Georgia Nigro – News

What can we learn about apologies from the #MeToo moment?

Emily McConville — Fri, 13 Mar 2020 13:17:12 +0000

“Not all apologies are created equal,” says Ella Ross ’19.

The truth of that observation has become abundantly clear in the years since investigative reporting on movie producer Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct kicked the #MeToo movement into high gear, initiating a sea change in how we talk about sexism, sexual harassment, and sexual assault.

The movement has resulted in the proliferation of public apologies by dozens in entertainment, media, business, and other fields who have admitted to misconduct.

As a �ֲ��ý student, Ross joined Ceria Kurtz ’19, Talia Binns ’20, and Professor of Psychology Georgia Nigro to try to classify types of public apologies and determine what makes an apology effective.

One effect of the #MeToo movement is a robust sample of public apologies for psychologists to analyze. (Wikimedia Commons)

The result of their independent research, “Apologies in the #MeToo moment,” was published last fall in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture.

“A good apology is a recognition of the ways in which you’ve harmed another person, with the emphasis being on the effects on the victim, not on how it’s impacted you as the offender,” says Ross, who is now the civic engagement fellow at the Harward Center for Community Partnerships.

To measure apologies, psychologists have identified several elements, classifying what apologizers say, the way they say it, and the concrete actions they take to repair the harm they’ve done.

In studying public apologies for sexual misconduct, the �ֲ��ý researchers homed in on one subtle but important distinction: whether the apology is focused on the self, or on what they call the “self-other.”

A “self-focused” apology primarily expresses the feelings of the one saying sorry. In admitting wrongdoing, the apologizer might say, “I take responsibility for my actions,” and emphasize how badly he feels. “I am embarrassed and ashamed of my actions.”

Ella Ross ’19, a recent �ֲ��ý graduate who now works in the Harward Center for Community Partnerships, talks with new students on Opening Day in August 2019. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

A “self-other focused” apology, on the other hand, takes the feelings of the victim into account. Instead of simply saying, “I did wrong,” the apologizer might say, “I did wrong, and as a result I caused people harm.” Moreover, the apologizer’s negative feelings would primarily focus on the victim. “I feel terrible that I caused you distress.”

The sample of apologies available to the �ֲ��ý researchers shows the extent of the #MeToo movement and the entrenchment of sexual misconduct in many fields.

The news website Vox’s running list of people accused of misconduct contained 219 names as of June 2018, when Nigro and her students gathered the apologies they wanted to study (the list now stands at 262), but the researchers limited their study to 37 people in the fields of arts, entertainment, and media who had acknowledged or apologized for their actions.

“A good apology is a recognition of the ways in which you’ve harmed another person, with the emphasis being on the effects on the victim, not on how it’s impacted you as the offender.”

A key way psychologists evaluate apologies is by looking at how the apologizer plans to make amends with the people they harmed. In studying the 37 statements of apology, the �ֲ��ý researchers had trouble finding actions that were self-other focused.

A person accused of misconduct might promise to go to counseling, or never harass anyone again — but could those actions repair the harm done to the victim?

“That was tricky,” Nigro said. “We spent a long time reading about, talking about, and never quite satisfied with the ‘action’ component, perhaps because there weren’t many actions that anybody took that were focused on the other person. The actions they took focused on themselves.”

In any case, many apologies that arose from the #MeToo movement had elements of both self-focus and self-other focus, though self-focus seemed to dominate.

Professor of Psychology Georgia Nigro. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Take one media figure’s apology for sexually harassing more than a dozen women over a couple of decades. American journalist Mark Halperin admitted that he was “part of the problem” of men harming women in the workplace and acknowledged the “fear and anxiety” he caused “women who were only seeking to do their jobs.”

According to the researchers’ classifications, one might see self-other focused acknowledgement of victims’ pain in Halperin’s apology, but also a self-focused explanation of Halperin’s own distress.

So which kind of apology — self-focused or self-other focused — is “better”? To find out, the �ֲ��ý researchers wrote apologies of their own.

“You’ve got to do some reflection.”

They created a fictional but familiar situation in which a prominent film director is accused of sexually harassing several women. They wrote several apologies for the director to give to the women who accused him, similar in length and tone to the real ones they had already studied.

One of the director’s apologies was self-focused, one was self-other focused, one had elements of both types, and one added statements that were neither self- nor self-other focused, but rather seemed to justify or explain away the director’s conduct, such as, “I thought that the feelings I was pursuing were mutual.”

