One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest This is a movie about assylums, insanity, stupidity and humor. Jack Nicholson plays a character that has been sentenced to a term of confinement (until he his deemd better) to a psychiatric ward. It was either this or prison, so the former was chosen naturally. The patients of the mental institute primarily volunteered to be there. This seemed extremely odd at first. But as the film progresses one sees the effects that conditioning over a period of time can have on people. In one particulary memorable scene Nicholson's character says "I'll show them just how easy it is." Then he proceeds to have a larger man boost him over the walls of "his prison." Everyone else was boosted over as well. A regular old night on the town for a bunch of loonies as lead by the film's hero followed. Ultimately they are caught while on a fishing boat and forced back to their loveable home. Nothing that Nicholson can do is enough for the staff on the mental institutue. He is even administered electro shock therapy to try and help his "attitude." He comes back into a patient meeting after this with a slow dull witted look and walk, and twitches all over. Everyone thought this would be the end of the man as they know him. But then he jumps up and smiles. The whole thing was quite a hoot to him. Nicholson in one scene wanted to watch the world series, but was denied the privaledge. In response he pretends to be watching in front of a blank tv screen. In the end another electro shock therapy session is given to ole "Jack" He does not fare so well after this. A larger friend from the institute kills him out of mercy and then lifts up a sink and hurls it at a window. Then he dashes for freedom as Jack had planned to earlier before getting caught and punished. The film is filled with humor until the tragic demise of the film's star at the end.

Nicholson went nuts in The Shining, but he did the time in Cuckoo's Nest as a rough-and-tumble felon looking to escape hard prison by spending a little quality time in a psychiatric institution. Little does he realize his phony illness is about to get him into all kinds of trouble. Louise Fletcher's Nurse Ratched, however, is the character who has since entered into the American lexicon, as have a host of other characters and scenes (most memorably: Nicholson's narration of a World Series game that's not on TV). Faithfully adapted from Ken Kesey's stirring novel. If ever an actor and a role were tailor-made for one another, it was Jack Nicholson playing Randle Patrick McMurphy in 1975's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Nicholson won his first Best Actor Oscar after four nominations (and one Best Supporting Actor nod for Easy Rider), and it's no wonder. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, available on a Warner Bros. DVD, showcased Nicholson's rebellious antihero persona at the apex of the actor's powers. In this anti-authoritarian parable, based on Ken Kesey's acclaimed novel, Randle Patrick McMurphy is a small-time con with a silver tongue and a taste for boozing and brawling. Rather than serve a short jail term, McMurphy fakes insanity, figuring that an easier life awaits in a mental hospital. What he finds, though, is a ward full of drugged patients whose every move is monitored and directed by the gimlet-eyed, soul-sucking Nurse Ratched (fellow Oscar winner Louise Fletcher). McMurphy's rambunctious, noisy charm and habitual insubordination soon infect his fellow inmates, empowering them to challenge Nurse Ratched. In retaliation, though the hospital could simply send him back to jail, they instead elect to "treat" McMurphy with shock treatments and worse, with tragic consequences. In addition to Nicholson and Fletcher's Oscars, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest also garnered Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director (for Milos Forman), and Best Picture awards. Twenty-five years later the film has lost none of its power. It's a harrowing, blackly comic ride with a cynical attitude toward authority — so emblematic of its post-Vietnam War, post-Watergate era — that remains fresh today. And while Nicholson and Fletcher received most of the praise, you will find few better ensembles than the one gathered here. In a cast that included William Redfield, a young Danny DeVito, and Christopher Lloyd in his film debut, the performances are uniformly excellent, imbuing these damaged souls with wounded humanity. Standing out are Will Sampson, a non-actor recruited to play the "deaf-mute" Chief Bromden, in a performance full of empathy and humo;, and Brad Dourif in an Oscar nominated, achingly vulnerable turn as Billy Bibbit, a troubled patient McMurphy takes under his wing. Warners presents One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in both full-frame and non-anamorphic widescreen with Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround Sound. The disc features a gorgeous transfer that perfectly preserves the muted

tones of Haskell Wexler's evocative cinematography. The disc's only special features are production notes and a memorial to co-star Scatman Crothers.

The Dance of Plants A researcher named Dorothy Retallack did some pioneering studies into the effects of different kinds of music on plants. Using strictly controlled conditions, she kept her plants in large closed cabinets where light, temperature and air were automatically regulated. She found that in under four weeks, three hours a day of acid rock, playing through a speaker in the side of the cabinet was found to stunt the growth of and damage philodendrons, squash, and corn plants. Retallack also studied groups of petunias exposed to two radio stations. One station was a semiclassical station and one was a rock station. At the end of the second week, the petunias exposed to the rock music were leaning away from the speaker and growing erratically while the petunias listening to the classical station were all leaning toward the speaker. All the plants exposed to the rock station died within a month. A third experiment was conducted with some fascinating results. Retallack used groups of beans, squash, corn, morning glory and coleus plants. These plants were divided up into groups that had the music of Led Zeppelin and Vanilla Fudge played to them; another group had contemporary avant-garde atonal music played to it; another group was kept in silence and an additional group had peaceful devotional music played to it. Retallack found that after ten days, the group exposed to Led Zeppelin and Vanilla Fudge (hard rock music for those not aware of these musical groups) were all leaning away from the speaker and after three weeks these plants were all stunted and dying. The plants exposed to the avant-garde atonal music were leaning 15 degrees away from the speaker but they had medium sized roots. The plants left in silence had the longest roots of these three groups and grew

the highest. However, the last group that had the devotional music played to it produced plants that not only grew two inches taller than the plants left in silence, but they grew toward the speaker! I think nature was making a statement here.1 Some other fascinating research was done by Dr. T. C. Singh, the head of the Department of Botany at Anamalia University in India. Dr. Singh discovered that classical music caused plants to grow twice as fast as plants not exposed to classical music. He then went a step further and found that a music instrument creating sound waves will cause the protoplasm of cells (the fluid medium inside all cells - plant, animal, human) to increase its motion. Dr. Singh found that violins produced the most movement of the protoplasm. Another discovery of Dr. Singh has far-reaching implications. When he tracked the plants that showed vigorous growth in response to the music, he found that later generations of their seeds produced plants that also showed increased growth. Think of the implications! This means that the music somehow altered the chromosomes of the plants! What could this mean for music that is harmful for the plant - or for our bodies? Some of the animal studies shed even more light on this subject.2 The Plant Experiments In 1973, a woman named Dorothy Retallack published a small book called The Sound of Music and Plants. Her book detailed experiments that she had been conducting at the Colorado Woman’s College in Denver using the school’s three Biotronic Control Chambers. Mrs. Retallack placed plants in each chamber and speakers through which she played sounds and particular styles of music. She watched the plants and

recorded their progress daily. She was astounded at what she discovered. Her first experiment was to simply play a constant tone. In the first of the three chambers, she played a steady tone continuously for eight hours. In the second, she played the tone for three hours intermittently, and in the third chamber, she played no tone at all. The plants in the first chamber, with the constant tone, died within fourteen days. The plants in the second chamber grew abundantly and were extremely healthy, even more so than the plants in the third chamber. This was a very interesting outcome, very similar to the results that were obtained from experiments performed by the Muzak Corporation in the early 1940s to determine the effect of "background music" on factory workers. When music was played continuously, the workers were more fatigued and less productive, when played for several hours only, several times a day, the workers were more productive, and more alert and attentive than when no music was played.

