My Daily Trombone Practice

Morning Session

Typically, my students and I set annual, big-picture goals, along with short-term goals that align with these long-term objectives. We also explore how daily practice can be scheduled. Because this is highly individual, I offer my own daily routine as an example and then help the student develop a daily routine that suits their interests.

I practice in the morning and in the evening. I start my day playing my large-bore, orchestral trombone. I play ascending long tones (60 mm., eight beats, low E to high E) chromatically. I then turn to a warm-up study from either the Schlossberg or Remington warm-up books. I complete this with long pedal tones.

During this portion of my daily routine, I keep the metronome clicking at 66 m.m., and always count a measure and take a natural ("oh yeah") breath on the beat preceding my playing.

Next, I play chromatic scales on various articulations (legato, tenuto, or staccato) from the lowest E to the highest E. I use a 6/8 time with eighth-note motion at 60 m.m.

I next turn to orchestral excerpts. Tannhauser for breath control, La Gazza Ladra for staccato articulation, and Mozart's Requiem for legato articulation. I then play Valkyrie for staccato articulation and breath control. Finally, I play Bolero and Also Sprach Zarathustra for the upper register. 

To conclude my morning practice on the orchestral trombone, I play Rochut Etude number two. 

At this point, I turn to my small-bore, jazz trombone. I begin by playing all major and minor scales, two octaves. Finally, I conclude by playing all Major 7th, dominant 7th, half-diminished 7th, and augmented 7th arpeggios in two octaves.

On Thinking About Nothing

Franz Brentano

The foundation of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology rests on three concepts: description, phenomenon, and intentionality. Rather than discussing awareness of the world as consciousness, he discusses intentionality. This means that consciousness is not a thing but an attention towards something. Intentionality reveals the paradox that we can think about the concept of nothing. When we think about nothing, “nothing” becomes an intentional concept. Intentionality is the directed awareness of a sensed stimulus (bottom-up processing in cognitive psychology terminology) or an imagined concept (top-down processing). Whereas early experimental psychology focused on the structure of consciousness as a measurable and observable object (Titchener’s structuralism), while Husserl’s phenomenology concentrated on awareness of some object or imagined concept.

A Phenomenological Exploration of a Bridge in Palmerton Pennsylvania

Matthew Giobbi, March 2024

Palmerton

Hardcover, Available at AMAZON

 I visited the neighborhood in Palmerton with my camera. Not far from the intersection the rail line cuts through the neighborhood, diagonally crossing the streets at roof level. Knowing Kline was captivated by the steel trestle of the railroad bridges, my eye too was captured by the lines and shapes. In fact, these railroad bridges are so characteristic that I would say they are a defining feature of the neighborhood in Palmerton and in nearby Weissport. Franz would have walked these bridges from Lehighton many times. 

Ways of Thinking: From Art to Social Science

I entered into psychology as many of us do; through the life-theorists. I call them life-theorist because they are not merely clinicians who treat the psychologically disturbed, but also, they think about our common experiences of living, and how to go about those experiences most effectively. They can also be called life philosophers because their interest is often less on acquiring facts and more on effective living. Most of us enter into psychology via our interest in Freud, Maslow, Jung, and others that have come to be called psychotherapists. For me psychology was never wholly about therapy and patients; it was more about living, life, and thinking; the psychology of the practitioner.

On the Thought Experiment Method in Psychology

*This blog post was originally published in 2013.

Thought experiments are a standard practice in physics, as they are in philosophy, but are curiously absent in academic psychology. Albert Einstein relied on thought experiments in developing the theories of specific and general relativity. In fact, most of the "hard" sciences are comfortable with entertaining thought experiments. However, academic psychology has a tradition of undervaluing the method in favor of quantifiable research. One would be hard-pressed to find a contemporary research paper in academic psychology that utilizes the method of thought experiment.

One criticism of research psychology that has gained considerable support recently is: there has been a lot of data collecting in psychology, but not a great deal of thinking about that data.  We tend to spend more time training our psychology students to use statistical packages for analyzing data, rather than to engage in penetrating and inspired thinking.

Erich Fromm & Media Psychology: Towards a Humanized Technology

1. Where are we Now?18th and 19th century industrialism


 We find Fromm describing a picture of where Western society has come from, since
the first Industrial Revolution, and where we are at (in the second Industrial
Revolution). The first Industrial Revolution, Fromm describes as a transfer of
energy sources from organic, animal and man energy sources, to mechanical,
steam electric, oil, and atomic, energy.

