The document discusses the importance of self-understanding in career development, questioning how employers recognize a candidate's self-awareness and offerings. It also explores the relationship between technology and societal changes, particularly through the lens of scientific acceptance and the impacts of the knowledge revolution. Additionally, it examines the roots of aggression in children, including social influences and parental modeling, highlighting the correlation between family dynamics and aggression risk.

1. Career Development:
Why is understanding yourself important in your career
development? How can you ensure that an employer will realize
that you have a clear grasp of who you are and what you have to
offer?
1)
2)
3)
Why is understanding yourself important in your career
development? How can you ensure that an employer will realize
that you have a clear grasp of who you are and what you have to
offer?
1)
2)
3)
Tech, Society and Culture:
If the scientific test of a scientific theory is accepted by the
community of men and women who are called scientists, does
that mean that anything is acceptable as long as enough of the
right people agree with it? Does that mean there is no such
thing as scientific truth? How, if at all, does science differ from
politics, art, or religion, in that case?
1)
2)
3)
Baase states that it is not just technology that changes so

2. quickly, but also the impacts which they have upon society. Do
you agree? How does that align with the assertion in the lecture
that we are now living in a third great technological
transformation called the Knowledge Revolution? Have
computers truly changed our lives so much that we can call this
a revolution like the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century?
1)
2)
3)
Social Psychology:
Discrimination is a behavior rooted in a preexisting attitude:
prejudice. In the textbook, social and motivational sources of
prejudice are covered (see pp. 319-331). We will begin by
considering prejudice as it relates to older people. Please follow
this link (Representations of Aging in the Mass Media), and
read the article on the power of the mass media to define how
we perceive aging Americans. According to the article, what are
the typical representations (words and images that are used) of
older people in the mass media?
1)
2)
3)
This discussion references TCO 2, on factors contributing to
aggressive behavior in young children. The textbook reports
that studies have found that violent television content tends to

3. elicit aggressive behavior by young children although there are
other factors of importance (See below Table 1). This example
clearly indicates multiple causality, as discussed in the Week 1
Lecture.
What other independent variables, in addition to graphic
violence in television content, may contribute to childhood
aggression? (Do not forget to think about both personal and
situational causes.)
1)
2)
3)
TABLE 1.
Picture this scene from one of Bandura's experiments (Bandura
& others, 1961). A preschool child is put to work on an
interesting art activity. An adult is in another part of the room,
where there are Tinker Toys, a mallet, and a big, inflated
“Bobo” doll. After a minute of working with the Tinker Toys,
the adult gets up and for almost 10 minutes attacks the inflated
doll. She pounds it with the mallet, kicks it, and throws it, while
yelling, “Sock him in the nose…. Knock him down…. Kick
him.”
After observing this outburst, the child is taken to a different
room with many very attractive toys. But after two minutes the
experimenter interrupts, saying these are her best toys and she
must “save them for the other children.” The frustrated child
now goes into yet another room with various toys designed for
aggressive and nonaggressive play, two of which are a Bobo
doll and a mallet.
Seldom did children who were not exposed to the aggressive
adult model display any aggressive play or talk. Although
frustrated, they nevertheless played calmly. Those who had
observed the aggressive adult were many times more likely to

4. pick up the mallet and lash out at the doll. Watching the adult's
aggressive behavior lowered their inhibitions. Moreover, the
children often reproduced the model's specific acts and said her
words. Observing aggressive behavior had both lowered their
inhibitions and taught them ways to aggress.
Bandura (1979) believes that everyday life exposes us to
aggressive models in the family, in one's subculture, and, as we
will see, in the mass media.THE FAMILY
Physically aggressive children tend to have had physically
punitive parents, who disciplined them by modeling aggression
with screaming, slapping, and beating (Patterson &
others, 1982). These parents often had parents who were
themselves physically punitive (Bandura & Walters, 1959;
Straus & Gelles, 1980). Such punitive behavior may escalate
into abuse, and although most abused children do not become
criminals or abusive parents, 30 percent do later abuse their
own children—four times the general population rate (Kaufman
& Zigler, 1987; Widom, 1989). Violence often begets violence.
Family influence also appears in higher violence rates in
cultures and in families with absentee fathers (Triandis, 1994).
David Lykken (2000) computed that American children reared
without fathers are about seven times more likely to be abused,
to drop out of school, to become runaways, to become
unmarried teenage parents, and to commit violent crimes. The
correlation between parental absence (usually father absence)
and violence holds across races, income levels, education, and
locations (Staub, 1996; Zill, 1988). Moreover, in one British
study that followed more 363364than 10,000 individuals for 33
years since their birth in 1958, the risk of problems such as
aggressive behavior increased following a parental breakup
during middle childhood (Cherlin & others, 1998) The point is
not that children from father-absent homes are doomed to
become delinquent or violent; in fact, nurtured by a caring
mother and extended family, most such children thrive. The
point is also not that father absence causes violence; we don't
know that it does. The point is simply that there is a correlation:

5. Where and when fathers are absent, the violence risk
increases.THE CULTURE
The social environment outside the home also provides models.
In communities where “macho” images are admired, aggression
is readily transmitted to new generations (Cartwright, 1975;
Short, 1969). The violent subculture of teenage gangs, for
instance, provides its junior members with aggressive models.
Among Chicago adolescents who are otherwise equally at risk
for violence, those who have observed gun violence are at
doubled risk for violent behavior (Bingenheimer &
others, 2005).
The broader culture also matters. Show social psychologists a
man from a non-democratic culture that has great economic
inequality, that prepares men to be warriors, and that has
engaged in war, and they will show you someone who is
predisposed to aggressive behavior (Bond, 2004).
Richard Nisbett (1990, 1993) and Dov Cohen (1996, 1998) have
explored the subculture effect. Within the United States, they
report, the sober, cooperative White folk who settled New
England and the Middle Atlantic region produced a different
culture from that of the swashbuckling, honor-preserving White
folk (many of them my own Scots-Irish ancestral cousins) who
settled much of the South. The former were farmer-artisans; the
latter, more aggressive hunters and herders. To the present day,
American cities and areas populated by southerners have higher
than average White homicide rates. Not surprisingly, southern
males are also more likely than northern males to perceive their
peers as supporting aggressive responses (Vandello &
others, 2008).
People learn aggressive responses both by experience and by
observing aggressive models. But when will aggressive
responses actually occur? Bandura (1979) contended that
aggressive acts are motivated by a variety of aversive
experiences — frustration, pain, insults (Figure 10.4). Such
experiences arouse us emotionally. But 364365whether we act
aggressively depends on the consequences we anticipate.

6. Aggression is most likely when we are aroused and it seems
safe and rewarding to aggress.