Dorothy Retallack and Professor Broman working with the plants used in music experiments. For her next experiment, Mrs. Retallack used two chambers (and fresh plants). She placed radios in each chamber. In one chamber, the radio was tuned to a local rock station, and in the other the radio played a station that featured soothing "middle-of-the-road" music. Only three hours of music was played in each chamber. On the fifth day, she began noticing drastic changes. In the chamber with the soothing music, the plants were growing healthily and their stems were starting to bend towards the radio! In the rock chamber, half the plants had small leaves and had grown gangly, while the others were stunted. After two weeks, the plants in the soothing-music chamber were uniform in size, lush and green, and were leaning between 15 and 20 degrees toward the radio. The plants in the rock chamber had grown extremely tall and were drooping, the blooms had faded and the stems were bending away from the radio. On the sixteenth day, all but a few plants in the rock chamber were in the last stages of dying. In the other chamber, the plants were alive, beautiful, and growing abundantly.

"Chaos, pure chaos": plants subjected to Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix didn't survive Mrs. Retallack’s next experiment was to create a tape of rock music by Jimi Hendrix, Vanilla Fudge,

and Led Zeppelin. Again, the plants turned away from the music. Thinking maybe it was the percussion in the rock music that was causing the plants to lean away from the speakers, she performed an experiment playing a song that was performed on steel drums. The plants in this experiment leaned just slightly away from the speaker; however not as extremely as did the plants in the rock chambers. When she performed the experiment again, this time with the same song played by strings, the plants bent towards the speaker. Next Mrs. Retallack tried another experiment again using the three chambers. In one chamber she played North Indian classical music performed by sitar and tabla, in another she played Bach organ music, and in the third, no music was played. The plants "liked" the North Indian classical music the best. In both the Bach and sitar chambers, the plants leaned toward the speakers, but he plants in the Indian music chamber leaned toward the speakers the most. She went on to experiment with other types of music. The plants showed no reaction at all to country and western music, similarly to those in silent chambers. However, the plants "liked" the jazz that she played them. She tried an experiment using rock in one chamber, and "modern" (dischordant) classical music of negative composers Arnold Schönberg and Anton Webern in another. The plants in the rock chamber leaned 30 to 70 degrees away from the speakers and the plants in the modern classical chamber leaned 10 to 15 degrees away. I spoke with Mrs. Retallack about her experiments a few years after her book was published, and at that time I began performing my own experiments with plants using a wood-frame and clear-plastic-covered structure that I had built in my back yard. For one month, I played threehours-a-day of music from Arnold Schönberg’s negative opera Moses and Aaron, and for another month I played three-hours-a-day of the positive music of Palestrina. The effects were clear. The plants subjected to Schönberg died. The plants that listened to Palestrina flourished. In these experiments, albeit basic and not fully scientific, we have the genesis of a theory of positive and negative music. What is it that causes the plants to thrive or die, to grow bending toward a source of sound or away from it?

MUSIC ENHANCES LEARNING

In recent years many studies have been conducted on the effects of classical music on learning. The results of these studies are interesting and varied: increased I.Q.'s, accelerated learning, greater retention of material learned, lowered blood pressure and heart beat, to name a few. Deep in the brain there is a band of white fibers connecting the right and left halves of the cerebrum called the corpus callosum. Very recently researchers have discovered that the corpus callosum increases in size when humans are exposed to quiet, classical music. This increase in size increases the communication between the two hemispheres of the brain which, in turn, increases learning efficiency. The optimum ages for the increase of the corpus callosum are from birth to ages 5 or 6, and during puberty. For a number of years I taught remedial English at the Grades 8, 9, and 10 levels. The students were not stupid, but they were disorganized and hyperactive. While I worked on their organizational skills, I also addressed their hyperactivity. First, I encouraged them to reduce their consumption of "junk" food by telling them that sugar and processed carbohydrates "dumb down" the brain; and second, I played tapes of quiet, classical music. Of course they thought the music was "dumb," but I ignored their remarks and let the music continue. The results were amazing. Ten to fifteen minutes into the class the hyperactivity reduced and learning was able to take place. A few years ago I saw a television documentary about the effects of music on plants. The experimenters set up two terrariums, each containing a variety of plants, and each connected to an audio speaker. Into one terrarium they played classical music, and into the other they played hard rock music. After a time the plants exposed to the classical music leaned toward the speaker; but, the plants exposed to hard rock music leaned away from the speaker. Are we so different from plants? Every generation has its own "fun" music and this is as it should be. However, studies show that in a learning environment classical, instrumental music, played at a low level, enhances and accelerates learning. The Cozy Classroom Collection is a selection of piano compositions, which have been performed and edited for quiet background listening, to facilitate learning. From an Animal's Perspective

I came across a very interesting magazine article in the April 4th, 1988 issue of Insight Magazine about a study done by physicist Dr. Harvey Bird from Fairleigh Dickinson University and neurobiologist Dr. Gervasia Schreckenberg from Georgian Court College in Lakewood, NJ. Dr. Bird is very interested in the effects of sound and music on our bodies. I subsequently got a chance to meet Dr. Bird and discuss his work and his theories. He and Dr. Schreckenberg had teamed up to study the effects of music on laboratory mice. They subjected one group of mice to incessant voodoo drum beats, one group to Strauss waltzes and one group was kept in silence. The experiment used music played at low volume so that volume was not a cause for any behavioral changes observed. Over the period of the experiment, they tested the different groups to see how well they could run through a maze to get to their food. This was a measure of their cognitive ability - their ability to remember the maze over time. Bird and Schreckenberg found that the group that listened to the voodoo music had a very difficult time with the maze that increased over time to the point where they were totally disoriented and unable to complete the maze. The other groups had no problem learning the maze, with an edge given to the mice listening to the waltz music. Even when the mice were given a break from the music for three weeks, the group that had previously listened to the voodoo music "still could not remember how to get to their food, while the others found it quickly with no problem," said Schreckenberg. This was pretty compelling evidence of the effect of different kinds of music on mental functioning. But the best evidence was yet to come. When the mice brains were later dissected at the end of the experiment, it was found that the mice that had been listening to the voodoo music had abnormal structural changes in their brain cells! The neurons in their brains were growing out wildly in all directions without connecting to other neurons. There was also abnormal amounts of Messenger RNA, a chemical that the brain uses for storing memories. Wow! Real physical evidence of brain damage as a result of exposure to harmful music! Finding abnormal changes to brain tissue like this proved that music can affect areas deep inside the brain, which other activities don't affect. Schreckenberg further commented, "We believe that the mice were trying to compensate for this constant bombardment of disharmonic noise. They were struggling against the chaos. If more connections among the neurons had been made, it would have been a good thing. But instead

