Hi All,
Now that Marie has obliquely raised the gender issue, I'll add my
thoughts. A few years ago, I became very interested in the way the changes
in the gender composition of psychology have been related to other changes
in the field. For example, women in psychology are more likely to be
interested in clinical/counseling fields than are males. One idea that
crossed my mind during that period of my life was that, science and
psychology having traditionally been male fields, males styles of
argumentation may have become "normal" for those fields. Thus, to some
degree, "new" students to the field, being mostly female these days, may
find those types of argumentation uncomfortable and unnecessarily
competitive, rather than collaborative, to the extent that women prefer
those types of interactions.
I have run across speculations that women are less skeptical than
men (the list of "great skeptics" is heavily male--Skeptical Inquirer, I
think), but I can find no documentation of those differences in online
databases. I offer this for what it may be worth, and would note that I
have seen presentations that were intentionally collaborative ("here's what
I found and what I think it means; tell me what you think"), and they seemed
to me quite different from what I was accustomed to, though the underlying
goals may be the same. The "tone" was quite different.
Joe Hatcher
Ripon College
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> ----------
> From: Marie Helweg-Larsen
> Reply To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences
> Sent: Monday, December 20, 2004 1:44 PM
> To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences
> Subject: Re: brain pick for TIPSTERS
>
> Scott
> I'm wondering to what extent this might also be related to Southern US
> culture. Obviously there are many causes (as we've already discussed)
> and students and faculty at Southern schools are not necessary from the
> South. However, I found when I taught at a Southern US school that there
> was much more concern about people having to be "nice" (women in
> particular had to be nice). This was true both in and out of class
> (students very often very uncomfortable with formal class debates) and
> among the faulty as well. The school culture clearly emphasized avoiding
> any type of conflict or disagreement. Perhaps one (you!) can also engage
> your students more broadly in a conversation about culture and the
> cultural settings in which being critical is exactly
> appropriate/expected and in which cultural settings it is not. Students
> might come to realize that there are of course different norms for
> conflict in different settings. Marie
>
> Scott Lilienfeld wrote:
>
> > Deb: Yes, we certainly do, but many of the graduate students find the
> > questions raised routinely at these colloquia and intradepartment
> > talks to be extremely threatening and challening as well. As for
> > Gerald Patterson's suggestions, ironically we did use the Dawes book a
> > number of years ago in precisely this setting. But most of the
> > clinical graduate students reacted to it extremely negatively,
> > expressing the view that they found Dawes to be overly harsh,
> > pugnacious, and critical. Again, I most certainly do not share this
> > view, but this goes to show that the problem we confront isn't easily
> > remedied by assigning readings, although I agree that this might be a
> > useful way to start in some cases. ...Scott
> >
> >
>
> --
> *********************************************
> Marie Helweg-Larsen, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor of Psychology
> Dickinson College, P.O. Box 1773
> Carlisle, PA 17013
> Office: (717) 245-1562, Fax: (717) 245-1971
> Webpage: www.dickinson.edu/~helwegm
> *********************************************
>
>
> ---
> You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To unsubscribe send a blank email to
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
---
You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]
To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
