- We may take this opportunity here to discuss briefly the
"objectivity status" of annotations, especially those types that describe
"internal" events. The experimental analysis of behavior tends to avoid the
recording of "inner" thoughts and feelings, a procedure that is often identified
in the literature as introspectionism (intro = inside; -spect-
= looking; hence, "looking inside"'). John B. Watson, the modern
"founder" of "elemental or strict behaviorism" was influential in
"stamping out" from behaviorism any kind of data that was based on a person's
observations when introspecting. These kinds of reports were deemed subjective and
unreliable.
- We feel, however, that in this the baby was thrown out with
the bathwater! There are two reasons we would like to mention. First, the significance of
so-called "introspective data" does not lie in their being an exact record Of
what the person thought of, sensed, or felt. Rather, as pointed out above, they are to be
classified as annotations the person presents, and it is this presentation
that is of interest, not whether they contain a precise record of what actually was
thought of or felt. Presentations are not introspective; they are interpersonal,
public, and objective. Their function is to elaborate upon the experimental context of
an event or involvement. They allow the "third party" to witness more fully the
events being reported.
- The second reason we may give concerning the validity and
utility of these annotations, is that they are of the same type that a person ordinarily
and commonly uses all the time for the self-direction of behavior. To leave them out,
would mean to eliminate a source of information that people actually use and rely on, and
the theories the experimental analyst makes up about human behavior would thus be
inadequate and falsified. Furthermore, the behaviorist already uses such data when he
records the "overt" reactions of a subject to a question, scaled item, or
summative report of one's evaluations. Thus, if you choose an item on a verbal
questionnaire, e.g., "+2" for "how we11 you like something," are you
not summarizing your introspected reactions? It would seem, therefore, that a better
strategy would be to obtain the subject's report in whatever manner desirable, and
as well, to obtain additional annotations concerning the objective context of the
report. In this manner, our understanding of the meaning and significance of the reports
are facilitated and enhanced.
- Example 6: Territoriality Slogans
| Data Segment |
Source |
Type |
Annotations |
"You eat too
much."
"Why aren't you
eating?"
|
Childhood
memory
Childhood
memory
|
Food
Food
|
This statement was often used by
my mother to indicate that I
should improve my eating habits.
My mother would often say this
if I stopped eating so much
because of the above statement.
It caused much confusion in my
life. |
Note how the various types of annotations interact with
each other to illuminate the biographical events being described. Merely reporting two
events, being frequently told about food that "You eat too much" and "Why
aren't you eating?" is not sufficiently evocative of their significance. Clearly, the
annotation "It caused much confusion in my life"' identifies an element about
the situation which is informative, that is, the significance the witness attaches to
these biographical items that she kept track of.
- In this next example, we present annotations that one
student wrote about another student's report. This kind of data is informative about the
interpretat10n and significance which the reader attaches to some biographical report.
- Example 7: Interpersonal Relations: Relationship
with the opposite sex.
| Data Segment |
Source |
Annotation |
"Playgirl."
"I look around the
house to make sure
everything is in
order before I leave
for the day." |
Lists and
belongings
(Folder #13)
Log activities;
11:35 A.M.
Psychohistory;
Attributions
(Folder #27) |
(This is a subscription she has.)
This subscription shows her
relationship to the opposite sex
as being on a pornographic level.
Here she is concerned about the
appearance of her home. This is
traditionally a female role.
|
In this example, the student is presenting two pieces of
evidence she isolated from the reports of two other students (Folders #13 and 27).
"Source" refers to the specific part of the report from whence the data segments
come. The
context of the report in Example 7 is given by the title annotation, i.e., observations
the witness has made concerning a particular significance she attaches to the data
segment, namely, indicators of "Relationship with the opposite sex." The
annotation entry for noting that person #13 subscribes to Playgirl magazine, is
informative about how she "reads," or interprets this fact about #13. Similarly,
the second annotation tells us that being c0ncerned about home appearance, is categorized
by her as a "traditional female role.''
- In this next example, the same student reports some of her
observations about two other students' reports. The two students were selected on the
basis of her first impressions about them in class, either favorable ("I would like
to get acquainted with this person"), or unfavorable ("I don't think this person
and I would like each other").
- Example 8: Social Attitudes; First Impressions
- Folder #107: (favorable)
| Data Segment |
Source |
Annotation |
"I hope I didn't over-
whelm her, though,
because once I get
going, I couldn't
stop talking to her!"
"I wish I didn't have
so much homework."
"I have to study this
weekend."
|
Interior Dialogue
Territoriality;
Epithets
Territoriality;
Transactional
Strategies I use
|
(She was being interviewed by a
girl and this is the response
she gave.) I often talk too
much also and sometimes I regret
it later.
I share in this sentiment.
(She says this to her boyfriend
sometimes when she has a lot of
work to do.) I have often said
this to my boyfriend also,
especially when exam times comes
around. |
- Folder #46: (unfavorable)
"I feel sentimental
and romantic."
"lipstick, eye
shadow"
|
Psychohistory
Sensations and
Feelings
Territoriality;
Lists and
Belongings
|
(She has just seen a sunset and
feels this way about it.) I,
personally, could not get
romantically involved with a
sunset but would rather philo-
sophize over people.
(These are the make-up things
she keeps in her purse.)
never carry any make-up in my
purse |
| "athletic" |
Self-appearance
assessment |
(She feels she is an athlet1c individual.)
I am definitely
not. I don't like sports that
much. |
These data are informative about the categorizations this
person makes concerning the significance of social attitudes towards personal
traits. Again, this kind of annotation informs us about the sign7ficance this person
attaches to items of observation about another person (= CCP's).
- The DRA Index. We are presenting below
information concerning the current contents of the student-produced and maintained data
bank which we call The Daily Round Archives or DRA. Part A gives a description of the
general contents by date of submission, i.e., year and semester. Part B gives the outline
of the categories of reporting, i.e., the daily round areas, for the Spring 1977
submissions of Psychology 222 students and the categories used for the Spring 1978
semester.
DRA INDEX
TlTLE: Transcript from TV or Movie
REFERENCE NUMBER: S76//(Q)
DESCRIPTION: Students recorded a TV program and transcribed a 10-minute
- section of dialogue. The reports included an introduction, a
- description of the notation system used in transcribing,
stage
- directions, an analysis (turntaking, transactional idioms,
- topical content, participant activities), and an
interpretation.
TITLE: Microdescription of Handshake Episode
REFERENCE NUMBER: F75//(R)
DESCRIPTION: Immediately after shaking hands with the person next to them
- in class, students wrote a detailed description of the
event.
TITLE: Paraphrase outline of Erving Goffman's Frame Analysis
REFERENCE NUMBER: F75//(S)
DESCRITION: Working in groups of five each student paraphrased in outline
- form chapters of Frame Analysis and prepared
revisions
- responsive to Dr. James' written comments.
TITLE: objectifying Autobiographical Record
REFERENCE NUMBER: F75//(T)
DESCRIPTION: Students prepared an autobiographical analysis using the Social
- Psychological concepts outlined in Erving Goffman's Frame
- Analysis. Students made revisions based on professor's
comments.
TITLED: Glossary
REFERENCE NUMBER: S75//(U)
DESCRIPTION: Students compiled a glossary based on the lectures, including
- paragraphs of definitions, examples, relationships of terms,
- and diagrams.
SEMESTER: Spring 1974
TITLE: IS (Instructional Statement) Pages
REFERENCE NUMBER: S74//V/W
DESCRIPTION: Students prepared 10 "IS" pages based on Erring Goffman's
- "on face-work: An Analysis of Ritual Elements,"'
and Edward
- Sampson's Social Psychology. IS pages refers to
a method of
- objectifying the perspective of a writer.
DRA INDEX
SEMESTER: Fall 1976
TITLE. Interior Dialogue Accompanying a Talking Exchange
REFERENCE NUMBER: F76//E
DESCRIPTION: Students prepared from memory a brief transcript of a talking
- episode in four columns: 1) transcript lines, 2) stage
directions,
- 3) interior dialogue of the student, 4) interior dialogue of
the other person.
TITLE: Outline of Textbook: Social Psychology of Contemporary Society
by Edward Sampson
REFERENCE NUMBER: F76//E
DESCRIPTION: Students prepared a handwritten outline of the text using chapter
- titles, section headings, and italicized terms.
TITLE: Transcript of a l0 Minute Segment of Conversation
REFERENCE NUMBER: F76//G
DESCRIPTION: Students recorded an hour-long conversation in which they
- participated, and transcribed a 10-minute segment with
- annotations.
TITLE: Students ' Transcript Analysis
REFERENCE NUMBER: F76//H
DESCRIPTION: Each student analyzed transcripts prepared by other students.
TITLE: Ocean School Report
REFERENCE NUMBER: F76//I
DESCRIPTION: Students were instructed to spend a half-hour daily in the
- ocean for two weeks and to record their observations within
- the framework of the Reacculturation Hexagram.
TITLE: Weekly Round of Activities
REFERENCE NUMBER: F76//J
DESCRIPTION: Students prepared a 24-hour log of their daily conversations for
- 7-day period. Each entry specified the time of occurrence,
- duration, and activity.
TITLE: Black Evaluation
REFERENCE NUMBER: F76//K
DESCIPTION: At the end of the semester students prepared a list of
- assertions evaluating the course.
DRA INDEX
SEMESTER: Spring 1976
TITLE: Impressions and observations about the First Class and Corrections to
- Assignment
REFERENCE NUMBER: S76//L
DESCRIPTION: Students reported their impressions and observations of the
- first day of class. Dr. James wrote comments on each
- paper, and students prepared responsive "corrections.
"
TITLE: Discourse Thinking Report
REFERENCE NUMBER: S76//M
DESCRIPTION: Students prepared a transcript with information arranged in
- four columns: 1) the transcript, 2) stage directions, 3)
dis-
- course thinking of the student, 4) discourse thinking of the
- other person.
TITLE: Comic Strip Interior Dialogue
REFERENCE NUMBER: S76//N
DESCRIPTION: Students prepared a transcript of a comic strip sequence with
- information arranged in four columns: 1) the comic strip
- dialogue, 2) stage directions, 3) the imagined interior
dialogue
- of one character, 4) the imagined interior dialogue of the
second
- character.
TITLE: a. Questions that Occurred to oneself During the Class Period
- b. Questions Asked Aloud During a Day
- c. Discussion of Questions Asked Aloud During a Day
REFERENCE NIJMBER: S76//O
DESCRlPTION: Students recorded the questions that occurred to them during
- the class period, all the questions that they found
themselves
- asking aloud during the day, and added their comments.
TITLE: Transcript
REFERENCE NUMBER: S76//P
DESCRIPTION: Students recorded an hour-long conversation in which they
- participated and transcribed a 10-minute segment. The
reports
- included an introduction, a description of the notation
system
- used in transcribing, stage directions, an analysis
(turntaking,
- transactional idioms, topical content, participant
activities),
- and an interpretation.
DRA INDEX
SEMESTER: Spring 1977
TITLE: My Talk
REFERENCE NUMBER: S77//A
DESCRIPTION: Students prepared a transcript segment of a dinner table
- conversation in which they were a participant, and annotated
- the transcript.
TITLE: My Daily Round
REFERENCE NUMBER. S77//B
DESCRIPTION: Students prepared a log of their activities during a 24-hour
- period, from the time they got up in the morning till the
- following morning. Each entry contained the following
- information: When? How long? Where? Who? Occasion?
- Nature of activity?
TITLE: My Standardized Imaginings
REFERENCE NUMBER: S77//C
DESCRIPTION: This assignment is divided into the following five sections:
- 1) Interior Dialogue, 2) Feeling Arguments, 3) Fantasy/
- Daydream Episodes, 4) The Elevated Register, 5) Routine
- Concerns: Selected Inventories. Students prepared paragraph
- descriptions from events on their daily round
- (Cf. NO12 Instructions for A3signments, Psy 322, Spring
1977)
TITLE: My Community of Relationships
REFERENCE NUMBER: S77//D
DESCRIPTION: This assignment is comprised of the following four sections:
- 1) Noticing observations, 2) Descriptions of Transactions,
- 3) Reporting Joint Activities, 4) Non-Joint Activities.
Students
- prepared paragraph descriptions of their activities on their
- daily round.
