Because of this, I was torn between two groups I aligned myself with.  Whether reflecting on my race or my class, I felt out of place.  I was White, but poor, so I didn’t feel like I fit in with my White peers, as I viewed Whiteness as inherently tied to wealth.  Conversely, I was poor, but because I was White and because I could not outwardly express this identity, I also didn’t consider myself a part of this group, as I viewed Blackness as inherently tied to poverty.

It was because of this cognitive dissonance and a negative experience with a Black classmate that I began to regress and hold covert resentment towards racial “others” Black people.  I wondered why “all of them” were poor, although I only made this association because this was the only experience I had with Black people.  I avoided playing with them because I perceived them as rude and brutish, generalizing my one negative experience with a Black student to the entire race.  Outwardly, I never said anything about their race, but one could tell I had a negative attitude towards them based on my actions.  When expressing my thoughts on race to my mother, she would often change the subject, and later told me it was because she thought I was too young to have the “race talk”.

Reflecting on my experiences with race up to this point in my life, direct links to Helms’ (1992) idea of ‘White racial identity development’ can be seen.  Contact, the first phase of this development, can be clearly seen in my early grade school years, as I had no definitions of or interest in investigating my race and others’ race.  However, when I moved to a White, upper-class town, I appear to have entered the disintegration phase, exemplified by the internal conflict I experienced between my White identity and my low-income identity.  This conflict led me to reintegration, which I experienced in the form of viewing all Black people as poor, rude, and not worthy of my time and attention, while still outwardly pretending to not be racist and to have a color-blind attitude.

The next phase in the White racial identity development is pseudo-independence, which didn’t come about for me until high school when we had mandatory seminars on racism, sexism, classism, and other ‘-isms’ in my freshman year.  It was at this point that we were taught in a very cold, clinical way to not engage in overt racism, without deeply investigating the roots of our prejudice and the history of racial discrimination.  This is something I recognized in Peggy McIntosh’s essay in Race Class & Gender An Anthology, wherein she describes her schooling not teaching her at all about her White privilege, and that she was taught to acknowledge the racism of her people in the past but to view current racial identity as morally neutral (Anderson & Collins, 2016).  The “-isms” seminars taught us about the history of race relations in the United States, about slavery, manifest destiny, segregation, the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and other historical incidents of racism, but had the general attitude of “well, thank goodness racism is over now!”, which was bizarre considering the fact that the seminars were set up to combat current racial discrimination issues.

I did not start to deeply investigate my personal identity as a racial being, questioning what exactly entails being White, and confronting my own biases until my senior year of high school, when I decided to take a course on the history of feminism, which included investigations of race and class along with gender, almost like a simplified version of the course I am in now.  This phase is referred to as immersion/emersion and is where I would currently place myself in due to my persistent racial guilt and reluctance to insert myself into discussions of the experiential nature of race, all characteristics of the final phase, autonomy.  That is my next step in my experience and understanding of race, which I hope to at least begin working towards over the course of the semester and afterwards, a never-ending journey that will go on only if I continue to put conscious effort into it.

References

Anderson, M. L., & Collins, P. H. (2016). Race, class & gender an anthology (9^th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage.

Helms, J. E. (1992). A race is a nice thing to have: A guide to being a White person or understanding the White persons in your life. Topeka, KS: Content Communications.

Hidden Figures is a film that tells the story of three forgotten women in Langley, VA, that helped astronaut John Glenn orbit the earth in 1962, effectively changing the tide of the race for space and giving the United States enough momentum to get two men on the moon. These women were Katherine G. Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughn, three black women that worked in the “colored computer” department of NASA.

