{Dr. Graves turned to Dr. Doug LaBier who had been one of his
students at
Union College
and asked him: “When did you find out?” Doug replied; “Some time
later, after I was in your original class, when you asked me if I would
like to work with you on some research that you were doing and when I
got started on the work with you I discovered that I had been part of
that research.”}
- They didn’t know that they were involved. – I copied their
papers.
-
Then I had to set up a kind of grading system that would meet the
requirements of the college. – We’re not going into
the details of this, but it worked out quite
adequately.
-
I then handed the conceptions back to these people and proceeded into
the second five weeks.
In the second five weeks I just randomly broke up the class into
groups. Each student had to present his or her conception of healthy
personality to his peers where the student would receive criticism and
questions from his peers.
I had an opportunity to observe that if a person presents a
conception of personality A – how does he behave when this peers go
after him? What is his behavior?
Now . . . we had a physical setup where we had a complete
intercommunication system using wire – and we had a physical setup
with a lot of rooms with one way mirrors where it was possible for me to
observe without the students ever knowing that they were being observed.
The observation room was a room in between two of the classroom where
the students were in a group. The door entering into the observation
booth was from the hall so that the students wouldn’t know that I was
present . . . If I was very quiet.
So the students had an opportunity to receive criticism from
their peers. At the end of the second five weeks the students were given
instructions to write a defense of their original conception of healthy
personality or a modification of their original conception as a result
of their five week experiences in the group.
-
As you are now aware . . . . I had an opportunity to see if their
conceptions changed under peer influence.
Then – in the third five week period – as a class – we
studied various authorities as to what they had to say about the concept
of healthy personality. At the end of this third five week period the
students were asked to write a defense or modification of their original
conception of the healthy personality.
VIII.
Secondary Questions Asked as a Result of the Method for Collecting Data:
1.
What will happen
to a person’s conception of healthy human behavior when he
is confronted with criticism of his point of view by his peers who have
developed their own conception of psychologically healthy behavior?
- This, by the way, became an amazing, revealing experience over
time.
2.
What will happen
to a person’s conception of healthy human behavior when he
is confronted with the task of comparing his conception of healthy human
personality to conceptions which have been developed by authorities in
the field?
3. How will the subject behave under peer criticism?