there were no more connections, just wild growth of the neurons....Everything in life goes in a rhythm, even the life of a single cell. All the biochemical reactions are rhythmic. If that harmony is disrupted by some kind of disharmony, then it can cause detrimental effects. And, regarding the extension of the results with mice brains to human brains, Dr. Bird added, "What we are seeing here is the effects of disharmonious music on mammalian brains. And, insofar as human beings have mammalian brains, we cannot preclude the possibility that disharmony may affect human brains as well." As with the voodoo music used in Bird and Schreckenberg's study, I have seen documentaries about how people respond to this music. With the voodoo rites, the participants dance in a trance-like fervor. At the conclusion of the dancing, the participants report that they feel "clean". I would describe it as "cleaned out". They've had their energy and proper nerve functioning cleaned out. I suspect this same phenomena could occur with some other forms of tribal dancing where the rhythms are constantly syncopated (some tribal music such as that of Native Americans actually emphasizes the strong beat and is not syncopated - I would expect that Native American music might be strengthening to the body, although I've never tested it.) The concept that what we take into our bodies as stimuli affects our brains is not a new concept to neuroscientists. Their experience and experiments have shown them, particularly for children whose brains are still growing, that the stimuli to which they are exposed to shapes their brains. In addition to shaping the way the brain uses its existing neural pathways (functional change), these stimuli also cause physical alterations in neural pathways (structural change). Dr. Kenneth A. Klivington of the Salk Institute in San Diego has said, "Structure and function are inseparable. We know that environments shape brains; all sorts of experiments have demonstrated that it happens. There are some studies currently being done that show profound differences in the structure of the brain depending on what is taken in by the senses." 4 This discussion of brain damage from harmful music ties right in with what had been reported at some rock concerts. People have put eggs on the foot of the stage and the eggs were hard boiled midway through the concert. Think about what that does to our brain! This phenomena was confirmed scientifically by Dr. Earl Flosdorf and Leslie A. Chambers who found that shrill sounds projected into a protein based liquid would

coagulate the proteins (this is what happens to eggs when they are hard boiled).5 I think about this phenomena every time I hear a car going by with cement shaking bass notes blasting from the speaker system. I wonder about the passengers of that vehicle and how much of their mental potential is being scrambled each minute (or in this case hard boiled) by listening to this kind of music. It is really a shame when you think about it. A lot of the lyrics of songs that are popular in the various rock and rap genres complain about the lack of control and the lack of opportunities that so many people face in this world, particularly our youth. It is so ironic that the very music that is conveying these sentiments is part of the process of taking away their control of their lives and their opportunities for a better life and better health. Animals seem to make a choice for better health when allowed to choose between different kinds of music. One experiment that demonstrates this involved rats and their music preferences. Rats were allowed to freely move between two boxes that were connected by a passageway. In each of the boxes a speaker was playing one kind of music. Johann Sebastion Bach's music was played into one box and rock music into the other. Even though the boxes were identical in all respects except for the type of music played through the speakers, the rats spent all of their time in the "Bach box". To further verify their results, the scientists switched the music that was playing in each box. The rats then all migrated away from the rock music to the box where the Bach was playing. Doesn't it seem as if nature is trying to tell us something here? 6 Are we smarter than rats and plants when it comes to our choices of the music we listen to? Or, are we so out of touch with our bodies and our health that we are numbed to the effects of certain kinds of music on us? One possible explanation comes from my previous discussion of switching. It is likely that many people are simply experiencing some confusion in their nerve pathways as a result of the music they been barraged with. Isn't it striking that this is precisely the description of what many addictive drugs do to you? Your body ends up craving that which is destroying you. The drug causes your body to have an actual physical dependence on continuing to get the drug. Have you ever known anyone that always had to have the radio or the TV on? Are your kids like this? Are they craving that constant barrage of hyperactivity and tension? Do they feel that they need certain kinds of music (i.e. rock music) to get going with their

day? To lesser or greater degrees, many of us suffer from this syndrome because of all the sound pollution we are subjected to on a daily basis. Like I said before, try the music fast and feel the difference for yourself. See what kinds of behavioral changes you notice in your children (and your plants and pets). Body, Mind and Spirit There's all sorts of fascinating research and wisdom available about the many ways that music affects your kids (and yourself) but it can be difficult to find. * Certain kinds of music are energizing for your children's minds and can help them learn much faster, and even help them digest their food better. Other types of music actually drain energy from your children's brains and bodies and can actually affect their hormone levels (this is especially a problem with teens). * Certain frequencies of sound are beneficial to your children's bodies and are more often present in certain instruments and in works by certain composers. * There are certain kinds of music from certain composers that can help in your home with everything from household chores to soothing a crying baby, enhancing homework, creative writing, math - you name it! * Music affects cell protoplasm and even chromosomes. Consider what you are passing on to your children and their children. * Listening to music by a certain composer has been shown to temporarily increase students' IQ scores. * There is a moral component of music that is totally separate and independent of any lyrics and significantly impacts your children. * Educators and researchers are finding direct relationships between music and television habits and the mental, verbal and behavioral development of our children. If you weren't aware of these points, don't worry you're in good company. Most people have never been exposed to these concepts. Some researchers have even commented on how this subject almost appears to be a taboo subject. I hope I've given you some food for thought (or at least an appetizer). If you'd like the main course, check out the information below.

The news stories sounded like, well, music to the ears when researchers at the University of California, Irvine reported in 1993 that college students could raise their IQs by listening to a few soaring bars of a Mozart sonata. But there's a problem with the concept of classical music as sort of a Gatorade for the brain. According to two studies reported in this week's issue of the journal Nature, classical music has no ability to increase basic intelligence in adults or children. The 1993 finding set off many parents who reasoned that if classical music could enhance college students' intelligence, then babies might benefit as well -- even if they didn't start composing piano pieces by the age of 6 as Mozart had, said Kenneth Steele, associate professor of psychology at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina and the author of one of the two new studies. Suddenly compact discs with titles such as "The Mozart Effect" and "Baroque for Baby" began appearing in the nursery, he said. Former Georgia Gov. Zell Miller was so impressed by the research that, in 1998, he played "Ode to Joy" for legislators and requested 105,000 dollars to give classical-music compact discs to parents of all newborns in the state. "The Mozart effect is pretty much on the wallet of the parents who are buying the CDs," Steele said. "There's no special effect on baby." The study: Double-time Steele repeated the original study in which college students listened to Mozart's "Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major" for 10 minutes, then performed complicated visual tasks that involved cutting and folding paper. The students who listened to the sonata did no better than control groups who listened to other types of music or simply relaxed before taking the test. "The experiment is not very complicated," he said. "If there is a Mozart effect, it should have shown up." In the second study, Christopher F. Chabris, a research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, reviewed 16 previous studies involving 714 subjects that compared the IQ-boosting effects of the Mozart recording. The result: Statistically insignificant increases in the ability to complete tasks requiring spatial visualization skills and abstract reasoning, Chabris said.

