Psychology, Anthropology, Ecology.

A few post’s ago I talked about education in the modern world. I talked about the economic system and used evolutionary theory of primate group size (Dunbar’s Number) to explain the social effects of modern history. I referenced an article in Time Magazine about the effects of decreased empathy in social interaction and increased self interest. It is necessary to read those bits to understand this.

There are social effects of decreased empathy. The existence of groups creates shared goals and achievements. These are part of Maslow’s Hierarchy, amongst belonging and mutual respect. Trust is also required for social groups, this comes under the ‘safety’ level of the hierarchy.

The term ‘psychopath’ can have strong connotations but there is a scale of psychopathy (Harper, 1989). I do not think it is productive to talk about psychopathy when it causes so much mental anguish. It is better to look at human behaviour from a distant and rounded perspective, using anthropology (The Naked Ape is a book that does this scientifically). However, for the purpose of talking about psychology in this blog here is a bit on the scale:- There is a test called the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised administered by mental health professionals, which contains 20 items relating to social behaviour. “Psychopathy is most strongly correlated with DSM-IV antisocial personality disorder […] It is also associated with narcissistic personality disorder, which correlates with extraversion and positive affect” (Wikipedia).  Hare, the author of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, says that psychopathy has no precise equivalent in the DSM.

Now for what is being done about competition in the free market over resources such as food, shelter and healthcare…

This TED Talk is about the ability of business to scale sustainable energy use because of reinvesting profit derived from self-sustaining solar energy. Non-governmental organisations and charities do not make a profit and so cannot reinvest in resources. Business makes up the majority of the US national profit. The speaker is the head of Ikea’s plan for itself and it’s supply chain to be totally sustainable in the next few decades.

There are different types of energy resources, such as planting Eucalyptus trees instead of cutting down old rainforest. Nuclear Fision also holds a lot of potential, see this article. This video talks about the ineffectiveness of current sustainable energy technology to be used on a large scale. This video is about Phosphorous in farming. It is a mineral necessary for the forming of plant DNA, and it is needing to mined because it is depleted in the soil. However, the mines are running out. There is mushroom that can be used in symbiosis with plants to extract phosphorous from the soil, reducing phosphorous use by about 85% and increasing crop yeild. I have posted other TED videos about the scientifc progress on the interactions between climate change, food & energy production and overpopulation.

Neuroscience and Metacognition

Sorry about the formatting.

First I will relay some points from a few other blogs that have been talking about Metacognition.

Then I will relate these to some Neuroscientific findings and some behavioural research.

I will make the point that Metacognition may be part heritable and affected by environment.

Metacognition is thinking about thinking, also called introspection.

It is useful in learning because it allows a learner to assess what they need to know in order to meet course goals or internal motivations. In a few blogs Metacognition has been talked about in depth. Duncan reported: “Craig et al (2006) found that

students who were asked “deep-level-reasoning questions” (questions based on

possibilities, such as hypothetical reasoning questions “If we change/do this, what

happens?”, and those asking for explanation of information “How does this work?”

rather than just recall) significantly outperformed those who were not asked any

questions when studying new material.” He explains this as increased mental

representation of the material gained from deeper processing, evidenced by longer

retention in long term memory (Craik & Lockhart, 1972).

Chris posted: “Knight and Wood (2005) looked into improving their biology

undergraduate course. To do this they used an hour less for lectures a week and

instead used that time for interactive learning and cooperative problem solving. They

found that this gave the students significantly higher learning gains (the difference

between pre and post-tests) and better conceptual understanding.”

A study by Fleming et al. (2010) looked at how well people judged whether they were

correct at guessing which of two light patches was the brighter. The task was adjusted

for individual ability, so that only the individual’s awareness of the accuracy of their

decision making ability was being measured. The researchers used MRI scans to find

that this metacognitive or introspective ability significantly correlated with the

amount of grey matter and the structure of the neighbouring white matter in a small

area of the anterior prefrontal cortex. This result could be due to innate differences in

brain function or the effects of experience and learning.

