This handbook is designed to accompany the published texts for this statistics class. We will use Babbie and Halley's Introduction to SPSS because I judge that the best way to introduce statistics as an integral tool for reading and understanding sociological texts. This is not a training course for researchers. Most of you are undergraduates, or graduates with little experience of statistics. A lot of you are afraid of the subject. I have taken that into account and organized the course in a way that I believe will be comfortable for all of us.
The advantage to Babbie and Halley's text is that they do all the math for you, because the computer does it all. That means we can concentrate on the concepts, the idea, of statistics. If you read their text carefully, and answer all the quiz questions from class, you should have no trouble getting the data results from the statistics lab. We will focus on interpreting what those results mean.
For that reason I am going to do two very unusual things:
1. Interpretation
I am going to begin the course with a study of interpretation. Statistics is useless if you don't know what to do with the tables and analysis once you have them. Besides, most of you are not going to go on to become professional researchers. Most of you are going to work at various jobs, of varying degrees of interest, and form opinions and vote about issues that you are going to understand to varying degrees.
To the extent that you learn interpretation it will serve you and me well for life. You, because it will help you decide whether or not to believe what you are told and what you read. Me, because you will make a much better citizen with such skills, and I can grow old with faith in your ability to make reasonable decisions when you vote, or when you protest, for that matter.
Another reason I am going to begin the course with interpretation is that I think statistics makes more sense that way. This is the common sensical part of data analysis. It's a good place to start because we can all play. This approach also fits well with my teaching of Habermas. Starting a statistics course with something we can all do and understand is one way to bring us all to the discourse table, one way to assure that we will all learn, and share that learning with the community that our class will become.
The second unusual approach is that I am going to actively use the Internet. We have lab time , so that those of you who do not have Net access at home, can use the lab. The WEB is so much a part of the world today that it has become a necessary part of your education. I have created a special web site for our course. And I have ordered two texts, one on criminal justice, one on gender to introduce you to the WEB. Pick the book that interests you most (no, you don't need both)
I hope that the difference in approach will help you to find a way to complete the course that suits your needs.
What Is Theory? Why Do We Need It?
Theory is an organized way of thinking about a subject. Most theories define the concepts they need to talk about the problem. Then they organize all those definitions so that they do not contradict one another. Definitions given, theories then try to explain and predict behavior on the basis of their concepts.
Most of us use theories unconsciously. When you suggest that idle hands should be kept busy, giving your children something to occupy their attention, you are operating on the theory of protestant ethics, or the work ethic. Depending on the definitions you use for the concepts, you might consider playing with Nintendo productive work, or you might consider it idle, leading to mischief later. At least one researcher uses Nintendo to reprogram the rules of the games and teach young children how to think critically about games. (Pogrow, the HOTS Program, the University of Arizona.) Now that would cause us to reconsider our definitions and how they fit together, wouldn't it?
Some people today insist upon teaching their children to read before the age of three, providing productive activities, ballet, gym, martial arts, etc. for almost every minute of their day. They are predicting that their children will be better motivated and more successful in later life if they learn productive work habits at such an early age. Other parents are alarmed at the loss of creative play. They would let children develop more spontaneously with less emphasis on production and competition at the preschool age. You can well imagine how these people have different definitions of the concept of achievement motivation. They have probably never thought out their definitions, probably never thought of this in terms of theory and prediction of future behavior. Unfortunately, this leads to more opportunities for contradictions and poor results in the theory's predictive and explanatory powers.
The abilities to predict and explain are powerful tools. Even though no one has any definitive answers as to whether playing Nintendo and/or following a full social/developmental schedule is good or not so good for preschoolers, we all of us sooner or later have to make decisions based on the answers we come up with. We may have young children and be forced to make decisions for them. Or we may just be forced to make a ballot decision on whether to pay for such education for all children. Either way, we can make better predictions and decisions if we get the contradictions out of our thinking, if we consider what is known on the many sides of the issue.
Theory helps in another important way. Most of these issues are intensely emotional when they apply to our friends and family. The parent who is opposed to Nintendo can get pretty emotional about the presence of Nintendo in the preschool or kindergarten classroom. That parent may not be willing to listen to why the teacher or the school has approved this, even though it might be part of Pogrow's research on critical thinking. The parent's emotion gets in his way. He "knows" Nintendo is bad. In order to hear what Pogrow has to say, the parent needs to step back, talk about the technical aspects of the problem, define what Nintendo means to her, what she thinks it means to her child. We call that critical distancing. Theory helps us to accomplish it.
Edward T. Hall, in The Silent Language, speaks of the "affect" attached to learning and knowing. He explains that the more technical the approach we take to an issue, the less affect we feel over it. Bloom and Krathwohl, in The Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, speak of the "affective domain" in education, and the "cognitive domain." They recognize that we have strong feelings about what we "know." So, of course, we have strong feelings about what we learn. Once we have learned a concept that fits and is appropriate and fits well in one context, we are disconcerted when we encounter later contexts in which this piece of knowledge fails us. Think of math. How many parents were upset to learn that two plus two no longer equaled four for their elementary school children, who were studying numbers to the base two, not to the base ten?
What we know, how we come to know it, and how we measure the appropriateness of the context in which we apply that knowledge is of major concern to every social problem we face at the end of this twentieth century. We classify this officially as epistemology in philosophy, as the sociology of knowledge in sociology, as the cognitive and affective domains in education, and by dozens of other terms across all the disciplines, for every discipline addresses this issue. And every discipline must analyze the data it collects in seeking to explain how and what we know. The analysis is what we call statistics. The statistical tools we use to analyze our data are dependent upon our theoretical approach to the problems.
Theory depends almost entirely on the definitions of the concepts which underlie it. Those definitions come from our experiences which differ radically from one social context to another. When we fail to consider this we shout rhetoric at one another, failing to gain any real communication, and thus failing to solve our social problems. (Hirschman, Albert O., Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1991. ISBN 0-674-76868-X.)
In this text we focus on the analysis of data and its interpretation. Often the interpretation seems and is mere rhetoric, confusing the issues, failing to hear one another in good faith. If we can analyze these issues from the critical distance that theory provides us, then perhaps we will be better able to listen and hear, better able to understand our similarities instead of fighting over our differences. And better able to measure those similarities and differences, with all validity claims having the right to be heard and addressed in good faith. Theory allows us to do that precisely by affording us critical distance, by helping us to step back from the affect that so many research studies have shown to be attached to what we think we know, especially about others.
Catharine MacKinnon is a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, and a radical feminist. She addresses the oppression of women, using feminist theory which she bases on Marxism, postmarxism, and theories of racism. Ultimately she pulled these theories together into a book, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, a theory in which oppression would end. Unfortunately she called her book "Toward" a theory because the theory that will end oppression has not yet found its practice.
