Importance of Psychological Research and Contribution to Our Society - Essay Example

Importance of Psychological Research and its Value and Contribution to our Society Man is a social animal. Study of psychology and how man understands life begins with this sentence and has not ended till date. Understanding human psychology is crucial to social living and behavior. Perhaps one of the most important factors that determine a human psychology is the ability of human beings to emulate or imitate. Further on, there are other factors that keep the human psychology triggered and in running shape. Sequential studies and growth of understanding in this respect has been undertaken extensively over the past many years. We run a quick analysis on how useful these studies and the different doctrines provided with it are to us and our understanding of daily life and behavioral patterns. Training and Behavior: Shaping minds After a decent number of training hours, when you ask your pet to sit, it sits. When you ask it to fetch you a ball, it does. When you order it to eat its food, it does. Ever wondered why such things happen effortlessly after initial training, while the same pet had been an unruly rowdy before it? Well, everybody does. Skinners Experiments, Deductions and Behaviourism Model: Training is a great way to record a memory of actions, which causes the animal to act immediately as soon as the known signs or indications happen. Skinner elaborated this in a series of experiments in the animal shaping of minds (Toates F., 2012, 165). His experiments on animal psychology revealed that when in a situation of hunger, an animal, be it a cat, rat or bird, will figure out in what way it can reach its food. By series of mind-shaping or training experiments, Skinner proved that they can be made to develop new habits and the process may involve several memory making levels which comprise of reward and punishment. Through such experiments, he developed an understanding of two types of animal behavior which he classified as elicited behavior and emitted behavior. (Toates F., 2012, 170). Thus, his studies in animal behavior and psychology not only revealed the level of intelligence and memory making capacity in different species, but also found how the psychological dynamics worked in generating the two types of behavior. While Skinner’s results were important in many studies, they were particularly important in predicting human psychology and actions. Today, when we see a person addicted to gambling or poker, or to habits like drugs or smoking, we know which psychological metrics have led him to this situation, and what dynamics work in his mind most of the day. This gives us more control on our behavior with them and in understanding their behavior in turn. Dealing with addictions becomes way much easier in present day society, with awareness of how elicited behavior can be used to slowly deal and fight with the addictive mindset. Skinner’s experiments proved that not all human behavior comes about from his/her original nature, but might be elicited due to reinforcements in surroundings that have fed in new behavioral tendencies in him/her. A lot of behaviourism gets explained with his theories (Toates F., 2012, 178). The Art of Emulation..or is it a Natural Tendency? From children to young adults, human psychology has always acted like a mirror when it watched something new happening in its surroundings. For example, when a child sees another person or child being abusive or aggressive, he immediately applies the same behavior to a any object he finds similar to the object of their hatred. The concepts of fashion and trends in society stem from this tendency to emulate whatever looks or is considered attractive by the person sitting next to you. The Story Of Bandura’s Experiments: Bandura’s experiment with around hundred children aged between 3 to 6 years in age has proven these emulative tendencies. His experiments concentrated on treating groups of children to different suggestions of similar aggressive acts. To one group he showed a video of the recorded model action, while in the other he had a real model do the doll punching and swearing, to another he had a cartoon film depicting an aggressive cat punching a doll and to the fourth group he administered zero dose of aggression centric action (Oates J., 2012, 112). In all cases, when these children were left alone to play with a similar doll in a room full of toys, children mostly emulated what they had seen in the previous sections of the experiments and punched and yelled at the doll. He also tried to check if gender had a role to play in the actions that ensued and found that girls were apparently milder in their violent outbursts than boys were. (Oates J., 2012, 116). Thus, the impact of social influence in determining the extent to which the behavior of a person is changed owing to what he witnesses in people around him. Young adults are seen to be influenced by many social factors at the same time. Their violent outbursts and emotional break-downs therefore lay explained through these studies. As we all know, a great chunk of the learning that we have in our younger days shapes our personality in later days. Dealing with a violent man becomes easy then, when you know or can guess his background, upbringing, and natural intentions. Today, even parents know how to generate better control on the content that their children come across online and ensure that social and online influences do not bring in aggressive tendencies in the children (Oates J., 2012, 135). This gives better groomed individuals and a more stable society that knows how to deal with aggression. The ever silent question: Are we paying enough attention? When you are talking to a friend, how many times have you wondered if