What I would like you to do is to find a topic from this week's chapter that you were interested in and search the internet for material on that topic. You might, for example, find people who are doing research on the topic, you might find web pages that discuss the topic, you might find a video clip that demonstrates something related to the topic, etc. What you find and use is pretty much up to you at this point. Please use at least 3 quality resources.
Once you have completed your search and explorations, a) I would like you to say what your topic is, b) how exactly it fits into the chapter, and c) why you are interested in it. Next, I would like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about the topic in a knowledgeable manner. At the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. Keep in mind that it will be easier if you keep it to one topic.
By integrating/synthesizing I mean to take what your read/experienced from the internet search organize the information into the main themes, issues, info, examples, etc. about your topic and then write about the topic in your own words using that information. This is hard for some people to do - many students write what we refer to as "serial abstracts." They are tempted to talk about the websites rather than the topic proper and this what you DON'T want to do! They will talk all about website #1, start a new paragraph and talk all about web site #2, start a new paragraph and talk all about web site #3, and then write some kind of conclusion. Serial means one after the other...again, this what you DON'T want to do! Also if all three sites are on the same one topic it will be easier.
At first it is a real challenge to get out of the habit of writing "serial abstracts," but I assure you once you get the hang of it it is much easier to write using the integration method. And besides this is the way researchers and scientists write their technical reports and findings - many of you will have to be able to do this for other classes and for jobs that you may eventually be hired for so now is a good time to learn this skill. At this point don't worry about a grade, worry about doing your best to have fun with the topic and then integrate it into your own words to share what you found and now know. We will work on citing the sources later....
Additional instructions: For each URL (internet resource) you have listed. Indicate why you chose it and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
Chapter 1 Topical Blog
I chose to do more research into the archives of American psychology. I was interested in what they all did and other things that they do to promote their libraries so to say. My main focus was the Center for the History of Psychology that is at the University of Akron. This topic fits into the chapter because in the chapter they talk about the how this archive plays a big part in psychologist’s lives. In the chapter they tell you where it is and how it is used, but I was still curious about what else happened there in a more modern sense.
When researching this subject I didn’t expect to find out that it was more like a museum than a library. I went in thinking it was more like a library, but I think it would be really cool to see because they have so many items that are part of the past of psychology. They have a simulated shock generator which is a pretty exciting thing for people to see. The Center for History of Psychology has moved buildings because of how big there collection has gotten over the years, and in the video I found it talks about why they are moving and what they could do with the new space. It is going to allow for them to show more of the artifacts that they have. I would love to go see the things that they have in show cases so that I could get a better understanding of what really went on back when psychology started. Their home website also talks about what their mission is, what events they have planned, and how you can support their mission. There website has a lot of information that is interesting to learn about. For example, I was interested in the museum part of the Archive so I went to their museum tab. Under that tab you can plan a visit, find out there current exhibits, and look at their featured exhibits.
One thing that I stumbled across in my research was that The Center for History of Psychology has a Facebook page. It makes sense that they would have one in this day and age because it is a way to get your information out to multiple pages of the world with one easy click. I have been looking through there page because they put up pictures of their exhibits and the building construction and textbooks. It is exciting to see what they all have there and what they are planning on doing in the future. For example they have a BoBo doll in a case. On their Facebook page they also have a donation spot where you can donate to the Archive through your phone. You can also donate on their webpage as well which is easy to do. Going to this place is honestly on my lists of things to do now because I would love to see those things in person like the shock simulator generator, and the things from the Stanford Prison Experiment.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Archives-of-the-History-of-American-Psychology/118907044806093#!/pages/Archives-of-the-History-of-American-Psychology/118907044806093
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mmXwFGLMGo
http://www.uakron.edu/chp/
topic.
The topic I chose to learn more about was the term, Personalistic. This term fits perfectly into the chapter because considering we’re being introduced to the history of psychology, what wouldn’t we want to learn about the men and woman who shaped the history we are going to be learning about; because perhaps without their findings or views during that time we wouldn’t be reading the information presented in the text book in the first place. Prior to reading this chapter I had never heard of the term personalistic, but I had always wondered about the ‘what ifs’ this term presents. How interesting is it to think that if a person back in time had fallen asleep, lost their voice, gotten ill, been sidetracked by some random situation, then the things we know today might never have happened or might have happened a year later, but not have had the same effect.
So after doing some website scanning of the term personalistic I found out some interesting things. One being that the term itself was actually once a philosophy, the term came about in the thirties due to the depression bringing about a group of ‘non-conformist movements’, which in fact meant that their intentions were to not seek an academic theory about a person, but rather a practical philosophy of engagement. What I understood from this website was that our philosophy’s today are retrieved from the personalistic themes back in the thirties that can be applied to crisis’ or current situations.
http://www.ethical-perspectives.be/page.php?LAN=E&FILE=ep_detail&ID=21&TID=240
Another website related the term as being an approach of stressing individual personality as the central concern of psychology. I suppose this could tie in with the book as someone being heroic or evil and how their actions affect everything around them. Continuing on this idea a website gave the example of a man seeing a speeding car and rushing himself and his girlfriend out of the way, saving their lives. To me I see this as being heroic, but I’m not so certain about it being personalistic because he didn’t necessarily do anything that has never been done before.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/perso http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~aglembot/portfolio/personalisticethics.htmnalistic
This week I'd like to focus not on a subject but on a person. While reading chapter one I really took a deep interest into the things that Dr. E.G. Boring said. HIs points of view seemed extremely well-thought and it really pushed me to pursue more of his ideas and also gave me a curiosity about what he did during his career.
When I first started looking into the life of Dr. E.G. Boring I assumed that I would find many different instances of his work in one specific topic in psychology. However, I found myself to be very wrong. While looking at a couple pages dedicated to his biography, I noticed that he was involved in many aspects of psychology. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1886, Edwin G. Boring grew up to eventually become a Psychologist after graduating from Cornell University in 1908 with a Bachelors in Engineering and subsequently obtaining his PhD. in Psychology at the same institution in 1915. During this time he also worked in the US Army doing psychological work. He then went on to become an instructor of psychology at Cornell University only to become a psychology professor at Clark and eventually Harvard Universities. Boring soon went to to things such as becoming the secretary of the American Psychological Association as well as the Editor of Contemporary Psychology, The American Journal of Psychology, and The Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences. After reading this I was most delighted when I came across the books he authored such as A History of Experimental Psychology, Introduction to Psychology, Psychology for the Armed Services, and Psychology at Large; to name a few. Within the books he wrote there are so many different categories of psychological material; from history to armed services to an introduction and even sensation and perception information.
http://www.nndb.com/people/931/000117580/
http://www.igs.net/~pballan/Boring(1963).htm
these sites allowed me to easily find information that I was looking for an seemed to be extremely valid
Once I took a deeper look into his deeper psychological interests I read that his concerns were mostly history of psychology and experimental psychology. It was written that Dr. Boring always saw experimental psychology as the only legitimately scientific way of probing the relationship between the environment and human behavior. During his own experimental research Dr. Boring conducted studies related to visual perception. During these studies he became most well-known for his creation of the perceptually ambiguous figure of both a young and old woman. This would later become known as the "Boring Figure" (as seen in this image http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/elw33/articles/ )
. Dr. Boring's triumphs include obtaining independence as a Psychology Department separate from the Philosophy Department at Harvard University which had been one department for fifty years. Also, Boring's achievements have landed him number 93 on the American Psychological Associations list of the 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century.
http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k3007&panel=icb.pagecontent44003%3Ar%241%3Fname%3Dboring.html&pageid=icb.page19708&pageContentId=icb.pagecontent44003
This site helped me to better understand the value of Dr. Boring's work and how it could contribute to a discipline in such a holistic way
After reading about his triumphs in the field of psychology, I couldn't help but wonder if he came up with these conclusions on his own. Although I did find that he had his own mentor, what I found more interesting was the person who called Boring their mentor. This man was Stanley Smith Stevens. The two met when S.S. Stevens was a student of Dr. Boring at Harvard University. Boring fully intro ducted Stevens to the depth of psychology which led to the two of them beginning active promotion of their interpretation of Percy Bridgman's Concepts in the mid-1930s. Boring and Stevens then went onto continue to argue that operations could combine and provide fountains for the advancement of knowledge. This would soon reveal his positivist faith. When asked in later texts and journals, Steven's always refers to Dr. Boring as the person who shaped and refined his ideas on operationism.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Edwin_Garrigues_Boring.aspx
I chose this site due to it's known validity and density of the topics I was looking for.
