Self-control, Rage, Advantages and Disadvantages
Steven Slater has become an internet sensation and a hero for many people. He did not save someone’s life, or he did not stop a robbery. What he did was quit his job. The way in which he did it though made drew the admiration of tens of thousands of people worldwide.
The 38-year-old flight attendant for JetBlue Airways got in an altercation with a female passenger. She hit him in the head and after the dispute he told everybody in the plane via the intercom that he quits. He then grabbed a beer from the beverage cart, deployed the plane’s emergency chute and slid down into it. This happened as the plane taxied into the gate at New York’s JFK airport. When the story was presented in the news, thousands of people cheered for him, because of his crazy way of quitting his job, and because he had the courage to quit his job. A Facebook Fan page was created and more than 130,000 people became members of it. Video tributes were made, and a sing has been composed about him as well.
His actions did not go without consequences, as he was arrested soon afterwards for reckless endangerment and different other charges. If he is convicted he might face up to 7 years in prison. He smiled when he was arrested; he wasn’t violent or outraged that he got arrested. A “Free Steven Slater” campaign was created online, and he received the support of celebrities as well. Someone created a “Steven Slater Legal Defense Fund” as well and in very short time the fund managed to raise more than $2.000.You might wonder why did he received such praise when it is known that he will suffer for what he did? Why do people consider him a hero?
The psychologists say that the reason why we sympathize with him is because we see ourselves in Slater’s position. We can relate to the buildup he might have felt before he finally snapped and in the moment when he released all the energy and rage he held for so much time. The structured environment and the flight attendant’s personal history might have had to do something with the fact that he burst out, but the psychologists believe that it was healthy for him to release all the pressure.
The scientists have discovered that too much self-control is bad. They consider that one should have self-control, but if one tries to control every aspect of his life with much rigidity, he will only do more harm than good. The self-control wears us down, and the process of thinking about other’s self control can be demanding as well.
Keeping too much inside for long periods of time might make one to snap and release everything in an instance. Slater’s case was a happy one because he did not cause harm to the people around him; in fact it could be said that he acted with diplomacy even if he was the one who received the negative comments and the physical abuse.
Many shootings which occur in schools are the result of the self-control and of the pressure which one contains inside of him. In those cases everything ends up in a tragedy because the people who can no longer take it harm the others and then harm themselves. There are also people who simply end their lives because they can not go on with the abuse and with the pressure.
Jonathan Bricker, a psychologist at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle stated that many people can relate to the frustration associated with the air travel. The so called process of “air rage” is the result of the fact that both the passengers and the staff must follow very strict rules. They can not touch that, they can not do that, and so on, and that makes them very irascible and nervous. Bricker said that whenever rules are created for people, the first thing they would like to is to break those rules, and to do the opposite of them, to prove that they can not be controlled. It is very likely that the incident was a result of the frustration and of the rage associated with the rules. Slater told the female passenger that her bag was too big and that she will have to check it. She did not do it. Then she stood up when she wasn’t allowed to, and Slater told her that she should sit down. The passenger cursed at him and the bag hit him in the head.
Slater was under lots of stress as well, as he had to take care of his ailing mother too. The passenger might have had problems as well which made her more stressed. Slater had problems as well which made him stressed. When they started arguing both released the pressure and the outcome was Slater’s outburst and unusual way of quitting his job. Slater might have run out of the energy require to hide his true emotions, and as a result he revealed them.
Brandon Schmeichel, a professor of psychology at Texas A&M stated that the willpower might operate as a muscle. Each repetition is getting harder and harder because the muscle gets more and more fatigued. The willpower is the same, the more you have to work on it, and the more difficult it will be to “perform a correct lift”. Daniel Kruger, a University of Michigan evolutionary psychologist stated that Slater’s outburst might do him good in the future, because it might have told him that he wasn’t suited for those types of relationships.
The interesting thing is that he did this job for 28 years, and during those years he had no similar incidents. He managed to keep everything calm until this point when he finally snapped. Another reason why we might sympathize with him is because he fought against he hierarchy and against the authority. He managed to challenge his bosses.
