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Live Lecture #2 Continued- Psychology's Place in the Sciences
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hello to everyone that's watching this
recording later we just finished uh kind
of our discussion of these big questions
to cause an existential crisis and get
y'all thinking
uh and then we went into the mind body debate
debate
um i want to cover one last thing right
now and that is uh
kind of the idea of where does
psychology fall within the sciences
and we still have quite a few people on
live so thank you for to those of y'all
that were able to stick around
um this isn't going to be too long of a
lecture but i wanted to cover it because
there's maybe one or two questions on
quiz one
about this and i want y'all to be able
to finish out that quiz i take those
final two attempts
so the question is where is psychology's
it's confusing because you've heard of
it like here it's housed in the social
science department but you've heard of
it probably as a behavioral science as a
physical science
um as all these different as natural
science all these different things and so
so
it become a social science oh i said
social it becomes confusing but so what
i want to do is go back to an
old kind of separation uh the natural
okay i like to do this because my
professors used to
randomly start speaking in german which
was just hilarious
i think they would do this because they
wanted to sound super intelligent but it
was just so fun
uh so for natural sciences they would
say nacho beast and shopkin
and for human sciences they would say
geistes beast and shoften
i wonder if that my neighbor here could
can hear me my
office neighbor geistes beeson jofton
sir excellent uh bonus uh questions
maybe for
him i love him me and my friends loved
these terms we had plans to get a dog and
and
name it guys just beeson chopped in and
called geisty and
you know it was just a fun idea we never
did it but maybe one day
so they also are just these memory
anchors for me that i always remember
this discussion because of those words
so maybe it'll help some of y'all
so not your vision jofton what is that
uh the natural sciences think natural
it's about nature
nature is like nature out there
objective reality
it focuses on the tangible and
measurable aspects of human existence
existence it focuses on explaining
that's an important thing because that
means it's going to ask why
questions kind of questions determine
the kind of answers you get they want to
know why
i think of the scene from steel
magnolias where she's why
why why why i feel like that's what
these sciences
ask why um and so
they want to explain why things are the
way that they are
they're going to focus on physical bodies
bodies
on matter and they're going to deny or
throw aside the subjective problems such
as values
freedom responsibility denoting them as
not worthy of study
so they denote uh values
freedom responsibility
as not worthy of study
the natural sciences are physics
is a perfect example physics
and so i have a quote here natural
sciences have a whole lot of attitude
there's this guy ernest rutherford long
long time ago said there's only one science
science
and it is physics all the rest is stamp collecting
collecting
what i find to be hilarious is he wasn't
a physicist
he was a chemist so he was putting
himself down
um but if they don't believe that chemistry
chemistry
is a true science or the capital s
what do you think they think about
psychology we're like a joke
compared to physics compared to
chemistry is what they would think so
there's this attitude there
um okay so we want to look at what
are the human sciences well these are
going to be any science that focuses on
understanding that's this vision often
is like sciences
of the spirit focused on understanding
so instead of explaining
understanding what kind of questions do
they ask
to focus on understanding how questions
it's like when you go to a therapist and
they ask you how does that make you feel
you know once you get to know psychology
and how this works
to me it becomes comical when you go
into a therapist and they ask you
basically the same questions over and
over and over again
they've gotten really good at asking
these same questions but really what
they're trying to do
is they don't want to force you to
explain something because it's going to
make you feel attacked
or something make you feel defensive and
the focus isn't on you trying to consciously
consciously
explain instead the focus is on you just
kind of
giving information so that they can
understand how you're viewing the world
so they can see okay these are the dots
the person has
this is how they're connecting the dots
and then together in this journey of
therapy you all can figure out hey which
connections are healthy and which ones
aren't healthy
and so they're going to ask questions to
just get more and more and more data so
that they can better understand in your position
position
so that better stand in your position so
they can better understand how it is
that you view the world
and how you're living through in and
through it um and so
these how questions they'll say things
like oh geez
that's incredibly tough can you tell me more
more
how does that make you feel those kind
of things are just going to generate
responses with more and more information
and so they study human beings not
primarily as physical bodies but as
meaning they studied meaningful phenomena
and we are meaning making presences in
experiences thoughts
attitudes phobias everything that
involves human beings as conscious
