Cause and effect - Patterns of development

Successful college writing, Eighth edition - Kathleen T. McWhorter 2020

Cause and effect
Patterns of development

Using Reasons and Results to Explain

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In this chapter you will learn to

✵ understand the purpose and function of cause-and-effect essays

✵ use graphic organizers to visualize cause-and-effect essays

✵ integrate cause and effect into an essay

✵ read and think critically about cause and effect

✵ plan, organize, draft, revise, and edit essays using cause and effect

Writing Quick Start

ANALYZE

Assume you are a journalist for your local newspaper reporting on this natural disaster. Brainstorm to determine possible causes, both immediate and long-range, of this fire. Then consider the immediate effects and long-term effects.

WRITE

Your task is to draft a plausible account of the event to accompany the photograph shown here. In your paragraph, be sure to tell readers why the disaster occurred and what happened as a result of it.

CONNECT

The paragraph you wrote is an example of cause-and-effect analysis (or causal analysis) because it considered causes (why the disaster occurred), effects (what happened because of the disaster), or both. In this chapter you will learn to write effective causal analysis essays. You probably use causal analysis every day. If you decide to get a good night’s sleep rather than pull an all-nighter because you know you do better on exams when you’re well rested, that’s cause-effect analysis. Causal analysis is frequently required in college classes too, where you might be asked to analyze and write about the causes of the Civil War or the effects of oxygen deprivation on the central nervous system.

Causal analysis is a useful and important method of organization and way of thinking because it promotes understanding and enables change, improvement, and innovation. It examines relationships that reveal why things happen and what occurs as a result of those events.

USING CAUSE AND EFFECT

IN COLLEGE AND THE WORKPLACE

✵ For an essay exam in your twentieth-century history course, you are required to discuss the causes of U.S. involvement in the Korean War.

✵ For a health and nutrition course, you decide to write a paper on the relationship between diet and heart disease.

✵ For your job as an investment analyst, you need to explain why a certain company is likely to be profitable in the next year.

What Are the Characteristics of Cause-and-Effect Essays?

A successful causal analysis essay fully explains the causes or effects that are the focus of the essay’s thesis and presents those causes or effects in a logical order.

Causal Analysis May Focus on Causes, Effects, or Both

Remember that causes are the reasons that something happened and effects are the results of the thing that happened. Some causes and effects are relatively easy to separate out.

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Example 1: Cause reads, “You get a flat tire.” Effect reads, “You are late for work.” Example 2: Cause reads, “You forget to mail a loan payment.” Effect reads, “You receive a past-due notice.”

EXERCISE 18.1

IDENTIFYING CAUSES

Alone or with a classmate, list one or more possible causes for each of the following events or phenomena:

1. You observe a peacock strutting down a city street.

2. The airline notifies you that the flight you had planned to take tonight has been canceled.

3. Your phone frequently rings once and then stops ringing.

4. Your town decides to fund a new public park.

5. A good friend keeps saying to you, “I’m too busy to get together with you.”

EXERCISE 18.2

IDENTIFYING EFFECTS

Alone or with a classmate, list one or more possible effects for each of the following events:

1. You leave your backpack containing your wallet on the bus.

2. You decide to change your major.

3. Your spouse is offered a job in a city five hundred miles away from where you live now.

4. You volunteer as a Big Brother or Big Sister.

5. A close relative becomes very ill.

But causal analysis can be complex when it deals with an event or phenomenon that has multiple causes, multiple effects, or both. For example, you probably chose the college you attend (one effect) for a number of reasons (multiple causes).

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Multiple causes read, “Courses available," "Cost," "Reputation," and "Distance." One effect reads, “College attended.”

One cause may also have several effects. For instance, the decision to quit your part-time job (one cause) will have several results (multiple effects).

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Cause reads, "Quit job." Multiple effects read, "More study time," "Less pressure," and "Less spending money."

Related events or phenomena may have multiple causes and multiple effects. For instance, in urban areas, an increase in the number of police patrolling the street along with the formation of citizen watch groups (multiple causes) will result in less street crime and more small businesses moving into the neighborhood (multiple effects).

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Cause reads, “Increased street patrol.” Multiple effects read, “Less street crime” and “Growth of business.” Similarly, another cause reads, “Citizen watch groups” can lead to the same multiple effects.

In some cases, a series of events forms a chain of consequences.

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Cause reads, “You cannot find your car keys.” Effect reads, “You are late for class.” If the cause is “You are late for class,” then the effect is “You miss a surprise quiz.” If the cause is “You miss a surprise quiz,” then the effect is “Your A quiz average is lowered to a B average.”

Once you clearly identify causes and effects, you can decide whether to focus on causes, effects, or both.

Causal Analysis Includes a Clear Thesis Statement

An effective thesis statement for a cause-and-effect essay does the following:

✵ It identifies the topic.

✵ It makes an assertion about that topic.

✵ It suggests whether the essay focuses on causes, effects, or both.

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Causes reads, “The root causes of unsportsmanlike behavior lie in how society elevates athletes to positions of fame and heroism, making them unaccountable for their behavior.” In the above sentence, “causes" is labeled as causes. "Unsportsmanlike behavior" is labeled as the topic. "Lie in how society elevates athletes to positions of fame and heroism, making them unaccountable for their behavior" is identified as the assertion. Effects reads, “The negative effects of unsportsmanlike behavior impact fans, players, and the institutions the players represent.” In the above sentence, “Effects” is labeled as effects. “Unsportsmanlike behavior" is labeled as the topic. “Impact fans, players, and the institutions the players represent” is labeled as the assertion. Causes and Effects reads, “Unsportsmanlike behavior has deep roots in society’s inflated regard for athletes, producing negative effects on fans, other players, and the institutions they represent.” In the above sentence, "Unsportsmanlike behavior" is labeled as the topic. "Roots" is labeled as causes. “Producing negative” is labeled as the assertion. "Effects" is labeled as effects.

Causal Analysis Is Logically Organized

A good cause-and-effect essay is organized logically and systematically. You may present causes or effects in any logical order, but these are the most commonly used:

Chronological order, the order in which causes or effects happened

Example: An essay about causes of rising college tuition costs might begin with reasons for tuition increases in the late 1990s and move chronologically to current increases.

Most-to-least or least-to-most order

Example: An essay about increased immigration to the United States might begin with more important causes and progress to less important ones.

Causal Analysis Explains Each Cause or Effect Fully

A causal analysis essay should present each cause or effect in a detailed and understandable way. For most cause-and-effect essays, you will need to research your topic to find evidence that supports your thesis. For instance, in an essay about the effects on children of viewing violence on television, you might conduct research to locate facts or statistics that document changes in children’s behavior after watching violent programs or expert opinion supporting this claim.

You might use another pattern of development (such as illustrations, descriptions, or comparisons) to explain causes or effects. For example, an essay about why dishonesty and lying are common in social media may include reasons, but also give examples or narrate incidents of dishonesty, categorize the characteristics of the social media environment that make lying easy, or contrast face-to-face communication with online communication.

Causal Analysis May Challenge Readers’ Assumptions or Offer Surprising Reasons

Cause-and-effect essays that merely repeat commonplace causes or effects will discourage the audience from reading on. Engaging causal analyses, in contrast, surprise readers by challenging popular assumptions, offering surprising reasons, or including interesting evidence. For example, an essay on the effects of capital punishment might attempt to dispel the notion that it deters crime, or it might surprise readers by contending that criminals are in fact deterred, but not for the reasons readers would be likely to assume.

Dealing with the causes or effects that readers assume to be primary is an effective strategy because it creates the impression that you have recognized other viewpoints and not overlooked important information. So essays that challenge readers’ assumptions may first explain why the most popular explanation is false or inadequate before moving on to the writer’s preferred cause or effect.

The following readings demonstrate the techniques for writing effective cause-and-effect essays. The first reading is annotated to point out how Alex Vitale explains the connection between police misconduct and the likelihood of indictment. As you read the second essay, try to identify for yourself how Adam Alter uses the techniques of causal analysis to support his claim that labels shape identity.

READING

Why the Police Are Rarely Indicted for Misconduct

Alex S. Vitale

Alex Vitale is an associate professor of sociology at Brooklyn College and the author of City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed U.S. Politics. Vitale has also published numerous articles for publications such as The Nation, The Abolitionist, and Gotham Gazette. The essay that appears below was originally published online by Al Jazeera America, a news and current events media outlet.

Before Reading

1. Preview: Use the steps listed in Chapter 2.

2. Connect: What incidences of perceived police misconduct have you read about in print or seen on television?

While Reading

Study the annotations that accompany the reading to discover how the essay illustrates the characteristics of effective cause-and-effect writing.

Introduction: Grabs readers’ attention with anecdote drawn from the headlines

1On Monday evening, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert P. McCulloch announced that a grand jury decided not to indict Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson for the August 9, 2015, shooting death of unarmed teenager Michael Brown. The announcement concluded a tumultuous summer of mass protests against police violence and racial discrimination. Although the decision will be a disappointment to many, those who follow prosecutions of police for use of excessive or unwarranted force say a decision not to indict Wilson is unsurprising.