- (Cf. NO12 Instructions for Assignments, Psy 322, Spring
1977)
DRA INDEX
SEMESTER: Fall 1977
TITLE: Research Report 1 - Recording Interior Dialogue
REFERENCE NUMBER: F77//AA
DESCRIPTION: Students tape-recorded the thoughts that occurred to them
- in the course of a day and reported their observations about
- their recordings. A record of their daily round accompanied
- their report. Types of thoughts recorded were impressions,
- fantasies, judgments, decisions, conversations, etc.
TITLE: Research Report 2 - Diagram Your Knowledge
REFERENCE NUMBER: F77//BB
DESCRIPTION: Students were instructed to diagram their knowledge--personal,
- social, academic--in several specific ways: by making lists,
- charts, diagrams, geometric representations, analogies, tree
- diagrams, and conceptual progressions or series.
TITLE: Research Report 3 - Why Can't They Do It Another Way?
REFERENCE NUMBER: F77//CC
DESCRIPTION: Students interviewed cohabitants, car-mates, and 'phone pals'
- for instances where people said to themselves "Why
can't
- they do it another way?" and the actions taken. They
in-
- cluded descriptions of incidents and occasions, and of the
- rationale for action taken. The analysis took the form of
- charts which were discussed in the report.
TITLE: Research Report 4 - What Should Social Psychology Be?
REFERENCE NUBER: F77//DD
DESCRIPTION: Students answered the question by 1) scanning current texts
- and professional journals in social psychology, 2)
interviewing
- members of the community, 3) reviewing their lecture notes
- and course work. The discussion included tables and charts.
TITLE: Inventory Questionnaire
REFERENCE NUMBER: F77//EE
DESCRIPTION: Students completed a personal opinion inventory questionnaire
- (prepared for a pending Ph. D. dissertation) designed to
- measure the "positivity or negativity" with which
a person
- views the world. The students commented on their reactions
- after completing the survey.
DRA INDEX
SEMESTER: Fall 1977
TITLE. Daily Feedback Sheets ("DFS")
REFERENCE NUMBER: F77//FF
DESCRIPTION: After every class students completed a form reporting (1) %
- ratings for a) Preparation, b) Comprehension, c)
Satisfaction,
- and d) Intrinsic Interest; and (2) their answers to
questions
- asked by Dr. James during the lectures; and (3) their
- comments and messages to the professor.
TITLE: Messages on Research Reports
REFERENCE NUMBER: F77//GG
DESCRIPTION: Students read each others' research reports and wrote
- reactions and messages to the authors.
TITLE: Lecture Outlines
REFERENCE NUMBER: F77//HH
DESCRIPTION: Students listened to tape recordings of class lectures, and
- outlined the lectures.
TITLE: Extra Projects
REFERENCE NUMBER: F77//II
DESCRIPTION: Miscellaneous projects planned jointly by professor and
- student.
DRA INDEX
SEMESTER: Fall 1977
TITLE: Research Report 1- Daily Round Sociomap
REFERENCE NUMBER: F77//JJ
DESCRIPTION: Students in Psychology 397 prepared a Daily Round Log and
- drew a map representing their comings and goings for the
day.
TITLE: Research Report 2 and 3 -
REFERENCE NUMBER: F77//KK
DESCRLPTION: Students in Psychology 397 surveyed several of their courses
- by filling out Daily Feedback Sheets (DFS) during five
consecutive
- lectures. Data include overall personal ratings
(preparation,
- comprehension, satisfaction, intrinsic interest) and various
- comments on the lecture. Students analyzed and discussed the
- data.
TITLE: Inventory Questionnaire (397)
REFERENCE NUMBER: F77//LL
DESCRIPTION: (see ref. # F77//EE)
TITLE: Daily Feedback Sheets (DFS) (397)
REFERENCE NUMBER: F77//MM
DESCRIPTION: (see ref. # F77//FF)
TITLE: Messages on Research Reports
REFERENCE NUMBER: F77//NN
DESCRIPTION: (see ref. # F77//GG)
TITLE: Lecture Outlines
REFERENCE NUMBER: F77//OO
DESCRIPTION: (see ref. # F77//HH)
TITLE: Extra Projects
REFERENCE NUMBER: F77//PP
DESCRIPION: (see ref. # F77//II)
DRA CLASSIFICATION SCHEME
I. MAJOR CLASSIFICATION LEVEL
ZONE 1: BIOGRAPHIC RECORD
ZONE 2: TRIBE
ZONE 3: ROLE
ZQNE 4: PSYCOHISTORY
ZONE S: TERRITORIALITY
ZONE 6: APPEARANCE
II. SUBCLASSIFICATION LEVEL
ZONE 1: BIOGRAPHIC RECORD
- lA MY VITA
ZONE 2: TRIBE
- 2A MY TALK
- 2B CONNECTIONS
- 2C FAMILY TREE
ZONE 3: ROLE
- 3A LOGGING ACTIVITIES
- 3B SITUATED INTERIOR DIALOGUE
- 3C SITUAIED STANDARDIZED IMAGININGS
- 3D SITUAIEO PSYCHOLOGIZINGS
- 3E SITUATED SENSATIONS AIID FEELINGS
- 3F SITUATED FEELING ARGUMENTS
- 3G SITUATED FANTASY/DAYDREAM EPISODES
- 3H THE ELEVATED REGISTER
- 3I RESPONSIBILITIES AND DUTIES
- 3J SOCIAL MEMBERSHIPS
ZONE 4: PSYCHOHISTORY
- 4A SITUATED ATTRIBUTIONS
- 4B SITUATED INTERIOR ASSESSMENTS
- 4C SITUATED JUDGMENTS
- 4D INTERVIEWING THE SELF
ZONE 5: TERRITORIALITY
- 5A REGULAR LISTS AND BELONGINGS
- 5B ROUTINE CONCERNS: SELECTED INVENTORIES
- 5C NOTICING OBSERVATIONS
- 5D DESCRIPTIONS OF TRANSACTIONS
- SE TRANSACTIONAL STRATEGIES: EPISODES WHEN I:
- 5F DECLARATIONS
- 5G SLOGANS
- 5H EPITHETS
- 5I HANGOUTS AND GROUP ACTIVITIES
- 5J REPORTING JOINT ACTIVITIES
- 5K NON-JOINT ACTIVITIES
ZONE 6: APPEARANCE
- 6A INTERVIEWING OTHERS
MICRO-CLASSIFICATION LEVELS
ZONE 1: BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
--lA MY VITA
- 1A1 Current Status in Community
- 1A2 Background
- 1A3 Topic Focus
- 1A4 Personal
- -------1A4.1 Ambitions
- -------1A4.2 Favorites
- -------1A4.3 Fears
ZONE 2: TRIBE
-- 2A MY TALK
- 2A1 Analysis of Argument Logic
- -------2A1.1 Schema of Argument Structure
- -------2A1.2 Description of Operational Talking Procedures
- -------2A1.3 Schema of Behavior Strategies in Talk
-
- 2A2 Analysis of Relationship
- -------2A2.1 Case History
- -------2A2.2 Relationship Dynamics
- -------2A2 3 Tabulation of Pair Types
- -------2A2.4 Tabulation of Role Types
- 2A3 Analysis of Sequence
- -------2A3.1 Schema for Move Embeddings
- -------2A3.2 Tabulation of Adjacency Relations
- 2A4 Analysis of Setting
- -------2A4.1 Discourse: Analysis
- -------2A4.2 Tabulation of Derivative Relations
- -------2A4.3 Tabulation of Implicit Meanings
- -------2A4.4 Tabulation of the Rhythm of Exchange
- -------2A4.5 Transactional Engineering Through Talk
- 2A5 Analysis of Topic
- -------2A5.1 Breakdown of Topics Exchanged
- -------2A5.2 Topical Annotations
- -------2A5.3 Topical Chart of Transcript
- -------2A5.4 Topicalization Dynamics
- 2A6 Transcript Annotations
- -------2A6.1 Explanations
- -------2A6.2 Stage Directions
--2B CONNECTIONS
- 2B1 People I Live With
- 2B2 People Who Are My Immediate Family
- 2B3 People Who Are Extended Family
- 2B4 People Who Are Acquaintances of the Family
- 2B5 People I Know From Work
- 2B6 People Regularly Socialize With
- 2B7 People Who Have Provided Me with Professional Services
- 2B8 People Whose Change in Financial Status Would Affect My
Financial Status
- 2B9 People Who Are Non-Intimates and Non-Family Whose I'll
Health or Death
- -----Would Affect Me
- 2B10 People Whom I Might Ask for a Recommendation
- 2B11 People Who Influences My Intellectual and Personal
Maturity
- 2B12 People I Don't Know Personally But Whose Ideas Affect
Me
- 2B13 People Who Have or Could Ask Me for a References
- 2B14 People I See Regularly for Service or Supplies
- 2B15 People I'd Like Currently to Meet
- 2B16 People I Know Whose I Quote or Stories I Tell
- 2B17 People Whom I Believe to be Admired by My Parents
- 2B18 People Whom I Know Who I See or Think About Only Rarely
--2C FAMILY TREE
ZONE 3: ROLE
--3A LOGGING ACTIVITIES
- 3A1 Time
- 3A2 Duration
- 3A3 Place
- 3A4 Participants
- 3A5 Occasion
- 3A6 Nature of Activity
--3B SITUATED INTERIOR DIALOGUE
- 3B1 Overlays of Comments to Self
- 3B2 Value Expressions
- 3B3 Preparing Schedules
- 3B4 Reviewing/Making Plans and Lists
- 3B5 Emotionalizing Episodes
- 3B6 Rehearsals and Practicings
- 3B7 Annotations, Memorizing, Editings
- 3B8 Unmentionables Within the Relationship
--SITUATED STANDARDIZED IMAGININGS
--SITUATED PSYCHOLOGIZINGS
--SITUATED SENSATIONS AND FEELINGS
- 3E1 Microdescriptions of Sensory Observations
- -------3E1.1 Aches and Pains
- -------3E1.2 Stretchings and Exercise
- -------3E1.3 Blushing
- -------3E1.4 Retinal Sensations, etc.