An Introduction to Media Psychology

What is media psychology? What do media psychologists do and how do they do it? What is the intention of the media psychologist as an individual, and media psychology as a discipline? These are the five questions that I would like to explore with you in this essay.

A good place to begin is by defining the words media and psychology. You have learned, no doubt, that the definition of psychology is “the scientific study of behavior and mental processes”. This definition of psychology is not the first, not the last, and not the only definition. In fact, this definition reflects the system of knowledge (called a paradigm) of one of the seven, contemporary systems of knowledge, or schools of thought of psychology; the cognitive paradigm. The cognitive revolution in psychology took place in the early 1960s against the prevailing behaviorist paradigm. From the early 1930s through the 1960s, introduction to psychology textbooks defined psychology as “the scientific study of behavior”. When computer scientists, linguists, and artificial intelligence researchers began treating the brain as a piece of computer hardware and the mind and thinking as software, the definition changed to include mental processes, which means cognition or thinking. It was said at this time that psychology had “regained consciousness,” after a forty-year period of classical and operant conditioning theories of behaviorism.

A Chronology of Media Research

Research and discussion of the media has taken place long before the designation of media psychology as a field of study. The humanities and social sciences have discussed the implications of media since the written text overtook the oral tradition. Philosophers as early as Plato explored the implication of the switch from an oral to a written culture. The influence of mass media has been discussed since the entrance of the movable type printing press in the 15th century. Although thinking about media has taken place for 2,500 years, how we think about media has changed over time.

We will begin our investigation in Ancient Greece. Early philosophers discussed not only the use of persuasion and rhetoric in speaking and writing, they also considered the psychological effects of media including speaking, writing, visual arts, and music. The sophist explored how the way something is said affects how it is received. This research in rhetorical analysis continues in contemporary media studies. Plato (427-347 B.C.E.) discussed the influence of music and visual art on the individual and groups. He warned against the power of poetry and even advised on which music to avoid when sad, angry, or happy.

An Intellectual History of Media Psychology

Premodernity, Modernity, and Postmodernity

In intellectual history, the history of ideas and systems of knowing, we typically discuss three periods of historical contexts. To discuss the difference between premodernity, modernity, and postmodernity, it is most helpful to look at the transitional moments first. We begin with the transition from premodernity to modernity. 

The year 1650 is typically used as practical demarcation of the boundary between what we call premodernity and modernity. The First World War is typically used as the event (concern) to demarcate the boundary between modernity and postmodernity. Let us sketch the picture of these three worlds.

Buddhist Psychology: On The Development of The Ego

Qin Shu, Lotus flower with dragon fly the morning .

The Western psychologist who wishes to explore Eastern psychology may wonder where to begin their search. Buddhism is an ancient tradition that has many variants and thousands of years of texts to explore. In this essay I would like to introduce a few basic concepts about Buddhist psychology, and discuss a basic description of the development of the ego.

There are many books available for Western psychologists who wish to explore Eastern psychology. Some of these books are more friendly to the beginner than others. Two books which I have found to be very helpful in my exploration have been The Sanity we are Born With: A Buddhist Approach to Psychology by Chögyam Trungpa, and Psychotherapy East & West by Alan Watts. Both of these texts offer the Westerner basic theory as well as basic attitude of Eastern psychology.

A few Basic Attitudes

Alan Watts describes the basic attitude of the Eastern psychologist with the image of the lotus flower. The lotus flower remains uninjured from the most turbulent storms, both from the sometimes restless waters from which it arises, and from the winds, rains, and scorching heat that it will encounter during its life. The lotus flower is a part of the world but is not destroyed by it. Stormy rains and high waters "roll off" its petals. This is the image that many Buddhists use as a lesson for how to be in the world. The lotus flower is the example of the serenity that one can cultivate despite the most hostile environments.

Search not Research

Eastern psychology is distinctively personal. Whereas Western psychologists may be taught methods of "research" that are based on the Eighteenth-Century Enlightenment concept of objectivity, the Eastern psychologist engages psychology as something personal. In this way, we can think of Eastern psychology as searching, whereas Western positivistic psychology focuses on researching. The Western philosophical traditions of Existential-Phenomenology, Humanism, and some psychodynamic theories are exceptions to this distinction. It is acknowledged by even the most objective Western psychologists that "research is me-search." In Buddhist psychology this is the basic assumption. The "research" done by the Buddhist psychologist is a personal searching.

