Psychology and Human Behaviour
|
| The human mind — a universe of thoughts, emotions, and behaviours waiting to be understood |
Studying People
Human behaviour is easy to observe and surprisingly difficult to explain.
W(caps)e see someone react, withdraw, laugh, become angry, fall in love, conform, or make a decision, and our instinct is often to look for one reason.
Psychology teaches us to be more careful than that.
Biology matters. So do cognition, experience, relationships, social groups, and culture. None of these exists in isolation. Human behaviour emerges from their interaction, often in ways that are far more complicated than they first appear.
That complexity is not a problem psychology has failed to solve. It is one of the reasons psychology is worth studying.
The British Psychological Society defines psychology as "the scientific study of people, the mind and behaviour." A simple observation — boys tend to pick trucks, girls tend to pick dolls — can open up multiple explanations: biology, socialisation, peer pressure, and media influence.
No single explanation is sufficient. This is not a weakness of psychology. It is its honesty.
Human behaviour cannot be reduced to one cause. Multiple influences are always at work.
A Brain of Two Halves
The brain is divided into two hemispheres, connected by the corpus callosum — a large bundle of nerve fibres that allows information to pass between them. Classic split-brain research explored how some functions are distributed differently between the hemispheres.
| Left Hemisphere | Right Hemisphere |
|---|---|
| Often dominant for language processing | Important for aspects of visuospatial processing |
| Speech production in most people | Aspects of spatial awareness |
| Some aspects of sequential and mathematical processing | Integration of visual information |
| Important for aspects of analytical processing | Important for aspects of music, prosody and imagery |
Important: These differences do not mean that one hemisphere is "logical" while the other is "creative," nor that people are naturally "left-brained" or "right-brained." Most complex human abilities depend on communication between both hemispheres.
Roger Sperry's (1968) split-brain experiments demonstrated important differences in how the two hemispheres processed information when communication through the corpus callosum was disrupted. In some tasks, a person could recognise an object through information reaching the right hemisphere while being unable to name it because language production was more strongly associated with the left hemisphere.
The brain is not one simple, uniform system. Different regions specialise in different functions, while communication between them contributes to coherent experience.
It's the Thought That Counts
Cognitive psychology examines how we acquire, organise, and use knowledge. Three ideas are particularly useful for understanding how information is processed and remembered.
Mental Images
We can remember verbal information more effectively when we pair it with vivid or unusual mental images. The keyword technique described by Raugh and Atkinson (1975), for example, linked unfamiliar foreign words with familiar-sounding words through mental imagery and produced substantial improvements in recall.
Concepts
We organise the world through concepts: animal → bird → sparrow. But concepts are not always rigid categories. A penguin is still a bird even though it does not fly.
We often classify things according to how we understand and use them. A table is something we put things on; a stool is something we sit on. Categories help us organise a complicated world without requiring every object to fit a perfect definition.
Schemas
A schema is a mental framework containing what we already know about a particular situation. It is like a file in a mental filing cabinet: when new information arrives, the existing framework helps us interpret it.
Bransford and Johnson (1972) demonstrated the importance of this process. Participants who received a meaningful title for an otherwise confusing passage understood and remembered it more effectively because the title activated an appropriate schema.
Example: A Schema in Everyday Life
Imagine entering a restaurant you have never visited before. You probably already have a mental framework for what happens: you find a table, receive a menu, choose what to order, eat, pay, and leave. If something unexpected happens, your existing schema gives you a starting point for interpreting it.
How we think — not just what we think — shapes what we remember, how we understand, and how we act.
Adult and Intimate Relationships
Human relationships provide another example of how several influences can operate at the same time. Attraction is not explained by one factor alone.
Proximity and Familiarity
The "mere exposure effect", associated with Zajonc (1968), suggests that repeated exposure can increase familiarity and, under certain conditions, liking. People we encounter frequently can gradually become more familiar and more attractive to us.
Similarity
We are often drawn to people who share our beliefs, values, and attitudes. Similarity can make interaction easier and provide a sense of recognition and mutual understanding.
Physical Appearance
Evolutionary psychology has proposed that some aspects of physical appearance may influence attraction because they can be associated with perceived health or reproductive potential. The matching hypothesis, associated with Murstein (1972), suggests that people often form relationships with partners who are broadly similar to themselves in physical attractiveness.
What Keeps Relationships Together?
Sternberg (1999) described love through three components: passion, intimacy, and commitment.
