Extra Credit #2 - Media Equation

Extra Credit #2 - Media Equation

        I really enjoyed the experiment talked about in this chapter.  I would say that I interact with my computer as a person from time to time.  from this experiment, I am certain that I do more often then I think since they all did not even know they were being polite to the computers they were interacting with.  It was interesting that we see separate computers as individuals even though they are all connected.  I wonder if it is the computer itself that we see as a person or only the monitor.  If monitors are switched out would we treat it as an "other" or would we recognize it as the same computer?

        Grice's maxims were very interesting.  I did not realize that politeness had key attributes that could be explained so simply.  Before reading this politeness was simply a way of interacting in my mind.  I feel as if I now know secrets to get anyone to like me.  I did not think that it was possible to pinpoint ideas that span over any culture to explain politeness.  The actions may be different, but the same ideas are there as explained by Grice's maxims.  

        Before reading this, I always thought that the wording of text in a program was needed for clarity.  Making what an action in a program does is very important, but now I am aware that it is best to make it polite as well.  It makes sense after thinking about the benefits of politeness in a program.  Especially after learning that users unknowingly interact with computers like they are humans.  Making a polite program is so easy and politeness has great benefits.  I will now take the time to make sure every program I make  is polite to the user.

Extra Credit #1 - Why We Make Mistakes

Extra Credit #1 - Why We Make Mistakes

        This was a very interesting read considering I just drove for an hour and a half earlier today on my way home.  I did not know that the majority of plane crashes are caused by the crew's attention being distracted by various control systems or other small distractions.  The same thing happens in cars.  

         It happened to me on my drive back home today.  I was taking my normal route on 359, a small farm road going towards Houston that does not have much traffic. I had forgotten how sharp a particular turn was, and did not slow down enough.  I took the turn faster than I should have, so the force of the quick turn made some things I brought back for the long break fall over in the back seat.  It unexpectedly made a loud thud momentarily distracting me.  I instantly took my eyes off the road, and looked into my back seat out of surprise.  It then took me a few more moments to refocus on the road.  Remember I was turning this entire time and so kept turning even after the turn veering into the oncoming lane.  When I realized I quickly got back into my lane. Luckily, there was know one coming the other way before I had time to steer back.  I was extremely lucky there was know one else passing by me at that very moment, or I do not think I would have been able to finish this extra credit in time.

         On the rest of the way home all I could think about was how quickly I could loose focus on a very important task by a distraction and then how long it took me to return driving.  It all took a second, maybe two, but thing could have been very different because of that moment.  The human mind was not meant to process multiple tasks at the same time as clearly noted in this chapter of Why We Make Mistakes.  Personally,  I do not think evolution took into consideration all the various tasks we deal with today.  Back in the day, all we thought about was food, shelter and reproduction.  There was not much need for multitasking since know one can do two of those things at once or had a need to. 

Assignment 10: Chapters 9 & 10

Opening Skinner's Box by Lauren Slater

Chapter 9

        Psychologists began to remove pieces of the brain to try and "cure" mentally ill patients. It was soon discovered that if the hippocampus was removed, the patient could no longer formulate new memories.  They had effectively removed the part of the brain that created memories.  This was a massive leap forward because the theory before was that memories are formed scattered all over the brain.  This was an unexpected outcome from an experiment to cure a man suffering from chronic seizures.  The author refers to him as Mr. M.  After the operation, he did not seize nearly as much, but he had no short term memory whatsoever.  Even into his old age he would weep when someone reminded him his mother died many years ago as if he had just found out for the first time.  I feel very sorry for him and all of the mentally ill patients that were put under the knife for an experiment.
Chapter 10
        Psychosurgery was first done by Antonio Moniz.  He also is the one that created its negative image in societies eyes.  He operated on patients that were available with little disregard for them.  He did not even clean his surgical tools between operations.  They were treated horribly because of their mental illnesses.  His work was not well documented, but the results that he did publish were astounding.  He reported that he was successfully curing patients with mental illnesses.  Many went on to live normal lives in society.  There was a sense that they were not completely the same person after the operation.  The author mentions that they were missing a certain spark or humanity.  They simply seemed odd.  Nonetheless, many thousands of operations were undergone by other psychologists because of Dr. Moniz's work.
         The pharmacological industry today is seen as a more humane way to cure mental illnesses.  Whether or not it is any better is up to debate.  The author explains some statistics that show very few patients actually see significant improvements from pharmacological drugs.  The companies backing the industry would like everyone to think otherwise.

