Aiden's death-match: psychology vs. the Bible

PART II: In which the Pied Piper of psychology leads students to the gates of HELL!

3.An Assault on the idea of Authority.

Pages 568 to 574 present the phenomenon of Group Conformity. This section presents, among other topics, the "Asch Effect" and "Groupthink," which offer highly negative depictions of the relationship between an individual and a group with a shared belief, ("Asch Effect") and between a group with a shared belief and objective truth. ("Groupthink.") Any group with strong shared convictions becomes suspect in the reader's mind after reading this chapter. No attempt is made to balance this negative depiction with groups who's shared beliefs are an asset to individual integrity and honesty.

The lead author of Core Concepts is Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University. Obedience to authority is his area of specialization. In fact, he was an architect of the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment.

For those of you who don't know what that was, here's a quick overview:

In August 1971, Zimbardo executed an experiment designed to measure how people reacted upon being placed in artificial roles of dominance and submission. This study had been funded in part by the Navy, which was out to unearth the roots of systemic problems in its own prisons.

For an observational period of two weeks, volunteers - drawn in through a newspaper ad and selected for their psychological stability - would adopt roles normally found in a prison environment. Some of these men were assigned as guards, and others as inmates.

Certain elements of humiliation - wearing smocks with no underwear, blindfolds, and leg chains for example - had been added to ramp up the experience. These were not standard procedure at most prisons, but were added in the hope that two weeks might reveal truths that took months to develop in more ‘authentic‘ environments.

The “prison” assigned each inmate a number to be used instead of his name, so the process of dehumanization could be more quickly asserted and deconstructed. These volunteers had been warned about the possibility of facing verbal harassment, and about the austere environment in which they’d live for the duration of their stay.

What happened next is the stuff of legend, and Zimbardo still receives considerable criticism for it after 35 years: Although a limit had been placed on what the “guards” could do to their charges - these people were given no instruction but that they were not permitted to physically harm the inmates - it took all of a day before these boundaries were tested.

The first day had been uneventful: Prisoners were subjected to tests of physical exertion and to the dehumanizing treatment outlined above, but each group had yet to slip completely into its role. Guards were assigned shifts, and permitted to return to their own homes during off-hours

By the second day, however, prisoners had actually organized into a revolt. Guards called for reinforcement from among fellow students who had been placed on-call for that purpose, and they armed themselves with fire extinguishers to break the uprising. These men actually hosed down the prisoners before entering each cell and stripping their charges naked as a form of punishment.

Considering the experiment was only a day old by then, this behavior was remarkable - not to mention creepy. And even as the guards became more brutal in adapting to their positions, Zimbardo and his colleagues began to unconsciously take the posture of bona fide prison administrators.

The authors of this experiment were drawn into it and, instead of merely observing and recording the reactions around them, began seeing the prisoners as deserving of increasingly harsh treatment.

Otherwise sane young men were reduced to quivering masses of nerve, and a couple of them - student/prisoners - had to be removed from the experiment within the first couple of days. Zimbardo would later recall he felt some reluctance to let them go, since he believed they were conning him to get out of facing consequences they deserved.

By day four, Zimbardo was perfectly willing to counter rumors of an escape attempt by transferring his pretend inmates to an actual prison.

The overseeing psychologists suggested the guards use a backhanded kind of positive reinforcement, in the form of a “privilege cell”. Special incentives were offered to prisoners who, not unlike the kapo in Nazi concentration camps, were amendable to helping the guards in their task of keeping the inmate population under control.

These special prisoners were allowed to bathe and brush their teeth, as well as eat desired food in the presence of other inmates. To sow distrust among that population, thus breaking any resolve for collective action against authority, guards then revoked those privileges and gave them to other prisoners.

These guards, meanwhile, had been brought closer together by the shared experience of having put down the revolt. At night, when they believed the cameras had been turned off, a few of them demonstrated genuine sadism in their interaction with fellow students.

By the fifth day, prisoners had been forced to walk around blindfolded and shackled. They also cleaned toilets with their bare hands, and were denied “bathroom privileges” for minor infractions.

