[1. 2]

Case History Report: Fall Semester, 1977. The student of social psychology has available, at hand, an excellent laboratory for observing social phenomena. That laboratory is the student's daily round. A community may be defined as an ecological unit within which a minimum of three individuals share their daily rounds. A community has a rhythm of life that is visible in schedules. Sharing daily rounds entails a common relation to the scheduling of events. For example, daily round logs kept by students indicate common patterns in individual profiles: getting up time (6-8 A. M. going to work or school (6-10 A. M.); shopping, lunching, running errands (between 8 A. M. and 5 P. M.); eating "dinner" (5-11 P. M.); watching television (2 P. M. to 2 A.M.); going to sleep (10 P.M. to midnight); and so on (see Chart E/27 in Chapter 10).

Besides time zones for activities (see Chart T/15, Chapter 10), the community schedule also implicates the length in the time it takes to accomplish them, as well as the rhythm of succession of activities. For example, "getting up time" includes a slow rhythm for a few minutes, then it picks up, and suddenly all sorts of activities press upon the individual. An activity reported as "washing in the bathroom" or "shower" takes longer in the evening time zone than in the morning. These and other such situational properties of activities may be observed in the sample data given in Chart R/27, Chapter 10.

The understanding of how the setting affects the individual's behavior was the theme of the lectures for Psychology 222, Fall Semester, 1977. Though this basic idea is simple to grasp and accept, grasping the significance of it for the study of social psychology turned out to be a more difficult undertaking. Details to be presented in this chapter will show that students resisted the idea that formalism in theory was a necessary step, insisting instead, that "their level" was not sufficiently advanced to have to deal with the formalisms of theory which preoccupied the instructor. In the end, students produced Research Reports which were, for the most part, devoid of any interest in formal theory. Thus, that objective of the instructor was not met.

The current student of Psychology 222, namely you, no doubt also has definite attitudes towards the usefulness, or lack of it, of formalisms. As well, you have opinions on the content of the course you have registered in. As well, you have evaluations on what should or should not be done in many departments related to course procedures: style of lecturing, comfortableness of the room you're sitting in, grading policy, etc. And last but not least, you have as well, convictions concerning facts about the world; about how teaching should be done; about what are the antecedents and consequences of behaviors; what "ethnic" or "standard" mean; and so on.

Thus, attitudes, opinions, evaluations, and convictions are already operative as you begin this course of study on the nature of the individual in social settings, i.e., the nature of attitudes, opinions, evaluations, and convictions. This self-reflexiveness of the study of social psychology turned out to be both exciting and frustrating to many, both illuminating and befuddling. To study how this was the case will provide us with an opportunity to accomplish two things: (a) examining the dynamic features of the activity [PSYCHOLOGY 222, FALL SEMESTER 1977] and (b) examining techniques in which record keeping of such complex social activities can serve as a source of data for understanding them. We hope you will focus on both these issues in the presentation we are making for you.