Assignment 10: Chapters 5 & 6

Opening Skinner's Box by Lauren Slater

Chapter 5

        This chapter is about Leon Festinger's studies of cognitive dissonance.  He and some others infiltrated a cult that believed the end was near, but when it was not they rationalized to fit why doomsday did not happen.  They said that enough humans repented their ways and believed in their god to save the entire race.  When faced with even the exact opposite of what they believe so strongly in, they rationalize a reason in order to help make what they believed significant.  No one likes to admit that all they believe in is for nothing.  The human mind is ready to rationalize very strong inconsistencies in the name of self preservation.
        I thought that the author was incredibly rude to Audrey's mother throughout her conversations with her. I do not believe in such miracles like the author, but I do realize that others do.  She repeatedly prodded at the fact that her daughter has not saved her.  I felt as though the author was picking at clear sensitive areas to get a reaction she wanted out of her.  I can only imagine the pain that poor mother was going through loosing her daughter at such an early age, knowing she will die from cancer soon and not knowing what will happen to her daughter after she passes.  I am sure anyone would make up very strange rationalizations of it all.  I would probably just go crazy.
Chapter 6
        Harry Harlow's experiments disproved Skinner's theory that all actions are caused by stimulus such as hunger.  There are other elements in play.  His experiment showed that the love of a child to it mother is not based on the supplying of food.  Touch is overwhelmingly more important, though it is not the only thing required.  A baby monkey will attach itself to a comfortable surrogate mother even if it does not supply food.  The babies grow up to be mentally unstable without any interaction with other monkeys even though as babies they are very happy with the surrogate mother.  Harlow clearly did not see child rearing as very important when it turned out to be more complicated than he had thought.  He continued research to see what exactly the elements were to create a normal adult monkey.  Touch, movement and just thirty minutes of interaction with another monkey a day seemed to create a normal monkey.  It was not until they had offspring that it was clear they were not normal.  The mothers killed or neglected their offspring.
        I believe that these experiments are incredibly unethical.  Pain is pain no matter what the organism.  They clearly were feeling pain and being completely mentally debilitated.  That being said, the outcomes of the experiments help humans raise children and is rather beneficial over all.  Do the end justify the means in this case?  It is hard to say.

Assignment 10: Chapters 3 & 4

Opening Skinner's Box by Lauren Slater

Chapter 3

        This chapter Talks about Dr. Rosenhan's experiment in the 1970's where he and some of his friends were admitted in to psychiatric wards under a false evaluation to see how long it would take the doctors to realize they were sane.  After their initial lie of hearing a voice say thud over and over, They acted completely normal.  Much of their normal behavior was evaluated to fit their false condition.  It took weeks and even over a month for a few to be let out of the wards.  The psychiatric field was in an uproar by this experiment, but it showed just how unscientific the evaluation of patients was.  over the years they have lost a lot of credibility and respect as scientists.  

        To test if the new and improved practices of psychiatric wards are better, the Dr. Slater went to a few and did the same experiment Dr. Rosenhan had done.  To her surprise she was almost always given a prescription for pills.  She was never once admitted as Dr. Rosenhan and his speudosubjects were.  I believe that it is very hard to diagnose a disorder when all of the symptoms are given by the patient.  Since there are no clear objective evidence for many mental disorders, it would be easy for anyone who can act out the symptoms to fool people.  It is the same for medical doctors prescribing pain medication to someone who says they have chronic back pain.

