TV & violence & studies

[joanna bujes]

At 11:03 AM 03/29/2002 -0500, Greg S wrote:
>The quasi-science of psychology rarely comes up with anything 
>non-ideological, its experiments running from interesting to absurd, but 
>hardly ever conclusive on anything important. If some causal relationship 
>is being sensibly argued and the "tests" show that there is some practical 
>relationship in a meaningful way then that would be a different thing, if 
>however the causual relationship is something along the lines of "me see 
>violence, me do violence" then I reserve my right to be more than a little 
>dismissive.

I agree. Here's another example for your arsenal. A friend of mine was 
doing "conservation" tests for a Piaget-inspired study some years ago. This 
is the one where you pour blue liquid  from a cup into a tall skinny tube. 
Then you pour the liquid back into the cup. Then you pour the blue liquid 
into a short fat tube. Then you ask the kid who is watching all this which 
tube has more liquid: the tall thin one or the short fat one. Most kids, 
Piaget argued, will argue that the tall thin tube has more liquid....up to 
a certain age, then after that age, most kids will realize that it's the 
same amount of liquid. OK. So he's doing the experiment and all the kids 
are younger than the age at which they understand about conservation and 
they're all saying that the tall thin tube has more liquid. So my friend 
gets bored and he goes to the soda machine and he gets some orange crush, 
which he drinks with visible delight. Then he decides to see what happens 
if he uses the orange crush rather than the blue liquid. And guess what, 
now all the kids can conserve!!! Moral of the story: sometimes a subjective 
interest in what is going on can make you more intelligent. The kids didn't 
give squat about the blue liquid; but they cared very much what wasa 
happening to the yummy soda.

Joanna