MasterV Have You Seen the Elephant

8/8/2019 MasterV Have You Seen the Elephant

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text. There are some very good

reasons for thismost of our

teachers have training in psy-

chology of one sort or another,

for one thing. For another, the

Air Force has job specialties in

psychology and related fields,

but not in sociology or anthro-

pology. Finally, if you consider

simply which of the three

coursespsychology, sociol-

ogy, or anthropologyis taken

by the largest number of under-

graduate students in America,

the winner is psychology.

Moreover, textbooks are ex-

pensive, and we only want to

make you buy one. So psychol-

Welcome to Behav-

ioral Sciences 110Introduc-

tion to the Behavioral Sciences

and Leadership. At many col-

leges, students will take all or

some of the following courses

psychology, sociology, an-

thropology, economics, and

political science. These sub-

jects, taken collectively, are

usually referred to as thesocialsciences. Psychology, sociol-ogy, and anthropology are

sometimes referred to as the

behavioral sciences, though it

can be argued that there is a lot

of behaving (and misbehaving)

going on in economics and

political science, too. Here at

the US Air Force Academy,

you will, as part of the Core

Curriculum, take this course

(Beh Sci 110), Economics, and

Political Science. Sociology is

an optional course taken by

some Behavioral Science ma-

jors (and some others) and An-

thropology is not offered. So

unfortunately, most of you will

not have an opportunity to take

a full course in sociology or

anthropology.

You have probably

noticed by now that the book

for this course is a psychology

HAVE YOU SEEN THE ELEPHANT?

In This Chapter:

Of Sciences Hard, Soft and

Easypg

Historical Development

Psychologypg

Sociologypg

Anthropology

pg

Subject Matter & Method

Psychologypg

Sociologypg

Anthropologypg

What Do Social Scientists

Actually Do?

Psychologistspg

Sociologistspg

Anthropologists

pg

Back To The Elephant-pg

George R. Mastroianni

Wilbur J. Scott

Angelle Khachadoorian

Since its emergence as

a major in the 1950s,

psychology has

increased to be one of

the most popular

majors in colleges

across the US.

Psychology is the

fourth most popular

major according to

the APA Monitor,

June 2008.

-


2/24

ogy is the chassis for our

journey into the behavioral

sciences.

Our consideration of

sociology and anthropology

will be more than paint andbody work, however. Psy-

chology is a vehicle that can

take us lots of interesting and

even fun places. But sociol-

ogy and anthropology are

vehicles different enough

from psychology that they

will carry us to places from

which the view will also be

quite different. Well try to

show you that sometimes the

various views of phenomenaand events that well get from

these three disciplines are

like the old story about six

blind men who each examine

an elephant, but only feel

certain parts of the beast.

Only by combining the

different perspectives do

we get a full and complete

picture. The elephant story

is of ancient Eastern origin

(perhaps India) but the bestknown version in America

is a poem by John Godfrey

Saxe (1816-1887).

Social sciences.

Page 2

John Godfrey Saxe


3/24

Natural sciences. Basic sciences. Physi-

cal sciences. Hard sciences. Soft sci-

ences. Mathematical sciences. Earth sci-ence, life science, food science, informa-

tion science,

sport science,

the sweet

science, the

dismal sci-

ence, weird

science, real

science -

science is

impressive in

our culture,

so a lot ofdifferent activities get labeled science

in hopes of getting in on the credibility

the title confers. So what is science

how is it different from other ways of

knowing, what exactly are social sci-

ences, and what makes them different

from other forms of science?

Science is the way many of us go

about trying to discover truths about the

world we inhabit.

Youve probably

leaned in highschool that sci-

ence happens

when scientists

make observa-

tions, form hy-

potheses, design

experiments to

test those hy-

potheses, carry out

the experiments,

and

validate or invali-

date theories on

the basis of their

findings. This is a

good basic statement of what goes on. We

can add that science is empiricalthat itconcerns events and phenomena that

are observable. Note that observable is

not the same as visiblethere are ob-

servable but not visible things (X-rays),

but observable things are things that

you dont have to take another persons

word for: we can all agree that it is or isnt

there, through aided or unaided observation.

Another aspect of science that is

important is that it is more than facts and

observations. Theories are ways to organize

facts into formal, logical structures that per-

mit us to make predictions about new facts,

and then test them. Theories have explana-

tory power that mere facts do not have.

Observing lots of things falling on earth is

collecting factsno matter how many

things you see fall on earth, though, you

wont be able to say anything about how

things will fall on the moonunless you

have a theory of grav-ity. Theories are al-

ways works in pro-

gress. We dont think

of theories as being

right or wrong so

much as we think of

them as fitting the

facts more or less well.

Newtons theory of

mechanics wasnt

wrong, it just didnt

fit the data as well asquantum mechanics

did after Einstein

came along.

One last thing about

science: while it

may be about the

world, it is done by

people. You have

heard people talk

about being objec-

tive as opposed to

subjective. The idea

is that we take the

facts for what they

are, not what we want them to be. This is

the only sure path to scientific truth. This

aspiration to be completely

objective, is like scientific

theory-making in the sense

that we can never really quite

achieve perfection. Thomas

Kuhn, a phi-

losopher of

science, ar-

gued many

years ago

that science

is also aso-cialprocess

a process

that is,

whether we

like it or not,

affected by

the people

who do it. Now, this does not mean

that its all relative and there is no

such thing asright or

wrong, bet-

ter or worse

when it

comes to

scienceit

just means

that it is

sometimes

hard to tease

out the sub-

tle influences our humanness has on

everything we do, even science.

Of Sciences Hard, Soft and Easy

Page 3

Science is the way many of us go

about trying to discover truths about

the world we live in.

Science is empiricalit concerns

events or phenomena that are ob-

servable.

Observable is not the same as

visible. Observable things are those

you dont have to take another per-

sons word for: we can all agree it

is or isnt there, through aided or

unaided observation.

Science aspires to be completely

objective.

Science is a social processa proc-

ess that is, whether we like it or not,

affected by the people who do it.


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leave at the door of the scientific labo-

ratory. There is a lot of worthwhile

thinking to be done that is not science.

So what exactly are social

sciences? Perhaps the best way to

think about the social sciences is to

think of them as the study of the world

with people in it. There are other sci-

ences which would work just as well

on the moon as here on earth.

Physics and chemistry come tomindthe same principles we

use to understand motion on

earth apply equally well on the

moon. Minerals on the moon

contain elements from the same

periodic table that works here on terrafirma. A physicist or chemist could

find much to amuse him/herself on the

moon, and some have done just that.

One more last thing about sci-

ence: it is only one

way to encounter the

world we live in.

Truth can be sought

in other ways, such as

through painting,

literature, dance,

theater, spirituality,

sport, and the list goes

on. Are scientifictruths better than other

kinds of truths? Well,

most of us in the Western

tradition have decided that

if you want to learn about

the world we live in, science is the best

way to go about it. Other kinds of truths

is this way better than that, is this

act right or wrong we generally

But what would a psychologist, or soci-

ologist, or anthropologist, or economist,

or political scientist do on the moon?

Pretty much nothing, short of studying

any transplanted Earthlings nearby. So

the social sciences study social beings,

which here on Earth, means mainly hu-

mans. Not exclusively humansbecause

there other creatures which are social,

FROM N-RAYS TO COLD FUSION

Page 4


5/24

but not human. Ants and dogs are exam-

ples. Some psychologists even study other

creatures that arent particularly social,

but nevertheless offer opportunities to

learn more about humans. The common

thread is that social scientists are inter-ested in people as an ultimate object of

study.

Being interested in people has

advantages and disadvantages, from a

scientific point of view. One advantage is

their availabilitythe planet is crawling

with us. We have been paying lots of at-

tention to ourselves for a very long time,

and we keep fairly good records, so there

is a rich source of human activity to

study. Physical scientists sometimes find

themselves studying phenomena that are

very hard to observe and dont last long,

like the collisions of sub-atomic particles

or chemical reactions

under extreme tem-

perature conditions.