Thesis: Thesis forecasts multiple causes to explain a controversial effect

Effect

2There are major legal, institutional, and social impediments to prosecuting police. Thousands of officers are involved in shootings every year, resulting in about 400 deaths annually. However, successful criminal prosecution of a police officer for killing someone in the line of duty, if no corruption is alleged, is extremely rare. Even when officers are convicted, the charges are often minimal. For example, Coleman Brackney, a Bella Vista, Oklahoma, police officer who was convicted of misdemeanor negligent homicide in 2010 after shooting an unarmed teen to death while in custody in his cruiser, went on to rejoin the police and was recently appointed chief of police in Sulphur Springs, Oklahoma.

Structural Barriers

Heading: Signals Cause 1

Topic sentence for section 1

Transition

Explanation offers support

Reasons offer support

Effect

Reasons offer support

Example offers support

3There are significant structural barriers to successful police indictment or prosecution. For one, investigations are usually conducted by a combination of police detectives and investigators from the prosecutors’ office. Prosecutors tend to take a greater role when there is a reason to believe that the shooting might not be justified. However, they must rely on the cooperation of the police to gather necessary evidence, including witness statements from the officer involved and other officers at the scene. In some cases they are the only living witnesses to the event.

4The close collaboration between police and prosecutors, which is an asset in homicide investigations, becomes a hindrance in police shooting cases. In most cases, the prosecutors’ reliance on the cooperation of police creates a fundamental conflict of interest. As a result, prosecutors are often reluctant to aggressively pursue these cases.

5Moreover, the local elected district attorneys often want to avoid being seen as inhibiting police power. Even in communities where distrust of police is common, no prosecutor ever got thrown out of office for defending the police. At its core, the public sees the DA’s office as a defender of law and order and expects these officials to uphold them.

6The way prosecutors handled the Wilson case illustrates this conflict of interest. It took prosecutors months to collect and present evidence to the grand jury. While this has the appearance of thoroughness, it also has the effect of creating a public cooling-off period as short-term demands for prosecution become muted. The radically different approach of the St. Louis County DA is telling. Typically, prosecutors make a short presentation to the grand jury in which they call for specific charges to be considered and then put on their best show of the evidence to see if it passes muster. Indictments occur in more than 90 percent of cases, owing to the low threshold of probable cause and the one-sided nature of the proceedings. In Wilson’s case, however, the DA said he planned to provide the grand jury with all the evidence and allow them to decide, without any prompting, whether an indictment was justified and for what offense.

7The DA hoped to accomplish two things. First, this approach allowed him to absolve himself of any responsibility for the outcome. Second, it served to confuse and undermine the confidence of the grand jury. Normally, the jury is given clear guidance and overrules prosecutors only in extreme cases. By giving the jurors a wide variety of conflicting evidence and little framework in which to evaluate it, the DA is opening the door to a he said/he said dynamic in which they may err on the side of caution and avoid an indictment.

Legal Hurdles

Heading: Signals Cause 2

Topic sentence for section 2

Example offers support

Transition

Effect

8There are also huge legal hurdles to overcome. State laws that authorize police use of force, which are backed up by Supreme Court precedent, give police significant latitude in using deadly force. In the 1989 case Graham v. Connor, the Supreme Court ruled that officers may use force to effect a lawful arrest or if they reasonably believe that the person represents a serious physical threat to the officer or others. This means that police may use force over any resistance to arrest and that if the resistance escalates, officers may escalate their force. The court also said that the totality of circumstances must be judged with an understanding of the split-second nature of police decision-making.

9Furthermore, in Missouri and many other states, even a perceived effort to take an officer’s gun justifies the use of deadly force. Therefore, in judging the reasonableness of the officer’s actions, the jury may consider factors such as the alleged perpetrator’s size and previous actions as well as the officer’s training and guidance. All this creates numerous avenues for justifying police action based on the officer’s reasonable understanding of the situation rather than a more objective post hoc assessment.

Reasons offer support

10Juror mindset creates yet another challenge to successful indictments and prosecutions. Grand juries and criminal court juries consist of local residents. Even in periods of heightened concern about police misconduct, most citizens retain a strong bias in favor of police. Popular culture and political discourse are suffused with commentaries about both the central importance of police in maintaining the basic structural integrity of society and the dangerous nature of their work. In addition, the legal standard for judging police misconduct calls on jurors to put themselves in the officers’ shoes, further strengthening the tendency to identify with the police.

Race Relations

Heading: Signals Cause 3

Topic sentence for section 3

Example offers support

11Another important dynamic in police prosecutions is the state of race relations in the United States. Despite the rhetoric about being a post-racial society, racial divisions and bias remain omnipresent in American society and nowhere more than in the realm of criminal justice. There is abundant evidence of jury bias in a variety of racially disparate criminal justice outcomes, including false convictions, application of the death penalty, and drug convictions. Research shows that whites have a generally more positive view of the police than blacks do. The sad reality is that white jurors are much more likely to side with police, regardless of the race of the officer and the person killed. This was seen in the Rodney King prosecutions in California, in which a mostly white suburban state court jury did not convict four Los Angeles Police Department officers in the severe beating of King after a high-speed car chase, despite the incident’s being videotaped. (The jury acquitted three of the four officers and deadlocked on a charge of excessive force against one officer.) A more diverse federal jury later found two of the officers guilty of violating King’s civil rights.

Conclusion: Refers back to example in introduction; reviews possible solutions (prosecute police misconduct on federal level) before offering solutions of his own in paragraphs 14—16

12Regardless of what happens in Brown’s case, there are no simple fixes for these problems. Advocates such as the Rev. Al Sharpton have called for a federal prosecution. Even if federal officials get involved, they must bring a different kind of charge, related to civil rights violations. While this legal twist of logic has been an important check on failed state legal processes going back to the civil rights fights of the 1950s and 1960s, it is not a substitute for local criminal prosecution, especially in an era of heightened resistance to federal legitimacy.

13Internal administrative accountability is sorely lacking. In “Jammed Up: Bad Cops, Police Misconduct, and the New York City Police Department,” Robert Kane and Michael White show that police rarely face internal disciplinary charges for use of force. Recent reports from Philadelphia and Seattle show that even when officers are subject to discipline, the majority of such cases end up being overturned by arbitrators or courts as a result of extensive due process protections for police officers.

Transitions signal proposed solutions (creating a “blue desk,” reforming laws on use of force, demilitarizing the police)

14Instead, states should create a police prosecutor’s office, or blue desk, that is more removed from local politics. While relying on state attorneys general has its own challenges, the outcomes are likely to be viewed as more legitimate. These blue desks could become repositories of expertise on police prosecutions. Even if tied to state politics, they might be better able to insulate themselves from accusations of overly aggressive prosecutions as well as charges of not supporting the police.

15Laws on the use of force need reform. Police shootings were much more common in the 1970s when regulations about the use of force were even looser. In response to public outcries and rioting in the 1960s and ’70s, local police began to tighten up regulations and offer training to officers, resulting in significant reductions in shootings. The 1984 Supreme Court case Tennessee v. Garner institutionalized some of these changes nationally, including making it unlawful for police to shoot a fleeing suspect. Since then, however, the courts have mostly expanded police authorization to use force.

16Finally, the U.S. needs to dial back the dramatic expansion of police power over the last forty years. For example, the growing prevalence of paramilitary SWAT teams and the ongoing war on drugs have significantly contributed to excessive use of force. In part this happened through the combined direct enforcement practices of these two types of policing. But they also contributed indirectly to a larger ethos of militarized patrolling that equates policing with the use of force and a war footing. The public and its representatives need to realize that there are better ways to prevent crime and serve the community than licensing excessive police force.

Visualize Cause-and-Effect Essays: Create Graphic Organizers

Graphic Organizers 18.1, 18.2, and 18.3 show the basic organization of three types of causal analysis essays.

✵ Graphic Organizer 18.1 shows the organization of an essay that examines either causes or effects.

✵ Graphic Organizer 18.2 shows the organization of an essay that examines a chain of causes and effects.

✵ Graphic Organizer 18.3 shows two possible arrangements for an essay that focuses on multiple causes and effects.

For more on creating a graphic organizer, see Chapter 2.

All three types of causal analyses include an introduction (which identifies the event, provides background information, and states a thesis) as well as a conclusion. Notice in Graphic Organizers 18.2 and 18.3 that causes are presented before effects. Although this is the typical arrangement, writers sometimes use the reverse organization, discussing effects first and then causes to create a sense of drama or surprise.

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GRAPHIC ORGANIZER 18.1 The Basic Structure of an Essay on Causes or Effects

The basic structure includes, Title, Introduction, Body, and Conclusion. Introduction: Background information about the event or phenomenon. Thesis statement. Body includes two possibilities. First: Cause A, Cause B, and Cause C, lead to one Effect. Second: Cause leads to Effect A, Effect B, and Effect C. Conclusion: Reminder of thesis. Final statement. The process from title to conclusion leads through the introduction and body respectively.

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GRAPHIC ORGANIZER 18.2 The Basic Structure of an Essay on a Chain of Causes and Effects

The basic structure includes, Title, Introduction, Body, and Conclusion. Introduction: Background information about the event or phenomenon. Thesis statement. Body: Cause A leads to Effect A, which becomes to Cause B. Cause B leads to Effect B, which becomes Cause C, which leads to Effect C, and so on. Conclusion: Reminder of thesis. Final statement. The process from title to conclusion leads through the introduction and body respectively.

