Introduction/Overview
We (1) introduce ourselves; (2) establish some benchmarks; (3) review this document; and (4) discuss what lies ahead in terms of the subject matter and our approach to it.
In accordance with the incurably human nature of the entire enterprise, social psychologists are trained to begin any line of inquiry by propounding a clear and concise and consensually valid "definition of the situation." Plainly, our more specific need is for a definition of the present situation that takes properly into account the undeniable fact of our own involvement within it (i.e. as participating/observing elements). The questions, though provisionally answered above, recur: Who are we? What are we doing here?
In an effort to begin to find out, everyone completes a Preliminary Information Form and Benchmark Questionnaire. Let us ask again: Who are we? What are we doing here? What is (are) our goal(s)?
Once the criteria for involvement and the plan of the terms work have been more fully described, we will take a short break. This will enable those who wish to avoid further involvement to do so by leaving.
AFTER THE BREAK:
When we reconvene, those returning will be presumed to be ready, willing and able to regard themselves and each other as prospective serious students of the subject before us. The class will next be divided RANDOMLY (why randomly?) into a number of separate and distinct Study Groups that will have designated powers and responsibilities and will meet together regularly for at least two additional hours per week outside of class and will generally remain together for the duration of the term.
In systematic rotation, and with due attention to both the topical sequence indicated below and the developmental process through which the 9.70 learning system as a whole will be passing, the study groups will share -- each in its own turn, the power and responsibility of "steering" the class through its work on the main issues and topic(s) that present themselves for consideration that week.
As will have been previously mentioned and as those still remaining now begin to more definitely recognize, 9.70 cannot be thought of as simply a "lecture" class. On the contrary, those continuing to "take" 9.70 should not expect to be able to do so as passive viewers of somebody else's parade. Far from being any such "spectator sport," satisfactory completion of academic requirements in 9.70 demands that each and every participant seriously endeavor to play several different active roles in the organization and development of the class as an effective learning system.
What this means more precisely will be further explored in due course. But suffice it for present purposes to say that one of the main "take home lessons" of past 9.70 classes has been that Aronson's "first law" applies to the "positions" or "roles" or "parts" that all 9.70 students are expected to learn to "play." As might be expected, these roles embody or represent the functions of both "participation" and "observation."
We will pursue a scientific understanding of the subject in two complementary ways. On the one hand, we will be reading and discussing our way through the text. In effect, Aronson will take us on a tour of the scientific literature of experimental social psychology. On the other hand, we will be involved in a more directly experiential course of inquiry based on the organization and development of the class into a "collaborative learning system."
In all aspects of the 9.70 learning process you will be quite extensively and continuously exposed to diverse and sometimes conflicting social influences emanating from various sources, including the textbook, other readings and other media, the instructor, classmates, group-mates, peers, etc. By design, participation in 9.70 entails exposure to a variety of social psychological beliefs, values and practices associated with at least two quite separate and distinct scientific "paradigms." The first paradigm - the modern scientific one-is exemplified in and espoused by the textbook. The second paradigm - a would-be sustainable alternative scientific perspective will be presented in class and through some additional assigned readings.
This is not the place to relate any more details, but it is worth pointing out that while some authorities regard the paradigms in question (both the positivistic, mechanistic/reductionistic atomistic one and its more contingent, systemic, relativistic, complementaristic alternative) as not only totally separate and distinct but also as mutually and reciprocally irreconcilably opposed and contradictory, our aim will be to show that they are complementary. That is, that neither paradigm is wholly sufficient; and that both are necessary to provide a satisfactory understanding of the subject.
In the process of coming to grips with the material, you will need to master some academic and technical terminology and to learn to recognize, to distinguish between, and to reconcile some relevant epistemological, axiological and methodological implications of the theoretical comparisons and contrasts to be drawn in class and in the readings.
IDENTIFICATION AND ORGANIZATION OF RELEVANT 9.70 SYSTEMS AND SUBSYSTEMS:
The class as a whole, the instructional and student subsystems; instructor(s) and students as individuals, as members of the class, as members of study groups and interest groups, study groups and interest groups as such, participants in 9.70 as members of various other groups outside of the 9.70 system, etc.); substantive and procedural norms inherited from past 9.70 classes, influences arising from the broader institutional context, local customs, other systemic sources of social influence, etc.
