Re:[tips] Obama's Mom--Black's rebuttal as well as Joan's
On 15 March Stephen Black wrote In my copy [of The Nurture Assumption], Harris lists 391 footnotes referencing her arguments,... and Joan Warmbold responded I have the book by my side (doubt there exists more than one version) and can not find one, not one, footnote on any page to provide the source for any of her assertions or conclusions. Yes, there is a list of references at the end of the book (391---is that what you mean by footnotes?) but how can a reader determine how and when any of those references were used? On a purely factual matter, the number 391 at the end of the endnote section (p. 418) is not the number of the endnote but the page number to which the relevant note refers. There are actually around 700 endnotes. (For some pages of the text there are more than one separate endnotes.) Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London http://www.esterson.org --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: Re:[tips] Obama's Mom--Black's rebuttal as well as Joan's
I have a copy of the original USA edition and I count 397 end notes. Has there been a revised edition, or is the UK edition longer? The original USA edition only has 326 pages total--there is no page 418. Harris' newest book, expanding her theory, has over 500 notes. But this isn't the point, is it? Anyone can list notes. The point is that her work is meticulous, incisive, and--especially in the first half of the second book--demolishes dieties of developmental psychology. No wonder people hate her. (Not me though.) Paul Okami - Original Message - On a purely factual matter, the number 391 at the end of the endnote section (p. 418) is not the number of the endnote but the page number to which the relevant note refers. There are actually around 700 endnotes. (For some pages of the text there are more than one separate endnotes.) Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London http://www.esterson.org --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) __ NOD32 2923 (20080305) Information __ This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. http://www.eset.com --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
[tips] Nurture assumption
I wrote In my copy [of The Nurture Assumption], Harris lists 391 footnotes referencing her arguments,... And Allen Esterson replied: On a purely factual matter, the number 391 at the end of the endnote section (p. 418) is not the number of the endnote but the page number to which the relevant note refers. There are actually around 700 endnotes. (For some pages of the text there are more than one separate endnotes.) Allen's right (Gad, how I hate having to say that). After carefully explaining the matter to warm and bold Joan, I forgot and confused the page number 391 with the number of endnotes. I estimate that there must be between 600 and 700 different endnotes (too weary to count 'em all) and around 700 specific citations to the literature, the vast majority of which are to peer-reviewed scientific publications. This impressive number makes Joan's claim, aided and abetted by Paul Brandon, that Harris fails to document her sources and relied on anecdotes outrageous. If you want to trash a work, fine, but do it on the basis of what the author has actually written. To do otherwise is intellectually dishonest. Stephen - Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Subscribe to discussion list (TIPS) for the teaching of psychology at http://flightline.highline.edu/sfrantz/tips/ --- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
[tips] Politician's Wives
It seems to me that as much as people are talking about Elliot Spitzer these days, many people are talking just as much about the fact that his wife was standing by his side when he apologized and resigned. The women I know have strong negative feelings about this and they all say that they wouldn't have stood next to him. His wife looked pretty bad. Is this just another example of how our culture expects women to support their man, or is there some other psychology going on here? Michael Michael Britt Host of The Psych Files www.thepsychfiles.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [tips] Politician's Wives
Hi An opinion - In general and historically I think that women are aware of the greater expectation that they will put up with sexual infidelity more readily than men will...and there is probably some resentment of that double standard. Just a guess based on casual observation, not a scientific conclusion. I think that as women are less economically dependent on men (as a group or on average) than they were 50 years ago, to whatever degree it might have been true that women are more likely to put up with it than men are, it is less true now. Many women can and do walk when this happens. Since Silda Spitzer has a lot of professional skill and experience it may be that women who can identify with her are frustrated that she has not yet left (not that I would be at all shocked if she does in the near future). Or maybe they are concerned that she is doing what many perceived Hillary C. to have done - staying with a philandering husband in order to gain political ground. Trading off marital satisfaction for political gain...ignoring the possibility that fidelity might not be that important to her for whatever hidden (none of our business) reason she might have. Nancy Melucci Long Beach City College Long Beach CA **It's Tax Time! Get tips, forms, and advice on AOL Money Finance. (http://money.aol.com/tax?NCID=aolprf000301) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [tips] Obama's Mom
