Sunday, February 22, 2009
observer effect
Why we pretend not to let other people know the truth about ourselves? For example if I was in a leadership position, then the way I act when my headmaster saw me is quiet different when he is not around. Why we act as if we are, knowing that God knows every thing.
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15 comments:
Chilot,
I think this is one of the most important problems of the human sciences - namely that humans are sentient, or conscious, and that means that we are are aware of ourselves as thinking beings. Hence we sometimes see good reasons for modifying our behaviour when we know that certain others are observing us. This problem from a human science researcher's point of view is often referred to as the "observer effect". Why not google this for further information...
Your question asks why we do this. I think I have partly answered this by saying that our consciousness is responsible for this aspect of our behaviour, but, for a deeper exploration of this topic, look up the meaning of "intentionality". Once someone responds to this, we can discuss it further...
Well i think this is the most weakness of human bengs.We usally act as if we are.I can relate this thing with common sense.Common sense is if we talk truly is the one that leads us in a right direction so i can say that humanbings usally dont use their common sensea as a result r oblighed to pretend.
Get IB,
Thanks for contributing - that's great.
Can you explain what you mean by "common sense"? Couldn't we say that it is "common sense" to take into account who is present and observing what we are doing?
You see, it is important to pin down what we mean when we use certain terms. Otherwise there is a danger we will go around in circles...
Concerning Chilot's original post, I see that Wikipedia has re-designated the psychological observer effect as "reactivity".
As previously noted, this is a problem of knowledge in the human sciences, but note especially in this article how researchers attempt to eliminate it through blind experiment designs (phew - something else to research!).
hey, it is the most interesting question
I think it is because every person demands respect as well as a certain level of authority. Hence we believe that we can achieve it by pretending.
Gentlemen,
It is great that we are having this discussion. I am so pleased that you are contributing. But please remember that TOK is an academic course, so once again I ask you to do the following:
(a) Look up "common sense"? What do you think it means? Is there such a thing?
(b) Look up "intentionality" to see what it means
(c) Look up "reactivity" to see what it means
(d) Now comment!
AS for Chilot's original question i think it has a little or a lot to do with the fact that being honest(whatever that means) isn't very feasible in society. In my brief experience of life I've found that being who you are...or who you think you are at least will simply not suffice you have to be a little bit more. So when people can be a little bit more on the outside they are normal, when they can't be they are weird when when they are really a little bit more everywhere then they need 'assistance' i know this isn't a very TOKey way to look at this but i think that lying or the ability to deceive might be an adaptive trait....
as for God.... i can't comment there
Cyanide,
You said:
"i think that lying or the ability to deceive might be an adaptive trait"
Indeed, and also the ability to detect the lying and deceiving, no?
This leads us to what has been called the "Machiavelli hypothesis", named after that delightful Italian observer of politics! This is one idea that attempts to explain the massive increase in brain size and intelligence that has accompanied human evolution - it claims that this huge change is an evolutionary response to a kind of social pressure. On an individual basis (which is the way that standard evolutionary theory works), there might have been a survival advantage to be gained through lying and deceiving; similarly, there would have been a survival advantage for those who could reliably detect these things in others. So we have a cycle of positive feedback, as the lying needs to become more and more sophisticated to work against the lying-detector and the detection of the lying needs to become more and more effective against the more sophisticated liar, and all of this would require ever more advanced brains. It should be noted here that there are other hypotheses that attempt to explain the evolution of intelligence.
In order for lying to work, the liar must understand that the person being lied to also has a mind. If you think about it, even this is not sufficient - the liar must assume that the other person also understands that the liar has a mind.
Our ability to function as social animals is dependent on these kinds of chains - we can understand a sentence like "I believe that John thinks that his girlfriend wants his best friend to admire her". This is what is known as the "intentionality" that I mentioned earlier - in this case, A believes B thinks C wants D... The order of intentionality might actually be a good indication of intelligence - how long can you extend my sentence above before you get confused? Research indicates that chimpanzees can just about manage second order intentionality (Chimp A believes that chimp B believes something), and smart humans about six or seven. Try to construct seventh-order intentionality and see if anyone understands your sentence!
I should have added that when you wrote:
"i know this isn't a very TOKey way to look at this but i think that lying or the ability to deceive might be an adaptive trait...."
