Racial Profiling - link & response for last week

I thought the video we watched last Thursday was really interesting (despite the design and presentation flaws we discussed in class). It led me to think more about the depiction of certain problems in the media, and how psychologists can influence those issues.

In our book, we learned about the alleged racial differences in intelligence and how those research prospects still influence our thinking today. As mentioned in our book, the differences in race (not just in intelligence, but in any aspect of life) tend to be an "American obsesssion."

And as we saw with the Dateline, 20/20, or 60 minutes spot we watched in class, people still tend to "prefer" one race over another, and this leads me to believe that people still see differences between people of different races. Lots of people will claim, "I don't see color," but the research presented in the video we watched tells otherwise. Will this ever go away?

An every day scenario where racial prejudice might come into play is in the phenomenon of racial profiling by police. I found this Time feature article pretty relevant and the interesting part is that it gives multiple viewpoints on this issue. It's kind of long, but I think you'll also find it interesting. (Here also is the photo essay on this subject.)

CBT - link and response for last week

While talking about behaviorism, I was thinking about how it applies directly to our lives as psychology students. Beyond knowing about classical and operant conditioning (which helps us shape our professors to stand in corners), how can it directly help us if we decide to go into careers in psychology?

Cognitive-behavioral therapy is a type of therapy that we've all heard about. It is a combination of studying behavior (what we do) and studying the cognition that causes our behavior (what we think). It's an interesting way that we can take Watson's idea of the "prediction and control" of behavior and apply it to a theraputic, clinical practice. I think it even helps to combine the psychology of the late 19th century (before behaviorism), the study of consciousness and its processes, with behaviorism.

Going beyond that, I was thinking about a discussion question I would have liked to ask in class last week. Do you agree or disagree with the "prediction" aspect of Watson's goal of psychology? How about the "control" aspect? I think it's interesting that he lumped the two together. In earlier psychology, we were interested in reaction time, for example, which would help us to predict aspects of human consciousness. However, when did control come into the picture? When did it become desirable to control humans through the study of their mind/consciousness/behavior? This is something that I think applied psychology really influenced. Without applied psychology, we never would have thought to control aspects of people, especially not their behavior. Yet with the research produced in the subfield of behaviorism, we learned that people can be predicted, controlled, and manipulated. This is such a far cry from any ideas that the earliest psychologists had, but they are some of the most pervasive ideas to this day.

Freud - link & response for this week

I am fascinated by Freud. In our readings for this week (and the movie we watched on Tuesday), we get the impression that Freud and his ideas were very controversial and disliked. In his time, he was sort of a rebel. He was bringing up ideas that seemed so bogus and unscientific. He attributed everything (it seems like) to sexuality. But he really did contribute a lot to the field and I think it's telling that pretty much anyone in the world would associate his name with the field of psychology.

What is it that made Freud's ideas so controversial? Was it that they were so different than the themes studied by his contemporaries? Or do we still consider them bogus? Do we still consider him a quack? We've discussed this before, but what ideas do we have right now in the field of psychology that in 50-100 years will seem absolutely ridiculous? Or what ideas do we have right now that will last for 50-100 years and only at that time will seem valuable to the field? It's interesting that Freud was sensationalized for his very controversial work in sexuality and psychoanalysis, but the man also studied a lot of other things that we still consider valuable to this day: free association, defense mechanisms, and the subconscious.

I found a link to the Sigmund Freud museum in Vienna, Austria, which is housed in his old apartment. I've visited this museum and found Freud to be a very interesting man with interesting ideas (most of the work housed at this museum is uncontroversial and it details more a history of his life in general and of his clinical practice). I tried to post pictures from my visit but apparently I am technologically illiterate.

Science as Art - link & response for last week

From last week's readings on the development of psychology in America (with a focus on functionalism v. structuralism)...

I found Titchener's "periodic table" of the sensational elements of psychology fascinating. I wonder what the over 44,000 distinct sensations could be. I searched far and wide (well, Google searched) for a list of the "periodic table" of the sensations, but I couldn't find it. Has anyone else been successful?

Anyway, I found this article instead. It really got me wondering about the type of thinking involved with inventive psychology. During the late 1800's, when psychology was just a baby, it took a lot of creative thinking to come up with some of these schools of thought. A couple weeks ago in class we had a discussion about James and his artistic background. The article I pulled up on Titchener made me believe that he, too, had an artistic mind. The language he uses is very visual, descriptive, and I think he's done his best in trying to impress specific sensations upon the reader. The imagination abilities involved with making great strides in science are great; it takes more than just a knowledge of the basic theories of science, it takes creativity.

However, the way Titchener has written this piece makes me want to find his list of sensations even more!!

Competition in the Field

I will take this time to reflect on last week's discussion of the competition between the three (and more) moving forces in the field of psychology in the late 1800's. Psychology was a pretty new science during this time. In fact, William James was teaching psychology even before the date which we consider to be the "birth" of psychology (1879 - Wundt's lab). I found it interesting throughout the readings that the professors and practitioners of psychology were forming their own new and innovative ideas. Not only that, but they didn't necessarily agree with one another. It was interesting because James & Hall were pretty close in age, and Hall studied under James. However even though this science was brand new, they both (including Cattell later) went off to do their own things. Both Hall and Cattell also did a term with Wundt. You'd think that they would have had similar paths of study considering the close time frame and the novelty of the field and just the lack of diverse ideas in the field. Yet they all contributed different things... James and his stream of consciousness, Cattell and his mental testing, and Hall and his sexism (just kidding, Hall contributed alot besides his sexism and obsession with adolescent girls like the APA and the Child Study Movement). The fact that they all went their separate ways with the basis of philosophy, physiology, biology, and physics just goes to show that psychology has been and always will be a very diverse field with many approaches.

The Outrageousness of Science?

After reading the first few chapters in our textbooks and the pieces about Fechner last week, I have been left wondering: what makes a quack? What makes someone's ideas about psychology, or any science for that matter, more ridiculous than the next? Or more valuable than the next? In the first couple chapters of our book (and I'm assuming through most of our readings on the history of psychology), we encounter many individuals who contributed greatly to the field. Yet during their time, many were often thought of as outrageous with unfounded beliefs. Those who were denied these claims by crying "uncle" in the form of: "It's science!" Even more scientists of the time had ideas that were greatly admired yet seem common sense to us now.

Here's an example of a scientific idea that was respected during its time (and afterwards). Maybe I am missing something, or maybe it's good that I am in the field of social science and not natural science, but Fechner's research on psychophysics is difficult to understand. HOW specifically did he measure sensation? HOW specifically did he measure stimulation? If, in fact, according to Wozniak, "mental processes are internal, private, subjective, and cannot be measured directly," how did Fechner come across a way to measure these things? Fechner measured his findings "in terms of the relative increase in physical energy required to bring [mental intensity] about." I'm struggling to see the way in which Fechner could substantiate this data. In fact, if he found a way to measure mental processes - the private, subjective, inner workings of our minds - I think a lot of psychological researchers would be out of a job!

Back to my first point, I've started to wonder... what psychological ideas, methods, processes, and theories do we have now that will look outrageous fifty years down the line?