Human Sciences Tug-of-War: Is It More Like Natural Sciences or History?

Renata Sayão

Block 5 TOK

Ms. Hunt

Aug. 23, 2013

Are the human sciences more like the natural sciences or more like history?

            Although in technical terms, the human sciences do not encompass history, to a large extent the validation of a most human science knowledge claim relies on historical evidence and reference. After hours of thinking and researching and sorting data into categories, I’ve come to this simple conclusion: the human sciences try to follow the paradigm that is applied in the natural sciences but nonetheless are still more like history because their subjects are conscientious animals.

            Let’s take the TED Talk by William Ury on “the walk from ‘no’ to ‘yes’” to begin. Ury is a writer and mediator who works to resolve and study conflicts throughout the world. He’s an unofficial sociologist and anthropologist. He begins by explaining, in a very scientific term, that humans are reaction-machines, and that they cannot get an outside view of the conflict they are facing because they have already reacted. This is a knowledge claim based significantly on psychology and the study of human behavior, and can be tested using the methods and established rules that the natural sciences laid out. A little later, however, he begins to talk about conflicts in the Middle East, and references Abraham, the first man to walk across this territory. He discusses how Abraham is a symbolic “third side” that reminds us [humankind and Middle-Eastern tribes] that we’re part of an extended family. In addition, he discusses that when angry or lost in the world, walking is the key to getting back in focus for humans. These proposals are heavily based on historical analysis, following the “make a justified claim that is testable” of the natural sciences but having at their cores historical evidence and reference because that is how they get their data samples and examples. Since it is very difficult to “remind humans that we’re part of an extended family” in a scientific and methodic way, it is only through history that it is justifiable.

            In addition, an article published in 2008 in the freakonomics website on the “Economics of Happiness” is, as the title clearly depicted, an economic report. Journalist and economist Justin Wolfers noted the trend in graphs comparing GDP and overall wellbeing in a spam of 60 years, from 1950 to 2010. He concluded that the income-well-being relationship “has appeared just about as strongly in surveys probing happiness as in surveys asking about life satisfaction”. The relationship between income and happiness is about as strong today as it was in the very first surveys, which were taken sixty years ago, hence concluding his point that there is and has always been a direct correlation between income and well-being in humans. Now… how did he come to that conclusion so fast? He used historical data and analyzed, with the paradigm of a scientist (looking for patterns and trends), that there was a correlation between the two sets of surveys. There is no natural-sciences-method that could prove this correlation to be true in a laboratory or through an experiment. It is with data originating from history that one is able to prove his or her point. Had anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists not observed from history general trends and behaviors, they would not be able to ever come to a “justified true belief” through a scientific lenses and would not be able to call themselves social scientists.

            One last example that clearly distinguishes human sciences as an area of study more like history is Brené Brown’s TED Talk on “the power of vulnerability”. She says in the beginning of the talk that she likes to put human chaos into boxes, to observe patterns, observe if her observations are correct, and sort human society into organized information matrices. This is, to an enormous extent, a natural sciences paradigm, because again these scientists are trying to find patterns and behaviors that can be tested by other scholars and proven correct. However, she claims that when she gathered interviews and her qualitative data (which is very obviously a historical approach to society), she noticed that some aspects of human behavior can only be proven by interacting with people not by testing them or changing their environment or building experiments to prove the point. Similarly, historians take different perspectives on one event or situation and must build their arguments and explain their logic with these perspectives. Both areas of knowledge work strongly with qualitative data and put pieces of human society and behavior together with such scattered mediums of data. Meanwhile, in the natural sciences knowledge claims can only be justified if it can be observed and tested with the same results, and does not include qualitative data or different sorts of data.

            All in all, after going through some of the studies published by human scientists, I have come to the conclusion that the area of study is very closely connected to history. Again, the studies appeal to the patterns and testable information that is encouraged by the natural scientist community, however they almost always go back for data in historical evidence and records. Some observations are made through peering into history, looking at the evolution of our species and our civilizations, and such data could not be considered 100% valid and testable and acceptable in a natural sciences community.

Do we and should we study human behavior objectively?