Nigro and her students then asked several dozen �ֲ��ý students, as well as older adults on the Amazon crowdsourcing platform Mechanical Turk, to rate the quality of the apologies based on variables like perceived sincerity and willingness to accept the apology.

The types of apologies that most resonated with the participants differed according to age, gender, and whether the participant had identified as a prior victim of sexual assault. One thing, though, is clear: Apologies that focus only on the apologizer are not effective.

Talia Binns ’20, who helped run an experiment to determine how people perceive apologies, works on a ceramics project in Olin Arts Center. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

“The sincerity of the apology, the willingness to accept it, the judgment that the accuser’s needs were met, and the sense of closure derived from the apology all fell short when an apology contained only the self-focused elements,” the researchers wrote in Psychology of Popular Media Culture.

For the �ֲ��ý student researchers, parsing public apologies has informed both their academic careers and their personal lives. For her senior psychology thesis, Talia Binns looked further into how college-age men and women perceive apologies differently. She also understands “apologies in the media in such a different light,” she says. “I’m like, ‘That’s a bad apology.’”

Ross also parlayed her apology research into her senior thesis, creating a similar experiment in which she asked students to rate apologies related to an incident of sexual misconduct on a college campus.

Ross has also done more hands-on work on restorative justice, a system of justice prominent in some schools which focuses on rehabilitation and reconciliation. Because of her research with Georgia Nigro, she is better able to understand conflict and its aftermath.

Ceria Kurtz ’19, center, turns her tassel at Commencement in May 2019. Kurtz coauthored a study on the elements and efficacy of apologies. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

“I know what questions to ask,” she says. “Was the person apologizing talking about how they affected another person, or were they talking about how they’re feeling? If they actually talked about just themselves and how it made them feel sad, I’m like, ‘That’s probably why the other person reacted so strongly against what they were saying.’”

Nigro emphasized that defining the elements of an apology is not the same as creating a formula for the perfect apology. “People need to learn from what they’ve done, but learning isn’t going to be so easy as, ‘I saw this thing in the news and now I know what to say,’” she says. “You’ve got to do some reflection.”

And in the media, on a college campus, or in a restorative justice setting, even a really good apology is only one part of making amends for wrongdoing.

“Sometimes the offender will just quickly jump to an apology because they’re ready to apologize,” Ross says. “They’re not taking into account the self-other aspect of it — ‘Does this person want to hear this? Are they in a place to receive it?’”

Seven �ֲ��ý professors share topics and courses they’re excited to teach

Jay Burns — Thu, 13 Sep 2018 14:18:32 +0000

As �ֲ��ý professors lined up for Convocation last week, we asked a few what they’re excited to teach this fall.

In sum, they told us about some things old, some things new, and some things renewed.

In his second year at �ֲ��ý, Assistant Professor of English José Villagrana is teaching a new course, “Milton and the English Civil War.”

John Milton, of course, is a canonical figure in literature. By looking at Milton’s writings through the lens of the English Civil War (1642–51), Villagrana’s students can make fresh connections to “timely discourses on revolution, armed conflict, and the role of free speech and censorship.”

In his second year at �ֲ��ý, Assistant Professor of English José Villagrana is teaching a new course, “Milton and the English Civil War.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Lecturer in Anthropology Kristen Barnett looks forward to teaching her two sections of “Introduction to Archaeology.” She began teaching the course three years ago and has completely overhauled it.

Now the course focuses more attention on concepts of social justice, ethics, and “tensions between Indigenous communities and the archaeological community,” she explains. The course will also delve into questions of how certain colonizing practices are “established and perpetuated through archaeology.”

A �ֲ��ý faculty member since 1991, Professor of Physics Hong Lin is trying something new this year: teaching one of the department’s upper-level courses, “Electrodynamics.”

“It will be my first time teaching this course, but I love the topic,” she says. Lin has taught a similar course, “Electricity and Magnetism,” which covers the material at a lower level. “It will be good to help students see the topic in more depth,” she says.

Lecturer in Anthropology Kristen Barnett has revamped the introductory archaeology course. (Jay Burns/�ֲ��ý College)

In one of 39 First-Year Seminars, which are geared toward the college’s newest students, Professor of Anthropology Elizabeth Eames will teach “Disney Demystified: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Magic Kingdom.”

Popular culture being what it is, “we all have a bit of Disney in us,” Eames says. In other words, “Disney is a cultural text. And from that text, we can discern America’s beliefs and values. And we can unearth the cultural politics embedded in Disney productions.”

