Oh, the power of being at the head of the table...

I sat at the head of the large conference table today in Seminar in College Teaching. I was slightly late for class and someone had taken my usual spot at the side closest to the door. But, the new position seemed to embolden me, such that I challenged the instructor a few times during the 3 hour long class. The instructor has this tendency to make bold, blanket statements to incite controvercy. So he made the statement that he hates Social Psychology, whereupon which I practically pounce on him, "Well, I LIKE Social Psychology!" (I just happen to teach Social Psychology, so I may have been unconsciously taking this statement personally.) He qualifies his statment, "Social Psychology is based on research that is artificially created in the lab and therefore, does not represent true social behavior." So I state, "I disagree, field studies have been conducted that are closer to assessing natural social behavior." Then he speaks some blasphemy about the Stanford Prison Studies and how that was a field study that still had to be conducted with close controls, and thus, could only speak to behavior that fit within the constriants of the controls. So I shot back with, "Yes, generalizability is a problem with Social Psychology, but that does not justify completely denigrating the whole field." Then he changed the subject.

I think I scared him and other people in the room. I saw the look in one girl's eyes...just like how a deer's eyes look when they are caught by the headlights of an oncoming car. From then on, I made continued references to Social Psychology. When he said he hated counseling, too, I said to the counseling person, "Now he's picking on you guys." (I just may have been expressing my taking-it-personally perspective there.)

When class was over, he came over to me and said that he didn't really mean that he hated Social Psychology, he just read an article about the generalizability issue. I mentioned that I'd be intersted in reading the article. I thought I was being nonchalant about the whole thing, but he kept trying to reassure me (or perhaps himself???) that nothing was meant by it, etc, etc. Now I really thought I must have scared him. I just said that it was no big deal, I had just decided to fight back for once. He said, "Great! I just try to push people enough to get them to argue their point of view."

You know, I have actually gotten to really like this professor over the course of the semester. He keeps his political ideology out of the classroom, and he's always willing to argue the unpopular, underdog side. But, I think I've learned a very good lesson today: Don't sit at the head of the table (it has mystical ego-inflationary powers).