Nice People Research Articles

The Psychology of Prejudice

When the knight Lancelot came to the town enslaved by the cruel dragon, he heard, to his amazement, of the dragon's good deeds. During a cholera epidemic, he had boiled the water of the lake by breathing on it. And he had also saved the town from the Gypsies. "But the Gypsies are very nice people," said Lancelot in wonderment. "What are you talking about! How horrible!" exclaimed the keeper of the records, Charlemagne. "True, I have never seen a Gypsy in my life. But I learned even in school that these are terrible people. They are tramps by nature; it's in their blood. They are enemies of every system of government: otherwise they would establish themselves somewhere, and not wander back and forth. Their songs lack manliness, and their ideas are destructive. They steal children. They worm their way in everywhere." Note: Charlemagne had himself never seen Gypsies, but he had no doubts whatever about their negative qualities. Even a real dragon was etter than these mythical Gypsies. Of course, the source of the information on the Gypsy threat was none but Mr. Dragon himself.

The Psychology of Prejudice

When the knight Lancelot came to the town enslaved by the cruel dragon, he heard, to his amazement, of the dragon's good deeds. During a cholera epidemic, he had boiled the water of the lake by breathing on it. And he had also saved the town from the Gypsies. the Gypsies are very nice people, said Lancelot in wonderment. What are you talking about! How horrible! exclaimed the keeper of the records, Charlemagne. True, I have never seen a Gypsy in my life. But I learned even in school that these are terrible people. They are tramps by nature; it's in their blood. They are enemies of every system of government: otherwise they would establish themselves somewhere, and not wander back and forth. Their songs lack manliness, and their ideas are destructive. They steal children. They worm their way in everywhere. Note: Charlemagne had himself never seen Gypsies, but he had no doubts whatever about their negative qualities. Even a real dragon was better than these mythical Gypsies. Of course, the source ...

Essay Review: Power in Local Communities

violent in character, and that this violence is disruptive of an orderly life. The nice people living in what is now suburbia, yearning to have the predictable life success should bring, will find the argument overwhelming. The failures will find the wastebaskets called slums already existing and waiting for them. Then the gulf between the successes and the failures will widen and major forms of communication between them will become inoperative. Controlled by the use of scientific knowledge of human behavior, the nice people will be unaware of what happens to the failures. According to an old sociological law, of sight, out of mind. The deprived will be ignored; for, as another sociological law asserts, *ignorance is bliss.

The Concept of Social Class and Its Implications for Teachers

Recent studies of American communities by social anthropologists such as Warner, Davis, and the Gardners, have defined empirically the system of social stratification our society. The stratification is apparent such individual judgments by the members of the community as :They're too rich for my blood. They are big wigs. They are our kind; they with us. We couldn't afford to go with them. These implied judgements of rank are quite unscientific. Yet they are real, and wield a significant influence upon the status of individuals and of groups; their status turn determines their relative cultural opportunities. The social-class cultural systems are often so strong as to obliterate systems erected upon national origins. For example, according to Davis, the prestige value of being nice people to know, and people who fit in is so great that . . . our minority groups tend rapidly to extinguish their foreignborn culture and social motivation and to learn those of the particular American socialclass which they can win acceptance.' This phenomenon occurs all social strata.

The So-Called Twelfth Century Renaissance

THE frequent use of words or indeed names tends to wear down their meaning. They contract and at the same time expand their significance. We say 'they are nice people,' forgetting that the basic and long-prevailing meaning of 'nice' was 'ignorant' or 'foolish' (NED). And so it is with the name 'Renaissance,' as commonly applied to the rebirth of antiquity in the fifteenth and sixteenth century Wiedergeburt des Altertums, to use Burckhardt's classic phrase. I have always assumed that by rebirth Burckhardt meant, not a revival of something that was somnolent in the time, but actually a new birth or re-creation of an ancient world that had been discovered anew. It is this idea that I should like to contrast with the Classical re-awakening of the twelfth century. The truth lies often in a shading, and in this instance the shading is of importance if we wish to keep our distinctions clear. Let us look, for a moment, at the use of the word Renaissance in this stricter sense. 'By the term Renaissance, or new birth,' said John Addington Symonds, 'is indicated . . . the history of the attainment of self-conscious freedom by the human spirit manifested in the European races.' The great achievements of the Renaissance, thought Michelet, were 'the discovery of the world and the discovery of man' in the fifteenth century. And the humanism the age upheld has generally been regarded as a rebirth of the humanitas of Cicero, which in turn was a rebirth of the paideia or Greek way of life. In the words of Symonds (Encycl. Brit., l1th ed.):