Enlightenment not The Enlightenment

 

A Theory of Depression: S. Freud's Mourning and Melancholia

Before describing and explaining Sigmund Freud's theoretical model for understanding depression, I would like to make some points about theory.

A theory is a working model; a way of conceptualizing a phenomenon that helps us to understand and effect change in ourselves or others. The American intellectual William James described how theoretical models can be useful for understanding while not being real. In this way, a theory can be true -meaning it works, while not being real. An example of this can be found in our everyday treatment of currency. What gives paper currency value is our belief in it, not the paper and ink itself, which is relatively worthless. It's value is symbolic and theoretical, not real. The value of the money is true in that it functions within our society in meaningful way. James shows us that theory can be true without being real. This being said, we can approach Freud's theory of depression as a model that can be useful in understanding the phenomenon, without becoming distracted by questions that have little bearing on its pragmatic functioning.

The Marketing Character

This blog originally appeared on October 23, 2011.

When Jean-Paul Sartre described a life lived etre de mauvaise foi he was not speaking so much of dishonesty or destructiveness to others, but rather, a dishonesty to oneself. The bad faith examined by Sartre is the life lived in what Heidegger called fallenness. Heidegger described the person who has become lost in culture, buried so deeply in the layers of the social that the authentic self is concealed. Heidegger does not isolate the self from culture; however, he does describe authenticity as a remembering or awareness of the identification with culture. This is the soul of Sartre’s bad faith -a life completely forgotten in the isolated spectacle of the manufactured desire.

Freud & The Cocaine Episode in Context

This essay was originally posted on January 5, 2015

Coca in Context: From The Andes to Paris & Atlanta

An early documentation of the use of the medicinal properties of the coca plant came from the Spanish friar, Vincente de Valverde, reporting on the importance of the coca tree to the Incas:

"...coca, which is the leaf of a small tree that resembles the sumac found in our own Castile, is one thing that the Indians are ne'er without in their mouths, that they say sustains them and gives them refreshment, so that, even under the sun they feel not the heat, and it is worth its weight in gold in these parts, accounting for the major portion of the tithes."¹

It was not long until quantities of the medicinal plant were being exported from South America to Europe and the United States, where Western "medicine men" began making coca infused beverages and tonics. Historian Howard Markel points to an 1817 article published Gentleman's Magazine to illustrate the European fascination with coca:

"[The Indians] masticate Coca and undergo the greatest fatigue without any injury to health or bodily vigor. They want neither butcher nor baker, nor brewer, no distiller, nor fuel, nor culinary utensils."²

According to Markel, the article called for immediate scientific research to uncover the wisdom of the power of Coca.

By the mid-nineteenth century, coca leaves were being analyzed for their chemical structure. In Germany, Albert Niemann earned his doctorate by developing a method for extracting the coca alkaloid from the leaf in 1860.³  As academics and pharmaceutical laboratories were investigating the chemical properties of coca, medicine men of a different sort were developing tonics and a variety of coca-infused beverages. One of the most popular and successful of these libations was Vin Mariani, a coca wine developed by the French chemist Angelo Mariani. By the turn of the century, Vin Mariani had become the choice intoxicant of many celebrities and artists. Mariani published a collection of celebrity endorsements for his wine in a book entitled Portraits from Album Mariani.⁴

In 1859 the influential Italian neurologist and fiction writer, Paolo Mantegazza, published an influential paper On the Hygenic and Medicinal Virtues of Coca.⁵  Sigmund Freud was an avid reader of Mantegazza's fiction.⁶

The Myth of Freud's Iceberg Model

Originally published on February 29, 2012

The 1933 illustration Freud used to depict the psyche.

About ten years ago I was heading to teach a class in introductory psychology at a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. As I walked passed the social sciences office I encountered a box of books marked "free". Little did I know that the box contained an out of print gem, Robert C. Bolles' The Story of Psychology: A Thematic History.

On The Psychology of Religion (Part 2)

                                                                                                                 

Psychology & Religion

Psychology and religion have a historically uneasy relationship. Many psychologist hold the view that religious belief is parochial, myopic, and ignorant. Many religious thinkers find psychology to be rigidly adherent to objective empiricism (only accepting as valid that which is observable and measurable) and capable of producing only shallow interpretations of spirituality. Although these attitudes are not reflective of all psychologists and theologians, we can make a general observation that what religion  might lack in certainty, psychology might lack in wisdom.

