Yongho Kim

Category: school

  • Multivocality

    Yongho Kim
    October 8, 2003
    Anthropology (248) of Religion

    Our author Hicks tells us that blood is a multivocal symbol, and this makes it particularly useful in ritual contexts. What IS a “multivocal symbol”? How have cultures used blood to transmit powerful religious concepts? (Use specific ethnographic examples to illustrate your discussion.) Can you think of another entity or substance that, like blood, is a multivocal symbol used in ritual context? (Illustrate your points with specific examples.)

    A multivocal symbol is that which is referred to from different conceptual schemes. (Hicks 203) In Hicks and his choice of ethnographies, blood may be invoked to bring about the images of fertility, productivity, purification and forgiveness of sins, sexuality, initiation, and salvation.

    (more…)

  • Proposal: Political torture in southeastern Perú during 1992-2000

    Yongho Kim
    October 3, 2003
    INTL245: Intro to International Human Rights

    Paper topic proposal:
    Political torture in southeastern Perú during 1992-2000

    The initial motives for the internal conflict Peru has lived for two decades can be attributed to the PCP-SL (Peruvian Communist Party Shining Path), which started acting in the southeastern region of Peru, in the city of Arequipa, immediately after the leftist dictatorial government ended and a new civil president was elected. The conflict has endured the three regimes of Fernando Belaúnde Terry, Alan Garcia and Alberto Fujimori, and continues today. Among agents of violence in this conflict figure the MRTA (Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement), the armed forces, police forces, and CADs (right-wing paramilitary groups, called Self-Defense Comssions). It has been assumed that roughly 70,000 peruvians have died directly or indirectly in the armed conflict, having the recent CVR report confirmed 20,000 individual cases. In my paper, I want to focus on the human rights violations committed by the state and its agents in the southeastern region of Peru, encompassing the provinces of Ayacucho, during the Fujimori government.
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  • Asian Values

    IC, CP,

    This section discusses the current human rights debate between a number of East Asian states intent on economic development and Western states’ views of basic human rights and universalism.

    A first perspective comes from Bilhari Kausikan. In his comment, Kausikan argues that human rights touch upon delicate matters of culture and values. In Kausikan’s view, realities and interests must be taken into account when promoting or speaking about human rights. Kausikan states that although abuses and inconsistencies continue to exist in Asia, the human rights situation has greatly improved in the last 20 years. Kausikan believes that Western states’ self-interest and pressure on Asian countries, which are often insufficient and condescendingly ethnocentric, deny the improvements that the region has made.

    Next, Kausikan comments that the diversity of cultural traditions, political structures, and levels of development, is difficult and almost impossible for a universal view to apply in regards to the human rights regime in Asia. Whereas the West has an individualistic ethos approach, the East and South-East Asia have a communitarian approach. As a result, Kausikan states that there is “a general discontent throughout the region with a purely Western interpretation of human rights” (540). In order to find a balance between a pretentious and unrealistic universalism and a paralyzing cultural relativism, Kausikan writes that a genuine and fruitful dialogue will need to take place in order to expand and deepen consensus between Western and Asian states on the issues of human rights. According to Kausikan, “the West will have to accept that no universal consensus may be possible and that states can legitimately agree to disagree without being guilty of sinister designs of bad faith… it will require the West to make complex political distinctions, perhaps refraining from taking a position on some human rights issues, irrespective of their merits, in order to press others where the prospects for consensus are better” (543). By allowing cultural leeway in interpretation human rights, are we undermining the essence of the rights themselves? Where should we draw the line?

    The White Paper provides us with the government of China’s view on human rights issues. According to China, “as history develops, the concept and connotation of human rights also develop constantly… the most urgent human rights are still the right to subsistence and the right to economic, social, and cultural development; therefore, attention should first be given to the right of development” (547). In addition, the paper argues that human rights are essentially a matter of domestic jurisdiction. For China, “international human rights activities should be carried on in the spirit of seeking common ground while reserving differences, mutual respect, and the promotion of understanding and cooperation” (548).

