Robbers Cave By Saul Mcleods: Article Analysis

Psychologists have been interested in the subject of birth order and its effect on personality for over twenty years. The long-standing theory has been that there is little we can do to change our personalities; since this is predetermined by the order in which we were born. Modern research has attempted to debunk this theory, and prove just the opposite. One author, Julie Beck, took notice of a large study done by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Based on this research she penned an article titled, “Birth Order is Basically Meaningless.” Beck lays out a well-organized argument as to why she believes birth order has no lasting effect on personality. I find her article not only credible, but insightful to the critical reader.

“We all decry prejudice, yet are all prejudiced,” said Herbert Spencer, a famous philosopher. Prejudice is frequent everywhere and difficult to stop. It is very difficult to destroy something in someone’s mind, and it will inevitably be expressed through various methods with different degrees of subtlety. Any expression of this can hurt. Subsequently, in Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston, the main theme is that prejudice is everywhere, and can be of varying degrees.

In Ray Bradbury's “Fahrenheit 451”, the character Guy Montag is similar to the prisoner in “The Allegory of the Cave” because, Montag and the Prisoner were brought into the world with forced opinions and thoughts that shaped how they feel and think. Both Montag and the prisoner had nothing to look back on that showed a different opinion, so they were both stuck to believe anyone at face-value. These forced opinions however, were later changed after they were revealed by a character (the old man or Faber) and caused them to shed a whole new set of skin.

In the teleplay, “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” by Rod Serling, the community wanted to know the real culprit of this unnatural power outage, and they did everything to seek the answer. In news article “The Rosewood Massacre of 1923” by Emily Upton, a white woman claimed that a black man assaulted her which lead to a chaotic community. The riveting teleplay and news article both had the elements of an accusation and a metamorphoses.

The play Twelve Angry Men shows that civility is important. By the end of the play, the jurors were willing to listen to the people who were the most rational. Juror 8 calmly took the other’s ideas into account, which swayed the jury to favor not guilty. Most of the jury was convinced the boy was guilty, but Juror 8 used relaxed tactics to change their minds. One of the last jurors to change his mind was Juror 3. He couldn’t be convinced at first, but eventually, he let Juror 8’s point sink in to add clarity. In addition, because of Juror 8’s civility, many jurors respected him. Juror 9 was one of the first jurors to show respect for Juror 8. Before the second vote, Juror 9 says “It takes a great deal of courage to stand alone even when you believe in something very strongly” (Rose and Sergel 28). Finally, by the end of the play, many jurors stopped listening to the men who were not civil. Juror 3 is an example of a person who was ignored because he was inconsiderate towards the other jurors. In fact, Juror 3 repeatedly accused many jurors of lying, which is where he lost the other’s vote. Juror 8’s calm nature favored the jury's attention.

Discriminatory attitudes are often deeply embedded and hard to shake. Overcoming prejudice as well as discrimination, requires education, community engagement, dialogue, leadership, laws and policies which reflect and promote the principles of non-discrimination and prejudice. Because it all starts with a belief, then people tend to find information that confirms their belief intensifying their commitment to that very belief, thus strengthening their bias. If then the non-prejudice and non-discriminatory policies and laws are put into place one will but have no choice to believe what he/she sees being

The blue eyed – brown eyed experiment in my opinion is indeed ethical. The issue at hand with this experiment is will it cause permeant future psychological damage. Jane Elliott conducted this experiment with her third-grade students which some would say it is too harsh of an exercise for a group that young; She wanted to teach her student that discrimination is wrong which have been a topic they discussed from the first day of school but felt the student would become confused with the fact she just honored Dr. king in the month of February and now she had to explain to them that he was assassinated because of discrimination. Jane Elliott agreed that this exercise can do Psychological damage if not conducted correctly but the benefits are remarkable.

City of Thieves is historical fiction set in the besieged Russian city of Leningrad during World War Two. Lev Beniov, a Jewish seventeen year old, details his story as the protagonist through his first person narrative perspective of the siege. Benioff’s focus is the desensitized attitudes and behaviour shared by characters throughout the novel as they contend with dehumanising situations which would appear horrifying under circumstances that have been unaffected by war. Through the utilisation of techniques such as characterisation, plot and first person narrative, Benioff explores the dehumanising aspects of war in his novel.