On The Psychology of Religion and Religious Belief (Part 1)

Religion matters to many Americans. When asked, 42% of the population believes in creationism and 57% believes that religion can answer all or most of our problems. This high level of religiosity in roughly half of the population entices a number of questions regarding religiosity and the human experience of religion.

The Social Responsibility of the Press: Lessons From the 1947 Hutchins Commission

This article originally appeared on February 26, 2015.

Journalists and the media platforms that broadcast their work play an essential role in the American version of democracy. Those who write the news, produce, and distribute it act as an unofficial fourth estate of government. Founders including Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson felt that the press should act as a watchdog that keeps-in-check the actions of the executive, legislative, and judicial estates of government.

The history of journalism is necessarily entangled with the history of technology. With each technological revolution, the fourth estate has undergone considerable transformations. In its earliest appearance town criers would read the news aloud to a largely illiterate citizenry. The press came to refer to the news when figures such as  John Campbell, John Peter Zenger, and Benjamin Franklin established press-printed news broadsheets; early forms of print newspapers. The technological transition passed from an oral, to print, to electronic, and currently to digital medium which has been described as a networked fourth estate or a fifth estate. Marshall McLuhan's (now banal) declaration that, "the medium is the message," points to the fact that technology influences how we receive, process, and react to information.

The Public Pursuit of Personal Significance

It has been a decade since Facebook has been available to all Internet users. We construct public personae that proposes what we would like others to believe about us and what we would like to believe about ourselves. We cultivate a satisfying image that we float for others to either validate or reject through likes and comments. We carefully construct our persona campaigns through images, writings, videos, and sound recordings. We also carefully share media produced by others that supports our public image.

Sometimes a post is made with just one recipient in mind. We make these posts publicly as a sort of cloak under which the intended recipient can be reached without the risk of our having to take full responsibility for our actions. We can also carry on private conversations which enables us to communicate with one person, or a select group of persons. Often these conversations take place synchronously with a corresponding public conversation. In this way, the platform functions on a public and private level, Facebook replicates a conscious/unconscious or private/public structure. We present carefully selected information publicly and privately. It is interesting to consider what the chronological correspondence must look like, if we were able to compare one's public and private postings.

Before the digital persona campaign, we knew much less about fewer people. When we encountered an acquaintance, or an old friend in a public space, there were certain limitations on what they knew about us and what we knew about them. Public image, the persona campaign, was much slower and shallower. One's public persona was limited to how they acted, what they shared, and with whom. Occasionally some individuals or families would publish annual newsletters that served to inform those close to them of the state of their affairs. Some published holiday cards with the image of the happy, prosperous family. But those media are trifling compared to the mass, digital platforms we use today.

We now know much more intimate details about many more people. These details are carefully crafted; we have become public relations experts. We attentively construct how we want others to think of us and look to their reactions for validation of a desired image and self-view. Much of what we publicly post goes beyond the polite and acceptable grounds of sharing, and serves the purpose of generating a social image of ourselves and our families.

We grieve our losses, celebrate our accomplishments, share gossip, news, and culture at a pace and volume that was heretofore unknown. Each of us now eclipses the daily exposure that even the most celebrated celebrity experienced only fifty years ago. Every piece of information is carefully selected, constructed, presented. Some of us have become extremely well versed in the strategies and techniques while others founder. Some strategically observe and cautiously, conservatively release well timed, infrequent, declarations of self and family. Others disseminate on a hourly basis and on multiple platforms. These are different styles of public relations used in the persona campaign.

What is the purpose of all this campaigning? Are we merely sharing with others, socializing with our communities, and participating in the conversation? Do we need digital, social networking to satisfy those needs? Does it have to be so fast, so frequent, and so profuse? Or are we acting as a sort of salesperson, peddling ourselves on the character market, hoping to reap the riches of social acceptance, admiration, and even that most prized evidence of our personal value--being envied?

It seems we are all selling something on the Internet, and I gather that something is ourselves. Or maybe a carefully crafted, strategically conceived, self-assuring idea of ourselves. The goal seems to be the same for each of us, regardless of the campaign strategies. We all have a deep need to feel significant.

