Think Before You React to Mrs. Trump's Speech

Source: Pixaby

Melania Trump recently made a speech at the Republican National Convention. Overnight, mountains of comments piled up regarding recycled material from First Lady Michelle Obama's 2008 address.

Over the years, it has become commonplace to critique everything in the media. It is an exciting and wonderful time that each person has the potential to have a voice or start a positive conversation about a variety of topics. It is also troubling to see how suspected missteps have taken over in our media culture over more pressing and humanistic issues.

It struck me today in class today while presenting, how much our society, as a whole, perceives others so quickly making assumptions about their internal character. "She's a thief!" or "A plagiarist!" or "A horrible woman" or "Has no brain!" or, " Someone wrote it!" While making a choice not to side with the Republican Party. I offered some social psychology points to as it relates to media processing.

When we see unfoldings such as these, we tend to think about the internal character of the person, first and foremost. When thinking about how "others" behave we tend to think of their internal characteristics first or dispositional attributions rather than external factors or situational attributions. Situational attributions are what we often use to explain our behavior (Shaver, 2015).

I can't speak for Mrs. Trump, but I can say as a person who has been asked to speak in front of individuals, that it takes some preparation and practice. While I do not condone the possibility that the said speech was plagiarized (or plagiarism in general), I do, as a person, have a theory on perhaps how these unfolding of events occurred.

When you ask for help with major projects, there is a chance that support may not be as reliable as expected, especially, when that help is a topic outside of your comfort zone. Granted, I am sure she has learned many things a candidate's spouse... However, creating a compelling speech may have been an area where she required some assistance. I have five degrees myself, and still, would have asked for a speech writer's help had my husband decided to run for office, and I needed to speak at such a widely televised event.

Thus, as a comment on media perceptions at large, if we begin to look at other factors outside of a particular person's character, and consider the situational factors, I think we may hope in maintaining our weaken thread of humanity. The current political news climate and its harshness should consider about dialing it down a notch, or two or twelve. Granted tensions are high, and a decision will be made come November. However, arriving at conclusions based on small snippets of information can only lead us to misunderstand a situation when we only think about dispositional factors by thin-slicing our experiences.

Key Term: Thin-slicing is a term used in psychology and philosophy to describe the ability to find patterns in events based only on "thin slices," or narrow windows, of experience.

Shaver, K. G. (2015). Principles of social psychology (Vol. 28). Psychology Press.