[Basic] Skill of the week: Psychology and Sociology

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Not having been around when 4e was written (or being in the same country as my 3e books), I wonder if this is an example of a skill whose writeup was changed to give it a clear use in adventures. And I can't think of a better name for being good at modelling minds!

The concept, and the core of the wording and modifiers, have survived from the first edition Characters book. That's the piece of hardcopy I refer to most often in writing skill of the week posts.

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by whswhs

That strikes me as really clever roleplaying and as a scene that would be fun to play out.

I sometimes feel that my job in campaign/scenario design is to leave lots of things sticking out for players to choose to engage with, often in ways I hadn't anticipated. (I'm very fortunate in my players.)

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Sociology is the IQ/H study of societies and social relationships. It defaults to IQ-6, Anthropology -3 or Psychology-4, and Anthropology and Psychology have defaults to Sociology. The skill is penalised by Low Empathy. On a success, you can predict how a large group of people will work together, deduce the causes of social changes, or predict their results.

Some futurist and utopian speculation supposes that in the future there will be a discipline for designing and managing societies that corresponds to sociology in the way that electrical and mechanical engineering do to specialities of physics, chemical engineering to chemistry, and GURPS "Bioengineering" does to physiology. We were all expecting this to be called "social engineering", but that term has (unfortunately, in my view) been pre-empted for the use of psychological and anthropological tricks in manipulative social interactions. There is a fashion now for calling this future discipline "memetics", but I think it is passing. Besides, memetics proper would correspond to social engineering in the way that genetics does to bioengineering.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Some futurist and utopian speculation supposes that in the future there will be a discipline for designing and managing societies that corresponds to sociology in the way that electrical and mechanical engineering do to specialities of physics, chemical engineering to chemistry, and GURPS "Bioengineering" does to physiology. We were all expecting this to be called "social engineering", but that term has (unfortunately, in my view) been pre-empted for the use of psychological and anthropological tricks in manipulative social interactions. There is a fashion now for calling this future discipline "memetics", but I think it is passing. Besides, memetics proper would correspond to social engineering in the way that genetics does to bioengineering.

At least one of the "technologies" for changing a society as a whole is Propaganda, though this corresponds somewhat more closely to memetics than to sociology overall. GURPS links it more to Psychology, but it seems to be largely about the average psychology of a population and/or about the collective psychology of a group, and at least the latter seems to be a branch of Sociology and perhaps Anthropology.

Consider, for example, the Torches of Freedom event, in which women marched in New York's 1929 Easter Sunday parade while smoking cigarettes. They were hired to do so by an advertising executive, Edward Bernays (who consulted a psychoanalyst in planning the campaign), and it made more money for his client, but it also changed social customs.

Of course Propaganda has been practiced since long before there was such a thing as theoretical sociology, but then Engineer goes back to long before there was anything approaching a scientific approach to physics.

[Agemegos]

Yeah. Propaganda might be the means that Social Engineers use to effect their designs, as Machining is a means that mechanical Engineers use to effect their designs.

[Michael Cule]

My current game is an investigative one so Psychology is often useful to the players. Body Language and Interrogation would be more useful but even default Psychology can reveal things about people being questioned or the subtext of the sticky social situation a character has found themselves in. The campaign is set in the BANESTORM universe and my players wanted to know whether they had Psychology in medieval times. I assured them that Aristotle started the science of Psychology.

I've only ever used Sociology in a cinematic way with secret societies like those in THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND who know the secrets of how cultures could be manipulated. I usually required the manipulator to be Illuminated and when it came to the Hivers in my GURPS TRAVELLER game the entire species was Illuminated. There was a hidden faction of Illuminated humans who had been behind the foundation of the Third Empire and used their skills to get their rivals in the Psionics Institutes outlawed.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Yeah. Propaganda might be the means that Social Engineers use to effect their designs, as Machining is a means that mechanical Engineers use to effect their designs.

When you look at Asimov's stories about psychohistory, The End of Eternity has its time traveling Eternals saying, "If you go into this specific room in this year and move this object from point A to point B, that will result in historical changes that will bring an end to the interplanetary travel industry three centuries later." And Hari Seldon seems to have set up similarly precise conditions for the development of the Foundation over a couple of millennia, disruptable only by the Mule. But that seems to me to say that it's possible to calculate chains of social cause and effect with amazing precision, over a span of centuries, without the causality being lost in the random processes that are a fundamental assumption of psychohistory (which after all is modeled on statistical mechanics), and without giving rise to butterfly effects that magnify a tiny change out of all calculation (sensitive dependence on initial conditions). So I don't think that sort of "social engineering" works in any setting that isn't cinematic/epic. Hari Selden appearing to tell the Foundation what's going on in their current situation, century after century, seems more like a projection of Rome's elders consulting the Sibylline Books than like any possible science.