For the most part,

human behavior is all

around us all the

time. Some of us may

not behave well, but

we all behave a lot.

But the sheer

availability of human

behavior as data is

offset by some

real disadvan-

tages. For one

thing, doing

scientific ex-

periments in-volves achiev-

ing experimen-

tal control over

the phenomena

we are interested in studying. So, if we

want to understand the relations among

the pressure, volume, and temperature of

a confined gas (as a physical scientist

might) no one will object if we confine a

gas and heat it up. We can, with relative

ease, control all other variables and elimi-

nate any potential sources of experimental

error. We can measure the pressure as thetemperature rises. We can cool it off and

try again. And again. We can change

things a little and repeat under slightly

different conditions, if we choose to.

But what if someone made the

observation that there seems to be a lot

more violent crime when the weather is

hot, and hypothesized that increased am-

bient temperature makes people more

aggressive, and therefore more likely to

commit crimes? How can we learn more

about this interesting question? To beginwith, we really dont have control over

the weather. So theres a problem. But

even if we did, would it be rightorfairtopotential crime victims to go ahead and

raise the temperature if we could, just to

see the effects? How would you like it if

you got mugged one hot sunny day and

found out that pointy-headed evil scien-

tists had been cranking

up the temperature to

see what would hap-

pen, mugging-wise?

We have ethical obli-

gations to humans (andto animals, though any

people believe that the

nature of our obliga-

tions to animals is dif-

ferent) and so sometimes, even if it

is technically possible to achieve

experimental control, we cant do it

because we might hurt someone.

And, through application of some

of those non-scientific ways of

thinking we mentioned earlier(philosophy, ethics, morality) sci-

entists have decided that it is not

OK, under most circumstances, to

hurt someone (or risk hurting

someone) just to advance the state

of scientific knowledge.

Page 5

Scientists have decided that it is not OKto hurt someone (or risk hurting some-

one) just to advance the state of scientific

knowledge


6/24

made up of people. Summer is a time for

travel, vacations, and going to the beach

(maybe not so much in Colo-

rado). Is there any guarantee

that the people in Colorado

Springs will be the same ones

from week to week? Noin

fact we can be pretty sure that

they wont be. You may say

that as long as the processes

that cause people to come and

go from Colorado Springs are

randomthey dont show any

systematic variation that might

affect our measurementsthen we can

still do our study, though maybe with a

little less confidence than before. But

arent some of the factors that might

cause people to come and go non-

random? For example, lots ofcollege students start returning

to college towns, and twelve

hundred brand-new USAFA

cadets (not the rowdiest group

around) get added to the popu-

lation of the Springs in July.

They are not in much of a po-

sition to commit crimes, as it

happens, so they may skew

our data if our study happens

to occur in the first two weeks

of August. So we could shift it

to the third and fourth weeksbut then, all those Colorado

College and

UCCS students

will be returning

and we all

know what they

are like! (More

on prejudice and

stereotyping

later).

And then, of course we have

to take in to account thatpeoples activities change when the tem-

perature changes. They may be outside

more, gathered in larger groups when the

temperature goes up, conditions that

might themselves lead to an increase in

crime through factors that are accidentally

associated, orcorrelated, with higher

temperature. Maybe they drink more alco-

hol when it is hotand we know that

alcohol consumption is related to violence.

In colder weather more of them may have

colds, and who feels like committing a

crime when you have the sniffles? They

may even have air conditioning and heating

systems that blunt the effects of our manipu-

lation.

So, we

might throw

our hands up

and abandon

the idea of

testing this

hypothesis

in a city. Remember, after all, that the

physical scientists didnt try to test their

hypothesis about the pressure, volume, and

temperature of gases on a busy city street

with whatever materials came tohandthey did it in a labora-

tory, with carefully purified

materials, where they could

control all the relevant vari-

ables. We can do that too!

In a laboratory, we can make

sure we have the same people

from condition to condition

well pay college students a

paltry sum and get them to live

in our lab. Well control their

activities and manipulate the

temperature in the laboratory,and measurewhat? It seems

unlikely that any of them will

be committing any crimes in a

psychology laboratory. Theres

certainly not much worth steal-

ing in most of them, and hope-

fully there will be no violence.

We can use questionnaires toassess how violent, angry, or

aggressive peoplefeel, though

and this will give us an idea as to how tem-

perature affects behavior.

So lets pretend we could ap-

proach this problem the same way a

chemist would

approach the prob-

lem. We can treat

individual people

in a city like the

molecules of gas in

a confined space.

We can raise and

lower the tempera-

ture at will and

then see if there are

changes in the

crime rate. If we take a city like Colo-

rado Springs, Colorado, population

about 500,000, and study two weeks in

August for our experiment, we should,

by raising the average temperature by

say, ten degrees Fahrenheit during thesecond week, be able to compare the

number of crimes committed during the

second week with those committed

during the first week, and test our

hypothesis, right?

Not so fast. In the pressure-

volume-temperature experiment, we

were able to ensure that when we raised

and lowered the temperature, every-

thing was the same exceptthe tempera-

turesame gas, same vessel, same

environmental conditions, same peoplereading the same meter, etc. So, if we

observe a

difference in

pressure, we

can be pretty

sure that it

was caused

by the differ-

ence in tem-

perature. But

can we make

the same

kinds of guar-antees about Colorado Springs on any

two weeks in August? If crime rates

change, can we be sure that the change

was due to the heat?

The gas in the vessel is made

up of molecules. They are the exact

same ones under the heated and un-

heated conditions. Colorado Springs is

Page 6

Random shows no systematic variation

that may affect measurement.

Correlation measures the extent to

which two factors vary together, and thus

of how well ether factor predicts the

other.


7/24

But notice that we have now

been forced to move rather far from our

initial plan to study this phenomenon.

We have been forced to use a group of

college students instead of real people

because we can make sure they will bethe same ones in our study from condi-

tion to condition. We have been forced to

take them out of their natural habitat and

study them in a laboratory, where we can

control both the temperature and their

activities closely. And we have been

forced to measure something that is not

what we were originally interested in -

crimebut instead a substitute that we

hope is related

to the measure

we are inter-

ested in(questionnaire

results).

Now, as one

of my college

professors

was fond of

saying, you

might want to

ask yourselves

at this point

which of the

sciences arethe hard

ones, and

which are the

easy ones!

Of course Ive

chosen this example to make a point

(remember, science is done by people)

and there are other examples that could

be used to show how hard the

physical sciences are and how

easy the social sciences can be.

But I hope youll appreciate at

this point that the social sciences

are certainly no easier than the

physical sciences, and because of

the special ethical obligations we

have to our object of study, and

the difficulty this implies for

achieving good experimental con-

trol, the social sciences are beset

by methodological challenges that

make them very hard indeed.

Next time someone says, This

aint rocket science, you can answer, No

thisis really hard!

Moreover,

the social sciences

are not all thesame. Psycholo-

gists are interested

in a wide range of

behavior, including

the behavior of

individuals. So

doing experiments

in psychology may

sometimes be eas-

ier than doing

experiments in

sociology, where

there is less inter-est in people act-

ing alone and

more interest in

large aggrega-

tions of people. But psychologists are

also interested in group behavior, and so

labor under the same challenges as soci-

ologists. And sociologists are also inter-

ested in in-

teractions

between peo-

ple on a very

small scalemaking ex-

periments

possible.

Anthropolo-

gists, especially cultural anthropologists,

often interest themselves in events that

unfold over long periods of time, like the

development of societal institutions

under different cli-

matic and environ-

mental conditions, or

the development of

courtship and mar-

riage traditions in

societies with vary-

ing patterns of eco-

nomic activity. Such

interests require dif-

ferent methods than

are used in psychol-

ogy and sociology.

So lets learn a little

more about these three different, but re-

lated disciplines. Well begin by looking

at how and when these disciplines became

differentiated as distinct areas of study.

Up until the

18th and 19thcenturies,

scholars typi-

cally worked in

ways that today

would be re-

markable.