On a lighter note: John Barrymore is quoted as saying, Footnotes get in the way of a good read, It's like having to run downstairs to answer the doorbell on one's wedding night. Don Allen Dept. of Psychology Langara College 100 W. 49th Ave. Vancouver, B.C. Canada V5Y 2Z6 Phone: 604-323-5871 - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, March 14, 2008 9:31 pm Subject: Re: [tips] Obama's Mom To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) tips@acsun.frostburg.edu On 14 Mar 2008 at 19:32, Joan Warmbold wrote: it goes totally against the grain of the theory of Judith Harris's that parents care-giving doesn't make much of a difference. I found her hypothesis patently ludicrous but thought I had best check out her book, The Nurture Assumption, before I criticize it. When I read it, I was astonished at the amazingly poor scholarship throughout. First, she does not provide one (not one!) footnote, therefore making it impossible for readers to determine the source of her various conclusions and beliefs. She also provides an amazing number of casual observations as 'scientific' evidence. I'm astonished myself at these assertions from Joan, and I can only conclude that she must have read some other Nurture Assumption than the one I have. In my copy, Harris lists 391 footnotes referencing her arguments, and provides more than 700 explicit references to the scientific literature (there were so many I grew tired counting and had to estimate). The work is exceptionally well-supported, with the casual observations intended only for illustration and explanation and to make the book interesting to read. Herpatently ludicrous hypothesis has a firm basis in the findings of the important field of behaviour genetics, Obama's mom notwithstanding. An earlier and briefer version (Harris, 1995) was found to be sufficiently persuasive as to be published in the holy of holies, _Psychological Review_ despite her lack of a Ph.D. or any academic affiliation, and how often does _that_ happen? It was then awarded the APA's George A. Miller Award for an Outstanding Recent Article in General Psychology in 1998, which is not bad for a theory which Joan finds entirely lacking in scientific merit. Harris's views are unfortunately often misunderstood and misrepresented, and no wonder, because they provide a significant challenge to the conventional view of child development. Are you sure you really read the book, Joan? Harris, J. (1995). Where is the child's environment? A group socialization theory of child development. Psychological Review, 102, 458- 489. Stephen - Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Subscribe to discussion list (TIPS) for the teaching of psychology at http://flightline.highline.edu/sfrantz/tips/ --- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [tips] Politician's Wives
I have had class discussion on this related to evol. psych explanations and comparisons. Have the class find examples of men leaving women who are unfaithful? Men may also be more likely to respond violently to such unfaithfulness. Also, note that women might SAY, in hindsight, they would not do this (that is, stay with their man) but perhaps the evidence suggests otherwise. Anyway, it provoked some interesting class discussion in my social psych group. Gary Gerald L. (Gary) Peterson, Ph.D. Professor, Psychology Saginaw Valley State University University Center, MI 48710 989-964-4491 [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [tips] Nurture assumption
All responses to my criticisms of Harris are totally on the mark. I prefer to have footnotes on each page so I can verify the source of various statements as I'm reading. But that's me. Harris, indeed, provides notes for each of the statements in each chapter, though these notes don't provide the source per se--those are provided in the list of references. I apologize for all of you fans of Harris's work for my inaccurate contentions about her book. I feel there are many sound studies to disprove the contention that parents are not crucial to the development of their children but that's an entirely different issue. My apologies to all on this listserv for my sloppy scholarship. It wasn't intentional as I truly hadn't noticed the NOTES, just the list of references. Mea culpa. Joan [EMAIL PROTECTED] I wrote In my copy [of The Nurture Assumption], Harris lists 391 footnotes referencing her arguments,... And Allen Esterson replied: On a purely factual matter, the number 391 at the end of the endnote section (p. 418) is not the number of the endnote but the page number to which the relevant note refers. There are actually around 700 endnotes. (For some pages of the text