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GRAPHIC ORGANIZER 18.3 The Basic Structure of an Essay on Multiple Causes and Effects

The basic structure includes, Title, Introduction, Body, and Conclusion. Introduction: Background information about the event or phenomenon. Thesis statement. Body: Arrangement 1: Cause A, Cause B, Cause C lead to Effect A, Effect B, Effect C. Arrangement 2: Cause A and Effect A lead to Cause B and Effect B, which lead to Cause C and Effect C. Conclusion: Reminder of thesis. Final statement. The process from title to conclusion leads through introduction and body respectively.

READING

How Labels Like Black and Working Class Shape Your Identity

Adam Alter

Adam Alter is an associate professor of marketing and psychology at New York University. His research focuses on decision making, and he has published numerous articles in academic journals in psychology. He has also published a number of articles for general readers in publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Psychology Today. This reading is from Alter’s 2013 book Drunk Tank Pink and Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave. Before reading, preview the selection and make connections by thinking about the way labels affect how people are treated. Think of instances that illustrate or disprove this idea. While reading, highlight the effects Alter names as resulting from racial bias or social labeling. Then compare your notes with Graphic Organizer 18.4.

1Long ago, humans began labeling and cataloguing each other. Eventually, lighter-skinned humans became “whites,” darker-skinned humans became “blacks,” and people with intermediate skin tones became “yellow-,” “red-,” and “brown-skinned.” These labels don’t reflect reality faithfully, and if you lined up 1,000 randomly selected people from across the earth, none of them would share exactly the same skin tone. Of course, the continuity of skin tone hasn’t stopped humans from assigning each other to discrete categories like “black” and “white” — categories that have no basis in biology but nonetheless go on to determine the social, political, and economic well-being of their members.

2Social labels aren’t born dangerous. There’s nothing inherently problematic about labeling a person “right-handed” or “black” or “working class,” but those labels are harmful to the extent that they become associated with meaningful character traits. At one end of the spectrum, the label “right-handed” is relatively free of meaning. We don’t have strong stereotypes about right-handed people, and calling someone right-handed isn’t tantamount to calling them unfriendly or unintelligent.

3In contrast, the terms “black” and “working class” are laden with the baggage of associations, perhaps some of them positive, but many of them negative. During the height of the civil-rights struggle, one teacher showed just how willingly children adopt new labels. On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered, and the next day thousands of American children went to school with a combination of misinformation and confusion. In Riceville, Iowa, Stephen Armstrong asked his teacher, Jane Elliott, why “they shot that king.” Elliott explained that the “king” was a man named King who was fighting against the discrimination of “Negroes.” The class of white students was confused, so Elliott offered to show them what it might be like to experience discrimination themselves.

4Elliott began by claiming that the blue-eyed children were better than the brown-eyed children. The children resisted at first. The brown-eyed majority was forced to confront the possibility that they were inferior, and the blue-eyed minority faced a crisis when they realized that some of their closest friendships were now forbidden. Elliott explained that the brown-eyed children had too much melanin, a substance that darkens the eyes and makes people less intelligent. Melanin caused the “brownies,” as Elliott labeled them, to be clumsy and lazy. Elliott asked the brownies to wear paper armbands — a deliberate reference to the yellow armbands that Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust. Elliott reinforced the distinction by telling the brown-eyed children not to drink directly from the water fountain, as they might contaminate the blue-eyed children. Instead, the brownies were forced to drink from paper cups. Elliott also praised the blue-eyed children and offered them privileges, like a longer lunch break, while she criticized the brown-eyed children and forced them to end lunch early. By the end of the day, the blue-eyed children had become rude and unpleasant toward their classmates, while even the gregarious brown-eyed children were noticeably timid and subservient.

5News of Elliott’s demonstration traveled quickly, and she was interviewed by Johnny Carson. The interview lasted a few brief minutes, but its effects persist today. Elliott was pilloried by angry white viewers across the country. One angry white viewer scolded Elliott for exposing white children to the discrimination that black children face every day. Black children were accustomed to the experience, the viewer argued, but white children were fragile and might be scarred long after the demonstration ended. Elliott responded sharply by asking why we’re so concerned about white children who experience this sort of treatment for a single day, while ignoring the pain of black children who experience the same treatment across their entire lives. Years later, Elliott’s technique has been used in hundreds of classrooms and in workplace-discrimination training courses, where adults experience similar epiphanies. Elliott’s approach shows how profoundly labels shape our treatment of other people and how even arbitrary damaging labels have the power to turn the brightest people into meek shadows of their potential selves.

6Four years before Jane Elliott’s classroom demonstration, two psychologists began a remarkable experiment at a school in San Francisco. Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson set out to show that the recipe for academic achievement contains more than raw intellect and a dozen years of schooling. Rosenthal and Jacobson kept the details of the experiment hidden from the teachers, students, and parents; instead, they told the teachers that their test was designed to identify which students would improve academically over the coming year — students they labeled “academic bloomers.” In truth, the test was an IQ measure with separate versions for each school grade, and it had nothing to do with academic blooming. As with any IQ test, some of the students scored quite well, some scored poorly, and many performed at the level expected from students of their age group.

7The next phase of the experiment was both brilliant and controversial. Rosenthal and Jacobson recorded the students’ scores on the test, and then labeled a randomly chosen sample of the students as “academic bloomers.” The bloomers performed no differently from the other students — both groups had the same average IQ score — but their teachers were told to expect the bloomers to experience a rapid period of intellectual development during the following year.

8When the new school year arrived, each teacher watched as a new crop of children filled the classroom. The teachers knew very little about each student, except whether they had been described as bloomers three months earlier. As they were chosen arbitrarily, the bloomers should have fared no differently from the remaining students. The students completed another year of school and, just before the year ended, Rosenthal and Jacobson administered the IQ test again. The results were remarkable.

9The first and second graders who were labeled bloomers outperformed their peers by 10—15 IQ points. Four of every five bloomers experienced at least a 10-point improvement, but only half the non-bloomers improved their score by 10 points or more. Rosenthal and Jacobson had intervened to elevate a randomly chosen group of students above their relatively unlucky peers. Their intervention was limited to labeling the chosen students “bloomers,” and remaining silent on the academic prospects of the overlooked majority.

10Observers were stunned by these results, wondering how a simple label could elevate a child’s IQ score a year later. When the teachers interacted with the “bloomers,” they were primed to see academic progress. Each time a bloomer answered a question correctly, her answer seemed to be an early sign of academic achievement. Each time she answered a question incorrectly, her error was seen as an anomaly, swamped by the general sense that she was in the process of blooming.

11During the year, then, the teachers praised these students for their successes, overlooked their failures, and devoted plenty of time and energy to the task of ensuring that they would grow to justify their promising academic labels. The label “bloomer” did not just resolve ambiguity, in other words — it changed the outcome for those students.

EXERCISE 18.3

DRAWING A GRAPHIC ORGANIZER

Using Graphic Organizer 18.3, draw a graphic organizer for “Why the Police Are Rarely Indicted for Misconduct.”

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GRAPHIC ORGANIZER 18.4 The Structure of “How Labels Like Black and Working Class Shape Your Identity”

The basic structure includes, Title, Introduction, Thesis statement, Body Cause: Labeling or Cataloguing, and Conclusion. Title: How Labels Like Black and Working Class Shape Your Identity. Introduction: Labeling has been going on since people first noticed that other skin colors existed. Thesis statement: Categories or labels, such as “black” and “white,” affect all aspects of a person’s life. The Body Cause: Labeling or Cataloguing: Effect A: Racial labels lead to stereotyping. Effect B: Social labels affect how others perceive a person’s intelligence. Effect C: Social labels become associated with positive and negative character traits. Effect D: Labels affect the way we treat people. Effect E: Labels attached to student academic ability affect student academic performance. Conclusion: Because this selection is an excerpt from a longer work, there is no formal conclusion. The process from title to conclusion leads through the introduction, thesis statement and body cause: labelling or cataloguing, respectively.

Integrate Cause and Effect into an Essay

Although some of your essays will focus solely on causal analysis, other essays will combine cause and effect with other patterns. For example, in an essay comparing two popular magazines that have different journalistic styles, you might explain the effects of each style on the reading experience. Use the following tips to integrate causal analyses into essays that rely on other patterns of development:

1. Introduce the causal analysis. Use transitional words and expressions to prepare readers for a causal explanation. For example, in writing about your college president’s decision to expand the Career Planning Center, you might introduce your discussion of causes by writing, “Three primary factors were responsible for her decision.”

2. Keep the causal explanation direct and simple. Since your overall purpose is not to explore causal relationships, an in-depth analysis of causes and effects will distract readers from your main point. So focus on only the most important causes and effects.

3. Use causal analysis to emphasize why particular points or ideas are important. For example, if you are writing an explanation of how to hold a successful yard sale, your readers are more likely to follow your advice to keep the house locked and valuables concealed if you include anecdotes and statistics that demonstrate the effects of not doing so (such as thefts and break-ins during such sales).

HOW WRITERS READ

CAUSE AND EFFECT

THE READING PROCESS

STRATEGIES

BEFORE READING

Preview the essay to get an overview of its content and organization.

Make connections by thinking about the causes behind the effects (or the effects resulting from causes).

AFTER READING

Analyze and evaluate the reading by answering the following questions:

✵ How is the essay relevant to your own experience? What are your reactions to the essay?