Knight and Wood observed that marking students on a curve discouraged them from working collaboratively. In addition,

students in ethnic minorities achieved a slightly lower average, but this was not significant.

Thinking of this, Metacognition may be one mediator of academic success but that it may be moderated by social factors.

Chris also stated that a course involving “practice with problem-solving, data analysis, and other

higher-order cognitive skills improved the performance of all students, but

particularly those from a disadvantaged background” (Haak, HilleRisLambers, Pitre, & Freeman, 2011).

This suggests that Metacognition could be more-or-less moderated by an environment-gene interaction similar to

that being researched in the fields of intelligence and personality.

Research reported in Science Daily by Baird et al. (2013) found that there are multiple

brain systems within the prefrontal cortex supporting Metacognition – “The ability to accurately reflect on perception is

associated with enhanced connectivity between the lateral region of the anterior

prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate, a region involved in coding uncertainty

and errors of performance.

In contrast, the ability to accurately reflect on memory is linked to enhanced

connectivity between the medial anterior prefrontal cortex and two areas of the brain:

the precuneus and the lateral parietal cortex, regions prior work has shown to be

involved in coding information pertaining to memories.”

Metacognitive systems in the prefrontal cortex could be functionally linked to systems of memory. A study by Tine (2013)

found that children who grew up in rural poverty scored lower on visual working

memory tests than those growing up in urban poverty. In contrast, urban poverty gave

a slightly lower score on verbal working memory. These differences were explained

by the researcher as relating to differences in the lives of the children. Rural areas

lacked visual stimuli such as traffic, crowds and signs, whereas noise pollution in

cities was cited as slightly hindering verbal working memory.

Metacognition is necessary for social behaviour. This extract of an abstract of a recent

meta-analysis explains the role of rest and non-attention in Metacognition:

“When people wakefully rest in the functional MRI scanner, their minds wander, and

they engage a so-called default mode (DM) of neural processing that is relatively

suppressed when attention is focused on the outside world. Accruing evidence

suggests that DM brain systems activated during rest are also important for active,

internally focused psychosocial mental processing, for example, when recalling

personal memories, imagining the future, and feeling social emotions with moral

connotations. Here the authors review evidence for the DM and relations to

psychological functioning, including associations with mental health and cognitive

abilities like reading comprehension and divergent thinking.”

Immordino-Yang et al, (2012).

Immordino-Yang’s review states quite a few things: that in people with stronger DM activity at rest there are higher scores on divergent thinking, reading comprehension and memory Li et al., 2009; Song et al., 2009; van den Heuvel, Stam, Kahn, & Hulshoff Pol, 2009; Wig et al., 2008), performance ability on cogntively-demanding attentional tasks.  The level of long range and overall neural DM activity has been shown to be greater in those of high than average intelligence. Suggested is that children without adequate opportunity to play and teenagers without opportunity to quietly reflect may not do as well as others on these skills. That there is a gap still between disadvantaged students and others in the studies aforementioned alludes to this. Level of DM activity has also been shown to be lower in autistic and depressed people and higher in Schizophrenia. Schizophrenia and depression are linked to social factors.

References

Craik, F. I., & Lockhart, R. S. (1972). Levels of processing: A framework for memory

research. Journal of verbal learning and verbal behavior, 11(6), 671-684.

Fleming, S. M., Weil, R. S., Nagy, Z., Dolan, R. J., & Rees, G. (2010). Relating introspective accuracy

to individual differences in brain structure. Science, 329(5998), 1541-1543.

Immordino-Yang, M. H., Christodoulou, J. A., & Singh, V. (2012). Rest Is Not Idleness Implications

of the Brain’s Default Mode for Human Development and Education. Perspectives on Psychological

Science, 7(4), 352-364.

Knight, J. K., & Wood, W. B. (2005). Teaching more by lecturing less. Cell Biology Education, 4, 298-310. DOI: 10.1187/05–06–0082.

Tine, M. (2013). Working Memory Differences Between Children Living in Rural and Urban Poverty. Journal of Cognition and Development, (just-accepted).

