Archive: Feb 2009

I just discovered that PBS provides the entire documentary “A Class Divided” online. The video discusses the experiment a teacher conducted in her classroom, in which she divided her 3rd-grade class into groups with blue eyes and brown eyes and told them the blue-eyed groups were “the better people in this room,” later changing the rules and saying that brown-eyed kids are better (she started this experiment the day after Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot). It’s an interesting look at stereotyping and social psychology, particularly how quickly groups will change their behavior if they are told they have a superior or inferior characteristic.

The website also has clips from a class reunion 14 years later where the people who took part in the experiment talk about it, as well as when the teacher was hired to conduct the experiment on Corrections Department employees to teach them about discrimination and stereotyping.

You might also discuss this experiment when you’re looking at ethics of research–would we allow something like this now? How would parents likely react today if they found out their child was told they were in an “inferior” group? My guess is a teacher would face a lot of opposition trying to do this now.

The New York Times recently published an article on the evolving Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).  The DSM is the official source for psychologists who are diagnosing patients with mental disorders.  The article points out that the number of disorders in the manual has more than doubled since the 1950s:

Hypothesis One:  The DSM reflects an increasingly sophisticated and exhuastive compendium of all possible mental disorders.

Hypothesis Two:  More psychological disorders = more people diagnosed with mental disorders = more money is siphoned off to hospitals, treatment centers, drug companies, mental health professionals, social workers, school counselors, etc.  (Scientists who are currently working on the next version of the DSM have agreed to restrict their income from drug makes to $10,000 a year or less.)

Hypothesis Three:  We are an increasingly rationalized society and all things are becoming increasingly listed, compiled, organized, and annotated.

Hypothesis Four:  What is considered a “problem” depends on the social context.  (“Homosexuality” used to be in the DSM, but it isn’t any longer.)  Perhaps a shift in the last 50 years has created a social context that is less tolerant of difference, more insistent upon happiness, or requires a more compliant citizen.

Hypothesis Five:  Grassroots activists get together and lobby scientists to include disorders in the DSM so that they can raise awareness and money for research.

What do you think?

Thanks to Francisco for pointing me to this article!

Julie C. drew our attention to this ad for an internet service that filters “inappropriate” content:

Lizvang nicely articulates an objection (my emphasis):

The breasts, the vagina, the uterus and the colon is cut out of an anatomical text book. When did biology and education about our bodies become shameful? Haven’t we as a society moved past the “a woman’s body is dirty” mindset?