Proposal: Draft One

This topic submitted by Louisa Versaw and Sydney Willcox on 2/17/06. [ Human Nature Team: Louisa Versaw and Sydney Willcox-Section: Cummins/Wolfe]

Semester Project

For our research project, we are going to be studying how Miami students judge others, specifically based on appearance, and the relationship between this type of judgment and human nature. The judgment of others is a quality in humans which is based on competition which is argued to be an element of human nature. We will be asking the question, how does judgment manifest itself from competition; what is the connection between judgment and competition? We will also be asking the question: is it human nature to judge others or it a culturally constructed concept? We will be studying the element of culture by testing students from both Western campus and main campus and comparing their answers and opinions. We will be testing the social aspect of judgment by seeing if people's judgment changes when judging in larger groups and how other can influence one person's judgments? We will use a scientific, empirical approach to our testing. We will be using an empirical approach in our studies and actual research and interpretive approach in understanding the meaning of the information we acquire and the relationship between judgment and human nature.

Introduction:
What is/are your scientific hypothesis(es)? Our hypothesis is that the judgment of others is a quality of human nature. We will be testing the degree of connection between an individual's judgment of others and human nature. We will also be studying the connection between judgment and competition (which argued to be a quality of human nature) as well as judgment and non-human nature elements, such as class and socialization. What is the cultural affect on individual's judgment of others? Do individuals judge other based on the individual's gender? Self-esteem? Does judgment change when it occurs in groups rather than individuals?
Is your proposal interdisciplinary? How? Our proposal is interdisciplinary because it requires the study and integration of many different disciplines, such as anthropology, sociology, biology and psychology.
How does your proposal address a fundamental issue of human nature? Our project is testing what is the fundamental issues of human nature.
What do you plan to accomplish? Our goal is to understand if the judgment of others is an element of human nature or a culturally constructed concept. Is it a quality of human nature or a quality of society?
How does your research connect with other aspects of our Nature of Human Nature course? Look at the syllabus to get a sense of perspectives and issues to be covered in the course.
This ties into Module 2 Ð sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, and human nature- (competition part of evolution)
module 4 Ð the social animal

3. Explain your interdisciplinary approach. (including cultural, social, and scientific perspectives)

4. A Specific Research Design
What is your experimental design? Be specific. We plan to utilize empirical research methods through survey. We will be handing out a survey with 2 parts: one asking the individual to evaluate their self (questions of self-esteem issues, etc.), and one part asking the individual to evaluate their judgment of others (the extent of judgment, their moral views of judgment, the social acceptance of judgment/if judgment occurs more in groups). We will also use the survey method to study a more specific aspect of judgment: the judgment of others solely based on appearance. For this part of our research, we will be handing out two identical surveys to individuals and then to groups of the same individuals. The survey will include pictures of random people and a set of questions asking about judgments/assumptions of these people. This part of our research is significant in testing the social influences of judgment and the extent to which the judgment of others is a culturally constructed concept.
What will you be measuring and why? We will be measuring the social influences of judgment to test the nurture vs. nature of the judgment of others.
How will your measures address your specific research questions? Include a specific sampling design for each method. Make sure each method is statistically sound. By asking questions about oneself in the first part of the survey and then asking questions about judgment of others in the second part, we can get a good idea of how social influences of others relate to defining oneself. The other part of the study where we have people make judgments based on photographs individually and then make judgments as a group will address the socialization of judgment as well. Our sample will be Miami students.
What are the social and cultural dimensions components of your study? We will be testing cultural and social dimensions of judgment at Miami.

5. Materials and Methods
Describe important materials and how they will be used. Our participants will fill out surveys on paper.
How will your research team work with each other (within a team) to "make your
project happen?" We will conduct the surveys of Miami students as a pair.
Have you considered what statistics you will use in your scientific analysis? No, we will decide that after the survey has been taken.
Include a specific time-line of research execution.
We will allow ourselves a month worth of survey writing, surveying, and data collection to then be analyzed to come to a conclusion.

Literature Review
Alicke, M., Dunning, D., & Krueger, J. (Eds.). (2005). The self in social judgment. New York: Psychology Press.
This book deals with the self as a source of constraint and social judgment. Since we want to see how much judging others affects one's notions of self, this book will be useful in providing us with what has already been done and how much judgment and social awareness have to do with that.

Atoum, A. O., & Al-Simadi, F. A. (2000). the effect of presentation modality on judgments of honesty and attractiveness. Social Behavior And Personality, Retrieved Feb 12, 2006, from http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3852/is_200001/ai_n8892065.
This study draws upon other studies of judgments of others in social interaction and how certain cues, such as non-verbal behaviors, are used in making these judgments. In this particular study, judges Ôjudged' others on honesty and attractiveness and the researchers saw if this related to the judges gender and nationality. This is important to our study because we want to see how the characteristics of the judger relate to the characteristics of the Ôjudgee.'