Chapter 4

        There have been many small experiments done to study how easy it is for people to ignore others in distress.  This chapter uses the extreme example of the murder of Kitty Genovese.  A woman was brutally murdered after three separate assaults by an attacker over a period of about 40 minutes.  There were 34 witnesses that heard her scream for help during each assault, but know one went to save her or even call the police until well after she had died.  Why were people so reluctant to help her?

        There are many theories that have been proposed and many experiment to try and shed more light on the subject.  My favored theory is the theory of group responsibility.  When people are in a group, they tend to not take personal responsibility for the actions or lack of action by the group.  People are less likely to take action in a situation where help is needed if they are in a group because they do not feel as responsible for what happens if others do not take action with them.  Everyone in the group always hope that someone else will take action so they do not have to and the more people in the group the less responsibility they feel because there are more inactive people.  If a person is alone in a situation that requires their help, they are more likely to take action because they are forced to take all responsibility for the situation.

Assignment 10: Chapters 1 & 2

Opening Skinner's Box by Lauren Slater

Chapter 1

        This first chapter is all about B. F. Skinner's life and work as a psychologist.  It talks about his life was riddled with scandals of him using his baby daughter as a lab rat which is completely not true.  After meeting one of his daughters, the author find out that he was actually amazing with children and they all loved him very much.  

        His famous boxes helped realize how positive reinforcement is a much better teaching tool than punishments for mental conditioning. By using variable reinforcements he is able to make selected behaviors happen more frequently and slowly developed more intricate behaviors such as playing hide and seek or ping pong.   I myself now want to test Skinner's techniques on a dog or even my roommates sometime.  He also found that random reinforcement creates a behavior that is harder to replace once instilled than set reinforcements.  This can explain such things as gambling and other extremely low chance possibilities that cause mental addictions. 

Chapter 2

        The second chapter focused on Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority experiment that we learned all about in his book.  Dr. Slater takes a more broad approach about the experiment focusing on Milgram himself for most of it.  I did not know how the experiment made him famous, but also destroyed his reputation with other psychologists.  He was kicked out of Princeton and had a lot of trouble finding work.      

        It was also said that Milgram spent a lot of time trying to find out how to classify the subjects as obedient or disobedient.  He ended up theorizing there are too many variables to take in account with human mental processes.  The major variable is the situation itself.  Many sociologists believe that the power of the situation makes the individual personalities negligible.  Milgram's argument to this theory is what separated the obedient from the disobedient.  If the situation truly has the power then all subjects should have been either obedient or disobedient.  There should not have been any differences between subjects. 

Assignment 9: Obedience to Authority

Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram

Chapter 1, The Dilemma of Obedience: It begins by explaining the part of human nature the experiment tries to shed light on.  Many atrocities have been committed throughout history where the assailants are "normal" people.  The author believes that a possible cause is the humans ability to lose sight of human decencies under authorities.        

Chapter 2, Method of Inquiry: The entire experiment is explained with considerable detail.  This experiment is incredibly well thought out taking into account all angles of approach to ensure the collected data is targeted at the hypothesis.

Chapter 3, Expected Behavior: Different groups ranging from psychiatrists, college students and middle class workers were explained the experiment and asked to predict the outcome.  All thought that very few would go all the way to 450 volts with the mean point of disobedience being around 150 volts.

Chapter 4, Closeness of the Victim: New slight variations of the experiment were tested where the learner is in three different locations.  Them being in another room, across a table from the teacher and finally right next to the teacher requiring them to touch.  The results found that the closer the learner was to the subject, the more likely they were to disobey.

Chapter 5, Individuals Confront Authority: The dialogue and experimenter's thoughts on a few specific subject are given.  The difference in thought processes among the subjects is remarkably different even though only one of them actually disobeyed.  

Chapter 6, Further Variations and Controls: Even more slightly different experiments are tested.  The introduction of female subjects, proximity of the experimenter to the subject and locations are a few examples.  Results show that women act the same as men, more disobey if the experimenter is absent and the location has little effect.