there are more than one separate endnotes.) Allen's right (Gad, how I hate having to say that). After carefully explaining the matter to warm and bold Joan, I forgot and confused the page number 391 with the number of endnotes. I estimate that there must be between 600 and 700 different endnotes (too weary to count 'em all) and around 700 specific citations to the literature, the vast majority of which are to peer-reviewed scientific publications. This impressive number makes Joan's claim, aided and abetted by Paul Brandon, that Harris fails to document her sources and relied on anecdotes outrageous. If you want to trash a work, fine, but do it on the basis of what the author has actually written. To do otherwise is intellectually dishonest. Stephen - Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Subscribe to discussion list (TIPS) for the teaching of psychology at http://flightline.highline.edu/sfrantz/tips/ --- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [tips] Politician's Wives
I have had many friends also express dismay that his wife stood by his side. My response is that her pale and very sad expression certainly let the public see that she was one unhappy woman. Of course, we can't be sure for what reasons--i.e., her husband's betrayal, the embarrassment to the family or the impact this will have on his career and their future. I will only state that if I were Elliot, I would probably have prefered that my wife not be by my side if she appeared as dispirited as she did. Joan [EMAIL PROTECTED] It seems to me that as much as people are talking about Elliot Spitzer these days, many people are talking just as much about the fact that his wife was standing by his side when he apologized and resigned. The women I know have strong negative feelings about this and they all say that they wouldn't have stood next to him. His wife looked pretty bad. Is this just another example of how our culture expects women to support their man, or is there some other psychology going on here? Michael Michael Britt Host of The Psych Files www.thepsychfiles.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
[tips] Harris 1995 [Was Nurture assumption]
There seem to be two issues that are being conflated: (1) The issue of whether Harris is presenting a scientific hypothesis (as opposed to bunch of poorly-documented anecdotes) and (2) whether Harris' argument is valid. I suggest that the first question can be answered by examining the 1995 Psychological Review article (v. 102, pp. 458-489) instead of arguing over endnote/footnote/reference formats. The argument in the 1995 article is presented in a format familiar to psychologists. It also seems to me that many people misunderstand her basic thesis, which is *NOT* that parents are unimportant but that they lack a certain influence that has been automatically assumed. Her argument is that a lot of environmental influence has been uncritically assigned to the parents when it should have been assigned to the peer group. I don't know whether she is correct or not but this hypothesis seems plausible and empirical. Here is a summary of the thesis from the 1995 article. The theory presented in the remainder of this article, Group Socialization (GS) theory, explains the shaping of adult personality characteristics in terms of the child's experiences outside the parental home. It is important to note that this theory does not imply that children can get along without parents. Children are emotionally attached to their parents (and vice versa), are dependent on them for protection and care, and learn skills within the home that may prove useful outside of it; these facts are not questioned. What GS theory implies is that children would develop into the same sort of adults if we left them in their homes, their schools, their neighborhoods, and their cultural or subcultural groups, but switched all the parents around. (1995, p. 461) What a gedankenexperiment! Ken --- Kenneth M. Steele, Ph.D. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Department of Psychology http://www.psych.appstate.edu Appalachian State University Boone, NC 28608 USA --- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [tips] Harris 1995 [Was Nurture assumption]
Hi, Another thing that doesn't get mentioned is that it's not parents VERSUS peers (any more than it's nature versus nurture). Since who the parents are (SES and other socio-cultural factors) as well as decisions that they make (like where we go to school) influence the type of peers to whom children are exposed. It's not either-or - it's a very complicated mix. Nancy Melucci Long Beach City College Long Beach CA **It's Tax Time! Get tips, forms, and advice on AOL Money Finance. (http://money.aol.com/tax?NCID=aolprf000301) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
RE: [tips] Harris 1995 [Was Nurture assumption]