Professor of Psychology Georgia Nigro is teaching “Community-Based Research Methods.” Offered in a variety of disciplines, methods courses give students a chance to exercise their emerging research skills.

This fall, Nigro says, her 18 students “are going to learn with a community partner, the .” The institute is working closely with the Lewiston School Department, which is seeking to infuse .

Professor of Psychology Georgia Nigro is teaching a course that will support efforts to introduce restorative justice practices in Lewiston public schools. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

“My students will look at data already collected from teachers, who are working to be more restorative in their practices,” Nigro says. Restorative justice tries to “replace the old-fashioned punitive disciplinary practices with practices that repair the harm.”

Raj Saha ’03, a lecturer in geology and physics, is eager to teach his First-Year Seminar, “The Living Planet,” and hopes his students are ready for a surprise.

Raj Saha ’03, a lecturer in geology and physics, is teaching a First-Year Seminar, “The Living Planet.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

In its examination of intricate connections among the Earth’s living systems, the course sits “at the intersection of math, science, environmental studies, and social justice,” he says.

It might surprise these new �ֲ��ý students, he says, “that there is scientific basis for concepts that we often label as moral or ethical, such as the need for diversity, what diversity does in an ecosystem, and how you can translate these qualities to society in general — what makes us more resilient.”

Su Langdon, a lecturer in psychology, is excited to have more time to teach “Principles of Psychology.”

Drawing from the tenets of problem-based learning, the course uses “consider scenarios,” in which students look at real-life situations from psychological perspectives. For example, how do gymnasts and other athletes accomplish complex motoric tasks? Why do we feel “all gooey inside” when we think about someone we’re attracted to?

Having taught the course a “gazillion times,” Langdon wanted the flexibility to add a few more scenarios, including ones her students suggested. To do so, “I needed to reclaim some time,” she said. “To be more creative, I needed about a week.”

Working with the Accessible Education and Student Support office — to ensure that the changes met the needs of all her students — Langdon moved the course’s traditional in-class exams to online exams, outside of class.

And presto: A whole week of new time!

Look What We Found: A note from Seamus Heaney to Georgia Nigro

Phyllis Graber Jensen — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 15:36:23 +0000

A framed, typed manuscript of a famous poem by the late Seamus Heaney hangs by the desk of Professor of Psychology Georgia Nigro in her Pettengill Hall office. At the bottom is a handwritten note: “To Georgia — hoping you approve of this order — how you heard it! S.”

In the early 1990s, Heaney, who was a friend of Nigro’s husband, Senior Lecturer in English Robert Farnsworth, gave a reading at �ֲ��ý. The reading included one of his newer poems, “A Sofa in the Forties.”

Georgia Nigro holds a framed copy of Seamus Heaney’s poem “A Sofa in the Forties” that he inscribed for her.

The poem begins with children on a sofa pretending they’re riding a train, but the reader soon understands that “it is really about the trains taking Jews to concentration camps,” Nigro explains. That shift, “from playful to serious was so startling, but beautifully done. I liked the way it grabbed me and sort of massaged my emotions from one place to another.”

After the reading, she made a point of telling Heaney how much she admired it. What Nigro didn’t know at the time, nor did anyone else in Schaeffer Theatre that night, was that during the reading — as he was at the lectern — Heaney swapped the order of the third and fourth stanzas, and that new arrangement was how the poem would later be published.

She learned about the switch when he mailed her the original typewritten poem, with hand-drawn edits — made right after the �ֲ��ý reading, reflecting his new preference. And that’s how the poem appears in 1996’s The Spirit Level, published a year after Heaney won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Nigro recalls the thrill of receiving the unexpected gift from a poet who is “the voice you want reading you bedtime stories when you’re an adult.”

She’s loved his work all these years, recalling his “stunning” reading of the poem “Digging” at �ֲ��ý in 1986, when he received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree.

Nigro has always kept the framed poem — and a photo of the family dogs — near her. The placement is intentional, she says, because the poem is a treasure. “I like having his poem and a picture of my dogs to remind me that there’s more to life than the large screen in front of me.”

What boys want: perspectives on gender differences

�ֲ��ý News — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 15:23:17 +0000

If you’ve been paying attention to education news, you know that boys are falling behind academically. You’ve heard they are lagging in reading and writing, graduating from high school at lower rates than girls, and filling fewer seats in college classrooms.