✵ What is the writer’s purpose in offering this analysis of causes and/or effects?

✵ What assumptions underlie the explanation? Are they reasonable?

✵ How well does the writer explain the causal relationship? Has the writer provided sufficient evidence to make the causal relationship believable?

✵ Does the writer cover all major causes or effects fairly? Is anything important omitted?

✵ Has the writer avoided the common errors of reasoning, such as confusing chronology with causation (carrying a rabbit’s foot does not cause good luck); mistaking correlation with causation (an increase in sales of shovels and mittens doesn’t mean shoveling causes people to buy mittens); and/or misidentifying causal relationships (does failure in school cause personal problems or vice versa? Maybe both are caused by some third factor)?

EXERCISE 18.4

Apply the questions in the “How Writers Read” box above to the selection “How Labels Like Black and Working Class Shape Your Identity.”

PREWRITING DRAFTING REVISING EDITING & PROOFREADING

A Guided Writing Assignment*

CAUSE AND EFFECT

Your Essay Assignment

Write a causal analysis essay on a topic that you believe would interest readers of your college newspaper. You may consider causes, effects, or both. The following are some options:

✵ the popularity (or lack of popularity) of a public figure

✵ cheating on college exams

✵ a current trend or fad

✵ a major change or decision in your life

✵ a problem or event on campus or in the community

· * The writing process is recursive; that is, you may find yourself revising as you draft or prewriting as you revise. This is especially true when writing on a computer. Your writing process may also differ from project to project and from that of your classmates.

PREWRITING

1 Select a topic from the list above, or create one of your own.

Consider the length of your essay as you choose your topic and decide whether to write about causes, effects, or both.

Example: You couldn’t explore fully both causes and effects of child abuse in a five-page paper.

2 Consider your purpose and audience, and choose a point of view.

Ask yourself these questions:

✵ What is my purpose? A cause-and-effect essay for a college course may be both informative and persuasive.

Example: An essay on academic cheating could examine the causes (informative) and propose policies to help alleviate the problem (persuasive).

✵ Who is my audience? How much do my readers already know about the topic? If your readers are unfamiliar with the topic you are writing about (or if the topic is complex), limit your focus to the most important, obvious, and easily understood causes or effects. If your audience is generally familiar with your topic, then you can deal with less obvious or more complex causes or effects. Take into consideration what your readers will think are the most likely causes or effects.

✵ What point of view is most appropriate given my purpose and audience? Although academic writing usually uses the third person (he, she, they), you might use the first person (I) to relate relevant personal experiences.

3 Discover causes and effects.

Try one or more of the following idea-generating strategies:

✵ Write your topic in the middle of a page. Then alone or with a classmate, brainstorm possible causes and effects, listing causes on the left and effects on the right.

Replay the event in your mind. Ask yourself, “Why did the event happen?” “What happened as a result of it?” Make notes on the answers.

Ask questions (or have a friend ask the questions) about the problem or phenomenon and then write down answers. Did a chain of events cause the phenomenon? Try to identify causes and effects that are not obvious.

Research your topic. Try Googling a keyword and making notes on possible causes and effects.

4 Identify primary causes and effects.

Review your prewriting, and highlight what you see as the primary, or most important, causes and effects. Ask yourself questions like these:

✵ What causes or effects are the most obvious and immediate?

✵ What cause(s) or effects are the most serious? For whom?

✵ What causes or effects will my readers expect me to address?

Example:

Topic

Effects of television violence on young viewers

Primary Effects

✵ An increase in aggressive behavior

✵ A willingness to accept violence as normal

Secondary Effects

Learning inappropriate or offensive words

Work Together

In groups of two or three, test your causes or effects.

1. Take turns presenting your primary causes or effects to the group. First, state your cause(s) or effect(s), and then explain why you think they are important:

Example: I think caused/is an effect of because .

2. Have each member of the group rank each cause or effect as

a. sufficient (enough) on its own

b. a contributing cause or minor effect

c. an unlikely cause or effect

3. Compare notes and discuss what might be the most interesting or persuasive causes or effects to focus on.

Hint: Do not assume that the most obvious or simplest explanation is the only one. If a child often reports to the nurse’s office complaining of a stomachache, a parent may reason that the child has digestive problems, but a closer study of the symptoms may reveal that the stomachaches are the result of stress.

5 Gather evidence to support your thesis.

Compile evidence — facts and statistics, expert opinion, personal observation — to support each cause or effect you will include. (Conduct research as needed — Chapters 21 and 22 can help you find and select sources.) Alone or with another student, consider whether one or more of the other patterns of development would help you support your thesis effectively.

Examples:

✵ A story (narration) could demonstrate the effects a fad diet had on an individual.

✵ A comparison with a fad diet from an earlier era could show likely effects.

Examples of earlier fads that have come and gone could show likely causes.

DRAFTING

6 Draft your thesis statement.

An effective thesis statement should

State the cause-and-effect relationship. Do not leave it to your reader to figure out.Image

The original sentence reads, “Breathing paint fumes in a closed environment can be dangerous. People suffering from asthma and emphysema are particularly vulnerable.” The revised sentence reads, “Breathing paint fumes in a closed environment can be dangerous for people suffering from asthma and emphysema because their lungs are especially sensitive to irritants.”

The word because makes the cause-and-effect connection explicit. Adding their lungs are especially sensitive to irritants makes the cause more specific and focused.

Avoid overly broad or absolute assertions.Image

Example 1. The original sentence reads, “Drugs are the root cause of inner-city crime.” The revised sentence reads, “Drugs are a major cause of inner-city crime.” Example 2. The original sentence reads, “Overemphasizing competitive sports is harmful to the psychological development of young children.” The revised sentence reads, “Overemphasizing competitive sports may be harmful to the psychological development of young children.”

Avoid an overly assertive or dogmatic tone.Image

The original sentence reads, “There is no question that American youths have changed in response to the culture in which they live.” The revised sentence reads, “Substantial evidence suggests that American youths have changed in response to the culture in which they live.”

Working together. In groups of two or three students, take turns reading your thesis statements aloud. While they listen, have group members write down the cause-effect relationship and identify any qualifications. Then, as a group, discuss how writers could make the cause-effect relationship more plausible and specific.

7 Choose a method of organization.

Chronological order works well when a clear sequence of events is apparent.

Most-to-least order works well to highlight one or two particularly important causes.

Least-to-most order works well to create suspense.

Review Graphic Organizers 18.1, 18.2, and 18.3 to find the graphic organizer that is closest to your essay’s basic structure, or use the outline function in your word-processing program to create an outline for your essay.

8 Draft your cause-and-effect essay.

Use the following guidelines to keep your essay on track.

✵ Your introduction should identify the topic and causal relationship as well as draw your reader into the essay. Unless you want to give readers the sense of discovering the cause-effect relationship for themselves, you will likely include the thesis statement as well.

✵ Your body paragraphs should include a clear topic sentence and provide sufficient evidence (examples, statistics, expert opinion, comparisons, and so on). Use transitional words and phrases (such as in addition, furthermore, more important, or finally) as you move from one cause or effect to another, and use transitional sentences to alert readers that you are moving from discussing causes to discussing effects (or vice versa) or shifting to a different pattern of development. Use qualifying words and phrases, such as perhaps, possible, it is likely, and most likely, to limit your claims and avoid a dogmatic tone.

✵ Your conclusion should remind readers of your thesis and draw your essay to a satisfying close.

REVISING

9 Evaluate your draft and revise as necessary.

Use Figure 18.1, “Flowchart for Revising a Cause-and-Effect Essay,” to evaluate and revise your draft.

Image

FIGURE 18.1 Flowchart for Revising a Cause-and-Effect Essay

The flowchart is organized under two columns, Questions and Revision strategies. Question 1: Highlight your thesis. Does it express a qualified, manageable assertion? (Can you prove your thesis?) If yes, proceed to Question 2. If no, use these revision strategies: Use a branching diagram to narrow your topic (see Chapter 4, pp. 100 to 101). Focus on only primary causes or effects. Add qualifying words or phrases to your thesis. Question 2: Place a checkmark by each cause. Mark a cross mark by each effect. Does your essay clearly focus on causes, effects, or both? If yes, proceed to Question 3. If no, use this revision strategy: Reconsider whether you want to explain causes, effects, or both. Will the essay be skimpy if you focus on only one? Will it be too long or too complicated if you discuss both? Question 3: [Bracket] the explanation for each cause or effect. Is each explained fully? If yes, proceed to Question 4. If no, use these revision strategies: Add anecdotes, observations, other details and examples. Do research to locate facts, research studies, statistics, and expert opinions. Question 4: Write the method of organization (chronological, least-to-most, or most-to-least) you used at the top of your essay. Is it clear and effective? Do your ideas progress logically? If yes, proceed to Question 5. If no, use these revision strategies: Choose a different order if necessary. Rearrange your causes, effects, or both. Question 5: Circle any sections where you have recognized readers’ assumptions and either supported or challenged them. Have you identified all likely preconceptions? If yes, proceed to Question 6. If no, use this revision strategy: Brainstorm popular ideas readers might assume about your topic and either support or challenge them. Question 6: Underline each topic sentence. Is each paragraph focused on a separate cause or effect? If yes, proceed to Question 7. If no, use these revision strategies: Combine closely related paragraphs. Split paragraphs that cover more than one cause or effect. Question 7: Reread your introduction and conclusion. Do they provoke thought, engage readers, and provide a sense of completeness? If no, use these revision strategies: Revise your introduction so that it sets the tone of the essay, provides necessary background, and engages readers. Revise the conclusion so that it reaffirms your thesis and brings the essay to a satisfying close.

