Totally with you on this Ed. Imagine what the conservatives feel about two recent books, based on good empirical data, that experiences are fairly crucial to achieving success--"Outliers," and "The Talent Code." I recommended the latter as good summer reading but it actually belongs in another category--crucial reading for those who wish to understand why and how young children achieve greatness.
Joan [email protected] > So why are academic psychologists more likely to be liberal. I have a > theory.that is probably not new: We are trained to look for the causes of > behavior. And because of the behaviorist influences on so many of us, we > tend to look for environmental causes. But even the biological types among > us (myself included) look for causes of behavior. > > In my experience (and understanding), liberals tend to make situational > attributions to explain behavior while conservatives tend to make > dispositional attributions. Those dispositional attributions are precisely > the sort that conservations like to talk about. i.e., people succeed or > fail because of their laziness, ambition, etc. Those are also precisely > the sort of explanations that behaviorists are most likelt to dismiss. We > want to go the extra step and ask "what external variable cause > differences in laziness, ambition, etc. and how can we change those > variables to change behavior. > > I'm suggesting that academics are trained to go deeper in asking about > causation whereas the majority of conservatives that I know are perfectly > happy to make those dispositional attributions and end the discussion > there. I am not suggesting that this more superficial analysis is a > necessary part of all conservative thought (I can appreciate a George > Will) but it seems to be a rather ubiquitous position among conservatives. > > Ed > > > Edward I. Pollak, Ph.D. > Department of Psychology > West Chester University of Pennsylvania > http://home.comcast.net/~epollak/home.htm > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > Husband, father, grandfather, biopsychologist, & bluegrass fiddler...... > in approximate order of importance. > > --- > You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. > To unsubscribe click here: > http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=49240.d374d0c18780e492c3d2e63f91752d0d&n=T&l=tips&o=2673 > or send a blank email to > leave-2673-49240.d374d0c18780e492c3d2e63f91752...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=2681 or send a blank email to leave-2681-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