What do study groups (peer groups) steering groups (or leadership teams) do? How - by what process and by whom-are interim evaluations to be made and final grades to be determined?
These issues remain to be worked out. You will have access to some communications on this and other topics to you from last year's class.
YOU WILL RECEIVE A TIME SHEET. Use it for keeping track of the time and effort you devote to your performance in this class. This might seem silly, but experience teaches us that you need to keep track of the quantity and quality of your participation in real time (or soon thereafter). In this class, success demands close attention to procedural details and openness to information generated, in part, by the experience of self-consciously observing whilst concurrently participating in the organization and development of the 9.70/02 collaborative learning system. In effect, 9.70/02 suggests itself as a model system for study by us precisely because it is, in fact the only social system of which we are all presently members and in whose organization and development we are all conjointly and concurrently involved as students and instructor(s). Moreover, it is the best model system for our purposes because the process of its organization and development as a human social system is more or less prototypical of its kind. You, your group mates, and your classmates and I need to understand the structure of the class in mutually complementary ways. Why does it matter? Precisely because 9.70 is intended to be a collaborative learning process, we are all individually and collectively responsible for devising and implementing a mode of self-organization that includes, among other things, an equitable division of roles and responsibilities among yourselves. Try to agree on some shared goals. (e.g. "to make this class a good learning system for everyone involved"). In any event, timely, effective and conscientious engagement with organizational tasks by everyone is expected, likewise completion of all reading and writing assignments.
Let learning and teaching about social psychology therefore be taken here as a primary personal and social responsibility by everyone in 9.70. Do you have any prior knowledge (dare we say "prejudices"?) regarding specific beliefs, values and practices prevailing (or generally presumed to be prevalent) among MIT undergraduates? Can you identify any points at which such pre-existing information might influence the ease (or difficulty) of making 9.70 the kind of learning experience that you would most like it to be? Speaking more generally, you will quickly come to see the 9.70 learning system operating concurrently on 3 essentially interrelated levels of organization and development: (i.e. the level of individuals, study groups and the class as a whole); with respect to the quality of the 9.70 learning experience, we know and can say with some confidence that each and every one of these levels is equally important and all 9.70 subsystems have their essential parts to play. In order for us to meet our learning goals, all participants must do what needs to be done on all levels of organization." Given the "default assumptions" that commonly prevail in contexts like this one, it's difficult to do this in an MIT classroom, but we somehow need to learn how to encourage trust, personal initiative and social responsibility; to discourage cynicism, freeloading and cheating.
The Science of Social Psychology and Vice-versa: Part One
After giving some illustrative examples of the kinds of issues with which scientific social psychologists have been and are concerned, the author identifies his subject with "the study of social influence," and almost immediately goes on to introduce us to what he calls his "first law," namely that "people who do crazy things are not necessarily crazy."
The point is that this "law" likewise applies (mutatis mutandis, as philosophers like to say) to persons whose behavior in a given situation may justly be regarded as "stupid," "irresponsible," "hateful," "mean," "insensitive," "bad," "cruel" or "vile" (not to mention those whose behavior in the same or different situation may be fairly judged by contrast as being "brilliant," "responsible," "sympathetic," "good," or "kind,") In short, "Aronson's first law" is perhaps best understood as his way of cautioning us against the commonplace tendency to "explain" behavior in terms of some more or less fixed and inherent "dispositions," "characteristics" or "traits" allegedly existing within the presumably intrinsically abnormal, upset, deranged, or other wise impaired and dysfunctional person -- body mind(s) or brain(s) -- of the individual(s) or group(s) whose behavior is thus causing them to be "labeled"? (What is "labeling theory?" Compare and contrast dispositional explanations couched in terms of determinants of behavior localizable within identifiable individuals and/or groups(on the one hand) and situational attributions which focus, instead, on showing how influences arising from within the socially organized environment around us influence our mental lives and behavior. With it, Aronson is thus reminding us that, precisely because we all share the common experience of being persons in contexts , it therefore is insufficient for our purposes to rely solely on explanations that purport to locate the root causes of our thoughts, feelings and actions in some supposedly significant differences lying "essentially" within ourselves. To do so in the context of social psychological discourse is tantamount, as we shall see, to falling victim to "the fundamental attribution error."
