Perhaps but I know that people can be easily conditioned to do things that they say would not do. To use a real life example, in one psych lab I taught, one of the requirements was a section on human conditioning. The lab for this section involved using behavioral shaping and conditioning to have a subject say an increased frequency of a certain class of words. Basically the person doing the lab reinforced the subject for saying certain classes of words. The subject in all cases had no knowledge of the target or that they were part of this lab. The results from all the students (except for two) were all the same, there was a considerable increase in the subjects saying the target words - going from none to almost every second or third word in some cases.
Half the class were also in a philosophy class. The instructor was very down on behavioral psychology, ridiculing its principles etc. So this group decided to give a demonstration of the effectiveness of these methods. The target behavior was the instructor's method of going back and forth at the front of the class. They decided to use shaping and conditioning to restrict him to one corner of the room. According to what one student told me, it took less than a half hour to get the person from bouncing all over the place to huddled in one corner. Again the subject had no knowledge about this. Media influences I think are even stronger. or at the very least they have much longer to act on the person. On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 9:33 AM, Cameron Childress <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 5:43 PM, denstar <[email protected]> wrote: >> I was more alluding to the volume of "hard evidence" that's out there >> now which shows that we are affected by *far* more than you'd think. >> >> The music we listen to, stuff we read, the things we see... hell, >> random tones actually change the chemical makeup of your brain-- I'm >> not making this stuff up. :) > > I will grant you that people are definitely influenced by more than > they think - alot of your points are valid. I really am just not > wandering off my initial point that watching mainstream television > isn't going to make a guy fly a plane into an IRS building unless he > already has a screw loose. > > -Cameron > > ... > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Want to reach the ColdFusion community with something they want? Let them know on the House of Fusion mailing lists Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:312387 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