    A second perspective comes from Yash Ghai. Ghai criticizes the Asian approach that because human rights are propounded in the West on individuals, they have no relevance to Asia, which is based on the primacy of community. Ghai argues that perceptions of human rights in Asia are reflective of economic, political, and social conditions; therefore, they vary from country to country and cannot be summarized into one “Asian” view. In addition, Ghai states that some Asian governments use communitarian arguments to support their proposition that rights are culture specific. According to Ghai though, this argument is flawed because it is also used to deny the claims and assertions of communities in the name of ‘national unity’ and ‘stability.’ In addition, Ghai argues that Asian governments’ view of the State is not synonymous with community. Ghai writes that the State is an imposition on society. Some Asian governments use the justification of ‘in the name of development’ to justify the denial of and violation of human rights. As Ghai states, “the contemporary State intolerance of opposition is inconsistent with traditional communal values and processes” (552). In what ways can communitarianism foster an individual understanding of human rights that does not undermine the community at large? Is it possible?

    A third perspective comes from Jack Donnelly. Donnelly invites us to consider the contemporary arguments against universal human rights standards on the basis of cultural relativism. Donnelly states that, “we must be alert to cynical manipulations of a dying, lost, or even mythical cultural past” (553). According to Donnelly, cultural relativist arguments are the economic and political elites’ tools to justify their corruptions and maintain their power.

    A fourth perspective comes from Soek-Fang Sim. Sim explores the logic of the one-party rule in Singapore and how the meaning of Asian Values is instrumental to sustain this logic. According to Sim, within the Asian Values discourse, “nation [is placed] above self.” Capitalism and authoritarianism are therefore reinforcing. In addition, Sim refers to Asian Values as “a strong normative centre” that plays the role of the social gaze. As she argues, “Asian Values makes for the subordination rather than the incorporation of dissent.” Is dissent possible under an authoritarian regime?

  • Response to The Notion of “Rights”: Origins and Relations to Duties

    Group 8: AT, AW, Yongho Kim
    Response to The Notion of “Rights”: Origins and Relations to Duties. Monday, September 22nd.

    Chapter 5 provides a close-up of the notion of rights and their historical evolution. The notion of rights emerged as a refining of the concept of ‘natural law’ coined in the 17th and 18th centuries by the Enlightment philosophers (Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau). In an era of Revolution (England’s Revolution, French Revolution and the Independence of the US) and exaltation of humanity, the natural rights were seen in absolutist terms as ‘inalienable’ ‘unalterable and eternal’ as self-evident truths that required recognition. That view was strongly criticized in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when scholars viewed the natural rights as an “unreal and metaphysical phenomena.” (Steiner, 326) The idea of human rights fully emerged after the fall of Nazi Germany. Do we see a pattern in the historical evolution of the notion of rights? What would that pattern indicate for the future?

    Three contemporary comments on the human rights follow this brief overview.

    1. David Sidorsky emphasizes the two main functions of the human rights: universality (1) based solely (2) on the virtue of being human. He distinguishes that unlike the natural rights, human rights function more on an international arena and points toward six elements that mark the ideological continuum between natural rights and human rights. He makes the comment that exercising the human rights was by protecting the individual sphere from coercive actions rather than fostering the future means for protecting the individual sphere. Are HR more preventive in nature than natural rights?

    2. Kamenka distinguishes the rights from different types of claims. He describes rights as claims that have achieved endorsement by “widespread sentiment or an international order’ (Steiner, 329) The key words in his argument are importance, urgency, universality, endorsement, conflict. The conflict seems to arise from the lack of authoritative voices, but rights are to transcend any authority. What is the supreme authority? Do we need one? Are we trying to create one?

    3. Kennedy brings the Spotlight on the US. He describes the rights as universal and factoid ‘mediators’ (330) between value judgments and factual judgments. His piece puts the relationship between rules and rights into perspective. Chicken or egg? – Rights or rules? Can they coexist? Can they exist independently? Is the US a ‘rights country’? Do rights turn into rules when legally adopted? Should we tend towards an incorporation of the rights into the legislature? What about duties?

