Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 20:47:54 -0400
From: Thomas F Brown <tombrown@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu>
Subject: Re: tracking
To: socgrad@csf.colorado.edu
Message-id: <97Jun24.204804edt.2530-7@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu>
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
>> That's a reasonable criticism, but it's so general it's always true. 
>> The only thing it tells you about tracking is that everyone is tracked 
>> in everything they do.
>
>Precisely--with variations in substance, intensity, etc.  Seems more
>useful to sort out degrees, frequencies, and patterns than start with a
>polemic about free will and determinism.

That's a lovely goal, to make a scale of tracking pressure. It's much
more ambitious than my conception. I think my simplified (oversimplified?)
conception is a more practical place to start, just to see if a significant
pattern emerges and to see what kind of impact it has on people according
to my dichotomous conception. If we get results, then we can go on to
develop a scale.

However, when we're dealing with such a subjective phenomenon--how much
social influence do you experience?--I think that it might be overly
ambitious to think we can more than scratch the surface of that
with the measurement capabilities we have. But I am not a social
psychologist and so I might be underestimating what those folks
are capable of.