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  #61  
Old May 3rd, 2006, 03:44 PM
TomJrzk TomJrzk is offline
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Default Re: Somatic Behavior Choice Hypothesis

Quote:
Originally Posted by Margaret McGhee
Well Tom, you may be right - but
Yikes, you really didn't get my point. Well, as long as we talk it over before you waste $20 (!!!).

BTW: My point is that those who agreed with the incorrect answers of the other 7 were probably thinking "Surely, there must be something I'm missing. Maybe the angle's all wrong. Maybe I didn't hear the instructions completely. Maybe..."; they doubted their own answer. Once you say "you get $20 if many others get it wrong" then you've just eliminated most if not all the reasons they followed the pack. IOW if the test was to prove that the subject followed an incorrect answer only because they didn't want to be different, the experimenter would have HAD to tell the subject that everyone else got it wrong before asking the subject.
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  #62  
Old May 3rd, 2006, 04:12 PM
Margaret McGhee Margaret McGhee is offline
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Default Re: Somatic Behavior Choice Hypothesis

Tom, this is getting more interesting than I first suspected. I see your point. When you say
Quote:
My point is that those who agreed with the incorrect answers of the other 7 were probably thinking "Surely, there must be something I'm missing. Maybe the angle's all wrong. Maybe I didn't hear the instructions completely. Maybe..."; they doubted their own answer.
That's a good observation. Now that you made me think about it I would say that's how social pressure to conform often works in our minds. It makes us doubt our intellect - as opposed to outright deny it, as I previously suggested. For example, 70 some percent of Americans claim to believe in Biblical Creation. I think social pressure to conform makes them doubt the science - which really isn't their own intellect speaking - since they don't understand the science anyway. For them it's a contest to conform to social pressure coming from two different camps - the believers and the atheists. No-one likes us immoral atheists so for them it is a slam-dunk

Maybe I'll have to drop my slam-dunk assertion until I can figure out a better methodolgy.

Thanks, Margaret
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  #63  
Old May 3rd, 2006, 09:19 PM
Margaret McGhee Margaret McGhee is offline
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Default Re: Somatic Behavior Choice Hypothesis

Tom, I had to go do some errands this afternoon but couldn't get this thing out of my mind. I still find your comment a bit cryptic - the sentence,
Quote:
IOW if the test was to prove that the subject followed an incorrect answer only because they didn't want to be different, the experimenter would have HAD to tell the subject that everyone else got it wrong before asking the subject.
Maybe you can clear that up for me if you still think it's needed.

But anyway, I think that the test subject could think (intellectualy) that he must be doing something wrong and doubt his conclusion as you mentioned. I'd call that reasoning - not social pressure. Perhaps, that was your point - that I didn't get.

In that case the Asch test doesn't support my theory as I claimed. It just says that the subject was being judiciously skeptical of his own judgement - something that I think humans often do in those situations. I think we intuitively know that our logical computer is often wrong and so we (subconsciously) decrease the stength of the emotions we grant it in our conclusions when we're feeling iffy.

As an atheist I sometimes struggle with social conformity emotions in religious situations - like a wedding for example. When we are asked to kneel and pray, do I pretend to pray to a God I don't believe in and avoid the certain disaproval of others? Some would no doubt conclude that I'd prefer to selfishly besmirch their lovely ceremony than pretend to bow to their God.

I usually swallow my pride in order not to besmirch, which would be seen by many as an insult to the bride and groom. I console myself with the thought that if I don't believe in Him - then kneeling is a (personally) meaningless gesture anyway. But, I would be lieing if I said I did not enjoy the reprieve from the disapproval of others when I do that. And I can definitely say
I would not kneel if it were not for the strong emotions urging me to do so - both not wanting to insult and not wanting to garner disapproval. It's a palpable feeling of discomfort while making the decision.

And afterward I still feel uncomfortable knowing that eanyone there who cares to think about it assumes I am not an atheist. So, I feel like I have been dishonest. And I even feel anger that I have been put in the position of having to choose between dishonesty and insult.

Damn. How complicated can this get? Perhaps the Asch study can be redone as a Catholic wedding ceremony with an atheist test subject - or an atheist wedding ceremony where the test subject is a Catholic and the wedding officiator or whetever they call themselves says, "Let us not pray"

Margaret

Last edited by Margaret McGhee; May 3rd, 2006 at 11:17 PM..
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  #64  
Old May 4th, 2006, 09:35 AM
TomJrzk TomJrzk is offline
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Default Re: Somatic Behavior Choice Hypothesis

Quote:
Originally Posted by Margaret McGhee
I'd call that reasoning - not social pressure.
Yes, that was my point: social pressure may have made some subjects change the answer they KNEW to be right but others may have weighed others' answers in their determination of their right answer.