Another facet of Harris' argument is that, in the typical study which assumes that parents affect children,and presents similarities between parents and children as evidence, both genetic effects and the effects of children on parents are ignored. From: Ken Steele [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sun 3/16/2008 1:24 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] Harris 1995 [Was Nurture assumption] There seem to be two issues that are being conflated: (1) The issue of whether Harris is presenting a scientific hypothesis (as opposed to bunch of poorly-documented anecdotes) and (2) whether Harris' argument is valid. I suggest that the first question can be answered by examining the 1995 Psychological Review article (v. 102, pp. 458-489) instead of arguing over endnote/footnote/reference formats. The argument in the 1995 article is presented in a format familiar to psychologists. It also seems to me that many people misunderstand her basic thesis, which is *NOT* that parents are unimportant but that they lack a certain influence that has been automatically assumed. Her argument is that a lot of environmental influence has been uncritically assigned to the parents when it should have been assigned to the peer group. I don't know whether she is correct or not but this hypothesis seems plausible and empirical. Here is a summary of the thesis from the 1995 article. The theory presented in the remainder of this article, Group Socialization (GS) theory, explains the shaping of adult personality characteristics in terms of the child's experiences outside the parental home. It is important to note that this theory does not imply that children can get along without parents. Children are emotionally attached to their parents (and vice versa), are dependent on them for protection and care, and learn skills within the home that may prove useful outside of it; these facts are not questioned. What GS theory implies is that children would develop into the same sort of adults if we left them in their homes, their schools, their neighborhoods, and their cultural or subcultural groups, but switched all the parents around. (1995, p. 461) What a gedankenexperiment! Ken --- Kenneth M. Steele, Ph.D. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Department of Psychology http://www.psych.appstate.edu http://www.psych.appstate.edu/ Appalachian State University Boone, NC 28608 USA --- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])winmail.dat
RE: [tips] Politician's Wives
My, what a wonderful example of how Bias cloud our minds. Frankly, as a male I admired how Silda came out, without make-up, haggard, and cried out but she stood there as I saw it, as an example for her daughters about what loyalty and family are about. She was more shamed than Eliot because of what his behavior suggested about there marriage. We saw the same thing in the wife (about to be ex) of the NJ governor who admitted to giving his male lover a state job and had a 1 year affair with him. Again a woman standing there for her child. As she recently said-after-all this man was the father of my child. We saw it with the Senator from Minnesota. His wife stood next to him too. Perhaps we should honor these woman who did something that a man probably wouldn't have done for their wife's if the situation was reversed. I leave it to the consciences of those who wish to attach their bias opinions to why woman do that-perhaps they are biased for reasons only they might want to explore. After all isn't that the role of the scientist? Wouldn't we, based on our theories and practical experiences, quickly recognized the behavior of a sick man doing illegal acts rather than a criminal. Should we not have been the first to offer up understanding and compassion? What does out training and experience instruct us to do in times like this? Let the cable news people pass judgement, we know what motivates them, shouldn't we have a higher calling? -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sun 3/16/2008 12:06 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Politician's Wives Hi An opinion - In general and historically I think that women are aware of the greater expectation that they will put up with sexual infidelity more readily than men will...and there is probably some resentment of that double standard. Just a guess based on casual observation, not a scientific conclusion. I think that as women are less economically dependent on men (as a group or on average) than they were 50 years ago, to whatever degree it might have been true that women are more likely to put up with it than men are, it is less true now. Many women can and do walk when this happens. Since Silda Spitzer has a lot of professional skill and experience it may be that women who can identify with her are frustrated that she has not yet left (not that I would be at all shocked if she does in the near future). Or maybe they are concerned that she is doing what many perceived Hillary C. to have done - staying with a philandering husband in order to gain political ground. Trading off marital satisfaction for political gain...ignoring the possibility that fidelity might not be that important to her for whatever hidden (none of our business) reason she might have. Nancy Melucci Long Beach City College Long Beach CA **It's Tax Time! Get tips, forms, and advice on AOL Money Finance. (http://money.aol.com/tax?NCID=aolprf000301) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [tips] Nurture assumption
