The implications of categorizing human society as a branch of
science is that humans will invariably search for patterns that somehow relate
to empirical science, which is built upon scientific experimental methods. As
humans, we come up with possible explanations to different observations and we
often fit our observations to our own initial premises. In physics class, we
were discussing about different scientists and their discordant discoveries,
and someone mentioned that "scientists often look for trends that will
most likely favor their research and their hypothesis." Therefore, can
physics, or biology, or chemistry be considered completely objective when
studied by humans? If humans struggle to study even natural sciences, then they
do not and should not study human behavior objectively.
Take the Stanford Prison Experiment, for example.
Psychologist, Zimbardo, set out with a rational goal: to study the unleashing
of evil in human behavior under extreme situations. He separated volunteers
into prisoners and guards, and began a prison simulation for collecting data.
Two days into the experiment, the researcher found himself just as mentally
involved with his research as the volunteers. His human nature, within a
certain scope of society (in this case a small prison), was altering his
perception of his own research. Zimbardo forgot he was a passive observer, and
instead transformed himself into a "prison inspector," barely
allowing volunteers to leave the experiment. The ethical limitations of this
experiment are evident, and the mental and physical instability of the
volunteers were disregarded, as he had absorbed himself into the observation.
This is where the 'Widower's Effect' comes into play, as Nicholas Christakis
explained in his TED Talk. It is fascinating to notice the domino effect of one
human's behavior on others connected to him/her. If your close friend is obese,
for example, you are more likely to become obese. In the same manner, Zimbardo
also became mentally unstable while studying prisoners' and guards' mental
instabilities. Humans are linked to those around them, and in this manner, it
is virtually impossible to study human behavior purely objectively.
However, there are ways of measuring human behavior
objectively. In the Obedience to Authority Experiments, performed by Yale
psychologist, Stanley Milgram, there seemed to have been predominantly
quantitative data collected. It's interesting that before performing his tests,
Milgram interviewed several people, from doctors to students, and when asked
what they thought the outcome would be, most of them took what they knew from
their own humanity and argued that the volunteers would not obey Milgram's
orders during the experiments. However, Milgram carried out his tests, with 40
volunteers, some of which were actors, and clearly set his control, dependent,
and independent variables. The results turned out to be shocking, even to
Milgram, because most of the volunteers assigned the roles of
"teachers" were barely hesitant to obey the observer, and would turn
up the voltage in order to harm (or so they thought) the "student."
Although it is apparently unbiased research, there are findings that argue
otherwise. Even with such objective observation of human behavior, Milgram
realized that his volunteers (the ones being observed) were less willing to
turn up the voltage when the experimenter wasn't on the room or when they were
placed within different scenarios. This is the 'Hawthorne Effect,' in which the
observed will respond positively to the experimenter simply because they are
being observed and being told more or less what to do. Is this really objective
then? It is in the sense that Milgram was not initially influenced by his own
understanding of human behavior, but it isn't in the sense that the volunteers
were changing the accuracy of results because they used their own subjective
lens to somewhat give the observer what they thought he wanted to observe for
his conclusion.
Are we ever then, objective in our study of human behavior?
And should we? Well, the alien goggles activity we did is another example where
objectivity should be implemented, but it wasn't as easy as I thought it would
be. Some students, like Cati, were able to be more objective, as she stuck her
head in the pasta bowl at dinner, for example, as if she really didn't know
what she was doing. At times, I was also really objective, and I found myself a
little freaked out about all the patterns we go through every day without even
acknowledging—it felt like "people-watching" from another species's
perspective. However, it was difficult to step away from my own confirmation
bias, because I already knew the answer to many of my alien questionings, so to
speak. Therefore, we should study human behavior objectively, for the sake of
the term 'science' and its implications to the experimental methods, but it is
not easy for humans to do that. If even with the natural sciences it is
difficult to step away from bias, then it is even more difficult to do so with
human behavior, because we are all different in several aspects. There is a
limitation between the observer and the observed, in which one will have to
resort to subjectivity in order to come up with results. Also, we can't ignore
ethical implications of studying human behavior and simply stick to the
objectivity in research. Humans behave in distinct ways. In sociology,
particularly, we must understand
ourselves and how we function as individuals in order to study other humans'
behaviors—human nature may affect nurture, in the same way that nurture might
be a dominant feature for explaining how humans affect other humans'
behaviors.
