To what extent should we use our humanity to study human behavior?

Bea Lorencatto 

To what extent should we use our humanity to study human behavior?

As a psychology student, when I first read this question it seemed illogical to use humanity when studying human behavior, considering the most reliable studies are those that have managed to isolate as much bias as possible. However, by deconstructing the prompt I came to figure that it’s actually impossible to go about not using humanity when examining human behavior. 

Studying human beings is not restricted exclusively for the P. H. doctrines in white lab coats. Everyone who’s come into contact with another human being has inevitably analyzed their behavior whether that be choice of clothing, manner of speaking, etc. We all try to make sense of one another’s behavior and inevitably through these unconscious analyses, we’re using our humanity. The question is, what is humanity? After quite a bit of research, I decided for the sake of my word limit to bound myself to one precise definition, like the burning housing activity. I analyzed my options and carefully chose that humanity will be defined as a characteristic that differentiates us from all other animals; it’s what makes humans, humans. In other words, humanity is a reflection of every individual’s unique experiences, opinions, emotions, knowledge, etc. This accepted definition of humanity is somewhat like a schema - a mental structure determined of prior ideas developed into a framework and system of organizing the world to perceive new information. I like to think schemas are like camera lenses; everyone has their own different lens that offers different perspectives and interpretations of the exact same scenario. For example, I might think that someone who’s 6 ft tall isn’t so tall being that i’m not too much shorter than that. However someone who’s 5 ft 6 might think that 6 ft is towering because that’s how they perceive things. Therefore, how can such a highly subjective feature of ourselves guide in further understanding human behavior? 

Human sciences aim to obtain knowledge about human behavior and their interactions within a society in order to establish patterns to then predict or aid disorderly behavior like eating disorders. Man is subject as well as the observer in this case which makes human sciences a very intricate area of knowledge. With ethics and other limitations, studying human behavior is quite a challenging process, its impossible to isolate characteristics of a human being to be directly observed. Thus, human scientists try to establish correlations, logic and prior knowledge in order to deduce a rational conclusion. Because of this many do not even consider this a ‘real’ science since it relies heavily on empirical observations to arrive at it’s findings as opposed to natural scientists often described as experimental scientists and are not faced with the ever-changing nature of human beings. However, with the appropriate use, our humanity can aid studies of human behavior. 

For example, completely objective approaches to studying humans can lead to flawed deductions. In our class activity, “alien lens” we embraced this objective approach by completely excluding any of our humanity to study human behavior. Reading peoples’ observations was both hilarious and incredibly interesting, like a dog interpreted as a slave. The alien had noticed that the dog didn’t have as many rights as those who were surrounding it and it was even put on a leash. To a certain extent these drawn conclusions are somewhat rational however had this been a human using its humanity to understand this peculiar behavior, a more realistic understanding of the situation could be drawn. Using emotion and language, perhaps the observer could have communicated with the humans under observation to learn that the dog was in fact another specie and not a slave. Likewise, sociologist Brene Brown noted the objective approach in her study wasn't helping, but rather detrimental. As expressed in her TED talk, she was a human scientists who wanted to measure everything; she lived by “if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist.” She wanted to unravel how vulnerability in her society was threaded through people’s lives. Interestingly she tried to analyze emotions by excluding her own as much as possible. This could have to some extent helped her gather some information, she even managed to establish a connection between how shame and fear played a role in vulnerability, however, it wasn’t applicable to her research. Suddenly Brown has a breakdown she likes to call as spiritual awakening and noted that she’d have to feel these emotions in order to understand them - apply her humanity in order to study other’s humanity. Once she exposed herself to them, she finally understood why this emotional phenomena occurred. In other words, her emotion guided her through her research in understanding human behavior. 

However, are emotions can also be misguiding in trying to learn about humans. Zimbardo’s Stanford prison ‘experiment’  reflects how humanity could the study of human behavior due to this emotional involvement during the ‘experiment’. Zimbardo wished to test the psychological affects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. He devised an experiment which would test this and gathered participants of an opportunity sample. Zimbardo placed himself in the experiment as the prison’s warren. He immersed himself in the society and planted his emotions with him. Zimbardo was so emotionally involved into the society that the reality of the experiment vs. real life got blurred for him. He believed that he really was the warren of a prison. As a result, he didn’t run an experiment, he was running an oppressive environment. In addition, our own emotions and perspectives can affect our judgements and create personal biases like confirmation bias; propensity to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms to one’s beliefs or hypotheses.

Even more, not only does our emotion affect our humanity. Our point of view is heavily influenced by a number of factors, like language. As the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or linguist relativity principle suggests, languages encode cultural and cognitive categories that affect how people think.  Therefore, speakers will change the way they think and behave with the different languages they use to speak. This is demonstrated in a reflection of a psych. study in 1990 in a NY times article; “Does your language shape how you think?” The psychologists compared associations between spanish and german speakers. There are a number of inanimate nouns whose genders in the two languages are reversed. For example, a German bridge is feminine (die Brücke) but el puente is masculine in Spanish whilst an apple is masculine for Germans but feminine in Spanish. When speakers were asked to describe various objects on a range of characteristics, Spanish speakers deemed bridges, clocks and violins to have more “manly properties” like strength, but Germans tended to think of them as more slender or elegant. This underlines how everyone’s schemas vary. Therefore, trying to understand another and applying your own schema to them could lead to incorrect judgement. Going back to the alien lens activity, someone described the eating of an egg as quite a barbaric scenario, even describing the event as eating a soon-to-be new born. In my opinion, that is quite an unnecessary and exaggerated approach to the eating of an egg, however someone who practices a vegan lifestyle may think otherwise and chose not to eat an egg for such reasons. This is already a possibly faulty conclusion i’m drawing towards vegans, because not all vegans chose that diet for animal rights however my schema has been shaped around the few vegans I’ve met who have turned to this lifestyle for that reason.

In conclusion, using our humanity could help study human behavior whether that be a daily interaction or formal assessment. Like the alien lens activity revealed, a complete objective approach to new situations could lead to erroneous conclusions or insufficient information to even draw one. However, our varying humanities can also interfere in the studying of human’s due to our biases and possibly drawn assumptions based on our own schemas. Either way, our humanity can offer a progression in the studies of human sciences as we try to understand human behavior. For instance, Brown’s TED talk shows how learning an aspect about humans must be somewhat relatable by the observer, after all man is both subject and researcher.  Our humanity will not always offer an answer about human beings, however it can help ignite doubt, sympathy, and drive for understanding as to why someone behaves in such ways instead of drawing irrational conclusions. 

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