That night Zimbardo’s girlfriend, Christina Maslach, dropped in on the prison to familiarize herself with the experiment. A newly minted psychologist just hired on at the University of Berkeley, Maslach had been asked to conduct interviews with the prisoners on the following day and wanted to look around ahead of time.

At first, Maslach, who was looking at security monitors to see what was going on, didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. She even chatted with one of the guards, whom she found to be charming and open - that is, until she saw him interact with the prisoners from her closed-circuit perch:

"This man had been transformed,” she said. “He was talking in a different accent ­ a Southern accent, which I hadn't recalled at all. He moved differently, and the way he talked was different, not just in the accent, but in the way he was interacting with the prisoners. It was like [seeing] Jekyll and Hyde. . . ."

Things only went downhill from there, and Maslach fought a wave of revulsion when she saw prisoners being led around with their heads covered by paper bags. One of the researchers poked fun at her for her timidity. After all, 50 people had come to observe the experiment without complaint - among them psychologists, friends of the students, a lawyer, and a priest - before Maslach raised an objection.

History, however, would bear her out. In looking over tapes and logs from that time, researchers saw the experiment had clearly gone out of control. Zimbardo, realizing this even in the grip of his own involvement, shut things down the next morning.

The Stanford Prison Experiment lasted six days.

A number of participants went on to become involved with prison reform after having seen what they’d become in so unwholesome an environment.

For his part, Zimbardo married Maslach, and he continued his studies into human behaviour. In 2001, he capitalized on the interest in reality TV by advising on a program called “The Human Zoo.”

(http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2001/may2/zimbardo-52.html)

In 2002, Zimbardo reconstructed certain aspects of his early prison experiment through another show created with cooperation from the BBC

(http://www.uel.ac.uk/psychology/news/panel-report.pdf)

In each instance, and despite new rules governing the treatment of experimental subjects, Zimbardo could successfully replicate results similar to those achieved through his Stanford Prison Experiment.

Like Stanley Milgram, Zimbardo was an intellectual descendant of Solomon Asch.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments).

Our intrepid reviewer – Aiden Humphrey, still – describes the Asch Effect thusly:

“[H]ighly negative depictions of the relationship between an individual and a group with a shared belief.”

The facts don’t bear that description out. The Asch Effect describes how an individual who believes one thing, no matter how strongly, can be convinced to believe something else by the presence of enough people who reject his initial assumption.

Asch gathered a group of student-actors into a room and instructed all of them to lie about the length of one drawn line in relation to two others. Asch used a fourth line, this one on a separate sheet, as a reference point against which to compare the other three.

Though line C clearly matched the control line, the actors were told to claim either A or B was correct when asked.

He then brought in other students – people who weren’t “in the know” – and had them sit among the group of actors. Each actor, when asked, selected lines A or B.

37% of the time, those unknowing students would agree with the actors.

So, one in three individuals subjected to that experiment ignored the information provided by his own senses.

This result has been reproduced many times in many situations.

A good understanding of the Asch Effect could proof Christian students against a natural desire to agree with common beliefs – assuming, of course, that their elders understand the Effect enough to teach about it.

Then, the authors suddenly alter course and begin discussing the phenomenon of human obedience to Authority.

They “suddenly alter course” from talk of groupthink to talk of obedience to authority? Because, what, these topics are totally unrelated?

This section begins on page 574, while the dark "lessons" of group conformity are fresh in mind. Between page 574 and page 578, the authors dismantle any positive association the student may have with regards to the idea of obedience to Authority. Their argument culminates on page 577, with the section entitled, "Why Do We Obey Authority?" Prominently featured is the famous picture of the Tiananmen Square protestor who disobeyed Chinese authority and opposed a tank

Humphrey appears to believe that any student exposed to this book will cast off old attachments and sign on with Zimbardo, I guess because students exposed to “humanist philosophies” will see the authority of a psychologist as being superior to the authority of a religious leader.

Humphrey doesn’t expect college-age adults to take responsibility for their own beliefs. Rather, he seems to think they’ll absorb whatever they’re told.