No doubt you’ve also heard theories about the causes of this phenomenon, from the rise of feminism to the departure of fathers from the home. You’ve also heard ideas about how to reverse it, from same-sex classes to more male teachers.

What you probably haven’t heard is what boys think about it. Until now.More than 540 Maine boys and young men shared their views on schooling in a yearlong research project whose preliminary findings, released at a statewide education conference at �ֲ��ý last October, are attracting queries from teachers across North America.

The study confirms what researchers suspected — boys’ underachievement parallels a sense of disenfranchisement in their schools — and it offers some surprises. Defying stereotype, for example, boys do care what teachers think of them. When boys have good relationships with their teachers, it has much to do with their love of a class.

“Our boys are saying they want people to connect with them,” says Professor of Psychology Georgia Nigro, �ֲ��ý’ representative to the Maine Boys Network, the consortium of policy analysts, educators, and youth-service professionals that sponsored the study. “They love it if someone — it doesn’t have to be a male teacher — knows and shares their interests.”

The project is significant not only for adding a vital piece to the national discussion, but also for its ambitious reach: Hundreds of boys offered opinions about the teaching techniques that engage them — or lose them. Nigro, with Maren Vouga ’09 of Louisville, Ky., and Erin Bonney ’09 of Sudbury, Mass., conducted a daunting analysis of the discussions, identifying common themes as well as classroom strategies that some Maine teachers are already putting to use.

“That’s where Georgia took the lead,” says Mark Tappan, a Colby College professor of education who performed the data analysis with Nigro and Stephan Derochers, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Maine–Farmington. “She developed a way to critically examine
the interviews. We were so lucky to have her expertise.”

Their findings appear in the October 2008 report “The Gender Divide in Academic Engagement: Perspectives from Maine Boys and Young Men.”

To read the report go to http://www.boystomen.info/ and scroll down to the report.

Children have been at the center of Nigro’s research at �ֲ��ý. She has studied children’s memory to develop interview methods that improve preschoolers’ recall and resistance to misinformation. She
also developed a project to raise middle-school girls’ awareness of careers in math and science.

Her concerns about boys date to 1997, when she helped to interpret a survey of Lewiston sixth-graders’ attitudes toward school and their future. (The survey had been designed and implemented by �ֲ��ý students under the direction of Professor of Political Science Douglas Hodgkin, now retired.)

“I was struck by the gender difference,” Nigro recalls. “Twenty-five percent of male students felt excluded in the classroom, that their opinions weren’t valued.”

When the survey was presented publicly to Lewiston residents, however, their attention went to other findings — understandably, since the national focus at that time was on improving girls’ education and career opportunities. “People thought paying attention to boys would take away from the attention that was being paid, and still needed to be paid, to girls,” Nigro says.

The Maine Boys Network study was her long-awaited opportunity. She and students from her “Action Research” psychology course were among numerous facilitators convening focus groups in elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and colleges during 2007–08. “The boys were thoroughly engaged,” she reports. “They took it seriously, but they also had fun. They appreciated that someone was asking the questions we were asking.”

Students shared, among other things, their yearnings for a kinesthetic but challenging curriculum; variety and freedom in their assignments; caring, fair teachers; and the same respectful treatment that they thought girls received.

“Sometimes I wanted to go off-script and intervene,” Nigro confesses. “One middle-school boy asked, ‘Why do I have to study science? I want to be a lobsterman.’ I asked him, ‘Don’t you think a lobsterman needs to know what’s happening in the oceans, what’s happening to the fish? That’s science.’ I could have gone on with an entire science lesson, but I stopped myself.”

That exchange was among many poignant moments from gatherings that often stretched to two hours — with students begging for more time. “That boy was getting the message that you’re a nobody if you don’t go on with education,” Nigro reflects. “Yet the somebodies in his life — his father, his uncles, his grandfather — hadn’t gone on in education. It made me see that we have to listen to them and think about how we convey the message that higher education is important.”

Nigro’s compassion for the students and passion for the project proved invaluable, says Layne Gregory, director of Boys to Men, the Maine network’s parent organization. “She is amazing because not only does she do what she says she’ll do, she’ll do it in five seconds.” Gregory is delighted with the study’s results, calling the data “so broad and deep that we’ll be able to mine it for years to come.”The research continues. Additional focus groups were convened this winter in Penobscot and Piscataquis counties and in tribal communities, and teachers whom boys identified as effective are now being interviewed so their techniques can be shared.

