Social Responsibility Norm
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Social Responsibility Norm, Textbook p. 447-449
I was walking downtown last week when I saw a woman on a wheel chair outside a grocery shop. She wanted to enter the store but it seemed that the owner of the store had not taken into consideration people with disabilities. None of the store attendants was close to help the woman up the stairs to pick the groceries she needed. Everyone watched expecting someone would help the woman into the store but it appeared none was forthcoming.
Several minutes passed and then suddenly a man pulled up his car, helped the woman into the store, helped her pick the items she needed and then helped her out and then sped off in his car. Everyone was embarrassed as we watched the woman leave.
I had watched the whole scene at a distance. When I thought over that incident, I realized that everyone expected someone to help the woman since she needed help (Myer, 2012) but no one felt it his responsibility to offer that help except, of course, the man who had done it. He had felt it his responsibility to help the woman who needed his help while the rest became just onlookers who knew that the woman needed help but expected that someone would do it.
Topic 5: Personality Traits, Textbook p. 467-468
Over the past week, I have been observing a family that recently moved into our neighborhood. The family has two boys EH and WH. WH seems more accommodating than EH. EH is, in fact, indifferent to people and will never say anything to anyone unlike WH who is talkative and very friendly to people.
One evening, I decided to talk to WH in one of the parks when I chanced by him there. When I asked him about his brother, he told me that the two of them were separated at birth. Their uncle had taken EH a few days after they were born to revenge against their father. WH did not tell me the reason for his uncle’s revenge against his father. Apparently, EH had been mistreated by his uncle and therefore become withdrawn and aloof. The boys were now about seventeen. The family had only come to learn about who took their son a year ago and it had taken almost a year of court battles for them to get back their son. After getting back their son, they had moved into our neighborhood to escape the town that had almost denied them of their son.
EH and WH clearly exhibited different personality traits most probably based on their environments as children. It is their environment of growth that most probably shaped their personality traits and that could explain why EH was indifferent and aloof (Myer, 2012).