Chapter 1 Topical Blog
I chose to do more research into the personalistic and naturalistic theories of history. History has made us and society who we are, and the past will always affect the present and not so much our future like so many of us perceive it does. This is why I was interested in knowing the different ways of viewing history. I was not aware before reading the chapter that these two theories existed. Another reason I researched these theories was because I didn't fully understand the concepts from the readings.
After viewing the websites, I noticed a couple of things I didn't actually recognized in the text. The brief meaning of personalistic, "great man/person" was noticeable in the text. But I was not aware that naturalistic meant "spirit of times". The things I found most interesting about these two terms was the way it brought division in history. Naturalistic focused on the cultural, social, and intellectual aspects of what made up history. Personalistic simply focused on the individuals that caused scientific events to take place. This idea if often trusted upon because at a glance it seems so obviously correct. When we learn about the past, this if often all we learn; that these great minds came up with these single great ideas and the world was never the same again.
One of the websites went into detail of the two terms based on the topics of the bible. This began to make me think of philosophy and the concepts of god and the bible. What this website went more into was the meaning of personalistic being "great man as emissary" and "great man as individual". these descriptions of personalistic brought more of a spiritual aspect t to it. These meanings in some views hold that a higher power or supernatural individual was what made history. Obviously we all understand why this may have been a controversially topic for people to discuss in the past and even now.
I see all the different takes on these two terms. The terms are viewed differently along the line of history. I'm not sure if there is an actually answer to what these two terms mean. But what I do know is that all of the things I have been exposed to by researching, these two terms are important to how we view history.
URL: http://core.ecu.edu/psyc/evansr/EVANS1.htm
URL: books.google.com/books?isbn=0313304602
URL: http://core.ecu.edu/psyc/evansr/EVANS1.htm
For this week’s topical blog, I chose to research schizophrenics and their differing learning processes. Chapter 1 highlighted Edwin G. Boring’s important influence on the studying of psychology’s history. In particular, on page 14, Goodwin created a close-up of Boring. There, I learned that one of his research interests included the learning processes of schizophrenics. I remember hoping that the book would go into further discussion about this topic in later chapters. To my pleasant surprise, I found that we could research whatever we wanted for this week’s blog. Aside from being specifically mentioned in Chapter 2, Boring’s research about the learning processes of schizophrenics ties into the chapter with a more holistic connection. Chapter 1 pointed out that psychology is still in its infancy and that often times, current psychologists face the same dilemmas/issues/interests that past psychologists faced in earlier generations. Boring was interested in schizophrenia nearly 100 years ago and yet, schizophrenia is still a looming interest of many current research professionals. Learning from past research can help guide the future of research and allow for the creation of a more thorough compilation of the learning processes of schizophrenics.
As an advocate for people living with mental illnesses, I find it vital to educate myself on the vast amount of illnesses that can plague an individual. Within the last year or so, I have taken a particularly strong fascination with schizophrenia. I cannot pinpoint the cause of this fascination. One of my favorite books was written about a female in college who was struck with the unfortunate illness and I suppose it stemmed from there. I am also very interested in depression and social anxiety for I have either suffered with these over the course of my 21 short years or have known people who have. Usually I strike an interest in something that has directly affected me. But for whatever reason, I love learning about schizophrenia.
I learned very surprising and new facts about schizophrenia. I was unaware that USUALLY auditory hallucination are more dangerous to the schizophrenics person because these, more often than not, tell them to do harmful things to either themselves or other and that they appear very much real to the person that is experiencing them. Before learning this, I had assumed that visual hallucinations would be more troublesome than auditory ones. This is not to say that visual hallucinations are not scary and present prominent danger, research simply suggests that more harmful scenarios have come into play due to auditory hallucinations.
This piece of information made me curious about how anxiety plays a role in schizophrenia and the hallucinations of schizophrenics. Again, to my surprise, I learned that schizophrenics in the chronic stage experience very low rates of anxiety. One article referred to this as the “flat affect.” Acute schizophrenics do suffer from very high rates of anxiety but something that occurs during the transition stage from acute to chronic lowers these rates of anxiety tremendously. Researchers are still trying to piece this together. Several research findings show that schizophrenics have major memory deficits and some call it the “existence of a schizophrenic amnesia.” This made me wonder. Maybe schizophrenics that are in the chronic stage of their mental illness almost forget how problematic their hallucinations/schizophrenic like experiences due to the longevity of their illness and the reality it has created for them. This in return could lower their rates of anxiety. It is all very fascinating pieces of information to ponder.
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/bul/55/5/316/ - I chose this internet resource because it found via rod library’s database system, lending me to believe that the information I found in it was factual. This source gave me facts about the memory impairment of schizophrenia.
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/data/Journals/AJP/3704/1358.pdf - I chose this source because, again, I found it on the library’s database. This article gave me information about the different anxiety levels seen in acute schizophrenics and chronic schizophrenics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXimT5CHCDE – This URL and the following URL, together create a news documentary following different schizophrenic patients while simultaneously having communication with their doctors. I chose this because I thought it would be fun to watch. This gave me information about the different kinds of hallucinations seen in schizophrenia.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74vTftboC_A
I have choosen to synthesis articles about Henry Goodard and his intelligence testing on Ellis Island. This topic was mentioned in the first chapter and caught my attention and I have been curious about it since reading about it. This topic interests me mostly because I find it interesting that Goodard believed he held enough prestige to use his intelligence testing to state who was fit to pass through Ellis Island and who was not.
In 1882 the United States Congress had passed a law prohibiting mentally defective people from passing through Ellis Island. Due to this, in 1910 Henry Goodard was invited to Ellis Island to help with this elimination process. Goodard, who had previously advocated for tighter immigration laws, believed that “feeblemindedness” was a threat to society and thought it was dangerous for people with these “defects” to reproduce children. Goodard believed the offspring of these “feebleminded” people would be responsible for social problems and would have negative traits that were passed on from their parents. These “feebleminded” people were also viewed as mentally challenged to Goodard, claiming these people as “morons” and “idiots”. According to Goodard, “morons” were unfit for society and should be removed from society through institutionalization and/or sterilization. Goodard suggested there should be colonies set up that these “feeble-minded” people could be segregated into.
When Goodard was invited to Ellis Island, he was accompanied by two others that he believed could do a better job than the Ellis Island physicians. Immigrants were selected by a two-step process administered by Goodard and the two other physicians. When the immigrants first stepped onto the island, Goodard and the physicians looked for immigrants that looked “feelbe-minded”. If an immigrant held these characteristics, they were chalked with an “X” on their back for further judgment and testing. For those selected for further testing, they were tested on their knowledge of the English language and other visual screenings for suspected mental defectiveness. Through the testing, multiple ethnic groups were tested and tests “found” that entire ethnic groups were smarter or less dull than other ethnic groups. From this, Goodard believed that countries were sending “the poorest of each race” to live in America. However, Goodard ignored the possibilities that these immigrants desiring to pass through Ellis Island were scoring low on these tests due to lack of access to the English language, their unfamiliarity with the cultural norms of America, and exhaustion from the long trip. Sadly, Goodard only believed these “feeble-minded” results only applied to immigrants traveling steerage (lower cabins) over those that were traveling in first and second class.
Overall, Goodard believed he was doing society a favor and was using his intelligence testing to better America, in hopes to avoid any mentally challenged or suspected “morons” entering Ellis Island.
http://ellisislandprogram.blogspot.com/2010/08/chapter-12-intelligence.html
http://www.disabilitystudiesforteachers.org/files/TestingatEllisIsland.pdf
http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/goddard.shtml
As I looked through the chapter a second time, I tried to pick a topic that I didn’t know much about and that was of great interest to me and I decided to take a closer look at intelligence testing. The book briefly touched over this topic when it taught us about presentism so I wanted to take a closer look into it. When I was in middle school I visited Ellis Island and I vaguely remember some of the information I learned there. I remembered being fascinated by some of the different testing procedures they did/ instruments they used but all of this was very fuzzy in my mind so I wanted to relearn more about the testing used at Ellis Island, and also about some of the criticisms of intelligence testing.
