On Friday we talked about the major psychological theories
and how they affect social behavior. We
watched a short video on Harlow’s monkeys experiment. The experiment took
infant monkeys away from their mothers. In isolation there were two surrogate
mothers. One made of wire mesh that would give milk and one covered in a
blanket that did not. The infant always clung to the surrogate with the blanket
even though it did not give milk. Once the infant was introduced to other
monkeys it was unable to integrate and had major health problems. All the test
subjects had shortened life expectancy.
We briefly discussed Darwin vs Watson and the nature vs
nurture theories. Darwin proposed that social behavior was all biological. This
meant that if an organism learned a behavior then its offspring would inherit
that behavior and survive. Watson offered the position that social behavior is
completely learned and that any healthy human child could be influenced toward
any path given the right circumstance. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle
and both forces play a major role in human development and social behavior.
The video covers Freud's
personality model with Id, Ego and Super Ego. Id represents the basic drives.
The Ego is the conscious efforts to balance pleasure with society. The Super
Ego is cultural values and societal norms internalized by the individual.
Piaget developed
a model included the following stages: Sensorimotor, Pre-operational,
Concrete-operational and Formal-operational.
Sensorimotor is the stage when infants learn the world with only their
senses. Pre-operational is the first use of language and symbols.
Concrete-operational is when they make casual connections with the world.
Formal-operational is abstract and critical thinking.
Kohlberg built on this developing the preconventional,
conventional and postconventional. Preconventional is simply what feels good.
Conventional is sort of a reward punishment system and Postconventional is the abstract
“freedom and justice” way of thinking.
Gilligan repeated the same study but incorporating females
showing that males and females think differently.
Mead developed the idea of “I” and “Me”. “I” is how we see
ourselves. “Me” is how we think others see us. This is also called the
looking-glass self and no he was not talking about the awesome band that sang Brandy.
Erikson’s 8 stages of development include: Infancy, toddlerhood,
preschool, preadolescence, adolescence, young adulthood, middle adulthood and
old age.
Kubler-Ross developed and described 5 stages of death. The stages are denial, anger, negotiation, resignation and acceptance.
Positive I can do - let my kids make decisions so they can develop critical thinking skills.
Negative I can do - Do everything for my kids so they end up being useless adults.
Positive society can do - Having trouble with this one today
Negative society can do - Allow no experts to continue making decisions for society.