- -------3E1.5 Appetite and Cooking
- -------3E1.6 Energy Level
- -------3E1.7 Smells and Odors
--3F SITUATED FEELING ARGUMENTS
- 3F1 Figuring Out a Conflict
- 3F2 Making Resolutions
--3G SITUATED FANTASY/DAYDREAM EPISODES
- 3G1 Elaboration of Dramatized Scenarios
- 3G2 Construction of Catharsis Stories
- 3G3 Re-contacting Nostalgic Memories
- 3G4 Working out Alternative Realities
--3H THE ELEVATED REGISTER
- 3H1 Praying/Invocations
- 3H2 Altered States of Conciousness
- 3H3 Meditations/Reading of Scriptures
- 3H4 Poetic Expressions
--3I RESPONSIBILITIES AND DUTIES
--3J SOCIAL MEMBERSHIPS
ZONE 4: PSYCHOHISTORY
--4A Who Am I
--4B What Am I
--4C How Am I
--4D What Do I Look to You
ZONE 5: TERRITORIALITY
--5A REGULAR LISTS AND BELONGINGS
- 5A1 Invitations
- 5A2 Announcements
- 5A3 Subscriptions
- -------5A3.1 Periodicals
- -------5A3.2 Membership Dues
- -------5A3.3 Contributions
- 5A4 Bills
- 5A5 Closets
- 5A6 Drawers
- 5A7 Objects
- 5A8 Documents and Mementos
- 5AB.1 Official/Legal/Medical
- 5AB.2 Personal/Biographical
- -------5A8.2.1 Prizes
- -------5A8.2.2 Letters
- -------5A8.2.3 Gifts
- -------5A8.2.4 Albums
- -------5A8.2.5 Souvenirs
--5B ROUTINE CONCERNS: Selected Inventories
- 5A9.1 Purse/Wallet
- 5A9.2 Car Glove Compartment
- 5A9.3 Your Own Drawer for Stuff
- 5A9.4 Clothes Closet
5B ROUTINE CONCERNS: SELECTED INVENTORIES
--5B1 Privacy
- 5B1.1 From the EYES of Particular Others
- 5B1.2 From the NOSE of Particular Others
- 5B1.3 From the Ears of Particular Others
- 5B1.4 From the Knowledge of Particular Others
-------5B1.4.1 Involving Your Activities
5B1.4.1.1 Places
5B1.4.1.2 People
5B1.4.1.3 Purchases
5B1.4.1.4 Bills
-------5B1.4.2 Involving Your Ideas
5B1.4.2.1 Memories
5B1.4.2.2 Attitudes
5B1.4.2.3 Opinions
--5B2 Information: Record Keeping
- 5B2.1 Schedules
- 5B2.2 Shopping Lists
- 5B2.3 Date and Addresses Books
- 5B2.4 Check/Bank Books
- 5B2.5 Biographical
- -------5B2.5.1 Diary
- -------5B2.5.2 Notes
- -------5B2.5.3 Resolutions
5C NOTICING OBSERVATIONS
--5C1 Visual Sightings
- 5C1.1 Physical State/Appearance
- 5C1.2 Mood
- 5C1.3 Unmentionables Within the Relationships
- 5C1.4 Disoccasioned Mentionables
--5C3 Auditory Pickings-up
- 5C3.1 Overhears Snatches of Talk
- 5C3.2 Sounds, Noices
5D DESCRIPTION OF TRANSACTIONS
--5D1 Gossiping
--5D2 Catching Up on News
--5D3 Having an Argument
--5D4 Joking
--5D5 Exchanging Information
--5D6 Making Arrangement
--5D7 Working Out a Problem
--5D8 Sharing Secret/Confessions
--5D9 Routine Reviews/News of the Day
5E TRANSACTIONAL STRATEGIES: EPISODES WHEN I:
--5E1 Lied
--5E2 Avoided
--5E3 Persisted In
--5E4 Pursued
--5E5 Insisted On
5F DECLARATIONS
--5F1 Problems
--5F2 Concerns
--5F3 Secrets
--5F4 Disoccasioned Topics
--5F5 Superstition
5G SLOGANS
--About Appearance
--About Health
--About Diet
--Folk Wisdom
5H EPITHETS
--5H1 Pet Peeves (self and others)
--5H2 Family Savings
--5H3 Nicknames (self and others)
--5H4 Personal (self and others)
--5H5 Regularized References to:
- 5H5.1 Time
- 5H5.2 Places
- 5H5.3 Events
5I HANGOUTS AND GROUP ACTIVITIES
--5I1 Places
--5I2 Circumstances of Crowding With
--5I3 Activities with Others
--5I4 Rights and Privileges
--5I5 Reputation
5J REPORTING JOINT ACTIVITIES
--5J1 Doing Something With Dates, Appointments
--5J2 Telephone Calls
--5J3 Writing/Receiving Notes, Letters, Memos, Ads, etc
--5J4 Paying Bills
5K NON-JOINT ACTIVITIES
--5K1 Doing a Task for Another Person
--5K2 Buying a Gift for Another Person
--5K3 Mentioning a Person to Someone
--5K4 Avoiding a Person
--5K5 Going to See/Looking for a Person
--5K6 Having a Mental Exchange with Someone
ZONE 6: APPEARENCE
6A INTERVIEWING OTHERS
--6A1 Who Am I
--6A2 What Am I
--6A3 How Am I
--6A4 What Do I Look Like To You
- Browsing Through the DRA. The DRA (=
"Daily Round Archives") is a data bank which, like a library or department
store, needs to be gone through in 0rder to assess its contents. Running up and down the
aisles while shopping around and exploring represents a common strategy. Browsing and
skimming through the DRA materials would therefore be a logical extension Of the same principles of familiarization through a strategy of scattered exploration. There
are DRA "Selections;' deposited for your convenience at the Reserve Desk of Sinclair
Library; ask for them under the title of this course, i.e., "Psychology
222."
- As you walk around a department store, you look around. Your
eyes go from people to walls, to articles, to your reflection in mirrors, and so on. It is
fair to say that you are accumulating lists of impressions and lists of items
as you walk around. The items in your lists may appear in sts (e.g., office chairs,
printing cards, pens), they may have "annotations" attached (e.g., "there
are the kind of baskets Julie is always looking for"), and they appear to oscillate
in your memory. some you forget, some keep popping back in your mind at seemingly
haphazard moments, and some you keep rehearsing silently to yourself to make sure they
don't fade away (e.g., "I gotta remember to tell Julie about those baskets...").
- Now consider going through the DRA materials. You look at
one bound Volume, then another. You notice they are arranged by semester and year (e.g.,
"Fall 1977" or "Spring 1978", etc.). You observe that each bound
volume collects together the work of several students on one type of assignment. F0r
example, "Spring 1978" has collections of several types of assignments students
completed in that semester and arranged in "series." In one series you'll find Research Reports 1 & 2 where students present information about themselves,
their daily round activities and experiences ("Research Report 1"), after which
they present, in "RR2," observations they make about each other. in another
series for Spring 1978, you'll find the field notes Of the Student Committees, where they
present what they've discussed and accomplished as ''task groups."
- As you browse, read through, and skim you are left with an
accumulation of impressions and items of fact. These may be evident in your "interior
dialog," in your "discourse thinking," and in your "standardized
imaginings"-- these expressions indicate the ways persons think and talk silently to
them- selves using words (e.g., "Oh, oh, there is Dr. Tanaka. I hope he doesn't see
me." or "This says $3.75, but the other one says $2.95. I wonder which is
better? They look alike." etc.). With the DRA materials, your accumulated impressions
and items of fact are undoubtedly selective, occur in sets, oscillate in your memory, and
have your annotations attached.
- "Gee, they sure did a lot of work. All that typing! Oh,
it's interesting how that person is both attracted to girls yet seems to avoid them. He is
Chinese. Hmm. And that girl knows so many people! It's amazing there are so many people
from Kailua High! There is another one--so many who think exactly the same sorts of things
r do, it's weird! I don't think these lecture notes are any good. None of these tables
make any sense. Oh, I know that person!....etc."
- Getting familiarized with a new shopping center or store
becomes a routine habit which we can execute automatically. This is because we already
have available both the components of the activity (walking around,
accumulating facts, working, touching, asking) and how the components fit together into a
unitary whole. The integration of the component activities into a whole is insured by the
natural community setting which provides for the maintenance and support of shopping
centers, shopping, talking about it, doing it with others, obeying rules of conduct,
traffic, etc. These routines of activities are naturally integrated in your childhood
socialization and work/school pattern of assimilation. This is not the case fur the
activities involving the use of the DRA Here you are confronted with a novel experience.
There is a need therefore to learn about the components of using the DRA and how these
components get integrated into a meaningful whole.
- One of the simplest yet most va1uable techniques to practice
is the making or recording of an annotation to a data segment. The annotation
should always identify the data segment you are focusing on by giving the identity
number of the report, the semester/year, the title of the task, and page number. This will
insure that your annotation will be meaningful and informative to you later, and as well,
to someone who reads your annotation. Thus, two things are accomplished when you record an
annotation to an identified data segment: first, you are making explicit to yourself that
which otherwise may remain contracted or unattended to ("unaware;"
"unconscious;" "automatic"); second, you are creating a permanent
record of your reactions impression, or comment. Thus, annotations linked to data and to
observations, constitute a major category of information to be found in DRA data.
"Annotations about annotations about annotations" could thus be a picturesque
and accurate description of the DRA collection. It is therefore important for you to
understand the real role and function of annotations in our daily lives and in the
functioning of society. Consider the following illustration. The data segment was prepared
by a student enrolled in Psychology 397 in the Spring of 1378.
This data segment has the following identification markers:
[Spring 1978; Psych 397; No. 52; My Standardized Imaginings; pages 1-3.]
The following annotations suggest themselves to us as we read this DRA piece:
Annotations (illustrative)
1) This is a piece dealing with standardized imaginings and follows the format in Sections
9.3.III. of the Workbook (2nd Edition) (James & Nahl,
1978).
2) This data segment has the following thematic and topical organization:
__I. Interior Dialog
- A. Overlays of comments to self.
- __1. Figuring out if boyfriend is going to come and visit.
- __2. Giving herself a pep talk about goofing off in school
work.
- B. Unmentionables within the relationship.
- __1. Can't say to roommate the noise she's making disturbs
her studying.
- C. Preparing Schedules.
- __1. Recovering from feeling too anxious about all of the
school work left to be done.
__II. Feeling Arguments
- __1. Chewing herself out for writing too long and having to
- ____type school work at 2:00 a.m. and promising herself
- ____never to do that again.
__III. Fantasy/Daydream Episodes
- __ 1. Projecting herself to the time after graduation, lying
on a
- _____Maui beach with her boyfriend.
- __ 2. Projecting herself into an overflying airplane and
traveling.
__IV. Routine Concerns
- 1. Falling asleep in her sociology class and worrying about
being noticed.
- 3. As we review the topical content of the eight paragraph
entries, we note that they each document a particular social occasion which we
recognize. We have given a one sentence title to every paragraph. These titles are in
effect situational specifications, i.e., what the reader has to be told to be
able to reconstruct the situation involved in the paragraph report. Note that
to reconstruct the situation depicted in each paragraph entry, the reader must use both
the title given and the category under which it appears. For
example, the title "Falling asleep in her sociology class and worrying about being
noticed." occurs here under the category of Routine Concerns. We conclude
that the event actually happened. If, however, the same title were presented under the
Category of Fantasy/Daydream Episodes, it would not be referring to an
occasion of having fallen asleep, but to another occasion, that of imagining oneself
falling asleep in a sociology class.
- 4. The Witness who presented this data segment, comments on
the effects of having prepared it. We paraphrase her observations as follows: (i) focusing
on one's thoughts in an effort to record them, brings about the realization that such
thought, occur all the time, yet go unnoticed by the person; (ii) such reporting saves,
for later information, specific ideas and thoughts that occurred to one, which otherwise
would be lost.
- 5. This data segment documents Once again a consistent trend
we've noticed in the DRA data; namely, the fact that components of one's daily round
activities, thoughts, and noticings are standardized. This means that the
details of one? person's subjective life are made of the same social components as those
of another person. This standardization is apparant in our conduct when we behave
appropriately in a situation. 3ecause of this standardization, the meaning of activities
can be shared Communication is possible because we talk about known settings and known
behaviors in those settings.
- Thus, this data-segment on "My Standardized
Imaginings" documents a number of social occasions familiar to us and to our
students.
- It might be helpful at this point to picture visually the
relation between these annotations and the data segment so as to clarify their function
and importance for social psychology.
- This table depicts the relation between DRA data segments
(in double lined boxes) to social events (single lined boxes). Each DRA data segment is an
annotation by a Witness of an observed social occasion. But the fact that a particular
social occasion was observed and recorded by a Witness is itself a fact or a social event.
This secondary fact is brought out by an annotation, such as those we have given above
(box B) or those that future students and readers may give (box C). But data segments A,
B, and C are at once annotations and, as well, social events
(boxes a - e). Thus annotations and social events and functionally related to
each other: given annotations, one can reconstruct social events; given social
events, one can construct annotations.
- The next table presents our analysis of a section of DRA
data containing "Student Committee Reports," i.e. reports prepared by a task
group regarding their activities.
p.9
Titles: name; course; Comm. Report #2.
- S1: Handout #2 was dittoed and given to class to fill out
- S2: They were returned and this Witness alphabetized them.
- S3: Two copies will be xeroxed, one for the library, the
other for the instructor
p.10
Titles: name; Comm. Report #2
- S1:This committee's second project was to make up a
questionnaire for the class which would provide information on class members
- S2: The committee got together and discussed the
questionnaire's contest
- S3: A Questionaire was made up and 200 copies dittoed.
- S4: They are being collated; the issue of how to file them
is being considered
p.11
Titles: name course, instructor; Comm. No. and Title; Comm. Report #2
- S1: The committee held a meeting at Gartley and decided on
the format of a questionnaire and the date of its distribution to the class.
- S2: The questionnaire concerned general information that
individuals in class would provide about themselves to the others.
- S3: Sharing of this information among class members will
strengthen the community feeling.
- S4: The Questionnaire was handed out to class on 4-25-978.
p.12
Titles: name
- S1: This committee's second assignment was to gather
information about each class member.
- S2: A Questionnaire was made up for the class to fill out.