From 1982 until about 1954 nearly twelve million immigrants arrived to the United States at Ellis Island from Southern and Eastern Europe. Upon arrival immigrants handed in all of their documentation and if they were in reasonably good health they went through the Ellis Island inspection process which lasted nearly four hours. During this process doctors performed what they called “six second physicals” and examined the patients for any obvious physical ailments. If they passed these tests and had no infectious diseases that were a threat to public health they were screened for mental deficiencies. In 1910 Henry Goddard wrote a paper involving Alfred Binet’s IQ testing; this test would detect whether or not immigrants were idiots (scored 0-25), imbeciles (26-50), or morons (51-70). If they were classified as having any of these mental retardations they would be denied admittance to the country and shipped back to their home land. This IQ test (intelligence quotient) was calculated by dividing one’s mental age by their age in years and multiplied it by 100. When it came down to testing to find out an immigrants mental age, psychologists used various different methods. They were dealing with people from other parts of the world who were radically different than us: less educated, spoke another language, sometimes illiterate, different morals and beliefs, so they needed to come up with a fair way to measure their intelligence. For those illiterate non-English speaking immigrants testers chose objects familiar to their patients and came up with nonverbal cues. In some instances they used children’s toys and had the immigrants draw pictures with blocks or touch them in a certain order. Another method they used was completing jigsaw puzzles. For those that were literate and English speaking they used a new method, only about one year old at the time, of standardized multiple choice tests. These were very effective and were a better tool when they wanted to compare individual scores. Later on these tests became extremely popular and are often used today in ACT, SAT, GRE, and MCAT testing. If we look at this situation as historicism we can see why testers did what they did. The US Congress was looking out for America’s eugenics. They feared that the gene pool would be negatively impacted if they let in feeble minded people and they didn’t want to affect their future offspring.
Though some of the criticisms of intelligence testing at Ellis Island are very obvious research on intelligence testing as a whole proved to be very interesting. While looking back at the Ellis Island testings in a presentist view we see how cruel and unfair all of it was and we are able to realize that many people who had great intelligence were deported back to their countries that were probably more than worthy of living in the United States. One big criticism of this test is that it confuses intelligence with knowledge. This means that this test pronounces one as intelligent based off the persons education and acquired facts/knowledge. If a person never had the opportunity to be educated and learn such facts he would be declared mentally deficient even though he may be very intelligent and capable, just because of his life situation. As a whole intelligence testing has been criticized for being unfair based off of race, gender, culture, and class, and it also has been said to discourage creativity. One last criticism I learned was that this type of testing makes people believe that they were born with a certain intelligence that determines their later success in life and is permanent/ you can’t do anything to change it.
http://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-6-the-nature-of-learning/henry-goddard-on-iq/
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xgl7ls_the-iq-test-and-standardized-multiple-choice-testing_news#.UQHGwGfjERY
http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb03/intelligent.aspx
Topic
I chose to the topic of historiography to take a deeper look into. I picked this because as I was reading the section in the book about it I had a lot of questions. I guess I have never really thought too much into the writing of history and who does it. As I continued to think about it I found myself asking a lot of questions. When we read something in our textbooks from school, we are highly unlikely to challenge anything it says. We have a trust in these books without even really know anything about the author. Would there style or writing confuse some people? And how do we know for certain that what we are getting from the writings is what actually happened. It got me to thinking how accurate historical writings actually are. It also got me wondering where they got their information from.
The book mentions things like archives, especially ones from the archives of history of American Psychology, as being useful tools in accuracy. Historiography answered a lot of questions I had about the writing of history. There are a lot of issues that are not exactly clear to us still. An example would be certain causes for American wars. Historiography attempts to take a look back using primary and secondary sources to try and answer these questions. It mostly involves primary sources because these are the most accurate. They include such things as records of speeches, university records, records of companies, etc. By looking at all these sources we can try and recreate the context of the time that it happened. This, in turn, gives us a better understanding of what happened and, sometimes more importantly, why something happened. This field is important because it is attempting to accurately depict certain historical events in order to learn from them. What makes this field so difficult is trying to get all the details right. It requires jointed efforts from historians and various other people to accurately depict an event. You must try and learn every little detail because the smallest detail can skew how something is perceived.
We must continue to advance studies in this field because it is always important to have an accurate depiction of history. This way we can learn from it and learn why it happened. This can prevent future tragedies from going unnoticed. It is important that we take the time to get these things right when we write about them. The next generation will learn about them from how we wrote it. That is why it is important for us to be accurate, unbiased, and detail oriented in our writings of history.
http://www.cgu.edu/pages/840.asp
http://www.writing.ku.edu/~writing/guides/historiography.shtml
http://www.trentu.ca/history/workbook/historiography.php
BG
One topic that I though was interesting that was mentioned in the book as well as other psychology classes is the American Psychological Association or APA. I have heard the term many times but I didn't quite know what it was so I researched it more.
The APA is the largest scientific and professional organization in the United States that represents psychology. The APA has more than 137,000 members consisting of researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. The idea of the APA is to help people communicate and share knowledge about psychology. The APA strives for high standards for ethics and education. They also strive for achievements and progress in psychology.
In the American Psychological Association there are 54 divisions. These divisions are interest groups that cover different areas of psychology. The APA has many core values and in its statement it talks about the continual pursuit of excellence, knowledge and it's application based upon methods of science, outstanding service to it's members and to society, social justice, diversity and inclusion, and ethical action in all that we do. The APA looks at many controversial issues like abortion, detainee welfare, rights for the mentally ill, and many more issues.
Each year the APA recognises top psychologist with very honorable awards. These awards are to recognize contributions in psychology. There are seven awards the APA gives out and they are all directed to certain fields in psychology.
After reading about American Psychological Association I have a better understanding of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Psychological_Association
http://www.apa.org/about/index.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_for_Psychological_Science
I kind of took a different turn from my original interests from the assignment due on Tuesday. I originally said that I was interested in Goddard and other psychologists at the time. I wanted to know what made them make the decision to do an intelligence test. However, after looking in to lost of data, I wanted to know more about intelligence testings as a whole. The test completed by Goddard could have very well been more of a physical assessment than a psychological assessment. Current research was being done on how germs act. To me, that would have been a larger concern of immigration coming into the country, rather then their intelligence or lack there of.
I understand that testing intelligence was rather new at the time. The Stanford-Binet Intelligence had been created only 20 years before Goddard's work, so the idea was fairly new. Not to mention that the Stanford-Binet wasn't translated to English until 1916, and this translation was even quite rough. So at the time, intelligence testing was quite new, and not terribly accurate.
As we have seen in recent years (50 years) intelligence testing cannot be universal. A test written in English targeted towards high class educated men will only show somewhat accurate scores for those people who fall into that category. Since people who were immigrating were from all over the world, there would have been no way for the intelligence test to be in any way accurate in showing how smart someone was. To add to this, the intelligence test probably fit a certain age group for a target. The Stanford-Binet scale developed adjustments for their tests, but not until 1986.
All of this just shows how inaccurate the testing must have been. But then after reading all of this, I wondered, how accurate could an intelligence test actually be? Is it really possible to see how "smart" someone is without knowing a lot about them? It seems ridiculous to me to be able to measure someones intelligence by a written test. The IQ, the most widely used scale of intelligence is said to be fairly inaccurate of testing intelligence but rather it is good at producing a score.
Finally, there are so many more types of intelligence rather than "book smarts" such as intelligence of a certain job. For example, the expertise and intelligence of a plumber is different from that of a physicist. You can also throw in emotional intelligence just to mix it up even more.
I will probably be doing more research on my own to see what some psychologists have come up with in the last decade. I may even look to see what philosophers have to say because the idea of intelligence really fits into philosophical thinking.
