Week 1 Discussion
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week_1_discussion.docxCareer Development:
Why is understanding yourself important in your career development? How can you ensure that an employer will realize that you have a clear grasp of who you are and what you have to offer?
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Why is understanding yourself important in your career development? How can you ensure that an employer will realize that you have a clear grasp of who you are and what you have to offer?
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Tech, Society and Culture:
If the scientific test of a scientific theory is accepted by the community of men and women who are called scientists, does that mean that anything is acceptable as long as enough of the right people agree with it? Does that mean there is no such thing as scientific truth? How, if at all, does science differ from politics, art, or religion, in that case?
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Baase states that it is not just technology that changes so quickly, but also the impacts which they have upon society. Do you agree? How does that align with the assertion in the lecture that we are now living in a third great technological transformation called the Knowledge Revolution? Have computers truly changed our lives so much that we can call this a revolution like the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century?
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Social Psychology:
Discrimination is a behavior rooted in a preexisting attitude: prejudice. In the textbook, social and motivational sources of prejudice are covered (see pp. 319-331). We will begin by considering prejudice as it relates to older people. Please follow this link (Representations of Aging in the Mass Media), and read the article on the power of the mass media to define how we perceive aging Americans. According to the article, what are the typical representations (words and images that are used) of older people in the mass media?
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This discussion references TCO 2, on factors contributing to aggressive behavior in young children. The textbook reports that studies have found that violent television content tends to elicit aggressive behavior by young children although there are other factors of importance (See below Table 1). This example clearly indicates multiple causality, as discussed in the Week 1 Lecture. What other independent variables, in addition to graphic violence in television content, may contribute to childhood aggression? (Do not forget to think about both personal and situational causes.)
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TABLE 1.
Picture this scene from one of Bandura's experiments (Bandura & others, 1961). A preschool child is put to work on an interesting art activity. An adult is in another part of the room, where there are Tinker Toys, a mallet, and a big, inflated “Bobo” doll. After a minute of working with the Tinker Toys, the adult gets up and for almost 10 minutes attacks the inflated doll. She pounds it with the mallet, kicks it, and throws it, while yelling, “Sock him in the nose…. Knock him down…. Kick him.”
After observing this outburst, the child is taken to a different room with many very attractive toys. But after two minutes the experimenter interrupts, saying these are her best toys and she must “save them for the other children.” The frustrated child now goes into yet another room with various toys designed for aggressive and nonaggressive play, two of which are a Bobo doll and a mallet.
Seldom did children who were not exposed to the aggressive adult model display any aggressive play or talk. Although frustrated, they nevertheless played calmly. Those who had observed the aggressive adult were many times more likely to pick up the mallet and lash out at the doll. Watching the adult's aggressive behavior lowered their inhibitions. Moreover, the children often reproduced the model's specific acts and said her words. Observing aggressive behavior had both lowered their inhibitions and taught them ways to aggress.
Bandura (1979) believes that everyday life exposes us to aggressive models in the family, in one's subculture, and, as we will see, in the mass media.
THE FAMILY
Physically aggressive children tend to have had physically punitive parents, who disciplined them by modeling aggression with screaming, slapping, and beating (Patterson & others, 1982). These parents often had parents who were themselves physically punitive (Bandura & Walters, 1959; Straus & Gelles, 1980). Such punitive behavior may escalate into abuse, and although most abused children do not become criminals or abusive parents, 30 percent do later abuse their own children—four times the general population rate (Kaufman & Zigler, 1987; Widom, 1989). Violence often begets violence.
Family influence also appears in higher violence rates in cultures and in families with absentee fathers (Triandis, 1994). David Lykken (2000) computed that American children reared without fathers are about seven times more likely to be abused, to drop out of school, to become runaways, to become unmarried teenage parents, and to commit violent crimes. The correlation between parental absence (usually father absence) and violence holds across races, income levels, education, and locations (Staub, 1996; Zill, 1988). Moreover, in one British study that followed more 363364than 10,000 individuals for 33 years since their birth in 1958, the risk of problems such as aggressive behavior increased following a parental breakup during middle childhood (Cherlin & others, 1998) The point is not that children from father-absent homes are doomed to become delinquent or violent; in fact, nurtured by a caring mother and extended family, most such children thrive. The point is also not that father absence causes violence; we don't know that it does. The point is simply that there is a correlation: Where and when fathers are absent, the violence risk increases.
THE CULTURE
The social environment outside the home also provides models. In communities where “macho” images are admired, aggression is readily transmitted to new generations (Cartwright, 1975; Short, 1969). The violent subculture of teenage gangs, for instance, provides its junior members with aggressive models. Among Chicago adolescents who are otherwise equally at risk for violence, those who have observed gun violence are at doubled risk for violent behavior (Bingenheimer & others, 2005).
The broader culture also matters. Show social psychologists a man from a non-democratic culture that has great economic inequality, that prepares men to be warriors, and that has engaged in war, and they will show you someone who is predisposed to aggressive behavior (Bond, 2004).
Richard Nisbett (1990, 1993) and Dov Cohen (1996, 1998) have explored the subculture effect. Within the United States, they report, the sober, cooperative White folk who settled New England and the Middle Atlantic region produced a different culture from that of the swashbuckling, honor-preserving White folk (many of them my own Scots-Irish ancestral cousins) who settled much of the South. The former were farmer-artisans; the latter, more aggressive hunters and herders. To the present day, American cities and areas populated by southerners have higher than average White homicide rates. Not surprisingly, southern males are also more likely than northern males to perceive their peers as supporting aggressive responses (Vandello & others, 2008).
People learn aggressive responses both by experience and by observing aggressive models. But when will aggressive responses actually occur? Bandura (1979) contended that aggressive acts are motivated by a variety of aversive experiences — frustration, pain, insults (Figure 10.4). Such experiences arouse us emotionally. But 364365whether we act aggressively depends on the consequences we anticipate. Aggression is most likely when we are aroused and it seems safe and rewarding to aggress.
