Anna Hase Annotated Bibliography

Chambliss, William J. "The Saints and the Roughnecks." Society 11.1 (n.d.): 24-31. Print.

In my intro to sociology class, we were given an article called The Saints and The Roughnecks. The Saints were a group of eight charming college-bound friends, and the Roughnecks were six lower class friends that attended the same school. This article really caught my attention because even though it didnt talk about the chemical balances that effect ones happiness, it was a story someone wrote from across the country that I could complete relate my own experiences to. I connected a lot of the theories Chambliss has with others I have read up on, and even my own observations involving the happiness in our generation. When I had previously read that materialism wasnt an effecting factor towards someones happiness, I saw the truth in the statement. It registered to me as money does not always mean happy. The connection I made reading Chamblisss article however, is that subconsciously and with the butterfly affect it can. The charming Saints drove nice cars, dressed well, and came from high class families. While the Roughnecks were a group of friends that didnt take high school fun to any higher of a level as the other group, they were still known as the town delinquents while none of the Saints were ever charged or arrested during Chamblisss two year observation. What was the cause of this disparity? He refers to the two groups of boys as gangs, as he dug deeper into the blatant (( bias ))). He compares the two gangs behavior in school and in the town to the consequences each of the faced. It was already apparent that the Saints were the ideal group of popular high school boys, most of them involved in athletics and all of them having high B grade averages. The teachers saw them as role model students, and at the end of their senior year four of the Saints were recognized as the school wheels which were the top 10 students the teachers thought would make something of themselves. The Roughnecks seemed to be more closed off type of people, and Chambliss said that in school they seemed to separate and hang around one or two of each other at a time. While they were at school, that is. The article implies students from both groups would cut class around the same amount of times, but that the teachers were blinded to the Saints absences, or understood that something came up. On the other hand, he didnt iterate any tolerance towards the Roughnecks when they would stay home from school. The article was filled with more details for example on classes Saints would flunk or unrecognized football involvement from the Roughnecks. Chambliss question that made me want to know more was Why did the community, the school and the police react to the Saints as though they were good, upstanding, nondelinquent youths with bright futures but to the Roughnecks as though they were tough young criminals who were headed for trouble?

Doss, Henry. Personal Interview. 10, Apr. 2014 After becoming familiar with all my research, and completing drafts of each genre piece, I met with a graduate student her at UNC Charlotte named Henry Doss. I met Mr. Doss last semester when we came to talk to my English 1101 class and there was something

about his views on the world that resonated with me. I asked to meet with him mainly to talk about my unsettlement towards my future, and also mentioned the research project I was working on for English 1102. I was expecting to get a little judgment when I opened up to him about what Ive been going through and my thoughts towards my future. It couldnt have been more opposite. He comforted me by saying you are only eighteen years old, that I needed to calm down and start reading more books. Hearing him say only eighteen was weird because I had it in my head that I was an adult now, and I needed to start having everything figured out. My mom has always told me that I stress too much about things that are out of my control, and raised me doing everything she could to get me to read more, and so when Henry told me the same thing, I really listened. It gave him a lot of credibility that he seemed to understand me, and he gave what my mom has always said more importance because it wasnt just coming from my mother this time. I asked him what he was doing when he was my age, and he told me I was about to be real happy that I asked that. He opened up to me about how he flunked out of high school, and still went on to turn things around and not even ten years later was a banking executive. I asked him what was so different about my generation from his point of view. He said nothing, which almost sent me into an internal rage until he explained how people are products of their environment. There isnt anything biologically different between our thinking and previous generations, we just live in completely different worlds. This personal insight is what helped me interpret what all the facts I had collected on happiness, the millennial generation, and social concepts were caused by.

Elias, Marilyn. "Psychologists Now Know What Makes People Happy." USATODAY.com. N.p., 10 Dec. 2002. Web. 3 Mar. 2014.

The next article I focused on dealt less with the scientific cause of happiness, and more on the lifestyle image happy people live. It started off by flashing back to the 90s, when apparently there were 100 studies on sadness published for each study on happiness. Psychologist Martin Seligman says this new decade seems to have kicked off a new theme of positive psychology where research has begun to emphasize and explore peoples happiness and talents over their sadness and weaknesses. While still in the early stages of his research, Seligman is beginning to figure out why some people are happy while others are not. This is the first thing about this article that drew my attention. Why are psychologists just now becoming interested in the causes of happiness? Seligman stated, The happiest people spend the least time alone. They pursue personal growth and intimacy; they judge themselves by their own yardsticks, never against what others do or have. Materialism is a big factor in the false image of todays happy people. University of Illinois psychologist ED Diener says that materialism is toxic for happiness. This opinion coincides with Seligmans idea of how happy people live their lives. They focus on people and memories, not things. They are focused on their goals, not name brands. They measure their own personal growth and dont compare their things to what others have. Diener brought up the holidays and how the family- oriented times bring out the lack of intimacy in some peoples lives. He uses the show Keeping Up With the Joneses, as an example. The Joneses expensive gifts and fancy traditions outdo the average families Christmas, and can leave viewers feeling disappointed. On the other hand, there are people who lose their jobs in December and are still filled with joy to be