MacKinnon defines sex and sexuality as either growing out of perceived differences, or as growing out of the subjugation of women through structural inequality. Whether we see the oppression of women from the "difference" perspective or from the "equality" perspective alters the whole pattern of what we want to proscribe as injustice. If we perceive gender as difference-based, then we perceive specific behaviors as impermissible, outlawing those based on wrong and/or purposefully limiting views of women. That means we evaluate individual behaviors and expectations for "wrong thinking," seeing nothing inherently wrong with the system except for abuse and misperceptions within that system. But if we perceive gender as structural subordination, then we see the system itself as inherently wrong, regardless of underlying wrong or right thinking about the individual behaviors. Very different explanations, very different predictions. Very different variables for each perception, and very different measurement.
This is perhaps the most fundamental social problem we face in the world today. Do we regard differences, of which there are many, as misperceptions within a fundamentally just system? Or de we regard the system as oppressive and unjust? One perspective approaches the problem through individuals and sees the solution as occurring through individuals. The other approaches the problem structurally and seeks solutions through restructuring or deconstructing the system. There are no answers. The question is not whether there are differences, but how to structure a reasonably legitimate society without exacerbating those differences, how to decide between preferential treatment and equality. The question is: what must we work to change, inappropriate behavior within an essentially just system, or structural change of an essentially unjust system? According to what we perceive as creating the present conditions, we will measure not only different variables, but variables that vary from the micro or individual level to the macro or societal level.
Do we want to talk about motivation to achieve from the perspective of the individual child and his/her development of motivational skills (David McClelland, Achievement Motivation) or from the perspective of the society that socializes the child to achieve (David McClelland, The Achieving Society)? Do creativity and motivation reside within the child or within the social group of which that child is a member? These questions matter in how we collect data and in how we analyze data.
What is discrimination? Our answer to that question certainly depends on the theoretical underpinnings of our approach to difference. Does equality mean that we treat everyone alike, even when we are all different and when equal treatment produces unjust results? Or does equality mean different treatment, sometimes preferential treatment for those who have been disadvantaged in some way? In most societies race and gender are the primary characteristics on which oppression is based. But in some, religion, ethnicity, skin color have produced the same effects. Why do people oppress others? Can we become aware of it? Can we learn not to do it? And discover ways to cope effectively when it is done to us, in any measure? How do you measure something as obscure as discrimination (or obscenity, for that matter)? If you just know it when you see it, how will others know that they have seen the same thing? However shall we measure the extent to which we have gained a feminist theory of the state? MacKinnon presumes it will be ready to happen in eighteen years or so. Will we be able to measure it?
1. What is theory?
2. What purposes does theory serve?
Some Basic Theoretical Concepts To Guide Us in Analysis
Most analysis depends to some extent on quantification. Most of the data analyzed by Babbie and Halley are based on social survey data, based on the questionnaire items reproduced on pp. 19-21 of the text. The very first step in interpreting the research results is to ask yourself what you think of the measurement used: questions asked in a survey. Asking questions is intrusive. The very question causes you to think about something you might not have thought about otherwise. Is your answer always the same? Would you answer the question differently in different situations? And is what you say you believe or would do what you actually do or would do? This kind of question always haunts survey data.
Mathilda White Riley, in an old text on methods, addressed this problem. But she put it in a wonderful context that still fits today's postmodern world. There is no means of measuring data that does not have problems of interpretation, Riley cautioned.
1. When we ask people what they think or believe, we assume that they will act in accordance with what they say. That is a big assumption.
2. When we observe people in what they do, we assume that we can tell from what they do what they are thinking or what they believe. That is another big assumption.
Why does this fit the postmodern world? Because it is the postmodern world that argues that there is no longer a single validity claim, a single theory, a single religion, a single belief that can unite us all in agreement. There are today many belief systems, for we are global in our outreach. Unless a country severely and closely limits access of its population to outside information, orthodoxy of belief is very hard to come by. Certainly, in the United States that is a major social problem. How shall we deal with the multiple cultures from which our citizens come? If we base our answers on what they say, we are assuming that a relatively simplistic statement describes complex behavior in many contexts. That's a lot to assume. But if we imply what they believe from what they do, again we are taking a relatively simplistic situation as representative of other situations and assuming that we can generalize from that behavior to what they believe. Again, that's a lot to assume. There are no perfect approaches to measuring social data.
One of the best ways to keep a check on our assumptions is to look at the measurement in terms of the theoretical approaches which led to that measurement. We are going to review some learning and attitudinal theories here. They should help you ask the above questions with a little more sophistication. These are certainly not the only theoretical concepts that could be used for analysis of the problems we are going to address in this class. Most theories in most social science and liberal arts disciplines seek to explain and influence human behavior. As sociologists, we place an emphasis on sociological and social-psychological approaches to these issues. As scholars, we draw more broadly from other disciplines to avoid the rigidity of limited focus. Nothing, to our knowledge, makes the theories we have chosen better explanations than any other theories that address these issues. As you expand your own reading you will find favorite theories that help you to better predict and/or explain the world. Do not hesitate to add them to this arsenal.
The theoretical concepts we include here give us a knowledge base that we can assume all of us understand and share. When we speak of the Herbartian apperceptive mass we will all know the concepts and definitions that we accept as forming Herbart's theoretical perspective. We are creating a kind of professional jargon within which we can cover material more quickly, for we are formalizing the ways in which we have agreed to talk about that material. Other ways of talking about the selections we read are equally acceptable, but we need to choose one set to facilitate our discussions.
Needless to say these are shorthand introductions to theoretical concepts that comprise the life's work of many highly respected professionals. Our definition of apperceptive mass does not give you a solid understanding of Herbart's approach to the world and our relationships within it. The definition does give us an agreed-upon term to explain a fairly complex set of ideas. Essentially, through the language of concepts that we agree to use, we are constructing a special social reality that works for us within the confines of this text. With that limited goal in mind we offer the following concepts.
Knowing or Epistemology
Most of us need some structure to our world. We would not be able to maintain completely open minds on all things, making decisions completely anew on the complex facts of every encounter. It is comforting to know what a chair is, to be able to recognize any one of several members of the class "chair," and to have a word for that class of objects. Unfortunately, having a word for that class of objects means that sometimes we cannot see anything but a chair, once we have classified and labeled the object. Thus, when an artist suspends a chair from a cord, hanging it by one leg, we may be confused and uncomfortable, for one cannot sit on an object so suspended. The artist is forcing us to reassess what we know, in particular, what we know about chairs.
