This experiment was rather confusing to me, however it was interesting to learn about. It is so crazy to think that we as humans can not only be manipulated into thinking a certain thing about something but we have the ability to do so while influencing others into thinking the same way. I think a big part of this experiment had to do with persuasion and it is interesting to find out how people in general are able to lie to others and persuade them into doing things under false pretenses for money.
Chapter 14: Social Judgement Theory Tuesday, Mar 25 2008
Uncategorized 9:42 pm
Chapter 14 opened my eyes to something that I have been doing subconsciously for quite sometime now, which was easy for me to understand why I had certain feelings either strongly for or strongly against certain issues and why. I think that the yardstick metaphor was a great way of showing how each and every one of us has a certain range or latitude of acceptance, rejection and noncommitment. These ranges are influenced by our personal stance on a subject and our ability to think about the issue in a certain way may become compromised based on how someone may persuade us in a variety of ways. I think that the airplane example was a nice way of putting this concept in motion. It gave me understanding and insight into our own feelings and emotions towards certain subjects, in this case, airplane safety. The text says that we each have the ability to perhaps be swayed into thinking in certain ways or be persuaded by others who we have close-knit relationships with if they present us with information that may help us to be more easily persuaded, also if we have wide latitude of acceptance. This makes sense to me, because I think that each of us has the ability to expand our minds and stances on subjects, but it is up to us to determine whether or not we want to. This makes sense to me because usually the people who are able to do this must have a wide latitude of acceptance rather than rejection.I must say that Social Judgement Theory makes a lot of sense to me, and it was something that I had always known existed, however, I guess I just didn’t know exactly how it worked until now.
Chapter 11: Relational Dialectics Monday, Mar 10 2008
Uncategorized 11:25 pm
I think that Baxter and Montgomery have touched upon a subject that most of us worry about when dealing with relationships. I think that a lot of people tend to think that their relationship is doomed when there is that struggle of push and pull, yet it is rather normal and healthy to experience it. I think that most relationships are stronger because of the constant state of flux that they remain in.Also, the concept of Contradiction is something that is introduced in the beginning of the chapter, and at first I had to re-read it to make sense of it. According to the text, Contradiction “refers to the dynamic interplay between unified oppositions.” I began to gain a better understanding of the concept in the example of the concept put into play by the characters James and Sarah and their struggle to gain interdependence and independence among their relationship with one another. I think that it is important to create a relationship in which each person is able to be independent and also interdependent at the same time, however it is not always as simple as it sounds, and most of us need to establish ourselves independently before we also become interdependent on another.The study of Relational Dialectics is important for us to learn about for many reasons and in my opinion some of these reasons include, to understand our relationships with others better, to establish a sense of normalcy within our struggles to maintain our relationships with others, but also to understand that the struggles that we face in our relationships exist for a reason and to learn that we let ourselves form these relationships based on the push and pull each other within our relationship.
Social Penetration Theory Tuesday, Mar 4 2008
Uncategorized 11:26 pm
After reading about social penetration theory, I recognized most of what was mentioned in the chapter in myself regarding relationships with friends. I think that whenever we as humans are initially introduced to others, we subconsciously think about the boundaries that are socially constructed to begin to build our relationship with that other person. I think that it is very true that we tend to shield ourselves from any vulnerability until we are certain that we can trust the person that we are disclosing our personal information to. It is easy to share “superficial” information with others in the beginning of a relationship such as our favorite band, interests and where we grew up. However, it takes time and trust to talk about emotional and spiritual or family issues and these things would be closer to the core. In Pete’s case, I think that I could relate to him as a new college student because being in an unfamiliar environment with someone from a different background than you already makes for a different experience. I agree with the onion model and I think that it makes a lot of sense, I know that it is my own personal experience that I have found that people have many layers to them and we each tend to hold the most important and gentle things closest to the core of ourselves. It takes time to build a relationship with someone and for that person to be able to peel away the layers and find out who we really are inside. The hardest part about this process, in my mind, is allowing the layers to be peeled away.
