Vfrankel

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This user has withdrawn from the social psychology unit, 2008.

Opening statement

Psychology is my second degree. My first degree is a Bachelor of Arts in European Studies. The degree included units in history, philosophy, politics, and some on contemporary Europe. I mention this because this knowledge gave me a good contextual understanding whenever key European figures or movements in psychology were spoken about in the various psychology units I have undertaken. For example when Freud and other Viennese psychoanalysts were mentioned I had a good and vivid picture of late 19th and early 20th century Vienna and therefore a solid (but not perfect) understanding of the philosophical, political, economic, social and cultural influences that shaped these peoples’ thinking. This was also true with Wilhelm Wundt and his contemporaries and the later Gestalt movement as well of those of the key players and movements from France, Britain, Italy, Russia and to a lesser extent Benelux and the Scandinavian countries. However, whenever U.S.A figures and movements were mentioned I had no personal body of knowledge that would allow a contextual understanding of the merits or otherwise of what I was being taught. Over the past three and a half years I have sought to redress my ignorance by reading widely about the U.S.A and whilst I am now better equipped to make evaluative judgments my knowledge is far from being complete and therefore will be an ongoing process. My reasons for telling you this I hope will be come apparent the following paragraphs. Whilst I have no criticism of the quality of the delivery of what we are being taught ( indeed it compares well with that which I received from my first degree and in one or two cases has exceeded it) I do take issue with what we are being taught and these are my reasons why. We are not being taught a coherent philosophical or historical narrative of the development of psychology. Without a coherent narrative it is much more difficult for students discern which is good science and which is rubbish and more importantly why the rubbish constant (i.e. that portion of knowledge which is rubbish no matter when it’s produced: now, in the past or indeed in the future) will remain relatively constant. Instead when we do learn something of the past like Phrenology it is easy to form the opinion that the generation that gave rise to and supposedly gave unquestioning acceptance of the idea that the shape of a person’s skull somehow told you something important about that person’s qualities were somehow intellectually less sophisticated than we are. However the reality is quite different. Many excellent minds of the time knew it was junk science at the time and devised methods to show it as such. So you may ask why then did such an absurd idea continue to have currency. Simply because scientific ideas (including those in psychology) are not always conceived, propagated and maintained to increase our knowledge and/or to make the world a better place. For example, from the 15th century onwards a number of European powers went on to develop empires right around the world. They did so to gain economic advantage for their ruling elites. Whilst Spain’s empire disappeared during the course of the 19th century those of Britain, France, Belgium, Netherlands and Portugal continued well into the 20th century. With the rise of a burgeoning educated middle-class during the 19th century it became increasingly difficult for the elites to justify their exploitation of other peoples so in desperation they turned to science. Elements within the scientific community bent over backwards to accommodate. They proclaimed that we were intellectually, socially and culturally superior to these people and instead of exploiting them we were bring them the benefits of our obviously superior culture. Many disciplines contributed to the fiction, including anthropology, philosophy, and yes psychology (think intelligence testing). Many scientists within these disciplines fought hard at the time to expose this fiction to little or no avail. Why, because the political and economic imperatives were too strong to be overcome.

Move now to the present. The European empires have gone (though some argue, and not without justification, that residual effects remain) however another empire has risen in their place. I refer to that of the U.S.A. . This empire has sought and continues to seek economic and military dominance over all others. Now I know this may be difficult to accept for a variety of reasons but many, many distinguished historians, political scientists, and other authors of note have written copious works on the growth, extent and effects of this empire not only on the rest of the world but on the United States itself. Like the empires of the past the political and economic imperatives that drive this hegemony have a corrupting effect and psychology just like other branches of science is not immune.

A lot of excellent science is produced in the U.S. and this is also true of psychology. However, just like the past not all theory development and research is carried out with the driving premise being the advancement of human knowledge or for the improvement humanity. Much of that misanthropic work is known at the time but is often buried by political and economic imperatives.

As most of the contemporary psychological theory and research either emanates from the U.S or trumps research from other countries by the mere fact (at least in this country) that most of the texts used are written in the U.S and exhibit many marked U.S biases.

What to do! For a start the continual reinforcement of the fact that a sizable element of the contemporary knowledge will not stand the test of time because it has been influenced by forces external to the discipline. This should be done in every unit in the same way that the elements of good scientific procedures and terminology is reinforced. There needs to be shift emphasis from training students to a process of education. All training does is equip a student with the knowledge of a discipline as it stands at the time of its teaching. Training does not teach the skills of critical thinking, of the extent and limitations of human knowledge, and of proper healthy skepticism; that’s what happens when a person is educated.

Why should this happen? Because I believe most of the students who complete the degree and who do not go on to become clinical psychologists will invariably work in jobs that involve the formulation and or administration of social policy that has the potential to affect far more peoples’ lives than those of the clinical psychologist. Psychology is a very important discipline which gives the person holding such a degree a prestige and status which may or may not be deserved. Therefore it is incumbent on the university to produce graduates who recognise the extent of and limitation to their knowledge base and who apply their knowledge with the appropriate measure of caution. The university should not be in the business of producing fachidioten who apply their knowledge indiscriminately and inappropriately. The current syllabus in my judgement is much more likely to produce the latter than the former. My apologies for such a long-winded introduction but I felt it was necessary as I believe it clarifies why my proceeding commentary is focused in the way that it will be.

Week 1

Before beginning this course I had no coherent understanding of social psychology. I had read books on and by some social psychologists like Stanley Milgram, Philip Zimbardo, and some others, but I really did not know what I was likely to encounter. Just before the start of the semester I purchased the prescribed text and had a quick skim read of a few of the chapters. My first impression was that I had encountered much of the broad topic material in a number of the earlier psychology units I had completed and therefore felt that I was unlikely to be troubled by this unit.

Upon reading the first two chapters for week one I was struck by how different the book’s information was set out in comparison to the texts of previous courses. The other texts structured their information around experimenters and their experiments, and although the terminology was important it did not play central role; but here it was reversed. The terminology and the concepts they engender are centrally important and the experiments play a relatively minor supporting role. Because of this structural change I experienced quite some difficulty retaining the information I had just read as I was unable to place the information in a meaningful context.

My first response when I began reading the first two chapters was “another bloody American textbook”. As I have written in the introduction to this e-journal that I have attempted to learn as much as I can about U.S history, politics and culture and as a consequence of this reading, I recognise there is a vast gulf between our value systems and those of the U.S. When I read American texts and/or texts about the U.S. I am often reminded of the quip by Winston Churchill (Britain’s Prime Minister during world war two) who when commenting on Britain’s relationship to the U.S. said “two countries divided by a common language”.