At the beginning of the film, Katherine G. Johnson, who was the main focus of the movie, was assigned to the Space Task Group in order to check calculations for the scientists there, while Mary Jackson was assigned to a group of engineers working with the space capsule. Dorothy Vaughn stayed in the computer department working as an informal supervisor and trying to achieve the official title and compensation for the work she was doing. Throughout the film, all three women face both racism and sexism while trying to achieve their goals, but through a combination of determination, skill, and activism, all three of them achieve what they sought to do. Mary Jackson wins a court case that prohibited her from taking engineering classes at an all-white high school, Dorothy Vaughn becomes the overseer of a team of women working on the IBM 7090 computer, and Katherine G. Johnson is given a chance to show off her mathematical prowess and help develop an equation to bring John Glenn safely back into the atmosphere, is also finally allowed to attend an all-white, all-male meeting about the launch, and is allowed to write her name on the reports she was previously not allowed to do so on, despite the fact that she was involved with many of the calculations. While these three women did not achieve complete equality for women, specifically women of color, in NASA, they certainly broke many barriers that allowed equality to begin to develop, something that is still being worked on today. Drawing from this, I believe the main purpose of the film was to bring to light the lives of three women who were crucial to the space program, and illuminate the racism and sexism in a profession (STEM) that is so important for the future of humanity.

While the film portrayed most of their time in the space program, it also discussed their personal lives, and their roles as mothers and wives. This portrayal allowed the women to be viewed as “real”, something that is often denied to career-oriented women in films. Usually women are given two roles, the caretaker or the businesswoman. The caretaker stays at home, or has an “unimportant” job, and serves as a source of emotional support for the men and children in her life. The businesswoman is usually tough, cold, and excellent at what she does. However, she is usually not liked, and has a very poor relationship with her children and partner, if she even has one. By showing both the working lives and the home lives of the three women in this movie, it breaks these stereotypes and gives the audience the idea that women can love their job, and be great at it, but also have a loving relationship with their family.

In the context of our class, I believe this movie relates to our discussion on the first day, where we gave examples of women who have inspired us. While we gave a plethora of different examples, from our mothers to women in politics or literature, I do not remember many examples of women in STEM. This movie was able to give us three examples of women in this field, while also reminding us that these women were forgotten, but not anymore. Hopefully throughout our time in this class we can discover and discuss more important women in STEM.

This brings me to two main themes I saw in the film- femininity and invisibility. Femininity is brought up many times throughout the film, as something that both aids and prohibits them. Femininity was able to aid the women in their home lives, allowing them to be kind and understanding of each other and their loved ones. One particular scene that brought this to light for me was the first time we are introduced to Johnson’s children. She had just come back from a particularly long shift at work, and discovered her children fighting in their room when they should have been asleep. She allowed herself to keep a level head in the situation, and calmly, rationally mediated the quarrel before settling them down and affectionately speaking with them. In this sense, her femininity, or at least what is perceived as “feminine” i.e. being kind and taking care of children, allowed her to take control of a situation and achieve a peace with her children. However, this femininity that gave these women power at home did not help them as much at work.

The scene that gave me this idea was when Mary Jackson first arrived at her new assignment. They were about to test some new fans on the capsule when she walked in, and she was instructed to walk into the control room where she would be safe from the fan. However, as she was walking towards the door, her heel got stuck in a grate, and she eventually had to run to the control room with only one shoe on. This particular scene stuck with me because of its symbolism. Jackson’s high heeled shoe, something usually associated with femininity, trapped her, and she was forced to abandon it for her own safety. The film was essentially saying that in order for these women to succeed and be safe in their workplace, they had to abandon their femininity. This was something that I personally had an issue with. I know that it was a fact back then, and sometimes still is today, but it is not something I believe should be true. Regardless of that, I admired the cleverness with which the film presented that metaphor.

The second theme that I noticed in the film was invisibility. These three women, and all women of color in their field, were invisible when passive, and extremely visible when active. When they were not “involved” with their white male counterparts, they were forgotten about. Most of the white workers did not know where the “colored” bathroom was, and many of them did not even know that NASA hired black women as computers. However, once women began to enter their space, they became extremely visible. For instance, when Johnson first walked into the Space Task Group room, people’s eyes were immediately drawn to her because she was different, she was an “other.” One man recognized her as an other and immediately assumed she couldn’t be here doing the same work he was, so he assumed she was a cleaning woman and gave her some trash to take out. All of her movements and actions were under scrutiny during her time in the Space Task Group. However, throughout history, she and the other women around her were invisible. It’s safe to say that a majority of the population had no idea who Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughn were before this movie came out (I know I certainly did not). Even the title, Hidden Figures, lends itself to this theme of invisibility. It refers to both the hidden mathematical figures that Katherine discovered, but also the hidden figures that were these women, forgotten by our white, male-centric historians. This is why I believe this film is so important for young people to watch, especially young people interested in STEM. For white, male individuals interested in STEM, it is a reminder of the diversity of the history of STEM. For women of color, it is a hopeful message, and a story that tells them that they’re a part of history, and that they themselves are capable of making history.