University of California – Santa Barbara (2013, October 16). Brain connections underlying accurate introspection revealed. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 25, 2013, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131016100432.htm

Blog 1

In post will briefly discuss theories in psychology that concern motivation and emotion. These will be related to the priorities of the UK’s education system.

The Theory of Planned Behaviour (Azjen, 1991)) is used in Health Psychology to predict behaviour. It takes into account perceptions of the likelihood of an expected outcome, behavioural self control, subjective evaluation of risks and benefits of outcomes and attitudes towards behaviour. The theory doesn’t take into account emotion however. Current theories of motivation state that it is a combination and conflict of cognitive and affective processes that drives behaviour, and define emotions as physiological changes in chemical secretion that affect physiological changes such as heart rate and energy use (Phillips, Drevets, 2003).

In my other blog written for the Psychology of Education module, I asked the question: What are we educated for? It is my contention that the exploration of psychology, in cognition, emotion, motivation and development, is changing to an exploration of neuroscience. The evidence for this trend comes from the project choices we have for our third year: most concern cognitive or neurological theories of biological processes, or, applications of psychology to intellectual disabilities, education or consumerism.

In Psychology of Education, the course tutor wants to change the education system to be more effective through applying research on motivation. However, for what purpose are people educated, what is their motivation? The field of Evolutionary Anthropology studies human evolution from social behaviour in the 190 or so species of primates alive today and fossil records. It gives a very good explanation for the events that have occurred in modern history. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution, social groups have been changed by overcrowding in cities (The Shock Doctrine, 2007). Before this, communities lived in groups of around 150, as predicted by Dunbar’s Number (Youtube, 2010). This is the number of stable relationships, relationships that contain obligation and trust, that a person can sustain at one time. Self regulation of these communities meant that self-interest was punished and cooperation rewarded (Morris, 1967). If one person acted in self-interest, somebody would point them out to the group. However, the Industrial Revolution allowed transportation of resources and the accumulation of money by the owners of production. Money acts a representation of value, for things such as food and shelter, but its flaw is that its use is not fully regulated between people.

Distribution of labour, a method of increasing production, is the division of parts of production to different people. A person does a job the same way in repetition, causing boredom and frustration. This contrasts to the theory of Flow, wherein tasks are implicitly motivating (Csikszentmihalyi, Rathunde, 1993). Without motivating tasks, achievement, one of the components of Positive Psychology, disappears (Seligman, Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).

Implicit Motives are “intricately involved in nonconscious cognitive and affective processes such as attentional orienting, implicit learning, and hedonic evaluation, including their physiological consequences such as hormone release.”

Explicit motives “guide strategic, declarative behavior, such as goal setting, decision making, and self-regulation. (Erlangen.de)

So implicit motivation is not present in much of formal education. However, implicit motivation can be found in science education, which is on the rise (IB TIMES, 2013). This is because science holds the answers to social and environmental problems, as well as technological advances (Savill, 2013).

References

Ajzen, I. (1991) The theory of planned behaviour. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179-211. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-T.

Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Rathunde, K. (1993). The measurement of flow in everyday life: toward a theory of emergent motivation.

Differences between implicit and explicit motivation. Uni-erlangen.de. Retrieved October 23^rd, 2013, from http://www.psych2.phil.uni-erlangen.de/~oschult/humanlab/research/differences.htm

Morris, D. (2010). The naked ape: A zoologist’s study of the human animal. Random House.

My Bright Idea: Robin Dunbar. Youtube.com. Retrieved October 23^rd, 2013, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZKtGosG-4I

Kerur, B. (2013). India, Russia to Collaborate on Energy, Education, Science and Technology. IBTimes.com. Retrieved October 23^rd, 2013, from http://www.ibtimes.co.in/articles/515804/20131022/india-russia-collaboration-energy-education-science-technology.htm

Phillips, M. L., Drevets, W. C., Rauch, S. L., & Lane, R. (2003). Neurobiology of emotion perception I: The neural basis of normal emotion perception. Biological psychiatry, 54(5), 504-514.

