Blog #3

In Blog # 3 you will focus on three things: 1) Your outlook on sociological theory, 2)Your feelings on authority, 3) Experimentation as a lesson.  

1) Thinking about the three theories of sociological perspective, discuss in length which theory best applies to your way of thinking about human behavior and our society. Think about how you view events that happen, conversations that occur between friends and enemies, authority figures, etc. 

I believe that i follow the functionalist theory of perspective. I believe this because, given a situation, I try to give everyone a job and purpose. When i see a situation, be it one in government or at a more community level, i believe that everything that everyone does some way affects the way that everything else works. I think that all members of society, legal or not, have a crucial job to maintaining social order. 
 
2) React to the Milgram Experiment. Do you feel that people will obey authority under any circumstances  if it is indeed legal authority or do people's consciences override their ability to follows authoritative demands. Please explain. 

I do NOT believe that Milgram's experiment was just because I feel that it is wrong to cause psychiatric damage to people unwillingly and unknowingly to the people performing in the experiment. That being said, I do believe that people will obey authority under circumstances because we are raised to. From the time we are born, people are taught to obey authority figures: respect your elders, obey your parents, teachers, police officers, etc. Children don't always know why they are following certain laws or attending specific events, but they still do it. This nature of blind obedience is driven into us at a young age so much that we continue to abide by the same structure in the real world. I think that, even if our consciences tell us otherwise, we would abide to an authority figure telling us to do crazy things. The only exception may be people who never listen to authority figures, even as a child. 

3) After watching Jane Elliott's "Eye of the Storm", do you feel that this experiment would be successful today? Why or why not? Could you make a suggestion as to what type of experiment we might be able to conduct in order to teach and or raise awareness about prejudice and bias, bullying and intimidation?

I believe that Jane Elliott's experiment was extremely successful. i believe that teaching children in a manner that gives them the concepts and the root meanings behind something before sharing the real topic is extremely helpful. Putting racism into a form that young children could understand, like eye color, teaches them the concept that having bias is wrong so that they can understand and learn this concept themselves. If you immediately start with how racism is wrong, the words that you use could associate a child with the opinions that their parents have, and they would be less susceptible to understanding the point of the experiment.