Scholars of the

seventeenth

century might well be schooled in a vari-

ety of disciplines. While the term is not

entirely historically accurate, the ideal of

the Renaissance man did apply to the

way scholarship and science were doneuntil relatively recently. Industrialization

and mass education have led to speciali-

zation, so that now we learn a great deal

about our chosen area and less about

other areas than was the case in the past.

One vestige of the old system is that most

of your professors with doctoral degrees

are Doctors of Philosophy (Ph.D.s) in

psychology, or physics, or what have you,

not Doctors of Psychology or Doctors

of Physics. This respects the broader

educational goals that were common in

the past.

When and how did the disci-

plines of psychology, sociology, and an-

thropology appear? What is the subject

matter of these three disciplines? What

kinds of methods do they employ? How

are people trained in these disciplines,

and what do they do? These are the ques-

tions we will try to answer in the next

section.

Page 7

Psychologists are interested in a wide

range of behavior, including the behav-ior of individuals and groups.

Sociologists are interested in group

behavior, but are also interested in in-

teractions between people on a very

small scale.

Anthropologists especially cultural

anthropologists, often interest them-

selves in events that develop over long

periods of time, like the development

of societal institutions.


8/24

The best way to summarize the

history of psychology is to say that peo-

ple have been doing psychology for along time, maybe as long as there have

been people, but weve only been doing

it a certain way since 1879. This chap-

ters first author, a psychologist, loves

psychology because it allows him to

make a living doing something he finds

intensely interesting and exciting: think-

ing about what it means to be human,

what makes him and the people around

him tick, why his boss and his dog and

whoever else do the things they do. It is

in that sense that

psychology is as old

as the speciesour

oldest written re-

cords contain sug-

gestions that people

were trying to ex-

plain the world, and

their place in it,

from the very begin-

ning. We are in-

tensely curious crea-

tures. People some-

times refer to sharks

as eating machines

creatures designed mainly to swimaround and eat things. Well, we humans

might be described as learning ma-

chines we are designed to learn and

adapt and learn more. Thats what we

do.

Before (and

after) psychology was a

word (it became a word

in Europe in the 16th cen-

turyits not clear ex-

actly who was the first to

use it) much of what wewould now think of as

psychology was done by

philosophers. The

Greeksthe pre-

Socratics, Plato/Socrates,

and Aristotle are best known in the

Western tradition, but of course there

were many others in Asia and in the

Moslem world thinking about the nature

of human nature. Check out the Timeline

on the wall on the 5th floor.

We mark 1879 (the year

Wilhelm Wundt founded his laboratory

in Leipzig, Germany) as the beginning

of scientific psychology. This is of

course an arbitrary choice, because the

appearance of psychology as a science

was the result of a set of processes that

were set in motion hundreds of years

earlier. The gradual separation of reli-

gious and secular power, the rise of hu-

manism in the Renaissance, the work of

the philoso-

pher ReneDescartes,

developing

conceptions of

humanness

during the

Enlighten-

ment, the de-

velopment of

new ideas

about the ori-

gin of the earth

and the crea-

tures on it in the 19th century, these

trends did not make the appearance of

psychology as we know it today inevita-

ble, but did make it possible.

At the dawn of the twentieth

century, when

modern scientific

psychology was

in its infancy, it

was novel, excit-

ing, daring, and

promising to

apply scientific

methods to thestudy of people,

as if people were

no different from

rocks and gi-

raffes and gases in

confined spaces. Prior to that time we

were SPECIALit was considered at

worst blasphemous and at best silly to

treat people the same as other objects on

the planet. And when the step was taken,

when psychologists

decided that science

was to be the orga-nizing principle of

the discipline, not

everyone was sure it

was the right way to

go, or that a disci-

pline organized this

way had much pros-

pect of success.

William James, an amazingly accom-

plished man sometimes referred to as the

Father of American Psychology, was

himself quite skep-

tical. James said

that we should go

ahead and try to do

the business of

psychology as sci-

entists, that we had

to act as if this en-

terprise would be

successful, but that

psychology was at

that time merely the hope of a science.

.

A hundred-and-some years on,

how are we doing? Did it work? What

verdict would James render if he couldbe here today? This course will not be

enough to equip you with the means to

answer that question. Many of us have

been at this for decades, and we dont

have the means. But one thing is certain:

psychology has come a long way. Psy-

chologists have made amazing strides in

understanding what makes us tick and

in helping those in need. Our scientific

approach has allowed us to jettison some

old ideas that everyone knew were

true that turned out to be wrong, such as

the once common idea that schizophre-nia was caused by bad parenting. We

now know it is a biological disorder, and

can treat it with drugs discovered by

scientists from many disciplines and

continually refined by psychologists who

work as neuroscientists. Psychology is

far from perfect, and none of us can pre-

dict its future. But this relatively undisci-

plined discipline is vibrant and stimulat-

ing more than a century after adopting

the mantle of science.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTPSYCHOLOGY

Page 8


9/24

As we have seen, there is no

one person who invented science or,

more correctly, the scientific method.

However, during the sixteenth and sev-enteenth centuries, a number of thinkers

and tinkerers in the West developed the

ideas and methods that

laid the foundations

for modern science in

the disciplines of phys-

ics, biology, human

anatomy, and chemis-

try. An Englishman,

Sir Francis Bacon, is

the scholar usually

credited with identify-

ing the basic compo-nents of science

logic and observation

and ordering them in

a sequence that led practitioners to for-

mulate theories and then test them.

A number

of scholars toyed

with the idea of ap-

plying the method

that had wrought

new understandings

of the physicalworld to the social

one as well. If the

physical world fol-

lowed discoverable

natural laws, surely

the social one did too. In Europe a

Frenchman, August Comte, thought so.

We probably wouldnt even mention his

name these days had he not proposed a

name for the endeavor in the 1830s

Sociology. For, although Comte (who is

also remembered as an important phi-

losopher) thought doing science was a

great idea, he himself never did it, devot-

ing his time instead to increasingly weird

activities in his self-appointed role as

sociologys high priest he was pretty

well convinced that he was the person

with the first and last word on how

French societyshouldoperate. Others

writing at the time also were given to

pontificating. Karl Marx, father of the

conflict school of thought in sociology,

for example, was both a politi-

cal activist and a social theorist.

During the 1840s, the German

firebrand passed out copies ofhis Communist Manifesto to

factory workers, urging them

with the words, Workers of

the world unite, you have

nothing to lose but your

chains.

Many of the early practitioners

of sociology in America also were re-

formers, but they usually thought it was

a good idea to really study social condi-

tions. The English writer Harriet Mar-

tineau, writing at about the same timeas Comte, told of her travels across

America and compared the actual

workings of U.S. society with the ideals

on which it was founded. In her travels,

she made a point of talking to people in

all walks of lifecan you picture a hard-

of-hearing woman in corset and

hoopskirt

conversing

with factory

workers or

field hands

on a planta-tion, strain-

ing to catch

every word

with an ear

trumpet?

She explained

the whys-and-

wherefores in

How to ObserveMorals and Manners. In a similar spirit,

historian and self-proclaimed sociolo-

gist, Albion Small, founded the first-ever

Department of Sociology in 1892. He

liked to stand at his office window at the

University of Chicago and point out to

the teeming metropolis. Go, he would

tell his faculty and students, your labo-

ratory is out there. One more example

will suffice. In 1899, historian W.E.B.

DuBois published The Philadelphia Ne-

gro: A Social Study, documenting the

pairing, under slavery, between male

slave owner and female slave, and, later,

among intermarrying blacks

and whites despite miscegena-

tion laws. Both arrangements

revealed the gap between socialrealities and racially-inspired

statutes which assumed clear-

cut racial categories. In 1903,

Dubois penned an immensely

popular work, The Souls of

Black Folk, an essay on the

strange double consciousness

that stems from living in an America in

which slavery and then segregation were

legal entities.