Seligman, M. E., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology: an introduction. American psychologist, 55(1), 5.

Savill, S. (2013). Anthrozoology, Climate Change and Overpopulation. Retrieved October 23^rd, 2013, from https://simonsavill.wordpress.com/.

The Theory of Planned Behavior. Sph.bu.edu. Retrieved October 23^rd, 2013, from

http://sph.bu.edu/otlt/MPH-Modules/SB/SB721-Models/SB721-Models3.html.

Anthrozoology, Climate Change and Overpopulation (Links to TED videos included)

What are we being educated for?
The explanation of human behaviour and a history of our evolution has already been found through psychology and the study of primate behaviour and fossil records. We can look at how to educate people but change in attitudes about wanting to learn occur when
there is a reason to learn. The things I want to study are those in the title, because these are the things that will enable us to change the world into a peaceful, sustainable place. I think that psychology now is applied or is neuroscience, with an explanation from Anthrozoology explaining the increase in mental health problems. This explanation being the lack of self-regulating communities (see Dunbar talk). But what are the practical uses of neuroscience? There are clinical uses, the biggest being antidepressants, but there is worrying research about harmful effects and SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) effectiveness (a main article in New Scientist Magazine a few months ago that I can’t find).

This leads me to the question: what can you do in psychology? Consumer, clinical, neuroscience, education. See my last blog for a quick explanation of the global economic system.

Video of interview with Robin Dunbar. He talks about Dunbar’s Number, the relationship between brain and social group size. Also talks about the cessation of self regulating community in the Industrial Revolution.

The talks I have listed below give a whole view of how science from biology, chemistry and ecology is changing the world. See this TED Talk for a brilliant overview of climate change science and how scientists who are connected through TED are and really need to be influencing other scientists, business leaders and politicians to develop within safe boundaries:

I also give some information on a book on Anthrozoology that explains human motives and behaviour.

The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris (Anthrozoology)

“Whether he is discussing our origins, sex, rearing, exploration, fighting, feeding, comfort or relation to other animals, he is always specific, startling, but logical… He minces no words, lets us off nothing in our basic relation to the animal kingdom to which we belong.” – Harpers Magazine

No 77 of the 100 most influential non-fiction books of all ‘Time’ (in Time Magazine’s history):

“You only need to read the first two paragraphs of The Naked Ape to understand why it was so controversial when it debuted in 1967 and why it wound up on lists of banned books deemed “anti-Christian” by school boards.”

Introduction to The Naked Ape

“There are one hundred and ninety-three living species of
monkeys and apes. One hundred and ninety-two of them are
covered with hair. The exception is a naked ape self-named
Homo sapiens. This unusual and highly successful species spends
a great deal of time examining his higher motives and an equal
amount of time studiously ignoring his fundamental ones. He
is proud that he has the biggest brain of all the primates, but
attempts to conceal the fact that he also has the biggest penis,
preferring to accord this honour falsely to the mighty gorilla.
He is an intensely vocal, acutely exploratory, over-crowded
ape, and it is high time we examined his basic behaviour.
I am a zoologist and the naked ape is an animal. He is therefore
fair game for my pen and I refuse to avoid him any longer
simply because some of his behaviour patterns are rather complex
and impressive. My excuse is that, in becoming so
erudite, Homo sapiens has remained a naked ape nevertheless;
in acquiring lofty new motives, he has lost none of the earthy
old ones. This is frequently a cause of some embarrassment to
him, but his old impulses have been with him for millions of
years, his new ones only a few thousand at the most—and
there is no hope of quickly shrugging off the accumulated
genetic legacy of his whole evolutionary past. He would be a
far less worried and more fulfilled animal if only he would
face up to this fact. Perhaps this is where the zoologist can
help.