Throughout the entire book, she writes in a first person perspective, with a kind of wit and familiar tone that instantly creates a bond with the reader. In the first section, she addresses the reader directly, speaking to them with the assumption that they are a white European or European-American coming to Antigua for a vacation. In long, sarcastic, tangential phrases, she outlines the life of the typical white European or European-American tourist. On page 16 she writes, “But one day, when you are sitting somewhere, alone in that crowd, and that awful feeling of displacedness comes over you,… you make a leap from being that nice blob… to being a person marveling at the harmony (ordinarily, what you would say is the backwardness) and the union these other people (and they are other people) have with nature.” In this quote she makes many assumptions that then serve to be key points of discussion and perception surrounding Antigua.

The first is that places like Antigua, to white people, are places to go to escape their lives. That somehow, the flourishing nature, beautiful landscape, and native customs will give them a chance to forget about their normal, western, hectic lives (when in fact, if these western countries hadn’t destroyed their landscape and nature in the first place, they wouldn’t need to spend their time in a faraway country with people they usually avoid, those people being, of course, anyone who isn’t white, european, industrialized, or middle class).

The next assumption is that white people view native Antiguans (and citizens other non-white countries) as spiritual and harmonious with nature, but only when going there for rest, relaxation, and enjoyment. When seriously considering them as human beings and not as their own personal entertainment, white people call them backwards and primitive. Although these assumptions are not always true of white people now, they were almost ninety-nine percent true of white people in the past, especially during the 80s and 90s, when the book was written and when the tourism business began to boom. Even if these assumptions are not an accurate reflection of the reading, they can still illuminate the prevailing American and European ideas of countries like Antigua, and thus incite reflection on the self, and reflection on the society.

SMBio Revised

A young woman rises from her bed, dreading the day ahead of her.. Not because of the hellish traffic on the way to work, or because of the annoying coworker who won’t stay out of her business,  or because of her frustratingly demanding boss, but because of one thing: social interaction. The thought of greeting the receptionist at the front desk makes her hands tremble. Standing by the water cooler and participating in light chit-chat makes her feel exhausted and inferior. She hasn’t received a raise in years, because she can never bring herself to step into her boss’s office and ask how their kids are doing, what their hobbies are. When discussing the weekend with the other members of her office, her eyes can never bring herself to meet her coworkers’, since then she couldn’t carefully monitor their expressions and make sure she hasn’t slipped up in some way. At night, she collapses into her bed, exhausted and depressed, only to be brought back to this hellish cycle when her alarm goes off the next morning. She’s always been this way, and she’s never understood why. She can’t understand facial expressions as well as others, she feels like she’s constantly wearing a mask, she finds herself easily exhausted in social situations, and the only enjoyable part of her day is when she can dive wholeheartedly into her work, likely something math or pattern-based.  This is just a glimpse into the world of autistic women. Despite the fact that their autism affects their life on a daily basis, they rarely receive a diagnosis that could help them understand themselves and receive the help they need. This is because doctors have always been extremely reluctant to diagnose women with autism. There exists a gender bias in the psychological world, specifically in the autistic community, in which doctors are far more likely to diagnose men, and ignore female signs and symptoms.

