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.   

Assignment 8: Gang Leader for a Day

Gang Leader for a Day  by Sudhir Venkatesh

Chapter 1 starts with Mr. Venkatesh attempting to learn about the poorer communities around Hyde Park in Chicago on his own.  As his interest grew, he attempted to collect data from poor people and ended up meeting J.T., a gang leader.  I was surprised as to how fearless Mr. Venkatesh was with a gun pointing at his head.

Chapter 2 follows Mr. Venkatesh's observation of J.T. and his gang as they transition into the Robert Taylor building J.T. grew up in.  Mr. Venkatesh began to meet people living in the building that were not part of the Black Kings gang.  I had never thought about it before, but I found it very interesting that people were so tolerant of the large presence of the gang in the building.

Chapter 3 focuses further on the close nit relationship of the community and the gang.  After J.T. started taking on more work with the BK's, Mr. Venkatesh became more free to meet other people in the community with power.  I thought it was very interesting that it was impossible to be neutral in the community.  Sides must be made to keep loyalty and trust.

Chapter 4 is a short chapter taking place mostly in a single day when Mr. Venkatesh attempts to do J.T.'s job for one day.  There were many tough decisions to make and things needed to do to keep the gang's business running smoothly.  Mr. Venkatesh thought it would be easy when in reality it was not at all.

Chapter 5 changes perspective and goes into detail about the relationship between the families living in the building and Ms. Bailey, the leader of the building.  She lobbies the CHA to get things done for the families as well as taking "donations" from businesses.  I am surprised what she is willing to do to get things done, and at the same time she seems very power hungry.

Chapter 6 takes another perspective when Mr. Venkatesh begins to interview many people of all sorts that live in and around the Robert Taylor buildings J.T. controls.  He makes a huge mistake by then telling J.T. and Ms. Bailey all that he found, and they use that information.  The community felt betrayed by him and rightly so.

Chapter 7 begins Mr. Venkatesh's return to following J.T. around as he gains access to the higher circles in the BK.  He got an opportunity to get the perspective of the police with Officer Reggie as well, but found that it was very dangerous so much as being seen with the police.  He is beginning to lose his welcome in the building from everyone except J.T.

Chpater 8 leads up to the inevitable demolition of the Robert Taylor building and how people are dealing with their forced evacuation.  It also finishes with short stories about where all the people he got close to ended up.  I felt like it ended rather quick in comparison to the detail Mr. Venkatesh goes into with other events earlier in the book.

Summary:

        I found this book incredibly interesting and very easy to read.  I had trouble putting it down after I finished a chapter.  Mr. Venkatesh seemed surprisingly naive during the entire book, but I believe that he made it seem that way in order to make a better story.  This book is not meant to be scientific ethnography, it is meant to inform and entertain the general reader.  Because of that, there were not as many solid facts and a lot more subjective findings that make for a much more interesting read.  He could not have simply reported his experiences in the Robert Taylor buildings and stated facts.  Not many people would by such a dry book.  

        A lot is still to be learned from this unique story of an ethnographer embarking on a morally questionable ethnography study of everyday life in a very poor community.  There would have been no way for Mr. Venkatesh to uphold a normal moral ground and stay alive in the society.  Everyday life in the Robert Taylor buildings held so many illegal activities that they were often overlooked as crimes at times.  They are considered necessary in order to survive.   

        Basic public services I take for granted are not available in the Robert Taylor buildings.  Things like ambulances, police or repairmen.  Almost every service is provided and done by the community as a whole. People like C-Note act as mechanics, repairmen and even sometime militia.  The BK act as security and keep things calm.  Though there are many drawbacks to the gang being there, the community would not be able to keep the peace without them.  

        The BK gang shows how complex gangs are.  Before this book I thought they acted more like an oppressive autocracy with the gang leader in charge and his thugs doing what he said.  This was a naive outlook, but until now I had only movies to go from.  The BK are depicted as community members with a dark side that is the source of their power and what they are most known for. 

