Monthly Archives: June 2016

Five terms from social psychology that apply to Donald Trump

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  1. Mere exposure effect

–          The more familiar you are with something, the more you prefer it. In other words, familiarity breeds content.

Trump started off as a joke candidate whose only redeeming feature was his entertainment value. In the months that followed, he was all the media talked about. Now he could become the next president.

  1. Fundamental Attribution Error

–          Failing to distinguish between situational and intrinsic causes.

Trump thinks being Muslim or Mexican makes you intrinsically dangerous. So he wants to ban immigration and build a wall. Other people believe lax gun laws, poverty and lack of opportunity create dangerous environments.

  1. Cognitive Dissonance

–          The tension you experience when you hold two conflicting opinions – or fail to act in line with your attitudes.

The Republican Party wants to appear unified. On the other hand, it’s keen not to go down in history as rallying behind a sociopathic, racist, misogynistic, egomaniac reality television star who unleashed a nuclear war. Otherwise known as: stuck between a rock and a hard place.

  1. Reciprocity norm

– the assumption that you get back what you give     

Ben Carson, the former neurosurgeon who tried and failed to become the Republican presidential candidate, is now one of Trump’s most vocal supporters. This is despite the fact that Trump compared him to a child molester. Carson is, presumably, working on the assumption that his support now will earn him a privileged position in a future Trump administration.

  1. Just-world phenomenon

– believing that the world is fair and that people get what they deserve. Sometimes related to the fundamental attribution error.

Trump once boasted that he had created a real estate empire after receiving a “small loan” of a million dollars from his father. Rather than recognising the enormous privilege he was born into, he implied that his fortune was self-made. Those who didn’t get such a loan probably didn’t deserve one. In other words: the fallacy of the American dream.

The German town that dedicates an entire festival to asparagus

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Before I moved to Germany, asparagus never played more than a supporting role on my dinner plate.

I regarded it as a bog-standard vegetable: average-tasting in a soup and appropriately assigned to side-dish status.

I soon realised this kind of indifference would turn me into a pariah here.

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My relationship to asparagus has developed since I moved to Germany.

The German language has a term to describe the period when asparagus is in season: Spargelzeit.  It’s generally between mid-April and mid-June.

In Berlin, Beelitzer Spargel is celebrated as the most exquisite – and comes with the price tag to match.

Beelitz is a 30-minute train ride south of Berlin and home to around 12,000 people. Its official website defines it as a Spargelstadt – an asparagus town.

Every year, it devotes a festival to the asparagus and crowns a local woman Asparagus Queen. This year, in an attempt to complete our integration into German culture, LSB and I decided to attend the event.

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Bavaria’s most attractive all-women band (or so I’ve been told)

From Beelitz train station, you can catch the Spargel shuttle bus to the town center. LSB and I decided to walk. It wasn’t far and the streets were well sign-posted with arrows on every other lamppost directing you to the Spargelfest.

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Costumed asparagus and Asparagus Queen greet festival-goers

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The 2016 Spargel Queen

We arrived in time for the 11 am performance of a Bavarian band called The Midnight Ladies. They advertised themselves as Bavaria’s “most attractive all-women band” – a title I was not in a position to judge but that seemed plausible, given how dashing they looked in their glamorous traditional garb.

Milling around the town were two giant asparagus: one green, one white. The costumed vegetables flanked the Asparagus Queen as she shook the hands and kissed the babies of stall-holders and visitors alike.

The highlight of the performances was undoubtedly the dance of the Spargelfrauen (or Asparagus women). The group of a dozen women have been performing at the asparagus festival for 20 years and it certainly shows in their choreography.

At 2 o’clock, it was time for the asparagus parade. LSB and I had an enviable spot right next to the stage, where two anchors from a local TV station provided a running commentary on the floats.

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Members of the Asparagus Women dance troupe perform at the festival

Asparagus farmers drove through the crowds in their tractors, handing out baskets of the vegetables to lucky onlookers (myself included). Any local organisation you can imagine, from volunteer firefighters to a children’s rope-skipping group took part. Even an historical society marched through, with members proudly pulling two replica medieval cannon-shooters through the town.

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Costumed asparagus receives assistance getting in the door.

It went on for an hour. Tragically, I could only capture five minutes on film.

I did however manage to snap a rather comic moment earlier on, when one of the costumed asparagus had to be escorted to the bathroom and an assistant recruited to get his head through the door.

After the parade, LSB and I went for lunch. We dined on a classic: white asparagus, served with butter and potatoes on the side.

The festival concluded with a tearful expression of thanks from the mayor and the Asparagus Queen. The former told the crowd he had already confirmed the visiting acts for Spargelfest 2017.

Never again will I consider asparagus as anything but the main act.

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Beelitz town