[nabs-l] Defining Excessively Helpful People and Interactions

[Andi]

For many years I worked at a summer camp for the blind.  We had both blind 
and sighted staff, and that varry experience was part of the training for 
the sighted staf.  We did several activities in witch the sighted staff 
members had to be blindfolded.  The first one to get them comfortable was 
traveling sighted guide with a blind person as the guide.  The blindfolded 
staff also had to travel a rout with a cane, but no guide.  They then hade 
to get through a lunch line with their tray and eat blind folded.  It was 
always interesting to hear the opinians of those who had to be blind folded. 
Most felt helpless at first and moved very slowly for feer of running in to 
something or tripping.  But we tought them to look for different texters and 
terains with their feet and canes, and most prefered a cane to a flashlight 
when travling at night.  Eating was funny as many of them made messes or 
barely ate because they couldn't find their food.  Once we taught them 
techniques they realized it wasn't as hard as they thought it was.  Most of 
the people who traind in this manner came to have grate respect for the 
blind, and realize blind people can do most if not all that a sighted person 
can do.  They didn't coddle our blind campers and instead encouraged them to 
be as independent as possible.  There is of course acceptions to every rool 
and a fiew became obnoctiously over helpful as all they got from the 
expirience was that it was hard for them so it must be hard for us.  That 
however is a risk you take with that training. Most liked the expirience and 
wanted to learn more throughout the summer, and treeted us like human 
beeings. The fiew who still over dramatized the blind are stupid and 
incapable of learning much or just didn't want to learn and didn't pay 
attention.

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From: "Arielle Silverman" <nabs.president at gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2010 7:21 PM
To: <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
Cc: <jason.gwinn at colorado.edu>
Subject: [nabs-l] Defining Excessively Helpful People and Interactions

> Hi all,
>
> So this isn't directly related to NABS, but I wanted to ask you for
> some brainstorming help and start a discussion which I think we will
> all find fun and personally relevant:
>
> As you may know, I'm working on my Ph.D. in social psychology. One of
> my co-grad students and I are designing an experiment to investigate
> the effects of blindness simulations (i.e. activities where people
> blindfold themselves and stumble around a room for a few minutes, eat
> a meal, etc.) on sighted people's attitudes and actions toward blind
> people. More generally, we're interested in finding out how sighted
> people try to understand the perspective of being blind and how those
> attempts affect their beliefs about blindness. Based on
> perspective-taking theory and past research (as well as my personal
> experience with blindness simulation exercises), we are predicting
> that when people do blindness simulations, they may like us more and
> express more sympathy and desire to help the blind, but that they will
> also think of the blind as less competent or capable, since they just
> went through the frightening and disconcerting experience of "being
> blind" and might be inclined to think that this is how real blind
> people feel and act.
>
> We have some ways of measuring people's attitudes toward the blind,
> but we'd also like to set up a real interaction with a real blind
> person and assess how sighted people treat a real person, and if
> people act differently toward a real blind person when they have
> undergone a blindness simulation. We think that people who do the
> simulation might tend to be more excessively or obnoxiously helpful,
> or less respectful, toward a blind person. What we're trying to figure
> out is how to measure this "over-helpfulness" in a way that shows that
> it's clearly undesirable. For example, we can't just keep track of how
> many people try to help the blind person and how many people don't,
> since people might argue that helping the blind is a good thing and
> that maybe these simulations are actually a good idea.
>
> So my question for you guys is, in your experience, what distinguishes
> people who are appropriately helpful from people who are obnoxiously
> so? Can you think of any good ways we can quantify these kinds of
> undesirable interactions, which I know we've all had at times with
> members of the public?
>
> Thanks in advance for your help.
>
> Arielle
>
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