      My eyes seem more open after reading this.  Not everyone is what they seem and no matter how criminal a persons' actions may be, chances are they had a strong motivation behind that action.  They are not simply bad people.  Bad is a hard word to pin on a person.  Actions can be bad, but that does not make the person inherently bad.

Ethnography Idea

A potential organization I thought of to do an ethnography about is Habitat for Humanity in Bryan. I believe that the people working and even regular volunteers would have developed a unique relationship that is key to the organization's success.  Habitat has done well all around the country in many different societies.  What makes them so successful in so many different places? It would also be very easy to get in close with Habitat as a volunteer.  I have only volunteered with Habitat twice.  Only once at the one in Bryan, and that was early last semester.

Assignment 7: Non-obvious Observation

        The group I was in decided to start on the north side of campus in front of Zachary.  From there, we individually crossed University Drive and walked into the McDonald's on the other side.  We stood in line for the register and ordered an item from the menu.  Then we had to wait for our order, receive it and walk back across University Drive to the starting point.  There are many interactions we were faced with. Such as people also waiting at the light to cross the street, cars going by, people waiting in line to order, talking to the lady behind the register, people also waiting for their food and passersby all along the way.
        My group had some technical difficulties with the camera.  Two of our recordings out of the five did not record (I will not say who's since it will give away which video is who's), so they had to redo them.  Unfortunately we did the originals right before sundown, so when we realized they were not recorded and could redo them it was already dark.
        The major non-obvious thing that we can observe from our video is what we do when waiting.  Most of us had to wait for the cross walk light twice when crossing University Drive, waiting in line and then finally waiting for our food to be made.  There were a lot of forced waiting in our particular path.  All of them were short, less than thirty seconds, besides the wait for food for some of us.  People do things they are not always aware of when they are waiting.  I am very curious as to what the different things that the other people do as well as what I do that I am not aware of.
        Another non-obvious thing  is how we interact with others passing by or going through a door at the same time as someone else.  How specifically react to another person opening a door for them or vise versa.  Where do they look when passing or interacting directly with other people?  The exact place people cannot be observed, but the general area can be since the camera follows the head not the eyes.
       

Ethnographies

        Ethnography is the scientific study of a culture.  The exact details of a culture that are taken into consideration varies across disciplines.  An ethnographer becomes a part of the observed culture and participates in basic cultural happenings in order to better understand them. An ethnography is not a look on the outside type study.  It is important to fully embrace the culture to be able to observe every aspect of the culture and not miss any key measures.  It is not possible to observe everything there is about a society, but it is critical to absorb as much as humanly possible in order to get a more full understanding.  The majority of ethnographic studies are done by anthropologists and sociologists.
        The collection of data is always subjective since the majority of data is the ethnographers' personal observations. Because human societies are so complex, an aspect of the selected culture is usually focused on.  That does not mean other aspects should be ignored because there are always links between aspects of societies.  Links are not always obvious, so it is important to keep a sense of broad ideas as well as the details throughout the societies aspects.
        There are many ethical issues that need to be taken into consideration when studying a culture.  The study should not negatively impact the society individuals under study in any way.  The ethnographer should keep an emotional distance from the people of the society as to unnecessarily effect their actions and gather false observations because of their own impact on the society.  They should also not discuss the aim of the ethnography so as to manipulate the peoples' actions to skew their responses.
        An ethnographer also needs to be aware that observations may not always be the exact or full representation of what happened either from a false observation or a loose interpretation of the data.  The fact that the ethnographer is also a participant in the culture means they will always effect the research in some way.  It is the ethnographer's job to keep their effects to a minimum and also consider their influence when observing.
       Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead is an ethnography about the life of young women on the island Ta'u in the Samoa Islands.  It was incredibly influential when it was published in 1928, but it was not received well by many Westerners because of the great difference in culture found on Ta'u.  It opened the eyes of many and solidified Mead as a popular anthropologist in America.  There were many critics that pointed out flaws in her descriptions of the Samoa culture.  There will always be inaccuracies in all ethnographic studies because they are subjective, but they can still strongly influence views and provide valuable knowledge about cultures.