How we Understand Others & Ourselves

It seems to me that any exercise of one's right to speak what's on one's mind comes with the prerequisite obligation that one first thoroughly examines one's mind. I am stubborn on this point. I pay due respect to those thoughts which show evidence of care being taken in their formation. A sign of my interest or respect in somebody's thinking can be found in my reaction to them. If I question and disagree with that person, it may be taken as a sign of my respect for their thinking. If I smile, nod, and seem to agree with everything they utter, chances are I am not willing to put more effort into their thoughts than they have been willing to.

I find it unfortunate that our education system fails to provide us with the basic tools for self-examination and critical thought. I am not merely talking about logical fallacies and rhetoric, but rather, about sincere self-criticism and the ability to be aware of one's own self-serving beliefs and attitudes that skews thinking. But these words--belief and attitude--take on a specific meaning in my usage. I am getting ahead of myself, and I should start from the beginning, not the middle.

Here is a quote that is attributed to Mohatma Gandhi.

"Your beliefs become your thoughts,

your thoughts become your words,

your words become your actions,

your actions become your habits,

your habits become your values,

your values become your destiny."

This quote illustrates a few of the core principles in Hindu, Buddhist, and Judeo-Christian psychology. A variation is also found in the pragmatism of William James, in his Principles of Psychology. I think that this verse illustrates a pragmatic human truth as to how each of us come to develop a unique worldview (Weltanschauung). In psychology, we refer to a belief as the fundamental aspect of an individual's Weltanschauung. We hold many different beliefs which are learned through interaction with our parents, our culture, and members of our society. These beliefs are largely based on education (or indoctrination) and many of these were absorbed so subtly, and over such a long period of time, that we have no recollection of them being absorbed at all. In fact, most of these beliefs feel "natural"--as if they were with us from birth. This is not the case. Every branch or thought shows us that there is not one belief for which we cannot find a cultural exception.

Belief, Attitude, & Weltanschauung

Beliefs, based on learning from others and through personal experience, become a conglomerate that fuse together into an attitude. An attitude, as we intend it in psychology, is not used in the same way as it is often used in everyday language, so you will have to abandon what you think "attitude" means in order to understand how we use it. Attitude is a collection of beliefs that one has about a certain phenomenon. For example, one has a set of beliefs that forms their attitude towards science, marriage, men, women, transvestism, religion... everything in a society's culture. We all hold attitudes that govern our actions, emotional responses, and thinking about others. To recap, beliefs are formed by learning and experiencing, and attitudes are the basis for how we think, feel, and act about people, places, and things. Attitudes, taken collectively, form our Weltanschauung--our worldview.

I find it useful to think of the self as a conglomeration of beliefs and attitudes which influence how we think about, emotionally react to, and behave towards others. This serves my early insistence that it is imperative that we examine our beliefs and our attitudes to better understand our Weltanschauung and our sense of self. It is not only critical that we pay attention to what we believe, but also, to explore how and why we have come to the beliefs, and how they are structured in to attitudes. Plato's dialogues of Socrates have shown us that our attitudes are often based on contradictory beliefs that diffuse upon contact. This is not only why it is important to read these dialogues of Socrates--to be better able to challenge our own attitudes--but also why the dialogues are so often neglected. It is painful to think critically about one's own beliefs and attitudes. It might also be why  we are often more aware of the problematic thinking of others than we are of our own--it is always easier, and possibly more beneficial, for us to see the faults in others rather than in ourselves.

In my experience, this kind of training is absent in our educational system. It is not typical to find people who know how or have taken up the task of the imperative "know thyself!" There are many models and techniques that one can use to distill their self, and to understand not only what, but why, and how they believe what they do. It is not an easy task. It is far easier to "let sleeping dogs lie". However, the rewards in examining one's self are extremely valuable, and possibly even necessary for living a "good life". 

I am basing this short introduction on how we understand others and ourselves on four sources. Firstly, we will be investigating the 1958 text by Fritz Heider, The Psychology of Interpersonal Relationships. We will also be discussing ideas found in social psychologist Eliot Aronson's text The Social Animal. The aforementioned work by William James, The Principles of Psychology serve as useful foundation in the understanding of habitual thought and beliefs. Collectively, we will understand how we make sense of ourselves and of others through the social psychological concepts of attribution theory and self-justification.