Sociology as a full-blown sci-

ence, however, got its definitive start

with a single, monumental work, Sui-

cide, written in 1897 by a French profes-

sor, Emile Durkheim.For sociologists, the book is still worth-

while, if not downright

required, readingto

this day, no card-

carrying sociologist

would dare admit that

he or she had only casu-

ally sifted through its

pages. Since the French

were avid collectors of

birth and death records, Durkheim,

working from his office at the Sorbonne

University in Paris, had access to a gold-mine of data. In addition, he had a the-

ory about suicide that focused on social

relationships among people, or the

dearth of them, rather than upon the psy-

chological states of individuals. Social

phenomena, he argued, beg for explana-

tions grounded in social, not exclusively

psychological, structures.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTSOCIOLOGY

Page 9


10/24


11/24

in the 1870s. Billed as ethnological ex-

positions, Negro villages, or sometimes

just the subhuman section of a zoo, ex-

hibits in Paris, London, Antwerp, Ham-

burg, and New

York City each

drew hundreds of

thousands of visi-

tors. ParisJardin

Zoologique dAc-

climatation, and

the 1878 and 1989

World Fairs in

Paris, staged expo-

sitions of people

from French colo-

nies in caged, natu-

ral settings. In the

U.S., the Cincin-

nati Zoo featured a 100-person Sioux village

for 3 months in 1896.

Another popular at-

traction in the U.S.

was a Pygmy from the

Congo, then a colony

of Belgium, by the

name of Ota Benga.

He was featured at the

1904 St. Louis World Fair and, in 1906,

over protests by a local African-

American minister, displayed in New

York Citys Bronx Zoo in a cage with anorangutan.

We have taken some space to

set up this scenario because early anthro-

pology grew from this fascination with

exotic peoples. Initially, two contrasting

positions

emerged. One

argued that all

peoples and their

societies could

move from the

simple to the com-plexsome were

just doing so more

speedily than oth-

ers. The second

position was more

sinisterit posited that primitive socie-

ties were primitive because of the primi-

tive nature of the people in them. The

idea was that people were limited by

their nature to whatever state of civili-

zation or barbarism in which

they were found. Among the first

to develop the latter position was

the Frenchman, Arthur

de Gobineau. Writingin the 1850s, he put

forth his ideas inAn

Essay on the Inequality

of the Human Races.

Simply put, Gobineau

argued that the racial

characteristics of a peo-

ple define the type of

society and culture they pro-

duce. As such, white,

yellow, and black races

represent a hierarchy of so-

cial possibilities, with the

white race being the most superior.Further, he warned that race-mixing

would lead to disastrous results. Books

like Goibineaus were very popular.

For instance, although many U.S.

whites in the South felt that the justifi-

cation for slavery could be found in the

Bible, they took additional comfort in

the scientific racism of Gobineau and

others.

The Englishman E.B. Tylor

disagreed. Considered the founder of

social anthropology, Tylor never ob-

tained a university degree. However,

his travels to Central America and en-

counters with the Anahuac Indians of

Mexico led to a life-long vocation as a

self-taught ethnologist, i.e., one who

studies a particular society and com-

pares its features with those of othersocieties. In a series of books, culmi-

nating in 1871 with one entitledPrimi-

tive Culture, Tylor argued that humans

in all cultures have the same basic ca-

pabilities. Peoples in very different

societies hence often find similar solu-

tions to problems independently. For

example, peoples in the Fertile Crescent

present-day Iraq and Syriawere the

first to develop a written alphabet, but

the Maya of present-day

Mexico, Guatemala and

Belize were one of only

a handful of societies to

do so separately on their

own (there are thou-

sands of languages, but

only a few alphabets

people in most societies

simply have borrowed

someone elses alphabet

for their language).

Primitive societies, he

believed, represent what advanced socie-

ties once were like, and progress from

primitive to advanced is possible. In his

view, the key difference among the types

of societies lay in the level of formal

education.

On the

American front,

similar arguments

were made by

Lewis Henry

Morgan, who was

university

trained, though in

law. Morgan had

befriended Indi-

ans from the Iro-

quois and Seneca tribes and assistedthem in the legal defense of their land

claims. In his interactions with these

tribes, he began to see intriguing cultural

similarities and differences which helped

shape his unity of origin of man hy-

pothesis. Kinship terminology espe-

cially caught his attention. While the

concept of family is universal, different

cultures might label and define relation-

ships among family members differ-

ently. For the Iroquois, for example, a

mothers sister is like another mother

and should be called such, while a fa-thers sister is similar to an aunt. Yet, he

also noticed that seemingly divergent

cultures can share a similar concept of

family structure.

Morgan extended this hypothe-

sis in his 1877 book,Ancient Society:Researches in the Lines of Human Pro-

gress, where he laid out a unilinear the-

ory of evolution, i.e., one that posits set

Page 11


12/24

stages of development through which

all societies will passin his terms,

from savagery to barbarism to civiliza-

tion. Technology, in his view, was the

driving force behind

social changethe in-vention of the bow and

arrow for hunting, met-

alworks for hoeing and

plowing, and the alpha-

bet and writing for civi-

lized ways. Indian so-

cieties, in fact, already

ran the gamut of these

stages (remember the

Maya and their alphabet?). The meth-

odology underlying Morgans claims is

intensive field workhe advocated

studying native peoples in their home

settings, just as a biologist might studyanimals in their natural habitat

(Morgan, it turns out, also published a

study of the American beaver using that

strategy). While Morgans efforts were

an attempt to point to the shared hu-

manity of all cultures, his theory was

recognized as weak for its emphasis on

material culture. The Aztecs, with their

complex culture and elaborate market

and monetary systems would, according

to Morgans model, never rise to civili-

zation because they had minimal access

to metal for tools.

Just as Durkheim helped estab-lish sociology as a science, so Franz

Boas did

almost

singlehand-

edly for An-

thropology.

German-born

and educated

(his PhD

actually was

in physics),

Boas traveled

to Baffin

Island in far northwest Canada in the

early 1880s as a geographer for the Brit-

ish government. There he discovered his

anthropologist self doing fieldwork with

Eskimos and then the Kwakiutl Indians

in the Vancouver area. He moved to

New York City in the late 1890s as Cu-

rator of the American Museum of Natu-

ral History, which featured exhibits of

Native American tribes, and as Professor

of Anthropology at Columbia University.

In 1911 he published a summary of his

thinking and a blueprint for Anthropology

in The Mind of Primitive Man. Taking on

the de Gobineaus of the world, Boas

argued that the concept of race was use-less in explaining the diversity of human

societies. The human mind, he con-

tended, does not explain variations in

society and culture. It is the other way

aroundhuman

capabilities and be-

havior are conse-

quences of having

learned the particu-

lar cultures into

which groups of

people were born.

Finally, he provided

Anthropology with a

methodological dic-

tum: ethnologists

must study societies

from the point of view

of those being studied, be proficient in the

native language, and employ those being

studied when possible as informants or

even co-investigators.

1890s, we can be confident

that the idea of including

the word behavior in the

opening sentence did not

occur to him. To

psychologists then,

and to most people

now, psychology

ought to be the

study of what goes

on in my

head. But

in the earlyyears of

psychology,

it quickly

became ap-

parent that

there is really only

one person who

KNOWS for sure

what is going on

Many introductory

psychology books a few

years ago would have begun

with a sentence something

like, Psychology is the sci-

ence of behavior. Youll

notice that yours begins

with, Psychology is the

scientific study of behavior

and mental processes. The

obvious difference is the

addition of the term, mental

processes. The story ofhow this change occurred is too long to

recount here in detail, but a thumbnail

sketch will help you to frame some of

the issues and controversies you will

encounter as you go through the course.

When William James was writing the

first psychology textbook in English

(thePrinciples of Psychology) in the

your headand that would be you.

Wundt (remember, the fellow who

founded the first psychology laboratory)

developed a method he called introspec-

tion. This

involved

exposing

himself and

others to

carefully

produced,

repeatable

sensoryexperiences

(flashes of

light, tick-

ing sounds,

and the

like) and carefully thinking about his

inner experience of these events.

