hendr757: April 2012 Archives

Five years from now there will be a lot of things I will remember from Psych 1001, but to be honest I will probably forget more than I remember. One of the things that I am confident that will stay with me however is all of the biases that we as humans have, even though we never mean to have them. From the durability bias to the representative heuristic to the availability heuristic, our mind sometimes prevents us from seeing reality. As teenagers and young adults we probably have a strong durability bias. We think that the good times and the bad times will last much longer than they do. I can't speak for everybody else but I know I need to learn that "this too shall pass". I think I will remember these biases and heuristics because the examples that the book gave really made me think about them. For example, the book asked which was farther West, Reno or San Diego. Our mind tells us that California is farther West than Nevada and San Diego is in Nevada, so San Diego must be farther West. Our mind has tricked us using a simple heuristic.

Even when we don't intend to, our mind tries to simplify things to much and we must be aware of this and try to consciously correct ourselves before we accept what is not true.

During the course of our lifetimes I'm sure we've all been asked a question to which there is no true right or wrong answer. Lawrence Kohlberg asked quite a few of these questions over the course of his lifetime to different age groups. But he didn't ask these questions to stump his participants. Kohlberg wanted to know how and why people think the way they do.

However his work wasn't perfect. There are a few criticisms of his work. Even one of his own students, Carol Gilligan thought that his studies weren't perfect. Gilligan's main gripe was that the questions favored males. Because it is generally accepted that males are more justice-orientated and females are more caring orientated, Gilligan thought that Kohlberg's test made it appear that females were okay with stealing or breaking other laws, when in reality they cared more about the dying wife. However, according to the textbook, there has been little evidence to confirm these beliefs that men score higher on Kohlberg's tests.

Overall situations like the one Kohlberg presented his subjects are a true lose-lose situation. I know when I read the story I couldn't come up with a definite answer myself. Every answer I came up with ended with "yeah, but...". What does everybody else think?