The Madding Crowd

Interdisciplinary Course Tackles Current Social Issues

Dr. William Anderson

Imagine the biting cold of an Arctic winter or the stifling heat of a barren desert. Consider an oxygen-scarce mountaintop or the oppressive humidity in a tropical rainforest.

If you enrolled in Dr. William Anderson's psychology course in 1984, you found yourself vicariously in such hostile physical environments. That course, Psychophysiology of Extreme Environments, included study of semistarvation, exposure to high-level noise, and even sensory deprivation. But through the years, the course's focus has shifted gradually from physical to social settings, examining very different, but equally stressful, environments--living amid insidious rumors, witchcraft manias, financial crashes, or severe political repression.

This retooled course, now called The Madness of Crowds, has been steadily increasing in enrollment--from 28 students in the 1980s to 110 this fall--since Anderson decided to modify course content. When asked about this shift, he replied: "I'm going to keep making modifications until I get it right. . . . It's an interdisciplinary course, and I'm trying to adapt it to student interests." This adaptation has involved the inclusion of topics--such as egregious human rights violations and abusive situations--that can produce very intense responses from students.

The course title reflects Anderson's view that the human mind is not wonderfully adept in all contexts. It is poorly designed for dealing with probabilities, resisting illusions, searching for disconfirming evidence, etc. These limitations are one way of explaining why human beings do foolish things--especially in a large group. The individual's inability becomes multiplied in a social context, as demonstrated throughout social psychology: in groupthink, studies of obedience to malevolent authority, ineffective brainstorming, and investigations of compliance and conformity.

Leading class discussions on these topics requires diplomacy, for stressful human environments prompt emotionally driven viewpoints. Students sometimes become angry and tearful, and Anderson seeks to incorporate these feelings and ideas into class meetings.

In his course, Anderson does not shy away from tackling current, as well as historic, issues. When child abuse in daycare centers emerged as a social issue, most students and the general public became outraged over this pervasive depravity. Following the premise in his course, Anderson urged caution about the allegations, pointing out how quickly things could go out of control. His students responded with dismay; their instructor seemed dismissive of reprehensible behavior.

Later, when the problem shifted to the widespread false accusations, Anderson suddenly found himself on the other side of the issue, urging caution at taking this belief to the extreme. "Now wait a minute," he heard himself saying to a new group of students, "the problem of child abuse is still with us."

Anderson's eclectic approach to education began with his bachelor's degree from MIT, where he concentrated in physics. That left him well prepared for the study of physical environments, but he also pursued a concentration in philosophy. Later, at the University of Pennsylvania, he earned a master's degree in political science. Then, after still another academic career--a medical degree at Jefferson Medical School and an internship under the auspices of Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard Medical School--he completed a residency in psychiatry. Currently working as a consultant, he is also the co-author with Michael McGuire of How to Fix the Health-Care System, published by Greenwood Press in 1999.

Each class meeting includes a Socratic dialogue, where Anderson seeks the contributions of his students, who keep him abreast of manias and fads, past and present. "The students make [teaching] a stimulating, productive experience," he said. However, the contributions of the students are not the only things that shape this course. Anderson's willingness to engage in dialogue on often difficult and touchy subjects as well as incorporating students' feelings into the class, have created a course that is challenging, stimulating, and growing in popularity.