The process we have just described of learning to recognize and classify a chair as a chair is called "naming" or "labeling." Once we have named or labeled an object we tend to see the object in that role or use. It becomes harder to see the object in another, different light. Whorf refers to this as the phenomenon of language as a cloak, of our tendency to interpret the objects we see by the names we have for them. Other authors, like Rokeach (The Open and Closed Mind), speak of dogmatism. Dogmatism describes the difficulty we have of conceptualizing solutions that rely on concepts outside the set of named categories and expectations we have learned.
You can already see how labeling might affect the way we respond to questions. Researchers often worry that they may be tapping "social acceptability" more than actual indicators of behavior. When we answer questions, the researcher assumes that what we say is what we will do. But to the extent that there is interference, like "labeling" or "social acceptability" operating, what we say may not be what we do. (Years ago Irwin Deutscher wrote a methods book in sociology called What We Say, What We Do.)
If the names we learn guide us in the way we perceive objects and their interrelations, then we need to be conscious of how we learn, and of the underlying perceptions that come through naming in that learning process, especially if those names and labels may later limit our conceptualization. Consider for example what you know about "woman" or "girl." How did you learn the concepts that come to mind when you encounter these words or the people you label with them? If you learned a limiting way of naming and resultant limited expectations, that will be reflected in most of your thoughts about "women" or "girls." By learning to recognize and bring to consciousness those limitations, you have some choice in whether you want to continue to be bound by them. As a researcher, you will have some choice in how you measure variables that describe these contexts. As a reader of sociology, you will always want to ask whether the authors or researchers have considered these contexts in their measurement and analysis.
Because so much of our world is shaped by socialization, and because much of that process includes naming, we need to become aware of how we learn, so that we can better judge what we know and how certain we are of the applicability of that knowledge in many different social contexts. That doesn't mean that we can't know anything, or make decisions. We do know. We do make decisions, including the very basic decision of which theory will guide our study and data collection. But sometimes we make erroneous judgments; we limit ourselves unknowingly in the way we see the world. Awareness of how we learn and how we know gives us more freedom to control our measurement of behavior and the results of our studies.
3. How can naming or labeling lead to problems in measurement?
4. What benefits accrue to re-examining the definitions by which we name or categorize?
A. Learning Theories
It is one of personkind's constant pursuits to try to know "reality," to explain and predict human behavior. Epistemology, the theory and methods of how we know, especially how we establish the limits and validity of knowledge as we understand it, starts with how we learn. Epistemology constitutes a whole branch of philosophy. Learning theory comprises a subspecialty in social psychology, for psychology and sociology address these same concerns. So also do history and political science, and almost every other discipline under the sun, for these are the "big" questions. These brief summaries will give you enough information for us to talk about how we have learned what we know, and how we and the studies we read have measured that knowledge.
1. Herbart's Apperceptive Mass
Concept: A description of the mind: I like to use the term "stew pot." In the days of extended families in an agrarian culture, there was always a big pot on the stove into which all leftovers were tossed. Everything tossed in added immeasurably to the ultimate flavor of the stew. By skimming off the top, you got a different flavor from that of scooping down and stirring the whole concoction. That is how we can seem to be different people at different times and in different contexts. It all depends on what the stimuli of the context bring up from the apperceptive mass.
There is an immediate analogy to learning and measurement. Some experiences stay on the top, some affect us profoundly and affect the whole set of our experiences. Sometimes you answer questions by skimming the surface of the pot, offering whatever happens to be there. Sometimes you delve more deeply and find very different answers. These are validity and reliability problems. Validity, because we ask which of these very different answers is the right answer? Perhaps neither is right. Perhaps there are two different answers within you. Reliability, because we ask, were we to ask the question again, would you give the same answer, or delve for the different answer? Would your answers be consistent, and, if not, what does that indicate to us as we try to understand you ideas and your behavior?
There is a further analogy in how you incorporate what you learn into your entire apperceptive mass. Sometimes information is forced on you. You just leave it there on top, in short term memory, forget it soon afterwards. Other times the information matters terribly, colors your whole life, then you find it connected in some way to all the other experiences in the stew pot. Think of paper clips. Some come out one at a time. But many are all strung together. If an idea in the stew pot is well connected to other ideas, and you recall one of them, all those other connected ideas come up with it.
Hint: The best way to remember what you have learned is to connect it well to everything else you know and have experienced. That way, there'll be lots of paper clips that will bring the idea you are searching for up to consciousness.
Hint: When you measure by questioning, you must consider the paper clip phenomenon. What is coming up that you hadn't counted on? Hadn't meant to even ask about? These are all questions about the validity of interpretations of the data.
Technical Terms: Apperceptive mass or Herbartian apperceptive mass, reliability, validity, interpretation.
Definitions:
Herbart's apperceptive mass: The collection of all ideas, experiences, learning that constitutes the mind. This includes both conscious and unconscious, or aware and out-of-awareness, if you prefer those terms.
Validity: The extent to which a measure actually measures what you think or say it measures. Example: the extent to which a mnemonic test actually measures intelligence. Pp. 11-12 in B and H.
Reliability: The extent to which a measure you use actually gives the same results consistently, over time. Pp. 12-13 in B and H.
Sources outside our texts: Herbart's theory of apperceptive mass can be found in any review of the classical literature on learning theory. My source: Hilgard's Theories of Learning. It's old. You may want to look for a newer version. Excellent summaries can be found in Bigge's Learning Theory for Teachers.
Effects we can explain with Herbartian apperceptive mass:
(1) The unreliability of memory. We have to dredge information up from the stew pot, and the information is colored by that which attaches to it. (Think of those paper clips that come up in a chain of tangles when you try to free just one.) There is also so much in the apperceptive mass that single bits of experience (untangled paper clips) escape our notice, and those ideas that are most important to us at the time we search our memories will color the memories that rise to the surface, will interfere with others so that we do not even notice them. Sometimes in court or in psychological tests or in surveys, probes are used. Probes are key words or concepts that the attorney or researcher hopes will prod our memory, somewhat like offering a paper clip and hoping that other ideas or memories will come with it.
(2) The inability to erase past experience. No way out of the stew pot, once it's in. It's a little like free speech. The answer to "bad" speech is to overcome it with "good" speech - more speech, not censorship. Once uttered, once experienced, we can only alter our responses to what is in our apperceptive mass, not erase it. Consider Rabelais' "frozen words." Rabelais, a 16th century French raconteur told the story of the giant Pantagruel, traveling one Spring on a ship with his tutor, Panurge. Suddenly, there were terrible sounds of battle. Panurge hid in a barrel. Pantagruel ventured out hesitantly and asked the Captain why all these terrible sounds in the middle of a calm ocean. "Oh," replied the Captain, "those are the sounds of a battle that took place last Winter when we were passing through here. They are melting in these warm breezes." [This telling is paraphrased. The original is in Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel.]