To begin, autism, or autism spectrum disorder, is defined as “a serious neurodevelopmental disorder that impairs a child’s ability to communicate and interact with others. It also includes restricted repetitive behaviors, interests and activities” (Mayo Clinic Staff 1). In more basic terms, it is a spectrum disorder that impairs an individual’s ability to interpret and understand social cues. Typical symptoms include a higher aptitude for logical thinking, sensory overload, lack of eye contact, “stimming” or physical stimulation, problems with language comprehension and production,  and constant movement (which can also be categorized under “stimming” (Shaw 11). In regards to stimming, there are many different kinds; visual stimming, which stimulates the visual cortex and involves waving hands in front of the face, staring back and forth between different objects, and blinking rapidly. There is physical stimming, which includes twirling hair, tapping body parts, and opening and closing latches or doors. Also, there is auditory stimming, which stimulates the auditory cortex, and can involve snapping fingers by the ears, playing the same note or few notes repeatedly on a musical instrument, or making noises themselves, similar to self-talk. Lastly, there is ‘touch’ stimming, in which autistic people rub or feel interesting surfaces or textures to stimulate their sensory cortex (Cowley 5).

There are many acknowledged and unacknowledged autistic historical figures and celebrities such as Michael Jackson, Temple Grandin, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Bill Gates, and more. However, the issue with gender bias in the autistic community lies within that list: among all of those names, there was only one woman. Though much research was done, it was hard to find any information on female autistic figures. There is almost no research being done on this enormous gender gap in autism diagnosis, and the fact that there are far more men than women with autism has simply been accepted as fact. Anyone who disagrees is faced with two common arguments: biologically, far more men are affected by autism than women, and that women don’t show autistic symptoms.

To address the first argument, one must listen to an interview from Professor Tony Attwood, on Sharon daVanport radio show, Other People’s Words. Professor Attwood said, “I think what kind of happened is if [women] have been seeking help, there may have been a history of inappropriate diagnoses or almost-right diagnoses. There can be a history of the possibility of anorexia nervosa or borderline personality disorder, and so people have approached the person because of that sort of interpretation of what the person is doing.” He was describing the misdiagnosis of women with autism, and the interpretation of their symptoms as borderline personality disorder, anorexia nervosa, and other disorders. This shows that women are out in the world, trying to get diagnosed, but their symptoms and signs are being misinterpreted. A commonly cited statistic is that there are five men with autism for every one woman. However, this statistic has been disproved. The true numbers are more in line with two men with autism for every one woman. While men are still more likely to have autism, it is not to the drastic degree that everyone believes, and the statistic doctors lean on in order to not have to work hard to analyze possibly autistic women is simply false.

It cannot be denied that men’s brains and women’s brains work differently. Men, when their brains are active, can be seen having more intense brain activity in one particular spot, while women will have almost constant, less intense activity spread across almost the entire brain, depending on the stimulus. Thus, it could be easy to see that if the physical brain is different, then display of certain signs in the brain would be different for men and women.

A brain scan is actually a part of an autism diagnosis, and the signs doctors are looking for are unusual sites of activity in the male brain. Since the male brain typically fires off intense bursts of energy in one area, it is easy to spot an autistic brain, since it has large sites of intense activity occurring simultaneously throughout the entire brain. This is hard to differentiate in a female brain, because the typical female brain is always firing in a similar fashion to an austistic person’s brain. However, the difference can be spotted if one pays attention to the location of the neurons firing, and the intensity. An autistic brain will usually be firing more often in the sensory cortex and sensory lobes, while a female, neurotypical brain will usually fire in areas of language comprehension, creative thinking, and memory cortexes (Cowley 3). In addition to this, women with autism display symptoms differently. This leads to the next argument against the idea of a gender bias in the autism community.

The second argument is that women do not display ‘autism symptoms’. However, these symptoms are associated with autistic males. They include repetitive behavior, selective muteness, abrasive/avoidant personalities, and displays of physical discomfort when forced into social situations. These are all symptoms that are seen in boys with autism. Since the research on autism is usually done on men and boys, and rarely on women, doctors have no idea, usually, what female symptoms are. Usually, the ratio of boys to girls in autism studies ranges from 5:1 to 12:1 (Cowley 2). Women are simply not being studied. This lack of representation is what leads to misunderstandings about female symptoms of autism. If women are not being represented, there is a lack of information, as well as a lack of interest, about autistic women, leading to misdiagnoses and misconceptions about autism that harm everyone, not just women. This lack of information and interest also keeps the scientific world stuck in the cycle of not studying girls with autism, which leads to more misdiagnoses, which in turn snowballs throughout the years.