One of the strangest features of previous studies of naked-ape behaviour is that they have nearly always avoided the
obvious. The earlier anthropologists rushed off to all kinds of
unlikely corners of the world in order to unravel the basic
truth about our nature, scattering to remote cultural backwaters
so atypical and unsuccessful that they are nearly extinct.
They then returned with startling facts about the bizarre
mating customs, strange kinship systems, or weird ritual procedures
of these tribes, and used this material as though it were
of central importance to the behaviour of our species as a
whole. The work done by these investigators was, of course,
extremely interesting and most valuable in showing us what
can happen when a group of naked apes becomes side-tracked
into a cultural blind alley. It revealed just how far from the
normal our behaviour patterns can stray without a complete
social collapse. What it did not tell us was anything about the
typical behaviour of typical naked apes. This can only be done
by examining the common behaviour patterns that are shared
by all the ordinary, successful members of the major cultures
—the mainstream specimens who together represent the vast
majority. Biologically, this is the only sound approach. Against
this, the old-style anthropologist would have argued that his
technologically simple tribal groups are nearer the heart of the
matter than the members of advanced civilizations. I submit
that this is not so. The simple tribal groups that are living
today are not primitive, they are stultified. Truly primitive
tribes have not existed for thousands of years. The naked ape
is essentially an exploratory species and any society that has
failed to advance has in some sense failed, ‘gone wrong’.
Something has happened to it to hold it back, something that
is working against the natural tendencies of the species to
explore and investigate the world around it. The characteristics
that the earlier anthropologists studied in these tribes may well
be the very features that have interfered with the progress of
the groups concerned. It is therefore dangerous to use this
information as the basis for any general scheme of our behaviour
as a species.

Psychiatrists and psycho-analysts, by contrast, have stayed
nearer home and have concentrated on clinical studies of
mainstream specimens. Much of their earlier material,
although not suffering from the weakness of the anthropological
information, also has an unfortunate bias. The individuals
on which they have based their pronouncements are,
despite their mainstream background, inevitably aberrant or
failed specimens in some respect. If they were healthy,
successful and therefore typical individuals, they would not
have had to seek psychiatric aid and would not have contributed
to the psychiatrists’ store of information. Again, I do
not wish to belittle the value of this research. It has given us
an immensely important insight into the way in which our
behaviour patterns can break down. I simply feel that in
attempting to discuss the fundamental biological nature of our
species as a whole, it is unwise to place too great an emphasis
on the earlier anthropological and psychiatric findings.
(I should add that the situation in anthropology and
psychiatry is changing rapidly. Many modern research
workers in these fields are recognizing the limitations of the
earlier investigations and are turning more and more to
studies of typical, healthy individuals. As one investigator
expressed it recently: ‘We have put the cart before the horse.
We have tackled the abnormals and we are only now beginning,
a little late in the day, to concentrate on the normals.’
The approach I propose to use in this book draws its
material from Three main sources: (i) the information about
our past as unearthed by palaeontologists and based on the
fossil and other remains of our ancient ancestors; (2) the
information available from the animal behaviour studies of the comparative ethologists, based on detailed observations of a
wide range of animal species, especially our closest living
relatives, the monkeys and apes; and (3) the information that
can be assembled by simple, direct observation of the most
basic and widely shared behaviour patterns of the successful
mainstream specimens from the major contemporary cultures
of the naked ape itself.
Because of the size of the task, it will be necessary to oversimplify
in some manner. The way I shall do this is largely to
ignore the detailed ramifications of technology and verbalization,
and concentrate instead on those aspects of our lives that
have obvious counterparts in other species: such activities as
feeding, grooming, sleeping, fighting, mating and care of the
young. When faced with these fundamental problems, how
does the naked ape react? How do his reactions compare with
those of other monkeys and apes? In which particular respect
is he unique, and how do his oddities relate to his special
evolutionary story?
In dealing with these problems I realize that I shall run the
risk of offending a number of people. There are some who
will prefer not to contemplate their animal selves. They may
consider that I have degraded our species by discussing it in
crude animal terms. I can only assure them that this is not my
intention. There are others who will resent any zoological
invasion of their specialist arena. But I believe that this
approach can be of great value and that, whatever its shortcomings,
it will throw new (and in some ways unexpected)
light on the complex nature of our extraordinary species.”