Chapter 1

“Mission and the Method” tells me that the sub discipline of social psychology was conceived in the U.S. and that she has dominated the field ever since. Though I am relatively ignorant of the history of this sub discipline I suspect this may be a case of ‘gilding the lily’. The authors quite rightly discuss social psychology’s place within the social sciences and I look forward to them drawing on these other disciplines when seeking to explain key aspects. I say this because I subscribe to the sentiments of John Dunne who wrote in the late 16th early 17th century about “no man is an island entire of itself …” and I believe this is also true of knowledge.

Chapter 2

“Culture and Nature” begins with a vignette on a Canadian boy who through a botched circumcision procedure lost most of his penis and as a consequence had the remainder removed and was raised as a girl. I took the point of this story as being that culture and socialization are less important in making who we are than was previously believed by social scientists. Whilst I have no argument that the case demonstrated the power of nature over nurture I was somewhat troubled by the lack of reference to Dr. John Money the psychologist who ran this whole experiment and who built his reputation around it. Dr Money published copiously on this case but the authors of this textbook have made no reference to him whatsoever. Rather curious!

Having demonstrated the power of inherited characteristics the next section on the psyche begins with the nature argument followed by that of culture. The section on culture was much larger than that on nature but I felt after reading it that I was little the wiser as to what they meant by culture. Yes the authors gave an example of differences in family sleeping arrangements between the U.S and Japan but surely these are merely differences in behavioural practices and that the reasons for these differences (historical, social) were not addressed. To understand a culture you need to compare it to other examples and to tease out why differences occur.

The U.S is, like Australia, a country built on immigration. It has taken in large numbers of people from countries right around the world. As a consequence of this together with its geographical position the U.S has sizable ethnic minorities (ie Hispanic, African-American etc). However, the authors give the impression of cultural homogeneity. Also troubling is that they make no reference to the work of social psychologists in other countries. As a consequence the later descriptions of the elements of culture are given through the eyes of white middle class America.

The section on the duplex mind was very interesting in that it set out two different and seemingly different paths to our thinking and behaviour. Whilst I have learnt about our different modes of thinking from other units this book describes these differences under the aegis of automatic and conscious systems which gave me a degree of clarification that I had not experienced before.

Week 2

I attended my first tutorial this week and, although initially skeptical of the value of the activities described in the first tutorial literature, I must admit I was pleasantly surprised. The most important aspect of the tutorial for me was to do with the groups. Thinking about the broad categories of grouping we were asked to divide ourselves into caused me to think about the exercise in a number of different ways.

Firstly whilst we were asked to form ourselves into groupings based on some aspect of ourselves (eye colour, relationship status, political belief etc.) these groupings fell into three broad categories. The categories were: physical attributes (an aspect of ourselves that we have little or no control over) a state of being (belonging to a group as a result of decision made and an action taken; marriage for example) and those based on our attitudes or beliefs (which party we vote for, Religiosity).

Secondly, I found myself attaching more value to some groups over others. For me the groupings of religiosity and political affiliation evoked the strongest feelings of group membership whereas eye colour and relationship status evoked a very weak response. I wondered whether others had the same or similar reactions to me.

Thirdly, I initially thought that groupings consisting of attitudes and beliefs would naturally bring about the strongest group identity as a matter of course. But on thinking about this a little longer I realized this could not be right. For example having blue eyes in Hitler’s Germany had particularly strong group identification as would being born an Indigenous Australian in today’s Australia. Relationship status though relatively benign as a group marker in Australia is not so in other cultures. Like 18th to early 20th century western women who had not married by the age of 25, women of other contemporary cultures find themselves strongly identified.

Lastly, from this I concluded that the strength of group membership identification is very much tied to cultural norms and that these norms are subject to change over time; and also that membership to a particular group can outweigh membership to all other groups that a person may share with others.

Chapter 3: The Self

After reading the chapter I was quite surprised there was so much to the self. I must admit I was somewhat perplexed as to why the terms ‘interpersonal self (public self)’ and ‘self as an institution’ were both included. Yes I know that the descriptions are worded differently but to my mind it is a minor matter of degree and surely one term could subsume the other.

I was somewhat disappointed by the Culture and Interdependence section. The story about the Japanese gymnast, whilst moving, I felt told me almost nothing about interdependent self-construal from a different cultural perspective. As I was reading the story I could immediately think of two examples of Australian Olympians who were seriously injured during team events but continued despite extreme pain because they did not want to let the team down. They were Bill Roycroft (Rome 1960) and Gillian Rolton (Atlanta 1996) both were members of Australia’s Equestrian Eventing teams and both won team gold because of their drive to not let their team mates down. Clearly there are differences between how we as westerners view ourselves in relation to others and how people of eastern cultures do; but so far this book failed to describe such interdependence in terms other than how we would see it from our perspective. This is not helpful.

The section on self-awareness was very interesting in that we will modify our behaviour to conform to either private or public standards as our self awareness increases. Also of note is that our self awareness does not require reflective thought but merely being able to see our reflected image will bring about change in behaviour.

The idea that environmental factors influence what aspects of ourselves we will be accessing at the time was thought provoking in that it offers an explanation for our avoidance of places and contexts that are reminders of our previous failings.

I thought the link between self-handicapping and the personal belief that earlier success was undeserved was quite illuminating but also wondered how that would play out in a collectivist culture. Would for example a group’s belief in undeserved success affect individual performances more than it would in our culture?

The information on self-esteem and narcissism offered a different perspective than to other works I had read. I had come to believe that narcissists were lacking in self-esteem but I accept the premise of this alternative view. The subtly of a narcissist being cognizant of how others view them only as a means to achieve his/her goal and that lack of approval by others only affects their sense of self when this interferes with their goal outcomes was edifying.

Chapter 4 Behaviour Control: The self in action

Reading this chapter brought a number of points to mind. The choice of vignette to kick the chapter off was an interesting one. Straying into the political field can be problematic in that highlighting the misdeeds of others can open the door on having one’s own actions scrutinized. This can be through a heightening of self awareness and/or public self-consciousness. I suspect there was an absence of mirrors during the writing of this piece. Obviously the authors were affected by levels of meaning in that their focus was at a lower technical level rather than the more cognitive reflective higher levels of meaning. I also suspect that in achieving their goal of writing this text they were pursuing and upholding their values as no doubt the coming chapters will reveal.

