Sunday, May 25, 2014

UNIQUELY YOU (NAME OF DIGITAL COPY: EMBRACE YOUR INNER ECCENTRIC)


“How a desire to stand out from the crowd shapes behavior and creative thinking”
By: Hans-Peter Erb and Susanne Gebert
Published: Scientific American Mind; March, April 2014 issue; http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/embrace-your-inner-eccentric/  
To locate the article, go to the Scientific American website, click “S.A.Mind” in the bar along the top of the page and then search for the issue.
Level of difficulty:****
BEFORE YOU READ
·         How do you define yourself? By your profession, your personality, your expectations?
·         Give an elevator speech: you are in a lift with a total stranger who you want to go on seeing and you only have until the lift stops. Tell him / her who you are in one or two sentences.
QUESTIONS
1.       What makes you who you are?
2.       The purpose of the Mohawk example is to prove that………………………………………………………
3.       There is a positive / negative correlation between fitting in and creativity and innovation.
4.       Read Solomon Asch’s experiment carefully. The number of the subjects that gave the wrong answer despite initially hitting on the right answer is due to………………………………………………
5.       Read the information concerning the uniqueness scale. According to the survey Erb carried out, what personality trait was someone who was herd minded more likely to be?
6.       The purpose of Erb’s 2009 study was to see if ……………………………………………………………………….
7.       Read Erb’s 2009 study to the end. What was the reason for the way the subjects responded to the question concerning dining cars?
8.       What interesting conclusions did Chan and her coworkers draw from the results of their research?
9.       The purpose of Chan’s second study was to determine…………………………………………………………
10.   How exactly did the subjects both signal group membership and assert their uniqueness in the test carried out?
11.   Read Kim and Marcus’ 1999 experiment with the pens. Why did only one in four East Asians choose the minority color?
12.   What is the wider implication of this research for individuals and society as a whole?
13.   Read the following quote from the text: “To investigate this question, economist Yuriy Gorodnichenko and Gérard Roland…”What question precisely were these economists investigating? Use your own words.
14.   What overall conclusion can be drawn from these economists study?
15.   State the concluding statement of the text.
WRITING TASK
Either go to the advantages and disadvantages essays on this blog and write about “the advantages and disadvantages of being a member of a group” using the new information you have gleaned, or provide a summary.
WHO AM I? KEY AND TEACHER’S NOTES
This fascinating analytical text aims to analyze the process through which we reach the answer to the question above. It lends itself to some superb questions and is a taught cookie so treat it with respect and keep your wits about you.
1.       Introspection and interactions with the social environment
2.       We set ourselves apart by affiliating with groups of people more like us
3.       Negative
4.       The size of the group, the presence of a dissenter or two and all the group’s overall status
5.       Introverted, conservative, neurotic
6.       A person’s propensity to seek uniqueness can temporarily shift due to certain situations.
7.       People who had been led to believe they were unremarkable had felt that their individuality was threatened and thus offered dissenting opinion as a way to differentiate themselves
8.       Our taste in clothing broadcasts our identity to the people around us and we can signal group membership and uniqueness simultaneously through choices in clothing.
9.       How a person’s choices can signal group membership and uniqueness simultaneously.
10.   Through choice of a model or color
11.   They are a collectivist culture
12.   If a need for uniqueness is linked with creativity, then a culture’s orientation towards individualism could enhance that society’s overall innovativeness…
13.   Possible answer: how collectivist and individualistic cultures impacted overall innovativeness
14.   One way or another, countries of independent thinkers find a way to rally others to bring their ideas to life.

15.   The last sentence

1 comment:

  1. This is a great post; it was very edifying. I look ahead in reading more of your work. essay online

    ReplyDelete