I always had the idea that science was mostly researching things we already held for the truth. I sat with my mother at the kitchen table, discussing items from the newspaper. Here this idea sprouted; those small news items which only told us what we already knew. And, of course, holding a lot of information behind. For examples, search on something like science confirms the obvious.
A number of teachers – but also my own experience in reading research in books – changed my mind. They learned me that it are things that you might already know, but the research makes it clear, how exactly (according to the research) and gives me a way to formulate that what I already knew*.
A quote** from an old commercial from the NRC (a Dutch newspaper):
those who never change there minds never learn anything new (wie nooit van mening veranderd heeft nooit iets geleerd)
And this leads to something I now know how to formulate :) The topic of fear for immigrants in the Netherlands came to mind immediately when I read this.
From a research of Stephan and Stephan (1985), Wilder and Shapiro (1989 and 1996), Wilder (1993).
When we fear the interactions with another group or person which we don’t know, this fear might grow so large that it biases the way we see this group/person. We process the things we see, only in a simple way; we only see the things we already expected (based on stereotypes of this other) and we neglect the things that don’t fit that expectation.
Thus we are not able to gather new or changed information about the other and thus we won’t be able to explain accurately why they behave as they behave.
Duh ;)
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* Disclaimer: I’m not saying that all science is about things ‘we’ (the general public) already know.
** Disclaimer 2: The NRC quote is not exact, they speak of ’seldom’ instead of ‘never’.
Tags: anatomy of intcult interact, anxiety, behavior, expectation, fear, influence, interpretation, science, stereotypes
Categories: a cultural journey, an intellectual journey
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