I took from the ‘Freedom of Action’ section that it is not the reality of the freedom of action but the holding of a belief that we have a measure of control over the circumstances we find ourselves in is crucial to our well-being. That the disturbance of that belief can lead to either learned helplessness in some or reactance in others.

The section on suicide was a very superficial look at a very tragic and complex topic. In trying to condense the obvious wealth of information on the topic they have oversimplified which has led to a single planed view. I also note that the research they quoted is no more recent than the 1980’s and I wonder why that is?

Week 3

Chapter 5

I found the opening story of Carolyn Briggs’ journey into and then out of Christian fundamentalism an interesting one. Whilst I do not necessarily disagree with the authors’ summation at the end of the narrative, I think that the change in her belief structures is also one of maturation. For me she was a young, not very well educated woman who like all of us was looking for truth, certainty and meaning in her life. She obviously felt she had found this in fundamentalist religion. Yet as the years passed the inconsistencies in the doctrine she had embraced began to trouble her. Her development is one that pretty much all of us experience with the passage of time. How you view yourself and the world changes markedly as the decades pass. Life goes from being more certain to one of much less certainty. It is not unnatural to find this troubling. The more intelligent invariably seek knowledge to help them cope with this growing realization. Clearly Carolyn Briggs is an intelligent woman.

In reading the rest of this chapter I felt that I was pretty much reviewing information I had been exposed to in last semester’s Cognitive Psychology unit. There were for me however some interesting departures some of which I will now describe. The concept ‘cognitive miser’ implied levels of intelligence being the key factor. But I wondered whether ignorance independent of intelligence also plays a major role. My own personal experience has been that the more I have learned about the world around me the more I think. My thinking has also moved from the concrete (what has occurred) to the more abstract (why has it occurred and what does it mean); in other words I am thinking about thinking.

Accompanying the photo of the American soldier and the Iraqi boy (p. 154) we are told that different news media may frame this according to their own perspectives. I have a few problems with this. Firstly, the implication that truth is not important in reporting the news. Secondly, that the recognition of the biasing of news reported in the U.S. is by default replicated in equal measure by whatever other news services are reporting on the conflict. The question to ask is why are the authors making this particular point? I suggest reading Amy Goodman and her brother’s book ‘Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People who fight back’ which will provide some insight into this question.

The Food for Thought section on page 155 was interesting in that it reinforced the notion that it is not the reality of what we are doing that shapes our continuing behaviour but what we believe that reality to be, regardless of the degree of the inaccuracy of that belief.

I must say I was delighted to come across the ‘first instinct fallacy’ as I have lost count of the number of times I have sat in a multiple choice exam and have agonized over whether to change an initial answer, because in the back of my mind has been the old saying that the first response is more likely to be the correct one.

Chapter 7

I am somewhat fascinated by U.S attitudes and beliefs on the issue of life and death. How does a country that thinks and fights so passionately over the sanctity of life to the point where a woman’s rights to abortion laid down by the U.S Supreme Court decision of Roe vs Wade in the 1970s can be so systematically wound back. That terminally ill people who want to choose to end their suffering are denied this choice because of the belief of sanctity of life, and yet state sanctioned killing of criminals regardless of whether they are intellectually challenged, or not quite of right mind, and until quite recently juveniles is OK. To maintain this attitude particularly in the face of numerous recent cases of death row prisoners being exonerated by advances in genetic forensic evidence is quite something. Is this a case of dual attitudes?

In the section on ‘how attitudes are formed’ I learnt that our formation of attitudes has less to do with conscious contemplation and more to do with behaviourist principals of learning (ie stimulus-response and vicarious) and that having formed an attitude I will not only hang on to this attitude in the face of conflicting evidence but that my attitude will polarize. What was the example used to demonstrate this principle, ah yes that hoary old chestnut the death penalty. The authors go on to describe how people find ingroup evidence is more compelling than that of the outgroup and I wondered in reading this material that these same authors are in fact demonstrating this very principle by the narrowness of the material they present.

Reading Heider’s P-O-X theory I could not but think ‘pox’, as I was reminded of a 19th century German philosopher (his name escapes me at this moment) who wrote that all science was underpinned by mathematics and because psychology did not use mathematics as its foundation it was not a true science. But seeing the mathematical pluses and minuses did make me wonder. But seriously, this is asking us to think about things on a single plane, which has not been my experience of psychology, and is to subscribe to the notion of ‘simple ideas for simple people’.

The food for thought article on eating a worm I found very informative of how faced when with an onerous task and seemingly little choice in the matter, we will more likely continue to fulfill that obligation even when given a later offer of a more benign choice. The key to this counterintuitive finding is whether we have changed belief about our participation in the undesired behaviour. Belief change in the face of adversity leads to commitment to the cause.

In the section on 'cognitive dissonance and attitude change' I came upon yet another of the authors’ faulty use of argument logic in order to press a point. I have not commented on the others but felt I need to so with this one because it is so egregious. On page 235 the book’s authors talk about ‘hazing’ on college campuses. They go on to say that college administrations are generally against such practices (however they do not say why they are against the practice). In contrast the fraternities and sororities are presented as arguing the merits of such practices on the basis of group bonding. Then we read that psychologists have shown the fraternities and sororities are correct and the administration wrong. What did the administrators get wrong? Were their reasons for opposing ‘hazing’ because did not believe in the effectiveness of hazing as a group bonding exercise? Hardly; I not unreasonably assume their opposition to hazing stemmed from a duty of care and a desire not to be sued by injured and/or humiliated students.

The section on ‘Belief and Coping’ provided another pithy insight to human behaviour. Under the concept of ‘assumptive worlds’ we learned that people who have been victims of violent crime can have three key assumptions about the world and themselves severely shaken or even shattered. Now these people are likely, because of what they have endured, to have a pessimistic and somewhat depressed view of the world. And as we have learnt from early chapters, it is those people who have a more realistic appraisal, rather than optimists with high self-esteem. It is not reality that is important; instead it is what we believe about that reality that guides our behaviour. This of course brings us to religion and irrational thought.