That once learned, once uttered, is a permanent addition to the mind, past experience that can be modified by more recent perceptions and learning, but might melt at any moment should the right warm breeze pass through the apperceptive mass. We experience continuous examples of mind sets, beliefs, attitudes, things once said in pleasure or in anger that crop up, unbidden, as if from nowhere, and surprise us. They are buried deep in the unawareness of past experience. We do not know to what extent they can be "erased" as opposed to "modified," or "tempered". Some believe that meditation can cleanse the mind of some of these contents. Maybe. If the question intrigues you, off with you to the library. It's a good research topic.
Did you ever spend a long time arguing with someone, knowing that you had convinced her by your persuasive argument, only to discover that an hour or a day later, she had moved right back to her original position? What happened to your argument and her perceived understanding and acceptance of that argument? Ever try to convince your son not to dye his hair emerald green, and think you'd won, only to find that he dyed his hair emerald green last night? What happened to all your wonderful arguments? They're there, somewhere in his apperceptive mass. But probably not connected to as many important paper clips as they are in your apperceptive mass. How do we measure these gradations in persuasion? Maybe your arguments didn't win on green hair, but they might resurface on other issues and carry the day in your favor. How do we measure that? (Compare to latent learning, where the problems of measurement require the utmost creativity.)
(3) Behavior that is inconsistent with our stated philosophy. For example, we may blurt out something discriminatory when we claim not to be prejudiced. The stew pot contains material from infancy. Some behavior, particularly spontaneous behavior or behavior under stress is likely to stir up the depths, draw on information or emotions that go back to early childhood, even though we are not consciously aware of it. (Freud) To the extent that we act on such early experience, unmitigated by more recent cognitive understanding, our behaviors may well be inconsistent with our professed cognitive position. You see the reliability problem?
(4) The difficulty of maintaining orthodoxy, validity and reliability in questioning:
The stew pot is so individualistic for each of us, and so affects how we perceive the world that orthodox belief systems are distorted by individual perception. This could explain the need for orthodox belief systems to insist on rigid prescriptions for behavior, to guarantee that individuals will not lose sight of the belief system's dictates as they follow their own perceptions. This could explain the requirement for frequent attendance at religious gatherings, the AA philosophy that recovering alcoholics need to attend meetings, the Chinese Marxist requirement that all individuals attend frequent "block" meetings in their neighborhoods. (Please notice the "could." This provides one possible explanation. There are many other possible explanations and many other theories to derive such explanations. Many people, with many different apperceptive masses, have considered what we believe and how we come to believe it.)
Where someone is part of a group that is trying to maintain orthodoxy some answers and some behaviors will be responsive to that orthodoxy. But to the extent that orthodoxy breaks down, the behaviors and answers may show inconsistencies. Remember to use these theories to explain anomalies in your results.
5. What is the Herbartian apperceptive mass and how does it affect measurement?
6. Rabelais' story of the "frozen words" serve to illustrate what characteristic of the apperceptive mass?
2. Bloom and Krathwohl's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives
Concept: There are many levels of learning in understanding a given concept. We first learn to recognize the concept, then to recall its name or classification when we see it. In later stages we learn to analyze it, to evaluate or judge its meaning and its importance to our world view, and finally to synthesize it to other concepts.
Definition: Bloom and Krathwohl classify learning from the lowest to the highest level: recognition, recall, analysis, evaluation, synthesis. They analyze the measurement of learning in terms of which level the measure tends to assess.
Source: Bloom and Krathwohl, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives.
Effects we can explain with the theory:
(1) Inconsistencies in the limits we place unconsciously on people. Some material in the apperceptive mass was learned only to the lower levels of understanding. When that material is recalled, it comes up to consciousness just as it was learned. Consider the story of the little girl answering the door for her mother. [Curran recollects this story and believes it to be from Jules Henry's Culture Against Man.] The young child answers the door. A woman asks for her mother. The child calls out: "Mother, a lady wants to talk to you." Her mother answers the door, completes the transaction, closes the door, and then says to her daughter, "Dear, that wasn't a lady; it was a Negro." the underlying logic of that statement is too complex for the little girl to analyze. She is more likely merely to learn and recall it as it was stated. But the statement creates and enforces on the little girl different categories for "Negro" and "lady." That differentiation will now attach to all the other concepts the little girl carries about "Negro" and "lady." Her mother may not have meant to teach discrimination to her child. Analysis of the underlying assumptions of her statement may never occur to her if she is in a social context where such assumptions are received as "truth."
The mother's discriminatory statement is now part of the child's apperceptive mass. When she recalls it, she will recall it as she learned it as a child. She might reassess the statement when she is older, in light of new cognitive understanding about discrimination. But it might be too emotional or seem too unimportant for reprocessing. She might not even consciously recall it. It may just stay there in her apperceptive mass affecting her responses and behaviors without her quite understanding why.
When someone in adult life accuses the little girl, now grown to womanhood, of discriminatory thinking, she may deny it, claiming that she did not learn discrimination. If someone knew of the above incident and cited it, she might very well deny that her mother had ever said anything derogatory about black women. And at that childhood level of understanding, she is right. Her mother merely identified categories, and helped her correctly categorize. That is why we must know how we have learned the categories, how we have learned to name and label. Imagine the complications this presents in trying to measure concepts like discrimination.
At the lowest levels of learning, recognition and recall, people often mistake their own experience as universally applicable, for that is all they have yet experienced. As they move through analysis and evaluation, into synthesis, they are better able to discern nuances in reasoning, to see greater detail in variation, and understand the complexity of the concept. This is one possible explanation for discrimination and stereotyping. The greater our experience and understanding of difference and variation, the greater our tolerance, and the less our need to view the world as one simplistic whole. Nota bene: Levels of understanding vary across concepts. Someone may be brilliant, generous, caring, [generally at a high level of understanding for most of the concepts that come up in their everyday transactions] and still exhibit insensitivity or incomplete understanding on a concept they acquired at an earlier or less aware cognitive and emotional level. Knowledge level is not consistent across all concepts. It varies according to the conditions under which that concept entered the apperceptive mass.
(2) Mistaking How Much You Know or How Well You Know Something. This theory helps explain why sometimes you have difficulty with test questions, even when you think you understand the material. You may have learned the material well enough to recognize it, but not well enough to recall it, or well enough to recall it, but not to synthesize it with other theories.