Thanks Joan. Your mea culpa is admirable, especially in a wide public forum. I have only lurked on this discussion and found the interchage enlightening both about the book and the nature of such discussions. This is what tips is all about for me. I'm not sure a moderated list would have worked as well. A Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 619-260-4006 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Original message Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2008 12:15:10 -0500 (CDT) From: Joan Warmbold [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [tips] Nurture assumption To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) tips@acsun.frostburg.edu All responses to my criticisms of Harris are totally on the mark. I prefer to have footnotes on each page so I can verify the source of various statements as I'm reading. But that's me. Harris, indeed, provides notes for each of the statements in each chapter, though these notes don't provide the source per se--those are provided in the list of references. I apologize for all of you fans of Harris's work for my inaccurate contentions about her book. I feel there are many sound studies to disprove the contention that parents are not crucial to the development of their children but that's an entirely different issue. My apologies to all on this listserv for my sloppy scholarship. It wasn't intentional as I truly hadn't noticed the NOTES, just the list of references. Mea culpa. Joan [EMAIL PROTECTED] I wrote In my copy [of The Nurture Assumption], Harris lists 391 footnotes referencing her arguments,... And Allen Esterson replied: On a purely factual matter, the number 391 at the end of the endnote section (p. 418) is not the number of the endnote but the page number to which the relevant note refers. There are actually around 700 endnotes. (For some pages of the text there are more than one separate endnotes.) Allen's right (Gad, how I hate having to say that). After carefully explaining the matter to warm and bold Joan, I forgot and confused the page number 391 with the number of endnotes. I estimate that there must be between 600 and 700 different endnotes (too weary to count 'em all) and around 700 specific citations to the literature, the vast majority of which are to peer-reviewed scientific publications. This impressive number makes Joan's claim, aided and abetted by Paul Brandon, that Harris fails to document her sources and relied on anecdotes outrageous. If you want to trash a work, fine, but do it on the basis of what the author has actually written. To do otherwise is intellectually dishonest. Stephen - Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Subscribe to discussion list (TIPS) for the teaching of psychology at http://flightline.highline.edu/sfrantz/tips/ --- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [tips] Nurture assumption (was: Obama's Mom)
At 11:05 PM -0500 3/15/08, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 15 Mar 2008 at 10:42, Paul Brandon wrote: I must admit that I'm with Joan. I will admit to not having read the book (although I did read the Reference section that Stephen posted). but I did read the original article. I found it very sophomoric; a grab bag of mixed references (most of them anecdotal newspaper items) with a fairly high cherry picking quotient and little critical discrimination. At present, I'd call it at best an interesting hypothesis. Huh? I must admit that I have no clue what Paul is talking about, not having posted a Reference section, whatever that is. Nor do I have the faintest idea what original article he's talking about. I swore years ago that I would avoid the Evo Psycho wars, but I succumbed. Mea Culpa. I seem to have hit a nerve. I'm sometime amused by the way people in mainstream movements act as if they're a persecuted minority. I thought that I remembered someone posting a list of references from one of Harris's publications, but after a dozen or so years memory gets vague. Somehow I assumed that Stephen would have been the most likely culprit -- my apologies. I did not claim that Harris did not provide documentation (that was Joan's assertion). My skepticism is based on the nature of that documentation, voluminous though it be. It certainly does include many undeniably scholarly publications. I'm not going to get into a point by point debate concerning the applicability of each publication to her thesis -- others such as Stephen have much more invested in the topic than I do. References to authority notwithstanding, the core assumptions of Evo Psycho are not universally accepted. I'd suggest a reading of: Moore, David S. (2003) The dependent gene : the fallacy of nature/nurture for a discussion of the difficulties of assigning relative contributions to the genome and the environment. I read the 1995 Psych Rev paper when it came out. Based on descriptions the book seem to be more of the same (more depth, but no new major points) so I did not read it. On my reference to memes and the zeitgeist: While it is certainly true that most parents in Western culture set a