Ancient Greek Ideas of Causation

We spend much of our time mulling over what causes events to happen: what makes the thief steal the diamonds? What makes an animal a skunk, and not a raccoon? Psychologists often look for common ways of classifying animals or human motives that are universal, and can be found in all cultures. Records from Ancient Greece, though, show that some civilizations have very different ways of thinking about causation from the modern West (Lloyd, 1995). Greek writers from the time of Aristotle (born 384 B.C.) onwards distinguished between the matter a thing is made of, the form it takes, the final cause, the function or purpose something serves, and the efficient cause, or "excuse" that brings an event about. A wooden cylinder will roll if pushed (the efficient cause), in part because it is the nature of cylinders to roll (the final cause). The Greeks applied their ideas to medicine, especially the causes of illness, as well as legal disputes. Yet only the efficient cause-the push-looks like a "cause" to most English speakers.

Teacher Ratings of Problem Behavior in Thai and U.S. Schools

Psychologists often ask the people who know a child best to report on that child's behavior: parents and teachers. When researchers tried to study primary-school pupils in Thailand and the United States, though, they found out more about the teachers' values than the students' behavior. (Weisz et al., 1995) In several studies, researchers found that Thai teachers reported that their students had a very high number of conduct problems, such as fidgeting and not paying attention, far more than teachers in the United States usually report. Yet Weisz and his colleagues observed that, to their eyes, the Thai children seemed more attentive and more "orderly" than U.S. children. Weisz et al. trained observers in both Thailand and the United States to use a checklist for problem behavior, and sent them to classes. The Thai teachers reported twice as many problem behaviors as the Americans; the observers saw the opposite pattern, spotting twice as many problems in the U.S. classes as the Thai classes! Undoubtedly, the teachers know their students far better than any trained observer sitting in on just a few classes. However, the Thai and U.S. teachers' different standards for conduct make it impossible for a researcher to use teacher reports as the only measure of student behavior.