(3) Following Emotional Appeals at Lower Levels of Learning. Levels of learning could also explain why it is so easy for a charismatic political speaker to persuade a crowd to engage in or accept prejudicial behavior that the individuals might not engage in, if they considered the meaning and ramifications at a higher cognitive level. In the heady atmosphere of a political rally no one brings up the finer points of the concepts. Notice that in the above example of discrimination, analyzing the words used, the mere placement in categories of address, which were undoubtedly socially acceptable in that place and at that time, there is little to quarrel with unless you move to levels of analysis, evaluation, and synthesis.
If you analyze the categories of social address as unequal and discriminatory, then evaluate that inequality in terms of its racially-based reasoning, then you may evaluate the incident as signifying and promoting racial discrimination. Simple recall and recognition would not produce such a result. This emphasizes the importance of developing your learning skills, and of learning to assess the levels at which you know different concepts that affect your behaviors and your belief systems. This also emphasizes the extent to which your theoretical approach can color the questions you ask, the interpretations of the data you collect, and the way in which you see your research as contributing to the knowledge base.
7. How does Bloom and Krathwohl's taxonomy help explain why sometimes our mouths say things our brains didn't mean to express?
8. Why do sound bites have so much power to persuade?
3. The Zeigarnik Effect
Concept: Zeigarnik recognized the effect that reinforces unusually good retention of a piece of information that we couldn't recall on some past performance, like a test, even though we were sure we knew it. Once we look up the information, after the frustration of forgetting it, we have excellent retention of that material over time.
Definition: "A finding, named for its discoverer, that a person has greater recall for tasks that have been interrupted and left uncompleted than for those that have been completed." [Jones and Gerard, p. 720]
Source: Jones, Edward E. and Gerard, Herald B. Foundations of Social Psychology. John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1967. Bluma Zeigarnik's research is summarized on pp. 617-621.
4. Latent Learning
Definition: Learning that is not yet well enough developed to be reflected in the measurement used.
Explanation and examples: There is an early stage in learning in which neurons have been altered, some effect has taken place in the apperceptive mass, yet we are not capable of performing the traditional tasks used to measure learning of the concept. Ex.: using a computer. You may have learned something from your sessions at the computer terminal, but when the instructor says, "Turn on the computer, find the Dorsey file, and copy it to your disk", you manage to turn on the computer and then freeze. If the instructor helps you, you might think, "Oh, I knew how to do that", but you couldn't manage it on your own. Sometimes you say things like: "I haven't learned a thing." Yes, you have; but it's in the latent learning stage. That's going to be particularly true where muscle coordination must be combined with cognitive material.
We have different latent learning periods for different concepts, for different types of learning. Some of us learn much more quickly by auding than by reading. Some of us learn much more quickly that which requires physical movement than that which requires intellectual manipulation of data and ideas. It is important that you learn to recognize your own latent learning so that you can discover ways to show what you have learned, to your teachers, for grades, to yourself, so you won't become discouraged on long and complicated tasks.
One easy way to measure latent learning so you can see it: Carry with you a good compact paperback English dictionary. Every time you encounter a word you do not traditionally use, look it up, even when you think you know the definition. Put a small check next to the word in your dictionary. The next time you encounter the word, look it up again. Do not berate yourself for not remembering it. That's latent learning. It will soon be yours. Each time you look it up, add a check. You'll discover that you quickly spot words you have looked up a few times. They appear mysteriously in everything you read. I find that I need about 17 checks before the word is mine. That's a measure of my latent learning. Five checks and I know I'm 5/17ths of the way to making that word mine. I might miss the word on a vocabulary test, but I know I'm learning it. Try it and see how many checks make the word yours.
If you want to use the word effectively in your writing, there's another piece. Try to write down the sentence in which it occurs. No pencil? At least read it carefully as a sentence. This will teach you to recognize and recall the context in which the word is used. There is nothing worse than knowing what a word means, but not being able to remember how to use it in context. I never counted on this one, so I can't share my latent learning measure with you. Doesn't matter. We're all different, anyway. Find yours.
Having learned to measure your own latent learning, which is an important task in a difficult subject like statistics, learn also to recognize the inadequacy of your measures to capture other people's knowledge when it is in a latent stage. Beware of spurious results and interpretations because you have too much confidence in your measures.
Source: Bigge, Morris. Learning Theories for Teachers. 1992.
10. How does the Zeigarnik effect help to explain the importance of the study questions to your learning?
11. Why does latent learning contribute so much to the affective component of education?
12. How do the affective component and the latent component of learning affect the problem of questioning as measurement?
5. Convergent and Divergent Production
Guilford, J., in The Nature of Human Intelligence, explored how many different kinds of intelligence we could measure. Once we thought of intelligence as some kind of global factor, g, that you had either more or less of, and that accounted for how smart you were. Yet we know that some people can be extraordinarily smart at some things, and just not get others. Learning theorists have many different theories to explain these anomalies. Perhaps we understand examples of inductive reasoning, but not deductive reasoning. A child, for example may be able to answer the question, "Lots of animals, what is that?" and answer "A zoo. A circus." But the same child may not be able to come up with the answer to "What is a zoo?." He might recognize and agree with "Lots of animals," but he might not be able to summon that answer on his own. This tells us that he can reason more readily from parts to the whole, than from the whole to its parts. Idiosyncracies in reasoning such as this are highly individual. Guilford wanted to measure these differences in our intellectual skills. He devised 120 separate intelligence skills and created tests to measure most.
Cognitive skills that particularly interested him were those he considered would lead to creativity. To measure such skills he defined one of the primary factors for analyzing intelligence the skill's placement on the convergent/divergent production continuum. Convergent production is most often recognized as the "right answer." Divergent production is the creative alternative. In Guilford's test on the number of uses a subject can list for a brick, he scored divergent production as the number of different types of usage the subject identified. For example, an answer high on divergent production would include use of the brick to construct or build something, use of the brick as a weapon, as a weighted object, as a decorative object, as crushed powder for painting or marking, etc.
Most school instruction that involves testing is heavily weighted toward convergent production, learning the "right answer." Few of our traditional assignments and tests reward divergent production, finding new ways of looking at the problem or question. Guilford saw this as a severe limitation in the teaching of creative response. As we study theoretical approaches to research, divergent production must be prized, for convergent production will often produce theories and approaches that are apologetic of the traditional infrastructure and fail to provide a forum for the good faith hearing of many citizens' validity claims. Some of the approaches we consider may also carry with them increased affect, because there will be no "right answer" situatedness to provide the comfort of cognitive consistency.
13. Catharine MacKinnon says that rape is about sexuality, not about violence, as Brownmuller contends. Why would MacKinnon's statement that rape is about sexuality cause consternation? What does this mean for the collection of data on rape? What particularly does it mean for our interpretation of that data?
