#behavioral studies

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Temple Grandin, a name synonymous with groundbreaking advancements in both animal science and autism awareness, has paved the way for understanding and innovation in two distinct, yet intersecting worlds. Born on August 29, 1947, Grandin’s journey from a child diagnosed with autism to a world-renowned animal behaviorist and advocate for individuals on the autism spectrum, showcases a life marked…

[Note:  If the reader has taken up reading this blog with this posting, he/she is helped by knowing that this posting is the next one in a series of postings.  The series begins with the posting, “The Natural Rights’ View of Morality” (February 25, 2020, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-natural-rights-view-of-morality.html).  Overall, the series addresses how the study of political science has affected the civics curriculum of the nation’s secondary schools.]

 This blog of late has been reviewing an approach to political science that has had a profound effect on civics education.  By stating an effect, that does not mean it has determined what that education is.  But it does mean influencing what that curriculum has chosen to highlight in terms of content or scope.  In addition, that influence has not been extended to the instructional approaches classroom teachers have implemented despite an attempt to do so by the federal government in the 1960s and ‘70s.  

During that time, federal officials encouraged teachers to apply something called the New Social Studies – a mostly instructional reform effort that heavily relied on scientific methodologies that teachers were to adopt. That effort was initiated as a response to the Soviet Union launching Sputnik.  Science illiteracy among Americans was considered a national detriment in the ensuing competition with the Soviets in terms of space exploration with its defense implications in mind.  This a multidimensional story the reader can readily look up.  Here, only a mention will do.

While the effort to instill a more “scientific” approach to civics and to all social studies led to the publication of various textbooks, the overall effect was minimal.  The instructional approach this movement called for, the inquiry approach, was/is at odds with the dominant approaches most teachers employ.  Those would be didactic approaches such as lecturing. Basically, didactic instruction imparts information; inquiry calls on students to discover information.  

At a minimum, those civics educators who have been so influenced by behavioral political studies have incorporated a general view of systems theory in terms of the content or scope of the subject matter but not its processes.  In terms of the scope, though, it has encouraged those civics educators to neglect the realm of community as an instructional topic and with it, all the obligations such an area of concern entails.

Over the last few decades or so, the trend toward individualism – as encouraged by the dominant natural rights view and further legitimized by behavioral studies – became so apparent that many school districts began to institute community service requirements for graduation. This was relatively new when this writer left his last classroom assignment in the year 2000.  

At that time, his observation regarding this requirement was that the resulting process to supervise any community service was vacuous.  That is, the process was, in his school district, ill-supervised and students did not treat it seriously.  It demonstrated how un-communal the schools and the school system administrators had become.  

Perhaps things are different now, but he could find out by working at a school – an option not available to him.  But this judgement that the requirement was merely a formality was further supported recently by the testimony from a social studies teacher in a mid-size school district.  

During February 2020, this writer asked a teacher, a social studies department chairperson, about whether his district maintained any community service requirement.  According to the department chair the community service element is not a general requirement in the Leon County schools of Florida.  There is a requirement attached to an honors program, but again, other than asking standard questions, the supervision of the requirement is limited.

So, to the degree this amoral view of politics which attachable to a natural rights view has captured the minds and hearts of Americans in general, and civics educators in particular, one can see how national politics has drifted.  Under the banner of a simplistic natural liberty, the dysfunctional state the nation’s politics finds itself as a bifurcated political environment and it has come about by people “doing their own thing.”  That state of affairs deserves its own investigation – the topic for future postings.

Up to this point, this blog might have left the reader with the impression that civics instruction around the country regularly portrays an image of citizens trying to outdo each other for favorable governmental policy decisions. After all the overall description of politics is that it is an activity by which people or groups seek public resources through a competitive process.  But that characterization, as presented in civics classrooms, does not extend usually to average Americans and this blog doesn't state that it does.  

If only civics and government classes were that interesting.  What this blog tries to convey is that civics and government classes have taken on a descriptive role, and they limit their efforts to describing the structure of the American political system.  Stated another way, secondary schools portray the government and the other parts of the political system as one big machine.

In the political system there are these “branches” of government, bureaucratic departments and offices, and outside government there are people (voters, interest groups, and political parties) who seek government action.  Usually, each of these provide the subject matter for each of a civics course’s units of study.  The image, as portrayed by civics education as currently taught, is of a political system resembling a big machine with multiple interacting parts.

