Ambivalent Academic and I have a very sexy series of posts coming up for you in May dealing with sociobiology and social psychology. We will be talking about sex. That's right - S-E-X. It's gonna be awesome.
But in the meantime, what Hot Social Psychology would you like to hear about? Is there a question you have about human behavior that you'd like to know the current theories on? (I know you do........)
Test me, folks! The vast majority of you are not in psychology, but all of us have questions about the behavior of the people around us and sometimes about ourselves. PhizzleDizzle, for example, recently asked about the assumptions we make about people we have never met.
I don't claim to be an expert. But I am a big fan of generating discussion and answering questions to the best of my ability. So lemme have it. If I can't answer your question, I will say so, but in most cases I should be able to provide you with a decent amount of knowledge on the subject.
(In case you can't tell, I anticipate boredom this weekend.)
5 comments:
Oh, I'd love to ask you loads of questions! Here are a few:
1. One of my office mates just left to start a new job. The week before he left, he put up stuff around the office, gave everyone in the group a hat with the group's logo, and even gave us a framed copy of his letter of offer. What do you think possesses someone to leave things behind, while others don't?
2. I bought a book recently called Women Don't Ask, and it's about how women are not as good at negotiating as men. What do you think about this?
3. I'm reading a book right now called The Female Brain, and it describes what our hormones do to our thoughts/actions throughout our lives. Do you think our thoughts/actions are governed more by our biochemistry or by our environment?
4. What is the deal with people one-upping each other when they talk about negative things in their lives?
5. Why are women their own worst enemies? I find this to be the case especially in the blog world when sexism comes up - why do women have a hard time agreeing to disagree?
LOL Okay - that's probably enough for you :D
What social constructs do you think contribute to the lack of solidarity between the driving force of the 1st wave of feminism (white females) and women of colour? I'm allowed to ask stupid questions, right?
right?
yes?
*hides in corner*
Hermitage, that's not at all a stupid question. Even a cracker male like me can see the cognitive dissonance between the 1st and 3rd waves.
1) In his book "Sex, Time, and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution", Leonard Shlain proposes that human pair bonding as an evolutionary and reproductive advantage was due primarily to needing iron because of menstruation and pregnancy. Iron that men hunters provided. I think this is kinda dubious because there is no reason prehistoric women couldn't have also been badass hunters. What do you think?
2) Men are socialized to think of women in terms of conquest and possession (e.g., "chasing tail", "she's my girl", etc.). Traditionally male-dominated workplaces, such as scientific research, are usually perceived as hostile by women due to the men still working in them. Could this be due to men not being able to dissociate their professional endeavors from the women-as-conquest mentality? At the same time, men have bluntly coded normative body langauges that reinforce group inclusiveness through communication forms homogeneity. Women have their own forms. Men don't always understand these. Could additional hostility in professional settings also be due to men not understanding women's body language or language subtexts and therefore prescribing stereotypical labels (e.g., "office floozy", "administrative bitch", etc.)?
Sorry about the run-on sentences.
Wow! I can't wait to dive into these! This is going to be fun....
In the meantime, MrsCH, I've talked about that book in my blog before. See the page http://topyourfragileself.blogspot.com/2009/02/wtf-do-i-do-why-social-psychology-of.html
(Sorry, I don't know how to create fancy hyperlinks in comments).
And Hermitage, definitely not a stupid question.
Thanks for the link, JLK! You can tell I'm a new reader. What you study is so incredibly interesting!
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