- S3: The questionnaire was to serve as a mean for the class
members to get to know one another
The Piecing Together of Information
by Task Group Witnessess
CCP's: Information Being
Kept Track of Explicitly |
Witnesses
1 2 3 4 |
1. The Comm. met at Gartley
2. The Comm. met to discuss the format of a questionnaire
3. The quest. was the Comm.'s second project
4. The quest. is to provide info on class members
5. The quest. is to strengthen community relations through |
- providing info on one another
6. The Comm. decided on a date for handing out the quest
7. The Comm. decided on a format and made up the quest
8. The quest. was dittoed
9. 200 copies were dittoed
10. The quest. was distributed
11 The date was distributed on was 4/25-1978
12. The filled out quest. were returned to the Comm.
13. Witness 1 alphabetized the returned quest
14. The Comm. is collating the returned forms
15. Two Xerox copies of the forms will be made: one for
- the library the other for the instr
16. The Comm. is considering tha issue of how to file the info
- - + -
- @ - -
- + - +
- + @ +
- - * *
- - + -
- + + @
+ * - -
- * - -
+ - # -
- - # -
@ - - -
@ - - -
- # - -
* - - -
- # - - |
Legend:
- + = occurrence of the annotation in the first sentence
- - = annotation does not occur
- @ = occurrence in the second sentence
- * = occurrence in the third sentence
- # = occurrence in the forth sentence
- One's position as an individual is buttressed by the consciousness
of community. We derive our values and criteria of right judgments from tradition and
precedent. We know deep down in cur thinking that we cannot survive on our Own. We cannot
inhibit feelings of admiration for those who possess the talents we want Even the
staunchest independent, even the mass killer, derives safety from somewhere in
community life. Thus, the individual's ultimate source of social legitimacy is
to be derived from consciousness of community.
- The issue we want to deal with is how this mechanism
operates in our daily lives. The behavioral manifestations of social legitimacy may be
defined in field theory terms as spiritual work, energy of action, and
interpersona1 influence or the power to attract others. History evidences that great
men and popular leaders influence others through their personal strength.
Thus, very high degrees of social acceptance are functionally related to the power to
attract.
- Social legitimacy is therefore a personal,
biographical trait that goes together with high degrees of acceptance by others, and
influence over them. Social illegitimacy operates in the opposite direction:
it weakens personal strength. Feelings of doing wrong shake your resolve to transgress.
Lack of acceptance by others drives you into feelings of isolation and peripheral
involvement.
- You can gain a better understanding of this psychodynamic
function by discovering the social occasions where you say things (to another or to
yourself) that are self-deprecating, i.e., where you enact the delusion of
self-illegitimacy. Let's examine a few reports where students of Psychology 222 describe
the social occasion of blushing. This is relevant to understanding the
delusion of the illegitimate self since blushing is an occasion for strong
self-deprecations, and therefore, we would expect that the person's usual social
legitimacy suffers. The first sample gives an indication of the extreme effects of
ordinary blushing.
Sample 1 (DRA, Spring 1977)
- "I am sitting with a group of girls at a meeting and in
a moment Of silence one of the girls mentions the name of the boy I like very much. I turn
my head as if not to notice. Some of the girls look at me and I look down at my feet. I
feel the blood running to my cheeks. My cheeks feel warm, the warmth spreading to my
forehead and the sides of my face, and finally to my chin, except for my nose. My eyes
move around as if I don't care or didn't hear. I start to breathe at a faster rate. I try
to show no expression in my face. I am neither smiling nor am I glum. I am just
passive."
- "One Of the girls mentions the name of the boy I like
very much."--and Boom! Blood is rushing and tinting new places (especially the
face, the loss of face!) Breathing accelerates. The mind is frantic, imposing upon the
self extreme forms of dislocation, Of altering profoundly the significance of
one's presence. In fact, one is no longer authentically present: "try to show no
expression in my face. I am neither smiling nor am I glum. I am just passive." It is
clear that the activity of blushing has diminished in extreme form the felt social
legitimacy of this witness.
Sample 2 (DRA, Spring 1977)
- "We are in the parking lot for Magic Island, unloading
our cars. Someone drops a 6-pack of beer and someone else starts cussing him out. They are
both swearing at each Other, and for some reason I feel embarrassed and look away,
pretending I didn't see what happened, nor hear what's happening."
Question: What happens to one's sense of social legitimacy
when "pretending I didn't see what happened, nor hear what's happening"? The
next person documents the contrast between making like nothing is happening and what
actually is happening.
Sample 3 (DRA, Spring 1977)
- "As we are walking up the steps in Waikiki #2, I
stumble and fall on the way up the stairs. Lucky for me it was dark, so I nonchalantly
pick myself up and made like nothing had happened. But inside I felt like a clumsy fool.
While Sandy was laughing at me I couldn't say a thing cause I felt so embarrassed. After
finding 2 open seats, and getting seated, I feel much better, out of the spotlight."
The social occasions that trigger these extreme physical
reactions are both ordinary and innocuous. Students of Psychology 222 blush under the
following conditions:
(i) they fall down steps on their way to class;
(ii) boys bumping into girls, and vice versa, when rushing around a bend;
(iii) getting umbrellas stuck;
(iv) mistaking a stranger for an acquaintance;
(v) lighting the filter end of a cigarette;
(vi) being focused on in class;
(vii) being found out that you've been secretly looking at someone or
- some place;
(viii) finding out that someone has been looking at you when you didn't know;
(ix) wearing new clothes with forgotten price tags;
(x) being seen un-made-up unexpectedly;
(xi) making a mistake and being laughed at for it;
(xii) many others--check DRA data, for Spring 1977.
The next four samples are some more concrete cases.
Sample 3 (DRA, Spring 1977)
"Me and my two friends were
discussing the Academy Award nominations when I said I didn't know how Carrie Snodgrass
got nominated for her role in Carrie. They laughed and told me, 'Smart, you, wasn't Carrie
Snodgrasss was Cissy Spacek or some- thing.' Then I realized the mistake I made. I felt so
embarrassed and I could feel myself getting warm. At this time I felt like the dumbest
person in the world."
Sample 4 (DRA, Spring 1977)
"The professor is telling the class
about the difference between voluntary and involuntary muscles in meat. I remember that I
learnt something about that in biology a long time ago and I decide to share it with the
class. I put my hand up and the professor points to me. I say, "Isn't it true that in
poultry, the involuntary muscles are the white meat and the voluntary muscles are the
dark?" I hear a quick stifled laugh and a giggle behind me; suddenly, I am not so
sure of myself anymore. I feel a tightening in my chest and throat, my pupils contract and
my face feels hot. I dare not look around and I pretend that nothing has happened. I look
at the professor. He seems to take my point seriously but he disagrees with it. I nod, as
if in agreement, and I keep quiet. Slowly, I begin to relax but I cannot get rid of that
little knot of tightness in my chest. I still think that I am right."
Sample 5 (DRA, Spring 1977)
"I am in a room at Porteus Hall where
one wall is made completely of glass, thereby allowing everyone to see in and vice versa.
I stretch my body in an unnatural position and look up to see three people staring at me.
I instantly resort to a "normal" position and feel hot flashes in the back of my
shoulders and in my neck. I sit there making believe that nothing is the matter yet
wondering of the reactions of the three."
Sample 6 (DRA, Spring 1977)
- "My husband and I are at a military party being
welcomed to the group over cocktails. We have to cross the room and go to the head table
as our names are called out. As I hear our names called I feel my mouth tighten, and my
neck feels hot, my forehead begins to feel moist near my hair line. The palms of my hands
are moist and they feel like lead weights hanging down at my sides."
- The loss of poise weakens the individual and neutralizes
one's presence. There is a gap of authenticity created between the public self and the
private self. One's social legitimacy is damaged; one's self-legitimacy is shot to pieces.
Question: What is the mechanism that empowers social occasions with such overwhelming
power? We would like you to look at some evidence that shows the important function of the
idea of privacy, and how the private/public dichotomy, serves to maintain the
power of social occasions over people's emotions and physical reactions. Consider the
following brief exchanges reported by a student of Psychology 222 in Spring 1976:
Sample 1 (DRA, Spring 1976)
Setting: Outside of Hamilton Library
Karen: "Hi Glenda. Where are you going?"
Glenda "Oh, Hi! Bio-Med."
Karen: "You got a class there?"
Glenda "No, I work there."
Karen: "Oh, you'd better go before you're late."
Glenda: "Where are you going?"
Karen : "To the library to study."
Glenda: "Well I hate to just rush off now but I've really got to go.
- So, I'll see you later. Bye."
Karen: "Yea, See you."
- As the transcript reads, the situation is familiar enough to
all of us. But now, what would happen if we could get at the private overlap Of self-talk
that goes on during our public conversations? How does what we say in privacy to ourselves
relate to what we say publicly to others? The above assignment was carried out as students
went out to have brief exchanges with someone, after which they doubled back and asked the
person to help write down a reconstruction of what each person said in privacy while
the public exchange was taking place. Here is what Karen and Glenda reconstructed:
TIME
0.00
|
TRANSCRIPT
|
STAGE DIRECTIONS
Karen sees Glenda approaching from the stairs to the right of her. Speaks when Glenda is
about seven feet away |
Karen:
DISCOURSE THINKING
There's Glenda. I wonder where she's going. I'll ask her when she comes closer |
Glenda
DISCOURSE THINKING
I wonder what I'll have to do at work today. I hope more medical applications come so I'll
have som ething to do. |
| 0.03 |
Karen: "Hi Glenda Where are you going? |
Karen smiles. |
I wonder if she's going to answer me, if she heard me that
is. I'd feel stupid if she didn't. |
Oh! There's Karen. I haven't seen her in ages. She looks
different , she must have curled her hair. |
| 0.05 |
Glenda: "Oh, Hi! Bio-Med." |
After hearing her name. Glenda looks to her left and sees
Karen and acknowledges the greeting as she walks towards Karen. Both stop walking and
start talking facing one anothe r |
I must have surprised her. She's going to Bio-Med. I
wonder if she's got a class there. I'll ask her. |
I wish I could stay longer and talk but I have to go to
work. Better let her know why I'm headed there. |
| 0.07 |
Karen: "You got a class there?" |
|
She must have a class there. Why else would she go there. |
Now that she's asked I can tell her instead of bringing up
the subject and sounding like I don't want to talk to her. |
| TIME |
TRANSCRIPT |
STAGE DIRECTIONS |
KAREN:
DISCOURSE THINKING |
GLENDA:
DISCOURSE THINKING |
| 0.10 |
Glenda: "No, I work there." |
Glenda points in the general direction of the Bio-Medical
Building. |
Oh, she works there. That's a far walk. I better not keep
her or she'll be late for work. |
I wonder where she's going. Probably to Hamilton but I'll
ask anyway. |
| 0.12 |
Karen: "Oh, You'd better go before you're late." |
|
I don't want her to be late for work. I can talk t o her
latter. |
Nah! It doesn't matter if I'm a couple of minutes late.
The main think is that I show up |
| 0.16 |
Karen: "To the library to study." |
Karen points to Hamilton Library only a few feet away. |
Well, time to study. At least its better than working
through. |
I was right. Well, I've really got to go. Don't want to
keep her from doing anything. |
| 0.20 |
Glenda: "Well, I hate to just rush off now but I've
really got to go. So, I'll see you later. Bye." |
Glenda waves good-bye and starts to walk away in the
direction of Moore Hall. |
She's going to work now. I wonder what she does there.That
Karen! She's always hitting the books. No wonder she gets good grades. |
| 0.23 |
Karen: "Yea, See you." |
Karen waves and heads towards the doors of Hamilton
Library. |
I'll ask her what she does at work. Now for the books. |
Hop to see her soon Better start running. Got a long way
to go yet. |
This report reminds one of comic book-sty1e
"balloon" talk. Could it be that interior dialog and comic book strips have a
connection? Do comic books condition our self-talk, or do writers of comics make their
characters think out loud as we think privately to ourselves?
- In this next sample, one gets the impression that two
conversations are taking place. What is striking about this is the fact that the private
lines also appear to fit with one another even though they are not spoken out loud.
