Acquisition Jobs

II. What exactly is meant by altruism? There is certainly a tendency toward social affiliation evident in all instances of altruism.

III. Scholars have undertaken systematic studies to determine why people do or do not behave altruistically under various circumstances.

A. Bystander studies are the most common means by which altruistic behavior is studied.

B. The findings from such studies indicate that in situations where the individual is in a group, he or she is most likely to act in the same way that the rest of the group acts.

1. One reason given by the subjects is that the situation is ambiguous.

2. The individual momentarily canvasses the situation and determines that nobody is doing anything. He or she may decide to avoid doing what nobody else is doing. This is regarded as the diffusion of responsibility explanation.

IV. The historical question arises, “how was the grave evil of the Holocaust able to take hold in Europe?” One wonders why there was a relatively low degree of altruistic behavior. The diffusion of responsibility is an extremely powerful influence.

V. Aristotle’s ethological psychology regards our sociality as a defining characteristic of the kind of creatures we are. This interaction occurs at the level of principle. Thus, it is not necessarily condemnatory when the individual acts in conformity with the action of the group.

Essential Reading:
Henry Gleitman, Chaps. 12, 14

Supplementary Reading:
A. M. Rosenthal, Thirty-eight Witnesses. (1964) New York: McGraw Hill.
J. Darley and B. Latané, “Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility.” 1968, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 10, pp. 210-214

Questions to Consider:
1. Describe, given the findings of the previous lecture, how altruistic behavior can be explained.

2. Conclude whether, if humans are social creatures, instances of altruism should be more prevalent.

Taken From: The Great Ideas Of Psychology

Scope: Against the view that significant human actions have selfish and self-regarding motives, many actions—those of so-called “saints” and “heroes”—seem to have a strong altruistic motivation, as do actions by many non-human animals. Dolphins, for example, have often been credited for aiding humans in distress, and in recent times a zoo gorilla has been filmed rescuing a human child. Even that arch-defender of the theory of evolution, Thomas Henry Huxley, saw altruism—the willingness to sacrifice oneself for the greater good—as a challenge to evolutionary theory.

Analysts have identified several contextual factors that influence or discourage altruistic behavior. These factors include the presence of others, and how those others behave when some course of action seems necessary. The sheer size of the group seems to be a powerful influence against altruistic behavior. The more people are present, the more does responsibility appear to be diffused, and the less likely is personal initiative. Nonetheless, persons having highly developed self-perceptions tend to define contexts differently and rise above them.

Objectives: Upon completion of this lecture, you should be able to:
1. Describe how context is a powerful influence on behavior.

2. Summarize how, even though “saints” and “heroes” are not self-regarding, evolutionary theory still offers an account of them.

3. Explain how a reference group helps to diffuse responsibility and thus render the individual less committed to action.

4. Outline how a well formed self-perception can overcome the influences of the context.

Outline
I. Wallace argued that certain aspects of human achievement could not be accounted for within an evolutionary framework. He regarded art, formal thought, and our tendency toward altruism as three aspects of human life which don’t match up with the suppositions of evolutionary theory. Altruistic behavior implicitly suggests that mere self-centered survival interests do not ground all significant human action.

Taken From: The Great Ideas Of Psychology

II. In Milgram’s famous studies of obedience, the subject was told that a learning experiment was being performed and that she would be required to shock a “volunteer” when an incorrect answer was given. As more incorrect answers were given, the voltage was supposedly turned up to a point where the dial read “danger” and screams could be heard.

A. Surprisingly, two-thirds of the subjects completed the study. Some showed reluctance, but given a firm request, most subjects complied despite outwardly visible stress.

B. The authority under which the subjects perceived themselves was in a majority of cases so compelling, that the subjects volitionally completed the study.

C. The Holocaust and the case of Kitty Genovese provide parallel examples in which something in the context led to inaction in the face of an egregious violation of rights.

D. Milgram’s study raises several ethical questions about the misinformation of subjects and because of the high stress levels that were endured.

III. In a study by Zimbardo, undergraduates at Stanford were selected to act as prisoners or guards. The guards were told simply that they had to preserve order. The study had to be called off because of abusiveness by the guards and utter dependency displayed by the prisoners.

A. Participants in the study were absolutely absorbed by the context and played to the extremes of their assigned roles.

B. One must ask ethical questions about Zimbardo’s study given the consequences for the participants. One must also begin to ask, “How should we raise our children with regard to authority?”