EDITING & PROOFREADING

10 Edit and proofread your essay.

Refer to Chapter 9 for help with

editing sentences to avoid wordiness, make your verb choices strong and active, and make your sentences clear, varied, and parallel

editing words for tone and diction, connotation, and concrete and specific language

Watch out particularly for wordy sentences and mixed constructions:

1. Revise wordy sentences. Writers often use complex and compound-complex sentences to explain causal relationships. These sentences can sometimes become wordy and confusing, so look for ways to eliminate empty phrases and simplify your wording.Image

The original sentence reads, “As you are already well aware, viruses of certain types in a computer file often create errors that you cannot explain in documents and may eventually result in lost data.” The revised sentence reads, “Certain types of computer viruses often create errors that you cannot explain and may eventually result in lost data.”

2. Revise to eliminate mixed constructions. A mixed construction occurs when a writer connects phrases or clauses that do not fit together in a sentence.Image

The original sentence reads, “Samantha, although she was late for work, but was not reprimanded by her boss.” The revised sentence reads, “Although she was late for work, Samantha was not reprimanded by her boss.”

Using both although and but makes this a mixed sentence. To avoid mixed constructions, check words that join your phrases and clauses. Pay attention to prepositions and conjunctions. Also, check to be sure that the subjects of your sentences can perform the actions described by the verbs. If not, revise the sentence to supply the appropriate verb.

Image

The original sentence reads, “The college hopes all students will take a freshman seminar.” The revised sentence reads, “The college encourages all students to take a freshman seminar.”

Readings: Cause and Effect in Action

STUDENTS WRITE

Why Ban Single-Use Plastics?

Thai Luong

Title: Identifies topic and indicates causal analysis

Thai Luong was asked to write a cause-and-effect essay that identified the causes, effects, or both causes and effects related to a phenomenon that interested him. He decided to examine how banning single-use plastics is affecting individuals and the environment. As you read the essay, notice how he carefully presents both positive and negative effects.

Image

Paragraph 1 reads, “Recently, communities across the country from California to Maine and New York to Hawai’i have begun to pass laws that will eliminate the use of single-use plastic items, such as plastic straws and bags. Their goal is to reduce the plastic waste that clogs our landfills and pollutes our oceans. While some of the effects of such bans are positive, they may also have some surprising negative effects that need to be considered before the bans are introduced on a large scale.” The corresponding annotation reads, “Introduction and provides background; concludes with thesis statement that identifies and multiple effects (positive and negative) and suggests essay’s organization.” Thesis statement, “While some of the effects of such bans are positive, they may also have some surprising negative effects that need to be considered before the bans are introduced on a large scale,” is double underlined. The cause, “eliminate the use of single-use plastic items, such as plastic straws and bags,” is highlighted. The effects, “reduce the plastic waste that clogs our landfills and pollutes our oceans,” is highlighted. Paragraph 2 reads, “The ban of plastic straws will produce many positive effects on the environment. Single-use plastic straws are typically too small to be recycled because they fall through the machinery used to sort recyclables, so they end up in the trash (Stockton). Because they are so light, they often get pulled from trash cans and garbage trucks by the wind, carried into bodies of water, float downstream to oceans, and wash up on beaches. A 20 15 article in Science magazine estimated that over 7 million plastic straws end up on U S beaches every year (qtd. In Stockton). For these reasons, many localities, such as New York, Seattle, and San Francisco, have established plastic straw bans (“Why”), and within two to three years, a number of large chains that serve food, including Starbucks, American Airlines, and Hyatt hotels, will follow suit, eliminating plastic straws and stirrers (Corbett). Banning single-use” (the paragraph continues on next page.) The corresponding annotations read, “Cause 1: Positive effects identified in topic sentence” and “Support: Uses evidence from sources to support positive effects (negative effects will be eliminated).” The cause, “ban of plastic straws” is highlighted. The topic sentence, “The ban of plastic straws will produce many positive effects on the environment,” is double underlined. The effects, “they end up in the trash,” “pulled from trash cans and garbage trucks by the wind, carried into bodies of water, float downstream to oceans, and wash up on beaches,” and “7 million plastic straws end up on U S beaches every year” are highlighted.

Image

The first paragraph is a continuation of paragraph 2. It reads, “plastic straws is one way that municipalities and businesses can positively impact the reduction of waste in landfills and bodies of water.” Paragraph 3 reads, “Unfortunately, eliminating plastic straws will also have an adverse effect on members of the disabled community, including individuals who have mobility and strength issues that make it difficult for them to hold a cup and those whose hands move or shake without warning (Vallely). Paper straws are not strong enough for these consumers, and reusable glass or bamboo straws need to be washed after every use (Isom and Shughart) and present a danger to disabled users who may break such straws by accident (Vigdor). According to Katherine Carroll of the Center for Disability Rights in New York, ’Plastic straws are an accessible way for people with certain disabilities to consume food and drinks, and it seems the blanket bans are not taking into account that they need straws and also that plastic straw replacements are not accessible to people’ (Martinez).” The corresponding annotations read, “Topic Sentence: Negative effects announced in topic sentence transition emphasis shift” and “Support: Uses evidence from sources to support negative effects.” The topic sentence, “eliminating plastic straws will also have an adverse effect on members of the disabled community, including individuals who have mobility and strength issues that make it difficult for them to hold a cup and those whose hands move or shake without warning,” is double underlined. the transition, “unfortunately,” is underlined. The negative effects “Paper straws are not strong enough”, “reusable glass or bamboo straws need to be washed after every use”, and “present a danger” are highlighted. Paragraph 4 reads, “In addition to banning single-use plastic straws, communities across the country also are working to ban or tax single-use plastic bags because they can have a negative impact on the environment. These bags can choke birds and fish and float into tree branches where they are difficult to remove. In addition, the production of these bags, which are typically used for just twenty minutes, uses up precious fossil fuels (Gosden). So far, only California, Hawai’i, and New York have banned the use of plastic bags statewide, but cities such as Boston, Chicago, Seattle, and Washington, D C, restrict their use or charge a per-bag fee (’State Plastic and Paper Bag’). The result of a ban on single-use plastic bags could be good news for the environment.” The corresponding annotations read, “Cause 2: Positive effects are identified in the topic sentence; transition indicates second type of single-use plastic item” and “Support: Uses evidence from sources positive effects.” The topic sentence, “In addition to banning single-use plastic straws,” is underlined. The topic sentence, “communities across the country also are working to ban or tax single-use plastic bags because they can have a negative impact on the environment,” is double underlined. The positive effects, “can choke birds and fish”,” float into tree branches”, “uses up precious fossil fuels”, and “good news for the environment” are highlighted. Paragraph 5 reads, “Although this kind of ban sounds like a sensible idea on the surface, eliminating plastic bags may actually have a negative effect on the environment by creating more trash and waste. According to Rebecca Taylor, an economist from the University of Sydney, California cities that implemented a ban on plastic bags could wind up having to get rid of 80 million more pounds of paper bags every year (Rosalsky). Taylor also estimates that many consumers end up replacing the free plastic bags they get from the grocery store with thicker garbage bags, leading to a 120 percent increase in sales of four-gallon bags (Rosalsky).” The corresponding annotations read, “Topic sentence: Negative effects announced in topic sentence; transition emphasizes shift” and “Support: Uses evidence from sources to support negative effects.” The transition, “Although this kind of ban sounds like a sensible idea on the surface,” is underlined. The topic sentence, “eliminating plastic bags may actually have a negative effect on the environment by creating more trash and waste,” is double underlined. The effects, “negative effects,” “could wind up having to get rid of 80 million more pounds of paper bags every year,” “many consumers end up replacing the free plastic bags they get from the grocery store with thicker garbage bags,” and “120 percent increase in sales of four-gallon bags” are highlighted.