To sort everything up, I guess I just got caught up in what intelligence testing. Goddard had a great idea for his time, but even in his time, he should have spent time testing the intelligence test. This could have saved many people the horrible trip of going to Ellis island and then having to return home. If testing was done on the accuracy of his test, and they found that the test was inaccurate (which they would have) then the test would not have been administered.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_testing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford%E2%80%93Binet_Intelligence_Scales
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/amp/38/9/986/
While reading this chapter I came across an interesting topic that I wanted to learn more about. The term I found was personalistic history. Before reading the chapter I had never heard of it before. While reading the chapter the only thing I really gathered about it was the "Great Man Theory". It is an interesting theory but I chose to find more information about it. I found a lot of information about this term that helped me better understand the concept behind it. Personalism has been around since the beginning of recorded history. It is especially evident with kings and queens that felt they had the divine right to rule over others. Personalism has impacted a lot of people, and there are a lot of people that can be an example of personalistic history. There are two different parts to the Great Man Theory. The first of this is the "great man as emissary". This is like people that believe in a higher power that has control. It would be like believing that the gods cast a sickness over them, or a witch or magical being cast a spell over them. People believe this could be caused by going against social norms. The second is the "great man as individual theory". This means that they are separate from higher powers and are in control of their own free will. During this concept people are independent from control from higher powers and act under their own free will. I also found it interesting how many famous and important people can be placed in the category as being a part of the "great man theory". These people include people such as early philosphers, Abe Lincoln, Hitler, and Alexander the Great. All of these people have huge parts of history. It seems like almost anyone that has had a large part in history can be put in the category of the "great man theory". Whether they are in the "emissary" part or "individual" part any powerful or important person can be categorized into one or the other. It is interesting to think about how all of these people can have at least one thing in common. I learned a lot from my extended research on this topic because it helped my understand more clearly the subject of personalistic history, because I could not comprehend much of it while I was reading it out of the book.
I chose my websites based on their content. I tried to choose websites that appeared to have plenty of content to choose from and also had different information from the other sites. I did not want to have three sites with the exact same information because that would just be a waste. I looked at the top search results and I found some quality sites that had a lot of useful information.
http://core.ecu.edu/psyc/evansr/EVANS1.htm
http://www.enotes.com/theories-health-illness-reference/theories-health-illness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personalism
After class today I decided to read the gray box that I had skipped over while reading this chapter previously. It ended up being the most interesting part of the chapter. The box talked about Edwin Boring, who was a psychologist during the 1900's, so I decided to look more into him and his life. I found this section interesting because of the work Boring did for psychology as a whole. The individual experiments he did also interested me.
Boring was a psychologist in the early and mid 1900's. He originally received a degree in electrical engineering, but ended up obtaining a doctorate in psychology at Cornell. There he was advised by Edward Titchener, who inspired him greatly and influenced the psychologist he became. Boring also taught at Cornell for four years after he received his doctorate.
One major thing that Boring did during his career was to separate the psychology program from the philosophy program at Harvard University. This was done partly because of the differences in testing theories between the two studies. Boring wanted to conduct experiments to test his theories. The philosophers preferred to think about an issue and test it mentally rather than scientifically. Once the departments were separated, Boring became the director of the psychology laboratory and the chair of the psychology department.
Boring was also interested in sensation and perception. He once conducted a serious of experiments examining why the moon appears bigger when it is seen on the horizon than when it is seen up in the sky. Boring concluded that the perceived size of the moon depends on the position of a person's eyes in their skull and not the position of a person's body or head.
Edwin Boring is seen as a major contributor to the history of psychology, writing several publications on the subject. When APA division 26, the division for the history of psychology was created in 1966, Boring was named honorary president of the division. He was supposed to attend the first official meeting for the new division, but his old age left him unable to make the trip. Instead he wrote a letter that was read during the meeting.
Learning more about Boring made me realize how much work has gone into making psychology what it is today. I had no idea before this that people like Boring had to fight to ensure that psychology was given a spot in academia or the funding needed to allow psychology to grow. I also did not realize how wide some psychologists fields were. Boring studied history, women's roles in psychology, sensation and perception, and was also a professor and director. I feel I have know a lot more about the beginnings of psychology now, and it was interesting to learn about as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Boring
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Edwin_G._Boring
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Edwin_Garrigues_Boring.aspx
KG
The topic I choice to talk about for this blog is personalistic history or otherwise known as “Great Man” and the person it is most often associated with; Thomas Carlyle. The way that history is written is though biography’s on these individuals which has created something known as eponyms. Where an historic period is based on an individual whose actions are responsible for forming the critical event at hand. This topic interested me in one of a few ways; first being that it talks about how real people just through their hard work and need to be recognized made them heroic figures to later generations without knowing. The second is that it shows that all humans have a need for heroes, regardless of age or job status and as long as there is that need history will always have a personalistic history of sorts. Also it was either this or naturalistic history both are fascinating to me in the like.
The “Great Man” theory was brought about by Thomas Carlyle in the 1840’s explaining that influential individuals or heroes, in respect to either their personal wisdom, intelligence, or in the way they utilized their power can have an historical impact. In one of his books On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History Carlyle gives detailed analysis of some of these “heroes” in some of their heroic acts. From his book of heroes had this to say about Napoleon:
“A Corsican lieutenant of artillery; that is the show of _him_: yet is he not obeyed, worshipped after his sort, as all the Tiaraed and Diademed of the world put together could not be? High Duchesses, and ostlers of inns, gather round the Scottish rustic, Burns;--a strange feeling dwelling in each that they never heard a man like this; that, on the whole, this is the man! In the secret heart of these people it still dimly reveals itself, though there is no accredited way of uttering it at present, that this rustic, with his black brows and flashing sun-eyes, and strange words moving laughter and tears,….”
In the 19th century the Great Man theory became fashionably popular with professional historians. Who then created the Encyclopedia Britannica Eleventh Edition in 1911 containing multiple and detailed biographies of great men from history. With every hero there is a villain; Carlyle’s theory had critics named Herbert Spencer. Spencer took the more naturalistic approach stating it was more of the social environment the “heroes” took part in that formed the forces of history. This in turn, turned some of the writers of these encyclopedias away from printing any biographies, opposing the idea of just one individual and not enough on the general public. The Encyclopedie having no other choice was forced to hiding its self inside articles.
http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Great_man_theory.html
http://history.furman.edu/benson/fywbio/carlyle_great_man.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory
The first day of class we were ask “why do we study history” and the first thing that came to mind was so we can learn from our mistakes. Generally, this was the response the rest of the class had until we were told about Henry Goddard. It was explained to us that Henry Goddard was capable of spotting intelligence just by looking at someone. He judged hundreds of immigrants that came to Ellis Island and sent many back because he deemed them to be “morons.” Today, we see that there is a problem with this logic. We see a problem sending immigrants away because of what they look like. But even today, we are having controversies over who comes to America. This example stuck with me while reading the text so when I read about Goddard, I was interested so I chose Henry Goddard and his studies as my topic.
Goddard is considered to be the father intelligence test in the United States. He translated the Benit-Simon test from French to English and it was sent out to over 20,000 to schools, Ellis island and to the military. This test was used to score the takers on not on their intelligence but also the intelligence that would be passed to their children. “He believed that feeblemindedness was caused by the transmission of a single recessive gene.”
Goddard thought of intelligence and knowledge as two different things. He thought that knowledge is what we are born with. Intelligence is what you do with knowledge. I think of his idea and knowledge is the foundation and intelligence is the building blocks and how you use your knowledge. Knowledge is passed on from parent to child and if the parent had little knowledge, so the child would also have little knowledge.
Goddard was worried about diluting his country with those of little intelligence. He focused himself on preventing “feebleminded” people to procreate. He also wanted to prevent such people in coming to the United States. The U.S. had passes a law forbidding those who were mentally retarded from passing though Ellis Island. To help insure this, Goddard was invited to come to Ellis Island and weed out those he and his test found to be morons.
http://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-6-the-nature-of-learning/henry-goddard-on-iq/
http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/goddard.shtml
http://ellisislandprogram.blogspot.com/2010/08/chapter-12-intelligence.html
I choose to do more research on Alfred Russell Wallace. I feel like he is very under appreciated. He was a significant part in the development of natural selection but he doesn’t really get much credit. There is a whole chapter on Darwin so I think it fits if I do more research on Wallace since he helped Darwin. It may not fit the best in chapter one but it does fit in the book. Without Wallace who knows how long it would have taken Darwin to come up with natural selection.