IV. Plato’s story of the Ring of Gyges holds that humans, when freed from the fear of punishment, are capable of the most offensive actions. As regards our conduct, the important question is not hinted at by any of the above studies. Knowing what we do is not nearly as important as knowing what we should do.

Essential Reading:
Henry Gleitman, Chap. 12

Supplementary Reading:
S. Milgram, Obedience to Authority. (1974) New York: Harper & Row

Questions to Consider:
1. Conclude what the above findings suggest about traditional perspectives on personality.

2. Infer what it is about human nature that gives such extraordinary power to social context.

Taken From: The Great Ideas Of Psychology

Scope: Solomon Asch and Stanley Milgram performed now-classic experiments illustrating the powerful influence of the social context on conduct. In Asch’s study, a person’s judgment of the length of a line could be significantly altered and predicted simply by arraying against him the judgments of others in the group. Milgram demonstrated the relative ease of having ordinary, decent citizens engage in an activity thought to be a source of pain and danger to innocent others.

The importance of this research is based on the challenge it offers to both of the dominant theories of personality: the biogenetic theory of “types” and social learning theory. If features of the social context can so determine significant courses of action, how useful is it to think of personality as stable or fixed either by conditioning or by heredity?

Objectives: Upon completion of this lecture, you should be able to:
1. Illustrate the methods and findings in several classical studies of conformity.

2. Explain how the best predictor of behavior in complex settings are the demand-characteristics of the setting, not the “type” of personalities present at the time.

3. Summarize the limitations and incompleteness of biogenetic and learning-theories of personality.

Outline
I. Several studies of behavior in a social setting have suggested the extraordinary power of context in shaping individual actions. Exploration of the role of context is invaluable to the question of personality. Something in the context has a trumping power over “personality” or reinforcement history. One group of studies was performed by Asch on the way a group setting may affect judgement.

A. Asch gave a subject a set of three lines out of which she was asked to choose that line which matched a fourth line. Not surprisingly, the subjects in this setting had less than a 5% error rate.

B. When the subject was placed in a group with collaborators who chose the wrong line, the error rate increased dramatically. Peer pressure had apparently shifted the judgement of the subject.

Taken From: The Great Ideas Of Psychology

A. Even as early as ancient Greece, “type” theories of personality have been offered in one form or another.

1. Theophrastus, for example, suggested that individuals could be described by a relatively stable set of dispositions. These dispositions are not merely accidental, but they are intrinsically tied to the person.

2. Within Greek tragedy, a more metaphysical notion of personality was described. Personality was taken to be a kind of curse, a mark for one’s actions that was rolled down through the ages.

B. In the eighteenth century, the psychology of personality was undertaken from a scientific perspective.

1. In this regard, Lombroso began to suggest there were particular characteristics of the so-called criminal personality.

2. Gall offered phrenology as a means of determining the personality characteristics of a given individual.

3. Lavater offered the science of physiognomy in which facial characteristics were taken to represents the various types of personalities.

C. According to the the majority position among current personality psychologists, there are five major personality types. The ‘big five” include:

1. Neuroticism, which is characterized by tension and anxiety

2. Extroversion, a characteristic of someone who is outgoing—the “life of the party”

3. Openness, characterized by intelligence and creativity manifest in a non-judgementalism

4. Agreeableness, seen in one who is always making concessions and avoiding conflict

5. Conscientiousness, describable as reliable and dutiful.

II. “Type” theories of personality are often criticized by those in the domain of social learning theory who argue that the role of biology and genetics, as regards personality, is quite limited. The question of gender differences in personality may be illustrative in this regard.

Essential Reading:
Henry Gleitman, Chap. 14
Daniel N. Robinson, Intellectual History, chap. 3

Supplementary Reading:
W. Mischel, Introduction to Personality, 4th ed. (1986) New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston
J. Lamiell, The Psychology of Personality. (1987) New York: Columbia University Press

Questions to Consider:
1. Describe the limitations of “type” theories of personality.
2. Infer to what extent “type” theories can be useful in understanding individuals.

Taken From: The Great Ideas Of Psychology

Scope: Freud, the neo-Freudians, and others have written at length about the development of the adult personality and about the disordered or maladaptive personality. But what is “personality”?

