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

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

The first thing that strikes me when I try to answer this question is the conception that our humanity could make us biased in any particular situation. The definition of someone’s sense of humanity according to Merriam-Webster is the quality or state of being human, or being humane and benevolent to other people and animals. In order to deconstruct this definition, I had to recognize a difference between the words human and humane and how this might affect the study of human sciences. To be human is simply to be a part of the human race, to identify with all other humans, and be a part of this larger community expanding throughout the whole world. To be humane, on the other hand, is to be marked by compassion and sympathy for others. Returning back to the original question, how would either awareness of our own humanity affect how we studied a specific situation—would we identify with the humans being studied because we, too, are humans like them? Would we sympathize based on this similarity alone, or would it be due to an inherent humaneness in us all? And finally, how does this affect studies of human behavior and how they are analyzed? 

A notable study that shows how humans can become biased due to their own humanness is the Stanford Prison Study conducted in 1971 by Stanford University psychology professor Philip Zimbardo. In this experiment, 25 young male students were randomly assigned roles as either prison guards or prisoners in a mock prison situated in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. The study was carried out to primarily observe the psychological effects due to these random assigned positions, but the quarantined environment and harsh circumstances resulted in an immediate adaption by the participants to the roles they had been given, to the point where they became transfixed with the fictionalized world the experiment had placed them in. One of the main concerns that must be taken into consideration when carrying out studies in relation to human sciences are the ethics behind a certain experiment, and one of the most shocking revelations (and also, perhaps what has made it so prominent in regards to the study of human psychology) is how Zimbardo himself became affected by the role he had placed himself in for the simulation. By allowing himself to play the superintendent of the prison, the psychologist behind the experiment became subject to the same influences that the participants were under. As a result, Zimbardo allowed the authoritarian measures and psychological torture enforced by the guards to continue, losing the awareness and conscientiousness he would have had as an objective party overseeing the experiment and its results. 

By actively playing a role in the experiment he had designed and was supposed to be analyzing, Zimbardo is portrayed as an example of his humanity interfering with any sound reasoning that should have been made during the events that took place, for example, when direct abuses began to occur between the guards and prisoners. In this example, it could be said that there is an apparent lack in reasoning which resulted in a wholly unethical and biased account of human psychology due to Zimbardo’s innate humanness. By using his own humanity in this sense, he was unable to remove himself from the situation and his cognitive abilities became impaired due to a shift in his perception. 

Another instance in which our perceptions in regards to human sciences can affect our reasoning as a way of knowing can be seen in the “Alien Lens” activity we carried out. By removing ourselves from the perception we have retained for our entire lives as humans, several practices that many of us perceive as completely normal could appear strange to someone who has not been exposed to the same schemas. By removing any sense of sympathy towards the subjects being studied, we were given an entirely different outlook on aspects of human behavior which we might not have been able to pick up on if we had identified with them due to our own humanness. At first, these two examples (Zimbardo and the Stanford Prison Study as well as the “Alien Lens” activity) made me consider that perhaps our humanity does directly interfere with how we look at other humans; either due to the fact that we see too much of ourselves in others, often resulting in faulty knowledge claims because of generalizations, or because our humanness can prevent us from clear and unbiased reasoning. 

Another instance in which this same notion became apparent to me was in a simulation we did in class when we were divided into two groups that represented different fictional cultures: the Alphas and the Betas. The separate groups had their own languages, customs, and hierarchical components, but they were unaware of the characteristics belonging to the other group. In this simulation, I was assigned a different role from everyone else: to portray an anthropologist who would oversee the interaction between the Alphas and the Betas. In regards to the role I was playing, I had supposedly been observing the Alpha group for a long time and had learned all about their culture and dialect, although I had not been fully adopted into their community as anything but an observer. Throughout the simulation, I made the conscious decision to immerse myself into the Alpha group, abandoning my objective standpoint as an anthropologist looking at the interaction from the outside. This drastically changed my perception of how the two groups interacted, and my observation of what occurred during the activity varied greatly from what it would have been if I had remained objective rather than involving myself. Comparably to Zimbardo, by allowing my own perception to interfere with my analysis of the interaction before me, I was unable to study the interaction between the two cultures, and lost the cognitive abilities of an observer with no connection to the situation. This made me think of entirely new questions relating to the validity of studies in the human sciences: to what extent can humans look at something objectively when studying human behavior? How does our perception affect our reasoning, and can it prevent us from making reasonable knowledge claims? And finally, to what extent can our humanness be used to provide valid information about a certain situation? 

In order to fully explore these questions, I believe it is necessary to apply them to real-world occurrences and examine how our humanity could affect our judgment towards these circumstances. This idea could be applied to what is happening currently in Ferguson, MO in the United States. In what began with the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a police officer and led to the ignition of protests and outrage, it can be deduced that there is no way to remain unbiased in such a morally complex situation such as this one. In order to examine what exactly is happening in Ferguson, would a social scientist be able to remain completely impartial—or would their humaneness overpower their objectivity towards what is happening? Would the aspects this scientist identifies with affect the way he would perceive the events? While these issues could affect the degree of accuracy that would come as a result from a study such as this one, another idea that I thought of was that perhaps a sense of humaneness is necessary to evaluate exactly what is happening. If a scientist studying human behavior were to investigate the recent protests occurring in Ferguson and remained completely objective towards the reactions of this group of people, there could be a lack of understanding the reasons why they have had this precise reaction. Without our humanity, it would be challenging to evaluate the emotional surges that led to the situation as it is now. With this in mind, I can relate this idea back to the “Alien Lens” activity. While disregarding our humanity allowed us to view human actions in a new light, our complete objectiveness did not allow us to fully grasp the core values of human behavior, and only provided a superficial level of analysis. Conclusively, completely immersing oneself in a study of human sciences can result in inherent biases, but in order to provide a full picture, the knowledge due to our humanity is necessary to fully comprehend and uncover certain aspects of our behavior. 

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