    The next section analyzed the common charges towards human rights. The first charge addressed the rigidity of rights, their absolutist character. Many people think that the complex issues of our day should not be solved by the simple formulas inherent in many rights, but by what should be a longer and more detailed political discussion. The next charge concerned the indeterminacy of rights. Due to the vague nature of rights, they are often just the beginning of discussions and need to be specified in order to have any solid meaning. Rights are also criticized for being too individualistic and for dismissing important moral and social dimensions of many current issues. Because of the abstractness found in many rights, people think they have been used to protect prior practices from change, in a very anti-democratic manner. The last charge focused on the lack of responsibility individuals have when they depend too heavily on rights, which stops them from doing what is right and from doing things for themselves.

    Stemming from the six different groups of charges against rights, two issues in particular emerged as especially interesting and controversial. All individuals have the ‘right to free speech,’ but what should be done when men and women use this right in controversial ways and create violent pornography, hate speech and advertisements for cigarettes (338)? Since everyone has the right to free speech are these kind of actions acceptable? Or because this right is so general and vaguely worded, can it even be applied to these cases until it is specified? Or should it not be specified?

    The abstractness and open-endedness of many rights give them a wide range of meanings. Concepts about one’s rights begin to mean different things to different people and take on inconsistent meanings. For example, the right to privacy grants all individuals the right to be left undisturbed by the government with regards to certain personal issues. Many people consider then that women have the right to choice about abortion and reproduction issues. Since what you do during pregnancy is a personal affair between you and your doctor, not a political issue, should it not then be classified under your right to privacy? What do you think about what George Bush and many congress people are doing today in relation to the issue? Do you think the anti-choice legislation that is being passed is going against a woman’s right to privacy? The government approves stepping in and meddling with a woman’s private decision to choice, so why do they not step in more actively and intervene or punish individuals when a woman is being assaulted by domestic violence? Why should the government be able to intervene on certain issues and not others? And who decides which issues are the government’s business? Or because of the right to privacy, should they stay out of all personal matters completely?

    Often the East and the West are stereotypically polarized in the argument that the former is intuitionistic and family-centered, while the latter is rational and law-centered. A reading of two “eastern” frameworks –Jewish and Gikuyu- and a comparison between the ICCPR and the African Charter, throws more details into the issue. Cover explains that the term “mitzvoth” or obligation, which dominates the Jewish legal language, is a main force that held the Jewish community through centuries of hardship (343). He goes on to argue that an ideology of rights, such as that represented by the US (and European) tradition, counters the state from accruing and abusing power, while an ideology of obligations or mitzvoth counters the external forces that endanger the unity of the Jewish community. Is Cover correct in his identifying the western rights discourse, or is he merely forcing an opposite to the Jewish system?

    Another duty-centered society is the Kenyan Gikuyu society. Kenyatta describes the strong social ties binding individuals in many activities – a restriction touching on authoritarianism – and defends the tradition because it keeps social mechanisms critical for its survival. Not everybody likes a narrowly tied-down system, and dissenters find an alternative in the European individualism. Kenyans are said to cry out: “the white man had spoiled and disgraced our country”. Do you think this feeling belongs to an outdated generation who only looks to settle old traditions? How does this relate back to the CEDAW; for instance, if the circumcision of women in the muslim tradition (as practiced in Somalia) were a part of the Kenyan tradition, how would popular rhetoric justify such practice? Reading Kenyatta, it seems as though “western” values were diametric to those among the Gikuyu. But, is family really not a focal point in US societies? For instance, what is the Financial Aid Office implying when it states that family should be the main resource in affording college tuition? Why is Thanksgiving a national holiday? Where does a major portion of college social interaction occur, in institutionalized settings, such as “dorm lounge”, “interest club” or “Friday party”, or in isolated one-to-one encounters?

