Constraints and Barriers to Participation
This week’s study was based on the three types of constraints; structural, interpersonal and intrapersonal.
Structural constraints are mostly brought about by financial shortcomings and the laws of the land. Financial inadequacies are reflected when one does not have the means to get to the venue for a leisure activity or even the total lack of the venue due to the high costs involved in setting up one.
Interpersonal constraints are caused by our interaction with others. This includes a friend who does support your sporting activity while intrapersonal constraints are caused by the individual’s decisions to quit participation in a leisure activity. This includes one’s perception of himself or herself as either too fat or thin and not worthy of being seen by other people.
Intrapersonal constraints are brought about when we become too judgmental of others, forgetting that even we have our own flaws. We should learn to accept ourselves as we are and focus on maximizing our participation in leisurely activities.
Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB)
This week’s lecture discussed the Theory of Planned Behavior which helps us in understanding how we can change one’s behavior. TPB is explained using three considerations; behavioral, normative and control beliefs.
Behavioral beliefs are about one’s attitude towards a behavior; an individual may first consider the consequences of his actions before actually undertaking them. His assessment of the consequences as either positive or negative determines whether he/she undertakes it.
Normative beliefs are about the individual’s perception of the way his behavior will be judged by other people while control beliefs are about the individual’s perception about the ease or difficulty with which a particular behavior can be achieved.
It is a bad idea when our behaviors are influenced by others yet we are the ones who suffer when faced with health problems arising from lack of exercise like obesity. This is better summarized by Fishbein and Ajzen (1990) who argued that an individual is best placed to make the best choice affecting him/her.
Stereotypes: Errors and Biases in Interpersonal Interaction
This week we looked into the factors that affect the decisions we make during our leisurely activities, especially through stereotypes and the attribution theory.
A stereotype is a commonly held public notion about specific target groups and affects our judgment of others ((Franzoi, 2000 p114).). Stereotypes can also include inhuman forms like plants and can be positive or negative, accurate or inaccurate (Jussim, McCauley & Lee, 1995). Our idea of one’s stereotype may affect the interaction with them, for example, the notion that football players are unruly off the pitch may determine the nature of our interaction with them.
Attribution theory discusses the reasons why an individual does a particular behavior and looks into whether the behavior came from within the person or from external factors.
Our perception of others is often wrong and may be due to errors or biases in our perceptions.
The most common errors are fundamental attribution error, self-serving bias and the just-world hypothesis error.
We should avoid perceptions as they do not allow us to judge others fairly, rather group them into the earlier formed perceptions. Erroneous assumptions can have negative repercussions and may hinder our interaction with others and may use these stereotypes to discriminate against other people.
Leisure and Play
In this week, we learn how play affects the child’s development, considering that play is the basis of leisure.
There are four main areas of child development:
- Cognitive development, this is the process which involves learning and acquiring basic skills by the baby and consists of two thinking processes; divergent and convergent thinking. Divergent thinking is where the baby uses a new approach to think about a problem, a convergent thinking is where the baby uses existing information to tackle a problem.
- Social development involves the reaction of the child when in the presence of others, young or grown-up.
- Emotional development of the child involves the ability to display, show and identify emotions like anger and happiness. Interaction with other children through play helps the child to develop emotionally.
- Physical development involves coordination of the child’s muscles.
Restricting children to only play indoors affects their physical development for they have limited play options, they must be allowed to run into the playground with other children.
Each stage of the child development is important as it allows the child to acquire the basic aspects of the development process, and these determine the children’s future behavior patterns ((Evans, p. 22, 1989)). A child must be allowed to play during the free time so as to learn the skills and values as he/she progresses into childhood.
Social meanings of Leisure
This week we looked at how the society determines the leisure activity we choose to participate in. Different leisure forms can be used to create a national identity, Brazil, for example has created an identity in soccer. The society has the ability to encourage or discourage a leisure activity and this depends on its perception of that activity. Activities like gambling are not morally acceptable by the society and this hinders people from participating in them. The media also has the capacity to promote certain leisure activities and lead to the downfall of others according to the information it gives to the society regarding these activities through the various news media.
Leisure is a reflection of culture; different cultures are associated with different leisurely activities. The English are associated with soccer while Fiji and Tonga citizens are associated with rugby.
Social meaning may also be associated with certain leisure behaviors, for example, golf players are known to be company executives.
These social meanings should not be used to form stereotypes, e.g. we should not associate everyone from Brazil with soccer since we have other sporting games too in the country. Forming of stereotypes may lead to the problems discussed in week 8.
The Dark Side of Leisure
This week’s lesson covered the leisurely activities that are not morally accepted in the society, these include graffiti, gambling, drug use and internet pornography.
We have the freedom to choose the form of leisure to participate in, but we must be careful so that we don’t participate in social evils in the context of having leisure. This is because what is good for one person may be abhorred by the other. The dark side of leisure takes three forms; self indulgence, self destructive and predatory.
A study of the theory of leisure suggests that there are three types of dark leisure;
- Invasive, this is the type of leisure where someone looks down upon himself and therefore engages in activities that he/she thinks will help to correct this. Examples include alcoholism and drug use
- Mephitic, these are dark leisure forms that are not accepted morally or that affect others in a negative manner. They include the infliction of pain on someone, pornography and serial killings.
- Wild, this is a leisure activity where one pushes himself/herself off the limit and performs extreme acts. This includes playing guitar at high volumes, group sexual acts and causing crowd riots.
A relationship exists between these forms of dark leisure and self-esteem; the partaker of the leisure forms could be suffering from low self-esteem. Drugs are seen as a way of developing identity among teenagers (Erikson, 1960) and the youth. A solution to the drug menace and other dark leisure forms would be making sure that these teenagers spend their leisure in the right manner and extend the same policies as they grow up.