A more realistic technology for sociological engineering would seem to be based on Law: that is, we want to bring about change X in human behavior, so we enact law P to induce that change. That kind of process probably could be well modeled by the GURPS rules for inventions, including the minor and major bugs rules; it's amazing how often laws have unintended consequences. See the parable about the peasants under the Qin Dynasty ("What's the punishment for armed rebellion?" "Death." "What's the penalty for being late to work?" "Death." "Well, brothers, we're late to work . . .").

[Micah Davis]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Some futurist and utopian speculation supposes that in the future there will be a discipline for designing and managing societies that corresponds to sociology in the way that electrical and mechanical engineering do to specialities of physics, chemical engineering to chemistry, and GURPS "Bioengineering" does to physiology. We were all expecting this to be called "social engineering", but that term has (unfortunately, in my view) been pre-empted for the use of psychological and anthropological tricks in manipulative social interactions. There is a fashion now for calling this future discipline "memetics", but I think it is passing. Besides, memetics proper would correspond to social engineering in the way that genetics does to bioengineering.

This level of proficiency seems unlikely unless we achieve time travel, move into hyper speed virtual worlds, or start parallel universe jumping. We have a (very) small sample size for mass human society and are likely to continue in that state for a long time. Within those contexts, though, this level of proficiency with social manipulation is Gadgeteer (Social) isn't it? Sociology isn't represented as having a TL modifier, but Gadgeteer (Social) should cover whatever moves you from "I'm making some good guesses here on what will happen" to "I can remake societies."

Expert Skill (Cliodynamics) [IW182] puts the skills for predicting where to put the hammer to change the course of history as Economics, Sociology, History, Geography, Current Affairs, Market Analysis, and Intelligence Analysis. The implementation of this is identified as being based on the relevant political and cultural skills for alteration. Knowledge that allows you to rebuild a culture exactly to spec would, of necessity, require a bunch of skills, but the difference between "I'm going to adjust society here at this one point and see how it goes" and "Psychohistory" is probably just Gadgeteer (Social).

A real "Future Foundation" agent might have Oracle using Cliodynamics or Sociology as well. A 250 point character can probably model such an agent, though the budget will be getting tight (Future Foundation as a Patron; Oracle; Social Gadgeteer; and then brutal amounts of IQ/Talent/Skill.)

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Micah Davis

A real "Future Foundation" agent might have Oracle using Cliodynamics or Sociology as well. A 250 point character can probably model such an agent, though the budget will be getting tight (Future Foundation as a Patron; Oracle; Social Gadgeteer; and then brutal amounts of IQ/Talent/Skill.)

I would do it with either Intuitive Mathematician and various math skills at high levels, or Intuition and outrageously high IQ.

I think the primary skills are Expert Skill (Cliodynamics) and Mathematics (Applied).

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by Michael Cule

The campaign is set in the BANESTORM universe and my players wanted to know whether they had Psychology in medieval times. I assured them that Aristotle started the science of Psychology.

More to the point, GURPS "Psychology", as written, is more the informal interpersonal skill of being good at people, rather than a science (not even the science of running rats in mazes and such). It's something you give great writers of fiction and cunning viziers, neither of whom may necessarily have read any Aristotle or Freud.

Originally Posted by whswhs

When you look at Asimov's stories about psychohistory, The End of Eternity has its time traveling Eternals saying, "If you go into this specific room in this year and move this object from point A to point B, that will result in historical changes that will bring an end to the interplanetary travel industry three centuries later." And Hari Seldon seems to have set up similarly precise conditions for the development of the Foundation over a couple of millennia, disruptable only by the Mule. But that seems to me to say that it's possible to calculate chains of social cause and effect with amazing precision, over a span of centuries, without the causality being lost in the random processes that are a fundamental assumption of psychohistory (which after all is modeled on statistical mechanics), and without giving rise to butterfly effects that magnify a tiny change out of all calculation (sensitive dependence on initial conditions). So I don't think that sort of "social engineering" works in any setting that isn't cinematic/epic. Hari Selden appearing to tell the Foundation what's going on in their current situation, century after century, seems more like a projection of Rome's elders consulting the Sibylline Books than like any possible science.

Asimov seems to have been brought up on late TL6/early TL7 physical sciences, with an according focus on the law of large numbers smoothing out any discrepancies, and liked to imagine social sciences developing the same way (for fun at least, whether or not he ever believed that they could work that way). These days, I imagine even a physicist or chemist would be painfully aware of the possibility of extreme sensitivity to initial conditions. A very basic programming course, or an hour spent tinkering with Conway's Game of Life, tends to bring that issue home.

It's not so much cinematic science or superscience as dated assumptions - period superscience, in the terms I used in Steampunk 1, perhaps.