Do we, and should we study human behavior objectively?

There are many different ways that we study the world, and one of the most significant ways we do so, is objectively. This meaning that we study and collect aspects in a factual fashion, documenting and classifying systematically in hopes of laying foundations that can be logically followed. In the sciences, we strive to abandon all our personal biases to gather information objectively - by observation devoid of emotion or opinion. Letting one's experimenter bias meddle with the results is seen in a negative light, it retracts value from the outcome. Human beings are extremely complex, and in this sense there's a debate, on whether we should study ourselves objectively, as a white-coated scientists studies a lab rat, or subjectively, with emotional value.

There have certainly been attempts to study ourselves objectively, but as we'll see from the following example, maintaining an objective position and scientist mentality, proves to be a challenge. The Stanford Prison Experiment was designed to study the psychology of a prison environment - what those with power (the guards) and what the incarcerated inmates experience and the attitudes they lean towards. The guards and the prisoners were randomly assigned to volunteers, the vast majority one of them being Stanford students looking for a summer job. The experiment was scheduled to go on for two weeks, but was stopped after six days. In these six days, the guards managed to go from intelligent young men to sadistic oppressors, the prisoners barricaded themselves inside the cell as a form of uprising, a prisoner was released because of a mental breakdown, and overall, the "fake" prison became very much like a real one. The organizer of the experiment, Philip Zimbardo, assigned himself the role of the prison warden, as well as the psychologist, or the scientific observer, thinking he could do both. Long story short, the role of a prison warden got to his head, and his scientist mindset all but crumbled: he was intent on only one thing - keeping the prisoners were they belonged, their cells. In the documentary, he himself admits he lost track of what it all meant - it ceased to be an experiment and became a reality. This serves to show the sheer difficulty that studying objectively sometimes holds - it's not a matter of simply choosing to stand back and observing, sometimes the dynamics that engulf the observer are just too strong to resist, and he becomes a participant.

On the other hand, an anthropologist might be able to successfully infiltrate a culture - say, an aboriginal tribe in the outskirts of the Amazon, and create a report with objective observations. The scientists needn't intervene with their lifestyles, she might certainly get affected by them (as with learning their language, eating their food, etc.) but her reports might be written as one writes a list of observations on the way a fish swims. There is, of course, personal bias and subjectivity, since the scientist no doubt has a background filled with opinions and beliefs, but then again, who doesn't? Pure objectivity is extremely hard, if not impossible, to attain.

Another point then can be raised, on whether what is best: should we or not attempt to study humans objectively? The Hawthorne effect, in a way, argues we should. This refers to the effect that social experiments have on people - once the subjects known that they're being observed or tested, they will inevitably try harder, to please the observer, or the scientist. This, in turn, changes their actual outcome to a much more positive one. It's too subjective to let the subject know they're being studied, and explains why many experiments take on to catch their subjects off guard - without any knowledge of the experiment. This certain objectivity, and observation point of view, certainly helps to obtain more truthful results, it can serve as an example as to why it is important to study human beings as an entirely different species altogether.

Nowadays, a man in a white coat holds certain assumptions about him. Primarily that he knows what he's doing, and that it's for the sake of science. Despite this, the distance that often separates a professional scientists from a everyday human being can sometimes prove to be harmful. In Elyn Saks's TED talk, she talks about her struggle against schizophrenia - a fearful mental illness that destroys inhibitions and the boundary between reality and fantasy. As she tells her story, we come to know of her mental outbreaks and the consequences: being strapped down to a metal bed for sometimes almost up to 24 hours. All this primarily on the basis that men in white coats deemed her "dangerous", even though she'd never had a violent outburst or deliberately hurt someone. At the end of the talk, she urges the world to see those with mental illnesses as a different race or psychopaths, but human beings in need of support and love. The scientists that deemed her unfit for control over her own life or interactions with others, were holding a barrier between them and the subject. The lack of subjectivity and acknowledgement that they were dealing with human being just like them lead to the assumption that they were different from them.

On a whole, it seems that more often than not, we strive for objectivity, but shift towards subjectivity. When we do create a strong barrier and decide upon objectivity, it can cause harm to others, lack of understanding, and uncertain assumptions. I believe humankind works in ways that we can only understand once we adopt position in which we are willing to connect with each other, mostly through direct, heartfelt interaction. Creating a distance between the observer and the subject only pulls us further away from what is truly important and makes us human, and that is our ability to connect.