READ AND DISCUSS:
How are human experience and human knowledge related?
"Let us get down to bedrock facts. The beginning of every act of knowing, and therefore the starting point of every science must be our own personal experiences. I am using the word, experience, here in its technical philosophical connotation, namely, our direct sensory perception of ... things. These are the immediate data of the act of knowing. They form the first and most real hook on which we fasten the thought-chain of science; because the material that furnishes, as it were, the building stones of science is received either directly through our own perception of things or indirectly, through the information of others, that is to say from former researchers and teachers and publications and so on. There are no other sources of scientific knowledge."
SOME QUESTIONS TO THINK ABOUT AND DISCUSS:
What is science?
Are we after one single fundamental and universally applicable answer, or a plurality of equipotentially credible and useful ones? Proposition to consider: whatever else it may be, science is a human social/cultural system and "doing science" is a human social/cultural activity or process.
What do scientists do?
Can they do it in social isolation? If not, why not? If so, how?
What are some of the epistemological, axiological and methodological aspects of science?
Social and scientific frameworks compared and contrasted.
How are the terms: "experience" and "experiment" related?
What is (and who has) "the power to give names and to enforce definitions"?
Compare and contrast: Meaning and Power: (as in: "the meaning of human nature" and "the power of mind/behavior control."
What determines (causes, creates, conditions, constrains) human behavior in social situations? Nature or nurture? Is it in our genes? In our evolutionary past? In our backgrounds and experiences? In the worldviews, valuesystems and lifestyles prevailing in our families of origin? Our communities? Our culture? Our schools and classrooms?
Discuss the "meaning and power" of the "scientific method." What are scientific paradigms? (scientific beliefs/values/practices)? - more on this next time.
It needs to made clear that in addition to working to master the main points of the narrative overview of the literature that the text provides, you will be involved in taking a complementary "hands-on" approach to the study of social psychological issues involved in the organization and development of the 9.70 learning system (which we will define, in due course, as a prototypical human social system, and which we will all come to recognize as the only one of its kind to which we are all more or less comparable related. Note to everyone: In this upcoming class meeting and the next one, we'll be discussing "the science of social psychology, and vice-versa." Against the possibility that some learning is about to occur, we need some way of determining whether (and if so, how) the experience is going influence of your own thoughts and feelings (= attitudes) and actions. It is perhaps to be expected that your initial impressions of the class and the subject will be more or less effectively challenged and possibly even caused to change by virtue of your involvement in this process. We've already taken a step in this direction with the Benchmarks exercise. As we continue, and learning proceeds (let us hope) do you sense any need for some other ways of gauging any possible future changes in your respective/collective perspectives?
In any case, this is intended to be a hands-on collaborative learning process and both its direction and trajectory beyond the limits defined by this syllabus, are bound to be determined - for better or worse - by the quality of the feedback that you give to and receive from one another. Thus, as you watch videos, read the text, or make observations in the classroom, study group or elsewhere: TAKE NOTES! Raise questions. Identify points or statements or issues with which you particularly strongly agree or disagree, or find incomprehensible or confusing.
After completing assignments, but before discussing your journal entries in whole or in part with any of your groupmates/classmates, please find a quiet place to think and then (1) using your journal and your personal copies of the assigned readings as your workplace, take some notes regarding your present understanding of the character and social role of science and scientific paradigms. In your communications with each other and with us, try to stay "on point." Be concise. Be thoughtful. Try to go as deeply as you can into the meaning of this stuff.
Let the minutes that your study group turns in prior to our next meeting include a summary list of any and all points of consensual (a) agreement (b) disagreement and (c) confusion identified and/or generated in the discussion. In particular: if it is found that two or more group members strongly agree or disagree on a given point of some importance, please so indicate.
Note to Steering Group #1 and all subsequent groups of Facilitators:
Each of us has her or his own relatively well-established and time-honored (if not always absolutely flawless) ways of entering situations (including classes or courses of study. For example, I've heard it said by some MIT undergraduates that they enter each new classroom on the first day of each new semester expecting another academically and professionally excellent adventure in an exciting and relevant subject area; others have told me they usually enter shyly, feeling slightly apprehensive, if not downright depressed and despairing; feeling vaguely embarrassed or guilty, or ashamed, with a definitely deflated ("one down") sense of self-esteem - not to mention a growing sense of fear for the future tinged, perhaps, by some self-doubt regarding academic and professional choices made.