The notion of personality “types” is ancient. Theophrastus actually depicted them in the form of characteristic faces and facial expressions. The term is generally used to describe more-or-less stable traits of character that are held to predict the person’s behavior in a wide variety of contexts and over a long period of time. Thus one is said to be “amiable,” “hostile,” “sensitive,” or “ambitious.” Because of this stability, some have assumed personality to be largely an outcome of heredity and tied to an underlying set of biochemical or neurological states and predispositions. Social learning theorists, however, have accounted for the persistence of certain “traits” in terms of conditioning and the imposition of various social roles; e.g., “manliness” as the result of sex typing practices. But there are well known gender-specific tendencies (e.g., aggression) displayed by males in cultures that are widely divergent in their rearing practices. The same tendencies are observed in the very young and even in non-human species. Thus theories of a decidedly cultural or envi-ronmentalistic nature are challenged by at least some of the findings.

Objectives: Upon completion of this lecture, you should be able to:
1. Explain in what sense the very concept of “personality” is ambiguous and probably too general for theoretical purposes.

2. Summarize why specific persons do seem to display fairly consistent patterns of emotionality and conduct even in very diverse settings and over long periods of time; that is, they seem to instantiate given personality “types.”

3. Explain “physiognomy” as an early attempt to identify certain “types” of character or personality, and discuss certain type-theories that have thrived ever since.

4. Explain how social learning theory is an alternative to such theories but, again, that there do seem to be strong hereditary predispositions at the foundation of personalities.
Outline

I. “Type” theories of personality take human identity to be more or less stable, as opposed to the sort of theory offered by Locke, in which identity is derived from experience.

Taken From: The Great Ideas Of Psychology

A. The neo-Freudian movement was highly sensitive to the role of culture within a meaningful human life. For Freud, the highest form of human life was displayed by those who lived in accordance with the biology of the system. The neo-Freudians recognize the significance of the interactions between the individual and the society.

B. Erikson’s theory illustrates an alternative theory that recognizes the primacy in social interactions in defining the individual.

1. In the earliest months of life, the infant demonstrates a definite attachment to the countenance of the mother.

2. In the next stage, the child begins to exhibit autonomy.

3. From ages three to six, the child begins to take initiative and reorder the way in which the world appears to him or her. This social learning is foundational for the subsequent adult personality. Reference to instincts and biology cannot account for these social phenomena.

4. Between ages six and twelve, the child develops competence. Competence is extraordinarily important in the formation of character. Competence provides an encouraging sort of feedback and supplies the young child with the notion that good things occur only with the fullness of time.

5. Adolescence is the next stage in development. This stage allows the individual to try out different roles. It is a tumultuous period, but it is also the training ground for a social and civic life.

6. The stage of early adulthood is characterized by intimacy or isolation. This is the source of serious problems for early adults.

7. Middle adulthood is a stage in which the individual is either stagnant or productive. This is not a mechanized productivity, but a fluid notion. Productivity means that one is engaged by and in the world. One’s resources are being deployed toward some end.

8. Later life is characterized by either integrity or despair. Integrity is the continuing integration of the most important features of one’s life. Despair is the opposite. One is utterly defeated after a life of which she is disappointed.

Essential Reading:
Henry Gleitman, Chap. 14

Supplementary Reading:
E. H. Erikson, Dimensions of a New Identity. (1974) New York: Norton

Questions to Consider:
1. Infer whether all human actions are inescapably social.

2. Conclude whether Erikson’s theory of development is overly polarized. That is to say, to what extent do the conflicts he cites comprehensively account for life’s transitions?

Taken From: The Great Ideas Of Psychology

Scope: Freud’s biological orientation led him to conclude that psychodynamic processes are universal and largely independent of culture and society. The neo-Freudians (such as Adler), not to mention the anti-Freudians (such as the behaviorists), have rejected such absolutes and have emphasized the social and cultural context as the source of personal development. Anthropologists such as Margaret Mead and Bronislaw Malinowski challenged Freud’s contentions about the universality of toilet-training practices, oedipal tensions, and kindred psychoanalytic certitudes. Others have noted that even Freud’s patient-samples reflected a late-Victorian culture long since past. As a result, the classical “hysterias” are now quite uncommon. Contrary to Freud’s essentially biological stages of psychic development, others have emphasized social stages. Erik Erikson, for example, offers an eight-stage theory beginning with the infant’s attachment to mother (the grounding of trust in later life), and culminating in the final years either in integrity or in despair as one’s lifetime is reviewed for meaning and purpose.

Objectives: Upon completion of this lecture, you should be able to:
1. Summarize how certain Freudian “absolutes” do, in fact, display cultural variations.

