Lessons Ignored

The world was stunned with the pictures released from Abu Ghraib, a prison in Iraq, revealing images of American soldiers harassing and torturing the detainees. It is said that 90% of the detainees there are innocent and that what the world has seen was only the minority of the army. However, the question was “how did this happen?”. How could the American soldiers, a group of valiant men and women who carried the promises of freedom to Iraq behaved in such ways?
Psychologists have conducted experiments that proved the causes of these scandals. They conclude that it is social context and surrounding people that brought about these behaviors. In an experiment by Phillip Zimbardo, a group of students were assigned into two groups, one act as the prisoners and another act as the guards. The experiment was intended to last two weeks, yet it was called off after six days when the subjects went too deep into their roles began to behave violently.
Another experiment by Milgrim also contributed to the fact that we all have the capability of doing evil deeds. Milgrim asked a subject to be the teacher for his experiment on memory, and for each time the subject received a wrong answer from the students, the subject will have to switch on electric current the runs from mild to severe to the student. This experiment was a fake, actually the student worked with Milgrim and did not receive any current; Milgrim was trying to find out how many people would switch on fatal current into a stranger. It turned out that two-thirds of the subjects went over 350 volts. From this he concluded that a subject is blindly obeying the order of the experimenter, showing no empathy for others.
What we have ignored is the fact that we all are capable of doing wrong things, and that our society is an important factor that influence our behavior.

INTELLIGENCE

1) How should intelligence be defined?

Researchers have come up with many definitions of intelligence, yet I believe that intelligence is a concept that involves interaction with environment, rational thoughts, problem solving abilities, and the ability to use our knowledge to adapt to the situation. It is about how well a person can deal with a situation or a problem.

2) What are the elements of intelligence?

According to Gardner’s concept of multiple intelligence, our intelligence is divided into 10 sub-intelligence: linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, spiritual, and existential. However, the psychologists are still skeptic of whether there are more fields of intelligence than those given by Gardner.

3) Is intelligence testing valid? Reliable? Ethical?

I believe that the intelligence tests being given nowadays are valid to some extent for its scores cannot be used to define whether a person fits to a job or not and that many of the tests do not evaluate the takers’ practical intelligence except for WAIS. However, the tests given are reliable and ethical since they produce consistent results and the takers are not threatened by the results.

4) How can variations in intelligence be explained?

Genes, disability, society, culture, and education are what account for the variations in our intelligence for they affect a person’s abilities to deal with problems. However, these factors do not always lower our intelligence for there are some cases that a person with disability is gifted with extraordinary intelligence.

EQ Abridge Test

I scored 122 on the abridged EQ test. The results, compared to other people, were excellent. I am partially agree with my results for it mostly reflects who I am, yet there are times and situations that the results does not suit me. For example, I am not a self-motivated person-someone has to get me going all the time, yet the results explain that I am able to motivate myself. However, I think the results are quite accurate for an abridged test.

Buried Alive

Buried Alive was a true story of 19 people, most of them young and energetic, who survived a plane crash on Mount Andes in Argentina in 1972. For seventy days the people suffered and struggled to survive in the subzero atmosphere of Andes, the deadly blizzards, and the devastating avalanches. What got the survivors through these days were their motivations; their needs to survive. Soon after the crash the survivors longed for shelter, and quickly assembled one- the physiological need for shelter was responsible for their action. Then their need for food and water drove them to go out drinking melted snow, searching for any sign of food, yet returned empty handed and were forced to eat the flesh of the dead passengers. Besides physiological needs, the survivors felt the need to belong, to be safe, and to act as a group for they knew that only in consent they will find rescue. It could be said that the need for safety, belonging and love also played a crucial role in their prolonged struggle.