Fernando Martin

Social experiment

An experience that I had that allowed me to meet people from different socioeconomic and cultural circles was, perhaps surprisingly, my entry into this university. I come from a “lower” social level and I never thought about entering a private university, but due to the fact that they offered me a grant, I was able to attend. There I met people with were able to pay the full price of the university, which usually signified that they belonged to a different sphere of society.

This experience consisted (and consists) basically in spending a period of time in a formative center which is frequented predominantly by people from other socioeconomic class or circle.

I find this particular kind of “experiment” really useful for understanding the social, cultural and ideological background that determine the believes and opinions of certain people and to empathize with them because you are not extracting them from their natural places but rather introducing yourself into them, so they will behave normally without any external condition that could made them alter their actions.

Another advantage of this experiment is that the amount of time spent among the other people is long enough to avoid rather superficial judgments but at the same time not so long that the researcher is in danger of “acquiring the Stockholm Syndrome”, or in other words, to become identified with the values that are predominant in that environment, which would probably result in a loss of objectivity.

I found (and I’m currently still finding) a pretty interesting experience from various reasons. First, because the contact with other people serve to eliminate stereotypes, which is essential to provide an accurate analysis of society.

It also helps to empathize with those people and humanize them which helps to avoid discourses which focuses on the hate towards the different and unknown, which is dehumanized and put as a one-dimensional, flat group with universal characteristics.

To end with we have to remark that this experiment has also been useful to understand how ideology is formed differently within different groups and how the education centers serve as a major element in the construction and distribution of it. It’s quite interesting the fact that in most schools the teachings and research are focused in the groups which attends this institution and putting them as the representative group within society.