14. How does the argument that women can't make a commitment to a career because they have prior and conflicting commitments to their families exhibit a convergent pattern of thinking? Would that affect our interpretation of the data on women and work?
6. Cognitive Dissonance Theory
This is a theory we put to constant use in this text. Humans have an overall tendency to try to maintain consistency in their thoughts, values, and beliefs. When such consistency is impossible, there is a resulting discomfort. Jones and Gerard offer the following definition: Cognitive dissonance "refers to the state of tension generated when a person holds two cognitions that are inconsistent with one another. Inconsistency, within the framework of cognitive dissonance theory, refers to cognitions that carry contradictory implications for behavior." (p. 708)
Consider an example. One of the cognitions might be: "I don't want to do the homework." The implication for behavior is not to do the homework. There is also another cognition, "If I don't do the homework I won't get credit it for it, and that will seriously lower my grade in the course." the implication for behavior here is to do the homework. This is what cognitive dissonance theory calls a "forced compliance" task. If I want a better grade I am forced to do the homework.
The theory further posits that we tend to resolve the conflict by justification. That is, if we really need to do the task, in spite of our unwillingness, then we justify it to ourselves. We make up reasons why we should be spending our time this way so we won't fell so frustrated by it. We might tell ourselves it's actually good for us, it provides some useful knowledge, some useful practice in writing, etc. The harder we work at this justification the more likely we are to become convinced that the task was good for us, and to learn from it.
Festinger studied this in an experiment in which he got people to eat grasshoppers. The more distant and forbidding the researcher who required that the subjects eat the grasshoppers, the more the subjects had to work at justification and the more they reported liking to eat grasshoppers afterwards. (Jones and Gerard, p. 498) Festinger found that the nicer the researcher was, the more likely the subject was to justify compliance as doing it for the researcher because he/she was so kind, so understanding, needed it, etc. That kind of justification tends to weaken the positive acceptance of the forced compliance task itself. Applied to the doing of homework that would suggest that if you do it for your teacher, or for extra credit, or for some other external justification, you will be less likely to come to like doing the homework, and probably learn less, since that would lead you to do it to please someone else rather than to take from the task itself what it can give you.
We are hoping that the less you like doing the homework and the meaner we are about requiring it, the harder you will work at justification for doing it, and the more you will enjoy it and learn. Nice trick if it works, hmm?
Duncan Kennedy describes another phenomenon that might relate to Festinger's work on justification and cognitive dissonance. Kennedy claims that students at Harvard Law rank as more popular conservative professors who act as authoritarians, who intimidate and bully them in the classroom, hewing closely to the inculcation of hierarchy. Such popularity is denied to the more liberal professors who dislike the enforced hierarchy and who therefore refuse to intimidate and bully their students. Kennedy's explanation is that "[a]s between conservatives and the mushy centrists, enemies who scare you but subtly reassure you may seem more attractive than allies not better anchored than yourself." He believes that students begin to worry that the liberals "niceness is at the expense of a metaphysical quality called rigor, thought to be essential to success on bar exams and in the grown-up world of practice." He sees the students as co-opted by the hierarchical system for which they are being indoctrinated. (Kennedy, in Kairys, David, Politics of Law, at p.40)
A plausible extension of that explanation is that enemies who scare you make you work even harder at justification of what you are learning and the way you are learning it. Cognitive dissonance theory suggests that the appearance of greater popularity for the intimidating conservatives may not be as much ingratitude or co-optation as Kennedy believes. It might be the result of the cognitive dissonance resolution and justification. Recall that Festinger notes that kindness and caring on the part of the researcher weakens the justification effect. So also kindness and respect on the part of the liberal professor might weaken the justification effect, and so alter the perception of how much is actually learned.
Giddens would say that sociology ought to make us all aware of such inconsistencies, as not appreciating the teacher who is kind enough not to intimidate and bully you, and then we could alter the normative ordering patterns that produce the justification task. Well, at least maybe the students could alter their evaluations of the teachers who try to help them through respect and humane treatment. Of course, then the whole system would change, and we as sociologists would have to start all over observing and critiquing it. But that's our job.
16. How could we use cognitive dissonance theory to explain the dilemma of a female trying to support her female colleagues in a hostile male working environment?
17. Are there other theories that could explain this behavior and provide similar predictions?
B. Theories on Knowledge and Affect
1. Kurt Lewin's Field Theory
Concept: Psychological life space. Lewin once explained this concept with the story of a group of male college students, probably in the 50s. The students lived in dorms, and one Saturday night played a practical joke on a friend by locking him in his dorm room. He had a date, but there was no phone in his room, so he couldn't call to cancel. At about ten the next morning one of the young men opened the door and walked into his friend's room. "What are you still doing here?" he asked. "You locked me in at seven last night," grumped the friend. "But," replied the young man, "we unlocked the door an hour later." (Curran recalls the story, but not the precise source.) The door was locked in the friend's psychological life space. As William James said, "When men believe situations to be real, they are real in their consequences."
Powerlessness carries strong negative affect. We don't like to be powerless. Tugging at a locked door we cannot open is not a positive feeling. So often we just stop trying to open the door. It is on this basis that some have described a ghetto as existing in the mind of the person ghettoized. This is also one of the explanations for feminist literature demanding respect for woman's voice, woman's perception. To give voice is to allow the door to open. To listen respectfully to that voice is to remove the sense of powerlessness that came with the ever locked door.
Definition: A person's life space consists of a set of valued possible activities, leading the person to move "from one activity to another in order to maximize satisfaction or minimize the frustration of a current need." [Jones and Gerard, p. 187.]
Source: Alfred J. Marrow, The Practical Theorist, Basic Books, London, New York, 1969. pp.34-5.
Elaboration: "Lewin held that the person's life space consists of a set of 'activities' potentially available to him at any given moment. Certain activities in the life space are perceived to lead to 'regions' that are positively valued, others to regions of negative value. Lewin referred to these values as 'valences.' He believed that at any given moment the person is in some activity region and in possession of needs that require some activity for their satisfaction. Behavior, he contended, involves moving from one activity to another in order to maximize satisfaction or minimize the frustration of a current need."
Source: Jones and Gerard, Foundations of Social Psychology, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1967, p. 187.