“The nicest people in the country”

“The nicest people in the country”

SCABIES AMONG THE WELL-TO-DO

My office file contains fifty-three cases of scabies among the better feathered, the silver spooned and the intellectual and professional elect. Of the fifty-three, thirty-seven had seen one or more physicians without relief. Eight had seen grade dermatologists. In five of the eight there had been diagnostic errors. To these myself contributed one. A total of ten correct diagnoses had been made by forty-nine physicians who saw thirty-seven of the patients. To one of them his family physician made the remark I would have called it scabies myself if it hadn't been thought that was a disease no nice people ever had. From twenty-one known sources, sixty-one recognized and an unknown number of unrecognized infestations resulted. Though the subject may seem a bit infra dig . and on a scale of morbidity rather picayune in a time of war and rumors of war, there is probably some justification

Stepbrothers: A Study of Prejudice and Convention

W 5 THEN you say men are brothers, what do you mean? Some persons imply that only native Protestants of Nordic stock are white men, and restrict fraternal relations to family, lodge and religious circles. In such cases, brotherhood connotes intimate association with nice people, like ourselves. Liberal democrats of Jeffersonian strain assert that all men are inherently equal, and should enjoy similar rights. But the term is usually limited to legal privileges. Social and economic opportunities are often ignored. In this case, 'fraternity means equal liberty to act within bounds established by the state. Apparently there are diverse interpretations of brotherhood. So it is interesting and important to understand what is in the minds of people who discuss the term. As a means of estimating the inclusiveness of this idea, we have measured the combined judgments of a hundred university students concerning the acceptance of certain peculiar persons in significant social relations. I Table I shows the general attitude of exclusiveness toward all the characters in each of these relationships, and also the bias toward each of the characters in al1 the relationships. Evidently marriage is considered the most narrowly restricted association; whereas church and state are regarded as very wide in their inclusion. Beggars and libertines would be debarred from more than half these social contacts; foreign born whites and illegitimate offspring would be accepted in more than seven-eighths of all relations. Apparently the scope of equal rights broadens more rapidly with the order of persons than with the order of associations. It is noteworthy that the proportion of persons accepted as inferiors increases in the wider associations, while it decreases among the more acceptable characters. The increase of superiors recognized among the latter may help explain this tendency. Other interesting trends of opinion are disclosed by the separate items for each character in every association; but typographic difficulties prevent our spreading all the subclasses before the reader. We are here concerned more with general slants of judgment that seem to affect group attitudes. Chart I shows the percentile distribu1 The Sociology Department in the University of Washington offers a course on Fraternity. In order to discover what limits of sympathy and toleration the students have fixed in their minds, a questionnaire is given them early in the course. It contains a list of characters marked by some one social disability; and also a number of relationships in which such persons might bc included. The students are asked to indicate frankly whether or not they would wish to accept these persons as superiors, equals or inferiors in the associations mentioned. No names are signed; but to aid in interpreting responses, data concerning sex, age, parentage and residence, as well as academic, economic, political and religious affiliation are requested. This year wc extended the scope of inquiry, by inviting other advanced classes in sociology and psychology to express their preferences. From about two hundred replies, one hundred reasonably complete sheets werc taken as samples of local student opinions and atritudes concerning fraternity. Men and women each contributed half the number, so that discrepancies due to sex might be compensated. By rcstricting the treatment to ten characters in ten social relations, the statistical work was simplified. Thanks are due to my pupils, Miss Ryan and Mr. Wcstby, for preliminary tabulation of data.

“Nice People”

“Nice People”

BRIEF CLINICAL MEMORANDA.Read in the Section of Practice of Medicine, at the Forty-fourth Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association.

1. An Available Catheter Lubricant .—Olive oil, glycerine, cosmoline, are the ordinary materials used to lubricate the catheter. As a rule they are satisfactory, although the oil parts with its sweetness if kept too long, and the glycerine irritates certain urethras outrageously. Cosmoline is pleasant enough, but the bottle is apt to be misplaced or empty when needed. Moreover, there are nice elderly people who have chronic retention from enlarged prostate or other difficulty and who are forced to draw their urine because they can not void it. They are well enough to go to the store, shop or church, and they always carry a catheter or two curled up in their pockets. But a bottle, in addition, is sometimes mussy and always a bother; and so, rather than carry the needed emollient or call on a neighbor for it, many a poor wretch remains reluctantly at home. But he need