Making Sense of Senseless Behavior

Making Sense of Senseless Behavior

Procedures

The first step for a student new to Psychology is to recognize that all forms of human behavior, including language, are natural phenomena. Therefore, they are within the domain of natural events that follow lawful patterns of cause and effect relationships. The whole search for meaning, the attempt to make sense of the apparently “senseless” and the search for causes, stems from our assumptions that there is causal determinacy.

1. Distribute the eight passages to eight different students. Give each member and opportunity to read over the passage.

2. Distribute a reaction sheet to each group member.

3. Explain to the students that they will hear eight samples of verbal behavior. They should ignore the different voices and expressive styles and focus on the content of what is said to see if they can identify what they are hearing. They are to note who they believe made the statement; do this on the reaction sheet under Round One.

4. In correct numerical order, have the selected students read each of the eight statements. Allow about ten seconds between them.

5. Organize students into groups to discuss their responses. Ask if group members had similar ideas? Why/why not?

6. Next, tell the students that modern poets or psychotics made the eight statements. A psychotic is an individual who is out of touch with reality, usually suffering from a serious mental condition. Tell them that the statements will be read again. This time they are to note whether a poet or psychotic made the statements.

7. Have students read the statements again.

8. Allow a few minutes for students to discuss and compare their responses. Then read the correct responses.

I. psychotic

II. poet (Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The Leaden Echo”)

III. psychotic

IV. poet (Gertrude Stein, “If I Told Him: A Completed Picture of Picasso”)

V. psychotic

VI. poet (E.E. Cummings, “#16)

VII. psychotic

VIII. poet (Gertrude Stein, “If I Told Him: A Completed Picture of Picasso”)

9. Tabulate data (number of students in group with correct and incorrect responses to each of the statements).

10. Discuss with students what they have learned about many of the reoccurring questions of psychology.

Statements

1. “A person once thought of, once said, wants to be admired, to be thought of as once said to be shown and admired, it if happens when and when to think of the individual, to think, but only as a guess on someone else’s part. If it happened to be, it was supposed to have been done by another person that to ever have done such as foolish thing then is ever not to having. It must slip away into the imaginary when it takes, and then relieves it of all its, evidently a laugh is enough although it shouldn’t be done in a way make it difficult for a person why it is or isn’t being done. If it is to show a person, why is it ridiculous?”

2. “No, there’s none, there’s none, o no there’s none, nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair, do what you may do, what, do what you may, and wisdom is early to despair: be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done to keep at bay age and age’s evils, hoar hair, ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, deaths worst, winding sheets, tombs and worms and tumbling to decay; so be beginning, be beginning to despair.”

3. “takes less place. Cat didn’t know what Mouse did and Mouse didn’t know what Cat did. Cat represented more on the suspicious side than the mouse. Dumbo was a good guy, He saw what the cat did, put himself with the cat so people wouldn’t look at them as comedians. Cat and Dumbo are one and alike, but Cat didn’t know what Dumbo did and neither did the mouse. Everyone should have a good laugh. Don’t cry over it. Don’t tell anyone – they will tell someone. Appreciate it without criticism. A word like milk shouldn’t be mentioned.”

4. “So to beseech you as full as for it. Exactly or as kings. Shutters shut an open so do queens. Shutters shut and shutters and so shutters shut and shutters and so and so shutters and so shutters shut and so shutters shut and shutters and. So and so shutters shut and so and also. And also and so and so and also. Exact resemblance to exact resemblance the exact resemblance as exact as a resemblance, exactly as resembling, exactly resembling, exactly in resemblance exactly a resemblance, exactly and resemblance. For this is so. Because. Now actively repeat at all…”

5. “Leaves have to be thought of too. If no leaves, no stone. If leaf didn’t have no place, then stone shouldn’t have no place. If tree had no place, there wouldn’t be any leave. “Man was very wise and went more ahead, to his own satisfaction proved to where it takes to destination, also informing it before ever having it. Imagine, people do wonderful things without ever knowing it. Gratitude becomes more than itself to prove to one’s capabilities to have to oneself without any doubt or undoing in the mind. Something, then again, nothing. If it were, it would be more approved to be than not to be.”

6. “when that hugs stopping the earth than silent is/more silent than more than much more is or/total sun oceaning that any this/tear jumping from each most least eye of star/and without was if minus and shall be/immeasurable happenless unnow/huts more than open could that every tree/or than all life more death begins to grow”/

7. “That refers to something that has nothing that could become nothing that someone has that is being done by someone else rather than not. If it does it then does it well, it only takes itself to a little. They say to do a little to do a little more if a thing is accomplished. Once it is done, there should be no questions as to why it has been done. Something may have been or not been…why…no one knows except maybe it had been. Whereas in a way, no one understands to contradict a person. Would have been, should have been…when it is achieved, it is given to the world to know for one purpose, and that purpose is simply…much of one knows of the object.”

8. “If I told him would he like it? Would he like it if I told him. Would he like it would Napoleon would Napoleon would would he like it. If Napoleon if I told hime if I told him if Napoleon. Would he like it if I told him if I told him if Napoleon. Would he like it if Napoleon if Napoleon if I told him. If I told him if Napoleon if Napoleon if I told him. If I told him would he like it would he like it if I told him. Not now. And now.”

Making Sense of Senseless Behavior

Response Sheet

Round One

I. ______

II. ______

III. ______

IV. ______

V. ______

VI. ______

VII. ______

VIII. ______

Round Two