Wundts observations then formed the

basis for his theories of the elements of

SUBJECT MATTER & METHODPSYCHOLOGY

Page 12


13/24

mental life and their combinations and

propertiesa kind of mental chemis-

try. The problem was, only Wundt

could see the chemicalsand if you

didnt happen to see them the same way

he did (since the authority of professorsthen was FAR greater than it is now) that

meant you were, well, wrong. This is not

a club a lot of people are going to want

to join, and psychologists soon began to

try other methods and approaches. The

one that had the most impact on the

STUDY of psychology was the approach

known as behav-

iorism. I say the

study of psychol-

ogy because the

PRACTICE of

psychology, thatpart of psychol-

ogy done by cli-

nicians and

therapists, was

most heavily influ-

enced by psycho-

analysis (Freudian

psychology) in the

early days.

As long as

we have run across

Freud, it is worth

pausing briefly to discuss his contribu-

tions to psychology. One of us

(Mastroianni) is a psychologist, and al-

ways asks his students in this class to

name one famous psychologist on

Lesson 1. The overwhelming

response is Sigmund Freud. Like it or

not, Freud is the face of psychology to

popular culture. Everyone has heard of

him, and many books, plays and films

use elements of Freudian psychology.

Many students are surprised, then, when

his psychology receives only a brief

mention in most introductory courses.Freud contributed mainly to clinical psy-

chology, and for a host of reasons,

Freuds approach is much less influential

among modern clinicians today than it

was a hundred years ago. But Freud is an

important historical figure: he, along

with Darwin, radically altered our con-

ception of ourselves, and in so doing

earned the admiration of some and the

disdain of others.

On the scien-

tific side of things, psy-

chology became domi-

nated by Behaviorism.As articulated by John

Watson, behaviorism

took as its guiding prin-

ciple the idea that the

ONLY legitimate object

of study in psychology

was behavior. Science

deals with ob-

servable events; mental events are

not observable; therefore, mental

events cannot be part of a scien-

tific psychology. That simple idea

dominated American psychologyuntil a few decades ago. The proc-

ess that would result in the term

mental processes reappear-

ing in textbooks didnt really

begin until the 1950s, and

gathered steam in the 1970s

and later. This happened for a

few reasons: a growing realiza-

tion that a psychology stripped

of all discussion of mental

events is not all that interest-

ing, really, and has a kissing-

your-sister (or brother) kind of

effect on most people passionate about

understanding human nature. And, the

invention of high-speed digital com-

puters appeared to offer a way out of the

behaviorist

box: a way to

keep the inter-

esting stuff in

psychology,

but do it in a

scientifically

respectable

way. After all,

computershave memo-

ries, and do

something that looks like a

lot like thinking, and there is

nothing unobservable about

them, so why cant we apply

the same methods to people?

Thus was born the cognitive

approach to the study of

psychology. And the methods we use in

psychology today are the methods of sci-

ence, applied broadly to both inner mental

events and publically observable behav-

ior.

Scientific methods include ex-

perimental, correlational, and observa-

tional approaches. Weve already encoun-

tered the fundamentals of the experimen-

tal approach. This approach involves the

purposeful and systematic manipulation

of an independent variable (such as am-

bient temperature) and the measurement

of a dependent variable (such as the rate

of violent crime). The groups defined by

the manipulation of the independent vari-

able are often refrred to as the control

group and the experimental group. Theexperimental group is normally exposed

to some treatment, such as raising the

ambient temperature by ten degrees Fahr-

enheit, while the control group is exposed

to normal temperatures. Subjects are ran-

domly sampled from the population

and assigned to the groups in the study,

to avoid biases arising from non-

representative samples.

Because people are exquisitely

sensitive to very subtle signals from one

another, and can be deeply affected by

their beliefs and expectations, we usually

conceal the nature of the experimental

treatment (am I in the control group or the

experimental group?) from the subject (a

Page 13
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14/24

Measures of Central Tendency1.0 Describe the three measures of centraltendency, and tell which is most affected by

extreme scores.The next step is to summarize the data using somemeasure of central tendency, a single score thatrepresents a whole set of scores. The simplest

measure is the mode, the most frequently occurringscore or scores. The most commonly reported is the

mean, or arithmetic averagethe total sum of all

the scores divided by the number of scores. On adivided highway, the median is the middle. So, too,

with data: The medianis the midpointthe 50thpercentile. If you arrange all the scores in order

from the highest to the lowest, half will be abovethe median and half will be below it.

Fig. 1.10 A skewed distribution This graphic representation of the distribution of incomes illus-

trates the three measures of central tendencymode, median, and mean. Note how just a few high in-

comes make the meanthe fulcrum point that balances the incomes above and belowdeceptivelyhigh.

In the United States, advocates and critics described the 2003 tax cut with different statistics, bothtrue. The White House explained that 92 million Americans will receive an average tax cut of $1083.Critics agreed, but also noted that 50 million taxpayers got no cut, and half of the 92 million who did

benefit received less than $100 (Krugman, 2003). Mean and median tell different true stories.

Measures of central tendency neatly summarizedata. But consider what happens to the mean

when a distribution is lopsided or skewed. With

income data, for example, the mode, median, andmean often tell very different stories (Figure

1.10). This happens because the mean is biased

by a few extreme scores. When Microsoft founder

Bill Gates sits down in an intimate cafe, its aver-age (mean) patron instantly becomes a billionaire.Understanding this, you can see how a British

newspaper could accurately run the headlineIncome for 62% Is Below Average (Waterhouse,1993). Because the bottom halfof British income

earners receive only a quarterof the national in-

come cake, most British people, like most peopleeverywhere, make less than the mean.

Measures of Variation1.0 | Describe two measures of variation.Knowing the value of an appropriate measure of central ten-dency can tell us a great deal. But it also helps to knowsomething about the amount ofvariation in the datahowsimilar or diverse the scores are. Averages derived fromscores with low variability are more reliable than averagesbased on scores with high variability. Consider a basketball

player who scored between 13 and 17 points in each of herfirst 10 games in a season. Knowing this, we would be moreconfident that she would score near 15 points in her nextgame than if her scores had varied from 5 to 25 points.The average person has one ovary and one testicle.

The rangeof scoresthe gap between the lowest and high-est scoresprovides only a crude estimate of variation be-

cause a couple of extreme scores in an otherwise uniformgroup, such as the $475,000 and $710,000 incomes in Fig-ure 1.10, will create a deceptively large range.

The more useful standard for measuring howmuch scores deviate from one another is the

standard deviation. It better gauges

whether scores are packed together or dis-persed, because it uses information from eachscore (Table 1.4). (The computation assem-

bles information about how much individualscores differ from the mean.) If your collegeor university attracts students of a certain

ability level, their intelligence scores will have

a smaller standard deviation than the onefound in the more diverse community popula-tion outside your school.
http://top.define%28%27mode%27%29/http://top.define%28%27mode%27%29/http://top.define%28%27mean%27%29/http://top.define%28%27mean%27%29/http://top.define%28%27median%27%29/http://top.define%28%27median%27%29/http://top.opensupp%28%27figure%27%2C1%2C10%29/http://top.opensupp%28%27figure%27%2C1%2C10%29/http://top.opensupp%28%27figure%27%2C1%2C10%29/http://top.opensupp%28%27figure%27%2C1%2C10%29/http://top.opensupp%28%27figure%27%2C1%2C10%29/http://top.define%28%27range%27%29/http://top.define%28%27range%27%29/http://top.opensupp%28%27figure%27%2C1%2C10%29/http://top.opensupp%28%27figure%27%2C1%2C10%29/http://top.opensupp%28%27figure%27%2C1%2C10%29/http://top.define%28%27standarddeviation%27%29/http://top.define%28%27standarddeviation%27%29/http://top.opensupp%28%22table%22%2C1%2C4%29/http://top.opensupp%28%22table%22%2C1%2C4%29/http://top.opensupp%28%22table%22%2C1%2C4%29/http://top.define%28%27standarddeviation%27%29/http://top.opensupp%28%27figure%27%2C1%2C10%29/http://top.opensupp%28%27figure%27%2C1%2C10%29/http://top.define%28%27range%27%29/http://top.opensupp%28%27figure%27%2C1%2C10%29/http://top.opensupp%28%27figure%27%2C1%2C10%29/http://top.opensupp%28%27figure%27%2C1%2C10%29/http://top.define%28%27median%27%29/http://top.define%28%27mean%27%29/http://top.define%28%27mode%27%29/


15/24

so-called single-blind experiment). We

sometimes even conceal this information

from the experimenter, as wellthis is

often done in drug studies, where sub-

jects are given an experimental drug and

a placebocrating a double-blind ex-

periment. This is not done because we

are afraid experimenters will cheat and

tell the subjects to produce the outcome

the experimenter desires; rather, it is

dine because we recognize that humans

are built to transmit and receive signals

and information from each other, often

without any awareness that we are doing

so.

