Group Project – Case Study

Group Members and Contributions:

Parth Joshi-B16ME014-Case of US tourist killed by arrow-shooting Andaman tribe

Poojan Gajjar-B16ME019-Case of Decriminalisation of Homosexuality

Manu Sheoran-B16EE022-Case of

US tourist killed by arrow-shooting Andaman tribe

Details of the case:
An American tourist was killed by arrows shot by protected tribesmen living in one of the world's
most isolated regions tucked in India's Andaman Islands.
John Chau, 27, had taken a boat ride with local fishermen before venturing alone in a canoe to the
remote North Sentinel Island where the indigenous people live cut off completely from the outside
world.
As soon as he set foot on the island, Chau found himself facing a flurry of arrows, official sources.
Contact with several tribes on the islands, set deep in the Indian Ocean, is illegal in a bid to protect
their indigenous way of life and shield them from diseases.

Some of the Concepts of the Psychology involved:

 Law of Effect: Basic of Operant Conditioning

o “Organisms tend to repeat those responses that are followed by favorable
consequences.” Thorndike (1898)
o If you do something and it leads to bad consequences, you do it less.

Case study:
 Once a person went to the North sentinel Iceland in the late 19th century. He was
suffering from a disease. And the disease spread over the Iceland and many of
Sentinelese died due to this disease. So, after this they don’t want to encounter any
outsider, because they think they are not safe from the outsiders.
 And the Indian government also supported them. Andaman and Nicobar Islands
Protection of Aboriginal Tribes Act of 1956 prohibits travel to the island and any
approach closer than five nautical miles in order to prevent the resident tribes
people from contracting diseases to which they have no immunity. The area is
patrolled by the Indian navy.

 Their population was estimated to be between 50 and 400 individuals in a 2012

report. The rate of learning on this Iceland is lower than us. They reject any contact
with other people, and are among the last people to remain virtually untouched by
modern civilization.

Conclusion: due to lack of knowledge and slow learning late the Sentinelese think that they have
harm from the outside people and society. So, they don’t allow any outsider to enter their territory;
whether the outsider come for help or anything else.
Media Impact - Current Affairs - Section 377
Media as in dictionary terms is just defined as an industry of mass communication. But to
psychologists, it is a vast potential to study, experiment and apply theories of mass-social psychology
as by definition itself, the impression stamps of media are universal but the impressions themselves
can come out to be variable depending upon different individuals and this is what makes the
judgement of whether the invention of mass-media is a curse, boon or somewhere in between, a
complex but interesting topic. Let’s focus on one event where media played an important role:

Details/Analysis:

To observe some of the concepts of psychology involved, let us take the recent judgement passed by
the Supreme Court of India regarding the decriminalisation of homosexual acts (section 377). The
only major sides to this decision are the ones which believe that homosexuality is psychological
disorder and the ones which believe that it’s a biological trait. Being a group of educated individuals,
we already know the facts that the second party is correct factually as proved very firstly by the
American Psychiatric Association in 1950’s. When there was no media, the popular opinion was
often formed via a Chinese whisper mechanism, where verbal gossips used to frame the mind-sets,
thinking process, or rather the temperament of the people. These ‘popular opinion’ over time
became traditions and lead to mass misbelieve regarding the subject of homosexuality. The media
may have had its fair share in defaming personalities but it also has a rivalling amount of share of
positive impacts as well. This topic has a large potential for learning the human psychological mind-
set on a large scale level.

Some of the Concepts of Psychology include:

 Social Desirability: People always demand a form of affection and belongingness from the
surroundings. One way to fulfil those criteria is to try and match as many traits with the
general public as possible. For example, in above case, if someone is homosexual or even if
someone isn’t and doesn’t have any problem with homosexuals, but due to the popular
opinion of being sexually straight more desirable, these former public are too afraid to
convey their thoughts and emotions to the world as they would rather be one with the
public than be alienated by them.
 Social reinforcement/Identification: People tend to trust the words of those they admire,
like elders, popular celebrities, political speakers etc…. The greater the amount of followers,
the greater is risk of public following forming an ethically and emotionally wrong opinion. In
this case, if some popular religion extremist is against the idea of existence of
homosexuality, then all of his/her follower base will tend to form a similar opinion.
 Self-acceptance: Homosexuals themselves find it challenging to resist their sexual urges and
come out in the open and thus refuse to accept themselves for who they are. All because of
their environment revolving around the idea that homosexuality is a sin.
 Observational Learning: Children often notice their parents react to the news of the
judgement of the Supreme Court regarding section 377 and tend to repeat the same with
hope of receiving a reward.

Conclusion:

To conclude, we can say that homosexuality by itself doesn’t consist of much psychology by itself as
it is a biological sexual orientation. But discussing this topic on a national judiciary level and making
corresponding criminal laws by taking everyone’s say into account invites the presence of a large
amount of psychological concepts to ponder upon.