high value on parenting (though one might also argue that, based on the time that parents actually spend with their children this is mostly lip service), most of those parents also are unhappily aware that the results do not usually fulfill their expectations. Writings such as Evolutionary Psychology provide a comforting explanation that removes blame by self or others for the consequences of one's behavior. Parenting is not the only area where this can be found. We also find it in fields such as drug dependence. NOTHING in science is ever irrevocably proven. While the findings of behavioral genetics may have become mainstream, there will be room for skepticism until someone can do a human twin study with random assignment. I will remain agnostic (a mild statement for me) on the relative contributions of different determinants on behavior. A lot may be culture specific. I did post a reference to her prize-winning 1995 _Psychological Review_ article but anyone who takes the trouble to examine it will quickly see that it bears not the slightest resemblance to to a sophomoric..grab bag of mixed references (most of them anecdotal newspaper items). On the contrary it's a sophisticated 31-page analysis of child development based on evidence from a wide variety of sources, especially studies in behaviour genetics and, as is all her work, extensively and meticulously referenced to the current scientific literature. I failed to spot even a single anecdotal newspaper item unless Paul includes in this category such well-known rags as Science, Child Development, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychological Review, etc. As with Joan's posts, Paul's description amounts to a serious misrepresentation of her work, made more reprehensible by the chutzpah of simultaneously claiming I will admit to not having read the book. For the opinion of someone who _has_ read the book, you might turn to the book review by the respected social psychologist Carol Tavris in the _New York Times_ http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/09/13/reviews/980913.13tavrist.html) Tavris's opinion is a little different from Paul's and Joan's. In particular, she observes: They cannot fault her scholarship. Harris is not generalizing from a single study that can be attacked on statistical grounds, or even from a single field; she draws on research from behavior genetics (the study of genetic contributions to personality), social psychology, child development, ethology, evolution and culture. Lively anecdotes about real children suffuse this book, but Harris never confuses anecdotes with data. As for Paul's claim that Harris has no more than an interesting hypothesis, I have news. The thing that seems to cause her the greatest hostility is her
[tips] The ultimate anal fixation
Did you hear about that woman in Western Kansas who was affixed to the toilet for two years? I guess chronic smokers could be the ultimate oral fixation. Michael Sylvester,PhD Daytona Beach,Florida --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [tips] Nurture assumption
Any one of us can be mistaken. It is always good to be shown by others in what way we are mistaken, so that we can correct ourselves. That is, of course, the the way that we progress in science. Being told that we are intentionally ignorant or other such ad homonyms is not helpful. I hope we can restrain ourselves from that sort of thing in the future. Bill Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] 03/16/08 4:16 PM Thanks Joan. Your mea culpa is admirable, especially in a wide public forum. I have only lurked on this discussion and found the interchage enlightening both about the book and the nature of such discussions. This is what tips is all about for me. I'm not sure a moderated list would have worked as well. A Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 619-260-4006 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Original message Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2008 12:15:10 -0500 (CDT) From: Joan Warmbold [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [tips] Nurture assumption To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) tips@acsun.frostburg.edu All responses to my criticisms of Harris are totally on the mark. I prefer to have footnotes on each page so I can verify the source of various statements as I'm reading. But that's me. Harris, indeed, provides notes for each of the statements in each chapter, though these notes don't provide the source per se--those are provided in the list of references. I apologize for all of you fans of Harris's work for my inaccurate contentions about her book. I feel there are many sound studies to disprove the contention that parents are not crucial to the development of their children but that's an entirely different issue. My apologies to all on this listserv for my sloppy scholarship. It wasn't intentional as I truly hadn't noticed the NOTES, just the list of references. Mea culpa. Joan [EMAIL PROTECTED] I wrote In my copy [of The Nurture Assumption], Harris lists 391 footnotes referencing her arguments,... And Allen Esterson replied: On a purely