Fall 2020 PSYC100 Musings - 03

 TLDR; - WEIRD as a concept in psychology shows how we see the subject through a Western lense. Emotions may not be innate and also are subject to a Western prejudice.

An interesting part of my PSYC100 textbook declared that, to date, psychological writings and research have focused on WEIRD subjects, where WEIRD stands for: White, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic. I was interested to see the same in a Douglas Todd column where he reviewed the Joseph Henrich book 'The WEIRDest people in the world'. (It turns out the author and his colleagues napkined out the concept at a Chinese takeout lunch at a basement food court at UBC. Hey, I had lunch there quite often. Yes, Jane. I used napkin as a verb.)

As Douglas Todd notes '...more than 96 per cent of experiments in social psychology were based on subjects who are WEIRD.'

And Henrich himself says that my PSYC100 textbook should be renamed:  “Textbooks that purport to be about ‘Psychology’ or “Social Psychology’ need to be retitled something like ‘The Cultural Psychology of Late 20th-Century Americans.’ ”

Basically, this says that all of our psychology is culturally biased. This a contest between 'cultural' subjectivism and objectivism. That is, is it really possible to develop a psychology for all humans, or are we so affected by our societies and cultures that we're beyond this? Are we committing cultural or psychological anthromorphism by projecting our WEIRD viewpoint on other cultures? Once you open this door, it's hard not to see it everywhere. (The AI behind Siri written by WEIRD computer programmers? Does the word 'systemic' now take on more gravitas?)

Contrast this with my other reading (acting as a pseudo-TA for Jane): How Emotions are Made (Lisa Feldman Barrett). The premise of the book is to disavow the 'classical' view of emotions: that there are 6 basic emotions that are innate (biological, like instincts), that are common across all cultures. Here we go again! The argument against this view considers emotions as constructed by our brains, not triggered like instincts.  

However, for this essay, the interesting part of the book is the premise that there is no basis for limiting emotions to the famous six. It turns out that the first experiments studying emotions (approx 50 years ago) were based on Darwin's theory that facial expressions hold the key, and from this, six emotions became defined as representative of all basic emotions, and we've been stuck with them ever since! Very weird.

Even studies of emotions in foreign cultures who have not had contact with the West are compromised, as the researchers reject from the study any emotions that they don't recognize. There could be a multitude of emotions in those cultures that our narrow six-pack of emotions can't fathom. And even further, are we in the West now constrained to these six emotions? Can we not now think outside the box we've put ourselves in?

Not sure where we go from here. The PSYC textbook, although identifying the WEIRD syndrome, does nothing to counter it. How could it? where do you start? And the emotions book is just getting started with creating a new theory of emotions after blowing up the old one.

But I should probably stop this now, and get back to studying for the midterm.

References:
https://psychology.pressbooks.tru.ca
https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-youre-most-likely-weird-and-you-dont-even-know-it
https://lisafeldmanbarrett.com/books/how-emotions-are-made/

Fall 2020 PSYC100 Musings - 02

 Chapter 2 is rather boring: research methods. Yes, yes I know about case studies and surveys, and the problems there-in. Or so I think! 

One of the things that I learned in my Philosophy course last term is that I do have a cursory understanding of lots of things, but not of the details, and my understanding isn't deep enough to actually talk intelligently about the topic: it's just all in there somewhere.

For example, this week I discovered my terms of reference are wrong. It turns out that there is a negative correlation between divorce in families and student academic achievement. At first I thought this meant there is *no* correlation, but a negative correlation is just as informative as a positive correlation; it just means that it's an inverse relationship.

I am still struggling with the completely online nature of this course. There are no planned interactions with anyone. Our only activity this week (other than reading the textbook and other suggested videos) is to study a research proposal and ask ourselves questions about it.

So, this time around, I'm wary that I need to do the work, and actually write things down. It's a completely different thing to draw it out of my mind into cogent statements.

 

It's interesting working with a digital textbook (kudos to Capilano for using a free digital textbook). This free textbook initiative is being provided through BC Campus' Open Textbook Collection. 

I recall Clint Lalonde from BC Campus doing a talk on this at a BC-Net conference about 5 years ago. It's good to see it's come to fruition, saving a student close a $100 per book).  The textbook has live html links, mostly to the BC Campus site for graphs, but also links to the famed Khan Academy site for specific and additional topics.

Fall 2020 PSYC100 Musings - 01

 I decided to take a basic PSYC100 course this term at Capilano University. This follows the Philosophy course I took in January 2020, which was relegated to online when the pandemic hit in March.

So, this is a itinerant record of that experience, sort of a psychological study of the new online post-secondary environment, using a psychology course as the vehicle for the study.

First things first: I'm enrolled in 1 of 12 sections of PSYC100, all but one are fully asynchronous online. That is, there are only videos to watch and the textbook to read. No streamed lectures. I'm disappointed by this. The streamed lectures in the previous philosophy course that kicked in when the Pandemic hit worked out quite well.

The start to the term did not go well. I was not enrolled in the class before classes started on Sept 8 (day after Labour day). The Cap Learning Management System(LMS) - Moodle) was down on Labour day (actually I think the single-sign on server was down, Moodle was fine), and was incredibly slow on the first day of classes. 

(This is understandable, and kudos to my new and old colleagues at Cap for at least keeping it up and running on the first day of classes when everything is online. This in itself is one of those remarkable achievements that IT departments routinely pull off with no one the wiser as to the incredible challenge this poses.)

The entire class missed the welcoming Zoom meeting that was supposed to happen Sept 8 morning, probably because the messaging did not come through in time. The instructor sent out another invite at about noon for a similar afternoon meeting. I missed the message, and I don't think it was well attended. 

The videos for the first week are a mix of introductions, Cap specific content, and generic PSYC content from the web. One video lecture I found particularly interesting was the relationship between Philosophy and Psychology (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieE1XMIezV4). Another was Cap specific and introduced me to a new visual of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Good to see there's a sense of humour. 

First week's assignment is to submit a one page document to describe what I thought Psychology was before I started the course, compared to what I now think it is after I've studied the content (videos and textbook) for the first week. Not challenging so far.

One observation that I had before, and was enforced by my readings, is the defensiveness of Psychology professionals in labeling their area of study a science. That is, Psychologists consider their field a science. However, the 'hard' scientists (Physics, Chemistry, Biology) scoff at this notion.