The organism view that Easton wrote about[1] – and as described in a previous posting – has not made it to secondary civics instruction in American schools – at least not to any meaningful degree.  Most notably, that instruction has little to nothing to say about the feedback process which makes what Easton describes a system as being more organic than mechanical.  All the juicier stuff of intrigue, power plays, deception, and the like is left to novels or the more partisan pundits on TV.

In contrast, school renditions of government are pale, objectified, and lacking in human drama.  After all, in keeping with classical liberal values, there is no aim to induce any moral position, outrage, or normative stand except for its support of natural liberty.  Topics such as equality are avoided, community or communal obligations are neglected, business needs are absent, or concern for the impoverished is nonexistent. What remains in those courses is bland, bland, bland.

Along with a lack of any drama, the nation’s classrooms, for the most part, neglect the research methodologies associated with the behavioral movement or that of any other political science approach.  But what of the instructional methodologies?  Are they important?  That is, is it important whether a teacher uses didactic methods or interactive/inquiry methods?

They round out what this adopted construct – the natural rights construct – is about; methodologies are not just ways to look at reality, they are ways to ignore reality or, as a former vice-president might say, fail to detect “inconvenient truths.”  This blog’s only editorial position regarding process is that whatever process a teacher adopts, it needs to have students reflect – not just memorize – on the needs of the political system and its citizens to be of any import or any effectiveness.

[Note:  If the reader has taken up reading this blog with this posting, he/she is helped by knowing that this posting is the next one in a series of postings.  The series begins with the posting, “The Natural Rights’ View of Morality” (February 25, 2020, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-natural-rights-view-of-morality.html).  Overall, the series addresses how the study of political science has affected the civics curriculum of the nation’s secondary schools.]

 This blog ends its review of behavioral political study by reporting on the basic methodology the political scientists of that movement – the behavioral movement – utilize.  Every academic field of study has an established method by which the practitioners of the field do their research.  This is not a haphazard endeavor; extraordinary steps are taken to define these methodologies.  

Practitioners take these methods seriously to ensure that the ways in which information is gathered and analyzed are legitimate according to thought-out rationales.  In addition, neophytes are strenuously trained in those methods.  In order to have their work taken seriously, scholars are critiqued on the methods they apply.  Their work will be judged on a variety of related issues such as statistical procedures, interviewing techniques, and analyses of physical evidence.  

By being taught these methods, the aim is to have would be political scientists learn to analyze, synthesize, and solve socially related problems or mysterious manifestations of curious events or developments.  In other words, such instruction teaches students how to view the world which, in turn, will affect what they “see” and what they do not “see.”

As to political systems theory and related approaches, David Easton in the 1950s led political science to analyze political processes in behavioral terms.  That is, the focus of study became human political behavior.[1]  This entails observing and measuring behaviors that relate to and affect political realities, such as voting, political group behavior, and conflict behavior.  

As stated previously in this blog, during the mid-twentieth century period, systems theory became the prominent approach in political science. With this ascendancy, the main methodology became those associated with behavioral studies.  

By the 1970s and 1980s, the emphasis shifted somewhat to what Easton called a post-behavioral revolution,[2] but the bulk of studies published in the field’s peer reviewed journals still rely predominantly on “hard science techniques” as is indicated by a statement from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at that time (1987).

Although political scientists are prone to debate and [have] disagreement[s], the majority views the discipline as a genuine science.  As a result, political scientists generally strive to emulate the objectivity as well as the conceptual and methodological rigor typically associated with the so-called “hard” science (e.g., biology, chemistry, and physics).  They see themselves as engaged in revealing the relationships underlying political events and conditions.  Based on these revelations, they attempt to state general principles about the way the world of politics works.  Given these aims, it is important for political scientists’ writing to be conceptually precise, free from bias, and well-substantiated by empirical evidence.  Knowing that political scientists value objectivity may help you in making decisions about how to write [a political science related] paper and what to put in it.[3]

Initially, the political systems approach attempted to apply those research techniques and theory building processes that defined the natural sciences.  