This can also be seen in other parts of the psychological world. Famous psychologists such as Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo, who did amazing work in their fields, only did research on white, college-age, middle class men.  Therefore, all the information being taught to new psychologists is from the perspective of and/or catered towards the mythical norm.

This argument can also be addressed by discussing female symptoms. Females with autism usually participate in what is usually called ‘the Chameleon Effect’. Professor Tony Attwood said, “… what can happen is that the girls will have their way of hiding, camouflaging, imitating others, which means that they’re often not picked up” (DaVanport 15). It’s an exhausting process by which autistic women mimic neurotypical individuals to try to blend in. They’re usually quite adept at this, and it is quite difficult to ‘spot’ a woman with autism. However, the exhaustion from keeping up the ‘mask’ can lead to depression, anxiety, and other similar disorders. This is often how doctors will take the ‘easy way out’ in diagnosing women with autism, since their depression and anxiety, or even multiple personality disorder (since the women have many different masks for different social situations) is extremely evident, and seems to be an easy way to sum up and explain the women’s deviant behavior. In the past, women with severe autism would receive lobotomies, because doctors did not believe women experienced autism at all, and they believed women with autism were “psychotic and manipulative” and needed to be “readjusted”.  This is another way a lack of information about autism permanently and horrifically damaged the lives of women in the past.

Doctors usually use the aforementioned chameleon effect to justify their lack of female diagnoses. However, that is simply lazy medicine. One simply has to pay attention to see that the person in front of them is wearing a mask. They refuse to make prolonged eye contact, many of their phrases sound rehearsed or straight from a novel or TV drama, and you can see them becoming physically exhausted quite quickly. (DaVanport 14). When alone, they retreat inside a world of fantasy. Even their physical movements are rehearsed, and are identical every time they are executed, like a shrug or a dismissing wave of the hand. It doesn’t take much time to see that they are trying as hard as possible to appear neurotypical and keep the facade up. This, combined with the differences in brain activity between neurotypical females and autistic females, should be an extremely simple indicator of autism. Yet, we continue to see dismal rates of diagnosis of females with autism, despite the actual predicted statistic of men versus women with autism (2:1) (DaVanport 11).

This problem can be easily solved. All it takes is effort on the part of doctors and educators. If psychologists are taught to recognize female symptoms of autism, they can spot them with less effort, and women can receive the help they need. This starts in the classroom. At Webster Groves High School, autism is only mentioned as a supplemental vocabulary word to memorize. The textbook for AP Psychology, the class in which autism would be expected to be taught, frequently refers to individuals with autism as “he” or “boys”. But some schools in the post-secondary level are beginning to include courses specifically studying women with disabilities/psychological disorders, or even more specifically, classes about autism and gender. Agnes Scott College, a liberal arts women’s college in Georgia, has recently developed a course called “Gender and Psychology” that studies this very aspect of the psychological world.

Also, if more women are included in autism studies, more information can be obtained about female autism, and thus this information can be taught to new professors, and the cycle continues, creating a better and better world for women with autism.  It is extremely simple to put out ads seeking women with autism, or men and women, and making sure to study the same amount of women as men with autism (if they are studying men and women). The Autism Women’s Network even has meetings and conferences where women can meet doctors doing studies on autism, and learn about how the process of a psychological study is carried out, and they are then more likely to volunteer to be studied. The doctors can also profit, if they are (and are subsequently viewed as) less lazy by the general public. This all can lead to more support for the scientific community which, on another note, is in desperate need of support, given the current environmental and energy crises. Also, regardless of these crises, the scientific world is a huge aspect of developing and further advancing the human species. If there is no support for this community, which recent studies show there is not, with trust in physician integrity dropping steadily over the past three years (Shaw 14), society cannot make gains and advance, both in their application/development of technology, and back in the sphere of psychology, with the ability to recognize and treat psychological disorders.

