Intro:

For research paper, it’s not required to take a side, but expected outcomes and hypothesis would be required, and the outcome and hypothesis must be examined with latest scientific facts. Before research paper, the writer needs to write a proposal. A proposal is basically a shorter version of the research paper. All the important information about the paper should be summarized in the proposal because the purpose of a proposal is to help the approver understand what the paper is about, and what the outcome and result are.

Is Chronic lateness a Sign of Emotional Detachment?

Feng Zhuo

The City College of New York

ABSTRACT

This research is to help people who are chronically late realize that chronic lateness might be a sign or early symptoms of emotional detachment, and some way to deal with chronic lateness. Chronic lateness should be taken seriously not only because it becomes some people’s daily behavior, which spawns a great number of economic loss, but also a “mistaken behavior” that punctual people wouldn’t make. Therefore, it’s logical to inference that chronic lateness can be fixed. There are a lot of reasons can cause chronic lateness. In the previous research “The Causes of Late Coming among High School Students”, the studies show that there are several reasons are causing students’ chronic lateness. First, most of coming-late students lack self-control. Second, parents are not monitoring kids’ sleep and wake time. Third, poor school management (Maile, 2017). Maile’s opinion is related to another research paper, “A review of Factors Associated with Student’s Lateness Behavior and Dealing Strategies”. The researcher Bataineh suggests that students are late might be because students have low expectation on their professors, therefore, it wouldn’t matter to be late or not. (p.4). From another point of view, chronically late people might tend to think that it’s not their fault that they are late, it’s other people’s imperfection that makes the event less important. In another previous research “Long-term Effects of Parents’ Education on Children’s Educational and Occupational Success: Mediation by Family Interactions, Child Aggression, and Teenage Aspirations”, the researcher finds out that well-educated parents’children tend to be more academically and financially successful in the future. It’s suggesting that chronic lateness might be an important factor of why some people cannot achieve their success. Since chronic lateness is already a habitual behavior, which is causing a lot of troubles in people’s life, there will be practical solutions recommended in this paper, and explanation of how it’s related to emotional detachment, and why it’s important to fix chronic lateness.

INTRODUCTION

The reason emotional detachment is brought up and related to chronic lateness in this paper is because there is some common behavior has been showed in these two group of people. In both research “The causes of Late Coming among High School Students (Simeon Maile, 2017)” and “A review of Factors Associated with Student’s Lateness Behavior and Dealing Strategies (Marwan Bataineh, 2014)”, both researchers suggest that it’s other people’s fault that students are late. The logic has a major flaw is that it’s true that nothing is perfect, however, if chronically late people think imperfect events or people could be an excuse to be late, then they can always have excuses for their behavior of chronic lateness, which is why the objective imperfection cannot be the reason people are chronically late, but only an excuse late people always have to comfort themselves. The study is worth conducting is because there are too many reasons might cause chronic lateness, which is why it cannot be fixed by one particular solution. As this paper’s researcher, I am responsible to provide some hypothesis for psychologist to find out anything that is related to chronic lateness and help people who have this problem to fix it.

METHODS

Emotional detachment is the avoidance of emotional connections. Emotional detachment in this sense is a decision to avoid engaging emotional connections, rather than an inability or difficulty in doing so. As researcher Christopher J. Patrick (1993) has explained, “On the other hand, for subjects high in emotional detachment, blink reflex magnitudes(table 1) were equivalent during pleasant and unpleasant slides and, for these affective stimuli, were significantly smaller than during neutral slides. Thus, emotional detachment—defined by such scale features as interpersonal glibness, absence of remorse, callousness, and lack of affective depth, and not simple criminality.” (p.89).

Table 1

One of significant results is that people who have emotional detachment tends to ignore other people’s feelings and use emotional detachment to deal with upcoming dangers and issues. It’s not suggesting that having chronic lateness is likely having emotional detachment, but emotional detachment can be connected to chronic lateness. People who have chronic lateness might make other people angry or upset, but they don’t seem to try to fix their lateness. Image a chronically late student enters a classroom while the teacher is teaching, and the interruption makes the teacher angry. No matter the late student is embarrassed or not, the student is still going to be late tomorrow.

In the previous research “A review of Factors Associated with Student’s Lateness Behavior and Dealing Strategies”(Bataineh.M, 2014), the researcher states that “The consequences associated with a behavior help in determine whether or not that behavior will be repeated. If the consequences are negative, the behavior is less likely to reoccur. This applies to coming to class.” (p.5). In other words, if the instructor is only teaching things that they can study on their own, there’s no need to be on time. In other words, imperfection of a person or an event can be an excuse for people who have chronic lateness issue. The logic is flawed because imprecation is a subjective opinion in most of situations. If people can use imperfection of a person as an excuse of being late, they can always use this excuse to be late. Therefore, imperfection of a person or an event cannot be the reason people have chronic lateness issue.

