Power Of Context
I usually write down thoughts or matters read in my blog over a period. As an added bonus, I have discovered that venting via my written words helps me ease my inner strife and upset, particularly when I have unresolved feelings and thoughts on a particularly thorny issues in my life and not when I've had a hard day. So relax life's cool.This over thinking mind of mine needs some outlet so this is it keeping things in is practically psyching ;-) and moreover telling others is the best way to hard wire matters into our consciousness.
The power of context is an environmental argument. It says that behavior is a function of social context. A group of social scientist at Stanford University led by Dr Philip Zimbardo concluded that there are specific situations so powerful that they can overwhelm our inherent predispositions. The key word here is situation.
He is not talking about our environment which has a major external influence on all of our lives. He's not denying that how we are raised by our parents affects who we are, the friends we have or the kind of neighborhoods we live in affect our behavior. All of these things are undoubtedly important. Nor is he denying that our genes play a role in determining who we are. Most psychologists believe that nature - genetics - accounts for about half the reason why we tend to act the way we do.
His point is simply that there are certain times and places where much of that can be swept away, there are instances where you can take normal people from good schools and happy families and good neighborhood and affect their behavior by merely changing the details of the situation.
Peer influence and community influence are more important than family influence in determining how children turn out. Studies of juvenile delinquency and high school drop out rates, for example show that a child is better off in a good neighborhood and a troubled family than he is in a troubled neighborhood and a good family. We spend so much time celebrating the importance and power of family influence that it may seem, at first a blush,that this can't be true.
But in reality it is no more than a obvious and commonsensical extension of the Power Of Context, says that children are powerfully shaped by their external environment, that features of our immediate social and physical world -- the streets we walk down, the people we encounter --- play a huge role in shaping who we are and how we act. It is possible to be a better person on a clean street or in a clean subway than in one littered with trash and graffiti.
Read more on Wikipedia
Notable Quote's
"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."- Steve Jobs
"Your best shot at happiness, self-worth and personal satisfaction - the things that constitute real success - is not in earning as much as you can but in performing as well as you can something that you consider worthwhile."-William Raspberry
Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.- Samuel Johnson
Ask not what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive... then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.-Howard Thurman
A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.- Dorothy L. Sayers
The power of context is an environmental argument. It says that behavior is a function of social context. A group of social scientist at Stanford University led by Dr Philip Zimbardo concluded that there are specific situations so powerful that they can overwhelm our inherent predispositions. The key word here is situation.
He is not talking about our environment which has a major external influence on all of our lives. He's not denying that how we are raised by our parents affects who we are, the friends we have or the kind of neighborhoods we live in affect our behavior. All of these things are undoubtedly important. Nor is he denying that our genes play a role in determining who we are. Most psychologists believe that nature - genetics - accounts for about half the reason why we tend to act the way we do.
His point is simply that there are certain times and places where much of that can be swept away, there are instances where you can take normal people from good schools and happy families and good neighborhood and affect their behavior by merely changing the details of the situation.
Peer influence and community influence are more important than family influence in determining how children turn out. Studies of juvenile delinquency and high school drop out rates, for example show that a child is better off in a good neighborhood and a troubled family than he is in a troubled neighborhood and a good family. We spend so much time celebrating the importance and power of family influence that it may seem, at first a blush,that this can't be true.
But in reality it is no more than a obvious and commonsensical extension of the Power Of Context, says that children are powerfully shaped by their external environment, that features of our immediate social and physical world -- the streets we walk down, the people we encounter --- play a huge role in shaping who we are and how we act. It is possible to be a better person on a clean street or in a clean subway than in one littered with trash and graffiti.
Read more on Wikipedia
Notable Quote's
"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."- Steve Jobs
"Your best shot at happiness, self-worth and personal satisfaction - the things that constitute real success - is not in earning as much as you can but in performing as well as you can something that you consider worthwhile."-William Raspberry
Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.- Samuel Johnson
Ask not what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive... then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.-Howard Thurman
A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.- Dorothy L. Sayers
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