2. Explain how Freud’s own patient-population may itself have arisen from cultural rather than fixed biological factors.

3. Define the neo-Freudian schools that emphasize the social and cultural roots of personality and personal adjustment.

Outline
I. Freud was very hostile toward those who criticized psychoanalytic theory. He was well aware that he was attempting to launch a movement which, if it were to succeed, would inevitably have to prosper within a politicized setting.

II. The anthropological record is not as consistent as is required by psychoanalytic theory. Rearing practices are quite diverse in ways not compatible with Freudian theory. As conceived by Freud, psychoanalytic theory overemphasizes the biological nature of human beings.

Taken From: The Great Ideas Of Psychology

A. Gratification for the infant is oral in nature. The infant experiences pleasure through engaging in sucking behavior.

B. The proximate stage is the anal stage. In this stage, the child begins to grapple with an external world. Therefore, this stage is crucial in guiding the child toward a particular pattern of interactions with others.

C. Throughout the phallic and genital stages, the person is driven by forms of gratification that are conducive to human procreation. Reproduction of the species is the goal of psychosexual development. This is not to suggest that the conflict between the pleasure and reality principles is resolved. This struggle persists from the anal stage throughout one’s life.

D. The quite natural target for one’s sexual energies is the most frequent source of one’s gratification, which from infancy is most often the mother. To account for this, Freud offers the oedipal complex.

1. Socialization forces one to find a surrogate for these mounting sexual energies. Either this tension will be resolved or it will plague one’s entire life.

2. Often the oedipal conflict results in overly paternalistic or effeminate types of character.

III. By what means is the psychoanalyst able to access the subconscious?

A. Freud suggested that the contents of dreams were representative of the contents of one’s subconscious. Thus, through the analysis of dreams, the contents of the subconscious are accessible.

B. There is a constant battle between the pleasure-seeking id and the conforming superego. The ego makes sense of this conflict and gives identity to the person. This identity often has to be defended from impulses by means of ego defenses. Where these ego defense mechanisms are most fully engaged, the neurosis begins to appear. When the integrity of the ego is violated, more severe forms of neuroses arise.

Essential Reading:
Henry Gleitman, Chap. 10

Supplementary Reading:
S. Freud, op. cit.

Questions to Consider:
1. Explain to what extent Freud’s emphasis on the psychosexual domain is limiting.

2. Conclude how, if the mind is explained by the id, ego, and super ego, those latter facets of mind are explained?

Taken From: The Great Ideas Of Psychology

Scope: At the heart of Freud’s theory are those evolutionary and ontogenetic processes that serve the interests of the species and the individual. These processes often pit against each other the individual quest for gratification and the requirement that such quests conform to the needs of the collective. The theory of psychosexual development holds that the individual progresses from infantile stages of sexual gratification (sucking as “oral gratification,” but serving the needs of the body) to adult heterosexual sexuality (an intensely pleasurable act but one that serves the interests of the collective). At each stage the process of socialization is at work, designed to reward or to move the individual along to more mature stages—a socialization that can be traumatic and that can instill guilt and feelings of rejection. The seeds of adult disorders are planted when one becomes arrested within a lower stage of psychosexual development. All later neurotic symptoms are seen as remnants of childhood traumas associated with psychosexual development.

Objectives: Upon completion of this lecture, you should be able to:
1. Summarize how Freud regarded his theory as derived from evolutionary theory and as a scientific theory in its own right.

2. Summarize how psychoanalytic theory is a theory of the development of personality—a developmental theory—that is biosocial from first to last.

3. Explain how the tension between the instinctual impulses (the Id) and the socialization of these tendencies (the superego) is a lifelong affair and one in which neurotic disturbances are grounded.

4. Identify how psychoanalysis is a form of “re-education,” designed to have the patient relive the earlier traumatic experiences and learn to cope with them now at a conscious level.

Outline
I. Freud was quite sensitive to criticisms that his theory of psychosexual development was too theoretical. Much of his early intellectual life was spent under Mach and positivism.

II. Throughout the psychosexual domain, nature makes pleasant those activities that will aid in the survival of the organism. Freud regarded this as the pleasure principle. Such a principle appears to be at work throughout the animal kingdom. In human society, there are inhibitions to pursuing pleasure. Freud tried to understand the purely naturalistic drives within the context of a complex society.

Taken From: The Great Ideas Of Psychology