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Paragraph 6 reads, “While the push to ban single-use plastic items is motivated by a worthy cause—to combat the growing mountain of plastics in landfills, waterways, and beaches—such bans often turn out to have surprising—and concerning—effects. Rather than focusing on banning plastic straws and bags, we need to find creative strategies to encourage people to adopt reusable substitutes or to find ways to recycle plastic materials effectively. Doing so would not only help Earth but also benefit the people that inhabit our planet.” The corresponding annotation reads, “Conclusion: Revisits cause and effects and lends closure by encouraging creative thinking for solutions.” The cause, “ban single-use plastic items” is highlighted. The effects, “to combat the growing mountain of plastics in landfills, waterways, and Beaches,” is highlighted. Works cited are as follows. Corbett, Erin. “These Eight Companies Are Ditching Plastic Straws. Here’s How They Are Replacing Them.” Fortune (Italicized), 11 July 2018, w w w dot fortune dot com slash 2018 slash 07 slash 11 slash ditching hyphen plastic hyphen straws hyphen replacements. Gosden, Emily. “Five Reasons Why Our Plastic Bag Habit Is Bad.” The Telegraph (Italicized) [London], 24 July 2015, w w w dot tele graph dot co dot u k slash news slash earth slash environment slash 11759608 slash Five hyphen reasons hyphen why hyphen our hyphen plastic hyphen bag habit hyphen is hyphen bad doth t m l. Isom, Brian, and William F. Shughart II. “Replacements for Plastic Straws Have Their Own Problems.” Duluth News Tribune (Italicized), 11 August 2018, w w w dot duluth news tribune dotcom slash opinion slash 4484642 hyphen national hyphen view hyphen replacements hyphen plastic hyphen straws hyphen have hyphen their hyphen own hyphen problems. Letter. Martinez, Gina. “’Disabled People Are Not Part of the Conversation.’ Advocates Speak Out against Plastic Straw Bans.” Time (Italicized), 12 July 2018, w w w dot time dotcom slash5335955 slash plastic hyphen straws hyphen disabled. Rosalsky, Greg. “Are Plastic Bag Bans Garbage?” N P R (Italicized), 9 April 2019, w w w dot n p r dot o r g slash sections slash money slash 2019 slash 04 slash 09 slash 711181385 slash are hyphen plastic hyphen bag hyphen bans garbage. “State Plastic and Paper Bag.” National Conference of State Legislatures, 2019, w w w dot n c s l dot o r g slash research slash environment hyphen and hyphen natural hyphen resources slash plastic hyphen bag hyphen legislation dot a s p x. Stockton, Nick. “How Plastic Straws Slip through the Cracks of Waste Management.” Wired (Italicized), 26 July 2018, w w w dot wired dotcom slash story slash how hyphen plastic hyphen straws hyphen slip hyphen through hyphen the hyphen cracks hyphen of hyphen waste hyphen management.

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Vallely, Erin. “Grasping at Straws: The Ableism of the Straw Ban.” Center for Disability Rights (Italicized), w w w dot c d r n y s dot o r g slash blog slash disability hyphen dialogue slash grasping hyphen at hyphen straws hyphen the hyphen ableism hyphen of hyphen the hyphen straw hyphen ban. Accessed 23 July 2019. Vigdor, Neil. “Fatal Accident with Metal Straw Highlights a Risk.” The New York Times (Italicized), 11 July 2019, w w w dot n y times dot com slash 2019 slash 07 slash 11 slash world slash europe slash metal hyphen straws hyphen death dot h t m l. “Why Plastic Straws Are Being Banned.” Town Square: Business Resource Center (Italicized), 2019, squareup.com slash town square slash why hyphen plastic hyphen straws hyphen are hyphen being hyphen banned.

Analyzing the Writer’s Technique

1. Purpose Describe Luong’s purpose.

2. Patterns What other patterns of development does Luong use to support his thesis and maintain readers’ interest?

3. Introduction and Conclusion Evaluate Luong’s introduction and conclusion. How effectively do they stimulate the reader’s interest and lend closure to the essay?

Thinking Critically about Cause and Effect

1. Tone Describe the tone of Luong’s essay. What words and phrases suggest his attitude toward the banning of single-use plastics? Given his tone, who do you think was his audience?

2. Sources Evaluate Luong’s use of sources. Are his sources convincing? What additional types of sources might have made his claims more convincing? Why?

3. Objectivity How objective does Luong seem in his presentation of information on the effects of banning single-use plastics? Use evidence from the essay to support your claim.

Responding to the Essay

1. Discussion Rate your level of concern (1 being the least concerned and 5 being the most concerned) about landfills being filled and oceans being polluted by single-use plastics. Share your rating with your peers and explain why you rated yourself as you did. Would you be in favor of banning plastic straws and bags in your community? Why or why not? How do you think most people would react to the ban? Would you be willing to pay for bags when you shop in an effort to reduce the number being used? If not, how could communities restrict the number of bags being used?

2. Reaction In paragraph 6, Luong states that adopting reusable substitutes or finding ways to recycle materials effectively “would not only help Earth but also benefit the people that inhabit our planet.” The benefits to the Earth are obvious, but how do you think the proposed strategies could benefit people?

3. Journal Luong focused on both the negative and the positive effects of banning single-use plastics. Write a journal entry on the following topic: How would your life be affected, both positively and negatively, by the banning of one of the following: firearms, video games, smoking, alcoholic beverages, or television?

READING

Why Summer Makes Us Lazy

Maria Konnikova

Maria Konnikova is the author of several books, including Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes (2013), The Confidence Game (2016), and The Biggest Bluff (2020). She has published numerous articles for publications such as Scientific American, The Atlantic, Slate, and the Wall Street Journal. In addition, she hosts the podcast The Grift, about con artists. The essay that appears here was originally published in The New Yorker’s Elements blog in 2013. Before reading, preview and make connections by thinking about how seasons of the year affect your mood and performance. While reading, highlight the results of each scientific study that Konnikova uses to support the cause-and-effect relationship she proposes.

JUST-IN-TIME TIP

Organizing Cause-and-Effect Relationships

This reading explores detailed and complex cause-and-effect relationships. To strengthen your concentration, understanding, and recall, organize these causal relationships using a chart similar to the one below; the first entry is provided to help you get started.

Variable

Cause

Effect

Motivation and productivity (paras. 2—3)

✵ Bad weather

✵ Good weather

✵ Motivation/productivity falls.

✵ Motivation/productivity increases.

Quality of critical thinking (4)



Mood (7—8)



“Goldilocks” effect (9)



Creating this chart will keep you focused as you read and make it easy to review the reading for class discussion and written response.

See Just-in-Time Guide, section 6a.

1In his meticulous diaries, written from 1846 to 1882, the Harvard librarian John Langdon Sibley complains often about the withering summer heat: “The heat wilts & enervates me & makes me sick,” he wrote in 1852. Sibley lived before the age of air-conditioning, but recent research suggests that his observation is still accurate: summer really does tend to be a time of reduced productivity. Our brains do, figuratively, wilt.

2One of the key issues is motivation: when the weather is unpleasant, no one wants to go outside, but when the sun is shining, the air is warm, and the sky is blue, leisure calls. A 2008 study using data from the American Time Use Survey found that, on rainy days, men spent, on average, thirty more minutes at work than they did on comparatively sunny days. In 2012, a group of researchers from Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill conducted a field study of Japanese bank workers and found a similar pattern: bad weather made workers more productive, as measured by the time it took them to complete assigned tasks in a loan-application process.

3When the weather improved, in contrast, productivity fell. To determine why this was the case, the researchers assigned Harvard students data entry on either sunny or rainy days. The students were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: before starting to work, they were either shown six photographs of outdoor activities in nice weather, such as sailing or eating outdoors, or were asked to describe their daily routines. The researchers found that participants were less productive when they’d viewed pleasant outdoor photographs. Instead of focusing on their work, they focused on what they’d rather be doing — whether or not it was actually sunny or rainy outside (though the effect was stronger on sunny days). The mere thought of pleasant alternatives made people concentrate less.

4But each season has its share of attractive days — and a skier’s mind would likely have many opportunities to wander in the dead of winter. There’s evidence, however, that in summer, our thinking itself may simply become lazier. In 1994, Gerald Clore, a pioneer in researching how ambient mood-altering phenomena affect cognition and judgment, found that pleasant weather can often lead to a disconcerting lapse in thoughtfulness. Clore’s team approached a hundred and twenty-two undergraduates on days with either good or bad weather and asked them to participate in a survey on higher education. The better the weather, the easier it was to get the students to buy into a less-than-solid argument: on days that were sunny, clear, and warm, people were equally persuaded by both strong and weak arguments in favor of end-of-year comprehensive exams. When the weather was rainy, cloudy, and cold, their critical faculties improved: in that condition, only the strong argument was persuasive. Clore and his colleagues concluded that pleasant weather led people to embrace more heuristic-based thinking — that is, they relied heavily on mental shortcuts at the expense of actual analysis.

5Summer weather — especially the muggy kind — may also reduce both our attention and our energy levels. In one study, high humidity lowered concentration and increased sleepiness among participants. The weather also hurt their ability to think critically: the hotter it got, the less likely they were to question what they were told.

6The shift toward mindlessness may be rooted in our emotions. One common finding is a link between relative sunshine and happiness: although people who live in sunnier places, like Southern California, are no happier than those who live in the harsher conditions of the Midwest, day-to-day variations in sunshine make a difference. People get happier as days get longer and warmer in the approach to the summer solstice, and less happy as days get colder and shorter. They also report higher life satisfaction on relatively pleasant days. The happiest season, then, is summer.

7A good mood, generally speaking, has in turn been linked to the same type of heuristic, relatively mindless thinking that Clore observed in his pleasant-weather participants. On the flip side, a bad mood tends to stimulate more rigorous analytical thought. Weather-related mood effects can thus play out in our real-life decisions — even weighty ones. In one recent project, the psychologist Uri Simonsohn found that students were more likely to enroll in a university that was famous for its academic rigor if they visited on days that were cloudy. When the weather turned sour, he concluded, the value they placed on academics increased.

8There’s a limit, however, to heat’s ability to boost our mood: when temperatures reach the kind of summer highs that mark heat waves all over the world, the effect rapidly deteriorates. In a 2013 study of perceived well-being, the economist Marie Connolly found that on days when the temperature rose above ninety degrees, the negative impact on happiness levels was greater than the consequences of being widowed or divorced.