The experiment would have to include an answer that's impossible to get wrong or something without a wrong answer. Like 'how many fingers am I holding up?' where everyone says 2 when there's actually only one. Or when the subject says he likes a 'horrible' song because everyone else prefers it and then later chooses to buy (accept as a gift?) the other 'better' song.

BTW, I kneel and look around the whole time (usually at the better-looking dresses ); if I see someone else looking around I smile at them in that friendly, knowing fashion.

PS. For Carey's sake and so I don't add another whole post for something so trivial: I usually confuse most readers because I often strain too hard to be brief to the point where it becomes cryptic .
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  #65  
Old May 4th, 2006, 09:56 AM
Fred H. Fred H. is offline
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Default Re: Somatic Behavior Choice Hypothesis

Quote:
MM: I usually swallow my pride in order not to besmirch, which would be seen by many as an insult to the bride and groom. I console myself with the thought that if I don't believe in Him - then kneeling is a (personally) meaningless gesture anyway. But, I would be lying if I said I did not enjoy the reprieve from the disapproval of others when I do that. And I can definitely say I would not kneel if it were not for the strong emotions urging me to do so - both not wanting to insult and not wanting to garner disapproval. It's a palpable feeling of discomfort while making the decision.
Yes Margaret, I know exactly what you mean—there's something wrong with your world, but you don’t know what it is—you are a slave Margaret—a slave to the primitive emotional and motivational systems. Like everyone else, your more recently evolved cognitive consciousness, that is capable of discerning objective truth and beauty, was nevertheless born into bondage, the bondage of the emotional matrix that imprisons us all, individually and collectively, and that cannot be readily, consciously perceived, nor physically touched. Unfortunately, no one can be told what this emotional matrix is; you have to see it for yourself; and in the seeing you may find believing.
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  #66  
Old May 4th, 2006, 10:37 AM
Margaret McGhee Margaret McGhee is offline
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Default Some thoughts about intellect in decision-making.

I have already stated my basic premise that human decison-making results from the summation of emotional forces from various sources in the brain. I listed those sources as - instincts, memories of past events, dispositions, social instincts, beliefs, and intellectual conclusions

Including intellectual conclusions as one of several inputs to the decision mechanism reduces intellect from the director of decisions to one of the contributors. That's enough to cause plenty of angst as it violates the cognicentric paradigm that we have always lived within. Here are some additional thoughts on the place of intellect.

We do use our intellect frequently in our lives. But when? I propose that we mostly use intellect when strong emotions are not involved in a decision. Like, "Is this the best offramp to exit the freeway if I want to go to Home Depot." You've done it many times before and without giving it much thought so you'll probably just take the usual offramp. But, this time you toy with the idea of taking a possible shortcut, one that your intellect tells you could well be faster. On a lark you take it.

But, what if you are delivering a million dollars to a certain trash can in the parking lot - and kidnappers have threatened to kill your child if it isn't there on time? Suddenly, the stakes go from insignificant to astronomical. Still want to try that shortcut?.

What is different between the two examples that causes you to arrive at a different decision? Examining this scenario illustrates several features of my SBCH. The choice in each case is between an intellectual conclusion and a belief. A belief is a personalized learned truth about the world. In this case it is the way that you always get to Home Depot.

One thing that is apparent right off is the fallability of intellect. It seldom produces completely reliable conclusions. You think the short cut could be faster but you've never tried it. So, when the cost of failure in decision-making is high we tend to go with our beliefs. When the cost of failure is high - that means the emotional stakes are high. And that's the case whenever a decision has a large potential effect on our happiness, our survival.

Beliefs are very valuable mental images. Beliefs are learned truths about the world that we internalize. They encapsulate other beliefs given us by teachers, our past intellectual conclusions, our past experiences, and testing that occurred in our own specific personalized enviroment. That's why they can be very reliable. They are bits of personal wisdom we can depend on in a pinch. The longer we hold a belief and use it to produce reliable decisions on our behalf the more it becomes part of our identity. More about beliefs and the strong emotions they can produce later.

But environments can change. There could be road work on our usual offramp. That's when intellect can help. We can intellectually examine our beliefs to be sure they still apply - something I think smart, effective people do a lot of. And we can use our intellect to come up with a better guess when they don't - the first step in editing our beliefs.

But in both of these cases it was the emotions generated by our beliefs and our intellectual conclusions that were weighed in our decisions. In each case I suspect the usual, belief based route, produced a reliable emotional tag. In the first case, the intellectual shortcut tag had a higher value - it was novel, it could possibly provide a new more valuable route to Home Depot than the belief we held, and there was no cost of a slight delay.

In the second case the shortcut choice held a very high cost for being late - and finding a faster route for later use and the novelty had no emotional value to us at all under those conditions. And so, our emotions ultimately guide our decisions according to the context of the decision that we are making - wisely enlisting our intellect to improve the quality of those decisions in terms of our own survival - and depending on the context - but never allowing our intellect to dictate them.