This is not to say that autism is a ‘disease’ or a disorder that needs to be cured. Poor organizations like Autism Speaks display their lack of understanding of autism when they pour millions of dollars into researching autism diagnosis in the womb, with the purpose of “avoiding autistic births” (Cowley 10). This problematic idea that autism is a devastating condition is another thing that keeps women from seeking a diagnosis. In reality, autism is simply, to reference the views of Professor Tony Attwood, a “rewiring of the brain, similar to AM and FM radio” (DaVanport 1). The process of diagnosis does not end in receiving a “remedy” or “cure” for autism, but rather an explanation for troubling and difficult thoughts and behavior, as well as an indicator that the patient should receive therapy in order to learn ways to cope with or work with their autism and participate meaningfully in the social world. For many women, receiving a diagnosis is a huge relief, and “a chance for introspection and acknowledgement of [their] own identities. It’s like learning a new part of [themselves]” (DaVanport 16).

In conclusion, it is clear that there is an easily solvable gender bias in the diagnosis of autism. Women across the world await the reform of autism diagnosis, which would lead to an increase of their understanding of themselves, and an improvement in their daily lives. Doctors across the world are looking for the next breakthrough in medicine to bring them fame and fortune, as well as a positive public opinion of the scientific world that can help them advance humanity. An autism diagnosis reform would be mutually beneficial to both of these parties. The gender bias in autism diagnosis can be solved by teaching doctors to acknowledge and recognize female symptoms, even starting in their high school Psychology course, and thus allow autistic women to receive the help and counseling they need. Doctors like Tony Attwood have already started this journey, and continue to spread positive, The cooperation between doctors and the non-medical world can bring about a revolution, and with more helpful information about women autism being spread, these forgotten girls can be brought into the light of day.

References

Cowley, Geoffrey. “Girls, Boys and Autism: Is this mysterious and sometimes devastating condition just an extreme version of normal male intelligence? That’s one provocative new theory. Behind autism’s gender gap.” Newsweek 8 Sept. 2003: 42. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 24 Mar. 2016.

DaVanport, Sharon. “Interview W/ Tony Attwood.” Interview. Audio blog post.Transcribery. WordPress.com, 11 Nov. 2010. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.

“Girls and boys with autism differ in behavior, brain structure.” Mental Health Weekly Digest 21 Sept. 2015: 75. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 24 Mar. 2016.

Mayo Clinic Staff. “Autism Spectrum Disorder.” Mayo Clinic. N.p., 3 June 2014. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.

“Researchers at University of California Have Reported New Data on Autism and Developmental Disorders (Does Gender Moderate Core Deficits in ASD? An Investigation in Restricted and Repetitive Behaviors in Girls and Boys with ASD).” Mental Health Weekly Digest 16 Nov. 2015: 184.Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 24 Mar. 2016.

“Research from University of Gothenburg Provides New Data on Autism.” Mental Health Weekly Digest 18 Apr. 2011: 60. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 24 Mar. 2016.

Shaw, Susan M., and Janet Lee. Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. Print.

To read more… Kein Frauenschicksal: An Analysis of Clara Schumann

To explain this, Diedrich says, “… the transformational power of black agency and its influence on white perceptions… The Negro/slave resurfaced as refugee, laborer, groom, forager, and guide, all assignations focusing on military rank, social class, and performance rather than race.” (Diedrich 101). Thus, self-liberators were supposedly given a chance to work in a system that sorted them not by race, but by their rank and ability. However, this ideal was not always the reality. A Hessian officer, Captain John Erwald, kept a detailed account of his experiences in America during the war, and Diedrich comments on his accounts by saying, “Cultural “othering” becomes a self-protective move to retain [Erwald’s] authority as a white European and officer… [The slaves] enter the text only as informers, spies, and workers… but he leaves intact the hierarchy he as an officer constructs between military and nonmilitary action, between a white European performance of the superior military task and the… inferior service work performed by the army’s black allies.” (Diedrich 104-105). In this sense, while Black people were given jobs, they were never given jobs that the Hessians deemed as equal to white men’s jobs, in order to keep the idea of white supremacy both in the minds of the African Americans, but also to reaffirm the idea in the minds of white Europeans. This proves that the Hessians truly did have an idea of white superiority before and during the American revolutionary war, although sometimes Diedrich’s writing tried to tip-toe around this issue. One criticism of her work says, “…Diedrich went out of her way to make race and the ill-treatment of Black people look like an American construct that the Hessians got trapped into as opposed to admitting that these ideals existed in the homeland, even with Black people existing in high ranking positions.” (Victor 2). However, this idea of white superiority would only skyrocket with the onset of German colonialism in Africa.

