On Thu, 13 Dec 2001 Leslilake1 at aol.com wrote:
> From: Propaganda and the Public Mind, Interview done 1998
>
>[snipped]
>
> I don't know of any understanding that goes deep
> enough so that you can't present it very simply and in such a way that the
> principles are pretty much on the surface. We're living in an era when a lot
> of prestige is given to professional expertise. People have a real
> responsibility not to claim more than they can offer. If you claim to have a
> theory that deduces unexpected consequences from nontrivial principles, lets
> see it....
>
Although few seem wildly interested, I can provide various examples that meet NC's criteria for a "theory". I love this one: Freudian theory predicts that people will engage in reaction formation as a defense mechanism. If I have unconscious desires/impulses, the psychodynamic theorist suggests, they can be sneakily manifested in my conscious mind via reversal (I say I really love my parents when in my unconscious mind I resent them). Here's the unexpected prediction: Due to reaction formation, people who say they are "disgusted" by gays and lesbians in fact have homosexual impulses/ desires simmering in their unconscious.
Adams, Wright & Lohr (1996) conducted a study to test this idea. They used a self-report scale of homophobia to identify college students high or low in homophobia and exposed them to films with erotic content. (All the students identified themselves as exclusively heterosexual.) Adams et al. found that homophobic men and nonhomophobic men both reported low levels of sexual arousal when they watched a film of male-male sexual activity; however, a penile strain gauge indicated that the homophobic men in fact were more sexually aroused by the male-male sex film than the nonhomophobic men were. This finding has been replicated a number of times.
That's one example off the top of my head, and psychology and sociology are full of examples like this. Doesn't this meet NC's criteria?
Miles