The Authors then bring some of their most shocking ammunition to the fore, calling forth the stomach-churning Milgram study (pps. 575-576) which viscerally depicts obedience to authority as a fatal flaw in human character. By the time the student is done reading of Millgram's brutal experiment, he will feel agressively hostile to any system of authority.

Humphrey seems to suggest here that Christian students needn’t learn about Stanley Milgram’s experiments, lest their minds be poisoned by a sharper knowledge of human frailty.

The Authors finish the chapter with a sermonette on our responsibility to ktgb nnnact in solidarity with each other, presumably, against the oppressive Authority in question. There are many other flaws of this text which I cannot go into.

Yeah, right.

“If you carefully review these conditions, you can see that the obedience effect results from situational variables and not personality variables. In fact, personality tests administered to the subjects did not reveal any traits that differentiated those who obeyed from those who refused, nor did they identify any psychological disturbance or abnormality in the obedient punishers.

“….The purpose in recounting these findings is not to debase human nature or to excuse evil deeds but to make clear that even normal, well-meaning individuals can give in to strong…social influences to behave wrong when they know fully the right way they should behave. In a sense, this reflects one view of ‘evil’ as knowing better and doing worse.”

These authors are talking about individuals who know right but do wrong anyway.

It is a profoundly manipulative text, clearly written by individuals who understand the power of manipulative tactics, and of positive and negative association in particular.

And what, pray tell, is their motive for this deliberate program of manipulation? (Spoiler: Humphrey blames it on Satan.)

PART III: In which Hunphrey breaks out his credentials as a scientician

This text [Core Concepts] also fails basic standards of sound science.

Below, Humphrey attempts to demonstrate how the Core Concepts text is a liberal plot to destroy young minds. He never does get to that science part.

It presents positive "studies" of homosexual behavior, but refrains from mentioning those studies which show negative aspects of the same behavior.

For instance, this text says that homosexuals are just as good parents as heterosexuals. The text fails to mention that the average homosexual man openly admits to having between 100 and 500 sexual partners in his lifetime, with a significant group reporting upwards of 1000 lifetime partners. (Journal of Sex Research, Paul Van de Ven V 34, 1997) Any sane individual knows such a "home" would be a holocaust for a child.

In 2001, Drs. Judith Stacey (currently at NYU) and Timothy Biblarz conducted a literature survey of 21 studies that concluded homosexual parents measured up in every respect to their heterosexual counterparts.

(How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?
Judith Stacey and Timothy Biblarz
American Sociological Review 66, n.2 (April 2001):159-83.

Though Stacey objected to some of the studies’ methodologies – namely, that sample sizes were (necessarily) too small and that some researchers were operating out of a reflexive desire to prove no difference existed between children of same and opposite-sex parents – she nonetheless came out (no pun intended) in favour of the positive view of homosexual parents.

The American Academy of Pediatrics released a report the following year. In it, researchers concluded there was no difference between homosexual parents and heterosexual parents “in emotional health, parenting skills and attitudes toward parenting." (As with other scholars, writers at the Academy found themselves hampered by small sample sizes.)

The report went on to state that homosexual couples experienced some of the same child-reading concerns as blended families. That’s hardly “a holocaust for a child.”

So it turns out the textbook was correct, or at least tracking well with current research on the subject.

As to homosexual health, which Humphrey conflates with homosexual parenting skills, that brief citation of Paul Van de Ven’s study raises more questions than it answers:

1) Did this study benefit from a large sample size?
2) Were people with higher lifetime partner counts as interested in child-rearing as those with lower counts?
3) Van de Ven works out of the University of New South Wales. How do his results translate across the pond?

We can easily tap researchers such as Dr. Mary Stewart Van Leewen of Eastern University (PA) for a less histrionic view of things:

72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:CMFZr1tldb0J:www.eastern.edu/academic/provost/docs/MS%2520VanLeeuwen%2520Top%2520Ten%2520Myths.doc+Judith+Stacey+homosexual&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=57

Incidentally, Van Leeuwen is both a psychologist and a Christian.

(http://www.eastern.edu/academic/trad_undg/sas/depts/psychology/mvanleeu/)

She, too, recognizes the increased number of partners among homosexual men, and the increased rate of disease.