Sample 2 (DRA, Spring 1976)
| TIME |
TRANSCRIPT |
STAGE DIRECTION |
MY THOUGHTS |
OTHER PERSON'S THOUGHTS |
| |
HE: Hi! You bought you Psy 112 book? |
The door was open and he walked into the room. He is one
of my neighbors in my dorm who is in my psychology class. I was sitting down, listening to
the radio. |
Oh, it's nice to see someone. I was getting a little
bored. |
Oh, she's in. She looks comfortable sitting there. |
| |
ME: No. I didn't have time to go to the
bookstore yet. |
He moved towards the desk. I was still sitting down,
watching to see what he was going to do. |
I got to work so I don't have time to go buy my books yet,
maybe later tomorrow. |
Yea. The Bookstore is crowded at this time. |
| |
HE: That means you never start reading the
first chapter yet. Smart yeh? I went figure that one out all by myself! |
He turned back to face me and stood by the desk He moved
across the room to sit on my roommate's bed. I turned so I could see him. |
Yea? Really? Sure, sure. |
I wonder when we have to finish reading the first chapter. |
| |
ME: Ha! Ha! You think you're funny! |
I had a sarcastic look on my face. |
He's getting a bit bighead. |
I wonder if she knows what the assignment is, if any? |
| |
HE: I know I funny man . You went look at the
syllabus yet? |
Both of us were laughing. |
I knew he was joking. What's he talking about? |
Maybe I should ask her. |
| |
ME What syllabus? |
I looked a little puzzled. |
Maybe he means for Psy 112. |
What other syllabus would I be talking about? |
| |
HE: For the class. |
He had a surprised look on his face. |
Oh, he did mean for Psy 112. |
Maybe she doesn't know. |
| |
ME: No. |
He looked down. |
I never even touched that paper yet. |
I guess she doesn't know. |
| |
HE: Oh you better. Bye I going study now. |
He stood up and waved and le ft the room. I got uo and
shut the door. |
I guess I better study too. |
I guess I'd better be going. |
- We don't know to what extent the attempted reconstructions
in this kind of assignment are artificial or invalid. One must rely on One's own self-
observations on the daily round. Whatever the case may be in these particular samples,
they do help focus or a most important feature of ordinary interior dialog: namely, that they are often delusiona1. This feature is particu1arly visible in the next
two samples.
SETTING: THE TWO PEOPLE ARE AT A KITCHEN
TABLE, LOOKING FOR AN EPISODE. Sample 3 (DRA, Spring 1976)
| TIME |
TRANSCRIPT |
STAGE DIRECTIONS |
SHE:
PARTICIPANT A |
HE:
PARTICIPANT B |
| 0.00 |
|
He is resting his head on his shoulder. |
I know he really doesn't want to do this. He's leaning on
his arm because he's bored. I better say something. |
Probably just a premonition that I really don't want to do
this, but I'll try to add to this assignment anyway. |
| 0.03 |
Did you go surfing today? (She) |
|
I'll talk about something that interests him. Surfing. He
loves to talk about that. Now things should start rolling. |
Typical question. Obvious tactics by her. At least she
could have brought it up more subtlely. |
| 0.04 |
Yeah, I went surfing. (He) |
|
Well, I thought I'd get more of a response than that. But
I guess it will have to do. |
There. I answered the question. Not too elaborate perhaps.
Maybe by my disinterest she will change the subject. |
| 0.12 |
|
He laughs. |
I think he's beginning to enjoy this since he's laughing.
That's really good. I know it will be a lot easier on him to help me do this assignment.
Heard a funny program co ming on in the other room, so let's get this session going. |
| 0.15 |
How were the waves? (She) |
|
He's still smiling so I know surfing is a good thing to
talk about. Now hopefully he'll play the game right since he's not so negative about it.
Keep talking about surfing. |
Hey, this is really hard. I know I'm blowing it for her. |
| 0.18 |
The waves were outstanding. (He) |
|
I wonder if he's just saying that. Maybe the waves were
rotten but he just wants to say that to make the episo de look good. |
Very frivelous comment. Can't she ask or make a comment
with ingenuity? Politics or Economics? Something else please. |
| 0.19 |
|
Resting his head on his hand again. |
Uh-Oh! Something is wrong. He must be bored for some reas
on. That sure was fast. He was just laughing a little while ago. I'll try and find out
what's going on. |
This episode makes me sound very limited. Like the only
subject that keeps my attention is surfing. That's the image I'm trying to get away fro m,
but it keeps reoccuring. Sad but true |
| 0.23 |
Are you ready to quit or something? (She) |
She had an aggravated look. |
Hopefully, he'll say no. I need to find out whether or not
he wants to continue. I should have picked a partner in class after all. |
Really don't want to quit, but don't want to give
suggestions on better topics. Can't do that diplomatically. Don't like this topic. |
| 0.24 |
Yes, I'm tired. (He) |
|
Shit. At least now I know he really didn't enjoy the
episode. But, I wonder what he was laughing about earlier. Well, now it's over and I'll
find out. |
I shouldn't have said I was tired, but I felt I had to
have an excuse. I think she's the one that wants to quit but blaming it on me |
Webster's defines to delude as
"to mislead" or "to fool" someone by giving "wrong notions."
Latin de- = from + ludere = to play, sport.) What is so striking
about social interactions is the extent to which one person tries to delude the
other; through making out like nothing is happening (as in the blushing cases,
earlier); through covering up, pretending, controlling one's appearance, conforming on the
outside while repelling on the inside. By witnessing your own delusional attempts, you may
gain a deeper understanding of the social forces that create occasions in which you are a
willing pawn. It may also help remind you that while a person is talking to you, the words
and gestures displayed for your benefit may have a private shadow of a very different
shape.
- The idea of privacy thus has two edges: one edge cuts
off visibility and protects us from social consequences; the other edge, cuts
off contact and keeps us separated from communion with others. In such situations as
when we lose poise, privacy helps strengthen delusional attempts to keep others
from knowing our predicament. The possibility needs to be explored, with empirical
data, that delusional interpersonal behavior makes one inauthentic, and weakens the
person's spiritual strength and power of influence over others. One needs to investigate
the extent to which inauthenticity and delusional behavior operate in the ordinary and
recurrent situations of the daily round.
Synopsis 13: The Daily Round Archives -- DRA.
- Kurt Lewin used this expression to underline his belief that
all behavior was a function of the forces in a social setting--hence the
"social" dependency of behavior. This principle was contrasted with the belief
held by "personality measurement" psychologists that behavior is a function of
internal factors relating to an individual's habits Of reasoning and reacting to social
stimuli. We call the emphasis on the setting as referring to ethnodynamic forces, while
psychodynamic forces are involved in the emphasis on the individual's internal
characteristics. Both types of forces are involved in the natural history of the daily
round approach (= sociodynamics). In actuality, all psychologists acknowledge both types
of forces, but the so-called "cognitivists" see the recurrence of characteristic
behavior across different social settings (i.e. personal identity = personality traits),
while the "behaviorists" see the recurrence of social forces (= reinforcers)
across different individuals (i.e. personal identity = social dependency).
- "Behavior assessment" is the term used by
behaviorists to refer to the attempt to isolate the social influences acting to produce an
individual's behavior. Though this approach enjoys the reputation of being most
"scientific,'' many psychologists feel that humanistic conceptions and issues are
left out because of the restrictions inherent to the behavioristic methodology. This
course of study attempts to extend the rigorousness of behaviorism to natural history of
the daily round, including such community issues as witnessing, praying, healing,
laughing, blushing, interior dialog, and others. As a result, this approach to the study
of social psychology is a "scientific- humanism" and may be seen by some as
"radically different." We feel that deep analysis, direct observation, and
personal annotation are better instructional techniques than the cursory examination of
the most popular topics one finds in more usual textbooks on social psychology.
Bird Stories (12) by Leon James
- When we get to know another individual, whether person, dog,
or bird, we gain precise information on what the individual's range of reactivity is to
changes in the environment The environmental changes include time-of the day and level of
adaptation, i.e., what is perceived by that individual as the state of normalcy. Any
variation within the normalcy range evokes strong adjustment behavior until adaptation
occurs.
- In two previous stories (10 and 11) I have described the
daily round pattern of the birds in our backyard aviary. During the regular mid-day low,
roughly between 10:30 and 1:30, the birds of all four species (i.e., cockatiels,
lovebirds, Java Rice birds, and parakeets) engage in a mostly solitary activity during
which each stays in its own place and appears intensely involved in itself. At these
times, the individual birds show a low reactivity to external stimuli, either the
surrounds of the aviary, or the presence of other birds inside (see graph in story #l0).
What on earth are the birds doing?
- They are not sleeping, that's for sure, as can easily be
observed by the intense twitching of their bodies, and the rhythmic up-and-down movement
of their heads. The eyes remain open, and there comes forth from inside the articulatory
apparatus, a constant noise(?) or sound that continually varies in intensity from
whispering to a strident staccato chirping. This sound is easily distinguishable from
singing, calling out, whistling, etc., all of which appear outer-directed. Instead, this
kind of chirping is non-monotonous, discordant, and appears inward-directed. The label I
use to refer to this activity is "praying."
- Of course, I do not mean this in the same sense as the
praying we do ordinarily, since I know nothing about the language of the birds, except
that it is plain to me, that it springs from a similar well, the involvement of the
ordinary self with something higher and beyond. What is the beyond for a bird? We can only
wonder, conjecture, and imagine.
- Variations of the above theme occur, though without altering
its apparent significance. At times, the praying-chirping proceeds intensely as the bird
faces a backwall (an infrequent act) and moves its head up and down, touching the wall
with the beak, sometimes knocking against it. Once in a while, among the parakeets, two
individuals (especially male-male dyads) would treat each other as if they were each
"the backwall," facing each other at close quarters, heads bobbing up and down,
and beaks knocking once in a while. At still other times--this, especially among the
lovebirds--the whole community lines UD on a perch, a11 facing in the same direction, and
chirping intensely as a dis-coordinated chorus, each body twitching and jerking, but
remaining in one spot.
- Do you have any interpretations?
Glossary of concepts for the
Methodology of Daily Round Data
BIOGRAPHIC RECORD = objectified natural history of a person's social existence
BIOENGINEERING = know how relating to the business of living
LIFE CYCLE = stages of development in a person's biographic record
DAILY ROUND DATA = objectified reporting or "witnessing" of one's reportable
- experiences
WITNESSING = reporting and annotating one's on-going experience by giving
- descriptions according to a priorly specified format
FORMAT OF REPORTING DAILY ROUND DATA = through instructions and training
- the witness produces oral or written "
- microdescriptions" in designated areas of experience
MICRODESCRIPTIONS = the technique of spontaneously producing "situational
- discourse" through involvement in regular, normalized
- circumstances of living
THE HEXAGRAM OF BIOGRAPHIC RECORD = the formalized series of categories
- that catalogue and classify the specific information
- obtainable from objectified witnessings;
- this is an empirically derived
- taxonomy reflecting the record keeping
- practices characterizing any community.
CCP's OR COMMUNITY CATALOGUING PRACTICES = conventionalized record
- keeping practices learned through literacy
- or schooling and evident in the
- organization of spontaneous discourse
LOCAL ETHNOGRAPHY = the sum total of available information in a community and
- organized into a catalogued collection called DRA or DAILY
- ROUND ARCIVES
DRA or DAILY ROUND ARCHIVES = data bank of general and investigative
- daily round data; empirically derived classification
- systems are derived from l'ethnosemantics"
GENERAL vs. INVESTIGATIVE DAILY ROUND DATA = a witness uses either
- a generalized involvement or a specific
- one when recording a micro-description; the
- specific "topic focus" to be attended to and
- reported, is specified by theformat instructions
TOPIC FOCUS = areas of observations designated by the format of reporting
- given in the instructions to the witness and referring to
regular
- categories ordinarily kept track of by one's peers on the
- daily round
DAILY ROUND TAXONOMY = categories of information available through shifting
- one's topic focus during the spontaneous production of
- descriptions of on-going involvements; these categories
- are arranged in a hierarchy called "the hexagram of
- biographic record"
14. THE SOCIAL DEPENDENCY OF BEHAVIOR
- Kurt Lewin's persistent message to his colleagues, that in
which he prevailed and was so successful in giving contemporary social psychology its
direction, was what he aptly termed ''the social dependency of behavior" (e.g., 1939,
quoted in Lewin, 1951, p. 130). This point needed to be made. and won in- as much as
experimental psychology inclined heavily towards the physiological dependency
of behavior. This is the context within which modern psychology became a science shortly
prior to the turn of the century, i.e. the context 0fphysiology (e.g., Pavlov) and
psychophysics (e.g., Helmholz, Fechner). The focus was almost exclusively centered 'within
the within' of the individual--his brain, his sensory mechanisms, his reactions to
laboratory stimuli, his autonomic responses and conditionability, his perceptual
consistencies and breakdowns (as in illusions), his ability to memorize, and so on. You no
doubt recognize these topics because they continue to form the bulk of the general
literature of psychology and are taught in 100-level courses and appear in popular
magazines. It is this context of experimental psychology that gave rise, at the turn of
the century, to the notion of personality testing and intelligence. These
tests depended on the rationale that the individual has a stable performance
characteristic, i.e. that his observable behavior was an Outcome of "internal
traits" that are "stable and enduring." he trick therefore, was to find
tests that would measure these internal traits; then, people scoring higher would
be expected to perform better. The possibility of this "trick"--or
methodology, was of great and exciting interest to society: indeed, a community or
organization could greatly benefit by a procedure (short and cheap) which makes it
possible to select individuals from a pool of available applicants or
volunteers so as to insure fitness--the right man for the right job! We are all familiar
with the enormous popularity of testing practices in our contemporary world--educational
tests, personnel selection tests, tests of abilities and interests, personality tests,
attitude tests, Opinion surveys, knowledge tests, self-tests, marriage compatibility
tests, legal psychiatric tests, and so on.