Beauregard, K. S., & Dunning, D. (1998). Turning up the contrast: self-enhancement motives prompt egocentric contrast effects in social judgments. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 74(3), 606-621.
This study is very similar to the study done in 1974 that we want to build upon. This study tests a motivational account suggesting that people tailor their judgments of others to affirm their own worth. The discussion of this study centers on relating these findings to theories on social comparison, self-affirmation, and social judgment.

Biernat, M. (2005). Standards and expectancies : contrast and assimilation in judgments of self and others. New York: Psychology Press.
This book contains social psychology essays dealing with social perception, self-perception, judgment, and comparison psychology. Since so many of the articles we found deal with similar topics, this book will help in designing our survey to build upon what is already known about these topics.

Craik, K., Hogan, R., & Wolfe, R. (Eds.). (1993). Fifty years of personality psychology. New York: Plenum Press.
This book contains two chapters that deal with our topic. One chapter deals with judging others based on their behavior and the other is based on judging personality. Along with the many studies we have found, this book will help to give us an idea on what has already been done and what still remains unstudied.

Darby, B. W., & Jeffers, D. (1988). The effects of defendant and juror attractiveness on simulated courtroom trial decisions. Social Behavior & Personality: An International Journal, 16(1), 39-50.
This experiment was done to investigate the interactive effects of the physical attractiveness of defendants and mock jurors on judicial decisions. The more attractive participants in the study were treated as expected. The results of the study are then discussed in terms of leniency when judging others with similar attributes.

Drapkin, J. (2005). The dirty little secret about gossip. Psychology Today, 38(6), 54-60.
Since gossip is seen to be a large part of making social connections, especially among women and much of gossip is making judgments of others, we needed an article that focused on gossip. This article discusses gossip, advantages of gossip, punishment for gossip, and how the Bible deals with gossip.

Enright, R. D., & Lapsley, D. K. (1981). Judging others who hold opposite beliefs: the development of belief-discrepancy reasoning. Child Development, 52(3), 1053-1064.
This article describes three studies conducted on children. The subjects' judgments of intolerance toward disagreeing others were examined developmentally in three studies. By using a study on children in different stages of development, we can see how judgment begins or was there from the start.

Fleischacker , S. (1994). The ethics of culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
There are two chapters in this book that deal specifically with judging others and judging ourselves. Since we have found many studies that use judging others as a way of defining oneself as well using judgments one has made about oneself to judge others, it will be helpful in seeing these as separate as well as related concepts.

Hanna, R. (2004). Kant's theory of judgment. Retrieved Feb. 11, 2006, from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Web site: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-judgment/.
This encyclopedia article explains the theories of judgment by Kant. This will be useful to our study because we can apply Kant's beliefs on judgment to see if it matches up with our findings in the surveys.

Kenealy, P., Gleeson K., Frude N., and Shaw, W. (1991). The importance of the individual in the 'causal' relationship between attractiveness and self-esteem. Journal of Community and Applied Psychology, 1(1), 45-56.
This paper argues the importance of the relationship between attractiveness and self-esteem. Since some of the other studies found a relationship between self-esteem and judging others, this study will be useful in better understanding attractiveness and how that leads to high or low self-esteem and judging others.

Lindsey, L. (2005). Gender roles: a sociological perspective. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.
In a section of this book titled, ÔThe Language of Friendship,' the author discusses that gossip begins friendship in women and girls because they talk to one another in their common roles, share secrets, and support the needs of each other and themselves. Since we are going to be using gender as part of our study, what this book has to say about gossip and gender is important.

Shrauger, J. S., & Patterson, M. B. (1974). Self-evaluation and the selection of dimensions for evaluating others. Journal of Personality, 42(4), 569-585.
This study was conducted on the belief that social comparison and comparative appraisal emphasize the importance of the evaluation of others as a way that people maintain or modify opinions of themselves. This study is important to ours because we want to build upon the findings of this study and possibly add other elements such as gender, class, group, and sexual orientation to see what else we can find.

Szefku, B., & Szvetelszky, Z. (2005). Three degrees of inclusion: the gossip-effect in human networks. AIP Conference Proceedings, 776(1), 308-313.
This study draws upon the scientific definition of gossip to measure its effects on human connections and networks. Before this study, no studies had been done to see how the effects of gossip lead to a network of people's self-organizing communication. This research is important to our study because judgments of others is a large part of gossip, and gossip as a social network-building tool can relate to the amount and degree of judgment that individuals or groups place on others.

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