Ray Bradbury born in 1920 to a middle class family. Bradbury went on to write and publish over five hundred pieces of literature. One of the novels he wrote was Fahrenheit 451, where he attempted to predict what the United States of America would look like in the future. The novel illustrates the idea of a totalitarian government and society burning books to stop the spread of knowledge, by following the development of the main character Guy Montag. Furthermore, the novel bring up the idea of Plato’s cave, in which Montag attempts to overcome the ideas of the society he grew up around. Plato’s Cave portrays prisoners captive in a cave and forced to look at the shadows projected on the wall in front of them for their entire life, until one of them is set free and allowed he choice of going back to the cave or leaving the cave . Many suggest that the novel Fahrenheit 451 represents the Allegory of the Cave given by the philosopher Plato; from the symbolism of the main character realizing the truth of his society and government, to wanting to know more about the situations around him and how they came to be, and finally making the decision to not go back to the society he grew up in.

For most of the time, prejudice only affects us personally. But if an individual is given a power to be responsible for another person’s live or death, prejudice can turn into a deadly weapon.

One would think prejudice is a thing of the past. Unfortunately, that is not the case, prejudice is still a common factor in todays society. Vincent N. Parrillo’s essay “Causes of Prejudice,” helped me to understand how we are affected not just psychologically but in a sociological way as well, as John A. Camacho explains in his A Few Bad Apples opinion piece published in the Pacific Daily News. Both forms of prejudice are continued to be explained through Stud Turkel’s “C.P Ellis,” he gives us an understanding of psychological and sociological prejudice through C.P Ellis’own experiences. This furthers our understanding on how we can be affected by both psychological and sociological prejudices. The Primary causes of prejudice are psychological as shown by emotional prejudice and demonstrated through an authoritarian personality, that may result in displaced aggression. Where Sociological prejudice can be shown by social norms.

The assigned reading for chapter 6, Testimony by Sonny Singh is a firsthand account of the author as he fell victim to the prejudice towards certain racial and ethnic groups that followed the events of September 11,2001. Sonny Singh belongs to an ethnic group called Sikhs which are very identifiable because of their appearances. Most Sikh men wear a turban and have beards. This is a religious requirement for them and they consider it a matter of faith and prestige. In this article, the author has mentioned various instances where he has faced prejudice by strangers even years after the 9/11 attack and how it affects his everyday life as an educator and musician.

As an individual amongst many other students, we all have our own ideas and opinions. This is what makes us different from each other and also similar in many cases. With the diversity of opinions they often depict our relationship with others and who we are compatible with. From my experience, having a different opinion about something out of the majority is not necessarily a negative thing. The people I usually hang out with are understanding and may oppose my opinion with other reasoning why my opinion may be incorrect or not as good. In the end, I can still have my own opinion without ruining my relationship with my friends. Being bias is an issue which we can encounter daily in our everyday

Youth violence in school continues to be a significant issue in the United States and research has repeatedly acknowledged being in a gang as one of the main causes of the violence in youths (Egley, Howell, & Harris, 2014; Huizinga & Lovegrove, 2009; Miller, 2001; Snyder & Sickmund, 2006). Youth violence can range from bullying, pushing/shoving, or emotional harm to gang violence or assault, with or without a weapon (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015). Research shows that in recent years, gang activity has been steadily growing—outward from larger cities (Egley, Howell, & Harris, 2014)—and about 8 percent of the youths, who surveyed for the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, had belonged to a gang at some point between the

The term gang can be attached to a legion of groups which would include outlaws from back in the nineteenth century in the west of America, a congregation of unruly prison inmates, members of the triads, the mafioso, and other organised criminal entities such as sons of anarchy a know motorcycle gang, and groups of socially displaced inner city youths. Despite its diverse definition, the term gang most of the times denotes the involvement to illegal or disreputable activities.