Psychology aspires to be taken seriously as a science. A testament to this desire has been the rejection of psychoanalytical theories on the basis of their untestability (ie unable to be falsified) and the pursuance of ever more refined experimental methods in psychological research. In the U.S today some 100 million Americans consider themselves to be born-again Christians, with a sizable portion of those Christian fundamentalists. A fundamentalist believes that everything written in the bible actually occurred and that it happened exactly as described. This means that the planet earth is only a few thousand years old. Now there is a wealth of scientific evidence from many scientific fields to show the risibility of this belief. How do committed Christians cope with such evidence? The latest manifestation of denial has been the rise of ‘intelligent design’. This attack on science has become such a threat to the teaching of science in the U.S that the normally staid and rational Professor Richard Dawkins (author of ‘The Selfish Gene’ and other scientific books) recently wrote a book titled ‘The God Delusion’, whose tone can only be described as apoplectic. For a more rational treatise on the subject I would recommend philosopher Bertrand Russell’s ‘Why I am not a Christian’.

An irrational belief according to my understanding is one held in the absence of any verifiable evidence or in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Why then was religious belief not included under this heading?

Week 4

Chapter 13 Social Influence and Persuasion

Whilst reading this chapter I found my thoughts wandering to George Orwell’s book ‘1984’ where ‘doublespeak’ was the order of the day. In the world of ‘1984’ the Ministry of Peace ran the nation’s wars and the Ministry of Truth produced propaganda. With this textbook, the chapter is titled ‘Social Influence and Persuasion’, both terms with relatively benign connotations, yet when reading the content I found myself thinking ‘manipulation’: a much more malignant term. Manipulation is about getting people to do things they would not otherwise do; that are often not in their best interests; that bring about some kind loss for that person (usually money, but not exclusively so); and that is perpetrated by individuals and organizations for some self gain irrespective of ethical or legal considerations.

Why? I kept asking myself was content of the chapter presented in such a way that ethical concerns were given only lip service. Could it be because the commercial aspect has such a strong currency and that American psychology has such long and deep links to the development of, rather than just the understanding of, the theoretical and practical aspects of this area? A number of historically prominent U.S psychologists have contributed to this field. Chief amongst them is John B. Watson who, having been forced to leave his academic position in the 1920s carved out a successful career applying behaviourist principles to the field of advertising. For anyone interested in the recent history of corporate commercial branding and advertising and its implications Naomi Klein’s books ‘No Logo’ and ‘Fences and Windows’ give a raw but detailed account. The history of Flashmobbing is entertainingly covered.

Tutorial 2

This tutorial was primarily focused on quantifying our understanding of interpersonal communication. Having described the elements of communication (audio and visual) we dissected the concept through several planes in an effort to explore its nuances including those elements that interfere with the communication process. The most important thing I learned during the course of tutorial was as a result of listening to other groups reporting on how they had tackled the problem of communication. Listening to them I was reminded that no matter how much a person knows, or thinks he/she knows about a topic, by paying attention it is possible to learn novel and illuminating perspectives from others. These perspectives do not have to be either well formed or necessarily well articulated to be instructive: for me it was the idea itself that was being expressed. Visual representations of an abstract concept can be quite edifying.

Week 5

Chapter 9: Social Psychology of Aggression and Anti-social behaviour

I learnt a number of things from reading this chapter some of which I will detail in the following paragraphs. The most salient lesions were don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story and if your argument is weakly supported by the studies you quote do not include any relevant statistics because of the inconvenience that would cause to the overall narrative.

The chapter begins with a vignette on Saddam Hussein, a truly brutal dictator: no argument from me. However in laying out a brief history of his misdeeds there are some key omissions of fact. I will now add them to the narrative. In 1980 Saddam did in fact attack Iran and after 8 years of fighting over a million people had died. But why was the U.S’s involvement in the war left out. Perhaps because current and recently past key white house officials were instrumental in the U.S providing Saddam with the vital support he need in sustaining his war effort and that would be inconveniently embarrassing. The gassing of the Kurds: It is not good form to also mention that the U.S and other western countries knowingly provided both the technical knowhow and the chemicals necessary for the production the gas in question. Without this assistance that incident would not have happened (See any of Noam Chomsky’s books on the subject of U.S involvement in Iraq for the relevant details). As for the bogus reasons for invading Iraq in 2003 more and more information is being revealed each day on the calculated deceptions and blatant lies used to justify the war. Many, many distinguished academics have written on this topic and if you are wanting franker and more balance narrative on U.S Iraq war then I suggest you google the words “Project for a new American Century” click in the Wikipedia link read and then go from there.

Whilst there are a number of other historical distortions I could elaborate on I will restrict myself to just one other because of its direct connection to U.S psychology. The authors provide us with a picture (p. 292) of a hooded Iraqi prisoner standing on a box and then something about a handful of sadistic guards. The reality of what happened at Abu Ghraib is very different. Professor Alfred McCoy (University of Wisconsin) sets out in his book (A question of Torture; 2006) how over 50 years North American psychologists knowingly and unknowingly through their research contributed to development of the very practices shown in the numerous photographs made public showing abuses at the prison facility. As for the fiction of a few bad apples: Professor Philippe Sands (University College of London) shows in his book (Torture Team: Deception Cruelty and Compromise of the Law; 2008) that the impetus came from the very top of the White House administration.

Now if you have read this far and are wondering why I have given you this detail, it is to make the point that psychology does not exist in a vacuum. It is not value free. The authors of this textbook have made this abundantly clear through their misappropriation of the historical narrative. They have done this to push a political viewpoint. That psychology can become a handmaiden to political and economic forces is neither new nor unique to the U.S. What is important is that you know that this occurs and being mindful when learning psychological theory and research that there may be influences outside our discipline that have shaped not only what has been researched but also the findings. A tip: If it is controversial it is a good bet that the controversy is probably not two schools of committed ethically neutral psychologists fighting over some noble truth.

Now to the second point I made at the beginning of this paper; if your arguments are weakly supported by the studies or there are other studies that would provide a more rounded view of the issue you describe, do not provide statistical evidence and you should fail to mention this other evidence because it only spoils the propagation of your political narrative. Here too the authors have provided numerous examples of where they have applied this dictum. However, because I have no wish to turn this paper into a narrative of the size of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace proportions (no irony meant here!) I will restrict myself to only one or two examples.