Ebook of The Naked Ape

http://www21.zippyshare.com/v/12584108/file.html

Human Evolution and Anthropology books

http://bioteaching.wordpress.com/2012/12/23/top-books-of-2012-human-evolution-and-anthropology/

Ted Talks on Climate Change:
http://www.ted.com/topics/climate%20change

This one is good for an overview:

Desertification (changing of grassland to desert) in about half of the world’s land is contributing possibly more than fossil fuels to climate change. A scientific solution is offered and already taking place:

HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program)
Extreme Ice Survey founded by James Balog
documentary Chasing Ice

Ted Talks on overpopulation:

Easy to understand overview:

Quick summary:

It’s happening in the poorest places in the world, 4 billion. Need to move them to having mobile phones and transport

(bicycles) so they can access healthcare by having a role in the global economy. In these countries mothers have more

children and the survival rate is around 60-70%. Vaccination, penecillin moves child mortality down and then family

planning moves family size down. This has happened to Arab countries, Bangladesh, all developing economies.

How cultures are changing from within:
http://www.ted.com/playlists/38/hans_rosling_5_talks_on_globa.html

Talk on growing from stem cells and also a bit on the economy.

Juan Enriquez: The next species of human

A discussion of the modern education system without looking at its evolutionary causes is limiting.

I need to say what my aims are with what I am talking about in this blog, because people commenting are lost as to what I mean. I am trying to get people to understand everything about human behaviour. The book I am using is an outsider’s view of humans, the writer is a zoologist who studied evolution and behaviour in primates and other animals and then applied it to humans. Everything from why we study to what we study and how we study is covered by the converging areas of psychology: emotion, attachment, motivation, cognition (including schemas & heuristics, creativity), conformity, obedience, psychoanalytic defense mechanisms. These are all explanable by relating the behaviours humans have: mating, rearing children, aggression, cooperation, forming groups and dominance, to that of our close evolutionary links, such as orangutans (who we share 98% of DNA with), as the book I am using does. The book is quick to read and will completely change your life. You will see your attachments/acquaintances differently, fall in true love, want to be as free as you were as a child and become frustrated by the lack of understanding of the majority of educated people out there.

My argument comes from Desmond Morris’s book ‘The Naked Ape’. I do need to look the studies referred to in this book to make a scientifically robust argument, however, this feels to me like a huge task because my aim is to relate it to society and then in that context, education, but I have been asked in this module to talk about education using only psychology. The book references a lot of evolutionary studies and has not been criticized for scientific inaccuracy. The BBC said of it upon its release in 1967: “Zoologist Dr Desmond Morris has stunned the world by writing about humans in the same way scientists describe animals.” Here is an Ebook if you wish to read it.

A key point in understanding the way our society is structured by employment and segregation is the theory behind conflict.  Firstly, when a group of people become larger than a few hundred (according to census data on tribal societies), social relationships are unable to be maintained with everyone in the group. Here is a study on Twitter use that supports this. Our society is far larger than this. Using Sigmund Freud’s Defense Mechanism of Displacement, which is the taking out of frustrations on people or objects that are relatively less threatening, it is logical that when an individual feels threatened and there is no or inadequate social attachments available … and this is accompanied by attributing causation to events (another Freudian mechanism, Rationalisation), anger can occur and it can be attributed to people. When a person is unknown, it is far easier for to make internal attributions which are judgements on the causes of behaviour decided on an individual’s characteristics such as ability, personality, mood, efforts, attitudes, or disposition (Markus, 2008). External attributions are those about situation or chance. However, mistaken Rationalizations about personality, such as eugenics, were used by Hitler to convince people that Jews were an inferior race. Freud was not the most empirical of psychologists, but his defense mechanisms are reflected in the most accepted research of anthropology and psychology.