Research by Gottman and colleagues also highlighted the importance of interaction patterns within long-term relationships. Persistent criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and withdrawal are associated with relationship difficulties, while supportive and constructive interaction can help relationships remain stable.
Attraction may bring people together. What happens between them determines what happens next.
Group Pressure
Human beings do not exist in isolation. Groups influence how we see ourselves, how we see others, and sometimes even how we behave.
Social Categorisation
We naturally classify people into groups and categories: rapper, teacher, foreigner, Christian, outsider, or member of a particular community. Categorisation simplifies a complicated social world, but it can also create boundaries between "us" and "them".
Social Identification
We can then begin to identify with a group, adopting some of its values, norms, and sense of identity.
Social Comparison
Once groups exist, people may compare their own group with others. Social Identity Theory, developed by Tajfel and Turner (1979), helps explain how these processes can contribute to in-group favouritism and out-group discrimination.
Sherif's Robbers Cave experiment (1961) demonstrated how competition between groups could contribute to conflict, while shared goals could help reduce it. Tajfel's minimal group experiments later showed that even arbitrary group distinctions could produce in-group favouritism.
Conformity
Asch's conformity experiments in the 1950s demonstrated how social pressure could influence people's responses even when the correct answer was obvious.
Conformity tends to increase when tasks are difficult or when uncertainty is high. The presence of dissent can reduce conformity. Cross-cultural research has also found differences in conformity between more collectivist and more individualistic cultural contexts.
Conformity is not simply weakness. It is a social mechanism — and recognising it makes it easier to notice when the group is speaking through us.
What Makes Us Who We Are?
The course brings these perspectives together through a case study: Zinedine Zidane's head-butt in the 2006 World Cup Final.
The same event can be approached from different psychological perspectives.
Case Study: One Behaviour, Several Lenses
Biological: Stress can activate physiological responses associated with heightened arousal and emotional intensity. Hormonal processes may also influence aggressive behaviour.
Cognitive: Previous experience and existing schemas can influence how a situation is interpreted. Selective attention can determine which aspects of an event become the focus of awareness.
Social: Behaviour also occurs within social identities, relationships, cultural expectations, and group norms. A person's identity as a man, footballer, family member, or member of a particular cultural community may all form part of the context in which behaviour occurs.
The point: No single explanation is sufficient. Biology, cognition, relationships, social identity, and culture interact.
The same principle applies far beyond one dramatic event: human behaviour rarely has a single explanation.
Seeing the Bigger Picture
One Behaviour, Many Possible Explanations
A behaviour is an observable outcome, not necessarily an explanation in itself. The same action can emerge from very different combinations of biological, cognitive, emotional, social, and cultural influences.
Context Changes Meaning
The meaning of an action cannot always be understood from the action alone. The circumstances surrounding it, the person's history, the people involved, and the expectations of the surrounding culture can all change how behaviour is interpreted.
Complexity Is Part of the Answer
Psychology does not always give us one neat explanation. Sometimes its most useful contribution is showing why a simple explanation is not enough.
My takeaway
Understanding behaviour means resisting the temptation to stop at the first explanation. Biology, cognition, relationships, groups, and culture can all be part of the picture.
A Reflection
When someone acts a certain way, there is usually more to the story than what we can see.
It is easy to observe behaviour and assume we understand it. Psychology makes that assumption harder to hold. The same action can have different causes. Biology can influence behaviour, as can thoughts, past experiences, relationships, social groups, and cultural background. Often, several of these are operating at the same time.
People are complex. And perhaps that is the most useful thing to remember.
Reference
- The British Psychological Society (BPS). Psychology is the scientific study of people, mind, and behaviour.
- Raugh, M. R., & Atkinson, R. C. (1975). Research on the keyword method and foreign-language vocabulary learning.
- Bransford, J. D., & Johnson, M. K. (1972). Research on comprehension and the role of contextual information.
- Sperry, R. W. (1968). Classic split-brain research on hemispheric specialisation.
- Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Research associated with the mere exposure effect.
- Murstein, B. I. (1972). Research associated with the matching hypothesis.
- Sternberg, R. J. (1999). The triangular theory of love.
- Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). Social Identity Theory.
- Sherif, M. (1961). Robbers Cave research on intergroup conflict and cooperation.
- Asch, S. E. Classic research on conformity.
Leave a comment. Share a line that stayed with you. Or simply whisper thank you to yourself for allowing a piece of someone’s quiet truth to touch yours.