In their section on chemical influences on aggression they have mentioned testosterone, serotonin and alcohol. I will restrict my comments to the first two. Here the authors give unequivocal one-to-one links levels of these substances in the body and the levels of aggression. But hang on a minute I seem to remember that in both my Individual Differences and Biological Psychology units that I was presented with studies that showed these links were much more problematic than this. Sure enough in reading the comparable chapter in the Australasian published Introduction to Social Psychology 5th edition (Vaughan & Hogg; 2008), a book I bought out of frustration, these authors detail a 2002 published study (p. 457) that showed a “small correlation of 0.14 between elevated testosterone and aggression”. They go on to say that “if it was causal (emphasis mine) testosterone would explain 2 percent of the variation in aggression”. In consulting James Kalat’s 9th edition of Biological Psychology (2007) on page 366 he concludes his section on Serotonin and aggression by writing “Again, the conclusion is that serotonin’s role is complicated and not well understood.” Why you may ask are Baumeister and Bushman so definitive in their pronouncements when others including Kalat, a specialist in this field, are not, maybe it’s because it fits within their overall narrative, a subject I will return to following my next example.

In Bushman and Baumeister’s section on gender and aggression it is very easy to gain the impression that the undeniable gap between male and female violent crime rates was immutably fixed given that in the proceeding sections the nature aspect of aggression is more heavily nuanced. However, in Vaughan and Hogg’s text a different picture emerges. Using U.S trend data covering the period 1980 to 2004 they showed that “the rate of violent offending has increased more rapidly among women.” They then provided a graph (p. 467) showing a considerable gap in rates of increase of violence between men and women which began in 1990 and widened substantially thereafter.

Why have I used these two examples? Because I hoped to show the U.S emphasis on individual causes of aggression (See Vaughan & Hogg page 480 Theory and Concepts 12.6) over those of societal influences. This is plain to see when you read Bushman and Baumeister and then Vaughan and Hogg. There are probably a number of reasons for this difference in emphasis but the one to keep in mind has to do with crime and incarceration rates in the U.S. From 1980 onward there has been expediential increase in the prison population to the point now that 1 in a 100 American adults is behind bars. However, this has led to no corresponding appreciable drop in rates of crime. As a comparison Australia would have to increase its current prison population by a factor of almost 6. Here in Australia the management of prisons is almost solely the preserve of governments (Under Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett some commercial contracts were undertaken but have proven a disaster and they will not be renewed). However, in the U.S there is a growing emphasis on privately run prisons that shows no signs of abating. In other words it’s becoming a big business. To focus on individual responsibility for aggressive acts and to virtually ignore societal factors is a good way of blunting any meaningful debate on how so many additional people can be imprisoned with no appreciable effects.

To sum up: Only the willfully ignorant would be unaware of the worldwide palpable anger directed towards the U.S because of the actions of the Bush Administration. It is not uncommon for individuals and organizations to adopt an inward focus when under such attack. Having read Bushman and Baumeister’s account of aggression that inward focus is readily apparent. However, this inward focus has not led to any meaningful introspection and I guess this probably because the authors are more likely to subscribe to the views of the American Enterprise Institute than those of Brookings. An unquestioning acceptance of such a biased narrative is not in our best interests.

Week 6

Chapter 12 Prejudice and Intergroup Relations

Whilst reading this chapter I felt some admiration for the level of consistency the authors have maintained throughout the chapters I have read thus far. They have consistently maintained points of view that are not sustained by factual evidence, and they have consistently focussed on the individual when applying social psychology terms to the almost total exclusion of societal influences. By doing these two things (there are others but I will only focus just on these) they are presenting an extremely biased, inaccurate and narrow narrative.

To highlight their penchant for not letting the facts get in the way of a good story I will use the plight of African Americans as an example. Following the North’s victory in the American civil war which ended in 1865, former slaves (freed by President Lincoln’s decree of 1863) had their civil rights enshrined in law through amendments (13 and 14 section 1) to the U.S Constitution. However, except for a brief period now called the ‘Reconstruction’ this legal requirement of racial equality was observed mainly in its breach. For much of the remainder of the 19th century and well into the 20th century African Americans in the former slave states were progressively stripped of their rights back to a state of virtual slavery in all but name. This happened by the passing of state laws which came to be known as ‘Jim Crow’ laws. The civil rights movement of the 1960’s was principally about getting the federal government to compel the states to abide by those 19th century amendments to the U.S constitution.

Now it would be easy to think, with the success of the civil rights movement, that virulent and institutionalised racism had disappeared from American society. Not so! Here are examples that highlight the fallacy of that notion. African Americans make up approximately 12% of the total population. However they represent a far greater proportion of the prison population (as does our own indigenous population here): for example 42% of all death row inmates are black. African Americans are sentenced to longer, harsher sentences than their white counterparts for essentially the same crime. Cocaine is a common drug of addiction in both communities but in white middle class America it is in the relatively expensive powered form whereas in black communities it is the cheaper crystalised ‘crack cocaine’. An African American caught with a much smaller amount of crack cocaine will be sentenced to a far longer sentence than his/her white American counterparts caught with the powdered form. It would be easy to dismiss this as only a single aspect of American society and not representative of the whole but for what is happening in New Orleans post Hurricane Katrina. Prior to the hurricane New Orleans was a predominantly black city (greater than 80%); since the hurricane this has dropped to approximately 50% or less. The main reason for this considerable drop is institutionalised racism. Please Google the internet for post-Katrina news stories and you will see what I mean. What is happening in New Orleans is being played out in many towns and cities in the U.S but this is seldom reported. It takes a major disaster to bring such issues into the public spotlight. You will note this narrative does not agree with the authors’ more rosy view of the state of race relations in the U.S today.

Now for the second point I made about focusing on the individual and ignoring societal influences when discussing an applying social psychology theory and terminology. I would like to continue to with the African American narrative, but I think gender issues are far more revealing in that every one of us is confronted with them every day. I will use sport as the salient example only because the Olympics has just happened and people’s memories are still relatively fresh. But I before I do that, please indulge me while give a little history of male predominance over women.

To say that throughout the history of humankind women have been dominated and marginalized would be to state the tragically obvious. However the historical significance of this is very relevant to the present. When I, a male, wish to find historical figures with which to identify as role models I have a plethora of examples from which to draw. For example: Don Bradman, Albert Einstein, Nelson Mandela, Bertrand Russell, Noam Chomsky etc. Women on the other hand have much fewer examples to hand because of this historical dominance. But this is made much worse because quite exceptional women have been literally written out of the pages of history. I will give you two examples from the fields of science to demonstrate what I mean. Most people will have heard of Sir Isaac Newton and his work on gravity. But how many of you have heard of Emilie du Chatelet? This 18th century aristocrat, a brilliant mathematician and experimental physicist, not only translated Newton’s work into French (this meant she needed to fully and comprehensibly understand what Newton was saying: something that very few of her contemporaries could) but that her own brilliant experiments led her to discover the law of physics that added the squared portion of Einstein’s most famous equation e=mc². How was she remembered (until quite recently)? She was remembered, when at all, as the lover of Voltaire despite the fact that he himself recognised she outshone him intellectually by a very wide margin; and after her death he spent much of the rest of his life trying to protect and promote her legacy.