The Free Market economical system, is a system in which value of goods and services is determined by demand and availability.  An anthropology textbook I own states: “It is often hard to fully understand the behaviours of a member of another society, which leaves open many chances for misunderstanding and inappropriate behaviour” (Weiss & Mann, 1978, p539). Before global trade increased rapidly in the 20th century, more of the trade and living in this country was done within communities, where conflict was resolved. This is because childhood play causes cognitive ability and social behaviour to develop (such as cooperation, turn taking and conflict resolution), (Fromberg and Gullo,1992). Children not born with parents who have secure (cooperative) attachments with people they have relationships with, are passed on anxious (insecurity) or resistant (resentful) attachment styles, these greatly affect the way the child plays and make them susceptible to being taken advantage of or doing so to others. Behaviours and beliefs are passed on from one generation to the next. The Free Market system is open to abuse between groups because it serves is to attain wealth in currency and therefore power over resources and social influence. However, this usually causes guilt and rationalization because it is at the expense of others. People who rise to the top of exploitative companies are now thought to often possess psychopathic traits.

Attachment style theory has been replicated over many experiments, and it is a better approach than using personality measures such as the Big 5 because it explains behaviour in a social context. However, both theories work together in the gene-environment interaction theories and in the Biopsychosocial model, which states that in physical and mental health and disease, biology as well as psychological and social factors play a role in human functioning.

The education system is geared toward filling these roles in the free market. However, in a century and a bit we have found out a great deal about our minds and behaviour. We have adapted to live in societies, although it does not suit us, but creativity in thinking is what is needed to provide conditions where we don’t need to fight for resources. There has been a recent advance in self-sustaining nuclear fision. Also important are green energy and more efficient food production.

Freud is discredited but there is no denying that his theories of defence mechanisms do hold up to how people think.

I’ll give you the a part of the preface of The Naked Ape that should help you see why the zoological point of view is not more popular:

“I knew that many people resented being called animals, as though this was in some way disgusting—an insult to human
dignity. Since • I had always loved animals I found this rather
depressing. It meant that such people had a low opinion of the
other members of the animal kingdom. For me, it was just the
reverse. Before I wrote The Naked Ape, I had preferred to study
other, more beautiful and more fascinating species. Now, at last,
I was prepared to elevate the human species to the level of one of
my beloved animal forms.
Of course, I guessed that I might shock some of the more
starry-eyed escapists—people who were still gullible enough to
believe the old fairy-tales designed to keep superstitious medieval
peasants in their place—and I also suspected that the deliberate
frankness of some of my statements might prove distasteful
to the more sheltered puritans. But I was in no mood to compromise
or to soften my message. I wanted to tell the truth as I
saw it, bluntly and straightforwardly, with all the usual ‘waffling’,
side-stepping and philosophical smoke-screening swept
away. The ape was naked, not merely because he had lost his
thick coat of fur during the course of evolution, but also because
I intended to strip him bare on the pages of my book and
show him as he really is—a remarkable, ingenious, brilliant animal.
No less and no more.” (Morris, 2010)

References

An algae growing helmet for sustenance: http://news.discovery.com/tech/gear-and-gadgets/food-helmet-sustains-you-with-algae-130813.htm

Morris, D. (2010). The naked ape: A zoologist’s study of the human animal. Random House.

Fromberg, D. P. & Gullo, D. F. (1992). Perspectives on children. In L.R. Williams & D.P. Fromberg (Eds.), Encyclopedia of early childhood education, (pp. 191-194). New York: Garland Publishing, Inc.-

Markus, K. F. 2008. Social Psychology. Wadsworth: Cengage Learning,

Weiss, M. L. & Mann, A. E. 1978. Human Biology and Behaviour: An Anthropological Perspective. Canada: Little, Brown & Company.

The individual and their self-concept, family, social groups, culture, evolution and intelligence. The individual’s behaviour and learning through complex cause & effect and cycles of thoughts, emotion and behaviour.

Psychology discovered robust learning principles in behaviourism. Operant conditioning is the process of learning by subjective reward, as opposed to the basic needs-reward of classical conditioning, such a as a lovely bone when a bell rings (Skinner, 1948). A decade or so earlier, Sigmund Freud was creating Psychoanalytic theory, which contains several observations of social behaviour such as the relationship between ID, Ego and Superego; denial, repression, reaction formation and rationalisation still applicable today. Cognitive Psychology has built models of the relationship between thoughts, emotions and behaviours, which apply to these observations (CBT).