"If listening to Mozart improves cognitive performance at all, it's by improving overall cognitive arousal and concentration," he said. "It shouldn't be viewed as an intellectual miracle drug." Holding the note Frances Rauscher, co-author of the original study, said that many researchers who tried to repeat the experiment failed because they measured the effect on general intelligence instead of on spatial-temporal abilities, or the ability to identify various shapes. She added that she was unfamiliar with Steele's research. But Rauscher, now assistant professor of cognitive development at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, agrees with her critics on one point: There is no evidence that playing Mozart in the nursery is going to raise an infant's IQ. The researchers who did the original study in 1993 never claimed it would. "I'm horrified -- and very surprised -- over what has happened," she said. "It's a very giant leap to think that if music has a short-term effect on college students that it will produce smarter children. When we published the study results, we didn't think anyone would care. The whole thing has really gotten out of hand." Ad libitum: Individual style Mozart won't work because there's no one way -and certainly no one right way--to increase a child's intelligence, experts say. Claire Lerner, a child-development specialist at ZERO TO THREE, a nonprofit organization devoted to providing information on childhood development, said that children react to different types of stimulation. The important thing is for parents to relax, get to know their babies and see what stimulus produces a favorable response. "The major message is there is not one right kind of stimulation. There are individual differences in children. They learn in different ways," she said. "If someone says, this is it -- whether it's Mozart or a mobile -- alarm bells should go off." THE MOZART EFFECT DOESN’T INCREASE GENERAL INTELLIGENCE! BEST WAY TO ACHIEVE LONG-TERM BENEFITS IS BY MUSIC STUDY AND MUSICMAKING The “Mozart Effect”, reported as an increase of intelligence after briefly listening to Mozart, is by

far the most well-known and sensational finding in music research in the public mind. At the same time, it is the most misunderstood. Trumpeted in the mass media as a way to increase general intelligence, it does no such thing, as shown in a detailed article in this issue of MRN. Francis Rauscher and Gordon Shaw first reported in 1993 that 10 minutes of listening to a Mozart sonata for two pianos increased the ability of college students to solve spatial-temporal problems. For example, subjects had to imagine that a single sheet of paper had been folded several times in certain ways and then various cuts made with a scissors. They had to then predict what the pattern of cut-outs would look like when the paper was unfolded. This test requires mentally keeping track of the sequence of events in space. Rauscher and Shaw specifically pointed out that the effect lasted only 10-15 minutes and worked only for spatialtemporal problems, not for other aspects of intelligence. The public’s belief of long term effects in general intelligence was fed by simplistic reports in the media combined with its tendency to believed in “cognitive bargains”, i.e., getting a big boost in mental processes without expending much effort. The Mozart Effect is more important for researchers than for any practical applications. Long term benefits from music are best achieved by intensive study and music-making. “The Mozart Effect”: A Small Part of the Big Picture Copyright © 2000 Norman M. Weinberger and the Regents of the University of California. All Rights Reserved.

Studies have shown that music learning and practice also benefit many mental and behavioral processes, including cognitive development, language learning, reading ability, creativity, motor skills, and personal and social adjustment. In contrast to these effects of continual involvement in music, merely brief exposure to some music of Mozart is thought by the public to increase intelligence. Although this “Mozart Effect” has generated a lot of excitement, it is also the most misunderstood aspect of music research. This article reviews the Mozart Effect and explains why it is only a very small part of the very large field of music research. As the Mozart Effect actually does not increase general intelligence and lasts only a few minutes, it does not provide a substitute for music study and practice. Substantial, long lasting effects require

deeper and more sustained involvement in music study and music-making. Studies have shown that music education and music-making have positive effects on many mental and behavioral factors that are themselves not part of music. We have reviewed many of the findings in previous issues of MRN. Reported benefits include the enhancement of general cognitive development (see issues of Spring, ’95; Fall, ’96), language development, reading-readiness and reading (Fall, ’94; Fall, ’95), verbal abilities (Fall, ’96), abstract conceptual thinking and reasoning (Fall, ’94, Fall, ’96), creativity and originality (Fall, ’94; Fall, ’95; Fall, ’96; Spring, ’98; Fall, ’98), memory (Fall, ’96), play improvisation (Fall, ’96), motor development and coordination (Fall, ’96), positive attitudes toward school, improved personal and social adjustment (Fall, ’95) as well as stress reduction (Fall, ’97), and increased quality of life including advanced age (Spring, ’96). [The relevant articles can be found directly at the MuSICA web site (http://www.musica.uci.edu) by going to the MRN cumulative Subject Index and selecting “Benefits of Music”.] These effects appear to result from a considerable investment of time and guided study of music. Such exciting findings show that we are now on the brink of beginning to understand the full importance of music for mental processes and behavior. In contrast to these findings, public knowledge about music research is currently dominated by the “Mozart Effect”. As widely understood in the public mind, the Mozart Effect is that a few minutes of listening to Mozart increases intelligence. This article describes the Mozart Effect, summarizes the current state of research and places it within the larger context of music research. It also suggests why the Mozart Effect commands an excessive amount of interest. We’ll begin with the last topic first. Cognitive Bargain Hunting The mass media have played a major role in starting and maintaining public excitement about the Mozart Effect. Reports have been sensationalized and oversimplified. However, the continued and even growing belief that a few minutes of Mozart improves intelligence also requires a public that is too ready to accept simplistic solutions to complex problems. A couple of examples are relevant. In 1513, Ponce de Leon “discovered” Florida, trying to find the legendary “Fountain of Youth”, a drink from which was reputed to reverse the aging process. In a 1989 movie, “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”, Harrison Ford sought the

