Without further ado, let’s begin…
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The only thing in the world trying to understand itself is the human mind. That’s the most fascinating thing about psychology. It turns the observer, which observes the world and how it works in all the other sciences, into an object of observation itself.
So if it is the mind which observes the world and in psychology, we observe the mind itself, what exactly is observing the mind in action? Is it the mind which is observing itself in action or do we have some deeper level of awareness that watches over the workings of the mind?
When we say we have an awareness that observes the mind, doesn’t that imply we are aware of the awareness that is aware of the mind? It is an infinite regress and makes one’s mind go like “Error 404: page can’t be found”.
- General human behavior– behavior common to all humans because of their humanity. From the need to survive and reproduce to the desire to feel loved, special and worthy.
- Gender-specific behavior– men loving guns, gadgets, and sports while women loving social gatherings, parties and make-up tutorials.
- Group behavior– behavior that results from identifying with a particular group. A person adopts the behaviors that are associated with a social, cultural, religious or political group to which he belongs.
- Individual behavior– behavior that is specific and unique to individuals, mostly shaped by past experiences. It is what comprises our personality and makes us different from other human beings.
2+2 ≠ 4
For instance, a person may smoke (effect) because he wants to alleviate stress and anxiety (cause 1) or assert his masculinity because he saw masculine actors on screen do it (cause 2) or be accepted among his smoker peers (cause 3). Additionally, it can also be that he smokes because of the combined effect of all these causes.
A person who suffers a major setback in life (cause) may become depressed (effect 1) or form beliefs like “I’m not good enough” (effect 2) or comfort himself by saying everything is OK (effect 3) or commit suicide (effect 3) or choose to fight back and survive (effect 4).
This is why psychology experiments and studies are rarely repeated or retested. Sometimes even the passage of time can be a crucial factor that governs behavior. You can’t step into the same river twice when it comes to human behavior.
The exact conditions in which a behavior was first observed cannot be 100% replicated and change in even a seemingly unimportant variable such as the ‘passage of time’ can have significant effects.
Unlike many other sciences which assume that phenomena occur according to some pre-set universal laws that are context-independent, psychology is highly context dependent. In fact, context is everything.