The history of intelligence research has lead to Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences (1983). This states that there are two different aspects of intelligence to those measured by intelligence quotient (IQ), intra-personal and inter-personal, the ability to understand ones own and others’ intentions, motivations and desires. In addition, there are two types of reasoning: deductive and inductive, in which conclusions are drawn from information available or information is used by the mind to contradict conclusions.

Milgram (1963) and Zimbardo (1971) did mock-prison and authoritative experiments and developed theories of conformity and obedience.

Attachment styles were developed originally by John Bowlby (1969), and they are acknowledged widely by the psychological community as explaining child attachment behaviour and in turn adult attachment behaviour. Adults pass on these styles to their children, however, they are changeable through therapy or relationships. Developmental psychology has found that children learn by copying behaviour from their parents, only developing their self-concept around age 6 with the ability to think abstractly increasing throughout the teenage years (Piaget). Obedience to authority is affected by everything I have and will mention here and develops in the school, play and home situations children experience.

Motivational styles are another prominent theory. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation refer to behaviours including learning that are motivating in themselves, or are obediently done because of an often implicit threat of not being able to achieve aims such as a degree. Carol Dweck has worked on fixed and growth mindsets of intelligence (2006), which is based on feedback to achievement from role models, categorised as ‘state’ i.e current mindset, or ‘entity’ i.e. having a fixed level of ability.

Way back in 1859, Charles Darwin formed the theory of evolution. Research that has taken place in the new field of Anthrozoology (see Desmond Morris for an easily readable summary of the field) has looked at the social behaviour of primates and carnivorous mammals. This new field posits that humans have behaviours of both, with features of the social order of a primate group including dominance and submissiveness behaviour. As well as this there is a difference in behaviour between genders. However, the cognitive and physical aspects of gender lie on a spectrum. There is also a balance between understanding and curiosity, curiosity being greater in those with greater neotony (brain development through till adulthood), which can help a culture thrive or suffer through behaviours passed on through role models from generation to generation. Dunbar’s Number is the correlation between primate brain size and average social group size. By using the average human brain size Dunbar proposed that humans can only comfortably maintain 150 stable relationships.  Conflicts use the effect of facial expression, body posturing and vocalizations in order to intimidate or show submission, hopefully stopping violence occurring. However, modern conflicts do not have this feedback (e.g. ranged weaponry) and so people do inhumane things in conformity (see Milgram). Historical records show that humans join forces to overcome a common enemy, just as evolutionary altruism suggests. An interesting application of this field applies to a project to create world peace, Peace One Day. I greatly recommend the documentary.

So will all of this psychological theory plot a map for the direction of humanity’s course? Some psychologists are trying to change the education system (see Donald Clark’s TED video). The most important welfare issues of our age need to be tackled by understanding people. They are: global sustainability: in overpopulation, chemical pollution (both for environment and health) and global warming (caused by various human activity and causing natural phenomena like rising sea levels). As well as this I speculate, based largely on the anthrozoology account, that there is an impediment to happiness and detriments to emotional stability of living in an inter-connected world.  See a TED talk on the paradox of too much choice making us unhappy instead of content with what we’ve got. Mindfulness, a meditative technique from ancient times, is gaining popularity as a means of being in the present moment instead of worrying about future choices or regretting past choices. People do not make a change in behaviour unless they see that they can control it (Locus of Control). Because of a lack of implicit motivation, caused by a lack of understanding of psychology and evolution’s affects on your Ego and your attachment styles (thinking you can understand and teach others this [locus of control], as well how you relate to your Dunbar group and how that relates to others in society), people aren’t curious about our surroundings in this sense, students in psychology aren’t looking at evolution and psychology and applying it to the imminent problems facing the world population and educating others about it through the education system. I intended this post as a background so we can start off from the same point. Once again I recommend you read Desmond Morris’s book The Naked Ape.

Yours bloggingly,

Simon Savill