    The African Charter on Human Rights and People’s Rights raises controversy. Freedom of association and immigration are granted with reservations when pertaining to national security (Art. 11 and 12); Art. 29 (2-5) specifies individual duties that remind of the National-Sozialistisch party when pertaining to “national solidarity” or “subversive or terrorist activities” (23.a,b). Liberation from direct colonial rule and postcolonial economic exploitation, “resorting to any means” is also emphasized. (20.2,3, 21.5). Finally, it promotes family relations such as the rearing and education of children, and the protection for the elderly and sustaining of parents (18.4, 29.1). Do you think that all three of these forms of particularities that stand out in the African Charter could be lumped together as the single category of “culture”? How do some of these duties infringe the UDHR? Makau argues that these unexpected rights correspond to pre-colonial times. (358) While he concedes that much has changed in Africa after colonial rule, he highlights the values set forth by the Charter as “ideals in pre-colonial African philosophy”. Makau acknowledges that the Charter may be abused by political elites, but at the same time argues that such a generous Charter also opens doors for grass-roots democracy and fraternal governance, “as in the days of the old where chiefs were held accountable” (360). Steiner is particularly critical of Makau’s viewpoint, framing his own questions as “Does his argument persuade you?” or “Is his view helpful?” instead of “Do you agree?”. Can the fact that Steiner is a Harvard law professor in the United States be an influence in his position towards Makau? What other variables should be taken into account when contextualizing the African Charter, for example, that pre-colonial societies bore no written law, or that European rulers further fostered inter-tribal animosity to facilitate colonial domination?

  • Film Review of Lumumba

    Film Review of Lumumba
    Anthropology 258: African Societies
    Yongho Kim

    I have seen Lumumba as a traditional film containing the ten years before and immediately following the independence of DRC. In other words, the fact that the theme was based in Africa did not tweak the way in which the narrative itself was presented, as it happens often with other movies focusing in the “underdeveloped” nations. I especially liked the way in which the urban and rural Congo was depicted, because it didn’t fix with the notion of a barren land.

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  • Reaction Paper: Stanford Prison Experiment

    Introduction to Psychology Laboratory
    Mike Mensik
    Due at April 15th, 2003
    Yongho Kim

    In 1971, Zimbardo set an experiment in the basement of Stanford University simulating a prison environment to see the effects of imprisonment in regular civilians. He and his team recruited 24 college students for a paid, two-week experiment. Half of the subjects was assigned the role of prison guards and the other half was assigned the role of prisoners. Within days, the “prison guards” began exercising oppressive psychological dominance over the “prisoners”. Guards created several punishment methods, such as push-ups and redirecting other prisoners’ frustration towards the rebel prisoners, and effectively implemented control methods such as giving better treatment to obedient students. The psychological damage was such that at the sixth day, an outside observer pointed out the suffering underwent by the “prisoners”. And thus the experiment ended.

    I agree that the experiment should have been discontinued as soon as the administration became aware of inherent flaws contained in it. The experimenters agreed to undergo minimal nutrition and psychologically hostile treatment, but the guards often imposed physical pain on the prisoners. Furthermore, even though the video didn’t mention it, in the website (prisonexp.org) it is mentioned that guards would harass sexually and physically the prisoners late at night when they thought nobody was watching them. (This was noted later through video recordings). The experiment agreement was rather vague on this respect and any kind of harassment or retention (such as when the whole prison was moved elsewhere to keep the system from parents) could be either interpreted as belonging or not belonging within the limits of the contract.

    Therefore, I believe the experiment could be re-proposed if the experiment participation agreement was clearly defined, stating what is allowed and what is not. Also, since Zimbardo declared he wasn’t playing the role of the experimenter anymore, absort he was in his role of superintendent, it will be necessary to allow external monitoring and participation of the research process while during the ongoing experiment. Also, “prisoners” should be briefed before initiating the experiment of the ways of interrupting participation. It should be remembered that when 8612 requested to be let out of the prison, he was talked by the “prison head” and the “superintendent” both of whom discouraged 8612 in such a derogatory way that 8612 ended up believing that his situation was a real imprisonment. This belief spread into the rest of the prison dwellers. What is important to see here is that both the “superintendent” and “prison head” persuaded 8612 believe that this would increase the level of reality the experiment carried, but they didn’t stop at the fact that 8612 really wanted to get out of the experiment altogether. Until the last day, anything that the participants did was understood within the context of experiment, effectively creating a total institution, the exception being 819 to whom Zimbardo explained that “this was just an experiment”