Correlational methods identify

statistical associations between variables

(most usually, two variables, though

there are techniques for measuring asso-ciations among many variables simulta-

neously). Correlations can be positive

(ranging from 0 to +1), where in-

creases in one variable are associated

with increases in the other; negative,

(ranging from 0 to -1) where increases

in one variable are associated with

decreases in the other; or can be un-

correlated (near 0) where there is no

systematic relationship between the

two variables. Height and weight, then,

are (positively correlated, negatively

correlated, uncorrelated)? Does this

mean that if adults eat more they will

get taller? No. And this illustrates the

crucial difference between experimen-

tation and correlation: experiments can

help us identify causal relationships,

whereas correlational methods only

identify associations. Surveys are fre-

quently used in correlational research.

Do you see why? Youve probably

taken a lot of surveys, and have noticed

that some are better than others. What

makes a good survey?

Observational approaches in-

volve, well, observing. These methods

can produce valuable insights into the

behavior of those being observed, andoften lead to the development of hy-

potheses that may be tested in experi-

ments or ex-

plored in cor-

relational

studies. Ob-

servation is

more than just

watching,

however:

behaviors of interest must be carefully

defined, using operational definitions;

systematically recorded, and the results

compared against those of other observ-

ers to ensure that no individual biases

in observing or recording have affected

the results.

While most psychological

methods involve studying groups of

people, the case study is also used

sometimes. This method involves the

intensive study of a single individual,

often relying primarily on observation

but sometimes including experimental

interventions

as well. Such

studies are

most appropri-

ate when thephenomena of

interest are

especially rare

or idiosyn-

cratic. Can you

think of an

example where

such a method

might be appropriate? (HINT: Wap-

ners on at 5).

SUBJECT MATTER & METHOD

SOCIOLOGYranging from the statistical analysis of

survey data to in-depth descriptions of

social settings. How did all this come

about?

The short story is that sociology

in America began to chart a course of its

own apart from that in Europe during the

1930s. At this time, the developing

model in psychology (Behaviorism) was,

Stimulus [black box] Behavior,

where psychologists settled

on directly observable stimuliand behaviors while bypass-

ing whirrings within the

black box, the not-directly-

observable workings of the

mind. The black box, how-

ever, was precisely the focus

of University of Chicago jack

-of-all tradessociologist,

philosopher, and psycholo-

gistGeorge Herbert Mead. What

Mead wanted to know was, what is

going on WITHIN the black box?

This question led him to study how

small humansinfants and children

acquired language, a sense of self,

and, ultimately, the wherewithal to

become functioning members of a

society. Because of its emphasis on

the role of language, Meads ap-

proach is called symbolic inter-

actionism, and remains withconflict theory (from Marx) and

functionalism (from Durkheim)

one of the three major theoretical

paradigms in sociology. Inci-

dentally, Mead himself, suffer-

ing from a bit of writers block,

never put his thoughts down in a

comprehensive, written

form. So, after his death, his

We just learned above that psy-

chology is the science of behavior and

mental processes. So what is sociology

about? For starters, most sociologists

would clarify that

their field is the

study ofhumanbehavioras it oc-

curs in groups.

Although some in

sociobiology, a

disputed subfield ofsociology, study

nonhumans who

live in complex societies, like ants, for

example, the human groupings could be

anything from couples to gangs to formal

organizations to whole societies or even

the whole system of currently existing

societies. Further, practitioners of the

field use a variety of research methods,

Page 15


16/24

students compiled and edited

his theory into a single volume,

Mind, Self, and Society. The

methodology associated with

this approach typically details

what individual social actorsare thinking, feeling, and ex-

periencing as they go about the

business of daily life.

At about the same

time, a young Harvard doctoral

student in sociology, Robert

Merton, published a paper

which would later culminate in

his 1948 book, Social Theory

and Social Structure. Probably

the single most frequently read

and trans-lated-into-

other-

languages book in

Sociology,

Social Theory andSocial Structure rede-

fined functionalism

in American social

science. Durkheims

functionalism had

proceeded by asking

of any social arrange-

ment, what purpose does it serve? This

query unfortunately created a kind of cir-

cularity of reasoning, for it implied that if

particular social arrangement did not

serve some important

purpose, it would not

exist. For example,

war is a persistent fea-

ture of human socie-

ties, so it must fulfill

some important system

needs for a society or

it would not be so

prevalent. Merton

suggested instead thefollowing question,

what consequences

does the arrangement

have? This question

directs the analyst to

look for positive and negative conse-

quences, plus ones that are intended

(manifest functions) and ones that were

unanticipated (latent functions).

Now try Mertons suggestion on

the question, why is war a persis-

tent feature of human societies?

What positive and negative conse-

quences did you come up with?What manifest and latent func-

tions? By the way, we can make a

bridge to conflict theory by adding

the question, positive and negative in

its consequences, for whom?

Associated with this refocusing

of functionalism is the emphasis

on social arrangements, i.e.,

social structures. It is possible

to devise strategies for studying,

in a scientific sense, whole so-

cieties or systems of societies.

Merton, however, argued that it

is best at this

time to place our eggs

in smaller baskets, or,

what he called

theories of the mid-

dle range. Every

society, for instance,

has a kinship and

family system and

struggles with issues

of deviance and so-

cial control, but there

is tremendous varia-tion in how societies

do these. By focus-

ing on these aspects

of a soci-

ety, Mer-

ton con-

tended, sociologists can de-

velop testable theories which

then can be validated with

data.

We will mention one more

sociologist from this era.Some contemporary sociol-

ogy is strongly quantitative in

its orientation and methods, a

characteristic we can trace to

the influence of Paul Lazars-

feld. An Austrian-born and educated

sociologist (his PhD actually was in

mathematics), Lazarsfeld escaped the

rise of Nazism to eventually assume pro-

fessorships at Princeton and later Colum-

bia Universities. An entrepreneurial

sort, he pioneered what at the time was

derisively called administrative re-

search, that is, studies paid for by com-mercial interests. At least he was big-

time about ithis first efforts in the U.S.

were funded by the Rockefeller Founda-

tion. His interest in the effects of mass

media on decision-making led him to

design a study of the 1936 presidential

electionand the field of public opinion

polling was off and running. Data de-

rived from surveys of this sort lent them-

selves to sophisticated statistical analy-

ses, thereby sparking the rise of not only

survey research but of reason analysis,

quantitative sociology, and mathematical

modeling.

Page 16


17/24

Anthropologists approach the

study of humanity through the lens of

culture. For this, we can thankFranz Boas. Central to his

perspective was the idea that

there was a virtual smorgas-

bord (all-you-can-eat buffet?)

of distinct cultures out there,

rather than societies that could

be rated in terms of they

where fell on some continuum

of how civilized they were.

Also, he insisted on studying

each culture on its own terms,

and waves of Boas students took to

the field with this mandate. Their

work has enshrined culture as the key to

understanding most anything that hu-

mans do.

At its simplest, culture is every-

thing humans do that is not directly re-

lated to survival. All humans need food,

shelter and companionship. Culture is

HOW people fulfill those basic needs.

Consider that all humans need food. Yet

every culture

defines what is

delicious, in-

edible, appro-priate or even

morally wrong

to eat. Ameri-

cans eat tre-

mendous

amounts of

processed foods that contain ingredients

that we have a hard time even pronounc-

ing, and French people, with their em-

phasis on local, fresh and home-made

foods would be horrified to consume

some of them. Yet, the French eat horse-

meat, considered so taboo tobe inedible for many Ameri-

cans. What, then, makes an

energy drink with its color

not found in nature more or

less palatable than a grass fed

mammal? Culture.

