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

Laura Schivartche

Block 6 – Hunt

August 28, 2014

TOK Blog Post

            When I first took a look at this question, I thought that a person who’s studying other people and their behaviors should always use their humanity. But as I went through my collection of psychological studies as well as the information I had gathered in TOK class, I noticed just how faulty my perception of what is humanity was. To me, humanity is something we all have; it is a characteristic that makes every human a human. But after going to the Oxford Dictionary, I found a few new (and more detailed) definitions of what humanity is. According to this dictionary, humanity is either “the quality of being humane” or “an act of kindness or (formerly) courtesy”.

            Quickly I realized that there is a certain degree of respect and conduct implied in exactly what humanity is, but as I think of real-life happenings such as the shooting and protests in Ferguson, MO or the events occurring in the Gaza strip, I think, to what extent do we all have humanity? If we go by the Natural Sciences and the Oxford definition of humanity, it seems that this characteristic is part of our biological makeup. Without it, it would seem we would be something other than a human. This particular characteristic is what deems us human; therefore it would be written in our genes, our very genetic makeup. In Natural Sciences, something like this is incredibly important because it allows us to know the differences between ourselves and other primates such as gorillas and chimpanzees or even other organisms. But as you meet people, observe their behaviors or just talk to them, it is very quickly discernable that there is no uniform degree of humanity across the human population.

            As mentioned before, the shooting and protests occurring in Ferguson, MO can clearly demonstrate how not everyone has the same degree of humanity. It is considered inhumane to shoot down an individual who is not committing crime, showing violent behavior, or doing anything to disturb (to a great extent) the environment around them. One would think it’s common sense that a person has the humanity to know to not gun down an individual that is not exhibiting behavior due for punishment. But, this particular case shows that the officer felt no empathy or emotion towards Michael Brown (the person brutally gunned down), which shows that his humanity has been corrupted by his racist views and his environment. But at the same time, someone cannot understand what led to the officer’s thinking because he has a different degree of humanity from anyone else.

            So, if not everyone has the same amount of humanity, how can we successfully understand each other, let alone study other people and their behaviors? Being a human, and thus having humanity, implies we have emotions such as empathy, understanding, happiness, etc. If our humanity allows us to have these emotions, that means we use them to interpret the world around us, and without emotions we might as well just be unable to process and let alone understand the world and people around use. In Social Sciences, it’s inherent to use our perception and emotion to interpret other people, so we do need humanity to study others. If we didn’t have this aspect of ourselves, we would misinterpret, generalize or make completely wrong assumptions about other people’s behavior (something we observed in our “Alien Lens” project). 

            This is one of the reasons social scientists use story knowledge and map knowledge extensively. Map knowledge is a class of knowledge that zooms back from a person/behavior/territory to represent a generalized overview in which the/their particular features of the person/behavior/territory lose their distinct identity. Story knowledge is knowledge that moves up close to describe particular spots and narrate the lives or particular individuals and their behaviors. Because Social Sciences uses both of these types of knowledge, a social scientists needs humanity to be able to see facts in both perspectives because we can use our own experiences (which have shaped us) to understand other people in detail (which includes their behavior) or in a general sense. In psychology, when a psychologist makes a hypothesis, they can sometimes test a group of people from a specific culture and use their own knowledge to formulate their study. But at the same time, other psychologists base their studies in the principle of generalization, so they rely on more map knowledge in order to eliminate biases in their results whereas the previous type of study would rely more on story knowledge.

            Map and story knowledge would not be available for Social Sciences’ use were it not for humanity because if humans lacked humanity, they’d have no way of observing and understanding people as well as acquiring shared knowledge about them. Take the warfare on the Gaza strip for example. Many people choose to side with the Israelis or the Palestinians and condemn the actions of the other side. Some even claim that the behavior of the other side is inhumane, that is, lacking humanity. However, a person needs to understand that both sides’ varying degrees of humanity is what makes their actions so different. Each side has emotional ties, perceptions and connections to this debate all based on their own humanity. This conflict is a perfect example of a situation Social Sciences might study. Not only do these scientists have to take in their subject’s humanity but they have to take in their own as well. If one were to not use their humanity to study human behavior, there’d be no insight into a person’s or a culture’s behavior, reasoning, motives, actions, and impacts. All these factors are essential pieces of information needed to comprehend human behavior.

            If we can assume that humanity is something every human possesses, than we can argue that humans use humanity all the time. A problem that arises is that if we were to use our humanity to study everything, our own perspective and emotions could cloud our judgment and bias our own research, observation or study. In my Psychology class, I’ve learned that when conducting a study, one must avoid the confirmation bias. This bias means that there is a “tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s beliefs or hypotheses” (Wikipedia). While this is something every researcher wishes to avoid in their studies, it’s impossible not to use our own bias to attain results and analyze them correctly, whether it is studying human behavior, human cognition or abnormalities. Therefore, while it is inherent that as humans studying other human behaviors use their own humanity to do so, they have to control how much of it they apply to their observations.

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