In my opinion, the three articles are
trying to explain human tendencies when it comes to gift exchange. The first
article talks about an observational experiment carried out on three-year-olds
that identifies and attempts to explain situations in which they decide to or
not to distribute their combined wealth (marbles) amongst themselves equally. The
second article explains why people, specifically children, often feel that life
is unfair if and when others get advantages. The third article considers the change
in human behaviours when a moral obligation becomes an economic transaction. I
think these articles try to prove that human beings act in selfless ways
generally but when there are economic incentives to gain, such as increased
competition, we tend to act in selfish ways.
An example that I have experienced that
relates to such human behaviour is when I was working in a group for a group
project, but each student was still graded individually, meaning even though we
are in the same group, we have nothing to lose or gain by helping our other
group members. This was for a gen-ed class, and our assignment was to write an
essay about anything we have learnt since the beginning of the class. We would
be given time during discussion sections to discuss each other’s essay topics
and provide feedback to each other, but we were also meant to meet outside
class since the time allotted in discussion sections was never enough.
However, since everyone just wanted to get
feedback on their own work but no one was really bothered whether other people got feedback on their work, their would often be conflicts. For example, everyone would want to display their own
work and get feedback on it first. What would then happen is that anyone who
has already received feedback would not be involved in giving feedback later
on, yet the people who were yet to receive feedback were always involved. I
think a large reason for this is that if they provide good feedback to someone,
they expect that person to do the same for them. While this is usually what
would happen, the people who received feedback would for the most part not even
pay attention to the discussion. Also, the people who received feedback would
not bother showing up when we met again to give everyone else feedback. This
happened right at the start, and when everyone else realized that others were
doing this, they decided to do the same thing and by the end of the semester, most
people were not even willing to give adequate feedback since they just wanted to get feedback themselves (and not ‘waste’ time in class by giving feedback to
others). I think this shows that at the start there was competition (for time
since there was a limited amount of time) but few realized it, but as people
started to realize it, everyone started to act in selfish ways.
A more positive example that relates to the
first example is when I was an intern this summer working as an automated
tester at an IT company that provides tech consulting and business process
services. I noticed that despite some members of my team being more efficient
than others, nearly everyone seemed to be putting in roughly equal amounts of
effort into their individual work. Despite having individual work, all
assignments were group projects since nearly all assignments were too large to
be done by solely one person. I noticed that everyone in my team would act in
selfless ways and would consider all team members important and all team members would be applauded. An example of a selfless act in this specific team was some
members who were more experienced in using the software would take time out of doing their
own work to help other less experienced members, and would still motivate them. Looking back, this example is a good display of the altruistic
nature of humans.
These articles display how humans can
behave differently in different scenarios, sometimes using their altruistic
instincts they gain from a young age and other times not. I noticed instances
of each which I had personally experienced in life, specifically the first
example, which helped me to understand how gift exchange works in teams and how
humans may react under competitive circumstances.
In your first example, was the feedback in writing or all given face to face? It might be that written feedback with follow up face to face discussion would address the issues, especially if a person who provided the feedback had to do so on all the contributions, not just one or two, and if the others can't see the feedback until after they've contributed their own. (How to enforce this would be something to consider.)
ReplyDeleteIn our class, I believe we have something like this issue in that some people who are unsure what to post in their blog wait and read a few early posts as well as my comments on those. This gives them a firmer idea of what to write about. But is it fair to do this? I would say if who goes early rotates, then it can be fair, but if it is always the same people who post early, then it is not fair.
Regarding your second example, there is a notion of the relationship between a master and an apprentice. Sometimes this is a formal arrangement. Other times, it happens less formally. To the extent that mastery comes with seniority, this is a way the the older generation help trains the next generation. Sometimes mastery comes with people of the same age because the master was a precocious learner. In this case the exchange may be driven by a sense of friendship. If you have siblings, you may have experienced it within the family, where the older sibling helps the younger one learn. My experience is that this can co-exist with sibling rivalry, so it's not one or the other, it's both.
In the first example I gave, the feedback we had to give each other was always meant to be face to face. However in the blog post I did not mention that when we would meet outside of class time, the people who would not show up for group feedback (typically those who had already received feedback) would sometimes send their feedback on our group chat. However, even if they did, it would very minimal and it would always be clear that they did not actually read the essay and just gave vague feedback, perhaps so that we don't single them out for not showing up.
DeleteWhile written feedback followed up with face to face discussions could have addressed these issues, I doubt it would have because from the student's point of view, they can just decide not to provide any feedback and it would not actually require to give feedback. I think what would have worked is if feedback was graded as well, perhaps via commenting on other student's blog posts where they have uploaded their essay. I have noticed that in classes I have taken in the past that when this method is used for feedback, most students tend to provide feedback to a good extent.
Regarding some students waiting to read other students blog posts first to get a better idea on what to write about, I think that is fair but only to an extent. As you said, if the same students are posting early and the same students are waiting to read other blog posts, it puts students who post earlier at a disadvantage since they may have a clear understanding on what to write about since there are no blog posts for them to read first. However, it would be hard to regulate who has to post first, since those students could still wait to read other posts first and if they forget to post earlier than usual, that can cause an issue for the rest of the class.
Regarding the second example, I think it is actually more likely that people were helping each other as a sense of friendship, but I think part of it is also just the sense of being in a large family. This is because while most people in the group are close friends, a lot of them barely talk to each other (since they work in separate sub-groups) but still help each other whenever one is in need of it. As you said, an older sibling tends to help out the younger one despite there possibly being sibling rivalry. I do have an older sibling who helps me with a lot of issues I face since she is also in university and is 1 year ahead of me.