- Thus, physiological determinants of behavior were the focus
of experimental psychology. As well, "abnormal" or clinical psychology derives
from physiology, neurophysiology, pathology, genetics, and so on. Freud was a physician,
and psychoanalysts today still go through medical school. But Freud's genius
broke this close tie between the mind and the brain, and imported into psychology the
insights of anthropologists, more particularly cultural anthropology. As a
result of Freud's interests in symbolism, magic, superstition, myth, and dreaming, the
psychodynamics that he spawned was a two-headed Hydra: the psychophysiological
composition of the biologically-given stages of psychological (or
"psycho-sexual") development of the personality.
- Thus, Lewin's point of the purely social dependency of
behavior needed to be made vigorously. He did so through, it is reported, his personal
charisma and, as we can read today thirty years later, through the power of his
schematisms (= diagrammatic notation system). We have noted that though his
field-theory dynamics was generally and quite easily adopted in social
research, nevertheless the details of the notation system he invented (i. e., topological
diagramming) remain unused. We feel that this rich tool of description should be learned
as a means of systematic study of one's social environment. It is like a language or
script that allows strict notations for mapping a situation or social occasion.
We found that the utility of a strict notation system lies in its pragmatic productivity;
that is, it allows better and more exact records of situational events.
- We are already familiar with several types of strict
notation systems: logic, algebra, geometry, tables, charts, forms, figures, maps,
recipes, schedules, directories, catalogues, indices, and so forth. In each case there is
an exact correspondence (or, a correspondence within known limits) of some
social event and an expression in the designated notation system (script, code, language).
For example, a schematic figure of the components of an amplifier allow you to "put
it together" because there is an exact correspondence between the notation (picture,
diagram, sequential assembly) and the event ("making an amplifier set that
works"). Similarly, we can re-create an unfamiliar dish because there is an exact
correspondence between an event ("here is my beef stroganoff") and a notation
("recipe").
- You can now understand the reasons that prompt us to lay so
much stress, in this course of study, on strict notation systems such as field-theory
topology and ethnosemantics. Perhaps because of our background in the field of psycholinguistics,
we are more open to the use of formal notation systems as these are part of the
linguistic, sociolinguistic, and ethnolinguistic methodologies. As well, our background in
ethnology (cultural anthropology, educational curriculum, ethnography,
ethnomethodology) alerts us immediately to the socio-cultural component of
behavior influences, as against the physiological/medical. Because our interests and goals
lie in the natural history description of behavior in social settings, it
becomes essential to arm ourselves with tools of recording, i.e., notation
systems for describing what one witnesses during a social occasion.
- We feel strongly that the future, as well as the present of
social psychology, depends on the development of a natural history methodology;
this means a notation system that is superior to ordinary description. Given a
suitable notation system we can analyze the visible components of a situation, map these
in charts, tables, or functional relations, and inspect the results.
Inspection may take an intuitive form (in the case of visual graphics), or a statistical form (in the case of tables and numerical distributions). In both
cases--intuitive and statistical inspection-- the "inspector" reads
the language of the notation system by transforming the displays (graph,
matrix) into verbal propositions or statements. Here lies the principal value
of notation systems for social psychology; a social event, once notated
(diagram; table) and annotated (verbal propositions), yields new
knowledge about the situation. A good example is the emphasis we lay in this course on
forms: the daily feedback form (DFF); the exercise forms that the Investigation Teams
(IT's) use; the forms for reporting data in the daily round archives (DRA); the forms for
tables and charts of research reports; and others.
- An important point needs to be made here: Not all
forms are strict notation systems. For example, any form that gathers recollected
or summative discourse does not provide an exact correspondence between
the form and the event; there is only a subjective correspondence between the
event and the report. Ask a person how he's been feeling lately, and you get a report that
is based on recollection of the day, or on an overall, "summative" evaluation.
or ask a person whether he is in favor of restricting tourism on Oahu, and you get a
report that may change a day later (the business opportunity opens up to switch his
investments from an apartment building to a hotel ! ). Thus, verbal reports dealing with
opinions, beliefs, assessments, evaluations, judgments, and the like (= PSYCHO- DYNAMICS)
are functional sociopsychologically as behavior influences, but are not functional as
notation systems. This is because there is not an exact cor- respondence between the
report and the social event.
- Cognitivist and Behavioristic Approaches.
The study of personality by psychologists usually takes one of two forms, cognitivist
or behavioristic. The cognitivist approach focuses on the
"psychodynamic" forces that are posited "inside'' the individual's skin or
brain ("mind"). This includes the work Of Freud and other psychoanalytically
oriented theories. Entities such as Ego, Super Ego, and Id are reified components that
interact dynamically and produce behavioral effects such as anxiety, neurosis, repression,
Identification, and the like (see Rosenblatt and Thickstun, 1977). This has often been
referred to by critics as the medical model since it presupposes the concept
of normal vs. abnormal or "pathological" behavior. The other approach to the
study Of personality, termed behavioristic, avoids inner forces that are unseen and
unobservable, and focuses, instead, on the ethnodynamic forces that externally
influence the individual's overt behavior. Both approaches, however, share the idea that
an individual's behavior is a dynamic outcome of social forces
("sociodynamics"), and they differ only in terms of the believed origin of these
influences: in one case, the origin is taken to be internal, and in the other, external.
It would seem to us that both these approaches are necessary to accOunt for all of the
features of individual variation. An up-to-date though brief survey of both approaches may
be found in Krasner and *Ullman (1973, Ch. 3); it includes the predominant psychological
and sociological theories of behavior, namely, psychoanalysis, behaviorism, social
learning theory, drive theory, gestalt, phenomenology, interaction theory, and trait
theory.
- The psychodynamic approach to the study of behavior sets the
definition of personality as "an enduring predisposition" to act, feel, or
perceive in a particular manner. The person is thus seen as possessing personality
traits; these are consistencies in ways of acting that the individual "carries
around", so to speak, with him from situation to situation, and is responsible for
his style of behaving - intelligently, effectively, expansively, sociably, and so on.
Because these personality traits are persistent and isolatable, they are therefore measurable.
This possibility has given rise to personality tests and inventories. They are the trade
tools used by clinical and other psychologists who apply personality theories to therapy,
diagnosis, selection, counseling, and the like.
- The behavioristic approach sets the definition of
personality as the individual's reactivity to particular social influences. Individuals
are observed under known or "controlled" circumstances and their behavior noted.
By varying the conditions, one can plot the individual's reactions ("dependent
variable") as a function of the condition or change introduced in a controlled manner
by the experimenter ("independent variable"). Through this strategy, the same
individual can be observed under different conditions and the behavior Of different
individuals are contrasted for the same condition. This technique is called behavior
assessment. Behavioristic approaches of assessment are also used in applied psychologv
and are widely used today in many settings to modify the behavior of people
towards socially acceptable goals in a community - changing anti-social behavior,
improving skills, strengthening desirable behaviors, and changing oneself
''self-modification of behavior".
-
- The Social Influencing Process. In their
latest work, behaviorists Krasner and *Ullman (1973) present what they call a sociopsychological
theory of personality that revolves around the theme of the ''social influencing
process." The accompanying diagram summarizes their argument, as we understand it:
THE TECHNOLOGICAL OF CONTROL
OF BEHAVIOR = INFLUENCE |
|
THE ASSESSMENT OF
THE TECHNOLOGY OF
CONTROL = MONITORING |
| MEDICAL |
SOCIAL |
|
COMMUNITY |
MORALITY |
- biochemical
- electrical
- genetic
- dietary
- surgical
- sensory |
- deprivation
- interpersonal
- sociocultural
- economic
- poliltical
- optimal |
- enviromnent
- methods of
- pacing
- operant control
- placebo effects
- conforming
- modeling
- education
- hypnosis
- behavior theory
- desensitization
- aversion
- coercion
- ecological
|
- beneficial
- constructive
- labeling
- role of |
- influencer
- mental health
- utopias
- ethics
- standards
- licensing
- supervision
- values
- freedom
|
As you can see, Krasner & *Ullman (1973) distinguish between influencing techniques
and strategies for monitoring the direction of control. There are medical and social
techniques of influencing behavior. The "social" techniques include a variety of
approaches based on the operant conditioning methods evolved by Skinner and the
"Skinnerians." Here we find a great deal of overlap between the work of
Skinnerian Behaviorists and social behaviorists: sociocultural influences (conforming,
coercion, mass media, ecological and environmental psychology), experimentally induced
influences (hypnosis, placebo effects, methods of pacing, optimal environment, behavior
therapy, desensitization), and others.
- Krasner & *Ullman (1973) insist that monitoring of
influencing programs and techniques are essential to 'control the controllers.' Community
based monitoring insures that control, manipulation, and induced changes are beneficial
and constructive; labeling of control techniques and the role or status of the
professional influencer are key factors. Morality based monitoring revolves around ethical
issues, values, and basic freedoms; ways of insuring standards include licensing
procedures, supervised training, and continuing education of the professional.
The next diagram summarizes the relation between the major 'work horse concepts used by
the behavior influence technologists. These originate clear from Skinner's work and those
of the Skinnerians. Students unfamiliar with these notions may consult Krasner &
*Ullman (1973) or other texts found in their Bibliography.
- Social Behaviorism and Sociopsychology. The
language of technology and engineering applied to the control of individual
behavior evidences the modern character of social behaviorism. It is well
suited for use in a technological society. The term "social behaviorism" is
reported in the literature as having been originated by George Herbert Mead in his
lectures at the University of Chicago shortly after the turn of the century. John B.
Watson, founder of "Behaviorism" in his presidential address to the American
Psychology Association in 1917, was reportedly a student in Mead's classes at Chicago.
Thus, Mead's social behaviorism was the context out of which sprang
"American Behaviorism" and its contemporary offspring in the person of B. F.
Skinner (at Harvard since the 1930's). Besides Krasner & *Ullman's sociopsychological
model, we may cite here two other works which stem from the context of social behaviorism:
the recent book by our colleague Arthur *Staats and having that title (1975), and the work
on "self-directed behavior" by our colleagues Roland *Tharp and David *Watson
(1977) (see pp. - ).
- We shall discuss both of these, in brief terms no doubt, but
sufficiently to indicate additional broad features of contemporary social psychological
work. It may be worth noting that a scientific discipline has fluid boundaries. This
allows for new ideas, methods, and paradigms ("schools of thought") - the march
of scientific developments, in other words. Fluid boundaries need to be protected to some
extent, however, so as to insure the viability of "current
methodologies and approaches. Given the cumulative and haphazard pattern of scientific
work, there is a common interest in the profession to uphold one or two or three - but not
more! - particular schools or "paradigms" so that they may receive the attention
and research focus on the part of a large number of investigators. Too many topics and
methods water down the available concentration of effort. This is one of the reasons
Psychology Departments are found to "specialize", i.e. to recruit colleagues who
belong to the same school of thought as already represented and to exclude applicants who
work in an opposing methodology. The value implication in "opposing" stems from
the existence of standards in a profession or scholarly discipline.
"Standards" are rules of conduct and criteria of judgment formulated by a small
body of individuals who act on behalf of the population, for the common good. Thus,
because the common good is served by restricting visibility to one, two or three - but not
more! - particular rules of procedure ("methodologies"), the standards set by
the "Body of Standards" provides the values and criteria for Opposing, with
sanctions if need be, the importation of new methodologies that appear to violate existing
standards. Without this process of "checks and balances," the boundaries
defining a scientific field would be too fluid, too permissive, insufficiently rigorous, wrong, out of date, out of place, and so on.
- For these reasons, we need to be especially explicit, as
teachers and textbook writers, concerning what we include, and what we exclude. We should
note here that the current practice in American colleges tends to constrict
the topical boundary of a field, partly because of the use of uniform textbooks - an
economic issue - and, partly because of national norms in educational tests - an
assimilation issue. It may be that other factors are operating as well, and that we only
see the resultant of these combined forces. At any rate, the student or reader should know
that we are seen by our colleagues to work in the opposite direction of constriction, i.e.
importation. The importation of new methodologies into the field of social
psychology no doubt goes on all the time as the field expands, matures, and penetrates the
layers of community, both within and without, towards other fields and society at large.