you get inside his mind and check if he is really listening to you. This happens to most of us and it is relieving to know that we are not the only ones facing this predicament. Every human being wants to receive due attention, but what happens when it comes to understanding the aspects to which we pay most attention to? Well, there has been a host of studies to describe how we, unaware of our tendencies follow a definite pattern in paying attention to the triggers and signs around us. With respect to these factors, the definition of attention suddenly changes from times when a person is consciously told to “pay attention” to when he actually works on silent stimulus from happening around him or misses a certain person or incident due to over involvement in the happenings around him, and is ultimately a machinery working on a combination of stimulus from the world around him (Edgar H. & Edgar G., 2012, 327). When such definitions come up, it becomes highly important to get our understanding of external stimulus, attention paying dynamics and attention grabbing factors clearer. A few active models and guidelines based on experiments conducted by various researchers help us tremendously in this regard. We shall take a quick look at all of them below: Broadbent’s work and the information flow diagram: In 1948. Donald Broadbent, an ex-pilot, studied various psychological factors that governed the reaction to stimulus of aircraft pilots basing on his experience. His studies further took him to delving deeper into the dynamics of paying attention in different situations. He came up with a very appropriate model and has been recognized in the field of psychology as a pioneer who laid the basis for advanced studies in understanding how humans pay attention to different signs around them. According to his model, all external happenings around us fall on our senses, whish lead to a temporary memory creation, where the information received from the stimulus is stored. While the short term memory gets erased eventually, a selective filter works in making it clear to us as to what is important and what is negligible amount of information in that memory (Edgar H. & Edgar G., 2012, 332). The information then passes through a cyclic limited capacity channel that either sends it for further processing to the brain and initiates a stimulus or reaction, or sends it back with logical feedback to the selective filter which again sends it back to the limited capacity channel only when there is a repetition of the same incident around. This model of information flow is seen in all human behavior, and has been corroborated again and again overtime. It is indeed interesting that all general inputs are so sequentially filtered to generate attention from us, all of which is completed within a matter of a few milliseconds. 334 He easily found through series of dichotic listening experiments that we pay more attention to what enter our right ear first, and tend to repeat information in that order (Edgar H. & Edgar G., 2012, 336), as inputs from one direction reach the short term memory faster than the inputs from the other direction. Colin Cherry and Other Experiments on Broadbent’s Model: Moving on from this basic understanding, Colin Cherry further deduced from experiments based on mixed and simultaneous speeches and found that while direction is the factor that leads to input going to selective memory first, meaning is the next important factor the decides how much attention the input will get from the brain(Edgar H. & Edgar G., 2012, 347). This was further confirmed by the works of Grey and Wedderburn in 1960 (Edgar H. & Edgar G., 2012, 348). and sheds light on how we humans pay attention to things that our sense of logical screening indicates as important. Kahneman later showed that his logical screening was often dependent upon context and experience, which often led to habitual omission or lack of attention to new objects or happenings in a familiar scenario (Edgar H. & Edgar G., 2012, 357). Thus, human behavior which might often sound absurd and harmful to society lies explained in these studies on how or why a person failed to pay attention to a few concerns of people around him. As we all know, right from school through life till death, we witness umpteen number of occasions when paying a little more attention could save us a lot of trouble. With these studies revealed, it becomes almost impossible to pay attention when you know where your logic or experience is failing you. Conclusion; There have been many questions as to whether these studies are justified with the fact that every time there have been elaborate experiments a huge number of living creatures, be it humans or animals have been subjected to psychological manipulation and behavioral tests. Regardless of where these arguments take us, we must not miss out upon the fact that these psychological tests and the results we have received from them have a great contribution to make to our understanding of the human mind and its impact in social behavior more complete. It is indeed intriguing that years of sequential studies have given us definite predictive patterns that people can relate to and use in daily life, bringing new dimensions and factors in building a stable society. References; Oates J. (2012) ‘Learning from watching’, In Brace N. and Byford J. (eds) Investigating Psychology, Oxford, Oxford University Press/Milton Keynes, The Open University. Toates F. (2012) ‘Changing Behaviour’, In Brace N. and Byford J. (eds) Investigating Psychology, Oxford, Oxford University Press/Milton Keynes, The Open University. Edgar H and Edgar G (2012) ‘Paying attention’, In Brace N. and Byford J. (eds) Investigationg Psychology, Oxford, Oxford University Press/Milton Keynes, The Open University. Read More