beings i'm not going to write it all down
down
they study meaningful structures that
humans create societies research
communities legal systems
they take beliefs and intentions and
motives as part of their subject matter
beliefs intentions and motives are part
of the subject matter so my question
becomes well what is psychology of
natural science or
because i think that's what we typically
get after the discussions that we've
just had because we've just
talked i don't know so much about this
kind of
uh spark that is you know a human
kind of thing and so of course we see it
at psychology as the study of that spark
the study of that essence
and then we see how maybe it would fall
more within the human sciences
but the focus right now in mainstream psychology
psychology
is on being a natural science they want
to be a natural science because they
want to be legit
so they're going to focus on the brain
they're going to focus on physicalistic
monism and that way of thinking they're
going to focus on
neurochemistry and neurological functioning
functioning
they're going to focus on hormones
they're going to focus on all these
physical things in order to explain and control
control
the psychological and so mainstream
psychology wants to be a natural science
but we can see how
you know the people that are interested
in this and when we're talking about it
it sounds more like
we want it to be a human science and so
it becomes confusing exactly
where we fall there's one more
distinction that i want to highlight here
here
i think that the natural that is too big
the natural sciences
have this idea this is going to be a
little man
it's hard to draw on here okay and then
over here i'm gonna draw a tree to
represent the world i could draw a world
but i can't okay the natural sciences
think we can bracket this
the world objective reality and that we
can study it
and it just presents itself to us
the world presented to us out there that
is real this table is real all that is
real it makes that assumption
the human sciences i believe instead
and they say yeah it's presenting itself
to us
but we're taking it up and we're in this
bi-directional relationship with the
world we
are a being in the world you can't
separate the human
being from the world you can't separate
the world from the human being kind of thing
thing
what we understand existence to be is
like this constant
taking up of this outside world and that
we are meaning making creatures and so
that world is what it is for me your
world is what it is for you
and so we influence things we create
things we
create our realities and so i think the
human sciences
respect and recognize that kind of uh
process a little bit more so it's an
important distinction okay
so where does psychology fall well we
just said okay they want to be a natural
science but we
hear that maybe it's a human science and
we go into a lot of
why does psychology want to be natural
and we'll talk about it next time
a natural science why do they care so
much about this physical
objective world we'll talk about it next time
time
and we'll further talk about how they
legitimize themselves through research methods
methods
you know and this idea of it's not about
what you study it's about how you study
it that's what makes you a science
but i want to kind of avoid this big confusing
confusing
question of you know what type of
science psychology is is it natural is
it human is it behavior or is it social
is it biological is it physical
and instead i want to talk about our
very last thing is levels of explanation
so let's stop worrying about that and
instead look at levels
of explanation
okay i'm going to use an example here
and it's hard to give in the very last second
second
when i don't have a lot of time because
it's such a
important heavy example but i i think that's
that's
i'm going to go for it somebody commits suicide
suicide
you know and the thing is a lot a lot of
people are struggling with suicidal thoughts
thoughts
suicidal ideation uh all this kind
these kind of things and i think it's
more people than we realize
and i have a lot of students come to me
and say that they're struggling with
different things
um or they've known people who have
attempted or committed suicide or they
themselves have attempted
um and so i know that this is something
that people are dealing with so we're
looking at suicide here
but and i want to take a moment i don't
know if i've already said this
i always want to say this and so i'll
say it later on um i know y'all just met
me and this is an online class
um but and so you may not exactly feel
comfortable with me yet but i just want
to say you all can trust me
i promise you with my entire heart that
you can trust me
um and if you are having suicidal
thoughts that are bothering you all the time
time
and if you're coming up with if it's
developing especially into something a
little bit more scary like you're
starting to think about
how you would do it and when you would
do it all this kind of stuff if this is
just bothering you
please know you can reach out to me you
can talk to me and i will do
anything that i can to help and you can
trust me
um so please know that you're not alone um
um
okay and and i'll i'll try to talk about
this throughout the semester i think
it's something important
uh there's so much about these suicidal moments
moments
you know that we have to emphasize that
it's temporary
the everything is temporary in life um
it's going to end at some point you're
not going to feel this bad
for forever and i do promise you that
and y'all are like oh how can you
promise it
and it's like well everything that i've
