PART I

Introduction

1

Sociology and Social Science

Jacksonn/aTobyn/an/an/an/a

Undermining the Student’s Faith in the Validity of Personal Experience¹

After listening to me talk for a half-hour on research in the field of child socialization, a freshman raised his hand to comment, "In all of my eighteen years, I never came across any of those things you were talking about." The class laughed, but I found that other students are also unwilling to believe anything that they cannot confirm by their own experience. It does no good to point out that they get to meet in a lifetime only an insignificant proportion of the human race and that, moreover, a white Protestant New Yorker has little chance of knowing Southern Negroes, European priests, or even American farmers. Personal experience is so convincing that they discourse with assurance on topics about which I dare to make only the most tentative observations. At first I was non-plussed. Then I got an idea. If I could shake their confidence in the validity of personal experience, perhaps they would prefer the cautious, pedestrian conclusions of social science.

My program of subversion includes the following illustration of the limitations of "experience": I ask the class whether anyone has noticed, in traveling by bus or streetcar, that there are more public conveyances going by in the wrong direction. A few students agree that this is so. "You mean that, no matter which way you wish to go, more buses come by going in the opposite direction?" The class begins to mumble that you see the same number in both directions, that it only seems there are more buses coming the other way. The handful of students who spoke up first feel trapped and hasten to disavow their original position.

"No, it is not an illusion," I assure them, "you actually have observed more buses going in the wrong direction!" No matter which direction you want to go in? How can that be? Disbelief is writ large on their faces. "Suppose you want to travel east. A bus comes heading west. Do you take it?" Of course not, they snort. "You wait five minutes more, and another bus comes heading west. Do you take it?" No. "How many buses do you see heading west that day?" It depends on how long it takes for my bus to come. "As many as five?" Possibly. "How many do you see heading east?" They begin to catch on. Only one because, as soon as a bus comes going in my direction, I take it!

"Over the years you can accumulate quite a bit of experience testifying that public transportation companies are engaged in a conspiracy to frustrate your travel plans. Of course, it is neither the bus company nor a malevolent deity. You observe the comings and goings of buses while waiting for one, and this biases your conclusions. When buses go by in the wrong direction, you may fume, curse the bus company, or spend your time counting them. But no matter how many there are, you do not board any of them. Let one bus come on your side of the street, and you get on. This is your mistake. If you want to prove to yourself that paranoid conclusions are unjustified, you have to restrain the impulse to get someplace. Station yourself at the bus stop at 6 a.m. and stay there until sunset, counting the buses as they go by in both directions. This is the only scientific way to mobilize the testimony of experience on this problem."

So far, none of my students has been scientist enough to accept my challenge.

¹ From , 1955, 20:717–718. By permission.