Culture shapes the

human worldview. It defines

the values, beliefs and com-

mon sense of a communitys members.

In fact, when humans see a situation or

action as so utterly logicalthat it need not be explained

because in fact it might be

very difficult to explain the

behavior logicallythey

simply refer to common

sense. Someone might as-

sert that it is simply com-

mon sense that one should

not wear white after Labor

Day. Is this logical? Does

this have any basis in the

natural world, such as prevent-

ing people from getting lost in

snow? Clearly, human survival is not

tied to packing ones white clothes away

in early September,

yet the common

sense of this action

is still taken for

granted in parts of

the United States.

Perhaps this is be-

cause white clothing

is symbolicit

represents summer,

and by Labor Day,

summer is seen asfinished. In turn,

white clothing becomes a misplaced or

misused symbol.

Symbols are the core of culture.

The meaning of these symbols is shared

among community members. A symbol

is anything which is assigned a meaning

that does not logically follow. There is

nothing inherently logical to the choice

of green as representing go and red as

representing stop. Instead, at some

time these colors gained these meanings

and the meanings wereaccepted (unconsciously),

shared and passed on to

subsequent generations.

A symbol, though, need

not be visual. Spoken

language is symbolic, as

there is usually no logical

connection between the

sounds of the words hu-

mans use for a concept or object, and

the object or concept itself. Culture,

and the symbols it is composed of,would have no meaning if it was not

shared. There cannot be a culture of

one.

Interestingly, a number of

Boas most visible and important stu-

dents were women. For example, one

of Boas most well-known students was

Ruth Benedict, who obtained her PhD

under his tutelage at Columbia Univer-

sity and joined its

faculty in 1923.

Her 1934 book,

Patterns of Cul-

ture, described her

fieldwork among

Pueblo Indians in

the American

southwest and

several available

ethnographies by

other anthropolo-

gists. It also contained her famous dic-

tum that the culture of a people could

be thought of as their distinctive per-

sonality traits writ large (for example,

restraint in both personal and public

matters among the Pueblo). During theSecond World War, Benedict prepared

her second monumental work, The

Chrysanthemum and the Sword. Since

it was not feasible for Benedict to do

fieldwork in Japan, her study of Japa-

nese culture was based upon an analysis

of Japanese literature and other arti-

facts, an illustration of doing

anthropology at a distance.

As well-known as Ruth Bene-

dict was, she was not the most famous

graduate student to come out of the

Anthropology program at Columbia,especially if the designation famous

is taken to include notoriety in the pub-

lic domain. That distinction goes to

Margaret Mead, a student of both Bene-

dict and Boas. Her greatest work, Com-

ing of Age in Samoa, the best-selling

Anthropology book of all time. How-

ever, her work, while influential, was

not without controversy (see box).

SUBJECT MATTER & METHODANTHROPOLOGY

Page 17


18/24

WHAT DO SOCIAL SCI-

ENTISTS ACTUALLY DO?

PSYCHOLOGISTS

There are two main kinds of

psychologistspractitioners

(clinicians and therapists) and

scientists. They are trained

Page 18

COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA

What was Coming of Age in Samoa about? Mead studied adolescents in Samoa guided by the

question, Is the angstof adolescence, known to us in America as a period of difficult adjustments, a phe-nomenon of adolescence itself or a product of how we do adolescence in industrial societies? To answer

the question, Mead lived in a small village in Samoa and, over a period of time, observed and interviewed

sixty-some girls and young women between the ages of 9 and 20. Her conclusion: adolescence was a verydifferent phenomenon in Samoa than in the U.S. She characterized adolescence there as a sunny, ratherthan turbulent, phase of life among young, female Samoans, marked especially by a casual attitude towardsex. Sexual relations, Mead contended, were enjoyed with many partners without jealousy. Conse-

quently, young Samoan women often deferred marriage for several years before settling down, marrying,and having children. The implication was that adolescence, and its related norms, are culturally deter-mined rather than naturally occurring. Some would consider Meads claims pretty hot stuff, even today.Can you imagine the stir they caused back in the 1920s? Even today the book is very controversial, and isregarded by some as dangerously undermining the basis of morality.

But Meads work also generated controversy within anthropology. A recent critique by Austra-lian anthropologist, Derek Freeman, is illustrative. Freeman, who did fieldwork in another part of Samoa

in his case, among Samoan men, who accepted him as a chiefargued that Meads findings did not jibe

with his observations. He noted that Samoan men he interviewed valued virginity in women they mightmarry and that sexual jealousies were rather common. He suggested that Mead had interviewed too small

and restricted a sample and, further, the girls had told Mead essentially what she wanted to hearthat sexwas carefree and that women occupied a more dominant place in Samoan society than they actually did.

Which viewpoint is more correct? In anthropology, as in other disciplines, it takes time and pa-

tience to resolve these differences. People must put aside deeply held, very emotional culturally-

determined attitudes of their own about sex to see another cultures practices objectively. From N -rays to

sex among the Samoans, scientists struggle to see through the filter of their own humanity and view the

world as it is.


19/24

There are two main kinds of

psychologistspractitioners (clinicians

and therapists) and scientists. They aretrained differently, and typically work in

different settings: practitioners in clinics

and private practice, scientists in univer-

sities and laboratories. Thats NOT to

say that no

practitioners are

accomplished

scientists, or

that all scien-

tists are insensi-

tive eggheads.

The boundaries

overlap, and weall share a lot of

common

ground. We

should also

mention that there are many people who

are often lumped together as

shrinks (clinicians or therapists) in the

public eye who are not psychologists at

all. These include psychiatrists, who are

medical doctors who complete a psychi-

atric residency. Psychiatrists and clinical

psychologists may overlap to some de-

gree in their training and orientation, but

there are some important differences.

For one thing, the capacity for psycholo-

gists to prescribe medications is much

more limited than that of

psychiatrists.

Clinical psychologists

and counselors provide

a wide range of mental

health and counseling

services. These services

include group and individual therapy,

preventive care, inpatient and outpa-

tient care, and grief counseling, to

name only a few. Some work

in hospitals or clinics, others

work in group or individual

private practices. Still others

are teachers or professors inclinical training programs. It

is also the case that many peo-

ple without formal psycho-

logical training are sometimes

confused with psychologists.

Regulations for licensure as providers of

mental health or counseling services

differ from state to state, and in some

places the requirements to set up shop as

a therapist are quite minimal. The

American Psychological Association

does accredit training programs, so there

is a way for the public to know at least

which practitioners have been trained

according to the standards of that organi-

zation. None of this is to say that only

certain people with certain training can

be effective or helpful: it is only to say

that the field of psychology itself isdiverse, and that the definition of psy-

chology in the mind of the lay public is

probably broader than in the minds of

most psychologists.

Experimental or research psy-

chologists typically work in universities

your teacher may well be one, though

many clinical or

counseling psy-

chologists also

work and teach

in universities.Researchers do

not receive su-

pervised clinical

training during

their graduate

schoolinginstead, they practice doing

research, and are often required to

study and practice teaching in prepara-

tion for becoming a professor. As your

book points out and as you will see as

you go through this course, there are

many different sub-fields of academic

psychology, ranging from some that

look a lot like biology to some that look

a lot more like sociology.

WHAT DO SCIENTISTS ACTUALLY DO? - PSYCHOLOGISTS

WHAT DO SCIENTISTS ACTUALLY DO? - SOCIOLOGISTS

Page 19

One way to answer

the question about what so-

ciologists actually do is to

pose a related question par-

ents often ask when they

find out their kids chosen

major in college: what can

you possibly do with a de-

gree in sociology (or anthro-

pology)? Several years ago,

there was a kind of anecdote

associated with the question,what can you do with a law

degree? The answer was that the

smartest law school graduates became

professors of law, the

next layer became judges,

and the lowest tier be-

came lawyers who make

all the money.

