Masters Theses

Date of Award

5-2000

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

Psychology

Major Professor

Howard R. Pollio

Committee Members

Wesley G. Morgan, Michael G. Johnson

Abstract

This phenomenological study of the experience of weather uses narratives written by student volunteers as data. The 100 participants are asked to list three times when they were aware of the weather, and to describe one of those experiences in detail. The participants report being aware of the weather at times that fit into five general categories.

The data in this study are significantly unlike the data with which phenomenologists typically work. Accordingly, new "rules" are stipulated in regard to what will count as a theme For X to be a theme it has to appear in the narratives regularly, but not necessarily in every narrative, as is the case when a smaller number of longer interviews are used as data. It is also stipulated that every narrative must contain at least one of the themes identified as such.

A phenomenological analysis of the narratives results in the claim that the following four themes are the essence of the human experience of weather Outside, Nasty or Nice, Changeable, and Controlling. The idea that the weather is Outside appears more than 50 times The idea that the weather is Nasty or Nice appears about 25 times. The idea that the weather is Changeable appears nearly 50 times. The Controlling nature of the weather is an idea that appears more than 75 times. In sum, the four themes appear about 200 times in the 100 narratives, with every narrative containing at least one of the four themes.

The human experience of weather is described along the following lines Although the weather can come indoors and affect us, it typically remains Outside We often judge the weather to be Nasty or Nice (in an utilitarian or aesthetic sense). Either way, the weather always Changes. Nevertheless, the weather is always a feature of the world that determines the way the world appears and/or determines how we feel and/or determines what we want or do. In short, the central aspect of the human experience of weather is its Controlling nature.

The discussion begins with an argument for the claim that results obtained phenomenologically can be generalized. It is then argued that the same four themes are evident in Huston's Key Largo and Camus's The Stranger, a movie and a novel that were discussed in Chapter I, to argue that the weather, which we experience often, is seldom the "object of consciousness." The suggestion here is two-fold not only is this evidence for Polkmghorne's provocative claim that phenomenologists can use novels, poems, etc. as narratives, but it helps us see something important about phenomenological research, namely, that it is sometimes necessary to learn a new "language game" in order to understand what the participants are really saying about the experience they are describing.

The central claim in the discussion, however, is this, these descriptions of the experience of weather suggest that the human experience of freedom and unfreedom are exactly as the philosopher, Merleau-Ponty(1908-1961), has described. Merleau-Ponty's "situated-libertarianism" is discussed at some length, and all of this is related back to an earlier discussion of what psychologists know about the effects of weather on human behavior It is also suggested that the results of this study have implications in regard to what the existentialist philosophers call the "human condition." The weather is always there to remind us of our vulnerability and our mortality. Finally, it is observed that a discussion of freedom/unfreedom and/or the human condition is always appropriate when the focus of the research is an aspect of what existential-phenomenologists call the grounds of human experience; namely, the world, the body, time, and other people.

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