That raises a few questions that neither the text nor LS and her band of hysterical cohorts bother to ask.

Dr. Thomas Lyons led a team of researchers into the world of meth-anon with his study of how the use of this stimulant increased the risky sex homosexual men were prepared to have.

Stimulant use and HIV risk behavior: The influence of peer support group participation
Thomas Lyons, Gopika Chandra, and Jerome Goldstein
AIDS Education and Prevention, 18(5), 461–473, 2006

These researchers describe HIV and drug use as ‘syndemic’ – that is, each feeds the other until both are hopelessly entangled. Meth users – in this case, gay men – feel a sense of euphoria and often the desire to engage in what researchers call “marathon” sex while high.

Most ‘meth-anon’ respondents reported having at least one sexual partner in the previous month, with a mean of seven partners in 30 days.

Almost all the respondents claimed their sexual activities took place under the influence of drugs.

73% of those study participants, recruited directly through 12-step meth-anon meetings, were HIV-positive. And homosexual men who injected drugs had an even higher positive rate than those who stuck to other absorption methods.

Lyons and his team recorded a sharp drop in unprotected sex among gay meth addicts who attended the 12-step program.

One respondent, who was quoted by the researchers, said the drug use broke through his sexual inhibitions. Many others agreed with this, a few of them adding that meth froze the conscience and increased aggression.

A weakness in this study was that there was no control group of meth users against which to compare outcomes.

And it gets even worse when one considers how crystal meth feeds the capacity of HIV to replicate itself under one specific circumstance: when patients with HIV are on HAART (more often known as the “HIV cocktail”). The presence of this popular HIV-suppressing drug regime, when commingled with meth, increases the virus’ reproduction rate.

Increased Human Immunodeficiency Virus Loads in Active Methamphetamine Users Are Explained by Reduced Effectiveness of Antiretroviral Therapy
Ronald J. Ellis, Meredith E. Childers, Mariana Cherner, Deborah Lazzaretto, Scott Letendre, Igor Grant and the HIV Neurobehavioral Research Center Group

So a lot of gay men fall into the meth trap, which leads them to disease, which leads them to earlier death due to the drug’s reaction with the HIV cocktail.

The question then becomes, ‘why this risky behavior?’ One answer, presented by researchers through the Journal of AIDS Education and Prevention, is as follows:

“As hypothesized, more negative attitudes toward homosexuality, more substance abuse symptoms, and poorer intentions for safer sex were directly associated with a greater likelihood of unprotected anal sex over the following year. Furthermore, lower self–esteem, more anxious symptoms, and childhood sexual abuse were related to more unprotected anal sex indirectly through more sexual partners, sexual encounters, and substance abuse symptoms.”

AIDS Education and Prevention, 18(5), 444–460, 2006
A model of sexual risk behaviors among young gay and bisexual men: longitudinal associations of mental health, substance abuse, and the coming-out process
Margaret Rosario, Eric W. Schrimshaw, and Joyce Hunter

This answer fits in quite well with Van Leeuwen’s finding on the prevalence of sexual abuse in the childhoods of gays. And it also outlines how prejudice against homosexuality, and not necessarily the homosexuality itself, can lead to risky behavior.

This text brazenly and unashamedly attacks Biblical values and Biblical perspectives, and reorients Christians to secular services meant by God to be performed by His church, and reprograms Christians to bring satanic viewpoints to the study of the human mind and being. I graduated from the University of Oregon - well known for it's liberality and hostility to Christian values.

Humphrey should have taken English and grammar classes while at university instead of filling his schedule with 100-level seminars on Hostility to Christian Values. That would have saved him a lot of heartache then and me a lot of heartache now.

You and I have influence over young people. They look to us (ministers, teachers, elders, parents) to help them form core values. That formation of values is by no means over by the time they get to college. Their trust in us is sacred. God will destroy those who violate their faith. This text violates their faith in God, their conscience (nudity) and the Biblical viewpoints that their parents have labored for years to inculcate in them. Parents hugely invest themselves in their children - this text attacks their investment.

If these college kids had been taught at a younger age to question authority, they wouldn’t be so vulnerable to the witch-work of this devil text.