By way of re-

sponding seriously to our

original question, the

answer depends some-

what on the level of the

degree. One cannot be-come a sociologist with a

baccalaureate degree. However, B.A. or

B.S. degrees in these fields, because of

the exposure they provide to the sci-

ence of human behavior, qualify one

for a wide variety of white-collar posi-

tions in which some people skills and

a nose for social issues are important.

This could potentially include any-

thing from an obvious application like

police work to any pursuit that is car-

ried out in which people are a factor.

For exam-

ple, the

daughter ofone of the

authors of

this chapter


20/24

For example, the daughter of one of the

authors of this chapter (Scott) earned a

B.A. degree in Sociology and was hired

by an engineering firm that does all their

work in teams. Scotts daughter was

hired because the firm likes to have at

least one member of each team that is

nottrained as an engineer, presumably tobring to the team a consideration for the

human dimension of their products. Per-

haps one reason the social sciences are

such popular majors in the USA is be-

cause they are a gateway to disparate

professional positions. In fact, social

sciences are the second most popular

major in our country. Do you think you

can figure out what the most popular

academic major is? Why?

At the Masters and especiallythe Ph.D. levels, sociologists, like psy-

chologists, divide into two categories

those who earn a living teaching the dis-

cipline to others at colleges and universi-

ties and those who work in applied

settings. Recent trend data show that

just over half of those receiving their

Ph.D.s in these

fields go into a

teaching position

upon graduation.In the case of So-

ciology, about

40% land a re-

search position

with a govern-

mental entity or

private firm.

Their task gener-

ally is to collect

and analyze

social data of

some sort. Pri-

vate firms may need social data for anumber of reasons, for instance, to pin

down the demographics of their cus-

tomer base. As for governmental

agencies, many of them have research

sections to assess the impact and effec-

tiveness of their programs. The remain-

ing percentage generally finds a position

in a governmental or nonprofit

organization, often with a con-

nection to the subject matter of

their specialty.One of the biggest changes in

sociology over the past 50

years is in who is getting their

doctorate in Sociology. Gener-

ally, about 500 to 600 people a

year earn a doctorate in sociol-

ogy here in the U.S. Fifty years

ago, the ratio of men-to-women

doing so was about 5-to-1.

That gap has been steadily

closing and in the early

1990s for the first time,

more women received Ph.D.s in Sociol-ogy than did men. These days the ratio

of women-to-men obtaining Ph.D.s in

sociology is about 1.5-to-1. Nearly the

same pattern has occurred in psychol-

ogy. Any ideas about why this might so?

WHAT DO SCIENTISTS ACTUALLY DO? - ANTHROPOLOGISTS

changing, and why those symbols be-

came important. They describe simi-

larities and differences between cul-

tures and explain what those similari-ties or differences

mean. For example,

virtually all cultures

have a concept of mar-

riage, but who gets mar-

ried to whom, how a

marriage is ended, and

the relationship between

the married people

all differ according

to culture.

Archeologists reconstruct andinterpret the cultures of non-

living peoples by examining the

material remains of their culture.

Many cultures did not keep writ-

ten histories, and those that did

rarely wrote of the daily lives of

average people. A typical farmer

does not usually have a pyramid

built in his honor. Archeological

work is oftentimes like that of a detec-

tive. Archeologists piece together clues

(sometimes very few clues are available)

and use existing cultures as examples fortheir interpretation

of their results.

Archeologists are

not just interested

in the objects they

find, but the con-

text in which they

are found. A pre-

historic building is

interesting, but a

wishbone shaped prehistoric building

that is surrounded by smaller, round pre-

historic buildings is informative.

Biological anthropologists, also

known as physical anthropologists, study

humans as biological organisms, exam-

ining how human biology might shape

culture. Biological anthropologists

study human variation across popula-

tions and regions. They study the skele-

tal remains of humans to analyze health

Like psychologists and sociolo-

gists, anthropologists with advanced

degrees tend to work either in university

settings (about 80%) or in governmentand industry. Anthropology has four

subfields which study culture in several

forms. These are cultural anthropology,

archeology, biological anthropology and

linguistic anthropology. These divisions

can be traced back to Franz Boas book,

The Mind of Primitive Man nearly a cen-tury ago.

Cultural

anthropologists,

also known as

ethnologists, studythe culture of liv-

ing people. Cul-

tural anthropolo-

gists study what

symbols have

meaning for a

living culture,

how that culture

has changed or is

Page 20


21/24

and mortality. Our overall health, his-

tory of disease,

diet and even our

region leave evi-

dence on our

bones. They cantell if an injury

occurred prior to

death, or after.

They can identify

the gender, age and

population of an

individual. In fact,

many biological

anthropologists assist with forensic

research, describing a deceased individ-

ual as they were in life, and how they

died. The U.S. military employs a num-

ber of physical anthropologists who areclosely involved in uniform and per-

sonal equipment design and sizing.

Sociolinguistics, or linguistic

anthropology, analyzes the ties between

language and culture. A sociolinguist

might describe the rules and structure

of a language, or trace the changes in a

language over time. Changes in lan-

guage indicate changes in culture. The

shift from the common use of Miss and

Mrs. to Ms. for women indicated a

lessening of interest in womens mari-

tal status. Sociolinguists also use lan-

guage to trace migration patterns. For

example, Navajo and Apache peopleof Arizona and New Mexico speak

Athabaskan languages indicating that

these tribes originated in Alaska. Indi-

vidual words support this point, as the

Navajo language has a word for

whale not a common sight in Ari-

zona. Language can

also indicate power

relations and rules for

interaction within a

culture. You call your

superiors sir or maam,

but they do not usethese terms for you in

return.

All of the

fields of anthropology

can, and are, used for non-academic pur-

poses as well. Biological anthropolo-

gists, for example, have used their skills

at identification and excavation in identi-

fying victims from mass graves in Iraq

that were executed by Saddam Husseins

government. Sociolinguists can work in

marketing and public relations, especially

with international clientele. Simple mar-

keting suggestions might have included

telling Chevy that the Nova (the no-go inSpanish)

will not

sell well

in Latin

Ameri-

can coun-

tries, or

that be-

fore sell-

ing Eng-

lish-speakers the Iranian detergent that

makes your laundry white as snow, its

name should be changed from Barf. Ar-cheologists use their skills at modern day

dumps to analyze American recycling

patterns, and used their excavation skills

in the efforts to recover human remains

from the Twin Towers site after Septem-

ber 11th. Cultural anthropologists can

explain the symbols and values of one

culture in its interactions with another,

thereby minimizing misunderstanding and

tension.

Understanding and

explaining the abuses

that took place at

Abu Ghraib prison in

Iraq in late 2003 and

(2) The question of

whether expo-

sure to violent

video games

increases aggres-

sion in children who play them.

Without getting into alengthy discussion of the nature of

the differences among monodiscipli-

nary approaches such as multidisci-

plinarity, pluridisciplinarity, and

crossdisciplinarity , as opposed to

interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary

approaches, we want you to notice that

fully understanding the case studies we

are going to discuss involves more than

We mentioned

earlier that the reason we

have included this mate-

rial on anthropology and

sociology in addition to

psychology is that we

wanted to take a transdis-

ciplinary approach to un-

derstanding humans. To

help illustrate what we

mean, well bring in sociology and an-

thropology throughout the course. Wewill also discuss these disciplines at

length again when we address two spe-

cific issues that are especially good ex-

amples of how we can learn more about

an issue when we apply the differing

methods and interpretations of the vari-

ous disciplines we have discussed to

those issues, rather than just one of them.

The issues we will focus on will be (1)

just these three disciplines of social sci-

ence. Not only do other fields of science

come into play (for example, political

science, economics), but other areas of

human activity outside science also

come into play, such as law, religion,

and educa-

tion. The

value of

transdisci-

plinary

approachesis that they

allow us to

integrate

knowledge

across dis-

ciplines, but also across less

disciplined but no less important ways

of understanding ourselves.

BACK TO THE ELEPHANT

Page 21


22/24

So lets return for a

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