Human Sciences

Within each discipline, there may be different ways to shed light on human behaviour. For example, within contemporary psychology you can take a psychodynamic, behaviourist or humanist approach. These approaches may co-exist and offer complementary knowledge. In this sense. the inclusion of a range of perspectives may lead to better knowledge. However, sometimes, theories or approaches cannot be reconciled and it appears that previous knowledge (or branches) within a discipline has to be discarded. Phrenology, for example, is no longer considered to give us reliable knowledge within psychology.

Using MRIs to research the brain in love

​Why do we crave love so much, even to the point that we would die for it? To learn more about our very real, very physical need for romantic love, Helen Fisher and her research team took MRIs of people in love -- and people who had just been dumped.

The brain in love https://youtu.be/OYfoGTIG7pY

Phrenology

Does the combination of a natural and human scientific approach lead to better knowledge about human behaviour? Phrenology has long been discarded. Do modern MRIs offer a better approach?

The great brain debate: https://youtu.be/pv6QHxkBFzY

The contextual nature of knowledge in the human sciences

Can psychological knowledge be timeless? Does this matter?

How ethical is it for dominant groups to produce knowledge about the behaviour of others?

Should we be able to repeat psychological experiments to claim something with certainty?

​Human behaviour is largely context dependent. What drove your great-grandparents to behave a certain way may not affect you. As the world changes, new behaviours will develop. In addition to historical variations, we need to take cultural and geographical variations into account. A theory that explains the behaviour of a Belgian group of teenagers anno 2050, may not at all be useful to explain the behaviour of a group of teens in the Borneo jungle 500 years ago. An IQ test designed for (and by) white males, for example, may not give accurate results elsewhere in the world.

We cannot always expect results from human scientific experiments to be replicated in a new situation, because the context will be different. The historical development of psychology as a discipline demonstrates that the methodology of the discipline has changed dramatically over the years. The validity of its methods as well as the actual theories it proposes are continually put to the test. Most people will have heard about Freud, but much of what he 'discovered' has been discarded today, partly because of flawed methodology, partly because some of his findings are simply not relevant in a contemporary context. In this sense, it is difficult to claim that knowledge about human behaviour is timeless and independent of the context in which it was produced.

Image 1:L https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y9vKF4uply4BB_Gz9Wbaijq2DYoyxGfk/view?usp=sharing

When we try to get knowledge about human behaviour, we need to keep a couple of ethical considerations in mind. Firstly, ​the purpose of the knowledge we acquire should be morally justifiable. There are some areas we cannot research for moral reasons. For example, it would arguably be wrong to research the connection between race and certain behaviours such as intelligence and violence because history has shown that (an interest in) such (sometimes erroneous) knowledge has been abused in the past; it can lead to eugenics programmes and even genocides. In addition, we need to ensure that the way in which we gather knowledge is morally justifiable. As always, in TOK we should consider the criteria we might use to decide whether knowledge production is moral or not. Does the outcome of our research ever justify the means? Is it possible to provide a rational basis for ethical decision making when it comes to knowledge production in the human sciences? How might we "define" a morally sound methodology we could use to obtain knowledge about human behaviour?

Some of the most interesting psychological experiments conducted in history touch upon dubious ethical grounds. Ivan Pavlov (see Pavlov's dog), for example, used experimental methods to research "conditioning" which many contemporary human scientists now consider unethical. In some cases, we cannot always repeat the experiments due to ethical constraints.

One of these examples is arguably the Milgram experiment (see below), in which participants were tested on their willingness to inflict pain on innocent citizens. The results of the Milgram experiment (60's), were ground breaking at the time. Its mind blowing results undoubtedly changed many preconceptions regarding human behaviour. After WWII, it was tempting for the victors to think that things such as the holocaust could only have happened in Germany, that "ordinary" people like yourself would never be able to inflict such cruelties. However, the Milgram experiment shattered this myth. The experiment 'popularised' Arendt's concept of 'the banality of evil' and ordinary citizens became acutely aware of the dangers of authority worship.

The knowledge created through this experiment can be used for sound ethical reasons. After all, it makes us more aware of the potential harm we might inflict on others, which could prevent future immoral actions. However, throughout the conduction of the Milgram experiment, participants were not told that they would be tested on their willingness to inflict pain on innocent citizens. Instead, they were told they had to take part in a memory experiment.

When the participants found out how willing they had been to inflict pain, some suffered serious emotional distress. We could wonder whether it is justifiable to conduct such experiments for moral reasons. The Stanford Prison experiment by Zimbardo is another example of an experiment which pushed the moral methodological limits. In this experiment, some participants became quite cruel towards their peers, which led to emotional distress.

Image: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IR_4bQH1W5vYzW-0OEfgFogH3yBCfi9T/view?usp=sharing

So what does this imply? Without the ability to repeat an experiment, we may not get enough data to be statistically relevant. Ethical limitations may prevent us from gathering knowledge about human behaviour because we cannot always repeat these experiments. It may also be morally wrong to gather information about human behaviour in some situations. In addition, knowledge about human behaviour can be used for immoral motives. It is not always easy to set the criteria to decide whether knowledge production about human behaviour is moral or not, but it is important to be aware of the possible ethical limitations.

Milgran experiment: https://youtu.be/xOYLCy5PVgM