Re: Earthquake Shakes Southern England

"La N" <nilita2004NOSPAM@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"Jack Linthicum" <jacklinthicum@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1177941990.606566.167890@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Eugene Griessel wrote:
"La N" <nilita2004NOSPAM@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Thank you, Eugene. That's a very thoughtful answer. I was hoping to
get
your feedback on this.

A lot of it is basically psychology 101 - designing questions that
will receive an approximation of a likely answer on how the subject
feels at that moment is fraught withh difficulties. You know the
classic trial where a bunch of subjects were shown the same movie of a
motor vehicle accident and then given slightly differing questions to
answer - varying from something like "how fast were the cars going
when the bumped" to "how fast were the cars going when they smashed
into each other" which, in this case, netted a 10 mph difference in
speed estimates. Things like that. I know how one lies when being
asked questions about ones intimate life. Ask a smoker to estimate
their daily consumption - often quite a gap between the reality in the
ashtray and the answer. Same with drinking or sexual habits. The
questioner cannot but help influence the answer - even if only
slightly - by appearance, attitude and reaction (no matter how
subtle).

I know a research product company who goes around areas slightly ahead
of the trash truck - analysing what it finds in the bins. Probably a
far more accurate result as to eating/drinking/consumption habits than
any direct questioning would ever give.

Now extrapolate that into a society, possibly bound more strongly by
cultural norms than your own, in which there is a marked difference in
your age and those you are questioning and do this through an
interpreter, maybe of the opposite sex, who might just use the
information for nefarious reasons and see what sort of data one gets.
One of the reasons anthropologists try to live with such people -
become one of them - is that some of the inhibitions do disappear.
But never all.


Eugene L Griessel

I am at one with my duality.

Perhaps add a deference by the interpreter to one group, the higher
ups, the "standard", and an accompanying feeling of superiority to the
lower downs, "wannabees".

I have a lawyer friend who represented a client who wanted to
introduce gambling to British Samoa as a tourist attraction. He was
assured by his contact there that it would be fairly easy. My friend
asked me if the CIA had any feelings about this. I checked with the
"funny little islands" person and she said the chiefs would never let
anything like gambling of the Western kind on the islands. It was like
booze during prohibition, you have to keep it in the in group, not let
outsiders control some part of your life. Not sure if "Our" Samoa is
different.


It was interesting (for me) to read that some of the criticism of Mead's
work came from latterday Samoans who were "horrified" that she would
characterize their people in such a lascivious promiscuous way. Could
these modern day Samoans have had missionary influence since Mead's time on
the Island?

People change over time. If you talked to a bunch of Nazis - 50 years
after the event - about things they did during Hitler's reign you
would probably get flat denials even though photographic and
documentary evidence to the contrary existed. I remember reading the
work a US researcher did in the 1970's amongst people who had
run/worked in concentration and extermination camps and there was
almost always flat denial - even when they were shown their signatures
on papers authorising certain acts - they continued to deny it. In
fact they truly believe they never did it. It's fairly normal. We
all subconciously censor those things we did in our youths and which
now embarass us. In some cases so well that it disappears from our
concious memory to such an extent we will refuse to believe
overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The promiscious girl who is
now a staid, matronly grandmother can tut-tut at the loose girls of
today secure in the fact that she has totally expunged the same
behaviour of her youth from her mind. We've all seen this sort of
thing.

As I said in one of my earlier diatribes - an interview will, at its
very best, net you an impression of the interviewee's state of mind at
the time of the interview. It may change within hours.

When I was growing up the community I lived in was a torrid mix of
repressed Victorian morality and Calvinism on steroids. Woman became
pregnant through wind pollination - God forbid anyone, especially
outside of holy matrimony, should ever sink to anything as low as
copulation. However the talk in the men's locker rooms was curiously
at odds with this "public " attitude and the fact that "homes"
proliferated where "disgraced" unmarried ladies could go to rid
themselves of their unwanted offspring belied the official morality
that was supposed to prevail. So you had this curious dichotomy of a
chaste religious commmunity whilst underneath the veneer it was a
seething hive of concupiscence. Imagine interviewing an adolescent
female of that community and at that time as to her sexual habits?
Do you really think you would have got, in most cases, anything
resembling anything else other than the "party" line of chaste
morality? Imagine the reverse taking place - a community that becomes
imbued with the mores of a repressed and restricted society. I doubt
they will confess to whooping it up in their youths, do you?


Eugene L Griessel

A dirty mind is a terrible thing to waste.
.

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