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guest_
· 2 years ago
· FIRST
A lot of good info and opinions in there. The Stanford prison experiment is a controversial one though- not just for its ethics, but in the sense that it’s scientific validity has been questioned numerous times over the years and because of the ethical controversies and ensuing changes to human experiments in psychology, the results haven’t really been able to be replicated- so strictly speaking we can say that those particular people under those particular circumstances behaved that way, but we can’t really make broad reaching conclusions off one limited experiment- which is sort of the point the conversation listed gets to anyway. A somewhat similar experiment- the Milgram experiment- is also somewhat well known in popular culture and likewise has questionable findings as well as accusations subjects were coerced, and numerous subjects who say they knew it was an experiment or fake and were just messing around. Regardless we so know that “guards” can abuse prisoners- this has…
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guest_
· 2 years ago
.. been documented in most conflicts in history and recent conflicts all the way up to the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. Speaking on culture and society, a notable convict in the prisoner torture at Abu Ghraib was Lynndie England, a female soldier. I do have to question the claims that “lord of the flies” or the like would happen greatly differently if the participants genders were different or such similar claims like “if women ruled the world we would have world peace.” We can’t dismiss such claims entirely because we don’t have meaningful real world long term data- but most evidence we have and most understanding of humans points to the idea being dubious. If we look at war through most of history cases of females abusing prisoners etc. tend to be uncommon- some could be differences in the values society imparts to females or in the nature of women- but most is likely much the same reason why none of the signatories on the Declaration of Independence were Asian- because society…
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guest_
· 2 years ago
… in that place and time hadn’t really allowed participation or power to those individuals. Women weren’t allowed to serve in many militaries through modern history or served in the minority and often in restricted capacities. So we could theoretically remove or mitigate gender in the equation and say that power, especially power with lack of supervision or feeling of accountability, can lead to abuse. There is for example little evidence that women were in any way appreciably “kinder” or more inclined to release slaves in specifies where slavery was common place. To the contrary- taking slavery in America for example, while women often had less direct power or interaction over slaves they are recorded to have leveraged their male “care takers” power in enacting violence or cruelty agaisnt slaves.
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guest_
· 2 years ago
So we can’t really say for certain without more data, but we can observe in society, the workforce, and historical contexts where women have held equal or somewhat equivalent power to men or greater power than others that they too as a group can be said to have abused this power at times. There really isn’t reason to believe that women are any less cruel or self serving than men can be even if we say that they may go about it or communicate differently based on some natural or cultural traits. It’s also hard to judge off of female rulers of the last etc. as it is hard to say what degree of their behavior was instinctual and what degree was done to maintain power in what was still mostly a male dominated world or environment where they’d have to consider the customs and methods of men in their decisions.
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guest_
· 2 years ago
It is true that western psychology does primarily view things through a lens of white male thinking- these have tended to largely been the people shaping the field and the subjects they studied in history. It also tends to make sense that psychology doesn’t always cross cultural boundaries unless it is a specific discipline. Much the same that we know far more about the earth than we do about Jupiter- a psychologist in China will most likely primarily see Chinese patients, thusly in China it would make the most sense in general that the majority of their research would be rooted in Chinese culture and the cognition of those living in that culture and not say, base their psychology off Hungarian culture and behaviors.
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guest_
· 2 years ago
So naturally the average psychologist in America would be mostly seeing American patients and specialize their focus on the way Americans think. To rephrase the problem here though- I think the real problem is the historically and still standing concept that “American” means “white” or “white male.” The tapestry of “American culture” is far broader than that and includes all races and religions and ethnicities and genders. It is a culture largely of immigrants and frost, second, third, fifth generation immigrants from all over the world each with their own cultures and variations and ways of thinking. So certainly in a place where diversity is so common and even intrinsic, psychology should take a broader sampling than mostly white men or just white people. It seems unlikely that any one psychological course of study could master the subtleties of understanding the minds and cultures of every possible group that could be considered “American,”
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guest_
· 2 years ago
So as is the case today, it might make sense to have various psychologists who specialize in certain groups or cultures, and given that “white” is becoming a minority in population figures in America, it seems more than a little silly that so much of psychology and those in the field would be specialized primarily to white patients or the data would be so heavily bias to data from white participants. So I do not dispute the overall thrust of this discussion- though I do question or outright reject certain aspects or facts presented. I think yes, psychology and the western idea of it (which tends to often heavily influence or be the default model across other cultures too) could use adjustment to better reflect a more complete view of modern society and everyone in it.
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st_claus
· 2 years ago
The actions of people during the height of the pandemic proved both the experiment and lord of the flies findings valid.
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metaanalysis
· 2 years ago
In actuality, the majority of experiments are done at universities. The most commonly used demographic for participants is university students. This of course automatically taps into a certain level of privilege. However some psychologists, usually BIPOC psychologists, are specializing in research and treatment of non-white and female patients. It is slow going, but at least it is going.
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karlboll
· 2 years ago
Very relevant username.
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