Dear XCULers,
I learned something interesting earlier this week during my undergraduate
social psychology final exam that I would like to pass along to you all.
After the regular exam, I asked my students to work in their established
small groups (which had been used throughout the course for various
projects) to answer this essay question:
"Throughout the course, Gabrenya has made the point that American
psychological social psychology is a product of the American Middle Class,
and that it has a politically liberal, humanistic value bias (which can be
good or bad, depending on your point of view). Choose one theory or topic
of study from this course, and show how it would be approached differently
(a different kind of theory, a different view of the topic, a different
type of research, etc.) if it were produced by people from a distinctly
different social background (i.e., different from liberal American Middle
Class; need not be different on all 3 dimensions). Bonus: do not use the
word "different" in your answer."
Some groups immediately interepreted the problem in terms of how people
different from themselves would behave in a certain domain, for example,
how middle- and working-class people would differ in helping behavior. But
of course, this is not the question at all. After I explained what I
really wanted several times to each group, it became clear that they simply
could not answer this kind of question.
Can you?
Have a nice holiday,
Bill Gabrenya
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
| School of Psychology, Florida Tech | GABRENYA who-is-at FIT.EDU |
| 150 W. University Blvd. | 407-768-8000 ext 8104 |
| Melbourne, FL 32901 | FAX: 407-768-6113 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
| Cross-Cultural Web sites: |
| |
| Society for Cross-Cultural |
| Research (SCCR): http://www.fit.edu/CampusLife/clubs-org/sccr |
| |
| The International Association for Cross-Cultural |
| Psychology (IACCP): http://www.fit.edu/CampusLife/clubs-org/iaccp |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------