Drunk Tank Pink

Written by; Adam Alter

Drunk Tank Pink written by Adam Alter, a professor, describes the hidden forces inside a person that influences their way of thinking, seeing things, feel thinks, and act towards things, Throughout this book Alter describes a lot of experiments that many scientists have conducted and have done thru research on. Alter talks about how we perceive names, look at symbols, the way we interpret labels and so much more. Its all about the individual, everybody will look, see, and act towards this things very differently.

Lets start of with the name of this book Drunk Tank Pink. It’s a weird name for a book, however the meaning of the title may surprise you, Drunk Tank Pink is a certain shade of Pink, its on the hotter shades of pink.  Drunk Take Pink got its name from Alexander Schauss, a professor, who conducted an experiment in 1970 at which men stared at this shade of pink to see if it would weaken their strength. Sure enough it did, Professional sports teams starting painting their visitors locker room this color hoping to weaken that teams strength. But it got its name “Drunk Tank Pink” when police stations started painting their holding cells for the drunks that came in for an overnight stay.

In this reading Adam focuses on what drives a person to interpret and make assumptions about everything. We judge people and things by what we hear however we shouldn’t be doing that because everybody is very different, we all take things every differently and no one will look at the same thing the exact same way. That is what makes us our unique self. Alter really looks at the way we judge names we always start to assume things when we hear a name before we meet that person. Alter also talks about the way we label things and the way we perceive certain symbols that have been around forever.

This reading relates to our class because we have been study the physiology of the way things work. And because we are doing the nervous system that deals with the brain and how our brain processes what we have learned. Our brain has different lobes which each stores what we learn and the way we learn it. It sends out signals and our brain helps us understand what we hear. This book is all about the psychology of ones brains and how they most likely process what they have just been given.

If I could ask the author two questions about this reading I would want to ask him; What part of our brain makes us do these things such as seeing symbols, putting labels on things, and basing things off a person names? Not everything you mentioned was based off a study or experiments that have proven to show these things so is this book somewhat based on what you believe people do and why we do it? Because some of the things that you mentioned seemed a little crazy and was sometimes hard to follow.

I think a lot of this reading is true. I know that because I can relate to it. When they we talking about us assuming the worst or best about peoples names and putting labels on them, the way we see certain labels as being good or bad, why we put labels on things, the way we see the meaning of symbols I do that all the time. Sometimes Adam would be taking about something that would be hard to understand or it would interpret the flow of the topic he was on, however this was a confusing book. It took a while to read because it wasn’t you ordinary book, you had to actually think out what he was saying for it to make since.

I think that this book is theoretical because everybody does the things that he talked about. I think it benefits society because I learned so much on it. One thing I could relate to was with the names. Alter was saying that when we hear a name we starting putting an age, race, religion, gender, personal characteristic, wealth on them. And sometimes we don’t even know that we are doing it.  

“These forces take many forms, arising from three different worlds; the mental world made up of small cues that burrow their way into our heads; the social world that connects us; and the wider physical world that surrounds us. Each of us is an ongoing product of the world within us, the world between us, and world around us- and their hidden capacity to shape our every thought, feeling and behavior” (4). This is trying to tell us that there are three worlds to our brain that control the mental, social and physical emotions of our body and the behavior that we present. But in each side of those worlds we have hidden parts that can effect of behavior we portray.

“Both physical and social pain seem less painful when we’re cushioned by symbolic reminders of money, even when the money isn’t real or doesn’t belong to us”. This quote described that when you have pain or experiencing pain (ex. After some one dies) and people give you money. That money makes you feel better knowing that someone is giving you something to try to make you happier. You received a happy gift to try to make you feel better. Or that sometimes you are bummed by something and the ways that will make you feel better is spending money, especially when you have unlimited money,