The second example is much more recent. In the 1950s the race was on to discover the building blocks of life. History shows that two young (cocky?) scientists Francis Crick and James Watson cracked the code by building the very first model of the DNA double helix for which they, together with Maurice Wilkins, were awarded the noble prize. But what was conveniently down-played at the time (particularly by that egotist James Watson: if you read any of his books you will know what I mean) was the crucial work of Rosalind Franklin. It was Rosalind’s x-ray image of the DNA helix (given to them by Maurice Wilkins without her permission) that provided the key to breaking the code to the helix’s structure. She went on to do brilliant work in the field of virology. However, until quite recently her importance in the discovery of the DNA structure was largely ignored. This meant Watson and Crick are well-known, whilst Franklin is unknown and therefore missing as a role model. Why have I given you this detail? Well for two reasons: firstly that for the women doing this course (overwhelming majority) these are two women you might like to know more about. Secondly, for how Emilie du Chatelet was remembered despite her brilliance: as someone else’s lover. She was defined by and reduced to her sexuality.

Despite the fact that women in our society have made great strides toward equality there is an overarching criteria against which they are constantly rated; their sexuality. It does not matter what they are doing or how good they are at doing it, their sexuality is almost always made apparent. It is very disempowering as it is often used very effectively to devalue their accomplishments. This brings me to the present day and women in sport.

I would like to ask a few questions about the recent Olympics games and then make a few observations. In how many of the women’s sports did their uniform accentuate the female form, and how does this compare to the men? Why were so many women competitors wearing so much make-up: this not just in the athletics? When interviewing the gold medal winning men’s and women’s sailing crews, why did Joanna Griggs start by interviewing the men first despite the fact the women were sitting next to her? I will answer the first two questions and ask you to think about the third and look for other examples to see for yourself if there is a pattern. The women’s sports that I felt had uniforms not made just for comfort included volleyball (indoor & beach) basketball, athletics, gymnastics, and there probably others that do not at this moment come to mind. For the men I can think of gymnastics, rowing (anyone that has watched a medal ceremony will know what I mean) and the sprinters in the athletics but unlike the women the men’s attire was primarily for functional reasons.

Now why were there so many women wearing make-up when this was not the case not so long ago. I will answer it this way. Michael Phelps won eight gold medals out of eight events contested. Stephanie Rice wins three gold medals from three events. Both these swimmers were the most successful athletes male or female for their respective countries. Both come from the same low-profile sport (in terms of how often the sport is on TV). Both have come to prominence because of their performances. But Michael Phelps will be marketed solely because of his performances whereas for Stephanie Rice her looks will trump her achievements and as a consequence who will remember her remarkable achievements in the years to come.

The dictum of desirability is also true of team sports. Men are supposed to be the major watchers of sport and as a consequence rationale goes that for women’s sport to appear on TV the contestants must be sexually appealing regardless of the quality of the competition. How does this work in practice? Last year the men’s rugby world cup was staged and it had very extensive coverage. In 2006 the women’s rugby world cup was held which had almost no coverage. The quality of the women’s competition from the very brief segments televised was quite high. But because it is a contact sport and it therefore requires bulk for players’ protection the women have a reduced desirability factor by the supposed audience members therefore almost no TV coverage. I am not convinced by this argument especially when I watch a women’s netball match and the camera pans a large auditorium which is invariably at full capacity; with mostly women.

The authors of this textbook gave almost no page space to female stereotyping. Why? Because if they had they would have had to talk about societal influences, almost without doubt, to explain female stereotyping and societal influences have been up to this point well and truly off the agenda. How did they deal with women’s issues? Well they made the comment ‘Some feminists have suggested that men invented stereotypes of women …’ The image that comes to mind when I read this is of an unattractive, man-hating woman, who probably prefers the company of their own gender and what self-respecting woman is going to align herself to an argument associated such imagery. It is a good way to blunt a debate.

The sexualisation of women is so successful (if you can call it that) that members of the very group being so treated have been co-opted into denigrating non-conformers or any woman who has fallen out of favour to the powers to be. By this I mean any woman can be sexually scandalized then once her stature has diminished her achievements are denigrated. Women’s magazines are replete with said examples.

How important are societal constructs in the creation and perseverance of stereotypes and prejudges? Most of us are familiar with the terms 'Dutch-courage', 'Dutch-treat' and maybe even 'nether regions'; a term used when referring to the genitals or the anus. These terms had their origin in the Anglo-Dutch war of 1660s and were created as part of English government propaganda of the time. The nether regions term came about because the Dutch lived in a country called Holland, also known as the Netherlands (yes I am aware that nether regions had an earlier history in reference to hell). The propaganda imperatives for these terms have long gone but the images remain.

Tutorial 3

During this tutorial we first watched a 50 minute video, The Australian Eye, on a ‘blue-eyed’ ‘brown-eyed’ workshop facilitated by Jane Elliott here in Australia during the early part of this decade. Afterwards we engaged in discussion centered mainly on the meanings we took from watching Jane Eliot’s workshop and then some talk on racism here in Australia and finally about the Rwandan Genocide. Before starting the video James asked us to take note of the techniques Jane Eliot used to make the role-playing more real for the participants and therefore increase its meaningfulness for the participants overall.

Of central importance to the workshop’s success was that all participants be strongly bonded to the identity of the group to which they were assigned. Because of the high number of indigenous participants in the dominant group and the fact this workshop was part of a broader process looking at indigenous issues, group membership was not arbitrary. To achieve strong group identification the following things occurred:

1. Blue-eyed participants were spoken to in an abrupt and hostile manner whilst they were having their group-identifying adornments affixed. This was done to elicit apprehension, anxiety, and resentment. They were then left waiting in the foyer for quite some time obviously not knowing what was happening or indeed was going to happen which would have also sharpened the emotions I have just described.
2. Whilst the ‘Blue-eyed’ out-group was left to feed on their neuroses the ‘brown-eyed’ in-group was subjected to a group identification process that would have won the admiration of many a totalitarian leader, past or present. Jane Eliot began by explaining the purpose of the workshop and what would happen. She then asked various individual participants about their experiences of discrimination, prejudice, and racism (public self statements). She further heightened this by highlighting the inescapability of this experience due to skin colour and that because of this they had not been treated as individuals but as members of a despised group. Highlighting this was important not only for their own group identification but also to that they would be less inclined to see members of the ‘blue-eyed’ group as individuals: a very important tactic if you are going to get people to do things they would not otherwise do, particularly in light of their own experiences.
   