studied about the lifespan
i believe that most of the people i
don't know everyone's ages but most of
the people in this class i believe that
you're in the hardest time of life right now
now
young adulthood you know maybe 18 to
26 kind of area it's the toughest
absolutely toughest the the rates of
depression the rates of anxiety the
rates of suicide
the onset of all these psychological
disorders y'all are going through the
thick of it and i'm going to talk about
it more throughout the semester
but i know i i know that it's a struggle
right now and i just want to say
things get easier i promise it gets
easier all the research points are
getting easier my own personal
experience points to it getting easier
and all we can always know is that
everything is temporary
so you will not feel this bad for
forever but please reach out to the people
people
that love you uh that you trust and it
reach out to me
you know i'm a neutral kind of place
that you can come
and then also we have free counseling
here that when you pay for your
class you also get a free therapist
associated with call-in
and so everyone should tap into that
resource while it's available to you
but let's look someone commits suicide
we want to know why and understand how
this happened
and again it's normal you know to talk
more about suicide it's normal to have a
thought from time to time
about killing yourself that's that's
human and so i do want to say that um i
had a professor that once said if you've
never thought about it then maybe we
should study you because
maybe you're the one that's a little bit
abnormal that you've never thought about it
it
although it's a wonderful way to be but
it's normal to think about it from time
to time it's when the thought keeps
entering your mind
and you can't control it and it's
harassing you and it's always there
um that's when it's really problematic
and then it starts developing
into a plan kind of thing how i said you
know you think about how you would do it
you're constantly thinking about how you
would do it
and then you think about when you would
do it um and
so it's just haunting you that's when
it's a problem
um and typically people don't talk to anyone
anyone
and then all of a sudden it happens and
no one understands so we want to understand
understand
well we've got to look at a bunch of
different levels of explanation the
first is going to be cognitive
your thoughts yeah you'll rock i need
like a hundred on
quiz cognitions are thoughts and so
there's different types of thoughts uh
knowledge and beliefs those are types of thoughts
thoughts
and so the idea would be they believed
if we want to look at an emotional explanation
explanation
idea would be okay we're going to look
at affects
we're going to look at moods we're going
to look at feelings
they felt depressed
we could look at a motivational explanation
drives needs goals and so we say they
no longer wanted to live they didn't
have that
um that driving force the thing that
they wanted to live
if you look at a social explanation you
see this a lot in other cultures
a leader told them to do it
in our culture though you see it too i
mean it was a couple years ago i saw an
article that
like a boyfriend a girlfriend was
feeling suicidal she said i feel like i
just want to kill myself
and the boyfriend started texting her
well just do it just do it and all this
horrible stuff
i think he ended up in legal trouble so
these outside pressures matter a lot
maybe someone's getting bullied at school
school
maybe someone's playing online games and
they keep telling them what is it
kill yourself and
maybe they actually do the social
pressures matter tremendously
we need to to recognize that that's part
of the picture
and social elements uh the biological explanation
we could look at uh chemical imbalances
so we can see that there's all these
different possible levels of explanation
and in that social you can actu also
have cultural
um and so i want us to think about this
when we try to understand another human
being try to take every single possible perspective
perspective
possible possible perceptive possible
that sounds great
every perceptive possible so you can
come up with as complete of a picture of
that person
as you possibly can while recognizing
that you can never fully understand them
um and there is one perspective in
psychology that's
starting to uh really be something huge
and that's the psychosocial model
bio psycho social
model and this is a model that you know
it has this unifying thing
it's like okay yeah we want to take all
these different perspectives
we recognize they're all different
pieces of this bigger puzzle and we
and so they're going to say our moods
our feelings are often influenced by
genetics and neurotransmitters that's a biological
biological
our learned responses and patterns of
thinking psychological and our
socioeconomic status and culture
and the uh cultural view of emotion
that's our sociocultural
and so it has all of those things and
they're kind of saying let's look at
this multi-dimensional picture
okay that's it y'all so that's about uh
psychology's place within sciences
um this week we're talking a little bit
about psychological disorders
i posted a uh kind of crash course that
i did
um when it comes to cognitive behavioral
therapy um and we're gonna
i'll look at posting maybe another
pre-recorded lecture but next week
we'll finish out that introduction to
psychological disorders and we'll move
on to research methods
and reach out if anyone needs anything
i'm going to end this recording thank
you to everyone
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