    This study shows that imprisonment can drive a “normal” person into other kinds of personalities, which are often described as criminal and brutal. Nazi germany was composed of normal humans who happened to be under the rule of a governor who developed a whole social structured that converted many into ruthless and genocidal soldiers. It seems like responsibility could be delegated upon the social institutions that rule people’s lives, given that the institutions are strong enough to exercise such power. It also shows that the control over a group of people doesn’t necessarily require physical (practical) power, but rather convincing the group that they’re hopelessly destined to obey orders. This is how three guards on a shift at a time could effectively control the 12 prisoners at any given time.

    On the other hand, it could be argued that the prisons are still doing what they are supposed to do, just that now they’re revealing the underlying criminal impulses of individuals that could materialize at any moment, and argue that the students happened to have such criminalistic instincts. However, what would happen if a new experiment with a larger pool of participants yielded the same results? Given every person has the so-called criminalistic instincts, having a number of people in jails and while others are not in jails for the same reasons is not justifiable.

    What was found in the Stanford Prison Experiment is the model for any generic form of total institution. At institutions in which individuals are immersed days and weeks, where a strong authority rules over them, such as the Army or Monasteries, where the settings are real and not just experimental, any violation of basic human rights, of human dignity, and negation of common sense could occur, and still pass unnoticed to the “prison guards”.

  • Fixed Response Lab Report

    Yong Ho Kim
    March 10, 2003

    1. Describe your rat’s progress during shaping.

    A mistake in the experimenter’s side must be firsthand explained in order to make sense of the rat’s behavior. I understood that the rat was not being given water until it pressed the lever by itself and assumed that the light was merely a cue stimulus to let the rat “know” that it was approaching what it was looking for – water. I convinced my labmates of this, and it is only now that I re-read the instructions that I realize that light always accompanied water and that the large delay in our rat’s shaping was due to excessively provided water.

    During the initial stages, the rat approached the light hole shortly after the cue stimulus was given. Every time the rat turned its head to the direction of the switch or when the rat came close to (3 to 5 ratfeet) it, the lights went on and water provided. After moving rather randomly around the light box (I was wondering why it was that the rat had its head stuck in the box for so long), the rat came back to the middle of the box and stayed quiet. The experimenters began improvising cues to get the rat into moving, such as knocking the window next to the switch and making loud noises. The rat showed some response, and tried several times to stick its head between the glass wall and the bottom bars.

    After lying down for a while, the rat again began to move around. A second shaping chance was tried again. The rat began lying its front feet on the wall more often than the first trial. Eventually it began holding the button and immediately moving over the square when the light was lit on.

    2. How do you know that water was a reinforcer for today?

    Providing water was a reinforcer because doing so increased the likelihood of the rat repeating the operation that became associated with water.

    The rats were deprived from water, which means that there was a background negative stimulus. Letting the rats access water, which would be a neutral stimulus in regular circumstances, became a negative reinforcement because thirst was temporarily removed every time the rat performed the desired behavior.

    3. Which child in a classroom would keep trying to get called on longer?

    The child who almost always gets called will keep trying to get called on longer. We need to assume here that being called is a positive reinforcement. If this is granted, then it is clear that if a child was almost always called per trial then the child would associate raising his hand with being called (which we assume is a desired behavior).

    4. Which type of reinforcement schedule is utilized by slot machines? Explain why it is successful.

    A variable ratio reinforcement schedule is used. This makes people easily addicted because they can’t control the desire to go and give the slot machine another try by thinking “well.. I could wait till somebody tries it 15 times and then I’ll go because chances are high between the 17th and 20th time” because any instance could be the lucky instance.