Holy Grail; one sip from this Chalice of Jesus would confer immortality. Both stories, fact and fiction, reflect a deeply-rooted but generally unspoken human impulse, to “get something for nothing”, or in its more common form, to “get a lot for a little”. In a helpful form, this is seen in shopping as bargain hunting. Unfortunately, people also use this approach for “cognitive” bargain hunting. This is nowhere more obvious than in the public’s fascination with the Mozart Effect, for which the chance to “buy” increased intelligence at bargain prices, the cost of a CD and a bit of listening time, has proven irresistible. The Mozart Effect — Background The First Study — This story began in 1993 when Frances Rauscher, Gordon Shaw and Katherine Ky published a brief paper in the prestigious journal Nature, launching an innovative line of research. They asked whether brief exposure to certain music could increase a cognitive ability. Thirty-six college students were divided into three groups which spent ten minutes in one of three conditions: listening to (1) a piano sonata by Mozart (sonata for two pianos in D, K 448), (2) a tape of relaxation instructions or (3) silence. Immediately after, they were tested on spatial/temporal reasoning. The measurements of spatial/temporal (S/T) reasoning were obtained using subtests from a standard intelligence battery (group) of tests, the Stanford-Binet Test. The important subtest was a paper folding and cutting task (PF/C). The subject has to imagine that a single sheet of paper has been folded several times and then various cutouts are made with a scissors. The task is to correctly predict the pattern of cut-outs when the paper is unfolded. The authors found significantly higher scores for the Mozart group than for the relaxation or the silence groups. The differences translated into spatial IQ scores for the Mozart group that were 8-9 points higher than the other two groups. However, the effect was very brief; it did not last beyond 10-15 minutes.1 The authors did not claim that the effects would be limited to Mozart’s music but did think that the benefits to S/T reasoning would require complex rather than repetitive music. However no further definitions of complexity were presented. Also, the authors did not claim that the effects would be found for other aspects of intelligence, such as verbal reasoning or short-term memory, but suggested that these be tested. The findings were widely reported in the mass media. This was not the first report that music and spatial reasoning were found to be related.

Marianne Hassler and her colleagues at the University of Tubingen in Germany had previously discovered a significant relationship between spatial ability and music; students (9-24 years of age) who scored higher on tests of musical ability also scored higher on a test of spatial visualization, i.e., the ability to mentally “see” and “rotate” objects.2 Although this study had revealed a relationship, it was a correlation and not about whether music actually was the cause of better spatial abilities. The report by Rauscher, Shaw and Ky suggested that listening to music actually caused the brain to perform better in spatial reasoning, at least for a few minutes. As is often the case with public reports of scientific findings, emphasis was placed on the most “sensational” aspects of the findings, i.e., the apparent 8-9 point “boost” in IQ. Two critical and highly limiting factors were generally ignored — first, that the effects were not on general intelligence but only for a test of spatial abilities; second, that the effects lasted only a few minutes. As widely disseminated, the Mozart Effect was born as the idea that listening to Mozart increases intelligence. There was an immediate run on recordings of Mozart’s sonata for two pianos, K. 448, which are still in short supply to this day.3 The Followup Study — The next stage of this story was provided by a more extensive study by Rauscher, Shaw and Ky, published in 1995.4 In this experiment, 79 college students were tested for their S/T abilities, using the PF/C test. The experiment covered five days. On day 1 they were tested for spatial ability and then divided into three groups that had the same average spatial ability. On days 2-5 they had one of three listening experiences and then were immediately tested again. The three groups received 10 minutes of (1) Mozart’s sonata for two pianos, (2) something different every day; (minimalist music by Phillip Glass one day, a story another day and dance music a third day), or (3) silence every day. The authors obtained the Mozart Effect. The benefit was greatest for students who were the worst at the PF/C task on Day 1, before the listening treatments were started. However, the effect was found only for the first day of listening; there was no difference between the Mozart and silence groups on days 3, 4 or 5.5 Importantly, the effect was limited also to the PF/C task; the Mozart group showed no superiority on a test of short-term memory. Once again, the findings were viewed by the media as showing that listening to Mozart increased intelligence. The restriction to the S/T task and the lack of effect on memory were

generally ignored, as was the brief duration of the Mozart Effect. The Give and Take of Science — Naturally, the Mozart Effect reports also stirred interest in the scientific community. The first attempt to replicate the Effect, published in 1994 by Stough and colleagues in New Zealand, failed to find an effect. However they used a different test than did Rauscher and colleagues.6 This was quickly followed by two more failures to find the Mozart Effect.7 However, both of these studies also used tests that were different from those used by Rauscher and colleagues, who have argued that the tests used don’t actually measure S/T abilities. 8 Steele and colleagues also failed to find a Mozart Effect but tested short-term memory rather than S/T processes.9 As Rauscher et al had specifically found no effect on memory in their 1995 paper, this failure was not surprising.10 Meanwhile, the Mozart Effect was found by some other laboratories. In 1996, Rideout and Laubach compared the effects of a relaxation tape to the effects of listening to the Mozart sonata and reported better performance for the Mozart group on the PF/C task. The following year, Rideout and Taylor obtained the Mozart Effect in a similar study.11 In neither case were the effects very large but they did not occur by chance, suggesting a reliable, if small, positive effect. Rideout, Dougherty and Wernert not only replicated the Mozart Effect, comparing the sonata to a relaxation tape, they extended it to a composition by the contemporary composer Yanni.12 The latter’s music, which is certainly regarded as extremely different from that of Mozart, was selected by a musician to be similar to the Mozart sonata in “tempo, structure, melodic and harmonic consonances, and predictability”. This finding emphasizes the need to have systematic studies to discover the special features of music that may be effective. In 1997, Wilson and Brown did find the Mozart Effect using maze problems to test spatial abilities, compared to relaxation and silence treatments. However, they also found that the relaxation tape produced more maze solutions than the silence condition.13 Very Recent Developments — The year 1999 saw several publications that have been critical of the Mozart Effect. Steele and colleagues attempted a faithful replication of the Rauscher et al studies, using the PF/C task. They failed to find the Effect in two experiments.14 A combined report of similar studies from three universities (Steele et al) also failed to obtain the Effect, using the PF/C task.15 Chabris performed a quantitative analysis of all Mozart studies and concluded there was no reliable Mozart Effect.16 However, Rauscher argued, once again, that many of the

studies used in Chabris’ analysis used tasks that do not measure S/T abilities.17 There still exists some dispute concerning which tests are best at measuring these abilities but Rauscher and Shaw had previously argued that replicated positive Mozart Effect findings used the same or highly similar tasks whereas negative findings used different tests (see footnote # 8). However, negative reports by Steele and colleagues did use the same PF/C task as Rauscher, Shaw and Key (see footnotes 14 and 15). In trying to reconcile positive and negative results from studies all of which used the same PF/C task, it becomes obvious that apparently small differences between experiments may have large effects. Thus, although Steele and associates used the same PF/C task, examination of their data shows that their subjects were much better at the task than the subjects of Rauscher et al before the Mozart music was played. In fact, their baseline performance was about as good as the improved performance reported by Rauscher. Therefore, the Steele studies may have failed to find an effect because their subjects were already doing as well as they could do with this task. This possibility needs to be studied directly.18 A recent experiment did replicate the Mozart Effect, but with an interesting twist. Nantais and Schellenberg first replicated the Mozart Effect, both with the Mozart sonata and also a piano piece by Schubert, compared to a condition of silence. Next, they ran an experiment comparing Mozart or Schubert to listening to a story. The Mozart Effect was found only for those students who preferred Mozart to the story. The authors argue that the Mozart Effect, while real, is caused when any preferred experience is paired with a less preferred experience. In short, they argue that the Mozart Effect is caused by a more pleasant mood.19 This is highly interesting but it leaves one puzzled about why the Effect should show up, when it does, on a spatial-temporal task and not on other tasks, for which mood benefits might be expected to help as well. Summary — Within the scientific community there is no agreement about whether or not the Mozart Effect is genuine. Moreover, the effective features of music that has yielded the Effect are not understood, so systematic analyses of musical characteristics are needed. It is now obvious that an apparently simple novel question, i.e., whether being exposed briefly to certain music can boost a cognitive ability, is not in fact such a simple question. Meanwhile, as the scientific controversy continues, the Mozart Effect has been extended to clinical applications. Thus, Johnson et al reported an improvement in spatialtemporal reasoning in a case of Alzheimer’s