Alfred Russell Wallace was the eighth of nine children. Soon after enrolling in Hertford Grammar School is family lost all their money and he was forced to withdraw from school. That was the only formal education Wallace received. After a few moves between siblings Wallace applied to the Colligiate School in Leicester and was hired as a master to teach drafting, surveying, English, and arithmetic. With Leicester’s extensive library Wallace was able to learn about natural history. With the help a Henry Walter Bates, Wallace was convinced of the reality of evolution. Together they went to Brazil to collect specimens of different animals. This was his first step to discovering natural selection. In an accident on his way back to London some of his drawings were lost but that didn’t stop him. His next stop was the Malay Archipelago (now Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia). He spent eight years there with around 14,000 miles of travel collecting species of animals. Wallace’s first paper was called “Sarwak Law,” it wasn’t about natural selection but it made an impact on Charles Lyell, a geologist. Lyell encouraged Darwin to publish is ideas on natural selection before someone else did. In February 1858 while suffering from a fever Wallace came up with the idea of natural selection. He wrote an essay explaining his idea and sent it to Darwin not knowing that Darwin had already discovered natural selection just on a different continent. Wallace was still in Africa. When Darwin got the essay he immediately put it with his work to be published. Wallace’s was still given credit as the author but Darwin’s work was put first emphasizing it. Wallace didn’t even know that his work was going to be published. Fifteen months later Darwin came out with the book On the Origin of Species. Wallace was most known in Malay Archipelago for his study of zoogeography. In 1862 he returned to England and married his wife Annie and had two children. He spent the rest of his life defending and popularizing natural selection. He was Brittan’s best known naturalist. He died at ninety-one among the world’s most famous people.
Here are my URL's I forgot to put them on my post.
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_14
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace#Differences_between_Darwin.27s_and_Wallace.27s_ideas_on_natural_selection
http://wallacefund.info/biography-wallace
The most interesting part of the chapter for me was the section on “Personalistic and Naturalistic History”. I wanted to do more research in this area. When I typed this subject into google, it was flooded with hits. What immediately caught my attention, however, was that most of the hits referenced this dichotomy in terms of psychology—even though “psychology” was not in my search. Perhaps there is a reason that psychologists are particularly interested in studying the different mentalities from which their history can be understood. However, it’s shocking that other fields do not do the same. World historians, I would think, would be interested in understanding if a revolutionary event was the direct cause of a single leader, or if it was just a culmination of the times. You can study events, memorize names and dates, but if you can’t grasp the philosophy behind the concept, then what’s the point? I feel as though the personalistic and naturalistic viewpoints are critical parts of understanding history, but my research seems to show that this is only the case in the field of psychology. I just wonder why.
When I went deeper into my research of the topic, I drew a connection. As I was looking deeper into the personalistic theory, I was bombarded with names: Alexander The Great, Joan of Arc, Martin Luther King Jr. —people who were, people who did. The naturalistic theory was more analytical. Sure, there were names of proponents of the naturalistic theory, but the names weren’t there to persuade the reader into buying into the theory. An explanation of the naturalistic theory was entirely rational—history can be explained through a complex understanding of the times, law, and the masses who compose society.
While I never came across this particular idea in the text, I began to think about how both theories could be appealing to people of different predispositions. Perhaps those who like data, empirics, and examples are more apt to think that the personalistic theory is valid. On the other hand, those who prefer to make decisions and reason theoretically prefer the naturalistic approach. I’m absolutely not saying that the personalistic theory is empirical and that the naturalistic theory is theoretical – they are both theoretical, it’s in the name! However, my guess is that those who place a lot of emphasis on empirical data prefer the personalistic approach, and those who like the abstractness and complexity of analysis prefer the naturalistic approach.
While I didn’t find anything on personalism and naturalism with regards to any other kind of history, I was shocked to find that the theories extended beyond the realm of history. This made sense when I thought about it—after all, the idea has nothing to do with history, since personalism and naturalism are just two different lenses from which we can examine any phenomena. I imagined that one can “try on” these different lenses to try to understand illness. In the western world, we tend to rely on naturalism to explain why a person has been injured or has any other kind of health-related obstruction. We use the scientific method to discover the mechanistic causes and to apply treatment. In the non-western world, the personalistic approach is more prominent. It is not uncommon for people to explain away their injuries and illnesses by referencing supernatural forces, spiritual possession, or bewitching of some sort.
As scientists in the western world, some of us will laugh at the ideas of non-westerners believing that illness is caused by supernatural possession, though we also know that our ideas are also highly influenced by our upbringing. What we can take away from this, however, is not that “non-westerners are dumb” or “the personalistic approach” is inferior”, but that these two different theories—the naturalistic and personalistic approaches—lend themselves to different fields of study. Science has validated our use in the naturalistic approach in medicine, but maybe the personalistic approach is a better lens in marketing, advertising, or any science that requires relating to other humans.
One approach may be better suited for analyzing history than the other—we have yet to determine. Like most things, it’s likely that neither approach will completely explain history. Rather, a complex string of theories, of which the naturalistic and personalistic approaches may only be small components, tell the whole story. The important thing is to realize that they can be compatible, both can be validated, and both are worth studying.
http://core.ecu.edu/psyc/evansr/EVANS1.htm
http://anthro.palomar.edu/medical/med_1.htm
http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Personalism
As a philosophy double major, I'm really interested in the "why". Depending upon one's perspective, the answer to that question may vary. Looking at the two different approaches, I got to analyze two different schools of thought, which was personally engaging.
It seems pretty clear, at least to me, how this fits into the chapter. Unless we have a way of interpreting history, it's completely pointless. It's worth understanding the different perspectives from which history can be analyzed. Maybe one is better than the other so we can pick and choose which one to use in different cases. Like I said earlier, though, one is probably no better than the other... so it's worth understanding both perspectives (and others, as I'm sure they're out there), if only we can grasp where others are coming from. Without perspective, nothing means anything. That sounds really dramatic, but it's true. Like anything else, we need to understand the perspective from which we analyze history if we are to extract anything from it.
Chapter 1 Topic
For my topic I wanted to further explore after reading chapter 1 I decided to choose the concept of the “zeitgeist”. I read through this and didn’t really bring it all in I just read it and got a little hung up on the word and concept and decided to just read over it entirely. The only thing that I really got over this idea was that it is basically an excuse for a concrete answer that historians give to events that happen when they don’t have a concrete answer.
From what I have gathered about the Theory of the Zeitgeist as it is called is that the zeitgeist is a type of “spirit of time” in which things that happen in our past are due to the conditions that surround those events. If certain things happen it is because the social conditions at the time gave rise to that event. No matter what someone would have stepped in to fulfill what was going to happen in the event of the past. A good example of this would be with Napoleon and directing France’s army. No matter what, because of the zeitgeist, France would have been a dominant country even if Napoleon were not in power at that time. Due to the social conditions that were in place at the time of France’s domination anyone could have taken control of France’s army and done exactly what Napoleon accomplished.
I understand the zeitgeist theory a little bit better now but I find it very odd and scary that things in our world are so predetermined that the people in them don’t matter to affect the outcomes. Since this was what seemed like an extreme theory to me I decided to look at the other side of the topic of past outcomes which came with the Great Man Theory. What I grasped about this theory before I looked further into it was that it was the opposite of the zeitgeist theory. This is a theory of there being certain people that make the difference in the world’s outcomes and without them it wouldn’t be possible at that time, maybe in the future but maybe not.
The Great Man Theory was developed in the 19th century and explains that there are certain “great men” or “heroes” in our times that impact history greatly. This theory was popularized in 1840 by Thomas Carlyle and was later counter-argued by Herbert Spencer with the above stated zeitgeist theory. An example of this theory is the same as the one about the zeitgeist. If France didn’t have Napoleon to lead their army then they wouldn’t have dominated Europe. It was Napoleon, also known as the hero, and only Napoleon who could make this happen in this time.
With a few websites and videos these counter-argument theories were much easier to understand and kind of put a whole new spin on how I look on events in the past. I feel like neither of these theories are entirely accurate and there may be a middle ground or a truth to both theories; however, leaning extremely to one side or the other just doesn’t work for me.
http://manasgarg.livejournal.com/8852.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man_theory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aebu-Sntq08
TL
I decided to look closer at personalitic vs naturalistic history with a greater emphasis on the 'great man theory.'I was not sure on what the difference was between the two when I first read the chapter, so I took this chance to research it some more. I was not sure if this greater man was considered to be divine or god like, or a normal human that carried great leadership traits. The three articles I found seemed to have three seperate agendas when it came to what the article was trying to get at, but they all had a similar idea when it came to the great man theory.