The Motivating Role of Affect
Our most fundamental, and most compelling psychical phenomenon is affect. Affect, commonly called feelings or emotions are the most powerful motivators in the human condition. Although it is typical, if not somewhat dull, to consider biological drives as the most powerful motivators, we experience hunger, thirst, and sexual desire as we do the drive for power--as emotions. The etymology of emotion is the Latin emoter meaning "to move away from". Emotion moves us into thinking and into acting. However, emotion is also formed through beliefs and attitudes.

Festinger's Cognitive Dissonance Theory
One of the ways in which contemporary social psychologists talk about this emotional discomfort is  with the term cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is pretty much what most people talk about as angst, anxiety, or guilt. Terms that hint at morality, or suggest some sort of emotional motivation, aren't so popular with contemporary, academic, psychologists, so they tend to use this term. Cognitive dissonance was first used by an insightful psychologist named Leon Festinger in the 1950s. What Festinger described was not too different from what previous psychologists told us about motivation and behavior, but, it was packaged in a language that was quite different from previous theories. Cognitive dissonance theory is essentially psychoanalytic ego defense mechanisms (without the psychoanalysis) and Gestalt attribution theory (without the attribution). We will discuss attribution theory next, and the ego defense theory in a separate essay. The reader should keep in mind that these theories are essentially identical, however the conceptualization of each offers unique, and useful, points of view into the human condition.

Let's illustrate cognitive dissonance with a worn-out but effective example popular in introduction to psychology classes; smoking. Aronson illustrates:

"Supposed a person smokes cigarettes and then reads a report of the medical evidence linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer and other respiratory diseases. The smoker experiences dissonance. The cognition 'I smoke cigarettes' is dissonant with the cognition 'cigarette smoking produces cancer.' Clearly, the most efficient way for this person to reduce dissonance in such a situation is to give up smoking. The cognition 'cigarette smoking produces cancer' is consonant with the cognition 'I do not smoke.' 

But, for most people, it is not easy to give up smoking. Imagine Sally, a young woman who tried to stop smoking but failed. What will she do to reduce dissonance? In all probability, she will try to work on the other cognition: 'Cigarette smoking produces cancer.' Sally might attempt to make light of evidence linking cigarette smoking to cancer. For example, she might try to convince herself that if Debbie, Nicole, and Larry smoke, it can't be all that dangerous. Sally might switch to a filter-tipped brand and delude herself into believing that the filter traps the cancer-producing materials. Finally, she might add cognitions that are consonant with smoking in an attempt to make the behavior less absurd in spite of its danger. Thus, Sally might enhance the value placed on smoking; that is she might come to believe smoking is an important and highly enjoyable that is essential for relaxation: 'I may lead a shorter life, but it will be a more enjoyable one.' Similarly, she might try to make a virtue out of smoking by developing a romantic, devil-may-care self-image, flouting danger by smoking cigarettes. All such behavior reduces dissonance by reducing the absurdity of the notion of going out of one's way to contract cancer. Sally has justified her behavior by cognitively minimizing the danger or by exaggerating the importance of the action. In effect, she has succeeded either in constructing a new attitude or in existing attitude." (Page 146, The Social Animal)

 Aronson's example provides us with an easy-to-understand illustration of Festinger's basic premise. When our action is incongruent with social pressures, we experience dissonance. That dissonance manifests as a psychical, and frequently physical, discomfort. In extreme cases we call it symptom. In order to alleviate this dissonance, we either have to change our behavior or change our belief. It is typically more likely that the mental gymnastics of justification will win out over a change of behavior, as was described in the example. These mental gymnastics have been precisely catalogued  by the psychoanalysts as ego defense mechanisms, also suggested earlier. In everyday jargon we know cognitive dissonance as the age-old experience called guilt.

Fritz Heider & Attribution
In 1958 the Gestalt psychologist Fritz Heider published The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. The ideas and thoughts which Heider presents in this book remain some of the most important, and most useful, in psychology. Heider's work is curiously absent in Eliot Aronson's classic text The Social Animal, which leaves Aronson's book less rich and, due to the book's popularity, Heider's work less read. A future revision would not only benefit from the inclusion of Heider's work, but would also provide students and young psychologists with the important research in attribution theory.

Heider was a Gestalt psychologist informed by phenomenology. An accessible definition of phenomenology might be: the study of how people participate in meaning making within the world. Heider illustrated this concept in an experiment from 1944 in which he showed a short film depicting non-human shapes in motion. Human subjects projected human-like qualities on to the shapes. This illustrates the basic question of phenomenology; how we participate in reality making.

