In podcast 3, Dr. Bezio talked about needing to be aware of where our judgements and biases come from. I think this podcast was a great way to follow up the reading for the last class regarding split second judgements and implicit biases. First, it is important to know where our decisions come from. Along these lines, awareness that differences aren’t always a bad thing is key. However, doesn’t part of this come from our own human nature to have an in group – our group bias judgement? I am not saying I agree with it, but rather I think becoming aware of it is important.

For example, Dr. Bezio discussed at length in this podcast about how the social standards set in The United States have generally come from the same population of people: a majority rule of white middle to upper class citizens. Because of this, laws regulations, and social norms were then facilitated in order to keep this group of people happy and satisfied because there was the most of them. However, as the podcast mentioned, this was really only roughly 30-35% of the population, which means that the other 65-70% of people were conforming to norms different than their own. It initially seems strange to think about, but I believe this goes back to the in group/ out group bias tendency. This group of people have generally been in rule of this society for a while, therefore the norms of the society benefit and are biased towards that group. Moving forward, I think we have to progress past the idea that if something is different or not normal then it is weird or even wrong. If we never move past the point of being critical of differences, then we neglect to take advantage of an opportunity to learn from others.

Lastly, I found one point from Flanigan’s writing for today interesting along these same lines. She discusses the fact that we tend to assume that people who are self medicating are doing it for reasons such as leisure, pleasure, or enjoyment, but rarely do we put ourselves in their shoes and evaluate it from a different standpoint. Medicine is a very important, yet touchy topic, and with a mom who is a doctor, I have heard stories about the DIC and her own struggles with assumptions about patients and their uses of medicine. It is obviously difficult to manage our assumptions, but awareness of it is the first key, and the process of moving past them can begin.