  • Personality Assessment Assignment

    Yong Ho Kim, April 29th 2003

    1. What are some criticisms of trait theory in general?

    Possible criticisms include that subjects can falsify answers because the result of a personality test can be personally important to them, that very often the questions are culture-specific, and that subjects across different cultures don’t necessarily present the same main personality traits (Kalat points out that in the Chinese there is only an “loyalty to Chinese traditions” trait instead of “agreeableness” and “openness to experience”. This could be interpreted as meaning that in China a high agreeableness (being loyal to other people who follow the Chinese tradition) and being closed to experience (not trying other non-Chinese things) have always correlated together and could be lumped into one category.)

    It turns out that given personality tests chunk groups of people together, it will forego other less prominent differences in personality, considered by the creators of the big five as overlapping or unimportant. However, ignoring small individual differences can directly lead to stereotyping, which isn’t always a desirable result. Of course, there is the payoff that the more traits we add and intend to measure through tests, the less parsimonious the test becomes. It is possible to do the reverse and decrease the number of traits even further arguing that they still overlap (Eysenck), even though it might generalize the descriptions even more.

    2. Evaluate your lab section’s choice of traits.

    Overall it was a good sample, but “experimental” and “curious” seemed to overlap in meaning. To experiment, one needs to be curious. For “motivated” and “diligent”, it seems like one corresponds to a mental disposition while the other is a behavior. Isn’t it the case that being motivated will lead the person to work harder, thus being perceived by others as diligent?

    Also, “social” and “shy” were two degrees of the single trait. Hence, we would be using more titles than necessary, and making the accuracy of the test lower. Overall, it was about a good number of traits.

    3. Evaluate your lab section’s choice of questions to evaluate those traits.
    Questions such as “during the past week, I cried more than twice” were aimed at too narrow audiences to make any sense out of the results. No male subjects responded yes to that question, but it is possible that if the frequency had been reduced to once per month the number of respondents had been over zero (still including those who cry twice), and make a conclusion out of it, since a result of zero doesn’t tell us what the lower limit is.

    4. What are some of the difficulties associated with developing personality questionnaires?

    The problem lies in the fact that the questionnaires have to be created with human subjects in mind. If the test is too long, it will discourage subjects from finishing or volunteering to work on the test. But the more questions the questionnaire carries, the higher accuracy can be expected from it.

    5. What are some of the difficulties associated with administering personality questionnaires?

    Especially if subjects are acquaintances of the experimenter, they might hide those qualities deemed undesirable and emphasize those desirable. Also, often the pattern of answers subjects give is highly dependent on the social and emotional context in which the subject was situated at during the specific time and place of the day at which the subject took the questionnaire. Also, it is a written test, so people must sit down or at least stand still, which excludes an important population of Macalester College who are often running from class to class. (This is not a implicit reference to the “running boy”.)

    6. How could personality evaluation be improved?

    It is necessary to hide the “socially unacceptable behavior” tag from the questions as much as possible, in order to prevent social hindrance at the moment of responding questionnaires. Detaching the questions of positive remarks is also important, the idea being that questions should sound rather neutral. This has been done for the current test, but still “People I don’t know make me nervous” carries a strong negative implication that should be corrected. (I suggest, “I am mostly friendly towards people I know”). The conclusion seems to be that this is a embedded problem for self-administered tests.

    Also, the format of the question could be changed so that it could, for example, be read off a tv screen or heard from a cassette recorder. Or done orally individually. If this were to be done, it would increase the repertoire of subjects to be included in the pool.

    On a final note, I thought the effectiveness of personality tests could be improved if subjects didn’t realize that it was a personality test that they were taking at the moment of taking them, (so that they can be less conscientious and less censoring while answering questions) but this seems impossible given the access college students have to Psychology courses.

  • Depth of Processing Assignment

    April 4th, 2003
    Yong Ho Kim

    Kalat (2002) summarizes the traditional consensus in the psychological community regarding short-term and long-term memory. Short-term memory is a “temporary storage of the information that someone has just experienced’ and long-term memory is “a relatively permanent store of mostly meaningful information”. Additionally, short-term memory stores up to seven (plus or minus two) bits of distinct information for a few seconds, and can store an kind of information. For the long-term memory, the capacity is not known but certainly very large, and the information needs to be closely tied down inside the learner’s mind to be successfully stored.