Another colleague in the department, Professor Herbert *Weaver, has edited a book of
readings for introductory students of psychology with the express purpose of
"supplement[ing] the typically behavioristic approach of current introductory
psychology texts" (*Weaver, 1968, Preface). Professor Weaver adds that,
"Whatever the values of the strict systematic 'scientific' approach of the latter
[behavioristic], the student often needs reassurance that psychology has not entirely lost
consciousness, lost feeling and lost humanity. He should know that the subject really does
have intimate relevance to him, his personal world and society, a fact frequently obscured
by the systematic behavioristic textbook" (*Weaver, 1968, Preface). Looking over
Professor *Weaver's selections, we find the following topics few of which are encountered
in "scientific" psychology: "Oddities of Experience" (Peter McKellar);
"The Functions of Laughter" (Brian FOSS); "What Makes a Person
Creative?" (Donald W. MacKinnon); "The Myth of Mental Illness" (Thomas S.
Szasz); "Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited" (Aldous Huxley);
"Psychological Science Versus the Science-Humanism Antinomy: Intimations of a
Significant Science of Man" (Sigmund Koch); "The Individual and His
Religion" (Gordon Allport); "Religious Healing" (Jerome D. Frank);
"Our Changing Conception of Human Nature" (M. F. Ashley Montagu).
- Those whose role it is to keep boundaries from becoming too
fluid, may interpret this opposing force we are contributing to the field of
social psychology as "radical." Because beginning students do not have a
historical context within which to interpret the radica1ness of an approach, they ought to
be given an understanding of this context. Too often, this important task remains
unfulfilled due to the cursory overview and all too brief space available in a
textbook that surveys the whole field. We are told by informants in the academic
publishing industry that survey textbooks have already surpassed the maximum size students
want to deal with, yet new topics keep coming in despite the efforts at constriction. The
results: (i) older topics get cut out while new ones get in - this upsets checks and
balances (standards), and (ii) less space is available for each topic included - this
denies the student understanding and substitutes recitation and paraphrase in
its stead. We argue with many "radical educators" of all centuries, as well as
those of today, that direct study of natural phenomena is superior to any
other method for the achievement of understanding. The radical feature we bring to this
approach to the study of social psychology, is that we place understanding of
natural phenomena as an earlier goal to literature study. In this sense, our
approach may be seen by colleagues as "radically different." This is worth
mentioning because students learn early the attitudes of their professors towards labels.
We've found that UH students tend to react to our radicalness in a similar way, and we
have interpreted this as evidence of student conservatism. By this we mean to
indicate a general tendency on the part of students, predictable over a
distribution, to prefer being responsible for definitions/ cursory
reviews/paraphrases as against "deep analysis" and required personal annotation
(your "personal" views, opinions, interpretations). We are convinced from long
teaching experience, as well as from self-directed learnings, that deep analysis,
direct observation, and personal annotation are three essential operations for
achieving understanding. This text is a "Workbook" because, (i) it attempts to
present, in depthdirect observation of
natural social phenomena ("Thursday Lab"); and (iii) it centralizes your own
annotations (observations, interpretations, and expression) as against those of
writers in the literature (who have also attempted to observe these same phenomena).
- A radical approach to the study of social psychology is
immediately enjoyed by some, while it repels some others. Let us hope that those who are
hesitant at first will eventually be captivated by the community milieu which the course
attempts to create, and thus come to experience the values which we believe it has. Of
course, the matter should not be left to mere belief, evidence of the purported advantages
of this approach is gathered along with the direct sociopsychological study of the process
of change (What you learn, in other words). This is only one of the several radical
features of this course of study.
Bird Stories (13) by Leon James
- I've described the curious "praying" activity of
the birds in our backyard aviary (see story 12). I've alluded to the
possibility of a bird language that appears to serve a mostly solitary function, rather
than an interactional function of communication. I would like to raise here this issue of
language behavior in a more extended context than the activity of praying-chirping.
- Why do birds chirp, sing, and whistle?
- Biologists usually say that bird vocalizations are innately
caused, though they've also shown that particular articulatory features are influenced
through learning. For example, the ordinary pattern of singing of a particular species can
be altered significantly by exposing the bird to the songs of other species, either
directly or through recordings. As well, birds reared in isolation show some idiosyncratic
patterns.
- Let us first consider the issue of communication through
vocal signals. It is very easy to note that birds typically affect each other through
sound. 0ne bird calls out, teet-too, teet-too, too-tee-too..., and another bird responds.
Silence intervenes and no one calls out. Then, one bird calls out again, followed by
others' responses. Thus, contiguity and inter-dependence are two sure signs of
communicative interaction.
- As well, cross-species interaction through the vocal medium
is easily demonstrated. I whistle in the vicinity of the quiet aviary. The cockatiel
responds within a half-a-second. I wait, and he waits. I whistle again, the response comes
instantaneously. I wait, and whistle, and wait and each time, the same result. Is this not
a communicative exchange of some sort?
- When the high flying frigate birds pass over our Kailua
house every late afternoon (on their way to Rabbit Island), the grey, adult cockatiel is
waiting, watching, and listening. Strident, intense calls issue forth from this vocal
apparatus. He relapses into silence when the birds disappear 0verhead. Is this not vocal
communication?
- Cardinals, mynah birds, and many Other species, travel
around the neighborhood in mated pairs. As one of the birds flies off, the other follows.
How do they not lose each other? One bird calls out, and the other answers.
- I often hear a type of night bird flying over the house in
the dark. is easy to localize the position of each bird since they emit a whistle call at
periodic intervals of a few seconds. No doubt this also functions to al the birds to keep
together in the darkness. Finally, when two of Our parakeets left the aviary through the
opening described in story (#3) the whole community was sounding off in a continuous and
impressive cacaphony. What particularly impressed me was the regular alternation between
wild noise
and total silence, accompanied by the characteristic tense pose of a bird
"listening." As soon as the calls were returned by the now distant parakeets,
the colony broke up into wild noise for a few seconds, then waited again. This went on for
3 or 4 minutes, in a dozen alternating pattern. There is no doubt in my mind that this
exchange helped orient the '"escaped" parakeets, who were seen to circle far and
away around the house, then returning to the aviary area where they hung around.
15. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES AND VARIABILITY
- The psychology of individual differences
concerns the teasing apart of which behavior influences cause similarity and
differences to arise in society. It comprises developmental psychology, child
psychology, genetic psychology, and personality measurement. We have reviewed in another
section the historical context of behaviorism, and traced the conceptual development of
four themes which we've inherited from the l9th Century relating to the principle that
behavior is influenced, often determined, by external and internal ''factors." Factors are to psychology what elements are to chemistry. This
concept entails the idea that behavior is a composite; a compound of different elements of
"factors," each of which can be observed, identified,
isolated, and manipulated. "Factoring" is following a statistical procedure
that "factors out" the numerical distribution ("correlation matrix")
into separate dimensions, spaces, modalities. In field theory concepts, a factor is a vector; that is, it has force and directionality. Behavior can be
observed, measured, transformed into a numerical distribution which is then factored or
split up into as many parts or clusters as are needed to elegantly describe the complex
patterns of the numbers. Because these numbers stand for behavioral observations and
measurements, the clusters and patterns you observe in visual or digital (graphic,
geometrical) representations, will also therefore represent facts about
behavior. Thus finding factors (factoring) and facts are related
in conception, as well as in orthography.
- The need for procedures that help isolate the
factors of human variability, has spurned the vigorous experimental activity in the
fields of childpsychology and psychometric measurement. For example, a
standard textbook in that area (*Johnson and Medinnus, 1974, 3rd edition) contains
thousands of references (we did not count them!). It may very well be the largest among
the "hard core" experimental school in contemporary psychology. This may be
because the study of the factors of human variability draws upon all four
themes we've inherited from the l9th Century (see pp. __ - __): sensory, associationistic,
motivational, and ethnocultural. The authors of Child Psychology: Behavior and
Development, confirm this view in the Preface Of their first edition (published 1965):
- "Child psychology is inextricably linked with other
psychological
- fields such as experimental psychology, the psychology of
individual
- differences, social psychology, learning, and personality.
It
- is also multi-disciplinary, since it draws on data gathered
in such
- diverse fields as sociology, anthropology, behavioral
genetics,
- pediatrics, and some areas of home economics. From these
different
- areas of specialization we have gathered data dealing with
two major
- aspects: first, those ways in which all humans are similar
to one
- another in their potentialities, patterns of development,
and
- behavior; and, second, the differences among human beings in
capabilities
- and in behavior as these differences are manifested-within
- the basic core of similarity.
- We see two forces operating to produce similarity. The first
is our
- biological nature, which makes humans the moderately large,
omniv-
- orous, though, stimulation-seeking, problem-solving,
symbol-using
- organisms that we are. The second is that necessary core of
culture
- based on such aspects of the human condition as a long
period of
- desendency that in turn demands a stable family structure,
consider-
- able instruction, and considerable psychological support if
the immature
- Organism is to survive. Within the limits imposed by these
- forces, individual differences in behavior occur as a result
of
- hereditary and environmental variability.'' (*Johnson and
Medinnus,
- 1974, Preface and First Edition).
- This stand had matured in the l9th Century in the writings
of the social philosophers and statisticians, so that one might say that the psychology of
individual differences, coupled with applied psychology, is the modern inheritor of social philosophy. Because it contains all four themes in behavior
influences--biological, sociological, psychological, and ethnocultural, it is the most
evolved school of behaviorism, and promises to synthesize, through the analyses of
factors, the totality of what constitutes community
- Psychological Aspects of the Family Setting.
We may examine this "synthetic" approach by summarizing and extracting the main
ideas presented by *Johnson and Medinnus (1974) in their chapter on "the
psychological aspects of the family setting" (Ch. 8). Note that the title refers to
three concepts we've been keeping track of throughout this book as "field theory
concepts." These are "psychological", "aspects", and
"setting". Setting defines the ethnocultural boundaries of a
society; psychological (as intended in the title) entails forces
that impart impulses and movement to the organism (or their inhibition); and aspects
contains the idea of factors or separate systems ("sub-regions"
within the field). Thus, "the psychological aspects of the family setting"
promises to be (i) an inventory of behavioral influences and (ii) an inventory of
observations detailing the behavioral consequences of social influences. The accompanying
diagram on the next page may help you structure your ideas:
| THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF THE FAMILY SETTING |
Inventory of Behavioral
INFLUENCES <=========== | |
Inventory of Behavioral
==>CONSEQUENCES |
| SOCIOLOGICAL VARIABLES |
|
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT |
| 1. FAMILY COMPOSITION |
|
- sibling rivalry;
- perental sex preferences;
- less parental involvment |
- with first born child;
- first born females show
- higher need for approval
- than later born.
| 2. FAMILY SIZE |
|
- large families are more |
- authoritarian and organized;
- reduced parental - contact
- induces greater frustration
- in children.
| 3. MARITIAL RELATIONSHIPS |
- OF PARENTS
- child's maladjustment;
- divorce causes stress to the
- child.
- IN THE FAMILY
|
- parental self-blame;
- disrupts family integration. |
| 5. MATERNAL EMPLOYMENT |
|
- working mother affects |
- psychological climate of the family;
- effects depend on age, class,
- attitude, etc.
- MEMBERSHIP
|
- tendency to downgrade self;
- defective self-concept;
- frustration and hostitlity |
- towards society
- *Johnson and Medinnus are understandibly cautious about the
details of the relationships depicted in this diagram which summarizes their discussion.
They refer to the paucity of research and hard data, nevertheless, they reinforce the
belief in a causal relationship between societal factors
("sociological") and personality factors. A belief in the reality of this,
interaction animates t he whole spectrum of psychology's applied involvement in the
community. Because psychologists are seen as ''behavioral experts" by the community,
their scientific beliefs come to inf1uence community 1ife in legislation, educational
administration, mental hea1th programs, community psychology interventions, therapy,
counseling. The philosophy that animates these applied efforts can be termed social
engineering to reflect the idea that behaviorists must take their tools to the field,
tools developed in the laboratory, and apply them in the service of finding solutions to
society's ills. This engineering service cannot wait for better tools and better re-
search: it is needed at once, and hopefully, despite the inadequacy of the tools, the
intervention that is motivated by systematic and general principles may be better than
non-intervention, or intervention based on biased reasoning.