Effects we can explain with the theory:
(1) The intimate association between affect and how we know. The concept of valences helps explain how affect is intimately connected to thought and belief systems. Think of our need to approach that which is pleasant, avoid that which is unpleasant. When could we explain an act of discrimination as an avoidance of negative feelings? Perhaps when we perceive others as different from ourselves, especially if that difference makes us uncomfortable because we perceive them as having more power, more strength, more opportunity, more social attractiveness, whatever. [Note that the negative affect is often mutual. The one discriminated against is apt to see the one discriminating as having more power, more opportunity. The one discriminating is apt to see the one discriminated against as having more ability to trigger protective social mechanisms, more ability to gain sympathetic responses from authority. As I have described them each sees the other as able to manipulate advantages to which the discriminator is not privileged.] When interests conflict we can move as in zero sum games where one side wins, one side loses, or in compromise and negotiation where each side gains some, and each side allows the other to gain some. Since the valences of behaviors and objects differ across life spaces we could agree to move in directions that maximize life space activity for all parties as in game theory.
(2) Unconscious benefits to those whom we perceive as like us. Milton Rokeach, in The Open and Closed Mind, notes that we tend to like others whom we perceive to be like ourselves. That means that we may grant advantages to someone we like because we make assumptions about him/her we do not make about those we perceive as different. The A student may be granted special courtesy on late work because the teacher knows that student always does his/her homework, always knows the answers, etc. But that same courtesy may not be granted the C student. The teacher in this case perceives the A student as being like herself, knowing the material. She perceives the C students as being different. Such subtle advantages are rarely conscious. We rarely critique the assumptions and theories on which we operate. Lewin would say that there is a positive valence attached to the A student.
Rockeach also emphasizes the difficulty we experience in thinking outside the traditional patterns of the belief systems within which we have learned and function. As the poet might put it, elephants can fly, if we just believe they can. Nota bene: We are not discussing the elephant's self esteem. We are not discussing an alternate socially constructed reality in which we shall all agree that elephants can fly whether they really can or not. We are discussing our ability to perceive possibilities that are real, such as the suspension of gravity we learned with space exploration. Once we extend the limits of our belief system, old impossible things become possible, even ordinary. Einstein discovered relativity by imagining alternative ways to explain old theories. Lewin would say that negative valence would attach to the statement "Elephants can fly." One might be considered crazy [or a poet] for saying such a thing. Since it has negative valence we tend to stay away from the thought, and not to discover ways around impossibilities.
Study Questions
18. How does Kurt Lewin's psychological life space theory help to explain how we build barriers for ourselves?
20. How does Kurt Lewin's psychological life space theory help to explain the importance of self-esteem to learning?
21. How does Kurt Lewin's psychological life space theory help to explain how we might discriminate without meaning to?
22. Does Kurt Lewin's explanation of how we can lock ourselves into situations inside our own life space mean that "you can really succeed if you just keep trying?"
2. Edward T. Hall's Theory of Learning and Affect
Concept: The more technical the learning, the less the affect attached to the knowledge. The more technical the learning, the more aware we are of the concepts that underlie the behaviors and or the expectations, the more aware we are of how we have defined those concepts, how there may be contradictions, how social context may affect the rules and expectations. What we receive at an out-of-awareness level, such as the social acceptability norms for how we address different categories of people, the less able we are to identify the underlying definitions, limitations in what we believe we know. The more technical the level of learning the greater the critical distance. Definition: Three levels of learning:
Informal. At the informal level we learn out-of-awareness. The elements of our experience learned this way are the ones "everybody just knows." This is the level at which we experience the most affect.
Formal. At the formal level we are aware, but our expectations are very rule oriented. DO, DON'T. At this level we experience less affect, but we are impatient with rule violation. The difference is that, at this level, we are willing to repeat the RULE, though we are little willing to listen to reasons why the rule may be invalid. At the informal level we are far more impatient, for the rules are not conscious, and we assume that there is no excuse for not knowing and not following such rules.
Technical. At the technical level we invoke rationality and objectivity. For the most part we have more critical distance at this level, and can give relatively objective reasons for persuasion. This is the level at which we experience the least affect. There is one very important caveat though: If we have not done an adequate job of defining our theoretical concepts and of testing them for validity in the context to which we apply them, extremely high affect is produced. For example, if we assume there is an objective reality identifiable and operative for all citizens, we provoke enormous affect by suggesting that the objective reality isn't so objective if it has failed to account for different groups' perceptions. This is repeatedly an issue as we address women's issues.
Heavy affect results when we are unaware of our underlying definitions and assumptions. (See Minow on five unchallenged norms on difference.)
To understand the importance of these levels of learning and the degree of affect we experience around each we need to recall that very little of the learning that goes on at school is reading, writing, and arithmetic. But learning does go on. Much of it is the formal rules of how to survive in the system, bring your homework, don't sass the teacher, read Dick and Jane, etc. Even more of the learning that does go on is in the informal area of peer group socialization: learning about how to play the games, how to be accepted, how to deal with rejection, how to get on the team, etc. Children don't give each other rules about these things; but they all know, and express great affect, when these unspoken rules are violated. According to some of the feminist research, boys do have a greater tendency to develop hard and fast rules than do girls. (Gilligan)
Source: The informal, formal, technical scheme is discussed in great detail by the anthropologist, Edward T. Hall, in The Silent Language, Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1959, Anchor Books Edition, 1973.
Effects we can explain with the theory:
(1) Emotional and rhetorical responses interfering with communication. Hall's theory of affect and learning helps to explain how seemingly simple transactions mysteriously turn into big deals. Arguments like: Post-modernists think they can just make up reality. The "can just" and the "make up" are pejorative here, emotional responses implying that conservative thinkers would never engage in such unspeakable subjectivism. When terms are pejorative, look for high affect. How can we even begin a discussion between post-modernists and conservatives? Take the argument to a technical level: How do we know what we know? Move back to epistemology, the science of understanding the limits and validity of all knowledge. At a technical level, with all the trappings of philosophical terminology, we can get the affect under control, maybe, if we try hard. We will use this approach to help understand Hirschman's thesis on why conservatives and liberals have so much difficulty communicating with one another.
(2) Impatience between learner and teacher, between knowers. This scheme also helps explain why learner and teacher, whether in the classroom, or in the parent-child relationship have so much trouble hearing one another. It would also help to explain many relationship problems. Whenever learner or teacher or "sharing other" threatens to dispute out-of-awareness knowledge there is a flare-up of emotional response. To the extent that we can harness theory to gain critical distance, to re-examine definitions, context, and unconscious limitations imposed, we can reduce that affect and improve communication.
23. How does Hall's explanation of informal learning and the affect that accompanies it explain the ongoing conversation between men and women in which each says "You just don't understand?"
