In addition to helping Paul with his work on metaphors (which will be discussed in a future blog when we get more results back), I have been preparing for my senior thesis in psychology. At Swarthmore, honors majors in psychology must complete a year long thesis. The thesis is extremely important piece of work. Not only is it important to graduate and when applying for graduate school, but it is the first real step towards a career in psychology.
That is really scary. The fact that a choice I make now, as a senior in college, will affect my career 10 years from now! If I choose a thesis in social psychology, I will likely need to apply to a social department. But what about cognitive psychology? What if I want to do that, but I did my thesis in social? What if I can’t get in to graduate school, because I chose the wrong discipline?
Maybe I am making too much of it---In fact, I know I am. After all, the thesis doesn’t really decide my career path, but it is weird to think that if I do change my area of interest, all the work will seem to have been for nothing. Well, you can see my fatalistic attitude seeping onto the page.
What I should actually be thinking is that I have the opportunity, my senior year, to explore an issue that I may never have the chance to learn about again; that I have the opportunity to broaden my research skills; and that I have my first real opportunity to sink my teeth into an idea and run with it.
But that is not the way I am thinking. It has been really hard for me to rationalize a thesis topic that doesn’t interest me, even though it may be a more practical topic, or may look good for graduate school. What is the point of toiling over a thesis for which I may be unmotivated? Like most of us, I feel I do my best work when I am motivated. Thus, I am searching for a topic, searching for a situation, in which I am motivated and can thrive.
So, what am I doing?
Well I have been reading a lot. Research on perspective taking, the concept of self-interest, and metaphors have all crossed my desk. At times I feel like I am reading in circles. At one moment I feel the perspective taking is definitely what I want to do, only to read another article on self-interest and subsequently have an intense desire to spend more time on that topic. I was trying to fit my thesis topic within a framework. I had the notion that I needed to choose a topic that is both doable and interesting. Though I did get inspired by the ideas I read, this inspiration was short-lived. Nothing I searched for stuck.
So I asked myself- What do I want to do? Regardless if it is practical, regardless if it will look good on an application. What motivates me? What do I think about when I am not working?
I decided to examine how our (the USA) economic structure affects our perceptions, assumptions, and behavior. How does our competitive structure influence our cooperative behavior. I have begun to read Marx and have found it invigorating. Not only am I motivated to do the ‘work’ but I feel I am learning information that will affect me for the rest of my life. To be fair, it is going to be a lot harder to create a psychology experiment out of what I am reading, because it is lies outside of the discipline. But I am not worried. I am learning and progressing, I am sure an idea will find me.
Even though I have at times gone in circles and I am not as far along as I would like to be on my thesis preparation, I do not feel negative about the path I have taken. And whatever path we take we must be honest with ourselves. Are we doing the things we want to do? Are we doing the things we planned to do? Will we be able to look back and say “I am glad I chose the profession I did?” It may seem rather utopian and idealistic, but why give up our ideas for a job, that we may not enjoy, may not fit our beliefs. In fact it may only pay the bills.
My advice: Don’t focus on a job that only pays the bills. Life is too short. It is not money we must grapple with. It is time. Money can be made and lost in a day. Time is limited. We cannot get more time, no matter what we do (at least not yet). So use your time to fulfill your goals, and change people’s lives.
Some may argue that money is a way to change lives. I do not dispute that this is possible. I only respond, who would you want your child to emulate: The man or woman who donates 10 million of his or her 100 million dollars? Or the man or woman who donates his or her time, his or her energy, and his or her life? It is our behavior, our actions that matter. It’s easy to donate money once you have it. But when all that one possesses is time and energy and he or she still chooses to give this up that, to me, is a more powerful decision.
Once again, I defend education. Here is a profession that is dynamic, fulfilling, and world changing. Do teachers do what they do for the money? It’s a choice to help and bring knowledge to others.
I hope my words have helped people in a similar spot grappling with the notion of a career versus an ideal. Choose the ideal. It will keep you upbeat, keep you happy, and your attitude and actions just may influence others to do the same. We don’t remember people who chose the easy route, we remember those who actions carried forth their beliefs.