I disagree with the first part of your sentence - you have made a start in applying a theoretical framework (behaviour as adaptation) to common observations of an aspect of human nature (sensitivity to being observed), and that is indeed a "TOKey" approach. My contribution above is an attempt to develop what you started.
oh ok...i think i have a different idea of what TOK is then....Thanks. just by the way i know this is a diversion from the original question but the concept of deception really intrigues me because when i think about it, lies only work because they are built on a foundation of truth and trust. The only reason lying still proves effective is because we still expect to hear the truth...gives me interesting ideas about life, it kinda relates to feedback and systems; you cant have good if there is no bad, no peace without war....it raises questions for me about life and the way in which we approach the 'bad' things!!
I agree that lying can work because it takes advantange of an atmosphere of trust. But just imagine if everyone around you had a tendency to lie - it might still be to your advantage to be skilled at detecting exactly when they were lying. I suppose I'm trying to defend the Machiavelli hypothesis.
Forgive me if I make too large a leap here, but I can't help seeing a connection to what has been called the "tragedy of the commons" - this describes situations in which something is jointly owned and where the individual can gain an advantage from taking more than his share of this something. The extra share is all for him but the damage he has caused is shared among everyone. The overall damage might be much greater than the short term individual gain, but because the damage is shared, it is in the individual's selfish interest to "cheat". Overfishing in international waters is a good example of this situation.
Now perhaps we could say that "trust" is a jointly owned commodity, and lying undermines it. The gain that can be made by an individual from lying could be greater than his individual share of the damage caused to the level of trust in society. Or is trust something that is attributed primarily to individuals? If so, this model wouldn't work. But people talk regularly about the level of trust in such-and-such a society, so maybe it's a coherent idea.
Well, this is highly speculative, but there is room for this here, I think...
i do believe that this is related with shekspers adage. he says life is like a stage: everyhuman being pretend inorder to be seen good in front of the person who is beyond our stage.( she/he could be our boss ,head master, pricipal...). in such case we can see that we are not confident of what we are doing.While, if we are confident of what we are doing, then we will not pretend because we know that we did correct.therefore, i can say that we pretend because we are not confident of what we are ding, or hesitation of our leader's, boss's... expectation.
Well, Binyam, that's a good link to the arts (drama). It sets off another question in my head but I think it's too far removed from the original intention of this thread, so I'll start another one - look for "the human condition".
With regards to lying and being able to detect deception, i completely agree that being able to lie without the ability to detect same in others would not be very useful. In fact, i find the Machiavellian hypothesis to quite useful...it applies to a number of situations.
Also about the tragedy of the commons bit, from one perspective it makes perfect sense to say overfish in international waters because the cost is shared but the gain is for one individual or for a few individuals and in the short term that's a pretty smart way to do things i think...besides its not really, in my opinion, human nature to consider the greater good before the sweeter good. t
i think that in some sense trlong term clause which complicates everything and then we have to think about being more efficient with our resources. That brings me back to what you mentioned about our brains developing, its kinda like and this is stretching it but perhaps the reason our intelligence has increased over the years is because we sort of need the ability to think both in short and long-term so that flies can get off with living for the moment or the few years but we can't really. naturally, intelligence is necessary for preservation although...when i think about tortoises and how long they live it punches a hole in my hypothesis...unless of course their really intelligent and we just don't know it... but anyway on to trust...
trust is primarily for to individuals but individuals have a tendency to form society's and so in a sort of natural progression of things trust appears to be a jointly owned commodity. Indeed it must be in a sense because we do not simply trust one person, usually each individual trusts more than one other person and that person may be trusted by another sort of like a series of many to one one to many relationships that eventually form a network.
However, the thing i cannot really reconcile or perhaps the one question I've always asked myself is to what extent our we truly ourselves society? isn't who we are a sort of by-product of our our interactions with others? we couldn't really say we had a personality if we lived alone in a place all by ourselves? almost as if maybe the supposed pretense is not really pretense at all, like an appropriate response to a situation as we deem fit?
i fear i havent been too coherent but hopefully i've made a bit of sense...
we don't want people to know our real behavior and the real situation we are in.we want people to know that we are good.
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