As many of you probably heard, same-sex marriages are now legal here in New York. I've heard a few things lately that made me wonder whether the pro and con attitudes toward this issue didn't have something to do with Piaget's concept of schema, assimilation and accommodation. Feel free to let me know if you think I've got this right or if I'm off-base here.
My guess is that if your scheme for the concept of "marriage" is primarily the idea that marriage is a union between a woman and a man, then you could easily assimilate a few variations on this, such as a) a union between an older man and a younger woman (and vice versa), and b) a union between a man of one color to that of a woman of another (again, and vice versa). You could easily assimilate these observations into your existing schema of "marriage". However, a union between and man and a man or a woman and a woman would probably require this person to accommodate - restructure their definition of "marriage". I'm guessing that for many people who have been brought up to have a tight definition of marriage (man and woman), the accommodation of this definition to include two people of the same sex is difficult. On the other hand, if your schema for "marriage" is primarily the idea that marriage is a union between two people who love each other, then a gay marriage is more a case of assimilation than accommodation. Am I right here? On a not unrelated note, I was recently watching the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie and I saw another example of assimilation vs. accommodation (got Piaget on the brain I guess). Early in this movie Jack Sparrow said to Will that Will's father was both "a pirate and a good man". Will had trouble accepting this because, from Piaget's perspective, the two schema, "pirate" and "good man" are very different and usually don't evoke each other. Will had trouble accommodating "pirate" to include "good man". Just checking to make sure this isn't too far fetched of an application of the concepts of schema, accommodation and assimilation. Feedback welcome. Michael A. Britt, Ph.D. mich...@thepsychfiles.com http://www.ThePsychFiles.com Twitter: mbritt --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=11151 or send a blank email to leave-11151-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