9Conversely, the effects of heat on our brains aren’t entirely negative. Many of the behaviors that psychologists study follow a so-called inverted-U pattern: as one factor steadily increases, a related behavior improves, plateaus, and then starts to deteriorate. A famous example of this is the Yerkes-Dodson curve, which charts the effect of stress on how well someone performs a given task. If we experience too little stress, or too much, our performance suffers. Like Goldilocks, we want to get it just right. Similarly, our cognitive abilities seem to improve up to a certain temperature, and then, as the temperature continues to rise, quickly diminish. An early study suggested that the optimal temperature hovered around seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit. A more recent review of the literature shows a target of twenty-seven degrees Celsius, or roughly eighty-one degrees Fahrenheit. (An important caveat, however, is that neither of these studies take humidity or sunshine into account, two major factors when it comes to assessing the influence of summer weather on behavior.)

10Maybe best of all, blistering heat does give us a perfectly good reason to eat ice cream: studies have shown again and again that blood glucose levels are tied to cognitive performance and willpower. A bite of something frozen and sweet, boosting depleted glucose stores, might be just what a brain needs as the temperature spikes.

Understanding the Reading

1. Summarizing List the changes in behavior Konnikova contends are affected by summer weather.

2. Details On what segment of the population did Uri Simonsohn conduct his research? Why did he choose to use this particular group of people as his research subjects?

3. Recommendations According to Konnikova, what type of food might help to raise glucose level and boost brain function in the summertime?

Analyzing the Writer’s Technique

1. Thesis Identify Konnikova’s thesis statement.

2. Evidence The author includes evidence consisting of data from the American Time Use Survey and the results of a research study by Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Why do you think she includes these sources of information?

3. Vocabulary Explain the meaning of each of the following words as it is used in the reading: meticulous (para. 1), enervates (1), ambient (4), cognition (4), and heuristic (4).

Thinking Critically about Cause and Effect

1. Evaluation Konnikova cites research conducted in the United States and Japan but none conducted in Europe. She also includes studies that were conducted on very specific segments of the population. How might broadening her research help strengthen the essay?

2. Tone How would you describe the tone of the essay? Use examples from the text to support your answer.

3. Fact or Opinion In paragraph 10, Konnikova states, “A bite of something frozen and sweet, boosting depleted glucose stores, might be just what a brain needs as the temperature spikes.” Is Konnikova’s statement fact or opinion? How do you know?

4. Purpose What does Konnikova hope to accomplish by writing this essay?

Responding to the Reading

1. Discussion The results of research conducted by Harvard and the University of North Carolina suggest that bad weather makes workers more productive. As a student, have you found this to be true? Why or why not? What about workers in general? Are there certain factors—for example, type of work or type of worker—that might affect the veracity of this statement? What might those factors be?

2. Journal What is your favorite season of the year? Write a journal entry in which you explain why you favor this season over the other three.

3. Essay Write an essay in which you identify one or more surprising ways in which a person could improve his or her mental health.

Working Together

Using the information in Konnikova’s essay, work with a partner to write an advertisement for ice cream as being the “magic bullet” for cognitive performance. Your ad must include both words and images. Try to capture the attention of your readers and leave them with a message they will remember. Be prepared to share your advertisement with the class.

EXPLORE, RESEARCH, WRITE

In “Why Summer Makes Us Lazy,” Maria Konnikova uses information from scientific studies to support her thesis that warm summer weather causes laziness. Many other researchers have also explored the impact of weather and the seasons on our bodies and minds, including the following:

✵ “Seasonal Affective Disorder,” published by the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (March 2016)

✵ “Five Ways Change of Seasons Might Affect Your Mental Health,” a blog post written by Joel L. Young, a psychiatrist and director of a center for behavioral medicine (Psychology Today, 20 October 2017)

✵ “How the Seasons Can Affect Your Body’s Metabolism,” published on the Cleveland Clinic’s Web site (17 December 2015)

Using your own ideas and one or more of the selections included here, write a thoughtful cause-and-effect essay in which you discuss the effects another of the seasons can have on the human mind or body. (The effects may be negative, positive, or a combination of the two.) Be sure to incorporate at least one quotation from the readings and cite it correctly at the end of the essay.

The Guided Writing Assignment in this chapter can walk you through the process of writing a cause-and-effect essay; for help with evaluating sources, see Chapter 21; for help choosing and synthesizing ideas from sources, see Chapter 22; for help with documenting sources, see Chapter 23.

READING

More Driving, More Dying

Joe Cortright

Joe Cortright is an economist and the president of Impresa, a consulting firm that specializes in urban economics. He also serves as a senior policy advisor for CEOs for Cities and was formerly the executive officer of the Oregon Legislature’s Trade and Economic Development Committee. This reading originally appeared on CityObservatory.org, a Web site managed by Cortright and devoted to the analysis of issues, ideas, and policies that affect urban areas. Before reading, preview and make connections by thinking about the automobile accidents that you have heard and read about and the reasons that they occurred. While reading, highlight the reasons that the number of automobile injuries and fatalities is increasing.

JUST-IN-TIME TIP

Reading Statistics

This reading makes use of statistics to explain what causes and what does not cause traffic deaths. It is easy to get lost in the statistical details. They are important in supporting the author’s thesis but not necessary to remember in and of themselves. More important is what each set of statistics contributes to the causal analysis. Write marginal notes next to reports of statistics so you do not have to reread them later to figure out, again, what they mean. For example, paragraph 3 cites statistics that support an effect—an increase in the number of traffic deaths; the cause of that increase is discussed later in the essay.

See Just-in-Time Guide, section 4a.

1Four days before Christmas, on a Wednesday morning just after dawn, Elizabeth Meyers was crossing Sandy Boulevard in Portland, near 78th Avenue, just about a block from her neighborhood library. She was struck and killed, becoming Portland’s 50th traffic fatality of 2017 (Ryan).

2Vision Zero, a bold road-safety campaign with its origins in Scandinavia has been sweeping through the US for the past decades, prompting all kinds of tough-talking, goal-setting traffic safety campaigns. And admirably, Vision Zero is designed to be a results-oriented, no-nonsense, and data-driven effort. Fair enough.

3But judging by the grisly traffic statistics of 2017, we’re failing. Almost everywhere you look, traffic injuries and crashes are increasing. The final national numbers aren’t in, but the trend is clearly toward higher road deaths. To focus on Portland for a moment, where Elizabeth Meyers was killed, the 50 traffic deaths recorded in 2017 were the highest number in two decades. After years of declines, traffic deaths in Portland have spiked in the past three years (see Figure 1).

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Fig. 1 Portland Traffic Deaths, 1996—2017 (Source: Portland Bureau of Transportation, press reports)

The vertical axis depicts the number of road deaths, which ranges from 0 to 70 in increments of 10. The horizontal axis depicts the years from 1996 to 2017 labeled in increments of 1 year. The approximate data are as follows. The line starts at 59 in 1996, steeply drops to 49 in 1997 and further declines to 28 by 2000. The line inclines to 46 by 2002, falls to 28 by 2006, and fluctuates through 2003 to 2013 and reaches 29 by 2014. The line further increases steadily and reaches 50 by 2017.

After averaging 31 traffic deaths per year between 2005 and 2014, traffic deaths have jumped 60% over the past three years.

4There’s a lot of finger-pointing about distracted driving (and red herrings, like distracted pedestrians), but there’s a simpler explanation for what’s at work here. Americans are driving more, and as a result, more people are dying on the roads. As the Victoria Transportation Policy Institute’s Todd Litman noted, international comparisons make it clear that miles driven are a significant and independent risk factor that’s much higher in the US than in other developed countries. As Litman puts it:

… don’t blame high traffic death rates on inadequate traffic safety efforts, blame them on higher per capita vehicle travel, and therefore automobile-dependent transportation planning and sprawl-inducing development policies; those are the true culprits.

5The effects are big enough to show up in mortality statistics: American children are twice as likely to die in automobile crashes as are children in other advanced countries (Walker), which is a major contributor to the higher child mortality rate in the US.

6After more than a decade of moderation in driving (motivated largely by high gas prices), driving in the US started increasing again when oil prices collapsed in 2014. Data from the U.S. Department of Transportation trace a clear uptick in driving in the past three years (Figure 2, Policy).

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Fig. 2 Traffic Volume Trends (Source: Policy and Governmental Affairs, Office of Highway Policy Information, U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration. “October 2017 Traffic Volume Trends. Figure 1—Moving 12-Month Total on All Highways.” www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/travel_monitoring/17octtvt/figure1.cfm.)

The vertical axis depicts the vehicle-distance traveled in units of billion miles, which ranges from 2,250 to 3,250 in increments of 50. The horizontal axis depicts the years from 1993 to 2017 labeled in increments of 1 year. The approximate data are as follows. The line starts at 2,250 billion miles in 1993, increased to 3,040 billion miles by 2007, and then declines to reach 2,950 billion miles by 2010. Thereafter the curve increases and fluctuates between 2,950 to 3,000 billion miles until 2014 and then increases steeply to reach the maximum value of 3,210 billion miles by 2017.

7The result inevitably has been increased carnage on the highways.