disease.20 Furthermore, the Mozart sonata apparently can reduce brain seizures.21 It is important to distinguish the Mozart Effect discussed above from other studies of the effects of music, including Mozart, on behavior, both in children and adults.22 Many people believe that the Mozart Effect described here applies to children but such studies have never been done with young children. Also, the effects of long term listening to music and long term involvement in music lessons are quite another matter from the Mozart Effect reviewed here. In any event, the larger context and implications of the Mozart Effect have been mainly ignored within the scientific community and grossly misrepresented and distorted within the public domain. It is now time see how the Mozart Effect fits into the “big picture”. The Mozart Effect in the Big Picture of Music and Behavior Setting aside current controversies, which will eventually be resolved, let us assume that the Mozart Effect is genuine and that 10 minutes of exposure to Mozart (and some other music) does increase the ability to perform S/T tasks for a period of 10-15 minutes. How important is this finding? The importance of a finding depends on the question being asked. If the question is whether or not brief exposure to certain music can be used to understand aspects of cognition and brain function by linking music listening to S/T reasoning, then the answer may be positive; The Mozart Effect could provide an important scientific tool in this research. However, if the question is whether or not brief exposure to certain music can produce long term improvements in intelligence, either limited to spatial/temporal abilities or to more general intelligence, then the answer is no. As currently understood, the most optimistic views of the Mozart Effect are that it is very brief and also largely restricted to certain S/T tasks. Thus, its practical implications seem minimal. Whether or not long term listening to music would have long term effects remains to be studied. In any event, the field of music research is very extensive and has spanned the entire Twentieth Century. So let’s consider the Mozart Effect within the large domain of music research. The Table below shows how two factors are related: the “Duration of Some Effects of Music on Cognition and Behavior” and the “Amount of Effort, Involvement” with music. This Table is not intended to be comprehensive, only illustrative.

Amount of Effort, Involvement

Passive Listening for 10 minutes Educated Listening in music classes for one or more school years

Instrumental or vocal lessons and regular practice for several years

Duration of Some Effects of Music on Cognition and Behavior Minutes

Years

“Mozart Effect” (increases ST reasoning)

none

none

Understanding and appreciating musical forms, genres, meanings and performances in historical, social and cultural context

none

Reading musical notation, integrating sight, sound, touch and movements to perform and express self musically, solo, in cooperative group or both

The Mozart Effect requires only 10 minutes of exposure (not necessarily even attentive listening) to music. This is certainly at the most minimal levels of Involvement and Effort with music. As for Duration of Effect, it is only a few minutes. This is certainly at the briefest of durations. So the Mozart Effect is placed in the upper left box of the table. Are there any known long lasting effects, that is years, of exposure to 10 minutes of music? Not to the best of my knowledge — so the upper right box shows “none”.

all sound so different and yet all be so sublime? Does the educated listener “hear more” in a composition than a naive listener? Certainly. Finally, look at the duration of effects of instrumental and vocal instruction and practice. These activities within music itself require even more effort over a longer period of time than does learning about music. And commensurately, the effects last years, even a lifetime. The issue here is not how well one sings or performs over ten, twenty or fifty years, but that one does them at all.

What about the effects of educated listening or music lessons? Do these last only a few minutes? Obviously not, hence “none” summarizes these non-existent states of affairs. Now consider the other parts of the Table that concern effects that last over years. The examples given, while not named as formal “effects” are nonetheless very well-established. Educated listening and study require a lot of effort, so much more than ten minutes of exposure to music that it might as well be infinitely more. How long do the effects of education about music last? Certainly years. It is not the remembering of a particular fact from music class that is important — do you really remember Brahm’s birthdate, I don’t — but rather the ability to hear and think about music in many ways at different levels of understanding. How can the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Duke Ellington and John Lennon

Lessons for the Future This is not the occasion to discuss how and why hard work and concentrated effort in music over months and years produce long lasting changes in our brains, but they do. They literally change us, for we are our brains. But it is the time to revisit Ponce de Leon, the “immortality sip” from the Holy Grail and other manifestations of our desire to get something for nothing, i.e., increased intelligence from brief exposure to music. Given all else we know about the realities of life, why would anyone believe in this mental “get rich quick” scheme? It can’t be because of Rauscher,

Shaw and others who have reported positive Mozart Effect findings, because none of them claimed a meaningful (i.e., long lasting) effect on intelligence.23 Well, as P.T. Barnum said “There’s a sucker born every minute”. Yes, folks will continue to seek not only monetary bargains but also the Easy Street to cognitive benefits. But the

Mozart Effect “bus” doesn’t go there. I don’t agree with P.T. Barnum. While a potential sucker is born with every human birth, our “sucker potential” doesn’t have to become real because a rational human being also comes with every birth. An informed public can certainly exercise judgement and caution.

FUNCTIONALISM

Functionalism is the oldest, and still the dominant, theoretical perspective in sociology and many other social sciences. This perspective is built upon twin emphases: application of the scientific method to the objective social world and use of an analogy between the individual organism and society. The emphasis on scientific method leads to the assertion that one can study the social world in the same ways as one studies the physical world. Thus, Functionalists see the social world as "objectively real," as observable with such techniques as social surveys and interviews. Furthermore, their positivistic view of social science assumes that study of the social world can be value-free, in that the investigator's values will not necessarily interfere with the disinterested search for social laws governing the behavior of social systems. Many of these ideas go back to Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), the great French sociologist whose writings form the basis for functionalist theory (see Durkheim 1915, 1964); Durkheim was himself one of the first sociologists to make use of scientific and statistical techniques in sociological research (1951). The second emphasis, on the organic unity of society, leads functionalists to speculate about needs which must be met for a social system to exist, as well as the ways in which social institutions satisfy those needs. A functionalist might argue, for instance, that every society will have a religion, because religious institutions have certain functions which contribute to the survival of the social system as a whole, just as the organs of the body have functions which are necessary for the body's survival. This analogy between society and an organism focuses attention on the homeostatic nature of social systems: social systems work to maintain equilibrium and to return to it after external shocks disturb the balance among social institutions. Such social equilibrium is

