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Relevance of your research question
Our research will touch on basic issues of kindness in the world. We hope to gain an idea for what the actual purpose is behind altruistic behavior, and determine if people are this way based solely on self-motivation or if there are other things behind this behavior. We want to witness and document people’s behavior on a very basic level that could be applied on a much larger scale. Any conclusions about the necessities of congeniality in a social setting will lead us into discovery of why people are the way that they are, and how individuals are influenced by social settings. We would like to determine if morals and values are truly that different depending on where you are from and/or where you were raised. This research will let us know where individuals feel that they stand with one another in social settings, and it makes us aware of our own motivations in relationships. The topics that we are investigating can be applied to small-scale issues as well as society at large. This form of altruism gives insight to the bigger picture, and ground level research may help in proving or disproving its existence.
Materials and Methods
Initial steps in research mostly surround starting with general exploration on the subject areas of social psychology, evolutionary biology, and anthropology. More specifically it will be beneficial to peruse what kinds of experiments and studies have been conducted surrounding altruism. In the last decades the social sciences have become concerned with what means location plays in attitude, Wright has offered many sources to start with, and we have found some of our own.
1. Badcock, C.R. The Problem of Altruism. New York: Basil Blackwell, Inc., 1986.
2. Cartwright, John. Evolution and Human Behavior. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000.
3. Ozinga, James R. Altruism. Westport: Praeger Publishers, 1999.
4. Pogrebin, Letty Cottin. Among Friends. United States: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1987.
5. Ridley, Matt. The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation. New York: Penguin Books, 1996.
6. Wildavsky, Aaron. Culture and Social Theory. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1998.
After a general background of environmental consequences has been covered the next step is to survey the public at large. As a group we intend to travel to three urban, three suburban, and three rural community settings. Proposed locations at this point are: Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Chicago for the urban environments, West Chester, Anderson and Dayton for a suburban setting, and for the rural arena we intend to visit Greenville, Oxford, and Eaton. Once on location the plan of action is to distribute as certain number of surveys over a given number of time. Data will be collected in two ways from the surveys. First it will be calculated and documented how many people were approached to fill out the surveys and how many people actually did so. A comparison will be made from the different venues concerning how willing participants were in the study. The survey it self will consist of only one question, a moral dilemma will be posed. For example, If you saw a person drop a twenty-dollar bill on the ground, and you had the opportunity to give it back, would you do so? This section of data will hypothetically give us the prospect to contrast the differing moral or ethic reactions of town and country. The advantage of having a duel purpose in our survey will allow us to gain access to both avenues of values and patience.
In addition, we intend to create a video from our experiences in the varying community settings to show the class. We feel that pictures at times are worth a thousand words, and since we will have had the opportunity to see first hand the differing reactions in public settings we feel the class should have the same opportunity.
Discussion and Conclusion
We hypothesis that the mentality of individuals growing up in a city environment will differ greatly from the mentality of individuals growing up in a small town surrounding. We believe that there will be an obvious correlation in the data that we collect showing differences between big city values and small town values. Neither of these groups’ beliefs are considered more acceptable by society, but each heavily argues for its lifestyle being on a higher moral ground. Are there any relations between these settings what are the differences? We predict that in small towns people will be more cordial toward one another and more prone to conversation, based on Wright's thoughts that we are more apt to be nice to people we will encounter again. In big cities we will see very little interactions due to the large populations. Natural selection has given us the ability to adapt and we have different reasons for doing things. People that live in small towns are not just more nice because of their personalities, but because of the necessity.
Timeline
Week of March 4: Printing surveys, conducting preliminary research, and gathering materials and data.
Week of March 11: Spring Break: Jamaica + Panama City!!
Week of March 18: Trip to Cincinnati areas, suburban and city. Survey distribution.
Week of March 25: Brandy’s Birthday! Friends coming from Bowling Green.
Week of April 1: April Fools Day! Tricks on you!
Week of April 8: Trip to Indianapolis and Chicago, city. Survey distribution.
Week of April 15: Trip to Greenville, Eaton, and Oxford, small towns. Survey distribution.
Week of April 22: Melissa’s Birthday! Watch out Oxford! Analyze data.
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