The irony here is that questioning authority is the surest way to defend faith against erosion.

What follows is a hodgepodge of different reviewers’ impressions of the textbook. It’s impossible to tell who wrote what.

The author of this portion of the review – he’s never identified, so I’ll call him Mr. X – concludes this text is not a work of psychology but of political philosophy.

How did he come to this conclusion? Well, he checked the textbook against the Bible, and the two didn’t match. Therefore, the former is not psychology.

It is no wonder, though, as psychology has never been an exact science, and changes with the times. I was unable to detect the presence of the belief of personal responsibility in this text, nor even a hint that Biblical values might have a part in a person's behaviour and attitudes.

Core Concepts is secular text, and the authors never marketed it as anything but what it is. The formal discipline of psychology is, in itself, of secular origin.

If students wish to study psychology with the aim of being accepted in that field, they must use the standard learning materials. Christians and other people of faith must necessarily take on the extra burden of reading through texts with a critical eye – but they need to study them.

As to Mr. X’s criticism that Core Concepts doesn’t place enough emphasis on personal responsibility, I’ll grab some low-hanging fruit by pointing out these critics’ unwavering belief that college students needn’t demonstrate any of that responsibility when viewing textbooks.

Instead, the prevailing theme seemed to be that genetics and frustration caused destructive behaviour, whilst there was a blank, for positive behaviour.

Um, no. The text never said that genetics or environment were sufficient reasons for an individual to cause destruction. Quite the opposite. (pg 49, 600)

Write a paper correcting the errors in this book, and you will not only educate your teachers but make a pretty good grade, providing you have good sentence structure and spelling, and you can make some sense of it! Scroll down fto the end of the page for some possible psychology of Bible characters.

Note to students: I don’t think you’ll make a very good grade if you model your rebuttal after these reviews.

This book mentions case studies of devient or negative behaviour (sometimes attempting to put it in a nuetral light) and no cases of good behaviour. Nor did it attempt to find out if a "good behaviour" gene had been discovered. No research or references to successful people is produced, except a statement that going to college and studying their book might be a sign that the student won't end up being a terrorist or a homeless person.

I’d like to see a page number reference for that. I certainly didn’t see anything like that when I read through the parts of this book cited in these reviews.

The Darwinist doctrine is cloaked in careful phrases to make it look normal. (For example, phrases that warn the student to be careful of psuedo-psychology---overlooking the fact that a lot of their own claims are not sound)

I don’t know what book Mr. X was reading, but the text I saw contained no effort to hide a preference for evolutionary theory. The authors were pretty in-your-face about their acceptance of evolution. That didn’t stop our hero from using the loaded term, “cloaked.”

Their solution to man's problems is to change federal policy (politics), provide therapy, and put people on medication.

If you’re a homeless guy suffering from pseudo-dementia of depression, therapy and medication might be good alternatives to sleeping in your own filth whilst your toes turn black from frostbite.

At any rate, the above sweeping generalization – “the solution to man’s problems…” – is more reminiscent of something Kevin Trudeau would say while hocking another scam than of anything a legitimate reviewer would commit to posterity.

Viagra is mentioned as a theraputic drug, as well as psychiatric, anti-depressants. No attempt to show the side effects of these drugs or research the effects of the use of them on the mind or the body (such as reducing natural inhibitions.) The text shields the student from any critical view or skepticism about Darwin.

Viagra can be a therapeutic drug, especially for older married men who have erectile dysfunction. They want sex and their wives want sex, but the twain shall never meet without medical intervention.

And anti-psyhotic drugs that prevent people with schizophrenia from hearing voices are also therapeutic.

These drugs, which are "re-uptake inhibitors" are mentioned without explanation of their danger.

Viagra and anti-psychotics are not selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, and the side-effects differ for each drug. Since this textbook is but an introduction to psychology, I wouldn’t expect it to contain a detailed list of drugs and their potential side effects.

The people reading this book will likely never be prescribing medication – not even if they become chartered psychologists eight years down the road.