Margaret

Last edited by Margaret McGhee; May 6th, 2006 at 04:20 PM..
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  #67  
Old May 4th, 2006, 02:05 PM
Margaret McGhee Margaret McGhee is offline
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Default Re: Somatic Behavior Choice Hypothesis

In my last post I said that,
Quote:
We do use our intellect frequently in our lives. But when? I propose that we mostly use intellect when strong emotions are not involved in a decision.
Before moving on I'd like to focus briefly on one of the more important implications of this - politics.

First, I will admit that I am generally liberal politically. This is not a partisan observation however. It's just that currently the conservatives are better at using this principle of the mind to their advantage and against liberals. There have been times when liberals used it to their advantage. If we look at the politics of academia I'd say that liberals are currently using those to their advantage against the conservatives - at least as much as Steve Pinker is correctly describing the pervasive influence of liberal ideology in academia (which I am inclined to believe at this time).

But, what this says is that if your position is not reasonable then raise the emotional stakes. When strong emotions are running through our minds we are far less likely to consult our intellect when making decison. And if we do we are far more likely to distrust our conclusions - as when delivering a ransom to Home Depot.

Today, this means that the upcoming mid-term election will be (wisely) framed by Republicans as a war against baby-killers (abortion), against those who would destroy American family values (same sex marriage), against terrorism enablers (Dems opposed to NSA wiretapping without warrants), etc.

The problem for democracy is that once the emotional stakes are raised the other side has no option but to go one better. We are soon swimming in a turbulent sea of hatred and mistrust of anyone who doesn't agree with us a hundred percent. Reason is lost - and all of us lose the benefit of the best intellectual decision-making in our interests that democracy - which spreads that decision-making over millions of minds where each person's beliefs and instincts can wisely qualify our intellectual conclusions - was supposed to provide.

Perhaps, Steve Sailer is just offering the only defense for genetic determisim that is available - after decades of Margaret Mead and slavery and civilization's instinctive and passionate recoil from the Third Reich. Maybe the effect that those highly emotional influences had on our world are far from over and will continue to reverberate and cause wide-swinging oscillations through our politics for many years to come.

It seems to me that the only way to mitigate the damage that these political oscillations have caused and will continue to cause is to understand that emotions are what motivates our minds and are the values that get negotiated in our decisions, that our intellectual conclusions are weak competitors to start with and that enlightened intellectual conclusions only emerge from minds that are free from strong emotions. When we understand that we may be better able to resist the siren call of those strong emotions in our political processes. The Ulysses of both parties need to tie themselves to the mast.

History has shown that these cycles of fervor, like the Crusades, only die out after so many millions have been killed that we run out of recruits. Those few left alive finally look around at the death and destruction and lose their passion for it.

Some scientists have postulated that this is the reason we don't find intelligent life in the universe. The time-line from the intellectual capacity to create fearful weapons (and possibly communicate with other life in the universe) - until we inevitably destroy ourselves with those weapons is extremely short. See Why We Haven't Met Any Aliens for more on this idea.

Enough political philosophy, Margaret

Last edited by Margaret McGhee; May 4th, 2006 at 02:33 PM..
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  #68  
Old May 4th, 2006, 02:32 PM
TomJrzk TomJrzk is offline
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Default Re: Somatic Behavior Choice Hypothesis

Quote:
Originally Posted by Margaret McGhee
This is not a partisan observation however.
Yikes. To say this and then go on to partisan observations is not exactly what I would do. You might have included more of the dems faults to make it more balanced and much less partisan.

I know you don't see them from your perspective since most in the media do not, either. Yes, "Enough political philosophy"...

Stuck in the middle...
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  #69  
Old May 4th, 2006, 02:42 PM
Margaret McGhee Margaret McGhee is offline
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Default Re: Somatic Behavior Choice Hypothesis

I don't see the imbalance here.

Examples from either side would make my point. Today's political examples are best exemplified by Tom DeLay and Bill Frist and Carl Rove.

Today's best academic examples are perhaps Gould, Lewontin, Rose and those who attack Larry Summers.

I was purposely not trying to score any political points which is why I declared my politics as liberal - so others could discount anything I said as they wish.

I suspect you're not as stuck in the middle as you think.

Margaret
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  #70  
Old May 4th, 2006, 03:55 PM
TomJrzk TomJrzk is offline
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Default Re: Somatic Behavior Choice Hypothesis

Quote:
Originally Posted by Margaret McGhee
I don't see the imbalance here.
You're right. I did not make the correlation between Summers' attackers and the left. My bad, I'm sorry.

I AM in the middle though. Economic R and social D, with the exception of gays. And I love the saying: "If you're in college and not a [social] D, then you have no heart; if you're out of college and not an [economic] R, you have no brain".
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