Archive for ‘Beginning of Scientific Psychology (Part III)’

When we watched that video in class I thought to myself I do not think I agree so much with how we tend to search out for our mate. I thought when they said that women tend to prefer men with softer features were more suitable for long term relationships I thought that was ridiculous because if you look at pictures Ted Bundy and Jeffery Dahmer they had softer features than the average “masculine” man. I see that they were both married and all that, but the point I am touching upon is the aggression being linked to the facial features.  I know these are exceptions and so I should not linger on these but it does just stand out. Most notorious serial killers tend to blend into surrounding looking “normal” so they tend to not have overly masculine features. These men obviously had much more testosterone than their counterparts. So you cannot judge how much testosterone a man has just but the features of his face. You cannot just tell how aggressive someone will be by looking at their faces; there is probably a lengthy back story of abuse and other issues that have not been brought to light.

Thinking about the theory of evolution and what kinds of impact it has today on society, I thought of the movie “Planet of the Apes” in particular. (Mostly because of the movie clip that was shown in departmental chapel before Spring Break) In that film, the apes rule the world and the humans are slaves. I started to think about all the theories that have sprang up over the years about how we as humans evolved into who we are today. Many have said that we come from apes and that we were once what they called “cave men”, which is between ape and man. The movie showed what would happen if we reverted back to that in a way. The apes were smarter than humans. This got me thinking. Are we as humans any different than animals emotionally? I’m not saying that we are, but if you look at our behaviors, they have similarities. Take anger, for example. When we are angry, our natural instinct is to fight, correct? Now look at the animal kingdom. When two animals are aggressive toward one another, it usually ends in a fight of some sort, whether that is over food, a mate, or even territory. The same could be said for the human world. Men have fought for centuries over land, women, and even the right to lead a country. All of this goes to say that while we may not have evolved from animals, I believe that God gave both humans and animals the capacity for emotions and the minds to deal with it in their own way. Humans, however, have more intelligence to use other means of dealing with the emotions and don’t always revert back to the violence of animals. Just a thought.

The Binet-Simon scale, developed by Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon, and first released in 1905,was made up of thirty items increasing in difficulty designed to identify intellectually subnormal individuals. In 1916 came the Stanford-Binet IQ formula: IQ score=mental age / chronological age x 10. Today, the scale is still used and is in its fifth edition. During World War I, Robert Yerkes, a psychologist from Harvard University, convinced the government that army recruits should be tested, using his own modified version based off the Stanford-Binet, to classify and assign them. The goals were to identify those with mental deficiencies, to classify men in terms of their intelligence level, and to select individuals for officer training. After coming up with a test, they discovered that about 40% of those enlisted were illiterate and therefore could not take it, so they made a Beta version for those who could not read. The army testing program was supposed to be a great example of how practical psychology was, but, in reality, only .005% of those tested were recommended for discharge as mentally unfit, and, in many cases the army ignored the recommendations. While, in theory, Yerkes’ ideas were good, he was never able to get them to work. Such is the life of a psychologist. Many of them are just a little off, and most of them are largely ignored. Maybe someday someone will develop a scale that can more effectively measure intelligence, but, in my opinion, for now it is just better to watch what people can do in real life situations rather than what they can do on paper.