achieved, most importantly, through the socialization of members of the society into the basic values and norms of that society, so that consensus is reached. Where socialization is insufficient for some reason to create conformity to culturally appropriate roles and socially supported norms, various social control mechanisms exist to restore conformity or to segregate the nonconforming individuals from the rest of society. These social control mechanisms range from sanctions imposed informally-sneering and gossip, for example--to the activities of certain formal organizations, like schools, prisons, and mental institutions. You might notice some similarities between the language used by functionalists and the jargon of "systems theorists" in computer science or biology. Society is viewed as a system of interrelated parts, a change in any part affecting all the others. Within the boundaries of the system, feedback loops and exchanges among the parts ordinarily lead to homeostasis. Most changes are the result of natural growth or of evolution, but other changes occur when outside forces impinge upon the system. A thoroughgoing functionalist, such as Talcott Parsons, the best-known American sociologist of the 1950s and 60s, conceptualizes society as a collection of systems within systems: the personality system within the small-group system within the community system within society (Parsons 1951). Parsons (1971) even viewed the whole world as a system of societies. Functionalist analyses often focus on the individual, usually with the intent to show how individual behavior is molded by broader social forces. Functionalists tend to talk about individual actors as decision-makers, although some critics have suggested that functionalist theorists are, in effect, treating individuals either as puppets, whose decisions are a predictable result of their location in the social structure and of the norms and expectations they have internalized, or sometimes as virtual prisoners of the explicit social control techniques society imposes. In any case, functionalists have tended to be less concerned with the ways in which individuals can

control their own destiny than with the ways in which the limits imposed by society make individual behavior scientifically predictable. Robert Merton, another prominent functionalist, has proposed a number of important distinctions to avoid potential weaknesses and clarify ambiguities in the basic perspective (see Merton 1968). First, he distinguishes between manifest and latent functions: respectively, those which are recognized and intended by actors in the social system and hence may represent motives for their actions, and those which are unrecognized and, thus, unintended by the actors. Second, he distinguishes between consequences which are positively functional for a society, those which are dysfunctional for the society, and those which are neither. Third, he distinguishes between levels of society, that is, the specific social units for which regularized patterns of behavior are functional or dysfunctional. Finally, he concedes that the particular social structures which satisfy functional needs of society are not indispensable, but that structural alternatives may exist which can also satisfy the same functional needs. Functionalist theories have very often been criticized as teleological, that is, reversing the usual order of cause and effect by explaining things in terms of what happens afterward, not what went before. A strict functionalist might explain certain religious practices, for instance, as being functional by contributing to a society's survival; however, such religious traditions will usually have been firmly established long before the question is finally settled of whether the society as a whole will actually survive. Bowing to this kind of criticism of the basic logic of functionalist theory, most current sociologists have stopped using any explicitly functionalistic explanations of social phenomena, and the extreme version of functionalism expounded by Talcott Parsons has gone out of fashion. Nevertheless, many sociologists continue to expect that by careful, objective scrutiny of social phenomena they will eventually be able to discover the general laws of social behavior, and this hope still serves as the motivation for a great deal of sociological thinking and research. CONFLICT THEORY The several social theories that emphasize social conflict have roots in the ideas of Karl Marx (1818-1883), the great German theorist and political activist. The Marxist, conflict approach emphasizes a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical method of analysis, a critical stance toward existing social arrangements, and a political program of revolution or, at least, reform.

The materialist view of history starts from the premise that the most important determinant of social life is the work people are doing, especially work that results in provision of the basic necessities of life, food, clothing and shelter. Marx thought that the way the work is socially organized and the technology used in production will have a strong impact on every other aspect of society. He maintained that everything of value in society results from human labor. Thus, Marx saw working men and women as engaged in making society, in creating the conditions for their own existence. Marx summarized the key elements of this materialist view of history as follows: In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness (Marx 1971:20).

Marx divided history into several stages, conforming to broad patterns in the economic structure of society. The most important stages for Marx's argument were feudalism, capitalism, and socialism. The bulk of Marx's writing is concerned with applying the materialist model of society to capitalism, the stage of economic and social development that Marx saw as dominant in 19th century Europe. For Marx, the central institution of capitalist society is private property, the system by which capital (that is, money, machines, tools, factories, and other material objects used in production) is controlled by a small minority of the population. This arrangement leads to two opposed classes, the owners of capital (called the bourgeoisie) and the workers (called the proletariat), whose only property is their own labor time, which they have to sell to the capitalists.

Owners are seen as making profits by paying workers less than their work is worth and, thus, exploiting them. (In Marxist terminology, material

forces of production or means of production include capital, land, and labor, whereas social relations of production refers to the division of labor and implied class relationships.)

Economic exploitation leads directly to political oppression, as owners make use of their economic power to gain control of the state and turn it into a servant of bourgeois economic interests. Police power, for instance, is used to enforce property rights and guarantee unfair contracts between capitalist and worker. Oppression also takes more subtle forms: religion serves capitalist interests by pacifying the population; intellectuals, paid directly or indirectly by capitalists, spend their careers justifying and rationalizing the existing social and economic arrangements. In sum, the economic structure of society molds the superstructure, including ideas (e.g., morality, ideologies, art, and literature) and the social institutions that support the class structure of society (e.g., the state, the educational system, the family, and religious institutions). Because the dominant or ruling class (the bourgeoisie) controls the social relations of production, the dominant ideology in capitalist society is that of the ruling class. Ideology and social institutions, in turn, serve to reproduce and perpetuate the economic class structure. Thus, Marx viewed the exploitative economic arrangements of capitalism as the real foundation upon which the superstructure of social, political, and intellectual consciousness is built. (Figure 1 depicts this model of historical materialism.) Marx's view of history might seem completely cynical or pessimistic, were it not for the possibilities of change revealed by his method of dialectical analysis. (The Marxist dialectical method, based on Hegel's earlier idealistic dialectic, focuses attention on how an existing social arrangement, or thesis, generates its social opposite, or antithesis, and on how a qualitatively different social form, or synthesis, emerges from the resulting struggle.) Marx was an optimist. He believed that any stage of history based on exploitative economic arrangements generated within itself the seeds of its own destruction. For instance, feudalism, in which land owners exploited the peasantry, gave rise to a class of town-dwelling merchants, whose dedication to making profits eventually led to the bourgeois revolution and the modern capitalist era. Similarly, the class relations of capitalism will lead inevitably to the next stage, socialism. The class relations of capitalism embody a contradiction: capitalists need workers, and vice versa, but the economic interests of the two groups are fundamentally at odds. Such

contradictions mean inherent conflict and instability, the class struggle. Adding to the instability of the capitalist system are the inescapable needs for ever-wider markets and ever-greater investments in capital to maintain the profits of capitalists. Marx expected that the resulting economic cycles of expansion and contraction, together with tensions that will build as the working class gains greater understanding of its exploited position (and thus attains class consciousness), will eventually culminate in a socialist revolution.