The great man theory seemed to go back further than Thomas Carlyle, and to the days of Plato. Plato believed that such great men did exsist, and were destined to be great. If they did not possess the strength of a heroic man or that of a god, then he would carry the trait of intelligence. If the great man was not intelligent, then that man was a prince that would assert his power in the best interest of his people. Whatever it took, this man was put on earth to be a change for good. As I continued to read I cound not help the closeness between the great man theory and the trait theory. The are the same in the sense that a man would be a leader of the people, but differed in how this leader role would shine through. The trait theory stated that,yes, there would be this leader, but he would not neccassarily lead unless the situation called for it. It also stated that all great leaders have the same traits, and that these characteristics were best fit in different environments. For example, a city facing religious prosecution would have a leader that had complimentary traits to that crisis. These two theories had some differences, but in all had the same idea that there was some great man born to lead.
Simlilar to ideas above, this article had the same opinions about the great man theory. In this case the theory seemed to be more in a divine sense of the term. The man soon became a prophet or poet figure, and was sent by a higher power to rule the people. At first it seemed a little like the story of Jesus, but as I continued to read it was not the case. It was not one man, but many men that sculpted this earth. Everything you see now on this earth is the direct effect of what great men have done in the past. Nothing would be created because these men are the creationists, patterns, and molders of the world we see now. This seemed a bit drastic as I was reading and lead me to skim the rest of the article. Although, the theory of there being a great men is fesible, the idea of these men being creationist and molders seemed to be to much for me to grasp. I did not like the idea that if these men never exsisted then the world would not be the same as it is today. I believe that someone else would have came along and done the same thing.
The next article took a left turn in my opinion, but stayed with the same idea of this greater man. Carlyle belived that the greater man would not be a man such as a politician, but some like a prophet like Muhammad or Martin Luther. When the word prophet came up again it brought me back to one of the other articles. This concerned me because this means that Thomas Carlyle is taking this idea of a higher being to the divine status. I do not know whether this is true because it is merely my speculation. Another man that had the same ideas as Thomas was German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. He even wrote a book called untimely mediations, that related this greater man to a "higher species" that lived on earth. Friedrich, later than took this idea to another famous man in history, Hitler. Hitler, used this idea of a higher species to slaughter 5 million jews, and 5 million other minorities. Now I know why this idea of a divine or super human scared me. When put in the wrong hands, this idea becomes very dangerous.
http://history.furman.edu/benson/fywbio/carlyle_great_man.htm
http://redroom.com/member/frank-sanello/writing/the-great-man-theory-are-leaders-born-or-made
http://sustainableleadership.info/mgmt.html
After reading a little bit on Edwin G. Boring I decided to do a little more research on him. I am interested in learning more because he is the historian of psychology and because he performed his dissertation on himself. He fits into this chapter because of the fact that he is known as the history of psychology. Boring started out as an engineer and after a few years he went back to school for psychology. His main psychological focus was on sensory processes. During his dissertation he checked visceral sensitivity on himself. Today you wouldn't hear about a researcher testing their theories on themselves. Generally they have other people to test their theories on. Boring also did research on schizophrenia. He also helped with military intelligence testing, which later he formed a negative opinion about. He thought the name for the test wasn't correct. Boring thought that intelligence was too broad of a term to begin with and that the test needed to have a more technical term. He also believed that the special abilities those taking the test had were forgotten after they took the test. Boring also thought that their was more to someone's mental abilities then their tested intelligence.
Not only did he do research on intelligence testing but he also helped form the tongue map. Boring took Hanig's (a German Scientist) raw data and computed actual numbers for the different levels of sensitivity on the tongue. This did not surprise me since his dissertation was over sensory processes.
One of his other experiments was on moon illusion. Moon illusion is when the the moon seems smaller while it is higher up in the sky but larger when it is near the horizon. Boring determined that it has to do with the position of the eyes in the skull.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Edwin_G._Boring
http://www.thenibble.com/reviews/main/salts/umami-the-new-taste6.asp
http://www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/sup/Boring_1923.html
For this week’s reading assignment, there wasn’t much information that really caught my eye. From all the topics presented in the first chapter, I chose to go more into detail about personalistic theory. I chose to research more about personalistic theory because it sounded like it would provide some interesting reads on the internet. Though the book was intriguing, I decided that searching online may provide me with some more insight as to what exactly it was. Personalistic theory, or sometimes known as the great-man theory, is an idea that some individuals could actually shape the course of history. I don’t know if I personally believe this idea or not, but it is definitely something worth thinking about. Was that person really born to do that one huge thing or were they really just in the right place at the right time kind of thing? I don’t know if we’ll ever know actually!
Personalistic theory has two forms that I came across. One of which was the “great man as emissary”, referring to that person actually being chosen to rule in a certain way or to carry out a specific plan of evil or of greatness. All of this was a little out there to me because it was talking about supernatural forces and how they were messengers from these forces. It’s hard to believe in this day and age, but at the time this was all taking place, I’m sure it was a huge theory! It was mentioned that kings and queens from the past might have actually used this concept before it was even put into words. Kings and queens claimed their right to rule throughout the past, but on what grounds? That’s another topic in it’s own, but it’s interesting to think about. Where did this right come from? Is it actually from these supernatural forces? I could try to believe it!
The other from I came across was “great man as individual”, which was actually the complete opposite. They found that these individuals didn’t believe that their abilities came from these supernatural forces, but from their inner self. They believed that everything they were doing came entirely from themselves, even if there might have actually been some supernatural phenomenon going on. Their own take was that they could, and most certainly would, rise to power and control who/what they wanted all through their own effort. This concept was a little scary to me. Hitler was definitely the first person that came into mind.
http://core.ecu.edu/psyc/evansr/EVANS1.htm
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/personalism/
http://books.google.com/books?id=6mu3DLkyGfUC&pg=PA339&lpg=PA339&dq=personalistic+theory+of+history&source=bl&ots=yPcfd2shNu&sig=3-GpG7n9sWBTgJrdT5wBuj-bSl0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VgYCUdivForU9QTBoYDgAg&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=personalistic%20theory%20of%20history&f=false
One thing that stuck out to me after reading chapter one was the development of the Association for Psychological Science (APS). The reference to the APS in the textbook only served as an example as to why one should understand the history leading up to the development of a historical concept, instead of simply studying the concept in itself. One could say, these two groups exist, but would have no knowledge as to why these two groups exist. Therefore, while reading about the APS I became intrigued and decided to research the topic in greater detail.
The APS was established in 1988 after tensions with the American Psychological Association (APA) caused a secession to occur. Although it was not the first group to break away from the APA, the APS is one of the larger subsets. The tension between research psychologists and practice-based psychologists is what lead to the secession. The APS desired to express a more scientific, research based approach to psychology as well as a desire to publish that information for the general public at a national level. The differences in overall goals of the groups caused the split between the APA and the APS.
At first, the APS consisted of about 5,000 members in the first six months of its existence. The goal of the newly formed group was to advance scientific psychology findings at a national level. In order to spread their findings, the APS released a journal called Psychological Science in 1989. Psychological Science contains research articles based on all of the sub-disciplines of psychology. Some categories of interest would include the behavioral, clinical, cognitive, neural, and social sciences. Psychological Science was quickly recognized and was one of most widely cited journals in the entire field. After that, the APS released several other scientific journals that are still widely used.
In 2005, members of the APS voted to change the name from the American Psychological Society to the Association of Psychological Science. This change was done to reach past the confines of the United States and influence psychologists at an international level.
http://pps.sagepub.com/content/4/3/211.full
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/about/history.cfm
http://www.forensicpsychologyonline.com/organizations/association-for-psychological-science.html
RB
In reading this chapter, there were a lot of pieces of information that I found interesting. One of the topics that really caught my eye was this notion of naturalistic history. Initially when reading about it, I thought it was a peculiar way to go about describing history. As defined in the book, naturalistic history is the force that impacts individuals and not the other way around. When I read that, that sort of struck me as odd. As I have always understood it, people are the ones who have the impact on history, not the other way around. That’s what made me decide to go with this particular topic. After I came across that section of the reading, I immediately started to research the topic more in detail.