    Often information is first stored in the short-term memory and then passed to the long-term memory. This is called consolidation. Controversy in the psychological community arises on the understanding of this process. Traditionally it has been understood that it is a matter of repetition for the information to pass to the long-term memory. However, recent research disagrees based on the fact that some very personal information don’t require several rehearsals for them to be learnt. It is suggested that the information must be meaningfully and emotionally tied to the learner in order to be transferred to the long-term memory.

    Jacoby (1973) tested the effect of rehearsal on memory improvement. By “rehearsal” Jacoby means “a subject’s covert or overt repetition of an item”, so that “increasing rehearsal frequency simply means that the person says the item more often”. He asked a random group of college students to memorize words from a pool of 200 words rated A and AA (obtained from Thorndike and Lorge word book). Ten lists were presented to subjects with a delay interval between each list. Each list consisted of 20 words. During the delay, some subjects were instructed to study the words in silence. Other group was instructed to study the words aloud, and another was instructed to perform arithmetic calculations. After a delay, the subjects were requested to recall all 20 words.

    In a laboratory hour of an Introduction to Psychology course in Macalester College, 35 students replicated Jacoby’s experiment with a slight modification. Instead of studying the words aloud, the students were instructed to say the word “Hello” aloud throughout the delay. Instead of performing random arithmetic calculations, students were instructed to think of a 3-digit number and keep subtracting 3 from the number throughout the delay. Instead of studying in silence, students were instructed to remain silent, with no specific duties. The subjects were not divided in groups, but were all asked to perform the same task at a given time.

    Based on Jacoby’s results, it is expected that students remembered words better for lists followed by silent study. In my individual test, I remembered 37 words for the interrupted and non-interrupted free recall test, and 14 words when asked to recall the whole list. For recognition, I recognized 37 words. It seemed like recognition would be much an easier task, but I recognized as the exact same amount of words that I recalled during the list-by-list free recall. It might be the case that the number of words recognized dropped from their expected number because that was the last activity and the total list free recall activity interfered with the memory.

    Reference

    Jacoby, L. L. (1973). Ending Processes, Rehearsal, and Recall Requirements. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 12, 302-310
    Kalat, J. W. (2002). Introduction to Psychology. Pacific Groove, CA: Wadsworth

  • Shaping lever press behavior and fixed ratio training for water-deprived rats

    Yong Ho Kim
    Macalester College

    Operant conditioning is a particular type of conditioning in which the subject associates particular behaviors with particular responses, and performs the behavior whenever it desires the response. (more…)

  • Reflective Essay on Readings of Marx’s Early Writings

    Professor Peter Rachleff
    January 29th, 2003
    Yong Ho Kim

    While at Mac, I got to hear of current humanities theories during my Intro HCST class. Under professor Kordela’s guidance, I was introduced to Zizek and his approach to Lacan, and followed a survey of western thought from ancient Greece to Debord and Derrida, and came back to Lacan and film theory. Throughout the course, and after I had finished it and kept reviewing books from Saussure and Burke, I felt I needed a more firm grounding that would fill in the gaps among these thinkers. Could I get a foundation for contemporary theory without going all the way back to Renaissance? That’s where I think Marx fits in. (more…)

  • Integration Paper on Race and Ethnicity

    Introduction to Sociology
    Professor Sharon Preves
    Due by December 9th
    Turned in by December 16th (7 days late)

    The U.S. banned the discrimination based on race, sex or ethnicity, through the Civil Rights Act, almost 40 years ago in 1964. However, more subtle, permeating forms of racism are prevalent in today’s U.S. society according to sociologists. Newman argues that to end racism it is necessary to recognize first the artificial nature of race as concept and then to differentiate between the various types of racism in society.