Despite this sense of the unalterable logic of history, Marxists see the need for social criticism and for political activity to speed the arrival of socialism, which, not being based on private property, is not expected to involve as many contradictions and conflicts as capitalism. Marxists believe that social theory and political practice are dialectically intertwined, with theory enhanced by political involvement and with political practice necessarily guided by theory. Intellectuals ought, therefore, to engage in praxis, to combine political criticism and political activity. Theory itself is seen as necessarily critical and value-laden, since the prevailing social relations are based upon alienating and dehumanizing exploitation of the labor of the working classes.

Marx's ideas have been applied and reinterpreted by scholars for over a hundred years, starting with Marx's close friend and collaborator, Friedrich Engels (1825-95), who supported Marx and his family for many years from the profits of the textile factories founded by Engels' father, while Marx shut himself away in the library of the British Museum. Later, Vladimir I. Lenin (18701924), leader of the Russian revolution, made several influential contributions to Marxist theory. In recent years Marxist theory has taken a great variety of forms, notably the world-systems theory proposed by Immanuel Wallerstein (1974, 1980) and the comparative theory of revolutions put forward by Theda Skocpol (1980). Marxist ideas have also served as a starting point for many of the modern feminist theorists. Despite these applications, Marxism of any variety is still a minority position among American sociologists.

SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM Symbolic interactionism, or interactionism for short, is one of the major theoretical perspectives in sociology. This perspective has a long intellectual history, beginning with the German

sociologist and economist, Max Weber (18641920) and the American philosopher, George H. Mead (1863-1931), both of whom emphasized the subjective meaning of human behavior, the social process, and pragmatism. Although there are a number of versions of interactionist thought, some deriving from phenomenological writings by philosophers, the following description offers a simplified amalgamation of these ideas, concentrating on points of convergence. Herbert Blumer, who studied with Mead at the University of Chicago, is responsible for coining the term, "symbolic interactionism," as well as for formulating the most prominent version of the theory (Blumer 1969). Interactionists focus on the subjective aspects of social life, rather than on objective, macrostructural aspects of social systems. One reason for this focus is that interactionists base their theoretical perspective on their image of humans, rather than on their image of society (as the functionalists do). For interactionists, humans are pragmatic actors who continually must adjust their behavior to the actions of other actors. We can adjust to these actions only because we are able to interpret them, i.e., to denote them symbolically and treat the actions and those who perform them as symbolic objects. This process of adjustment is aided by our ability to imaginatively rehearse alternative lines of action before we act. The process is further aided by our ability to think about and to react to our own actions and even our selves as symbolic objects. Thus, the interactionist theorist sees humans as active, creative participants who construct their social world, not as passive, conforming objects of socialization. For the interactionist, society consists of organized and patterned interactions among individuals. Thus, research by interactionists focuses on easily observable face-to-face interactions rather than on macro-level structural relationships involving social institutions. Furthermore, this focus on interaction and on the meaning of events to the participants in those events (the definition of the situation) shifts the attention of interactionists away from stable norms and values toward more changeable, continually readjusting social processes. Whereas for functionalists socialization creates stability in the social system, for interactionists negotiation among members of society creates temporary, socially constructed relations which remain in constant flux, despite relative stability in the basic framework governing those relations. These emphases on symbols, negotiated reality, and the social construction of society lead to an interest in the roles people play. Erving Goffman

(1958), a prominent social theorist in this tradition, discusses roles dramaturgically, using an analogy to the theater, with human social behavior seen as more or less well scripted and with humans as role-taking actors. Role-taking is a key mechanism of interaction, for it permits us to take the other's perspective, to see what our actions might mean to the other actors with whom we interact. At other times, interactionists emphasize the improvisational quality of roles, with human social behavior seen as poorly scripted and with humans as role-making improvisers. Role-making, too, is a key mechanism of interaction, for all situations and roles are inherently ambiguous, thus requiring us to create those situations and roles to some extent before we can act. Ethnomethodology, an offshoot of symbolic interactionism, raises the question of how people who are interacting with each other can create the illusion of a shared social order even when they don't understand each other fully and in fact have different points of view. Harold Garfinkel, a pioneer in these investigations, demonstrated the problem by sending his students out to perform "experiments in trust," called breaching experiments, in which they brought ordinary conversations to an abrupt halt by refusing to take for granted that they knew what the other person was saying, and so demanded explanations and then explanations of the explanations (Garfinkel 1967). More recently, ethnomethodologist researchers have performed minutely detailed analyses of ordinary conversations in order to reveal the methods by which turn-taking and other conversational maneuvers are managed. Interactionists tend to study social interaction through participant observation, rather than surveys and interviews. They argue that close contact and immersion in the everyday lives of the participants is necessary for understanding the meaning of actions, the definition of the situation itself, and the process by which actors construct the situation through their interaction. Given this close contact, interactionists could hardly remain free of value commitments, and, in fact, interactionists make explicit use of their values in choosing what to study but strive to be objective in the conduct of their research. Symbolic interactionists are often criticized by other sociologists for being overly impressionistic in their research methods and somewhat unsystematic in their theories. These objections, combined with the fairly narrow focus of interactionist research on small-group interactions and other social psychological issues, have relegated the interactionist camp to a

minority position among sociologists, although a fairly substantial minority. PHENOMENOLOGY, ETHNOMETHODOLOGY, SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION THEORY AND FEMINIST STANDPOINT THEORY Yet another approach to sociological theory which has been gaining in popularity is Phenomenology. The approach is based on the ideas of German philosopher Edmund Husserl, who insisted that the phenomena we encounter in sensory perceptions are the ultimate source of all knowledge His perspective was brought to the United States by sociologist Alfred Schutz and then was developed further by Harold Garfinkel, whose work on Ethnomethodology was described in the section on Symbolic Interactionism above. Another important development in phenomenological thinking can be found in the works of Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, whose landmark book, The Social Construction of Reality (1966), has been widely influential, especially among contemporary feminists. Prominent theorist Dorothy Smith draws heavily on Social Construction Theory, and also the ideas of Garfinkel and others, in her presentation of Feminist Standpoint Theory, arguing that sociological theory as constructed by men gives a distorted picture of women's experiences, and that any theory which ignores the perspectives of women (and of other excluded groups) is necessarily incomplete.

Social exchange theory From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Social exchange theory is a social psychological and sociological perspective that explains social change and stability as a process of negotiated exchanges between parties. Social exchange theory posits that all human relationships are formed by the use of a subjective cost-benefit analysis and the comparison of alternatives. For example, when a person perceives the costs of a relationship as outweighing the perceived benefits, then the theory predicts that the person will choose to leave the relationship. The theory has roots in economics, psychology and sociology. For social exchange theorists, when the costs and benefits are equal in a relationship, then that relationship is defined as equitable. The notion of equity is a core part of social exchange theory. Social exchange theory is tied to rational choice theory and on the other hand to structuralism, and features many of their main assumptions.