The German colonial period marked the beginning of a true lack of compassion for, and cruelty towards, Africans by German people. To justify colonization of Africa, Germans used many explanations, most of them centering around sympathy for the intellectually superior Volk Ohne Raum (people without space). Olusoga describes, “With the American experience as their example, a swathe of the nation’s philosophers, geographers, and politicians… that the colonial frontier might become a new arena in which the German spirit could undergo a revitalization, in terms similar to those which they believed had forged the rugged character of white America.” (Olusoga 108). Thus, the Germans planned on using African land to expand their empire and let their people explore, without any regard for the Africans living on that land. I believe they did, however, have a plan for the Africans. Zimmerman wrote, “The belief that cotton required black labor, … contained a grain of truth: the production of cotton for the mechanized textile industry did require the levels of control exercised over black cotton growers in both slavery and freedom.” (Zimmerman 1371). The Germans used this line of thinking to justify their colonialism in many ways. They believed that they needed the land for expansion, and thus would need to grow crops on this land. A growing textile industry suggested that they grow cotton, which was a perfect opportunity to the Germans, since they believed cotton to be a black crop. Thus, they could provide the “poor”, “savage” Africans with work in order to give them a sense of purpose , although I believe in reality they simply wanted to put the available Africans to use, and keep them under white European control. Subsequently, the German desire and justification for colonialism was born.

During this time, Africans were subjected to immeasurable horrors by the German colonists. They were beaten, raped, forced into labor, overall abused and dehumanized. Olusoga comments, “The racial contempt that both settlers and soldiers felt towards the Africans was compounded by their frustrations, impatience and greed.” (Olusoga 117). The African genocide, and subsequent imprisonment of Africans in what I would call the ‘original concentration camps’ lead to the deaths of a shocking amount of Africans, an amount we may never truly know, as many of these deaths were not reported by the colonists. Many Germans justified these killings with their idea of white superiority, saying “…that perhaps the inner cultural weakness of the native races of Africa, America and Asia made them passive, and therefore incapable of withstanding the European assault.” (Olusoga 110). Mixed-race children, born from either the rape of African women, or true relationships between white colonists and African women, were viewed as a threat to German society, because the German believed these children inherited the “savage”, “unintelligent” ways of their mothers. One German wrote, “Mischlinge should be brought no closer to the whites than absolutely necessary,… Yet the thought of giving these poor abandoned children a home… gives [the German teachers] the courage to carry on and to fight against the lies and the laziness that infects these children’s blood only too greatly.” (O’Donnelle 72). These ideas of African savagery and unintelligence were dragged into the twentieth century, and minutely tweaked the post-World War I era.

After Germany’s defeat in World War I, France was given control of the German, material-rich Rheinland. The French decided that they would use African troops in the occupation, both as a way to keep the armed, militarily-trained men away from their homeland, where they could instigate rebellion, and as a psychological attack on the Germans, who they knew viewed the Africans as “savage” and “inferior”. They believed this would be both an effective way to scare the Germans into submission, since the Africans were viewed as powerful warriors, and I also believe as an assault to their egos, since the people the Germans had once subjugated and held under their thumb now controlled their everyday lives. This occupation was referred to as the “Black Shame”, and led to a transformation of the German’s ideas of blackness. The Germans took to their media and wrote slandering articles about the African soldiers, displaying their contempt for their savagery, and lack of control, as well as the danger they presented to the pure German race. They viewed the Africans as wild, sexual creatures, who had seen and longed after German women for so long, and now had their chance to be with them. “The dichotomy set up implicitly within this discourse opposed germans as a white, civilized Kulturvolk to blacks as an uncivilized or primitive Naturvolk characterized by savagery and unbridled passions, appetites, and instincts.” (Campt 52). From this stemmed another interesting perspective, one which Campt describes by saying, “…the white German woman was presented as the channel of this threat. … she functions as both an active and a passive conduit of Black male sexuality… On the other hand, Blacks’ access to white European women through service in the occupying forces represented another form of racial parity–that is, a sexual equality between Black and white men in relation to (or perhaps in the possession of) white women.” (Campt 55). Based on this logic, women were now the targets of increased protection, so that German purity could remain intact, and also increased discrimination, so that women who did have relationships with Black men were ostracized, and set an example for other German women. Just like during the colonial period, the mixing of the races was viewed as terrible and terrifying.

