Social Science Knowledge: Do Connections and Situations Make Humans Bad?

We learned in the humanities that society has an effect on human interaction, because it is a factor in the development and growth of an individual. There are a variety of variables or factors that make up a person and set them up to follow the path that they are going down. Social Scientists must look at the facts that they gather during experiments and come up with a conclusion based on the findings.

To take a Social Scientists look at the question and come up with a conclusion to the questions "what makes humans bad?" and "do connections and situations make humans bad?" I would like to take the psychological perspective. I have a mere true belief that humans are bad and can become bad based on the factors of race/ethnicity, gender, interaction, and influence that they have been given or earned through hard work. The factors can be described and placed into a single factor called situation because every human is different based on the situation they are placed in and how they decide to react to that specific situation.

Starting at an early age people are put in situations where they make the decision to be bad or good. Bullying does not only occur in childhood, but it usually begins in a school setting with young children. In Parenting Characteristics Associated With Bullying Perpetuation in US Children Aged 10 to 17 Years Dr. Shetgiri, Dr. Lin, Dr. Avila, and Dr. Flores discusses the psychological outcome of bullying and how the parents perceive their children and what that means to their possible position of them being bullies. The research for the article entails 91,642 parents across the nation with children from the ages between 10

and 17 being interviewed on their relationship with their children and how much they knew about them and their friends. The experiment is a social science experiment because the doctors gathered evidence based on the facts that the parents supplied and then came to a conclusion that the odds that children were bullies were lower if there is a strong level of communication between the parents and children, if the parents meet and know their children's friends, and if the parents encourage their children academically. The doctors did not just see the information and make a decision. They also looked at the age, gender, race, language, family income, number of parents in the house, extracurricular activities, and the parent's actions in the home to make informed decisions about the possibilities of children being bullies. The experiment is not to form a position of blame onto the parents or the children, but to find the causes and likelihood children being bullies. Based on the article and the experiment that it discusses, I have come to the true believe that people can become bad in life based on the different variables that make up their life.

Bullying is a form of oppression which is when people subject other to cruel and unjust treatment or control. Bullying can occur in more than a school setting, but in a work setting where a person of authority will exert their ability to perform ill treatment onto others because they believe that they could do so. The Department of Psychology at Stanford University ran an experiment where twenty-four people were assigned the position of guard or prisoner at random and given the training, experience, and a list of instructions of what their role entailed. The participants were given uniforms to give them the appearance of the position that they held. The experiment was "to assess the power of the social forces on the emergent behavior in this situation, alternative explanations in terms of pre-existing dispositions were eliminated through subject selection" (1). Craig Haney, Curtis Banks, and Philip Zimbardo wrote the paper on the experiment and how it did not end up going as they hypothesized with more aggression from the guards onto the prisoners. Even though the participants were regular college students some accepted and embraced the roles that they were given. One third of the students that were the guards were thought to be more aggressive towards the students that were the prisoners than they had predicted which ultimately caused the experiment to be canceled part of the way through. The students that were given authority as guards took on their role seriously and began to become bad toward the other students, treating them as if they were not humans. The experiment was a psychological one that was developed to see how people reacted to the situation that they were placed in and the power that they were given.

Both articles Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison and Parental Characteristics Associated With Bullying Perpetuation in US Children Aged 10 to 17 Years looked at how the situation that a person is placed in can have an effect on their life and can make them commit bad actions and even become bad people. Not all of the situations that people are put into are malleable especially for the children who are becoming bullies because of their situations on the home front. The children might not be able to change all of the variables in their lives like their parents can, but they are still conscious human beings that make decisions on who they want to be and what path they are following based on the situation they are dealt. The situation is different for the Stanford students only because they are older and have more experience in their lives, but based on their lives as children they might have been in the same living situation as the children discussed in Parental Characteristics Associated With Bullying Perpetuation in US Children Aged 10 to 17 Years. Social Science knowledge complements Humanities knowledge because they both look at humans and their connections to others. While humanities knowledge looks at society's views on humans they social science knowledge looks at society's views and takes it into account when making conclusions based on the experiments they do. To get a non-biased look at the findings to come up with a conclusion that does not blame but explain why humans are bad.

Haney, Craig, Curtis Banks, and Philip Zimbardo. “Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison.” Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison. International Journal of Criminology and Penology, 1973. PDF.

Shetgiri, Rashimi, MD, Hua Lin, PhD, Rosa M. Avila, MSPH, and Glenn Flores, MD. “Parental Characteristics Associated With Bullying Perpetuation in US Children Aged 10 to 17 Years.” Parent Characteristics and Bullying. American Journal of Public Health, Dec. 2012. PDF.