Surely, the reader can recall the simplified version taught in school known as the scientific method (a creation of science educators in order to teach what scientists do).  For those who need a reminder, here it is:  

1.     identify and define a problem;

2.    hypothesize an educated guess that would solve the problem;

3.    gather relevant information;

4.    analyze the information;

5.    draw a conclusion as to the truthfulness of the hypothesis; and

6.    apply the conclusion (mostly to substantiate or modify, if necessary, existing theory).  

Due to a host of critiques that evolved during the 1960s and '70s, the “post-behavioral revolution” occurred and resulted in applying scientific techniques to societal problems which were political in nature.

Why were political scientists attracted to this more “scientific” approach?  This is Easton’s answer to that question:

Unlike the great traditional theories of past political thought, new theory [of the behavioral movement] tends to be analytic, not substantive, general rather than particular, and explanatory rather than ethical.  That portion of political research which shares these commitments to both the new theory and the technical means of analysis and verification thereby links political science to broader behavioral tendencies in the social sciences and, hence, its description as political behavior.  This is the full meaning and significance of the behavioral approach in political science today [in 1967].[4]

In layman's terms, Easton first points out what the perceived problem with traditional, pre-1950, political study was.  That is, behaviorists view traditional study as highly speculative, mainly consisting of interpretations by political writers who non-objectively selected historical events to support preconceived conclusions.  

To combat this embedded bias, behavioral researchers would mimic natural scientists by incorporating their methods.  They would strive to be value free by utilizing experiments or observed behaviors (including responses to survey questionnaires).  More specifically, the resulting studies abstracted these observed behaviors from their social contexts.

The behaviors could be observed and measured from actual, real world activities or from simulated situations in which experimenters set up the politically relevant conditions.  The behaviors, once observed, were broken down so they could be measured in quantitative units (a process philosophically known as reductionism).

For example, Congressional votes can be abstracted from their substantive context.  They can be analyzed to see what patterns emerge.  Patterns are correlations (noting what occurs when some other thing or things occur).  Despite pure scientific standards, correlations were converted into cause and effect relationships by formulating theories or explanations for the studied phenomena.  This latter activity is conducted apart from the data gathering activities by a separate cadre of political scientists.

An example of a correlation could be that becoming a US President and adherence to a Protestant religion have coincided in every case except one. All the presidents of the US have been Protestants apart from John F. Kennedy, a Roman Catholic.  A cause and effect relationship would claim there is something about being a Protestant that allows or strengthens the chances of a person to become a President but that would be left to a theorist to interpret.

In some cases, to point a more insightful relationship, political scientists might correlate certain demographic factors such as geographic regions, religions, income, education, and the like, with voting behavior.  Such correlations, if they exist, might suggest a generalization, such as poorly educated citizens might be too uninformed about issues to feel a necessity to vote.  Generalizations are the building components of a theory or model.

         The next posting will continue this review by looking at the role behavioral studies are meant to play in the development of theory. One should keep in mind that the ultimate aim of the behavioral revolt was to allow political scientists to develop an overall theory that would explain why humans behave politically as they do.

[1] David Easton, The Political System (New York, NY:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1953).  This source was not a call for behavioral study, but in its description of politics within systems naturally led to that methodology.

[2] John G. Gunnell, “Political Theory and Political Science,” in The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought, edited by David Miller, Janet Coleman, William Connolly, and Alan Ryan (Cambridge, MA:  Blackwell, 1987), 386-930.

[3] “Political Science,” The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, n. d., accessed February 19, 2020, https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/political-science/ .

Seeking Human Generosity’s Origins in an Ape’s Gift to Another Ape

By Carl Zimmer

The New York Times

How generous is an ape? It’s a hard question for scientists to tackle, but the answer could tell us a lot about ourselves.

People in every culture can be generous, whether they’re lending a cellphone to an office mate or sharing an antelope haunch with a hungry family.

While it’s easy to dwell on our capacity for war and violence, scientists see our generosity…

Angry People Likely to Overestimate their Intelligence- Research

Angry people are more likely to overestimate their intelligence. They tend to think they are smarter than they actually are.

Researchers examined the relationship between anger and multiple brain functions. They noticed that anger is different from other negative emotions such as sadness, anxiety or depression.

Anger is associated with optimistic risk perception and generally optimistic bias.…

What We’re Taught!

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which…