The use of these drugs explains the untypical behaviour of many otherwise normal, good people, who for no apparent reason, commit atrocious acts of violence. When the news reports a preacher or some other good citizen, mother or child stealing or killing members of his own family, they rarely admit that he was under the influence of these prescribed drugs, or was withdrawing from them-causing a dangerous reaction in the mind. Although the text does mentioned that SSRI's (Prozac, Wellbutrim, Zololoft, and a host of other drugs under different names ) cause suicidal thoughts, the book is irresponsible in not showing the other side of the use of these drugs.

He makes an inflammatory claim – “they [of the media] rarely admit that [the accused] was under the influence of these prescribed drugs” – and yet fails to provide even a scintilla of proof for the existence of this conspiracy of silence.

Mr. X sees the absence of any media report on the subject as evidence that ‘most of those otherwise good people’ were on prescribed medication when they committed acts that he, the reviewer, assumes were out of character for them.

To pick out all the flaws in his statement above would be like nailing Jell-o to a tree. And since his complaints here have almost nothing to do with the textbook he’s reviewing, I’ll move along…

Looking up words like "Vigagra, masturbation, abortion, etc." will do you no good if you depend on the index. The index carfeully chooses only the words that do not incriminate the text.

Notice Mr. X’s use of loaded terms to promote hysteria in his readers: ‘carefully chooses,’ and ‘incriminate.’ Most indices are collated by computer programs that have no agenda, and they choose broad headings rather than specific terms.

In one copy, during my reasearch of this book, I created my own index when I found references to humanistic indoctrination and evolutionary theory.

If the reviewer here wanted to lend credence to his claims above, he should have posted his index. That, at least, would have been something. And even then, no kidding he’d have found references to humanistic philosophy and evolutionary theory during his “reasearch” (sic!); the textbook was written from a secular perspective.

For those who will not be reading any further than this point, I will make a concluding remark here in regards to this textbook: This book contains unstable core values. It is flawed to its core. Garbage passed off as "required" or "important" is still garbage....Although the questions at the end of the chapters deal with some psychological points, the student has to wade through the mire of sexual deviencey and values clarification to get there.This in itself is suggestive manipulation.

Students are right to question the value and accuracy of any textbook they read. They can go to the local library or to the research library of a larger university and compare the claims in that book to what they find through the course of their own investigations.

Instead of working to ban books, maybe Mr. X and his confederates could lobby to have “Research and Critical Thinking 101” installed as a required class.

And on that note, we move on to the next review. The individual who wrote the following is a woman, and since she never supplies a name, I’ll call her…wait for it…Mrs. X.

Textbook shields students from truth and true science

We needn't worry on that score. It is a given, that even a homeschool student will never be shielded completely. They go to movies and they are not shielded. But it is atrocious that a school would require the study of a book that would be promoting things that are unholy, subversive, perverse, (and even against their own school mottos), and that it be a required course in order to get a degree.

The paragraph reproduced above is Mrs. X’s strongest and best claim for removing the textbook from a Christian school: the authors of that text endorse values the evangelical community, and presumably the leadership at that private college, do not share.

BUT she runs off the rails with that next bit about how allowing the text and teaching from it prevents students from finding information on their own.

Throughout the Bible are numerous examples of incest, rape, sodomy, bloodshed, murder, jealousy , sexual deviance and vice, showing the consequences and the rewards of each. The difference between exposing a student to these things from the textbook and from the Bible is that one of these books applies eternal law and consequences.

These two acts – reading the Bible and reading that textbook – are not mutually exclusive. Students could do as Mrs. X did: read the textbook and interpret it through their understanding of the Bible.

There is always a tendency to think that such a textbook would be "good," if only the bad parts had been left out. If the "bad parts" and everything that is unscientific had been left out, I can guarantee you that the students would be very happy, for the book would end up being the size of a pamphlet or tract.

This is a page for students to review, refute, and rebuke a psychology book required in some Christian Universities. The book is called "Psychology:Core Concepts " fifth edition by Philip G. Zimbardo, Robert L. Johnson, and Ann L. Weber. You will see later in this article, my special recommendation as to what should be done with this book.

I cut out the whole of this author’s “Secular Psychology Unveiled” because I don’t have the weeks of spare time it would take to debunk all her ravings. She does make a few mentions of the textbook therein, but nothing suitably substantial.