Are you ready to have some fun while learning something of possibly lasting social psychological value? Or has the fun already gone out of learning for you?
This semester long FACILITATION/EVALUATION process, is intended to be "real" Accordingly, it needs to begin by identifying and defining as appropriate, natural and normal some of the many and varied, highly complex and perhaps downright ambivalent thoughts and feelings that people appropriately naturally and normally experience at the point of entry into a social situation like this one.
What are those thoughts and feelings? Who is to say? Why not try to find out what people in the class are actually thinking and feeling about this process? HINT: Social psychologists (among others) study people's attitudes in many different ways. Can you identify any? Which approach seems the most sensible one to use in the present case and why? That properly depends on the objective. What is the facilitators' goal? Need to make it explicit. Is there a need for people to begin feeling "at home" with the process? Is this happening? Do you see any sense in the idea of connecting with the class as a whole by describing and illustrating by example your own approach/avoidance behavior at the point of entry? (Is there a better way for peer-group leaders to exhibit their capacities leadership than for them to identify with the concerns of the membership?) So, facilitators, if you think and feel that thoughts and feelings of uncertainty are a legitimate concern, why not demonstrate legitimize, normalize and otherwise validate the putative consensual validity of the thoughts and feelings in question. Here, again, we exemplify and thereby reconnect once more with the principle that the learning process "begins at home," with peers meeting and connecting with each other mentally and behaviorally wherever and whenever they are "on social psychologically common ground." (Hence the epistemological and linguistic sense made by the colloquialisms about people being most well met where they are "at.")
Indeed, in class, and via some additional readings, we will introduce another scientific perspective - one that both broadens and enriches the "situational" approach that social psychologists are commonly taught to take in defining and dealing with the aspects of human behavior with which they are academically or professionally concerned. In this connection, we will devote a substantial portion of our next class meeting to the task of comparing and contrasting these two complementary "paradigms."
The Science of Social Psychology and Vice-versa: Part Two
What are Paradigms?
What is "Normal"? ("Statistical" vs. "Clinical" Normality)
What are "Crises"?
PREPARATION:
Paradigms will be defined for present purposes as conceptually and materially complex composite cognitive, affective and expressive) unities. We will be comparing and contrasting the specific scientific beliefs values and practices related to two contemporary approaches to the study of social influences. Here is one of the questions to consider: Do either or both or neither of the two scientific perspectives that we are exploring appear to you to offer a sensible, appropriate and realistic scientific approach to the study of human mental activity and behavior in social contexts? Think about it! Consider the questions below also. And be prepared to discuss with groupmates and classmates.
SOME STATEMENTS/QUESTIONS TO DISCUSS:
What is "a system." What do we have when we have "an understanding of a system?"
Critically consider the following: "When I say that I understand a system, I mean to be understood as making no claims to anything like complete or comprehensive knowledge of it. Rather, what I have in mind is something altogether partial; something incomplete and incurably perspectival; something based on my relationship to something that is both "standing together" as a conceptually/materially compound and complex composite unity and which has a comprehensible relationship to things outside itself. In sum: I claim to know or understand some things about a system when I am able to give a more or less concise, coherent, credible, intelligible and comprehensible account of its (1) internal organization, (2) external relations and (3) the process by which it has come to be what it is.
So, what can we hope and expect to see and explain about the organization and development of the 9.70 collaborative learning system from our admittedly internal vantage point? What do we know about its constituents(individually/collectively); their respective and collective composition, modes of organization and the sub-system level relations of constituent elements or parts, 2) about its external relations, and 3) about its origins (initial conception, creation, original realization, birth, means of production; reproduction; history, transgenerational evolution/devolution, phylogenesis, ontogenesis, epigenesis, growth, development, maturation ... etc.)
"All human knowledge of the world and its contents, including our scientific knowledge of ourselves, always has been, is, cannot help but be and forever must remain, for us, altogether partial. One reason for this (the main reason, in fact) is that we are, as the old saying has it, "only human."
What does this mean or imply?
Is it true?
What is science?
What is consensus?
What is a "consensual domain"?
What is consensual validation?