It is true that we cannot measure social data with numbers in the same way we can in the natural sciences. Although all humans are unique individuals, we can share fundamental patterns of behavior, which can be measured and analyzed in the human sciences, both objectively and subjectively. Whether we should or not study it based solely on empirical evidence, however, is another question. While there are some significant gains on treating human sciences quantitatively, there are also advantages in using our humanity to study humans.

The social sciences have one characteristic that sets them apart—the human species is both the observer and the observed. This means that the object of study is rational, can adapt its behavior to different situations, and has a schema, or a cognitive map built through culture, education, and all the other factors that determine who you are. Nonetheless, no matter how difficult it is to come to conclusions about human behavior, every field in the human sciences needs a good amount of empirical evidence on which studies can be based. Plato defines knowledge as “justified true belief.” According to this definition, we need to find ways of measuring and experimenting in the human sciences so that these findings can be considered a part of human knowledge. 

Another reason why human sciences should be studied objectively is that some problems occur both in the natural and human sciences. Confirmation bias, for example, is when a researcher tends to prove what he or she believes in. However, it is a lot more difficult to prove your own opinion when most of your research is based on facts, such as in biology, physics, and so on, than when you are simply studying human behavior. Especially when we already have some preconceptions about humans, partly a result of our own schemas, it is difficult to see the other side of the argument. In the New York Times article "Divided They Fall," the author Nicholas Kristof talks about a study conducted with students from Dartmouth and Princeton. In the experiment, researchers showed them clips of a 1951 football game between both institutions. Asked to act as impartial referees, students had to determine which side cheated the most. The results were astounding Dartmouth students thought Princeton had cheated the most and vice-versa. Therefore, even though the two sides were watching the same game in the study, their brains came to two completely opposite conclusions. That shows confirmation bias—students would never admit their team cheated more than the other.

When we are doing scientific research we may also face another problem, the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy—the belief that because events occur together, one must cause the other. Although this fallacy may also occur in the natural sciences, it is much more common and challenging in the social sciences, where you can’t always isolate the dependent and independent variables, as well as control all the other variables. For instance, in one experiment, a psychologist might try to draw the relationship between teenage depression and parental divorce in the subjects’ childhood (please note that this is an arbitrary example; it’s not based on any real research). Now, if the results show that most kids whose parents divorced have depression in their teenage years, the researcher can’t automatically conclude that divorce causes depression. Imagine how many other uncontrolled variables come into play—the person’s environment, personal experiences and even genetics! Therefore, the researcher cannot just assume that one event causes the other simply because they are related. It doesn’t mean we have to ignore correlations—no—we just have to be careful not to make assumptions and let our judgment impair data collection and the pursuit of knowledge.

Other problems, however, are aggravated in the social sciences. The phenomenon known as the Hawthorne effect is one of them. The Hawthorne effect states that when you study people, their behavior will change and adapt to the presence of the experimenter. I was extremely pleased when I recognized such occurrence in action this week at school. It was the High School Open House, when the school is open for parents to visit and see students and teachers in their natural habitat. Weirdly enough, however, I noticed that all teachers decided to wear nice clothes that day, even though they hardly ever dress up like that. If any of us were anthropologists studying teacher behavior, we would not recognize the fact that teachers were reacting to the presence of parents, and thus our analysis of what we’d consider “natural behavior” would be wrong. However, this example results from my own personal bias as a student and my schema, so even then my analysis of the phenomenon would not be the best possible one. Nonetheless, this shows that using our humanity, perception, and previous knowledge is necessary if we want to paint the “most accurate” picture of our object of study. The same applies to the human sciences in general, where some subjectivity, such as using the tools humanity has given us (judgment, emotion, ethics) may add even more value to our investigation, and ensure no empirical mistakes are made.

Studying the social sciences objectively with a tad of subjectivity, however, is not enough to completely understand human behavior. In any research, there are two types of statements: positive, or statements of fact, and normative, or statements of value. Normative statements are important in letting us evaluate how important something is, but that kind of value claim cannot be made from within the social sciences. Thus, studying the social sciences objectively but with external influences like ethics is the only way to study the human sciences objectively, so that it complies with Plato’s definition of knowledge, while also preserving the field’s uniqueness. The social sciences are essential for us to understand human behavior, but they must be accompanied by a wider philosophical standpoint on social justice and individual rights.

WC: 980

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?