Human Psychology Book Steals the Mind

From the beginning, it takes the mind down a different path, away from the authority of the Bible, the counsel of parents, and dependence on God. No, it doesn't say, "Your God is stupid. Christians are crazy. Your parents are reactionary." No, not in so many words.

But as I read it, I saw the sly underlying suggestiveness and the little innuendos which undermined truth.I have read this book and found it to be unsound in so many ways. There is barely a redeemable sentence in it. It seemed to talk down to the student as well, as though they were of kindergarten mentality, with laughably simple sentences, like, "Many people find a therapist helpful," "Students try recreation drugs in college," and "Some people meditate,"as captions under pictures or just little side sentences. Many of the sentences seemed juvenile in their structure.

So college students will be fooled by this sly, subtle book full of innuendos despite the fact it is written in a “laughably simple” style? Neat trick!

I hope to learn Zimbardo’s magical kung fu someday, so that I too can slip subversive messages into a text that consists entirely of “See Spot run”-type sentences.

2. Objectionable Material in the Book

To impress upon you the impact of this book, think about what trouble students would get into if they cut out or copied certain pictures in the book, and tacked themto their bulletin boards in their dorm rooms. I'm referring to pictures of studentschug-a-lugging beer at parties, putting a needle to the skin to insert drugs, anda picture of a young person with alchohol in her hands.Not to mention the nude pictures and drawings.

The book suggests that authority must be questioned, but of course, it probably didn't expect anyone to question the authority or principles contained in it. Most students are not equipped to challenge this book. Most students go there to get a degree and are taking psychology because they have to in order to get that degree. They just want to get through it. They don't come to college to cause trouble. They don't want to confront anyone. It is painful for them to complain about anything, no matter what their age. That is why parents and elders must advocate for them, review the books, and run interference when necessary.

Give me a break. These are college students, not kindergarteners. If they don’t know how to confront error now, they’d better learn – before they find themselves answering a newspaper advertisement requesting research subjects for the next obedience study.

If parents don’t teach their children – and this, long before college – how to spot wrong, the world will teach them. And the world won’t be kind.

I understand there is a federal law in the public schools and universities that prevents parents from reading the textbooks of the students. I suppose this comes under the Privacy Act. Does that law apply in the Christian colleges? If such a law exists, why are some materials and textbooks "secrets" from parents?

I’ve looked for a federal law in the US that fits this description, and haven’t found one.

The only “privacy policy” I’ve found in relation to parents and education is called the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (“FERPA”), which has been on the books for about 30 years. That law deals with the methods by which schools can make student records available, and to whom. No mention is made of textbooks.

My husband and I went through our online E-Sword and did word lists from the Bible on the following:

• Mind
• Thoughts
• Think
• Conscience
• Meditate (as the book refers to Buddhist meditatiion, but not Biblical)
• counsel
• counsellor
• counsellors
• Poverty
• poor
• Abound
• death
• husbands
• wives
• young
• men
• young
• women
• hope
• sodomy
• evil
• sin
• double-minded
• Wisdom

We looked up these words in relation to this textbook. The study of these words in the Bible revealed just how the book undermines Biblical principles. If the psychology department was really sincere in trying to please the Lord, they would turn the students to Biblical word studies or character studies from the Bible, instead of a secular psychology book.

Once more into the breach: the psychology department at any accredited university exists to further the study of modern theories in that academic discipline.

The Bible falls under the study of theology.

It [the Bible] does not take near as much time, prepapation or materials as a textbook does. The textbook requires hours to study and then more hours to refute.

And what, pray tell, is wrong with devoting some hours to study and refutation? Whether you learn from this textbook or merely sharpen your teeth on it, that time is not wasted.

Mrs. X then claims the authors believe in a "criminal gene.: The authors denied the existence of a criminal gene, however, on page 134.

In the first place, not everything is testable. Some things are too "wonderful" to be understood. Nor does God intend for us to know everything. He wants us to limit our thinking to His standards. The scientific method that this text espouses is backwards from the scientific method used by scientists.

Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!

