Do we and should we study human behavior objectively?

 

In a matter of speaking, it isn’t much a question of if we do or if we should, but more of a can we and would we type. The way the question is currently formulated already makes the assumption that humans have a great capacity in studying human behavior objectively -- I believe they only have a much smaller potential. There are times when humans do manage to get data from tests, such as the Stanford Prison Experiment, that will be further analyzed later, where Professor Zimbardo tested the effects of becoming a prison guard or a prisoner. However, there's the off chance that not everything that humans do give the expected results, as seen with the Hawthorne effect.

The Hawthorne effect was based off a study at Hawthorne Works, an electrical manufacturing company near Chicago, whose goal was to optimize productivity from its workers, and so tested different things such as having more breaks and change in lighting. The result was that any slight change would make them work more because they knew that they were being observed. This effect can also be seen in the Milgram Obedience Experiment where Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, studied the correlation between obedience and authority with that of personal conscience by seeing until what point his patients would send electrical shocks to the actor-victim. His results were that, so long as the volunteer was told to do things in a more serene and pleading tone, while wearing a lab coat (appeal to authority), there would be a much greater rate of obedience even if that meant hurting, and possibly killing, a person. Although the Hawthorne effect actually helped Milgram to get his results (due to the appeasing factor the volunteers did as were asked), in most cases it can tamper the study since the people being studied might stray away from their normal habits in order to create a better self-image, hence tampering with our ability to study humans more objectively. And is there even such a way that we can be straight-to-the-point objective about our decisions?

Being objective can be defined as emotionless as we cannot put ourselves in the shoes of others. Although that might be an easier task when studying another species, when studying our own we can be emotionally hijacked or tampered. Reason and emotion go along side-by-side, so we cannot separate one from another. For instance, if Andrew Wiles, the mathematician who proved Fermat’s last theorem, hadn’t been as dedicated and passionate as he was to solve the so-called impossible mystery, he wouldn’t have been able to do it. Even if we sometimes require emotion to help us reach a conclusion, at times it can stop us from doing so.

In the Stanford Prison Experiment, Professor Zimbardo wasn’t able to finish his investigation because he got emotionally hijacked with the study as he started to think of it more as if he were the prison superintendent rather than a psychologist. And he wasn’t the exception, the environment had become so intense and realistic that the volunteers were taking upon their allotted roles – a university student became the guard or the number that was assigned to them. And not only that, but also John Wayne, the most aggressive guard, said that if he continued in that environment he would have done the same things as those soldiers in Abu Ghraib back in 2003 (extreme prisoner torture). Just seeing the degree of how things got to, would Zimbardo have opted to continue the experiment if that led him to a valid conclusion? And if there were much easier methods to study humans, would people choose to take those measures even if it went against the principles of ethics?

Imagine this scenario: an anthropologist wants to investigate the culture of a really underdeveloped tribe in the unexplored areas of Africa and has all of the resources available to his disposal, including video cameras and microphones. Should he choose to secretly plant those devices and have a variety of unexplored data, while going against the moral principles of privacy amongst many others, or should he try to become part of the community and risk going through the Hawthorne effect? Are these measures invasive to a point in which they might completely alter the path of that tribe, and if so, would it truly be worth it?