Heider's work in 1958 took up the phenomenological question in terms of how we attribute cause and effect in ourselves and others. Heider claimed that we make sense of our own behavior, as well as that of others, based on personal "motivations, intentions, and sentiments". In other words, our perception of "reality" is dependent upon emotional factors that are often self-serving. This concept is hitting on the same issues that Aronsons discusses as self-justification in his text.

Heider begins on the Kantian ground that we each seek-out meaning; specifically causation in the events of everyday life. Heider's theory rests on the idea that we seek to attribute causes to events which we experience. Heider also found that we are motivated to attribute those causes in such a way that serves the interests of the individual who is making the attribution. This is nearly identical to self-justification research discussed above. Heider found that we tend to attribute the cause of something either to a personal (internal) or a situational (external) cause.

I often illustrate this distinction of personal versus situational attribution to my students with an experience that is familiar to them: receiving an exam grade. When we receive a good exam grade, we find ourselves in a self-congratualtory mood, often praising our performance as due to "hard work" or laborious hours of study. These causes are both personal and internal attributes. Hard work and the self-discipline necessary for hours of study are attributes of personal choice and self-discipline. Contrast these personal attributions with the typical reaction one has to receiving a poor grade. "The book is terrible," or "the professor did not lecture on anything that appeared on the exam!" In the second example, the cause of one's poor test performance is attributed to something outside of themselves; an external cause. In short, we take credit for our successes and point the finger to a scapegoat for our failures.

This kind of behavior is referred to as the self-serving bias. It is the tendency for us to maintain a sense of security, empowerment, and self worth--in short, a sense of safety-- through a reshuffling of the factors that contributed to out situation. We tend to twist the facts to accommodate our personal interests. This behavior isn't isolated to a few others whom we meet here and there, Heider found that it is a characteristic of each of us; we all all attribute cause and effect in service to our need to self-preserve.

This self-serving bias is a prerequisite to one of the most popular attitudes that we find in American culture: the just-world hypothesis. The just world hypothesis is a belief, a false belief, that "good things happen to good people," and that "bad things happen to bad people." First discussed by social psychologist Melvin Lerner, the just-world hypothesis has become one of the most thoroughly researched topics in social psychology. It turns out that we have the tendency to place blame on victims as a way of maintaining our belief that the world is somehow a fair and just place to be in. This belief receives justification from as disparate places as "the justice of God" to "the laws of evolution". Both of these view the causation as being attributed to some greater, law enforcing entity.

What can we take from this handful of theories from social psychologists for better knowing ourselves? To start, we can learn to hesitate in our willingness to be right in every situation. We can pause and ask ourselves, "From where do I see this cause?" "From where do other people see this cause?" If we hold our own thinking against the criticisms we make of others' thinking, what do we learn about ourselves? What do we risk? If we have the tendency to attribute our successes to our own efforts, and our failures blamed to others, what might be gained by asking ourselves in a moment of failure, "what role do I have in this?" or, in a moment of success, "whom do I owe a debt of gratitude for their help in this success?" If we do so, we will find that there are few examples, if any, of an entirely "self-made" success or failure.

Direct comments, questions, & corrections to Matthew Giobbi.

How do we Study Personality? (Part 3)

I'd like to begin our discussion of research by making the distinction that we alluded to in the second part of lecture 1. And that's the distinction between qualitative and quantitative research. Understanding quantitative research as distinctly different from qualitative research, quantitative research can usually be identified by having a coefficient with it, a number. Quantifiable research has to do with counting, quantifying, to count. So anything that uses statistical measures, standardization, anything that has a numerical coefficient assigned to it is considered to be quantifiable research.

Qualitative research, on the other hand, is usually descriptive in nature. It's usually not measured. It's usually more of a description certainly as is evident in a case study or in observing a group or observing children and play behavior. That's qualifiable behavior, qualitative research.

Sometimes qualitative research takes on the guise of quantitative research. An example of this would be the Likert scale. So when an individual self assesses the amount of pain they have on a scale of one to five. It looks as if it's quantitative research. But it's really a qualitative measure.

So we have to be careful when we're analyzing research and we're understanding research findings that sometimes assigning a number to something arbitrarily, such as happens in a Likert scale of pain description, is the guise of quantitative research, when it's actually qualitative research. You're just using a number to describe an individual's interpretation of their level of pain or whatever it is that one is researching.