surrounded by friends and loved ones. He finishes by sharing that a persons level of happiness is about half genetic. This leads us to Seligmans next statement that everyone has a set point for happiness, just as they do for weight. Just like weight, you can take measures that improve or damage your progress but there is only so much one can do. This really interested me, because I never knew that happiness had anything to do with genetics, which introduced a whole new factor into my study. He also said that while many people believe that being healthy is the most important thing to be happy, physical health only has an influence on those impacted by a person who is very ill. Diener states, Plenty of healthy people take their health for granted and are none the happier for it. Meanwhile, the sickly often bear up well, and hypochondriacs cling to misery despite their robust health. In the beginning I quoted Seligmans description of what happy people do. The reason why people are happier when theyre engaged in activities is because this interest allows them to lose track of time for a little while and forget about any stress or personal worries. Mihaly Csikszentimihalyi, a psychologist from Claremont Graduate University, used the word flow to name this phenomenon and it basically just means staying productive and busy doing things youre passionate about. People feel best when doing what they do best, he said.
Garvin, Karen S. "How Does Exercise Help the Brain?" LIVESTRONG.COM. LIVESTRONG.COM, 28 Mar. 2011. Web. 2 Mar. 2014.

This article talks about the scientific effect working out has on your brain. In my study to research what makes people happy, working out constantly appears to be the healthiest and most beneficial advice. Physical exercise gets your body pumping blood quicker which moves more oxygen and glucose to the brain, and the boost in circulation is also said to improve your memory and learning ability. A 1999 Salk Institute study disproved the idea that brain cell production was completed at birth. Their study showed that our brain is capable of producing new cells in a process called neurogenesis. More recent studies have been conducted trying to prove how this process works exactly. Physical exercise helps stimulate the production of protein in the brain called Noggin, which increases the production of neurogenesis and brain cells. Just like anything you practice, the more you do it the better you become. Working out regularly or on occasion dictates the time it takes for progress to show the improvement in coordination and reflexes. The Franklin Institute claims that physical exercise has stimulated cerebral blood vessel growth and the brains synapses which is why it gives the brain more receptors. The impact on our mood comes from the serotonin which correlates with being active and eating healthy. This is why exercising works as a natural antidepressant and anti- anxiety. Duke University did a 16-week long study where they placed 156 people into three groups and observed the differences and effects. The groups were exercise, medicated, and exercise- medicated. After the study, the students concluded that the exercise alone was just as effective as even the exercise combined with medication for overcoming depression. Along with mental illness, physical exercise may be a factor in delaying the loss of cognitive function that is associated with age and diseases such as Alzheimers. The National Institutes of Health even says that non active people are twice as likely to grow up and develop these diseases. This article broke down the different scientific effects working out has on the brain, and gave me a starting point of what to further explore. My mother always told me working out would improve my

mood, but I wanted to know why. This article was a resourceful way for a beginner to gain some knowledge on why working out gives me a euphoric feeling.
"Millennials in Adulthood." Pew Research Centers Social Demographic Trends Project RSS. N.p., 7 Mar. 2014. Web. 10 Mar. 2014.

On Pew Research I read an informative article about what researchers have noticed about the millennial generation, generation y. They started with informing readers about how our generation is showing to be the least politically and religiously affiliated. Pew research center survey showed that 50% of the volunteers from generation y defined themselves as politically independent and that 30% of them were not involved with religious practices. These statistics are at, if not the highest, the highest level of disaffiliation records compared to any of generation in the past quarter century. I can see these facts reflected in my every day surroundings. Not many of my friends are very focused on religion or politics. Another thing the article pointed out what the decline rate in marriage in our generation. While in 1960, 65% of the population was married by the age of 32, only 25% are married by then today. What does this mean for our generation? The article goes on and talks about our heavy involvement and familiarity with technology, and how were the first generation to not have to adapt to it. 55% of American under the age of 33 have admitted to taking a selfie, a picture taken of oneself by oneself. Older generations such as the silent generation (late boomer, over the age of 69) only have 5% that have or even know what that means. 81% of millennials actively use Facebook, and despite all the positives of increased technology and social media, nine out of ten millennials say that people share too much information about themselves over the internet. We are also the most racially diverse generation; about half of new born babies born in the US are non- white. It is also predicted that by 2043, Caucasian will no longer be the majority race. The Pew Research also showed that our generation showed to be decreasing on levels of trust. The question Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you cant be too careful in dealing with people, was asked, and only 19% of our generation believed the people in their life could be truly trusted. I chose to look into this article because they conducted multiple studies on different factors that seem to be changing within our generation.

Thomas, W. I. "Self- Fulfilling Prophecy." Sociology: General Terms and Concepts. Infoplease, n.d. Web. 8 Mar. 2014.

Have you ever heard of the Thomas theorem? Neither had I. This theory of W.I Thomas said If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences, basically saying reality is what you make it. When a rumor is started, no matter how false or actual it may be, once a certain amount of people have heard, spread, and believed it, the lie can be viewed as a truth. Roert K. Merton was inspired by this theorem and further explored the effects of what the truth is defined as. One factor of Thomass theorem that Merton studies was an effect called self- fulfilling prophecy. The example he used was if a rumor circulated that a town bank was failing, and enough people believed that this was happening, they would withdraw their money from the bank which would contribute to the bank failing. This theorem was formulated in the early 1900s, but how does it apply to our generation today? Because of the access our generation has to technology, and the amount of power some groups of people have, the truth is controlled by that they tell us and it comes down to what we do or dont believe. Just like labeling a bank as a

failing business could contribute to its downfall, treating someone as a criminal or delinquent could help bring out those behaviors in them. Like in the article The Saints and the Roughnecks, people are sometimes seen in a different way because of a certain judged look or assumption.

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/uncategorized/200972-millennials-the-new-lostgeneration