8There’s some good news out of the Oregon Legislature in the past year. The legislature gave the city permission to set lower speed limits on city streets, and the city has just forwarded a new speed limit of 20 miles per hour that will apply to many of the city’s residential neighborhoods (Njus).

9As important as this move is—excessive speed is a key contributor to fatalities—it does nothing to address the conditions that led to the death of Elizabeth Meyers. Sandy Boulevard is a multi-lane arterial street, the kind that the region’s safety analysis has determined to be the deadliest part of the roadway system (“Regional Transportation”). The city has been working on pedestrian improvements, and efforts to reduce speeding and red-light running. But in the area just east of where Meyers died, a section of roadway controlled by the Oregon Department of Transportation, the state agency rejected city efforts to lower posted speeds:

In response to a community request to reduce the posted 35 MPH speed on the east end of NE Sandy Blvd, traffic speed counts were taken east of 85th Avenue in early 2014 as part of the High Crash Corridor evaluation. 85th percentile speeds were 40.3 MPH. The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) reviews and makes decisions on posted speed reduction requests. ODOT will not consider speed reductions that are 10 MPH or more below the 85th percentile speed. Therefore, ODOT would not approve a speed reduction on outer NE Sandy Blvd near 85th Ave. (City of Portland, Bureau of Transportation, NE Sandy Boulevard High Crash Corridor Safety Plan, 2014, page 5.)

10The grisly trend indicated by the traffic death data of the past three years tells us that as hard as we’re trying to achieve Vision Zero, we’re not trying hard enough. The biggest risk factor is just the sheer amount of driving we do, and with the boost to driving in recent years from lower fuel prices, it was predictable that deaths would increase. If we’re serious about Vision Zero, we ought to be doing more to design places where people can easily live while driving less and where people can walk without regularly confronting speeding automobiles. We clearly have a lot of work to do.

Links

✵ Litman, Todd. “A New Traffic Safety Paradigm.” Planetizen, 18 Dec. 2017, www.planetizen.com/blogs/96324-new-traffic-safety-paradigm. Blog post.

✵ Njus, Elliot. “Portland Poised to Drop Speed Limit to 20 mph on Residential Streets.” The Oregonian, 15 Jan. 2018, www.oregonlive.com/commuting/2018/01/portland_poised_to_drop_speed.html.

✵ “Regional Transportation Safety Strategy.” 2018 Regional Transportation Plan, 6 Dec. 2018, oregonmetro.gov/safety. Resolution no. 18-4894, Metro Council, Portland, Oregon. https://www.oregonmetro.gov/sites/default/files/2019/01/29/2018-Regional-Transportation-Safety-Strategy_FINAL.pdf.

✵ Ryan, Jim. “Police ID Woman Killed in NE Portland Crash.” The Oregonian, 21 Dec. 2017, www.oregonlive.com/portland/2017/12/police_id_woman_killed_in_ne_p.html.

✵ Walker, Alissa. “U.S. Kids Die from Traffic Fatalities at Twice the Rate of Other Wealthy Nations.” Curbed, 10 Jan. 2018, www.curbed.com/2018/1/10/16871152/traffic-deaths-children-vision-zero.

Understanding the Reading

1. Effect According to the author, what effect does the price of gasoline have on the number of traffic injuries and fatalities?

2. Contrast What difference does the author see in the automobile fatality rate of children in the United States as compared to other developed countries?

3. Conclusion What does the author conclude about our efforts to reduce traffic injuries and fatalities?

Analyzing the Writer’s Technique

1. Thesis Identify Cortright’s thesis statement. Is it stated or implied?

2. Sources The author includes several references to scientific studies. How do these references affect your reaction to his analysis? How do they affect the overall tone of the selection?

3. Vocabulary Explain the meaning of each of the following words as it is used in the reading: grisly (para. 3), culprits (4), uptick (6), carnage (7), and arterial (9).

Thinking Critically about Cause and Effect

1. Meaning In paragraph 4, Cortright mentions distracted pedestrians as a reason that some people use to explain the increase in traffic injuries and deaths. He refers to this reason as a red herring. What is the meaning of this term?

2. Evidence Cortright cites a number of sources that he regards as authorities on the topic. Based on the information in the references list, explain how you could determine whether the authors of those sources were in fact authorities. Going beyond the reference list, what other information could you use to determine whether a source was authoritative?

3. Purpose and Audience Why do you think the author wrote this essay? Who do you think he expected to read this selection, and how might his intended audience have influenced the decisions he made as a writer?

4. Tone How would you describe the tone of the essay? Use examples from the text to support your answer.

To learn more about evaluating sources, see Chapter 21.

Responding to the Reading

1. Discussion Do you agree with Cortright’s thesis that the reason there are more highway deaths in the United States is that more people are driving? Why or why not?

2. Journal Are you a help or a hazard on the roads you travel? Write a journal entry in which you examine your driving habits and explain whether you are creating safe or dangerous situations for yourself and others on the road. Are there habits you need to change in order to make the roads safer for other drivers you encounter?

3. Email Using Cortright’s research as your source, write an email to your city’s transportation director in which you present a three-pronged plan for reducing the number of drivers on the streets of your city. Your email should be business-like and use standard email format.

Working Together

In the closing paragraph of “More Driving, More Dying,” Cortright states that we need to design places where people can walk safely. Working with a small group of peers, research at least three ways that our cities could make streets safer for pedestrians. Once you have found the way that you think Cortright and your city officials would most favorably endorse, create a thirty-second television infomercial for it. Be sure to focus on the seriousness of the problem and the benefits of the plan. Be prepared to explain to the class the reason(s) Cortright and city officials would endorse the plan.

EXPLORE, RESEARCH, WRITE

In “More Driving, More Dying,” Cortright uses research to support his claim that more people are dying on U.S. roads because Americans are driving more. Other researchers have also studied the reasons for the ever-increasing number of traffic fatalities. Some reports about this research include the following:

✵ “Motor Vehicle Crash Deaths” by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (6 July 2016)

✵ “Even as Cars Get Safer, Traffic Fatalities Still High” by David Schaper (NPR, 22 August 2018)

✵ “More Cars on the Road, and More Distracted Drivers, Lead to a Jump in U.S. Traffic Deaths” by Mary Wisniewski (NPR, 28 May 2018)

Using your own ideas and one or more of the selections listed above, write a thoughtful cause-and-effect essay that goes beyond what the article tells and presents other reasons for the increase in deaths on U.S. roads. Be sure to include at least two supporting statistics from the readings and cite them correctly at the end of the essay.

The Guided Writing Assignment in this chapter can walk you through the process of writing a cause-and-effect essay. For help with evaluating sources, see Chapter 21; for help choosing and synthesizing ideas from sources, see Chapter 22; for help with documenting sources, see Chapter 23.

Apply Your Skills: Additional Essay Assignments

Write a cause-and-effect essay on one of the following topics, using what you learned about causal analysis in this chapter. Depending on your topic, you may need to conduct research.

For more on locating and documenting sources, see Chapters 22 and 23.

To Express Your Ideas

1. Write an essay explaining the causes of a “bad day” you recently experienced.

2. Suppose you or a friend or relative won a large cash prize in a national contest. Write an essay about the effects of winning the prize.

To Inform Your Reader

3. Young children frequently ask “Why?” Choose a why question you have been asked by a child or think of a why question you have always wondered about (Examples: Why is the sky blue? Why are sunsets red? Why do parrots learn to talk?). Write an essay answering your question. Your audience is young children.

4. Write an essay explaining how you coped with a stressful situation.

5. Write a memo to your supervisor at work explaining the effects of requiring employees to work overtime.

To Persuade Your Reader

6. Write a letter to the dean of academic affairs about a problem at your school. Discuss causes, effects, or both and propose a solution to the problem.

7. Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper explaining the possible effects of a proposed change in your community and urging citizens to take action for or against it.

8. Write a letter to the sports editor of your city’s newspaper. You are a fan of a professional sports team, and you just learned that the team has been sold to new owners who may move the team to a different city. In your letter, explain the effects on the city and the fans if the team moves away.

Cases Using Cause and Effect

9. Your psychology professor invites you to participate in a panel discussion on the psychology of humor. You are required to research this question: What makes a joke funny? Conduct research on the topic and write a paper summarizing your findings for the panel discussion.

10. A controversy has arisen concerning the use of campus computer networks. Students use the college computer system for personal as well as course-related, and some students have complained that the campus network is being used to post messages on social networking sites that defame the character of other students. In a letter to the student newspaper, either defend the students’ right to use the campus computer network to post such messages or call for a policy that limits such use. Give reasons in support of your position.

SYNTHESIZING IDEAS

DISCRIMINATION

Both “Right Place, Wrong Face” and “How Labels Like Black and Working Class Shape Your Identity” deal with the effects of discrimination.

Analyzing the Readings

1. While both authors address discrimination, they use two very different approaches: One focuses on a single personal experience; the other describes two experiments in detail. They also use two different points of view. Explain the advantages and disadvantages of each approach and point of view. To what type(s) of audience does each appeal?

2. Write a journal entry exploring whether you feel the incidents of discrimination in these two essays are typical and representative of discrimination in U.S. society.

Essay Idea

Write an essay in which you describe the effects of discrimination on a particular person or group with which you are familiar. Define what discrimination the group faces and propose solutions. (You need not limit yourself to racial discrimination; you might discuss age, sex, weight, or workplace discrimination, for example.)