As I read more into this subject, I found that naturalist history, as opposed to personalistic history, is centered around the idea that time makes the person, or it sets up the situations for individuals. It emphasizes the idea that the social, environmental and cultural circumstances are what contribute to the decisions people make or what kinds of events occur. In other words, it is the environmental settings that contribute to people’s impact on history, and not the other way around. This particular topic ties into the chapter in that it is related to the subject of the history of psychology. Famous psychologists such as Edwin G. Boring and Leo Tolstoy have both indorsed this particular view on history. Another part of the naturalistic approach to history is by being religion-neutral and do not view God as an important aspect to history.
http://books.google.com/books
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/05/god.aspx
http://www.academia.edu/466192/Roles_of_Naturalistic_Observation_in_Comparative_Psychology
RB
In reading this chapter, there were a lot of pieces of information that I found interesting. One of the topics that really caught my eye was this notion of naturalistic history. Initially when reading about it, I thought it was a peculiar way to go about describing history. As defined in the book, naturalistic history is the force that impacts individuals and not the other way around. When I read that, that sort of struck me as odd. As I have always understood it, people are the ones who have the impact on history, not the other way around. That’s what made me decide to go with this particular topic. After I came across that section of the reading, I immediately started to research the topic more in detail.
As I read more into this subject, I found that naturalist history, as opposed to personalistic history, is centered around the idea that time makes the person, or it sets up the situations for individuals. It emphasizes the idea that the social, environmental and cultural circumstances are what contribute to the decisions people make or what kinds of events occur. In other words, it is the environmental settings that contribute to people’s impact on history, and not the other way around. This particular topic ties into the chapter in that it is related to the subject of the history of psychology. Famous psychologists such as Edwin G. Boring and Leo Tolstoy have both indorsed this particular view on history. Another part of the naturalistic approach to history is by being religion-neutral and do not view God as an important aspect to history.
http://books.google.com/books
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/05/god.aspx
http://www.academia.edu/466192/Roles_of_Naturalistic_Observation_in_Comparative_Psychology
The most interesting part of this chapter for me was the emergence of Historicism. Up until about 1965, the study of history was usually only conducted through the lens of the present day culture. Stocking called this Presentism. Stocking called out the study of history as the one academic discipline that is undisciplined, because there was no methodology behind its research. Because of this bold, yet true statement, there was a major attempt to switch historians over to a mindset called Historicism. Historicism is the idea of assessing the culture of another time period based on their morals and cultural beliefs. This is similar to Cultural Relativism. Many people make arrogant statements, such as "If I were a German in WWII, I would not participate in the persecution of the Jews," or "If I were a southern plantation owner during slavery, I would not own slaves." People say these things, not realizing that their whole belief system is based on a very liberal 21st century upbringing. People blame bad things that happened in the past on some sort of special circumstance such as "pure evil." This is a defense mechanism to try to say that a normal person such as themselves are not capable of doing wrong. In 1963, Milgram proved that normal people are capable of doing what our culture would consider "evil" so long as they are following orders. In 1971, Zimbardo proved that it's even simpler than that; a person will do what we consider "evil" if they believe their role calls for it.
The presentist mindset is an example of this defense mechanism, because it makes people believe that bad things in the past couldn't possibly happen in this day and age, as though it's all due to the lack of a moral code in the past. It is important to understand that people in the past though they were modernized enough that they were immune to things such as genocide.
I do understand the irony of dissenting about past methods of studying something when I am advocating for studying people of a time period through the lens of their moral code and cultural norms.
http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00BJek
^This was a very good source, which I used because it has a great explanation of presentism vs historicism.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/1520-6696%28196507%291:3%3C211::AID-JHBS2300010302%3E3.0.CO;2-W/abstract
^This is the abstract to Stocking's article about presentism, which was very dry and hard to understand
http://anthrointro.blogspot.com/2008/04/george-stocking-jr-on-limits-of.html
^I found this source very useful in understanding Stocking's article
The topic in chapter one that I found interesting was about John B. Watson. How he was a comparative psychologist and one of the great thinkers in behaviorism. I found it interesting that he was able to use the same method of observing behavior in animals and apply it to studying human behavior. This topic relates to the book through the internal and external history, which is entwined with comparative psychology, from the study of consciousness to the study of behavior.
According to the first article I read, J.B. Watson had written an article in1913 and announced it was time for psychology to be classified as a natural science. In other words, he thought observable behavior should be the basis for research and studies. Watson believed that structuralism and functionalism was not effective and it was time for psychology to replace them as a form of natural science. Watson taught us how behaviorism can be objective rather than subjective.
Watson focused on habit and consistent behavior through a person’s emotional response. Today this is known as classical S-R Behaviorism which focuses on stimulus and response. However, Watson’s view had its flaws. First of all there was the spontaneous effect of behavior; some responses were revoked even without a stimulus. Another flaw was that the testing could at times be inconsistent. During the 1930’s, classical S-R Behaviorism was modified and is still being used today.
Another article talked about the contributions Watson has made in advertising. After Watson earned his Ph. D. from the University of Chicago, he worked as professor of psychology and director of the psychological laboratory at John Hopkins University. In 1908 he became editor of the Psychological Review; in 1911 he became editor of Journal of Animal Behavior, and by1915 Watson was elected as the president of American Psychological Association. Watson published the article, “psychology as a Behaviorist Views it” in the Psychological Review that helped earn him the title of “Founder of Behaviorism.” Watson would later explain how behaviorism “is a study of what people do.” Through Watson’s writings and studies psychology has been seen as a more scientific field of study.
The third article begins by explaining how John B. Watson was invited to Oxford in 1920 to join a meeting with other philosophers, psychologists, and other great thinkers of the time. This could have given Watson the opportunity to share his theory on behaviorism. At the time Watson was professor of psychology at John Hopkins. Unfortunately, he was unable to attend because of the lack of funding from the university.
I also learned from the article that Watson was involved in a scandal. He apparently, was using inappropriate behavior when he had an affair with one of his students. This ended up costing him his position at the John Hopkins University. Even with his flaws Watson has been influential about behaviorism and has taught us how we can observe human responses and learn from them.
Behaviorism, J. Moore. Psychological Record, 2011
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=afh&AN=45615036&site=ehost-live
John B. Watson at J. Walter Thompson: The Legitimization of Science in Advertising, Peggy J. Kreshel ,Journal of Advertising, 1990
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsh&AN=9605216145&site=ehost-live
Watson: The Thinking man’s Behaviorist, Geoffrey Hall, British Journal of Psychology, 2009
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsh&AN=9605216145&site=ehost-live
The topic in chapter one that I found interesting was about John B. Watson. How he was a comparative psychologist and one of the great thinkers in behaviorism. I found it interesting that he was able to use the same method of observing behavior in animals and apply it to studying human behavior. This topic relates to the book through the internal and external history, which is entwined with comparative psychology, from the study of consciousness to the study of behavior.
According to the first article I read, J.B. Watson had written an article in1913 and announced it was time for psychology to be classified as a natural science. In other words, he thought observable behavior should be the basis for research and studies. Watson believed that structuralism and functionalism was not effective and it was time for psychology to replace them as a form of natural science. Watson taught us how behaviorism can be objective rather than subjective.
Watson focused on habit and consistent behavior through a person’s emotional response. Today this is known as classical S-R Behaviorism which focuses on stimulus and response. However, Watson’s view had its flaws. First of all there was the spontaneous effect of behavior; some responses were revoked even without a stimulus. Another flaw was that the testing could at times be inconsistent. During the 1930’s, classical S-R Behaviorism was modified and is still being used today.
Another article talked about the contributions Watson has made in advertising. After Watson earned his Ph. D. from the University of Chicago, he worked as professor of psychology and director of the psychological laboratory at John Hopkins University. In 1908 he became editor of the Psychological Review; in 1911 he became editor of Journal of Animal Behavior, and by1915 Watson was elected as the president of American Psychological Association. Watson published the article, “psychology as a Behaviorist Views it” in the Psychological Review that helped earn him the title of “Founder of Behaviorism.” Watson would later explain how behaviorism “is a study of what people do.” Through Watson’s writings and studies psychology has been seen as a more scientific field of study.
The third article begins by explaining how John B. Watson was invited to Oxford in 1920 to join a meeting with other philosophers, psychologists, and other great thinkers of the time. This could have given Watson the opportunity to share his theory on behaviorism. At the time Watson was professor of psychology at John Hopkins. Unfortunately, he was unable to attend because of the lack of funding from the university.
I also learned from the article that Watson was involved in a scandal. He apparently, was using inappropriate behavior when he had an affair with one of his students. This ended up costing him his position at the John Hopkins University. Even with his flaws Watson has been influential about behaviorism and has taught us how we can observe human responses and learn from them.
