"Don't!" Note Card Workshop

"While Mischel was beginning to dismantle the methods of his field, the 

Harvard psychology department was in tumult."

The following sections of colored text are copied as directly as possible from my note cards.  These are answers or embellishments from my fellow students to help explain the quotation above.

Mischel's experimental methods greatly attracted the world of psychology.  Harvard could have been conducting a similar experiment and then have gotten scooped by Mischel, or his findings disproved by a theory someone else in the psychology department had.  Such connections include a theory that a child's tendency to wait has no impact or correlation with their progress as an adult.  This shook the department like an earthquake, but the end result left a new topography and a new disciplinary field to be discovered and investigated.  From this came a new series of questions to which Mischel and his team could respond.  Indeed, such an upset was very productive for his inquiries into the role of delayed gratification as a measure of future academic and career success. The stability of the researchers department can radically influence the outcome of a test: Mischel's findings shook what was previously believed about personalities/psychological disorders, but not all of his colleagues agreed on their cogency. 

Mischel's findings were huge in the field of psychology.  The department had a straight-jacket view of psychology.  When Mischel completed his findings, the department was in disbelief because it was against what was true to them.  The experiment was not just an experiment about patience, but an eventual milestone for psychology. 

It was really interesting to read through these answers after rereading the text and actually identifying the quotation in it's true from.  Jonah Lehrer had just touched on the progression of Mischel's work, and the way he was working through the methods of psychology.  The "tumult" Harvard is said to have been in is referring to the state of the students.  Lehrer follows with, " Mischel remembers graduate students' desks giving way to mattresses, and large packages from Ciba chemicals, in Switzerland, arriving in the mail. Mischel had nothing against hippies, but he wanted modern psychology to be rigorous and empirical. " The confusing quotation is describing the department and how involved people were acting in the 60's.  Mischel was doing some break-through work, but that wasn't why Harvard was in tumult. Although, he did end up moving to Palo Alto to work at Stanford in 1962.