What are "human systems?" Give some examples from biological, psychological and sociocultural levels of organization. In each case, indicate the kinds of things that it is necessary to know in order to be in a position to understand the systems in question.
Compare and contrast: (see catalog description for 9.68?)
Cognition, affect, behavior.
Worldviews, valuesystems and lifestyles.
Beliefs, values (theories) and practices.
Thoughts, feelings (covert attitudes and mindsets; mental events) and actions (overt behavior).
The main point of this assignment is to present for your consideration, two quite different scientific frameworks for defining and dealing with social psychological reality. Your task is to identify, to compare and to contrast some of the noteworthy conceptual and material similarities and differences between the two paradigms in question. What is a "scientific paradigm?"
Conformity and Deviance
Systems and Lifecycles
Stages/Phases of Development
Norms: Students and Teachers
Inside and Outside of Classrooms
PREPARATION:
At all levels of organization and development, from the nuclear family through schools and communities and beyond, to the scale of nation-states and global villages, the conceptual and material cohesiveness of human social systems is created and maintained, in large measure, by the emergence (imposition?) of a consensus among particular members of a self-consciously constituted community regarding the propriety of certain beliefs, values and practices. (Notice the recurring cognitive, affective and behavioral triad.) It is a primary social psychological presumption that the fact of group membership (whether achieved, in any given instance, by chance, choice or coercion) powerfully affects our attitudes and behavior. What roles do rewards and punishments play? What is groupthink? Compliance? Obedience? Identification? Internalization? What happened in the Challenger disaster? Is the behavior of uninvolved bystanders comprehensible as an example of conformity? Distinguish between and illustrate by example the characteristics of informationally more or less "open" vs "closed" social systems.
How do you generally deal with information that makes you uncomfortable? The following readings and videos -- like others to be encountered in this class -- contain some material and suggest some conclusions about various aspects of human social behavior in routine and problematical situations that most readers and viewers may find somewhat disturbing. As you encounter and come mentally and behaviorally "to grips with" such cases, it may prove more or less difficult for you to cognitively and affectively "take in" the information. It is normal, of course, for people to try to "distance" themselves from thoughts and feelings that are intellectually and emotionally disturbing. This tendency -- a common "defense mechanism" in psychological parlance -- is worth paying attention to in itself. But for us its more immediate need is for you to understand and endeavor to overcome this tendency because it may otherwise act as a barrier to your understanding of the material. With what kind of an attitude (mental "set") should you be approaching this material?
In doing and discussing the readings -- and more particularly -- in watching and understanding the videos for this class it is important to bear in mind that these media are being used here for LEARNING/TEACHING purposes, and not merely or mainly as ENTERTAINMENT.
The ultimate aim is to help you to better understand the ways in which your own behavior is subject to influences arising from elsewhere in the socioculturally organized venues in which you live and play and work and go to school. Try to observe and reflect on what you are seeing with the present learning context foremost in mind. This is, in fact, a learnable skill. If you find it necessary for understanding, feel free to reread, watch and listen carefully a second time. With respect to the presentation as a whole and the issues/events depicted: Keep asking yourself and each other what you think and how you feel about the media and the messages. Warning: In many cases, the films, and other media that you'll be encountering are "classics." Consequently, some of the videos are decades old and their technical quality is often far from up to present-day technical standards. Furthermore, the people and situations portrayed may look strange, sport passé haircuts and outmoded dress styles. Consider the case of The Wave, for example. Obviously, the young people who were more or less unwittingly drawn by their teacher into the informal "experiment" depicted in the film are not you. Moreover, your obvious differences from them (e.g. in age, context, dress and deportment, background, etc) will make it easy for you to refrain from identifying with them and their predicament. But the point you need to consider is that some such group of more or less "normal" young people of varying "types" were students in a California high school in the early 1970's and underwent something like the experience depicted. In other words, please do not let your own defenses entirely prevent you from making a conscious effort to identify at least somewhat with the people and the situations in which they find themselves. Only then will you be able to address the more important questions: Can you see yourself behaving as any of the students behaved? Is the story believable to you? Are the characters and contexts recognizably real? With which of the adults or students did you find it particularly easy (or hard) to identify or empathize? Why? Does anything in the film remind you of anything that you have personally experienced? How do you deal with things like "peer pressures," "obedience to authority," etc.?