factual matter, the number 391 at the end of the endnote section (p. 418) is not the number of the endnote but the page number to which the relevant note refers. There are actually around 700 endnotes. (For some pages of the text there are more than one separate endnotes.) Allen's right (Gad, how I hate having to say that). After carefully explaining the matter to warm and bold Joan, I forgot and confused the page number 391 with the number of endnotes. I estimate that there must be between 600 and 700 different endnotes (too weary to count 'em all) and around 700 specific citations to the literature, the vast majority of which are to peer-reviewed scientific publications. This impressive number makes Joan's claim, aided and abetted by Paul Brandon, that Harris fails to document her sources and relied on anecdotes outrageous. If you want to trash a work, fine, but do it on the basis of what the author has actually written. To do otherwise is intellectually dishonest. Stephen - Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Subscribe to discussion list (TIPS) for the teaching of psychology at http://flightline.highline.edu/sfrantz/tips/ --- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [tips] Politician's Wives
On 16 Mar 2008 at 11:53, Britt, Michael wrote: It seems to me that as much as people are talking about Elliot Spitzer these days, many people are talking just as much about the fact that his wife was standing by his side when he apologized and resigned. The women I know have strong negative feelings about this and they all say that they wouldn't have stood next to him. His wife looked pretty bad. Is this just another example of how our culture expects women to support their man, or is there some other psychology going on here? Toby Harnden of the UK's Daily Telegraph has a fantasy piece on the speech Silda Spitzer should have given. http://tinyurl.com/2ncyub Too bad she didn't. Stephen - Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Subscribe to discussion list (TIPS) for the teaching of psychology at http://flightline.highline.edu/sfrantz/tips/ --- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [tips] Nurture assumption (was: Obama's Mom)
At 4:46 PM -0500 3/16/08, Paul Brandon wrote: At 11:05 PM -0500 3/15/08, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 15 Mar 2008 at 10:42, Paul Brandon wrote: I must admit that I'm with Joan. I will admit to not having read the book (although I did read the Reference section that Stephen posted). but I did read the original article. I found it very sophomoric; a grab bag of mixed references (most of them anecdotal newspaper items) with a fairly high cherry picking quotient and little critical discrimination. At present, I'd call it at best an interesting hypothesis. Huh? I must admit that I have no clue what Paul is talking about, not having posted a Reference section, whatever that is. Nor do I have the faintest idea what original article he's talking about. I swore years ago that I would avoid the Evo Psycho wars, but I succumbed. Mea Culpa. And finally thanks to Ken Steele for reminding us that the core of Harris' case is not nature/nurture but rather than relative contributions of two different environmental determinants: family and peers. My one caution here is that this is a very contingent comparison (a given culture at a given point in time); not a direct statement about 'human nature'. Again, can one of you comment on whether Harris provides any cross cultural data on her effects? Changes in relative contribution over time (in generations) would also be interesting. -- The best argument against intelligent design is that people believe in it. * PAUL K. BRANDON [EMAIL PROTECTED] * * Psychology Department507-389-6217 * * 23 Armstrong Hall Minnesota State University, Mankato * *http://krypton.mnsu.edu/~pkbrando/ * --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
[tips] need help or tutorial in creating an on line intro psych class
I have recently been diagnosed with a serious medical condition (lymphoma) that will necessitate not being on campus frequently enough (most likely) to teach intro psych this summer and possibley longer. I am currently teaching a face to face class which integrates a lot of web based activites using WebCT. I have taught intro psych for over 30 years and am very comfortable with it. At the same time I am very open to innovations. Does anyone have a suggestion for a website that deals with creating an on-line class? I could also use suggestions for textbooks that have well fleshed out sites that may include podcasts or videos related to the topics. Any further suggestions would be appreciated. Though I am feeling fine now, I am aware that with the chemo I will be starting there could be cyclical fatigue. Mark Eastman Diablo Valley College Pleasant Hill, CA 94523 --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])winmail.dat
Re: [tips] Politician's Wives
- Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) tips@acsun.frostburg.edu Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2008 7:09 PM Subject: Re: [tips] Politician's Wives On 16 Mar 2008 at 11:53, Britt, Michael wrote: It seems to me that as much as people are talking about Elliot Spitzer these days, many people are talking just as much about the fact that his wife was standing by his side when he apologized and resigned. The women I know have strong negative feelings about this and they all say that they wouldn't have stood next to him. His wife looked pretty bad. Is this just another example of how our culture expects women to support their man, or is there some other psychology going on here? Toby Harnden of the UK's Daily Telegraph has a fantasy piece on the speech Silda Spitzer should have given. There is a cross-cultural aspect to this.Standing by your man is a Eurocentric white woman thang, Black women do not necessarily stand by their man. A sister would have asked for a divorce and move on. The white woman would follow the husband to the jailhouse and say how much she still loves him. Black women do not necessarily follow along. Michael Sylvester,PhD Daytona Beach,Florida --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [tips] Harris 1995 [Was Nurture assumption]
Gee, do I really want to get into this at all anymore?! But both Pinker and Harris boldly state that parents are not important. Quote from the foreword by Pinker states, The thesis of The Nurture Assumption . . .(is) that genes and peers matter, but parent's don't matter. In the preface by Harris, she quotes from her journal article, Do parents have any important long-term effects on the development of their children's personality? This article examines the evidence and concludes that the answer is no. I will again apologize for my very inaccurate statement that no citations were provided. However, I have been spending much time today reviewing this text and will provide a number of examples of statements in this book later this week that are quite unfounded and provide no citation. Stephen, please don't respond yet. Wait until I have the proper time and energy to provide what I believe to be reasons that this text has weaknesses that the scientific community at-large should be made aware. After I present such, go at me with any and all criticisms. This is what this listserv is all about--learning what does and does not make up good science. Joan [EMAIL PROTECTED] There seem to be two issues that are being conflated: (1) The issue of whether Harris is presenting a scientific hypothesis (as opposed to bunch of poorly-documented anecdotes) and (2) whether Harris' argument is valid. I suggest that the first question can be answered by examining the 1995 Psychological Review article (v. 102, pp. 458-489) instead of arguing over endnote/footnote/reference formats. The argument in the 1995 article is presented in a format familiar to psychologists. It also seems to me that many people misunderstand her basic thesis, which is *NOT* that parents are unimportant but that they lack a certain influence that has been automatically assumed. Her argument is that a lot of environmental influence has been uncritically assigned to the parents when it should have been assigned to the peer group. I don't know whether she is correct or not but this hypothesis seems plausible and empirical. Here is a summary of the thesis from the 1995 article. The theory presented in the remainder of this article, Group Socialization (GS) theory, explains the shaping of adult personality characteristics in terms of the child's experiences outside the parental home. It is important to note that this theory does not imply that children can get along without parents. Children are emotionally attached to their parents (and vice versa), are dependent on them for protection and care, and learn skills within the home that may prove useful outside of it; these facts are not questioned. What GS theory implies is that children would develop into the same sort of adults if we left them in their homes, their schools, their neighborhoods, and their cultural or subcultural groups, but switched all the parents around. (1995, p. 461) What a gedankenexperiment! Ken --- Kenneth M. Steele, Ph.D. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Department of Psychology http://www.psych.appstate.edu Appalachian State University Boone, NC 28608 USA --- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [tips] need help or tutorial in creating an on line intro psych class
Eastman, Mark wrote: Does anyone have a suggestion for a website that deals with creating an on-line class? I could also use suggestions for textbooks that have well fleshed out sites that may include podcasts or videos related to the topics. You might check out PsychPortal with the Myers text. http://portals.bfwpub.com/psych.php This one is particularly well-developed but most of the publishers of popular intro texts have (or are quickly developing) support for online courses. --Dave -- -- ___ David E. Campbell, Ph.D.[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Department of PsychologyPhone: 707-826-3721 Humboldt State University FAX: 707-826-4993 Arcata, CA 95521-8299 www.humboldt.edu/~campbell/psyc.htm http://www.humboldt.edu/%7Ecampbell/psyc.htm --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