In another previous research “Long-term Effects of Parents’ Education on Children’s Educational and Occupational Success: Mediation by Family Interactions, Child Aggression, and Teenage Aspirations” (Merrill.P.Q, 2009), the researcher states that “Parents” educational level when the child was 8 years old significantly predicted educational and occupational success for the child 40 years later. Structural models showed that parental educational level had no direct effects on child educational level or occupational prestige at age 48 but had significant indirect effects that were independent of the other predictor variables’ effects. These indirect effects were mediated through age 19 educational aspirations and age 19 educational level. These results provide strong support for the unique predictive role of parental education on adult outcomes 40 years later and underscore the developmental importance of mediators of parent education effects such as late adolescent achievement and achievement-related aspirations.”(p 1). The researcher finds out that well-educated parents’ children tend to be more academically and financially successful in their future. For most of students, going to ivy requires hard working and enthusiasm for knowledge. If we assume being on time is to make sure not missing out any knowledge that is being taught during class, then being punctual would be one of quality that most ivy students have. Therefore, it’s logical to inference that chronic lateness might be one of the reasons of why some students cannot achieve their success. Being late for 5 or 10 mins for all the events might not cause them missing any important information or material, but it does show that chronically late people might not care things as much as punctual people do.

RESULTS

The connection between emotional detachment and chronic lateness can be found by finding the common factor. People who have emotional detachment tend to feel numb on purpose because it’s more of an efficient way to deal with the problem they are facing, which is more of an efficient way to deal with their psychological problem, for example, getting cold feet before making a speech. Chronically late people are doing the same thing, except subconsciously. Some chronically late people might feel ashamed or embarrassed for being late, some are not, but they are still going to be late next time. It’s suggesting that chronically late people might feel sorry and embarrassed for their behavior of lateness because that’s how they were raised, but they subconsciously do not care other people’s feelings, which is why they are late for anything repeatedly, no matter what the consequence is. Also, they tend to find the imperfection of people or events, so they can feel better about themselves after being late for anything. It could be seen as a sign of emotional detachment because they do not seem to care about the consequence and how their chronic lateness issue makes other people feel, subconsciously. They tend to avoid the problem instead of fixing them. An obvious example would be being told by a doctor that you are overweight; instead of losing some weight, editing selfies to make yourself feel better. The actual problem that overweight hasn’t been solved, but you certainly feel much better about yourself by looking at the picture. In conclusion, the difference between people who have emotional detachment and chronic lateness in contexts is emotional detachment people ignore other people’s feeling consciously; chronically late people, on the other hand, tend to do it subconsciously.

Certainly, since it’s only an inference, it cannot  explain all the situation of chronic lateness.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

To sum up, the symptom of emotional detachment appears on people who have chronic lateness issue. They might feel sorry or embarrassed because it’s how they were raised, but they would never change the way the behave. Also, they tend to find other people’s mistake to comfort themselves, when the lateness behavior can certainly be controlled by oneself. Although emotional detachment does not necessarily suggest a “bad” psychological state, people who have chronic lateness issue should be aware that they might tend to feel numb about other people’s feelings, subconsciously or even consciously.

It’s important to confirm if you actually had chronic lateness issue. To confirm if you had chronic lateness, you can make a form to record everything you do for a week. If you were late for most of events, and always submitting your work close to deadline, then go back to check the form. If you see you had time to finish your work earlier, but you wasted it on something not important, for example, video games, then you might consider yourself have chronic lateness issue. Once you confirm you have chronic lateness problem, you can start to fix it. Note that you should have punishment on yourself if you didn’t stick to the plan, otherwise the carelessness might still cause you being chronically late.

Reference

Merrill.P.Q.,(2009). Long-term Effects of Parents’ Education on Children’s Educational and Occupational Success: Mediation by Family Interactions, Child Aggression, and Teenage Aspirations:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2853

Patrick CJ, Bradley MM, Lang PJ., (1993). Emotion in criminal psychopath: startle reflex modulation.:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8436703

Table 1. Reprinted from Emotion in criminal psychopath: startle reflex modulation, by Patrick CJ, Bradley MM, Lang PJ. Retrieved from:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8436703

Maile, S. and Olowoyo M.M. (2017). The Causes of Late Coming among High School Students in Soshanguve, Pretoria, South Africa. Pedagogical Research, 2(2), 04.

https://doi.org/10.20897/pr/80951

Bataineh.M, (2014). A review of Factors Associated with Student’s Lateness Behavior and Dealing Strategies:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268069949_A_review_of_Factors_Associated_with_Student’s_Lateness_Behavior_and_Dealing_Strategies

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.