Part I. The Study of Human Behavior—psychology, sociology and anthropology 1. Pre-test survey monkey on names, terms (what is anthropology, what is sociology, etc.?) 2. Read the overview below—discuss. * * * Thinking Like a Social Scientist: An Overview The various “sub-fields” of the social sciences (psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, etc.) frame their analysis differently and focus on particular types of evidence. However, they all draw conclusions about human behavior based on evidence. Psychologists look mostly at the individual. Their evidence usually consists of information about a person’s childhood, dreams and/or memories. Freud attributed human behavior to repressed sexual longing, for example. Skinner claimed that rewards and punishments experienced from childhood onward “shape” an individual’s behavior. Sociologists focus on group dynamics—from the family to the nation-state. Talcott Parsons claimed that people are shaped by their social “roles”—teachers act like teachers, soldiers act like soldiers, manager-workers have a prescribed relationship based on their relative positions and/or “roles.” Anthropologists look for the clues of human behavior in cultural traditions, beliefs, rituals and practices; often they compare one culture to another. Margaret Mead, for example, found gender roles to be by and large culturally determined. She compared girls in Samoa and the United States during the 1920s and used her direct observations to prove it. The key frames of reference here are: individual (psychology), groups (sociology), culture (anthropology). However, by the 1970s, the boundaries between sub-fields (following the trend in academia in general) were blurred. Since the 1970s biologists and neuro-scientists have had a tremendous impact on the study of psychology and sociology, for example. Postmodern philosophers and literary critics have influenced the direction of anthropology. Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene) and E.O. Wilson (Socio-biology) are prime examples of the former; Clifford Geertz and the incorporation of “symbols” and “belief systems,” echoed postmodern concerns with “constructs.” He, and others in the field of anthropology, began to use the tools of literary analysis (such as Edward Said’s concept of the “other) to examine culture as well as the traditional data drawn by closely observing daily life while immersed in the culture under study. * * * Unit A: G. Stanley Hall vs. Margaret Mead on adolescent girls in the 1920s 1. Hall’s observation re: flappers 2. Hall’s work in psychology 3. Freud, Young visit to Clark University—psychology overview 4. Mead’s argument in Coming of Age in Samoa—anthropology overview 5. Julia Roberts movie—advertisements and role of women and The Feminine Mystique—Clifford Geertz “symbols.” Unit B: Genetics vs. Culture 1. Start with the Coming Plague, section on Ebola where they finally find out that the custom is to touch the dead body just before burial. 2. Relate this to Richard Dawkins, meme and or Darwin and culture in The Selfish Gene. 3. Dawkins vs. Parsons, Durkheim, Marx. Unit C: Why do we do what we do? Lecture style—overview of the major figures mentioned in the overview above. 3. Take “pre-test” as actual test. 4. Work on essay: Why do we do what we do? Part II. Human Behavior in the Information Age