A couple great things to read:
Dale Miller (1999)- The Norm of Self-interest
http://64.233.179.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&q=cache:JzzRNxtpO6kJ:www.law.berkeley.edu/institutes/law_econ/workingpapers/PDFpapers/dtmiller.pdf+
Peter Singer – Marx: A very short introduction
http://www.amazon.com/Marx-Very-Short-Introduction-Introductions/dp/0192854054/ref=pd_bbs_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215753343&sr=8-9
Marx and Engels- The CommunistManifesto http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
2 comments:
Your ideas about charity and communism are nice, however, as a psychology student, I'm a little surprised. Evolutionary psychology explains away what we view as altruism as evolutionarily advantageous. This is why communism doesn't work, man is not forward thinking enough to realize the benefits of true collectivism and will always try to take advantage of the siutation.
First let me discuss the merit of evolutionary psychology. I feel I share the view of many psychologists, when I say that evolutionary psychology, while informative, is not empirically testable today, which greatly weakens the arguments. TO say something was advantageous a million years ago does not mean it is advantageous today, especially as our social environments are different.
That being said, let me address your claim that there is no evidence for altruism as advantageous. First, studies of birds have shown that when a predator is attacking it is advantageous for a bird to call out to the others, even though it puts itself in more danger in the present situation. This is the idea of reciprocity.
One may argue that reciprocity is simple selfish behavior as well, but here they are mistaken. It is a collective behavior for the greater good of all. The bird who makes the warning call does so, because in the long run he will also receive warning calls. So the sacrifice an individual bird makes at one specific time actually pales in comparison to the benefit that bird will take in the long run, as it benefits from other warning calls.
Furthermore, biological evidence supports the argument that altruism is a heritable trait. In a study comparing identical twins to fraternal twins, Rushton et al. demonstrated that identical twins had a higher correlation of altruism (r = .50 males, .54 females) than fraternal twins (r = .23 males, . 26 females, .28 male/female pairs). This study controls for environmental cues as best any study can by comparing sets of twins. The fact that identical twins showed higher correlated behavior than fraternal gives further evidence that altruism is indeed heritable. Furthermore aggressiveness was correlated higher in identical than fraternal twins. For identical males the correlation was r = .33 and for fraternal males was less than half, r = .16. A common argument against the concept of altruism is that has no genetic foundation in the claims. Aggressiveness however can be accepted as genetic because it helped human ancestors survive in nature. This research does not claim, evolutionarily that altruism is more or less helpful than aggression and other ego related behavior. What it does demonstrate is that altruism is not simply a socialized behavior based on an individual’s guilt and distress due to situational and social norms. But in fact it shows altruism has a genetic base, and therefore influences human behavior.
I would also like to point out that even though we tend to explain much of human behavior in terms of self-interest this may actually be a self-fulfilling norm. Please read the Dale Miller's Norm of Self-interest, to which there is a link under the original article.
Lastly, I would like to pose a hypothetical to you. If a society was collective enough that free-riders and highly selfish people were ostracized, how much anti-group behavior would you expect? Much of our behavior is shaped by our relationships with others and whether or not our peers condone or reject the behavior. If this were true one could expect a similar pattern from humans, as was demonstrated by birds. This is exactly the case.
Fehr and Gachter performed a study with 240 college-age students and demonstrated altruistic punishment improves group performance, even when the long-term benefit for punishing an individual is zero. Half of the 240 students performed six punishment trials, followed by six no-punishment trials, while the other half performed the reverse order. Groups of four were formed and each participant received 20 monetary units (MU). With these MUs, a player could put it toward the benefit of the group for a return of 0.4MU, or keep the money. If each group member invested all of his MUs, the total reward per person was 12 MU (total 32 MU). Each investor was unaware of his or her group members. The participants submitted their decision simultaneously, then were informed of their group mates’ decisions. For the punishment condition, a player could decide to punish a group member based on a ten point scale. Each point cost the punisher 1 MU and the receiver 3 MU. To ensure the punishment was truly altruistic, group members changed in each trial, and no participants were with a similar group member more than once. So, a player who chooses to punish is not rewarded in any way. Punishment can only help future group members of the punished individual.
I would like to conclude by saying I am glad you commented. I hope I have shed light on the lay presumptions of altruistic behavior and hope that we can alter the norm of self-interest. Remember, it is not that everyone must always sacrifice him/herself for the greater good. Only that we all must alter our behavior enough so that as a group we will all mutually benefit, more so, than if we are still constantly competing and undercutting one another.
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