24. What is the advantage to moving an argument to a technical level and how can you do that?
3. Status Characteristic Theory
Concept: This theory was developed through advances in social-psychology and education in an attempt to understand interactions between racial groups. In summary, the theory suggests that we categorize people by some fairly visible characteristic, gender, skin color, size, appearance, to which we assign a range of status. Thus we might favor hair color that is light, assigning a status on the issue of "beauty," to hair colors ranging from light to dark, assigning the lowest status to dark. This process generally operates out-of-awareness, meaning that we can expect high affect in attempting to measure and study it. The theory further suggests that we have a fully developed set of expectations that accompany these assignations to categories. These are of course expectations we have developed out-of-awareness in the transactions and experiences of everyday life.
According to the process described by status characteristic theory we share certain expectations of individuals on the basis of these status characteristics. When those expectations prove to be untrue in actual transactions negative affect is triggered.
Some examples might help: Blond women are often depicted as sensitive, attractive, submissive. We could conceivably share that expectation of blond women. Madonna would probably violate our expectations, causing negative affect, (we probably wouldn't like her) if we found the expectation satisfactory, or positive affect if, as feminists, we had been trying to bring that expectation to consciousness and break it.
Irwin Katz undertook a number of studies in which he studied black and white college males in small group interactions. He assigned a group task to two white and two black males. He asked his subjects at the end of the task to assess who had had the most input to the solution and whether they would like to work together again. Both whites and blacks perceived whites as having had more input to the solution, and they chose to work together again. In his next version of the experiment Katz required each person to state his concept of the solution. Both whites and blacks still perceived whites as having more input to the solution, and they still chose to work together.
In the next version of the experiment Katz gave the whites incorrect information and gave correct information to the blacks, so that the blacks had to come up with the correct solution to the task, and the whites had to have the wrong solution. Both whites and blacks still perceived the whites as having more effective input and still wanted to work together. In the final version of the experiment Katz continued to provide whites with the wrong information, blacks with the correct information, and again required each person to state his version of the solution. With these conditions, both blacks and whites perceived blacks as having greater effectiveness in coming to the solution, but the whites no longer chose to work with the blacks again.
Katz also measured group communication and found that whites addressed most of their comments to the other white participant, and that blacks also addressed most of their comments to whites. Katz interprets this as an overall discriminatory performance and competency expectation.
Katz's results, replicated by Elizabeth Cohen with junior high school black and white males, and by Jeanne Curran with third grade black and white males, led Cohen to despair of the ability of our public schools to eradicate the deep effects of racism. That conclusion is somewhat overly pessimistic, in that the experiments hold limited generalizability in some important aspects, such as time-dependent alterations in self esteem and in the expectations here being measured. But the results, including the research that has continued over the last two decades, do cause concern for the out-of-awareness depth of limitations we have assigned in our expectations of others' behavior. These studies were done with black and white males in order to provide some comparability of results over age groups and over time. But the results would be predictably similar for women and for other groups perceived as "different" or "disadvantaged."
The theory certainly gives us pause to go back and re-examine where these expectations are created. Katz's, Cohen's, and Curran's results do not lend themselves to an interpretation of open discrimination, but they do readily lend themselves to an interpretation of institutional discrimination, set up without perpetrator consciousness, by expectations based on status characteristics and the poorly formulated theories we have adapted in our interpersonal transactions. A bringing to consciousness of these operative theories is possible, even within our present institutions. With such consciousness, definitions can be better coordinated, concepts clarified, and the theories on which we are operating made to better explain and predict behaviors, particularly those that produce discrimination.
Definition: Humans tend to develop expectations for the behavior of others, based on status characteristics. A status characteristic is one that once perceived serves to suggest relative status. Race, if one can accurately perceive it, or if one learns of ethnic identification through other means, gender, group membership in some association or organization, say NOW, or the John Birch Society, for example, may provide group characteristics on which we assign status. When expectations based on such status characteristics are not met, there is frustration and displeasure, even though the behavior actually occurring may be exemplary.
Sources: The primary source for this text came from Katz' work. Katz investigated the frustration and displeasure, especially when an "outsider" outperforms an "insider" in his work on bi-racial groups: Irwin Katz, Judith Goldston, and Lawrence Benjamin, "Behavior and Productivity in bi-Racial Groups," Human Relations, 11 (1958), 123-141. One of the original presentations of this theory was in Joseph Berger, Morris Zelditch, Jr., J.S. Anderson, eds., Sociological Theories in Progress, Vol. I, Boston, Houghton Mifflin C., 1966.) There is a whole line of articles and books that continues the research on status characteristic theory.
If you browse some, you will find a similar interpretation of behavior in George C. Homans, The Elementary Forms of Human Behavior, which he wrote in an attempt to apply B.F. Skinner's behavioral modification theories to human interactions. The expectations we have for the behavior of others have developed from our experiences with those others and from the theories with which we are processing those experiences to predict future behavior. Getting what we predict is a form of reward. Having a prediction not work might feel almost like a punishment. Homans would therefore predict that we seek the reward, or the behavior we expect.
Effects we could explain with the concept:
(1) Seemingly contradictory emotional responses to others' behavior. Bear in mind that affect is triggered whenever expectations are not fulfilled. If you decide your child has turned into a "Calvin" [as in Calvin and Hobbes] is behaving badly, and make up your mind how you should handle that, you will experience frustration when you approach the child only to find that the child is now behaving like a little angel when you were prepared to deal with a "Calvin." You have been forced to reassess your expectation of another's behavior. Negative affect. (Of course, you may also be delighted that the child is angelic, but there will be a lingering frustration over the failed expectations.) Katz found this effect when he conducted a sociometric test amongst team members after the experimental tasks were completed. When blacks outperformed whites in his teams, the whites expressed negative affect in the tests. Katz suggests that the whites did not expect the blacks to outperform them, accounting for their negative reactions. Cohen found the same effects at Stanford with junior high students, as did Curran with third graders.
(2) The dilemma of the woman or minority member who behaves counter to expectations. If women are presupposed to be passive, then a woman who acts aggressively will trigger an out-of-awareness anger, merely by the violation of those expectations. The person experiencing the anger may not actually disapprove of the woman's aggressiveness. Nonetheless, status characteristic theory predicts that there will be some discomfort with these violations of expected behaviors.
(3) McCall and Simmons allude to this phenomenon of expectations in their description of how we selectively perceive an individual: "We impute to the real him all those characteristics, goals, and motives that constitute our image of him, and then we act toward him in terms of those imputed features." (George J. McCall and S.L. Simmons, Identities and Interactions (New York: The Free Press, 1966), p.110.
25. How does status characteristic theory help us to understand the problems related to measuring gender role?
With this array of theories we have at least a solid starting point for interpretation. Now, as we wend our way through Babbie and Haley and the Internet, we will encounter more theories. But the principle will be the same: look for the underlying assumptions, look for the way the theory puts the social structure together and fits the individual within that structure or community, look for what the measures tell you about the theory, and consider the whole context as you interpret the results.