There were also scientists who did research on racial mixing, to prove to the public how dangerous it was, but their findings were far from what they wanted. Campt writes, “[Fischer’s] conclusions were that… there was no evidence of the dominance of one race over the other…. thus also rejecting the assertion of “biological inferiority” of mixed-race people. Yet in a chapter on “the psychology of the Rehoboth” (which lacked any empirical basis), Fischer also remarked on the mental aptitude of the group… he made the dubious assertion that the “cultural” psychological and intellectual aptitude of these individuals was inferior to that of “pure whites”” (Campt 40). Because there was no biological factor, or even a factor of intellectual inferiority, Fischer, and possibly many other scientists, published studies that suggested mixed race children lacked “cultural” intelligence, despite the fact that there was no evidence to back up their claims. I believe this was a tactic to assure Germans that they were superior in some way.

To compare and contrast these eras, when the Germans thought of the Moor, an enslaved, but highly revered African, they thought of them as interesting and exotic. This perception changed to a more negative one when they thought of the African native, as they saw someone who was ready to be subdued, who was not locked into their idea of an enslaved Neger, as someone who was a little too free for their liking. That extremely negative view of Africans is very similar to the post World War One era, when they saw the African occupation soldiers, they saw a terrifying and dangerous threat. This was different from the colonialist era perception of black people only in the fact that the Germans now viewed black people as a physical threat, instead of a passive threat through racial mixing.  

In conclusion, the views of blackness harbored by the Hessians were vastly different from those harbored by post-World War I era Germans. However, there is an underlying theme of black inferiority that permeates throughout this entire time period, and beyond. White people have always viewed black people as some form of “less”, be it less intellectual, less reserved, less “cultural”, even less human. I believe it is easy, then, to see that as black people gained more authority and self-advocacy in the eyes of the white Germans, the Germans retaliated and spread ideas of African dangerousness and inferiority, in order to console themselves and protect their own position of power and their identity as “the superior white race”.

Works Cited

Campt, Tina. Other Germans. Chapter 1: “‘Resonant Echoes’: The Rhineland Campaign and Converging Specters of Racial Mixture”

Diedrichs, Maria. “From American Slaves to Hessian Subjects: Silenced Black Narratives of the American Revolution.” Germany and the Black Diaspora: Points of Contact, 1250-1914. Ed. Mischa Honeck, Martin Klimke, and Anne Kuhlmann. New York: Berghahn Books, 2013: 92-111.

O’Donnell, Krista Molly. “The First Besatzungskinder: Afro-German Children, Colonial Childrearing Practices, And Racial Policy in German Southwest Africa, 1890-1914.” Not so Plain as Black and White: Afro-German Culture and History, 1890-2000. Ed. Patricia M. Mazón and Reinhild Steingröver. New York: Boydell&Brewer, 2005: 61-81.

Olusoga, David, Casper Erichsen. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. New York: Faber&Faber, 2011.

Victor, Sharisse. “Re: Reading Blog Week 4: German – American Encounters.” Web log comment. Courses.agnesscott.edu. Agnes Scott Moodle, 17 Sept. 2016. Web. 1 Oct. 2016.

Zimmermann, Andrew. “A German Alabama in Africa: The Tuskegee Expedition to German Togo and the Transnational Origins of West African Cotton Growers.” The American Historical Review 110.5 (2005): 1362-98.