Meanwhile, we are almost 1/3 of the way into the term and need to do some interim stock-taking: How are you doing? What is your initial impression of the material and the class as a whole? How are you finding the homework assignments? Are you and your groupmates working well together? How is the 9.70 collaborative learning system developing, in your view? Have you been able to notice the emergence (or lack thereof) of any organizational and developmental issues or crises like the ones described in the handout on "stages and phases of development in human systems?" If so, please give some examples. If not, why not?
READ/VIEW AND DISCUSS:
1) S. E. Asch. Opinions and Social Pressure.
2) C. Wiener. Scientists, Engineers and Public Controversies. (Videotape; Viewing time 51 mins.)
3) S. Milgram. Behavioral Study of Obedience.
4) S. Milgram. Obedience to Authority. (Videotape; Viewing time 51 mins.)
5) S. Jones. You Will Do As Directed.
6) The Wave. (Videotape; Viewing time 44 minutes)
What lessons (e.g. regarding obedience to authority and conformity to peer pressures) do you take away from your exposure to these readings and films?
In The Social Animal, Chapter 9, you read Aronson's defense of deception in experimental social psychological research. Are any troubling ethical issues raised in your minds by the methods of procedure employed in the quite formally experimental Asch and/or Milgram studies? By the less formally scientific "experiment" or exercise (or whathaveyou?) done by the classroom teacher in The Wave?
Mass Communications and the Media
"The Engineering of Consent"
Propaganda and Persuasion
PREPARATION:
In social systems of varying kinds and sizes, -- and not merely in large, hierarchically structured organizations and groups -- various means (mass media appeals, propaganda and persuasion) are developed and deployed for the purpose of encouraging or enforcing conformity to prevailing mental and behavioral norms and with respect to certain key defining issues. We consider here the instance of "mass communications" and consider some of the factors that may influence the perceived credibility of communications; how do advertising and/or media appeals achieve "the engineering of consent?" Define the following: primacy effect, recency effect, emotional contagion, Compare and contrast: education and indoctrination; reason and passion; prosocial, asocial, and/or antisocial influences. Is it possible to distinguish between education and indoctrination? Define and distinguish between the primacy effect and the recency effect.
VIEW AND DISCUSS:
SOME QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
How do media images of women and men influence gender stereotyping?
How do media images of people influence our self-images as women and men?
What is "patriarchy?" "androgyny?" What are "gender stereotypes?"
Define "macho," "machismo," "masculine culture" "culture of honor".
How does pornography reflect and reinforce the "objectification" of women (and men) in our society?
Compare and contrast: "chromosomal sex," "hormonal sex," anatomical sex," "physiological sex," "sexual identity," "gender identity."
Social Cognition, Affect, Perception and Evaluation
The Psychology of Attribution
The Dynamics of Social Action and Inaction
J. R. Macy. Despair and Personal Power. (Excerpts). Writing in 1983, in the midst of an escalating nuclear arms race between the US and USSR, Macy sought to show how we tend to deal with information that is inherently threatening to our personal safety and security and which normally engenders feelings of fear and foreboding about the future. In effect, she offered up an explanation of what has been called "the dynamics of inaction." Does her thesis have any contemporary relevance? Is it applicable, mutatis mutandis to current events?
SOME QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
What happened on September 11, 2001?
How do we know what we profess to believe?
How do our attitudes relate to our actions?
What does it mean to say that in trying to figure out how social reality "works," children and other people tend to behave like "naive scientists?"
What is "the fundamental attribution error?"
How does context influence social judgment?
What is meant by "the social construction of reality?"
What is meant by "reconstructive memory?" by "false memory syndrome?"
Define "cognitive conservatism."
What are "attitudes?" "roles"?
What is "hindsight bias?" "actor-observer bias"? "confirmation bias?" "availability heuristic?" "egocentric thinking?" "the illusion of control?" "in-group out-group bias?" "sensitivity training?" "the dilution effect?" "rationality?" "self- fulfilling prophesy?" "learned helplessness?"
Us and Them: Individual and Collective
Socialization and Self Justification
How Attributional Biases Influence
Our Evaluations of Our Own and Other Peoples' Behavior
SOME QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
What is self-justification?
Is dissonance reduction "rational" or "irrational"?
What is "inadequate justification?"
