How American Culture Looks to Outsiders

While watching the video clip of Hugh Laurie singing his "America" song, I wasn't surprised or enlightened much by what I was seeing. Having lived overseas and having travelled quite a bit, I think that I am aware of other countries' viewpoints of America's ego.

I think that different countries have different viewpoints about America, which is reflective of those countries' own culture. For example, I believe that the way that Japanese people view Americans is very different from how British people view Americans.

After living in Japan and speaking to Japanese people on this same topic, I learned that when Japanese people picture Americans, they automatically think of rudeness and pushiness but not necessarily of a lack of education or ignorance. Japanese culture involves so much subtlety and courtesy that when they think of Americans, it makes sense that they would think of us as rude and pushy in comparison.

On the other hand, I think that when British people picture Americans, they think of ignorant, uneducated people who think that they are better than the rest of the world. British people, and other Europeans also, pride themselves on knowing what is going on around the world, economically and otherwise, so are surprised by Americans' self-centered attitude that they consider ignorant. This was shown in the video by the words that Hugh Laurie was singing. These viewpoints that British people have have also been exacerbated by the US government's foreign policy.

Stanford Prison Experiment

I believe that the researchers did not initially try to conduct an unethical experiment with the information that they had at the beginning of the experiment, but that it did turn out to be unethical.

In the video of the interview of one of the prisoners, he was clearly able to differentiate between the experiment and real life, now that the experiment was over, but during the experiment, he had a hard time identifying with himself and instead became the character that he was playing. Also, he seemed to have a certain opinion of the prison guard that did not go away after the experiment was over. I think that these things show that he did suffer from psychological harm, which is one indicator of an unethical experiment.

I think that the researchers were justified in calling off the experiment early and that this was the best course of action that they could have followed. I think that if they had allowed the experiment to continue, the abuse of prisoners most likely would have progressed, possibly to the extent that it did at Abu Ghraib.

Week One Blog Entry: Introduction

Hi fellow classmates!
I am a military spouse and just recently moved to Virginia. My husband and I lived in Okinawa, Japan for the past four years, and we loved it there. It was much warmer there, and I'm still trying to get used to the cold weather here!

I have a bachelor's degree from Texas A&M University in Nutritional Sciences. I have had a hard time finding a job in my field since being back in the states, so I decided to go back to school to be a nurse. I am planning on applying to a few different accelerated BSN/RN programs, but first, I have to take some prerequisites that I didn't need for my nutrition degree. Sociology happens to be one of those prereqs. Hopefully, after I earn my nursing degree, it will be easier for me to find a job wherever we end up moving.

I am a runner and triathlete, and I have completed 11 marathons and 3 Ironman triathlons, among other, shorter-distance races. Currently, my training is pretty light, because I am four months pregnant, but I am still running every day. Also, my seven-month old Great Dane keeps me pretty active!

I'm looking forward to meeting you all, and to learning together in this class!