    The relativistic meaning of the word “Race”

    Various sociologists throughout the world have proven that the same color is recognized as different races in different societies. For instance, what in the U.S. might be classified as simply “black” can be divided up as “zambos” and “mulatos” in Chile. To group them together as “black” would make no sense since the term “negro” is reserved for a particular tone of black skin and facial shape. In England or Ireland, any skin color that is not white is considered black. And white in Ireland does not signify the skin color, but rather to be of Irish descent. These kinds of multifaceted terminology around the world prove that race is not a given biological fact.

    Recently, as people with markedly different facial and skin characteristics began marrying each other, to define race has become even more complicated. In the church I go to, the pastor has a Korean mother and a U.S. father – what race does he belong to? He has brown hair and non-epicanthic eyes, but his cheek bones and cranium shape belong to those of the Ural-Altaic people.

    Personal racism, stereotypes, and Prejudice

    Personal racism is manifested through individual contact of a person to another person, in such acts as threats, avoidance, or verbal or physical insult. The use of stereotypes gives an easy solution when justifying personal racism. Stereotyping involves exaggerating certain features in a given group of people from the same race and assuming that a particular feature applies to everybody. For example, since the Los Angeles riot in 1993, during which a large number of stores in the city were destroyed and ransacked by a mob which was, rumors say, mostly black, Korean communities in the west coast assume black people will be violent by nature. I had some uncles in Los Angeles, who kept saying that it was all very evident that black people are poor and hence prone to vandalism and violence. Common reactions are moving to the opposite side of the sidewalk when one sees a black person coming on the other side, or moving to another table (or getting out of the restaurant, to “protect the kids”) if large groups of black people enter a restaurant.

    Stereotypes are hard to break because both the agent and victim of stereotyping are active, not passive, agents of the process. Furthermore, proofs against stereotypes are often refuted with arguments that claim the proof to be an isolated exception, but that the majority of the population keeps being “violent” or “greedy” or “lazy”, etc. In this is the self-fulfilling prophecy theory again applied.
    As seen in an article of past chapters from Newman, victims of stereotyping actively use the stereotype to their purposes. Thus, a group of black kids in ghettos pretend to be more violent that what they are, just to keep people away from them.
    Newman presents the research of Steele, who obtained more biased results when he explicitly told his subjects -black students- that he was testing something related to their stereotyped image – something like intelligence, the students performed in accordance to their expected social stereotyped images. Thus, it seems like there is an unconscious component to the self-fulfilling prophecy in race, because the black students didn’t meant to score lower than when they were not told that it was about intelligence, but rather their societal selves reacted to the suggestion of Steele which reminded them of the pre-existing stereotypes.

    The ghost of “Race”

    On the other hand, it seems like “race” is not a concept that can be easily deconstructed just out of realizing that it was originally a social construct. In some communities, the whole identity of the group falls back on the idea of race. Koreans for example, pride themselves in being a mono-racial country [unlike China, Russia or the U.S., towards which they look down on because they’re “mixed”, and thus “less pure”] For example, the current presidential candidate representing a party that matches the Republicans in the U.S. politics, often recurs to the great mono-raciality of Korea when arguing for the need to defend national interests by increasing military funding.

    But even when “race” does not involve a sense of ethnic belonging, de-framing race seems a challenging task. Movements that counter the discrimination racial minorities suffer in the U.S., carry on the assumption that race exists, because if there was no race there could be no movement to protect a particular race. I wonder if the dilemma of Affirmative Action, which so far I understand is an attempt of the dominant race to purge itself of injustices of the past, is precisely the paradox of solidifying the notion that race exists, while at the same time combating the discrimination arising from the existence of race as a notion. This problem seems directly related to the fact that proponents of civil rights movements were opposed to the integration of the “multiracial” category in the U.S. census form (Mathews), because such blunder would not benefit the traditionally groups protected by such measurements.

    Newman points out that as people from different races mix, the distinguishing features across races are fading, and takes the optimistic prospect that a gradual fusion of races will end the problem of racial discrimination. I should agree with him, even though this idea is again brought from the Melting Pot theory, which happens to be a rhetoric of the dominant class in the U.S.

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