   Then she asked group members to publicly pledge themselves to a process that many would have been uneasy with. Jane Eliot was then able to overrule the objecting voices within the group by using the then majority sentiment within the group to enforce individual conformity (Solomon Asch). In one case it was clear that one of the dissenters had not changed her private view about the abuse that was going to be perpetrated but she consented publicly. Having achieved group identification and compliance Jane Eliot then had the group outside brought in. In essence the members of the brown-eyed group were effectively moved from using higher cognitive thinking to one of the lower automatic variety. This is essential if you want people to breach their ethical codes. This fact was made clear by Hannah Arndt in her description of Adolf Eichmann, the chief architect of Hitler’s genocidal program. She said that Eichmann simply stopped thinking for himself.
3. The blue-eyed group was then subjected to Jane Eliot’s will both through her own utterances and through the utterances of the brown-eyed group. Whilst discrimination, prejudice, and racism were the stated topics of this workshop, in reality it was about the exercising of power or more precisely the abuse of power. Whether power is about one individual abusing the rights of another or of one group doing so to another group, abuse comes through the exercising power. Members of the blue-eyed group were both individually and collectively humiliated and degraded in a process that I can only describe as one of cruelty (the intentional inflicting of pain and suffering). The moment that most highlighted that fact for me was the Greek male who was in obvious distress because his treatment during the workshop caused him to reexperience the pain of his childhood mistreatment due to his ethnicity. His manifest suffering elicited almost no response of compassion from the brown-eyed group. As an example of how people can be manipulated to becoming indifferent to the suffering of others, it is first-class. This brings me to the tutorial discussion.

During the tutorial discussion the issue of cruelty was raised with the response that sometimes these things must occur to bring about a greater good. The problem with this is that at its heart is the notion that the ‘end justifies the means’. This rationale was clearly propounded by Niccolo Machiavelli in his book “The Prince” and has been well used through the centuries since by leaders in their pursuit of policies that have brought much suffering to the world. During the 20th century the most prominent exponents of this notion have been Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini. In this century that cudgel has been taken up by President Bush and his administration. I will return to this blanket acceptance of ends—means justification but I want to make a couple of other points first. We the audience of Jane Eliot’s video (at least in my tutorial) are members of the group that have oppressed and continue to oppress Indigenous Australians. It would be not unusual to experience some feelings of collective guilt when hearing details of our group’s abuse towards them. Therefore in an effort to further distance ourselves from such guilt it is quite conceivable that we would be more willing to sacrifice others for our greater good. For me, watching the video and reflecting on our tutorial discussion made it clear to me how easily people can descend into the sort of barbarism that was Rwanda. People reading this might rightly think that we did not advocate physical harm but only to cause people temporary discomfort in order for a deeper level of understanding to take place. This is true but all genocides have to start somewhere. They start with people being asked to deny other people basic rights to humane treatment. This request is invariably couched in terms of the greater good. The Germans under Hitler did not become detached killers overnight. It took some time for the ordinary German citizen to be propagandised into losing their sense of humanity towards others and this dictum is true of all cases where atrocities have occurred. Now to return to the ends justifies the means argument.

That students should be so implicitly okay with such a course of action is hardly surprising given that this rationale is repeatedly seen and played out in TV dramas and is enunciated by certain contemporary world leaders. In order for people to subscribe to such notions they much be first presented with an emotionally charged problem and then given an artificially restricted number of options to solve that problem. Like George W. Bush saying post 9/11 that ‘you are either with us or you’re with the terrorists’. When the previous Australian government started an intervention into Indigenous settlements in the Northern Territory the stated issue was stopping child abuse and that it was so endemic that we needed to resort to good old-fashioned 19th century paternalism to solve it and solve it quickly. In other words in order to stop one evil we had to perpetrate another by imposing our will and reduce their human rights. By linking the action to one of stopping child abuse the government narrowed the debate to such a point that anyone counselling caution could be labeled as uncaring or indifferent to the plight of the most vulnerable. In both these examples, the stated reasons for action were not the real reasons. In the U.S case it was about having a free hand in extending U.S geopolitical and economic power (please refer to ‘Project for a new American century’ previously mentioned by me). In the Australian case it was a cynical move by an unpopular government trying to curry favour with a disaffected electorate and thereby get reelected. Almost never are people asked to think about accepting full personal responsibility for the consequences stemming from the decisions they are being asked to make. This is for good reason as it usually makes people stop and think: you know that thinking of the deeper cerebral kind.

Why I Think This Degree SUX

The paragraphs to follow are going to be a venting of my spleen on how our prescribed textbook demonstrates the intellectual sterility of psychology as it is currently being taught. So if you are not interesting in this ‘and don’t want to know the score look away now’; or in the words of South Park’s Officer Brady ‘move along, there is nothing to see here’.

To describe our prescribed text as a disgrace would be to praise it too highly. It seeks to tie world events to the theory and social psychological terms but it presents these events in such a way that any connection to what actually happened is so tenuous as to be bordering on the delusional. How difficult would it have been for them to find information detailing a true picture of the events they describe? Well they could have referred to the works of Noam Chomsky, an academic who was recently recognised as the most cited living scholar and the eighth most cited of all time. Where does Chomsky get his information to write his books and academic papers, well mostly from official government records. If they did not want to consult Chomsky’s works there are a plethora of other academics’ works they could have consulted. There are also other deficiencies apparent with this book. Assertions are made with no corresponding supporting statistical evidence. Arguments are made where the premises raised have no logical consistency with the conclusions reached. Statements are made about scientific certainties where other texts I have read (usually by specialists in the field) state no such certainty exists. The text is in need of a serious case of editorial review as it is not uncommon for us to be asked questions in chapter about information we have yet to cover. The glossary of terms available on the website for each chapter includes terms that are not found in those chapters but are often in the Application Modules at the back of the book. Finally the emphasis for why we behave the way we do is almost exclusively focused on the individual, with societal imperatives barely rating a mention – at least in any meaningful way. By doing this it artificially narrows the debate and effectively blunts any consequential analysis of why things are the way they are and whether any change is possible.

