John - I suspect the answer is largely benign...we are all educators and find
it difficult to resist the urge/temptation to set someone straight. This is by
itself an admirable impulse, and it stems largely from our desire to influence
others in a positive direction. But as my one of Ph.D. mentors Paul Meehl
liked to say, "Sometimes one has to figure out whether someone is educable. If
he or she isn't, it's not worth spending time on them."
I don't know the person in question, so I don't know whether he is
educable. But it does seem to me that he is not interested in curbing his
behavior or trying to make a good faith effort to do so. If I saw such a good
faith effort, I might well feel differently. ....Scott
Scott O. Lilienfeld, Ph.D.
Professor
Editor, Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice
Department of Psychology, Room 473 Psychology and Interdisciplinary Sciences
(PAIS)
Emory University
36 Eagle Row
Atlanta, Georgia 30322
slil...@emory.edu
(404) 727-1125
Psychology Today Blog:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-skeptical-psychologist
50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology:
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-140513111X.html
Scientific American Mind: Facts and Fictions in Mental Health Column:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciammind/
The Master in the Art of Living makes little distinction between his work and
his play,
his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his
recreation,
his love and his intellectual passions. He hardly knows which is which.
He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does,
leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing.
To him – he is always doing both.
- Zen Buddhist text
(slightly modified)
-----Original Message-----
From: John Kulig [mailto:ku...@mail.plymouth.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 1:01 PM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: Re: [tips] Reclaiming TIPS
Claudia .. thanks, you inspired me to throw in $.02
I'm only an amateur when it comes to social psychology, but I am pretty sure
scapegoating always happens in groups sooner or later. When you study
scapegoating (e.g. the French anthropologist Rene Girard) you realize
scapegoats usually bring it on themselves (more or less), they are never
randomly drawn from the population ... so the group is also a participant.
While I understand the desire to "vote" on whether one person should be
excluded, I will not do it. It feels too ugly to me. ALL groups end up with
someone who we think deserves to be kicked out, but I would rather try to buck
Girard-like "human nature" and fill posts with other threads. I think it's a
signal-to-noise ratio issue. I do not want to start a tradition of voting on
exclusion. I think it is a bad road to start down. Also, the internet is
inherently open and that will not change unless TIPs becomes a gated community
which I would oppose. That being said, most posters on ANY group will tick
others off sooner or later, and some people will routinely tick off most
everyone. It's the nature of the medium.
FINALLY, let's take advantage of social diffusion. An email stares at YOU in
the face, but it is actually directed at no one person in particular, it is -
electronically - diffused across all members of the group. Remember the old zen
habit of visualizing a person's comments as an arrow that may be aimed at you,
but then flies past you. One more finally: maybe there is something in human
nature that always itches for a fight. I am (half) mystified why people cannot
resisting responding to posts they want extinguished. If one person is voted
on, there may be another next year and that's not a tradition I want to see
started.
--------------------------
John W. Kulig
Professor of Psychology
Plymouth State University
Plymouth NH 03264
--------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Claudia Stanny" <csta...@uwf.edu>
To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" <tips@acsun.frostburg.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 10:58:28 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: [tips] Reclaiming TIPS
I am violating my policy of refusing to respond to any post initiated in
response to an inappropriate off-topic post or posts that use offensive
language.
I am saddened that TIPS has devolved into a sandbox of abusive and semi-abusive
posts.
I am offended by the posts that initiate these threads.
I am ashamed of the manner in which some members respond to these threads.
I have been ashamed of some of my own responses to these threads.
I may yet regret this response.
However, if it serves to assist Bill in his efforts to restore civility and
purpose to the culture of this list, I will take this risk.
Thanks, Bill, for all you have done to create this community. It has been a
beneficial component of my scholarly community over the years. If I can help
contribute to sustaining that community, I will do what I can.
At present, I’ve adopted silence as my strategy, but I realize that this
strategy also creates some unpleasant unintended consequences.
Claudia J. Stanny, Ph.D.
Director, Center for University Teaching, Learning, and Assessment
Associate Professor, Psychology
University of West Florida
Pensacola, FL 32514 – 5751
Phone: (850) 857-6355 or 473-7435
e-mail: csta...@uwf.edu
CUTLA Web Site: http://uwf.edu/cutla/
Personal Web Pages: http://uwf.edu/cstanny/website/index.htm
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