I love the application of the scientific method to human psychology. Why? Because we don’t really know whether it is possible yet. We get lots of “results”, many of which turn up in headlines in less-respectable newspapers. These lack my key requirement of science: the ability to explain and predict.
However, the growing research into framing (changing people’s default perceptions) looks to have tangible impact on real world activities.
But still plenty of contradiction: here’s a study that finds very little difference between male and female humans that can be attributed to their gender.
And here is a study that suggests that having more females in a team makes that team smarter.
Combine the two: we should all imagine we are women and make a smarter world.
Or something like that: I guess I didn’t frame the discussion right.
Uber-like your conclusion. Because when we all try to pretend we’re men, we seem to start wars, wreck the banking system, and generally frame every relationship and interaction in terms of dominance and submission. We can’t lose much by trying out your excellent suggestion.
That made me think of my prelims philosophy tutor (Hugh Rice) who when I said ‘Psychology is at the cutting edge of science’ said ‘Humph! Not much good if all you’ve got is a plastic serrated knife to cut with.’ Have Skype, will travel.
Net-travel that is 🙂 On the gender-framing, any kind of broad stereotyping seems a little silly because we’re all individual: general suggestions such as ‘Men should’ are coercive and muddling to the individual and to me count as part of the problem not the solution.
I love the framing work and do think it’s a great way forward. But in brief, I’d say moving from black-and-white generalisations to a kinder, more personal perspective would probably do a lot towards softening the world up. This is why psychology as a science does not compute! they’re in different areas of the human spectrum and it’s silly to try to coopt one into another – both great, no ‘agreement’ required.
Off on one so I’ll continue – you’ve hit my area of passion so I shan’t apologise 🙂 I’ve noticed that intellectualising human growth is one of the surest ways to avoid actual growth, which just happens and doesn’t require any particular ‘watching over’ or explaining, it’s natural and unsung. As soon as there’s monitoring there’s constriction.
I’ll shut up now but only because it’s school run time 🙂
I love the plastic knife. I’m in agreement with the “mostly just let it happen” spirit. The thing with both these studies is that some (IMHO) relatively non-coercive framing has real world impact. That sounds worth investigating further.
So maybe we could all go round imagining how a female astrophysicist would do things? (I knew one at Oxford: she’s now a lead at the Royal Opera House. That’s a framing model, right there.)
I’d say let’s all go round imagining how our ideal self would go about doing things! as soon as you look outside yourself you’ve lost it :)))