Chapter 7, Individuals Confront Authority II: specific subjects are focused on in this chapter.  Subjects from different variations of the experiment are analyzed in detail thought the experimenting process.

Chapter 8, Role of Permutations: The three roles in the experiment are now altered in different ways to further test the power of authority figures. When there are two conflicting equal authorities, all subject disobey in the freeze of authority.  When an authority takes on the learning role they effectively give up their power as an authority.

Chapter 9, Group Effects: Next, the effect of being in a group where a fake teacher disobeys then gives the naive teacher the idea to do so as well.  When fake teachers obey the entire way, the naive teacher is even more likely to obey as well.  

Chapter 10, Why Obedience?-An Analysis:  The rest of the chapters focus on the analysis of the experiments and its findings.  The author explains the human nature that is most likely behind the reasoning for obedience instead of disobedience in straining situations such as in the experiment.  

Chapter 11, The Process of Obedience: Applying the Analysis to the Experiment:  Dr. Milgram goes through the steps he observed subjects going through during the experiment.  People want to obey when they see a clear authority figure, so they go through different thought processes to explain or dodge responsibility to keep a positive self image.

Chapter 12, Strain and Disobedience: Dr. Milgram adds to his obey or disobey process tree by adding a new strain variable.  When the strain a person feels is larger than their need to obey, then they will disobey.  He then goes into explaining what reduces or eliminates strain.

 Chapter 13, An Alternative Theory: Is Aggression the Key?: Some critiques suggest anger is the root to obeying a command that clearly harms another person.  The author explains that the mass majority of the subject exhibit no signs of aggression.  If a subject was aggressive, they would not be under strain and the result of the experiments showed that most of the subjects were under some level of strain.

Chapter 14, Problems of Method: There were three main critiques of the the experimenting.  The  people were not diverse enough, they did not believe they were administering shocks to the learner and it is not possible to generalize to the larger world.  Dr. Milgram refutes these accusations to further prove that people, given particular situations, are capable of harming others when yielding to authority figures.
Chapter 15, Epilogue: The last chapter was used to tie all the other chapters together. Dr. Milgram uses the Vietnam War where examples of soldiers under a clear authority committing atrocities happened, but many soldiers did not feel any personal blame since they were simply taking orders.  It can happen in any society and we should all be aware of the dangers of authority.
Book Response:
        I found this book and the experiment it explains incredibly interesting.  I learned about the Milgram experiment in a psychology class my freshman year, and I was very excited when I found out we were going to read this book for this class.  Of course at first everyone is appalled at how many people would shock another person with lethal amounts of electricity just because they were told to.  After a while it does not seem all that unusual when it is thoroughly explained in this book.
        There have been many times where I have heard a story from someone, and I immediately thought their actions were terrible and how I would have handled it better.  The fact of the matter is I have no way of knowing how I would react unless I was in the exact same situation.  This experiment is one of those situations.  We always think of ourselves in a positive light in theoretical situations. Small differences in situations can change a person's thought process and actions dramatically.  The amount of detail the experimenters used in the Milgram experiment to keep every test the same is incredible.  I am one of the people that would want to know how I would do in this experiment for my own personal knowledge about who I am.
        Everyone agrees it causes emotional strain on the subjects.  It clearly does to the mass majority of subjects.  Does that make it unethical?  Maybe.   I believe that brief emotional strain is worth the large amount of insight gained from the experiment.  Both for the individual and society as a whole.  The ends justify the means since the means is much less than the ends in my opinion.  I also believe that experiments should not deceive subjects which this experiment clearly does.  In this particular experiment, deceite must be used.  The only case, in my opinion, that deceite should be used is when there is absolutely no other way to run the experiment.  A pre-experiment brief with the subject would greatly effect the outcome of the experiment making the the entire project useless.
        This book should be a required read to everyone. If everyone was aware and would then hopefully take responsibility of their actions even if it is an order from a respected authority.  Atrocities such as the ones taken place in so many wars could have been stopped.