How does dissonance arise after a decision?
How does dissonance theory relate to the justification of effort?
What is meant by "the psychology of inevitability?"
What is "learned helplessness?"
Describe "victim blaming".
What is "role socialization?"
Families as Social Systems:
Anorexia Nervosa in Context
By hypothesis, families are comprehensible as human systems in which the thoughts, feelings and actions of all members are decisively influenced by prevailing rules that are tacitly (but not necessarily consciously) understood and obeyed. Like the speaker of a natural human language who more or less effortlessly adheres to grammatical rules that he or she may not be able to state explicitly, family members more or less unconsciously contribute to the maintenance of "family homeostasis" by acting in accordance with established role expectations. Like grammatical rules, the rules governing family homeostasis are largely discernible through analysis and can be recognized as relevant and operative by family members when they are explicitly stated. How does your family work?
During the class session, we will re-enact an interview with a family in which a child has become an "identified patient." Deborah Kaplan is 15 and has been diagnosed with a life-threatening case of an eating disorder (anorexia nervosa ). The family interview-in which Deborah, her brother and her parents participate -- takes place around lunch, and we are therefore able to observe the family's interactions in the face of Deborah's refusal to eat.
The interview is conducted "behind a one-way screen" by a family therapist/family systems researcher and various assistants. The demonstration helps us to understand some of the difference it makes whether someone with "the power to define" offers up as his/her expert opinion a dispositional or a situational-interpretation of human social problems. In so far as the interview is both dramatic and instructive it is because of-among other things -- the existence within human systems of influential links between (1) the way problems are defined (on the one hand) and (2)the way they are (and are not) dealt with. It also shows that it can sometimes be effective to "reframe" a problem in less reductionistic , more systemic, terms.
Aggression: What's "Human Nature" Got to Do With It?
Poverty, Racism Crime and Violence
By one contemporary formulation, truth is a relationship of correspondence between persons and statements and states of affairs. Thus when the state of affairs described by a particular statement (or statements in general) corresponds to the state of affairs actually observed to be prevailing in the pertinent context we say that the statement is true. By a hypothesis easily confirmed by direct observation, human mental life is more or less systematically related to behavior. Therefore distinctions need to be made between (1) questions about the truth/falsity (correspondence/non-correspondence) of propositions pertaining to persons, situations, states-of-affairs, etc. (on the one hand) and (2) questions about our beliefs and values (right or wrong) being principal determinants of our actions (on the other). Alas, we sometimes assert what we do not know and sometimes do not know what we assert. In any case, what we think and feel and say has consequences (exerts social influences).
For example, suppose we see people all around us behaving in greedy, aggressive, competitive, violent and self-seeking ways. Doesn't that prove that we are greedy, aggressive, competitive, violent and self-seeking "by nature"?
What is "human nature"?
What is usually meant by the phrase "you can't change human nature?"
If the true nature of "human nature" is inferable from human behavior, and is inherently fixed and unchangeable, what conclusions follow about (e.g.) the prospects for reducing the deleterious social effects of so much greedy, aggressive, competitive, violent and self-seeking behavior?
What is "biological determinism?"
Give a good example of the use of a biological determinist argument as a "social excuse."
What are "self-fulfilling prophesies?" How do they work? Give some examples. Relate to the use of "human nature as social excuse?
What evidence is there that we are genetically pre-programmed to pursue the transgenerational survival of our "selfish genes?"
From a social policy perspective, what differences does it make how we choose to answer such questions?
How much aggression is due to frustration?
What role does social learning play?
Are we living in the midst of an epidemic of "domestic violence?"
What chances do we have of reducing violence?
Prejudice and Discrimination
VIEW AND DISCUSS:
PBS "Frontline." A Class Divided. (Videotape, viewing time 51 minutes)
This program deals with what began in 1968 as an Iowa elementary school teacher's idea for a classroom "experiment" intended to teach her all-white and relatively socioeconomically non-differentiated students a lesson about prejudice, using on a seemingly trivial aspect of human diversity as a basis for distinguishing between two groups. Some highly instructive extensions of the work into other institutional contexts are also described.
The Color of Fear (Videotape)
SOME QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
What is "prejudice?"
What are "stereotypes?"
Is there a "prejudiced" personality?
Can prejudice be overcome?