“There’s not going to be a single quick fix,” Nigro believes. “It’s not going to be single-sex schools or classrooms. That may work for some boys, but it’s not one size fits all. The teaching the boys want is simply good teaching. It doesn’t have to be tailored to boys. Good teaching embraces a variety of approaches to reach different kids, whatever their needs are. Everyone, boys and girls, benefit.”

By Virginia Wright, photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen

Freelance writer Virginia Wright profiled economist Lynne Lewis in the Fall 2008 issue.

"Adolescence at the Millennium: Tales From the Field" to be discussed at �ֲ��ý

�ֲ��ý News — Thu, 27 Apr 2000 18:13:52 +0000

Georgia N. Nigro, Whitehouse Professor of Psychology at �ֲ��ý College, will lead a roundtable discussion on “Adolescence at the Millennium: Tales From the Field” at 4 p.m. Friday, May 12, in the Keck Classroom, Pettengill Hall, �ֲ��ý College. The event, which celebrates Nigro’s appointment as the Whitehouse Professor of Psychology at �ֲ��ý, is open to the public free of charge.

The Whitehouse Professorship at �ֲ��ý was established in 1992 with a gift to the endowment by David C. Whitehouse, a 1936 graduate of �ֲ��ý, and his wife, Constance, “for the advancement of that character which �ֲ��ý has consistently exemplified, including a dedication to free enterprise, freedom of religion, educational and moral excellence, and a respect for human dignity.” Constance, a native of Auburn, died in March 2000. David, raised and educated in Auburn, died in early April 2000.

Joining Nigro in the roundtable discussion will be several of her former students who now counsel, teach and advocate for adolescents across the United States. Nancy Bullett, a 1996 graduate of �ֲ��ý, has worked with the AIDS Coalition of Lewiston-Auburn and has been active in various activities designed to create safer schools for gay and lesbian youth.

Emily Cause, a 1997 graduate of �ֲ��ý, earned a master’s degree in middle school education from Lesley College and works in the Department of Ethics at the Fieldston School in New York City. The school’s ethics department guides children into becoming principled and caring members of their communities.

Rebecca Colman, a 1993 �ֲ��ý graduate, worked as a mental health counselor for three years before beginning graduate studies in developmental psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she is involved in projects related to adolescent sexual behavior, including a five-year evaluation of abstinence-education programs in the state of Georgia.

Emily Demong, a 1994 graduate of �ֲ��ý, worked for Teach for America and the National Outdoor Leadership School before joining the Aspen Achievement Academy, which leads high-risk youth on wilderness experiences in the Utah outback.

Lisa Kociubes, a 1996 graduate of �ֲ��ý, worked as a residential counselor in a Massachussets youth shelter for homeless and at-risk youth. She received her master’s degree in social work from Columbia University in 1999 and now works in the Juvenile Rights Division at the Legal Aid Society in New York City.

“The Whitehouse Professorship is an enduring and permanent symbol of the commitment to keep the finest teachers among us,” said �ֲ��ý President Donald W. Harward of the Whitehouse endowment. Recipients of the Whitehouse award retain the professorship for a period of four years. Professor Nigro is the second recipient, the first being Professor John Kelsey, also of the Department of Psychology at �ֲ��ý.

Nigro received the Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching at �ֲ��ý in 1989. She has been a member of the supervisory board for the Maine Court Appointed Special Advocate Program, serving abused children. She also has worked with local agencies on an HIV prevention project, developed a project to raise awareness about careers in math and science for middle school girls, helped to evaluate a sexual-abuse prevention program and assessed Lewiston 6th-grade students’ aspirations for the Lewiston Aspirations Partnership.

Nigro was named one of two 1998 recipients of the Maine Campus Compact (MCC) Faculty Service-Learning Award, one of the most prestigious awards for community service in the state of Maine. She has received the John W. Dallenbach Fellowship from Cornell University and a National Institute of Mental Health Fellowship. Nigro received her bachelor’s degree from Brown University, her master’s degree from Yale University and her doctoral degree from Cornell University.

After graduating from �ֲ��ý with a degree in economics, Whitehouse earned a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard University in 1938. He joined the Container Corporation of America in 1944, becoming general manager in Boston in 1958, west coast division general manager in 1963 and vice president in 1965. He managed the firm’s headquarters in Venezuela during the early 1970s and retired in 1980. Active in �ֲ��ý affairs and particularly supportive of the college’s museum and its collections, he served as chairman of his class reunion gift committee and as a member of the College Key, an honorary service organization of �ֲ��ý graduates.