Observing the social world.

Abstract

AbstractCurrent teaching methods in empirical psychology favour an uncritical learning of the literature over the direct observation of social events. To redress this imbalance a qualitatively oriented project was developed to sensitive students to the description and interpretation of social phenomena. Students were instructed to define a specific problem, select and interpret relevant examples of social episodes, and then compare their own ideas with concepts and findings in the literature. The study reported here examined the students' experiences of success, pleasure, and interest after undertaking this assignment. Regression analysis indicated that the assignment was found more interesting by students whose guiding motive for studying psychology was to gain wisdom. Perceived meaningfulness and personal relevance of the project also played a role. The guiding motive of a search for wisdom also shaped pleasure, as did the student's relative comfort with method. Subjective judgements of success were primarily affected by relative ease at articulating one's thoughts. Grades were accurately predicted by the guiding motive of a search for wisdom, difficulty articulating thoughts, and comfort with method. How can we best train students to understand the social world? By social I mean the - world (Giorgi, 1970), filled with events which can be described in natural everyday language. It is a prior to scientific analysis. Whether we speak of jealousy, sympathy, or divorce, these phenomena do not need scientific psychology in order to exist. Observing the lived - can yield a rich resource of natural data which, when examined in a disciplined manner, affords an understanding of the dynamics of thought, action, feeling, interaction, etc. It is therefore important that students develop skills of observation and interpretation. They should also become aware of their frames of reference and learn to discount personal biases, beliefs, and expectations.While these skills are developed during clinical training, mainstream empirical psychology does not actively encourage their use. Instead, a different kind of discourse is emphasized, one which proposes general principles to explain and predict social phenomena. This discourse, in the form of the psychological literature, sets problems, specifies research procedures, and provides theories to integratethe resulting findings (Kuhn, 1970). The significant effects that result from the use of specific experimental paradigms are highly attractive because they are the main vehicle of publication. Students may simply adopt operations which work (i.e., produce reliable effects), uncritically accepting the underlying assumptions and supporting theory.Much can be learned from the area of ethology which used the careful observation of animal behaviour as a basis for developing theories regarding the animal social world. Descriptive observation should precede the formalization of laws to account for events which occur in the lived - world. I am advocating a balance between direct observation of naturally occurring events and the critical examination of relevant literatures. One approach that united observation with critical evaluation is described in this paper.A Harvest of Social PhenomenaThe observers, undergraduate students in an advanced social psychology course, were instructed to adopt a sequence of steps in examining a social phenomenon of their choice. First, they individually (in a private consultation) identified a specific social phenomenon or problem for in - depth examination. Simply encouraging students to go out and observe the produced a remarkable harvest of problems and social phenomena. Sample topics were: jealousy, vicarious embarrassment, drug abuse, shyness, flirtation, alcoholism in the family, immigrant experiences, aggression in sports, the of the derelict, problems associated with revealing one's homosexuality, and racial discrimination. …