By: Greg Miller
Level of difficulty: **
BEFORE YOU READ
·
Do
you determine who someone is by the way they look, or their personality and
what they say?
·
Are
these concepts separable or not?
·
Would
you recognize and be able to pick out your loved ones no matter what?
QUESTIONS
1.
The
12 year old boy’s in depth knowledge about austerity measures and his love of
Dostoevsky should have led the subjects ……………………………………………………………….
2.
What
basic assumption does the research conducted by two psychologists at the London
School of Economics challenge?
3.
Stanley
Milgram’s experiment would never pass a modern ethical review
because…………………………………………………………………………………(Use your own words)
4.
What
is the similarity between cyronoids and Cyrano de Bergerac?
5.
In
what respects were Milgram’s earlier test subjects cyronoids? With respect to
the fact that…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
6.
The
writer says “The consequences would not be good”. What is he referring to? Be
very precise.
7.
What
does “That” refer to in the phrase “That was a huge surprise”. There are two
answers; find both.
8.
What
really scared the crowd in the exhibit around South Bank?
9.
Cyronoids
are a good way to study human social interaction because they allow researchers
to determine…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
10.
The
subjects failed to suspect that something was wrong in two later experiments
carried out by Cortie and Gillespie probably because ………………………………………………………………………………
11.
We
have already entered the world of cyronoids in the 21st century
because………………………..
12.
What
does “It” refer to in the phrase “It’s a twist”?
WRITING TASK
In the last
paragraph but one, Corti says “If you
want to get really deep about it, we are all cyronoids. We all say things we
hear other people say. Jon Steward is just an amalgam of ghost writers. The
stuff I told you earlier about Milgram is based on what other people said at a
conference. Where in all this are original thoughts?”. To what extent do
you agree? Write an essay in which you state your opinions.
IF SOMEONE SECRETLY CONTROLLED WHAT YOU SAY,
WOULD ANYONE NOTICE? KEY AND TEACHER’S NOTES
This fascinating text opens up a whole can of
worms about personality and individual character. It points to truisms we are
hard put to disagree with but make us jolly uncomfortable never the less.
Because of all this, it should go well. The bonus is that it really does lend
itself to some wonderful questions and a challenging writing task.
- To suspect his words were not his own
- We can recognize some element in all of us
that is a permanent part of our nature.
- Possible answer: It involved harming other
people; OR it ,involved people bowing to authority and harming other
people
- Neither of them spoke thoughts originating
in their own nervous systems; OR, the words they speak originated in the
mind of another person.
- They ceded control of their own behavior
to the guy in the lab coat
- A world in which the thoughts of one
person come out of another person’s mouth.
- The fact that even people who knew him
didn’t catch on; OR, the fact that people who knew him couldn’t get passed
the idea they were talking to him.
- The fact that cyronoids answered in unison
- Whether it’s what someone says or what
they look like that matters more
- Our brains are wired to treat someone who
looks and acts like a person as an individual person; OR, our brains
didn’t evolve to deal with people speaking through the bodies of someone
else.
- Identity replacement has become the norm for
online interactions.
- Looking at whether people can tell when
the person in front of them is being fed lines from a chat box.