- The Psychology of Aging. "The
Psychology of Aging" is the other end of "Child Psychology." Both belong to
developmental psychology. The child is father to the man: he turns into the young adult as
he grows older under the influences of social, psychological, and physiological forces.
The end of growth is reached in adulthood: "old age" in our contemporary,
so-called technocratic society, marks the natural beginnings of disorganization in
behavior and personality development. The following diagram depicts the biographical
growth process as a function of age:
The curves are only approximate and are culled from tables cited in Birren (1964). You can
note the pattern of growth and disorganization of performance factors in psycho-motor abilities, sex activity, intelligence, and conditionability.
Question: What are the social, psychological and physiological influences that cause
disorganization of the adult with advancing age? We shall organize the answer to this
question in terms of two factors: biological-medical and social-psychological.
- The biological-medical perspective on
development, growth, and aging stresses the stressors of living. Life is
cyclical, i.e. following natural growth processes that involve phasal development
and circadian influences or cyclical changes. The body organs and biochemical
functionings have a constitutional (genetic) schedule; they evolve gradually and on time
but their rate and range may be affected by social-psychological factors: mother's health,
nourishement, attitude toward exercise and motor skills, medical treatment and the
ingestion of drugs. Illness in aging appears to vary tremendously across occupational
classes within a society, as well as across ethnic groups, geographic p1aces, and
nationalities. It is important to note this inasmuch as it shows that socio-cultural
factors interact with physiological factors to determine the progress of aging. This may
involve both indirect and direct influences, as the following diagram depicts:
BIOLOGICAL/
MEDICAL |
X |
SIOCULTURAL |
| DIRECT |
INDIRECT |
|
DIRECT |
INDIRECT |
TREAMENT
SURGERY
DRUGS
THERAPY
ILLNESS |
DIET
STRESS
PREDISPOSITION
EXERCISE
GERIATRICS |
|
RETIREMENT
OCCUPATION
DISCRIMINATION
INVOLVEMENT
MALADJUSTMENT |
ATTITUDES
VALUES
MORES
CUSTOMS
|
- Pulitzer Prize Winner, Robert N. Butler (Why
Survive?: Being Old in America, 1975) argues effectively for the need to reverse and
control aging factors, especially the indirect, sociocultural influences. He reviews and
documents extensively through federal health and employment statistics, the tragic picture
Of biographical disorganization in modern America: poverty, inadequate medical services,
senility, degradation and uprooting, victimization, discrimination, ridicule, prejudice.
He argues for the need to better understand the elderly and to alter our attitudes,
values, and mores which assign inappropriate criteria of social acceptance, physical
appearance, and illness. You are no doubt aware of these attitudes in the community and
you may already have developed and internalized many of these values. For instance, female
students of Psychology 222 frequently report as one of their fears in life, the
anxiety of getting old (DRA data, Spring 1978). Standards of physical appearance are
inculcated early in life. Teenagers and young adults appear to be excessively preoccupied
with signs of "aging" to the point of separating themselves from the larger
context of community life. Socializing with "older people" is infrequent except
in required role interactions. Social life in the community is effectively segregated into
age castes, and relationships across the "age barrier" are
stigmatized, except under institutionally controlled forms ("helping the aged").
There is a general insufficiency in distinguishing between illness per se and
aging per se. the two being tied as proper and inevitable. Finally, there is
little appreciation of the advantages of aging, i.e. those performance factors
that increase rather than decrease with age: a deepening of understanding of the human
condition, experiences and memories as a valuable source of information and knowledge,
valuable personal characteristics such as greater patience, more compassion, readiness for
service and self-sacrifice, less competitive needs, and more time.
- A new or better methodology is needed for identifying those
performance factors which show continued improvement over age. Psychomotor tests and tests
Of personality and intellectual abilities bring out the disadvantages of aging past
middle-life. These are relevant in the sense that they indicate
the areas of breakdown and regression, and thus guide gerontology in resisting
or slowing down the effects of aging on social competence and community adjustment. But at
the same time, these psychometric methods tend to exclude the positive factors
of aging, possibly leading to their denial. Yet this position cannot be valid: the aged
have occupied a central position in all societies in the past, and still do today wherever
technology and urban family organization have not as yet eroded their status.
- In closing this discussion on the sociocultural influences
on the process of aging, let us recall that we started with child psychology and the
family setting. The problems of aging, like the problems of childhood, are rooted in rapid
societal changes and the breakdown of the family unit as the sociocultural
unit that has always formed the beginning and end of the biography of the individual. In
old Hawaii, as it is kept track of, and even fostered, by scholars and those still bound
to ancestral ties and mores, the family unit was the chief organizing element of the daily
round. As reported in Pukui, Haerting, and Lee (Nana I Ke Kumu, 1972), many
Hawaiians still feel the strength of family ties and practice the old way. We are told
that 'ohana ("members of the 'ohana, like taro shoots, are
all from the same root", p. 166) represents family consciousness as a
"deeply felt, unifying force" of the family clan: makuas (parents
and relatives of the parent-generation); kupunas (grandparental relatives); keikis (children), puluna (in-laws); and aumakua (dead
relatives and ancestral spirits). Rules of conduct emerged and were integrated as 'ohana
roles: younger siblings obeyed older ones, skills were taught by direct coaching and
participation ("watch, listen, shut the mouth"); a sister slept next to the
wife, on the other side of the husband's sleeping mat; the poi bowl was shared
communally and in sex-segregated dining rooms; "a man might wear his brothers malo,
[or loin cloth] but not the malo of anyone else" (p. 170). To prevent and
remedy interpersonal hostilities, the ho'oponopono, was the official family
gathering where things were aired and "set straight" (mahiki).
Repentance, mutual forgiveness, and above all, the releasing from guilts and
wrong doings (hala), functioned to maintain stability and continuity. Family
connections were kept track of up to the 13th or 14th cousinss. This oral history
was the job of the hiapo, or first born child, who was given away by the
parents to the senior relatives who officially adopted the child as their own, and groomed
it in its tribal function as official historian. The hiapo was usually the punahele, or "favored child in the grandparents' home" (p. 52).
Synopsis 15: Individual Differences and Variability.
- The psychology of individua1 differences comprises
developmental/genetic psychology and the psychology of measurement. The
"factors" of human variability include physiological, genetic, and
socio-cultural influences on personality and individual performance. Some factors are seen
as universal and affecting all members of the species; others are specific to individuals
or groups. Hence, there are pressures towards similarity across groups and pressures
towards variability. Applied efforts In the psychology of individual differences and
measurement have been vigorously pursued by behaviorists and now comprise active
involvements in community intervention programs in mental health, social reorganization of
neighborhoods, child rearing, and the psychology of "aging.''
- There are two factors being discussed as the
"causes" of disorganization in old age--biological/medical and social
psychological. Both of these have direct and indirect influences: surgery and drugs are
direct biological/medical factors, while diet and exercise are indirect; retirement and
discrimination are direct socio-cultural factors, while attitudes and values are indirect.
- "Psychometric" studies of the aged tend to isolate
those factors of aging that are disadvantageous (e.g. health, vision, paper-and-pencil
"reasoning" tests, etc.). There is a need for new methods which would isolate
the "advantages of aging." Because the Daily Round Approach was a natural
history methodology, it appears to be better suited to discover those factors that
cumulate positively with advancing age (e.g. wisdom, experience, personal growth, etc.).
Bird Stories (14) by Leon James
- The pigeon occupies a definite spot in man' s great saga of domesticating (Latin, domus = house, home) other species, i.e. of
bringing them into one's domicile, sharing space, food, work, and pleasure. Everyone. is
familiar with the pigeons of Florence (they are in movies, magazines, on postcards, and
your friends' slides), and though the dove somehow out-deserved the pigeon in God' s
scheme, having been chosen to overfly the aftermath of the Flood and report the good
tidings to Noah, nevertheless to the pigeon befell the honor of the first air mail service
in history!
- Carrier pigeons, according to Webster's
is "a pigeon trained to fly over great distances back to a home point, carrying a
written message fastened to its legs; homing pigeono'' My father never raced pigeons
though our Sunday mornings were often spent at the Flea Market in Antwerp which had a
special square reserved for selling, trading, and racing pigeons. Though, as a 10- year
old at the time, I was more interested in puppies, my childhood memories are filled with
pigeon stories.
- My father had had an obsessive involvement with them since
his teens. In those days of the late 1940's, the Sunday Morning Flea Market was the place
where everything was found, so it seemed at any rate, to a 10-year old, tagging after his
Dad, afraid of getting lost, pushed and stepped on by frantic mobs. The wares were
displayed on green army blankets spread out on the ground, in boxes, on people's shoulder,
car tops, tents, wooden collapsable structures, and bicycles. Sometimes I would be left in
the animal section playing with puppies while my father went for a "quick tour."
One day, totally unexpectedly, my father gave in to my weekly pleadings, and we brought
home a tiny little black and white furry dog thing which r named Juju. It was the happiest
day of my life.
- More usually, however, we brought home some pigeons. My
father was trying to breed them into chicken size, and whenever he found a large, robust
pigeon, he wanted it. Color, was the other factor. He wanted them to be large and of a
particular hue. As I think about these things today, I realize that I don't really know
what he was up to. (Fortunately, he is still around for me to ask. I must write him a
letter about it.) In fact, I am amazed how little I can say about all those years of
living with pigeons.
- Things come to me as I stir up those old memories. An
exciting event was getting Our pigeons to circle around the house. To accomplish this, you
have to get them going all at the same time. Basically, it meant frightening them with
sudden sweeping gestures, with objects thrown at them, and with lots of whistling,
yelling, and carryings on. Two or three pigeons might take off and I and on the roof next
door . Or the pack would take off in a sudden explosion of panic, scatter in the sky, each
pigeon for itself. A few minutes later, another try. Eventually everything would work out
just right, and the pack of 30 to 40 pigeons, would circle around and around, in tight
formation, offering a joyous sight to behold.
16. THE COMMUNITY CLASSROOM AND PRINCIPLES OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL
- Chances are you don't socialize with any of your
teachers in school. Chances are you never visit a professor's office unless you have a
specific requirement to transact. Chances are you feel uncomfortable when talking to the
instructor in class. Chances are you don't interact with your classmates unless you
already know each other. Chances are you come to class only because you feel you have to,
and that you consider much of school distasteful, boring, and hardly earth shaking as a
personal intellectual experience. This is not so good!
- This course of study is designed to counteract the usual
constraining atmosphere of the classroom. Two aspects of this need to be stressed. First,
altering the socio-cultural environment of the classroom in a direction that would foster
more authentic relationships, is in our estimation a desirable goal in itself. Second,
creating a community out of our membership in this course allows us to be objective about
it. This second point is more difficult to grasp than the first, but is of equal
importance. We feel that objective studies are desirable activities that foster the basic
humanistic purposes of education in a way that far surpasses the benefits to the person
that come from indirect study through passive readings. Objective studies are direct and
participatory. In a classroom where the people present act as in a community setting, you
cannot pretend you're only there to listen. This simply wouldn't be true. The activities
that go on in a community setting are great forces of energy that involve those present in
continuous exchanges with each other. There is no time out: that is, at no time are you
out of the community. This means that all your acts count. Many of the things that
ordinarily would get kept track of in a community setting where the members hook up to
each other's daily round schedules, also gets kept track of in the classroom setting that
operates as a micro-cosmos, or mini-world.
- Have you ever thought of founding a settlement, utopia, or
extra- planetary colony? If not, think of it now. Suppose you were the person who had to
write out all the rules and procedures that the volunteer members must follow in order to
make certain particular things happen, certain styles of life facilitated according to
your fancy, desires or reason. Could there be money and private ownership? Who makes the
decisions about living conditions, rules, ordinances? Would you make rules about eating,
touching, and clothes? Would there be an official ritual, religion, prayer, flag, bible?
On what bases do you decide?
- Chances are, if you thought about the Genesis Problem, or
how to create a community, that you followed the if/then reasoning mode of analysis:
"if" I make rule x, "then" y will follow, and that's either good or
bad for what I want to happen. Call this type of reasoning "the functional analysis
of antecedents and consequents of behavior", and you can count yourself among the
ranks of the behaviorists. This is because, behaviorism in the community takes precisely
that form. First, you identify a particular setting and list its relevant features; in
field theory terms, we would say that you've identified the ''ethnodynamic" forces
operative in a particular field or social region. For example, the force of
legislation rests in its power to alter procedures that must be followed by
individuals in particular situations:
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