Strixaluco
Owned little owl
- Joined
- Mar 7, 2022
- Posts
- 15,345
I recall reading that even the results of the popular personality tests like Myers-Briggs aren't fixed throughout life, so her belief does sound rather... Uninformed.
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I recall reading that even the results of the popular personality tests like Myers-Briggs aren't fixed throughout life, so her belief does sound rather... Uninformed.
Well, true. But there is also a limited amount of factors that considered constant. Things like being a bully or a charmer are not a among them.Meyers-Briggs is kind of nonsense to begin with. You can get different results taking it 2 days apart.
I've thought more about Wiseman's movie, but I can't quite link to the the OP yet. For one thing, the film is fifty-six years old and depicts what I'd call "peak public high school." It was filmed in Northeast Philadelphia, and the vast majority of the students in it are white. One thing to keep in mind is that the upper classes usually send their kids to a private school, or they use a public school in a particular area that they live in. (Say Darien, CT or Ridgewood, NJ.) For people further down the social scale (say all four of my grandparents around 1918-20) it was not always considered that vital to get a diploma. The late 1960's were around the point when high school was close to a "universal" experience. (I entered my school in 1969.)But this would mean she hadn't learned that much about her own field in the university, and how would she then even get the grant?
Though confirmation bias would indeed fit her belief. It sounds biased and not well-based. To begin with, you'd have to be able to separate high school from earlier and later impacts. The earlier ones may be me way more important, high school doesn't necessarily change anything regarding what character you grow to have. And if one is a player, how did *high school* make one so, instead of having those tendencies irregardless of high school?
Trading Places was a funny movie in places, but it is not a documentary. Billy Valentine's uplift struck me as rather abrupt and more than a bit unlikely. Of course, that was required to make the film watchable. I suspect that if that was to really happen, it would take a lot longer and require much more input than what is in the movie.There is a great documentary about that.
She is a psychologist. I'm sure you're tempted to make her a clinician, but I would avoid that; she is an academic. She is up for tenure, and is seeking a significant research finding that will push her over the top and secure her a full professorship.
She teaches all sorts of psych courses (because junior faculty), but she is a personality theorist at heart. She is researching whether personality is fluid or concrete (those are psych terms with which she would be familiar). Her goal is to create a lab that can generate its own grant revenue, while also giving her status in the university and a ready pool of grad students she can mentor. She has published academic articles (and a book, which was her PhD thesis), but she would like to go more mainstream and become someone laymen know about.
These kinds of goals, and the career trajectory that goes along with them, are common in academia, and will likely ring true to most readers.
Psychologist, Anthropologist, or educational profession.So I've been thinking of this story. It consists of a woman in DINK marriage. She gets a grant to research on the subject
" Influence of high school on overall character of an adult"
She believes that what characteristics you form during high school will remain the rest of your life and you can only hide or overcome it but it's set for life.
Sorry, I thought you meant that the movie was at least partially plausible. Typical of the many misunderstandings that take place in social media.
That's wonderful! With that kind of set-up, it doesn't make as much sense for her to be as initially obstinate about her theory as sweetdreamsss set it up in the initial post. Originally, I was thinking that she'd have to be, quite frankly, pretty daft to be genuinely stuck on the high school theory, which made me think that she'd have to be pretty far down on the totem pole wherever her research role was.
But in yours, it seems more like she'd see the pop culture potential in her theory and wants to capitalize on that hype to propel her career. So, she has a strong vested interest in creating research that will support her conclusion.
It's a half measure shortcut, and when it's published, the critics would absolutely rain down on her. I could see it becoming a personal ego fight for her after that, and she argues it so much and so vigorously that she genuinely convinces herself that it's true.
It'd be a great way to inversely show the deterioration of her marriage. Her husband hates the theory due to his PTSD as they said, and she's zealously doubling down on trying to prove it true for nobody but her own self.
I'm thinking about Milgram, who was explicitly setting out to achieve tenure when he did his experiments on obedience. He did not begin with a null hypothesis, and achieved results that ran completely counter to his expectations (to an alarming degree). Subsequent questions about his conclusions and his ethics derailed his career; he'd been a high-flying instructor bound for appointment at Harvard, but the notoriety from his experiment made him persona non grata in the Ivy League and even the next tier below.
Which doesn't mean he was a bad researcher, by the standards of his time, and didn't mean he was through doing meaningful work. His story is a useful lesson, though, on how behavioral research can be a gamble of sorts; that kind of dynamic would interest me, at least, if the OP wanted to go there.
Ten years later, Zimbardo encountered a somewhat similar dynamic... but he was already tenured at Stanford, which made all the difference. Even so, Milgram was grateful to Zimbardo for taking the ethical heat off him at last.
But how would she reach the conclusion that your four years in high school form immutable characteristics for the rest of your life?
I think your premise would only work if her theory was more plausible. Asking readers to suspend their disbelief that she naturally reached that conclusion naturally is a big ask.
There are millions of people who believe the position of the stars at one's birth defines personality for the rest of one's life. "Four years in high school" seems quite sober and plausible in comparison.
Never underestimate the power of a researcher with a pet theory to persuade themselves and others, regardless of its truth or supporting evidence. See e.g. Andrew Wakefield.
But I took Voboy's reply to mean that this researcher went in thinking one thing, and was surprised when her research pointed to High School being these immutably formative years.
From what I know about Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment, the particpants all knew what they getting into. And he did call it off after about six days when it became too "realistic."I'm thinking about Milgram, who was explicitly setting out to achieve tenure when he did his experiments on obedience. He did not begin with a null hypothesis, and achieved results that ran completely counter to his expectations (to an alarming degree). Subsequent questions about his conclusions and his ethics derailed his career; he'd been a high-flying instructor bound for appointment at Harvard, but the notoriety from his experiment made him persona non grata in the Ivy League and even the next tier below.
Which doesn't mean he was a bad researcher, by the standards of his time, and didn't mean he was through doing meaningful work. His story is a useful lesson, though, on how behavioral research can be a gamble of sorts; that kind of dynamic would interest me, at least, if the OP wanted to go there.
Ten years later, Zimbardo encountered a somewhat similar dynamic... but he was already tenured at Stanford, which made all the difference. Even so, Milgram was grateful to Zimbardo for taking the ethical heat off him at last.
From what I know about Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment, the particpants all knew what they getting into. And he did call it off after about six days when it became too "realistic."
I suppose the results were disturbing, but I don't know how it could be applied in a real-life settings. Humans can be quite - the word "ornery" is not really accurate, but it will have to do. Maybe what these researchers discovered is that all the good will in the world can't solve certain behaviors.