This is a highly politicized book in the worst possible way, and that it should be published at all speaks volumes about how the parlous state U.S now finds itself both politically and socially has impacted on the quality of academic output her colleges and universities. I have read and listened to many voices pretty much saying the same thing about the current state of U.S affairs. These people come from a wide spectrum of political beliefs not just from the left. Some of the most damning criticisms are coming from former political appointees from both previous and the current Republican administration, formerly avowed cold-war warriors, retired army generals, and sitting Republican Senators and House of Representatives congressmen and -women. Hardly people who could be legitimately accused of having a left-wing bias. The only people who maintain that things are OK are the Neoconservatives and the radical right Christian coalition, and of course a very compliant corporate-owned mainstream press. If anyone thinks that an Obama victory in the upcoming presidential elections would bring about radical change of course then they would be wishing for something that is just not possible for reasons that would become patently obvious with not too much research. If you have no idea what I am talking about and can not be bothered to find out. Please click on these two links for a bitingly funny view of American politics by Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart from comedy central.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa-4E8ZDj9s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE

Now why am I writing this when it would be much easier to bite my tongue and just play the game as I have been advised to by others? Because at the end of last semester I came to realize I had no academic future in psychology. I long realized that I was unsuited to clinical psychology which meant the alternative of academic research. However, I have come to realize that I could not possibly hold my nose long enough to complete the necessary academic hurdles to achieve that aim. I have no desire to become an intellectual accountant. For you to understand what I mean by that I will describe a business analogy told to me many years ago and one that I think is relevant to how psychology is being taught and researched in this country today.

The business analogy goes something like this. There are two major groups of people who have a major impact on the success or failure of a business; innovators and accountants. When their influence on the business is equal the business thrives but when it gets out of balance the business fails. If the innovators gain control their ideas may lead to wonderful new things and insights but unconstrained by the realities of the business they are just as likely to send the business broke; rather quickly. If on the other hand the accountants rule then they will rule over a business where innovation and hence meaningful change will be eschewed and the business will go broke; very slowly.

Currently psychology is run by accountants and is structured to pretty much produce accountants. Now I mean a couple of thing by saying this. Firstly, any changes of syllabus invariably happen when the pressure for change becomes too difficult to ignore. By this I mean that advances in knowledge from allied sciences will start to intrude so heavily in the technical terminology used in psychology related academic papers that for this information to be properly understood by psychologists, courses will have to incorporate aspects of these disciplines into psychology. This is already happening. The disciplines I have in mind are functional brain anatomy, the neurosciences, genetics, psychoneuroimmunology, psychopharmacology, and maybe even virology. Changes made under pressure are invariably begrudged and therefore will not be given much consideration as how to best harness this new knowledge in a way that maximizes its benefits to the teaching of psychology. Accountants do not look ahead; their focus is on making sure the existing structure keeps working. A quick online survey of what other Australian universities are offering pretty much confirms the vanilla folder approach to psychology; although I must admit with some interesting though minor variations.

The following second point pretty much explains the reasons why the above happens the way the way it does, and how it should come about that we could be assigned such a manifestly inadequate textbook. Modern psychology owes its foundation to two major academic disciplines: philosophy and human physiology. Here I will restrict my discussion to psychology’s philosophical roots. Many of the great thinkers early of psychology held university chairs in philosophy. Indeed William James – often referred to as one of the fathers of American psychology – not only held a professorial chair in philosophy but made significant contributions to the furtherance of philosophical discourse. William James was a man of his age. He, like his contemporaries, was a man of letters who read widely in many branches of the social sciences and who had more than a passing interest in the hard sciences. He had undertaken the grand tour of Europe and studied in Germany. In 1890 he published a 1500 page text on the principles of psychology, an introductory text book for the teaching of psychology. I have lost count of the number of contemporary texts I have read that have waxed lyrical over its eruditeness and its continued relevance today. I have not yet read this book but note that one can purchase a 2007 reprint of the original text (unabridged) from Amazon.com. My question is this: How many modern textbooks would still be considered relevant after five years let alone 118 years? How could he achieve this feat? Well, he like his contemporaries had a pretty good understanding of the world as it then existed. William James was able to discern what was ephemeral dross was and what was knowledge that would likely stand the test of time. If you want a demonstration of the veracity of what I am saying but do not wish to wade through 1500 pages then I suggest reading Bertrand Russell, a British 20th century philosopher whose texts are up to 80 years old but which message has a clarity and freshness that is still relevant today; any of his books on education would suffice.

Why then have we reached a point where the people can teach and research psychology here in Australia and be so seemingly clueless about the society from which the bulk of our psychological discourse emanates? Why have we in chasing a so-called academic rigor of experimental psychology so gaily abandoned knowing about the world in which our psychological knowledge is both generated and is supposed to operate? When did we decide that context was no longer relevant? Why have we abandoned our discipline’s philosophical roots so that almost no serious questions are posed about the extent and limitations of the information we are being taught? You know the sort of questions raised by that branch of philosophy: epistemology. I had a UC lecturer state earlier this year that she disagreed with the findings of a prominent U.S researcher into aspects of memory and could not understand why this person’s research was so focused the way that is was. Well I am well acquainted the history of the recovered memory verses the false memory debate in the U.S and also this particular researcher’s role as a gun for hire so it is no mystery to me. In case you are wondering, I am not advocating that we avoid American texts, on the contrary there are many high quality academic publications still being produced in the U.S. What I am asking for is an evaluative process that consists of more than whether the text is easy to read.

Why have we have become so wedded to an experimentation model that produces a wealth of data whose lasting relevance seldom extends much past hitting the send button? I agree that good experimentation is essential to the orderly progression of the science of psychology. But to pursue such a course of action in the absence of any serious intellectual discourse just beggars belief. Why has this happened well I’m guessing that when U.S abandoned an integrative approach to the social sciences in the 1960s we did likewise as a matter of default? Facts and figures can be mere information or the basis of knowledge. For knowledge you need context because context adds meaning and from meaning one can test the extent or limitation of that information. Information in the absence of context is just dross.

I had a dream the other day that I was that boy observing the public procession of the emperor in the story of the Emperor’s new clothes. But then I awoke realized the folly of such an idea. Therefore I suggest that the show bags of given out to first year psychology students during o-week be provisioned with an extra large tube of lubricating jelly so that students who recognise the difference between and education and information stuffing, and who care, will be spared the full agony of a bend over policy that is unlikely to change any time soon. A final note: Every time I have had to read a chapter from our prescribed text the red mist has descended causing me to seriously contemplate burning the book as an act of protest. You will know when it has become too much by the small pile of ashes outside the head of schools’ door.