Any claim that is not falsifiable – e.g., that God exists – falls outside the purview of modern science. This doesn’t render the claim false; it makes the claim un-testable.

Mrs. X’s says the scientific method used by authors and researchers who contributed to this book is ‘backwards’ because it doesn’t recognize the primacy of a non-scientific text. That view is, for lack of a better term, kinda stupid.

One particular example is that of Robert Fulton. While he was watching a kettle boiling on a stove, he observed that the lid of it moved up and down. After many experiements and hard work, he developed the steam powered boat.

This book suggests that we form a hypothesis first, and then set up an experiement to prove it. True science is based on observation, first.

At this point, the review writer describes her version of the scientific method, which we’ll skip because it doesn’t have anything to do with the book (or, for that matter, with science).

Sexual urges in teens are called "opportunities."Evolution is considered the reason for sexuality. Sin is called "risky behaviour." Sin is called "crime." Homosexuality is called "same-sex." Women working are promoted, while the traditional wife and mother and homemaker is subtly put down. Phrases like,"Whereas a woman would once only be defined as a wife and mother, she now has many more opportunities." Is this not the prevailing culture? In fact, no opportunity in the book is given to the young woman to show her the Biblical examples of wives, mothers and homemakers. Is this fair treatment of women?

The authors of Core Concepts never promised to balance scientific fact with religious belief, or to give equal time for both. This is a psychology textbook, not a religious tract.

And now I come to the end of the book, which gives the student some great military advice: (after all psych.s are experts) terrorism , inexcusable as it is, deserves to be treated in a different way. We need to realize these people are frustrated because of poverty and hopelessness. We should sit around the table and talk with them and find common ground.A Bible study of the word "poverty" and "death" will reveal what the real problems here are. Those who hate God, love death.Pro 8:36

The authors didn’t necessarily blame terrorism on poverty. Here’s what the textbook actually said:

“The flammable combination of poverty, powerlessness, and hopelessness are the tinder that the September 11th attacks were intended to ignite, says Jonathan Lash, President of the World Resources Institute in Washington, DC.” (pg 597)

Lash believes terrorists want to create sympathizers of the impoverished. Nowhere does the textbook claim the 19 hijackers who executed the 9/11 attacks were themselves poor.

On page 599, the authors discuss domestic terrorism, and nowhere do they blame that on poverty. On page 600, the authors make it plain they do not wish to excuse terrorists, but merely to understand terrorism.

While encouraging the student to look at the reasons behind the evil act of the terrorists of 911, they neglected to challenge the student to make sense of the heroic and sacrificial acts of the firemen who lost their lives rescuing people shortly after this tragedy, or to ask why some people allowed these evil people to be taught how to fly in our own schools. That would be a fairer study in human behaviour. The book simply made not attempt to contrast good and bad behaviour, mainly focusing on the bad and subtly justifying it.

Zimbardo et al justify it so subtly that neither they nor casual readers realize what is really going on. Yeah.

I won’t get into a bootless argument about how the flight instructors who trained those guys couldn’t have known they were terrorists; or about how the White House had in its possession, well in advance, a report on Bin Laden’s desire to crash planes into buildings.

So, professor, if poverty is the reason for terrorisim, shouldn't we be studying the reason for poverty? I mean, why do some people refuse to work, or what are Biblical principles of economy?

Poverty is no excuse. Our actions are motivated by our beliefs. Terrorists killed over 5,000 people [Um, actually about 3000 people] in New York [and elsewhere!] because of a false religion they were following. Psychology comes close to sympathizing with the unfruitful works of darkness, rather than exposing them. (Ephesians 5:11)

But our actions aren’t motivated by our beliefs nearly often enough. Christian students would have “killed” Milgram’s study subjects as readily as non-Christians would have. That fact should scare Lydia and her people far more than some little textbook most students won’t remember a mere two days after using it to cram for the final exam.

Way, way tl for the internet. But I shall investigate this matter further.

Fuck this person. Anti-depressant drugs are beautiful, wonderful things without which my life and the life of some people close to me would be devoid of light and happiness. I suppose he'd rather us go back to self-medicating with booze and nicotine, like my dad did for thirty years. That's not a very good option.