Behaviorism, J. Moore. Psychological Record, 2011
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=afh&AN=45615036&site=ehost-live
John B. Watson at J. Walter Thompson: The Legitimization of Science in Advertising, Peggy J. Kreshel ,Journal of Advertising, 1990
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsh&AN=9605216145&site=ehost-live
Watson: The Thinking man’s Behaviorist, Geoffrey Hall, British Journal of Psychology, 2009
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsh&AN=9605216145&site=ehost-live
N.M.S.
For this topical blog I chose to do research on priming. Priming involves presentation of stimuli, usually only milliseconds at a time and subsequently asking a research participant to engage in some task relevant to the hypothesis being tested. On page 27 of our text, different types of priming studies are discussed (semantic and object priming). I felt that chapter one was all about providing a foundation of knowledge about what cognitive psychology is and what its purview is. Priming is relevant to this goal of the first chapter as it is an example of a type of study that is attempting to elucidate how our brains/minds process and digest the information that it receives. I am interested in this topic because theoretically, it could have major negative implications for the free will of humans as well as a positive impact on our thought patterns.
On the Interaction Design website I visited there was information that can help shed light on the positive aspects of priming. It describes how if an individual hears a sentence in the passive voice and then speaks, they will be more likely to use a sentence that has the passive voice. This may seem trivial, but it highlights one of the most important characteristics of priming. This facet of priming that is so important is that priming has the capability to influence our future actions after the priming agent has been presented. If researchers have not already done so, it would be good to research the potential benefits of trying to prime positive thinking patterns or how to recognize when a negative thought pattern is primed.
The sentence structure example demonstrates how priming in the form of hearing a sentence could impact our interactions with others.
However, consciously listening and hearing someone are not the only ways our brains can acquire information and be primed. On the University of Arizona website I read, a method for priming individuals without their conscious awareness of it is described. This is the part of priming that seems to have serious implications for free will. If free will involves to make decisions without restraint, priming to a certain degree deny the possibility of having free will in specific situations. In these specific situations free will is threatened because a past prime has caused or increased the probability of an individual. If the prime was received in a non-concious manner, an individual may not even be aware of the connection between the prime and their behavior.
This may seem very hypothetical, but it could be the case that priming does exist and manifest in the real world, even if not always showing itself in ways as simple as in controlled experiments. People may even on some level know or suspect that their actions could in some cases be automatic reactions influenced by past events. An example of these premises lies in the case of Gwen Araujo. Gwen was a transgender women who was murdered by four men. The lawyer for the defendants used what’s known as the trans panic defense. This trans panic defense attempts to claim that learning of someone’s status of being transgender is something that triggers violence and disgust. In many TV shows when cisgender people learn someone is transgender they react with disgust and bewilderment. A good example of this is the crying game, where when a man seeing a woman finds out she’s transgender, he slaps her, vomits for some time then leaves the apartment without saying anything. It could be that being exposed to scenes such as these over time were priming the men to be more likely to respond in the violent manner they did when they were in a similar situation.
Judging by how there has been some success in advocating against the trans panic defense it would appear that people also seem to recognize that after the automatic affect that can be triggered people have the ability to make conscious decisions. Nevertheless, priming raises interesting issues with respect to ethics/justice, free will and our every day lives.
http://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/priming.html This source allowed me introduce some of the ways that priming can influence our thinking and behavior which would be necessary for the next two paragraphs to be more meaningful.
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~kforster/priming/ This source was included because it highlighted the fact that priming can happen outside of one’s conscious awareness and I felt that it was important and interesting for understanding priming.
http://www.ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&article=68991 I presented this source as a way to describe how may possibly exist outside of experiments and studies. I felt it was a good example of how cognitive science and priming in particular could play much larger role in people’s lives than simply influencing sentence structure like in the first link.
1a) State what your topic is.
Presentism and Historicism and how it relates to history.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
This topic was found within the section discussing the multiple variations of how to look at history in a more critical way instead of accepting it and moving on.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I am interested in it because it requires a method of critical thinking that relates closely to the way the philosophy program is set up and allows for a deeper and more appreciative understanding of facts.
For the first week after reading a chapter primarily done with introducing the chapter and not being to in depth on a specific topic, such as depression or development of the brain, the topic I was immediately interested in was the study of the history of any topic. The idea of studying history is one that is not all to new to any student in an academic setting, however, discussing the why’s and the idea’s of the historical facts is usually not done and just breezed over. In the chapter the author goes into great deal about two competing ideas in the look at history in the views of presentism, and also in the view of historicism, while giving much credit to these terms to George Stocking. George Stocking has been said to have, “a more penetrating one that put the development of ideas within a historical context that often was missing from similar efforts.” This extra effort and development of ideas can be assumed to mean the ideas of presentism and historicism.
The idea of presentism is essentially to look at historical facts with the views and ideas of what is happening now in the present, and applying them to the situations found in whatever topic is being looked at. This idea has been applied in the field since the 1916, with appearances to the notion happening almost a half century beforehand. Some historians may attempt to look at history without these present views and notions, but, habits die hard and this is not a way of thinking that many people learn at a young age. Presentism is seen as primarily problematic because if a person was to compare any age in history to today, they could either feel superior to those back then, or they could misinterpret the social norms and think that what happens today puts situations and events in a much better light, whereas down the road it may be frowned upon. The downsides of presentism, much like a fine wine, age with time. The more time that may lapse between event a and the present, the more likely presentism will be subliminally applied and the problems aforementioned will grasp at the minds of the people. Presentism is not a bad practice or an evil, instead it is a natural mindset that takes place in the present time when looking back at events and applying what is known now, versus understanding what was known then, also known as historicism.
Historicism is the opposite of presentism; it involves applying the norms, practices, and customs of the time being looked at as opposed to applying the present day ideals. Historicism is usually practiced in academic settings because it requires a more all encompassing knowledge of the event, and leads to a better understanding of why the event may have happened instead of event a happened on day x. In a nutshell historicism can be said to be the opposite of presentism, and once you understand the idea of what one is, the other is usually easily graspable as well.
Both of these methods of looking at historical facts require much more than a simple date or time, and this is what drove me to wanting to understand them in a fuller context.
http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2013/07/30/george-w-stocking-jr-historian-social-anthropology-1928-2013 - I quoted the author on how Stocking brings that extra something to historical debates that aren’t found just anywhere else.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism - Self explanatory, give the definition and much more information on presentism, both history and philosophy related. Article gave me a better understanding as to write a more coherent and better opinionated work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicism - Same as Presentism.
http://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/may-2002/against-presentism - Used to show some flaws in presentism and it is heavily opinionated with some issues with the practice and use of.
My topic is over René Descartes. In this chapter we read about Descartes life and his studies. His studies helped us progress in the area of physiology and psychology with his research.
I have a huge interest in neurology and he aided in the progression of discovering many neurological processes.
Three things that interest me the most about him are his ideas behind the reflex, mind-body interaction and animal spirits.
As the chapter mentions Descartes begins the concept of the reflex. He would study animals through dissection and he got his idea from statues that move hydraulically. This is how he came to the conclusion of how “reflexes” work. A stimuli would cause animal spirits to flow through nerves which would cause the brain to react and cause a behavior. This idea wasn’t very popular but would shape later physiological research. The idea behind animal spirits wasn’t first discovered by Descartes, however. The first ideas came from Alexandrian physicians before Descartes’ time. The first ideas believed that the animal spirits were indiscernible, whereas Descartes believed it was an actual liquid that flowed through the nerves. Furthermore, the body is controlled by the brain, the brain would then tell the animal spirits what to do and where to go. But, Descartes also believed that the mind played a major role in the how humans behaved. The mind was exempt from the body and the animal spirits. The meeting point of the mind and body was the pineal gland. He changed his theory of mind-body interaction because it was inconclusive. Descartes ended up being very wrong on some of his theories, although he really paved the way to biopsychology.
http://community.dur.ac.uk/robert.kentridge/comp2.html
This URL elaborated on how Descartes came to his theory on “reflexes.”
https://neurophilosophy.wordpress.com/2006/11/16/exorcising-animal-spirits-the-discovery-of-nerve-function/
This URL helped define animal spirits, where it originated, and how it helped Descartes develop his idea of animal spirits. It also aided in how it differed from Descartes later idea.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/#MinRel
http://www.informationphilosopher.com/problems/mind_body/
These URLs helped expand upon Descartes idea of how the mind and body were connected and his thoughts of how they were two separate parts of why and how humans behave the way they do.