Art or Science-The conception of the human mind?

Carl Jung argued that the mind contained the psyche and this is rooted as deeply as the biological legacy we inherited from thousands of years of evolution. Dr. Raya Jones from the Cardiff School of Social Sciences discusses the differences between the science of the psyche and the science of biology and how these created two fundamentally different arguments within the field. 

The mind is created over time and conceptualized as the soul. It is part of our conscious as a people and determines who we are, what we believe, and how we perceive the world. The biological sciences focus more on the empirical view of the body as a collection of wiring, chemistry, and anatomy that makes us physical humans. The problem is that the mind-body connection has never been made scientifically. 

Jung also believed in a collective unconscious that is deeper than our individual unconscious. It is something that connects all human beings together through their species. This existence is often seen as the wise old man who has accumulated centuries of knowledge that carries through to each new batch of people and makes its way into generations. They are archetypal images of human life.

The mind is inherited the same way that the body is inherited.  Our biological traits are carried through from our parents and great grandparents and are part of what makes us biologically human, monkey, or anything else.  It is associated with Darwin’s Origin of Species and simply comes with each child upon birth. 

The psyche is the formation of who we are and the conception of our spiritual self. The collective unconscious is that which we hold in common to all human beings and creates the structure of our mind and how we take in and develop information as a species. Without that structure our individual psyche could not create unique but similar schemes associated with our personalities. 

Each human is connected to other human beings through our social and biological traits. Some argue that we as a species are connected together on a deeper collective unconscious level that predates our own understandings of the world. What makes us distinctly human is our ability to be conscious of our own existence and that existence within a wider world. We are human because we are aware that we are human and all humans hold similar traits.

The author attempts to explain the differences between biological science and the science of the psyche. There is a constant debate among the many theorists and scientists as to what this means. Some will rely heavily on the physical and testable while others will move more into the mystic forms of the psyche. Both are rational explanations of the parts and the whole. Our parts are derived from our biological side while our whole is manifested as our soul. 

We can move beyond this report to find something related to marketing and business. There are recurrent themes within society that take on different forms.  Advertisements seek to create a connection to our inner world. For example, a commercial related to something sad may prompt us to purchase protection (i.e. insurance or safety equipment) while one that taps into a positive feelings may prompt us to relive that experience (i.e. music or vacation) again. Brand identity and marketing can successfully create positive or negative feelings in our audience based upon the mental frameworks in which customers understand them.

Jones, R. (2013). Jung’s “psychology with the psyche” and the behavioral sciences. Behavioral sciences, 3 (3).

Researchers Find 21 Different Facial Expressions

Researchers at the Ohio State University recently announced that the average human had 21 different facial expressions (1). Previously people thought there was only anger, happiness, disgust, surprise, sadness and fear. These expressions are considered universal across cultures, religions and races. That list has now been expanded to include more subtle impressions.

The recognition is based off of the way the muscles move behind the skin to create an expression (3). People can generally recognize these emotions based upon the expression a person provides in any given circumstance. Finding 21 different expressions changes the amount of information a person can gain from watching anothers face.

Famous philosophers such as Aristotle, Rene Descartes, Leonard Da Vinci and Charles Darwin believed in facial expressions as traits hundreds of years before modern findings. Research has now supported their discoveries originally derived from watching, studying, and artistically recreating people. They were astute reviewers of the world and were able to discern these patterns among varying interactions with people. 

You may be surprised that facial expression is something most of us do and our brains are hardwired to do so with mixed accuracy. Without the ability to discern the social networks in which we live it would be difficult to create trust and accurately understand friend from foe. Reading facial expressions, even if not on a conscious level, is something we are born with like the ability to speak, understand, grow or develop.

Processing of facial expressions is a deep process similar to speech. The human mind can read and understand the meaning of comments and activities through this para-language. The philosophers were deep processors and were able to slowly start understanding the patterns of life and what makes us the same and what makes us unique. 

The practical application can range from anything related to software development, theater, interrogation, psychological research, and much more. It is considered “honest communication” because people are not able to easily hide these emotions as a natural reaction to events within the world. If you question a person’s motives given them new information and see how they react. Go with your gut!

Book Review: The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt

The book The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt moves into the psychology of political parties and political persuasion. People naturally accuse the other parties of not thinking clearly and following logic. Each views the other as duped! Yet in his work, he points out that since there are strong logical arguments that follow most parties, these rational choices are based on their intuition. The logic seems to follow as people find justification for their choices. This makes changing one’s ideological views very difficult for many people. 

Jonathan Haidt, University of Virginia social psychologist, believes that people first have intuition and then rational choice. That rational choice is based upon people’s intuition and subject to it. He does not discuss those who can find multiple paths to rationality, understand the various arguments, and find validity in each of these arguments to think critically about ideology. It would require a level of stepping outside oneself without the bias we all hold onto so dearly.

This stands to reason for many people that fall within the middle curve of human perception. It would seem that biological and social self-interest would dictate our behaviors. Yet each of these parties were started by great men who thought outside of conventional standards. Whether we agree with their logic or not it would seem that those who started the philosophies were pioneers who helped people view the world in different ways.  However, as a social psychologist looking at the middle of the bell curve Dr. Glaucon would be correct in his social based analysis of human nature. 

The book appears to be more of a personal self-quest for truth that makes it fun to read. Dr. Glaucon is a supporter of liberalism and searches for knowledge and understanding within his work. From the book, we can also see a leaning to libertarianism as the authors other justifiable approach to politics. It would seem that the author likes the concepts of personal choice and ideologically finds value in the left liberals and the right libertarians. This choice comes from the belief that the rights of individuals supersede governmental needs. Fewer restrictions are better in his perspective.

The book uses ethnography, evolutionary theory and experimental psychology to understand human nature. For the vast majority of people they quickly come to conclusions when asked ethical questions and then move onto justifying their answers using poor logic. It is a rare exception for someone to spend significant time thinking, weighing, and balancing all the possible options and choices. We as a species are subject to quick heuristics and intuitive responses without much scientific or thought to these questions.

He provides explanations of basic value systems that seem to make up the two largest political parties. Republicans focus on faith, patriotism, valor, chastity, law and order while Democrats focus more on caring and fighting oppression. Each is seen as having valid arguments based in the early life experiences provided by family, friends, and social networks. Most people grow up assuming their particular ideologies are correct unless they are forced to question them. This may be one of the reasons why it is difficult to change the way people believe using only logical arguments without a deeper level of appeal.

According to the book, people are becoming more polarized with less of the population in the middle and more people moving to the extremes on either ideological side. Such shifts are considered tribal and group pushes for social network adherence.  At the very lowest level of our personality are a number of factors that include threat sensitivity, novelty seeking, extroversion, and conscientiousness. These traits stay consistent throughout our lifetimes and influences the type of political leanings a person adopts. The traits lead us in particular directions that can be difficult to adjust or change unless the environment provides alternative methods of fulfilling these personality traits in new ways. When the environment encourages us to accept and propagate certain values as truths, many of us will do so without question.

The book is separated into three categories that includes Intuition, a wider understanding of morality, and the blindness of ideology. Each section has approximately four chapters that provide justification for each of the author's beliefs and theoretical points. The book will moves through ideology, beehive mentality, subjective nature of morality, and better ways of disagreeing with each other. It provides for a thorough understanding of human nature within a work of this size.

The book was interesting to me in understanding how people can become ideological staunch in their particular positions and beliefs. This rationality is argued in many ways with each being somewhat more logical than others based upon the depth of their personal analysis. The author himself seems to be leaning toward his own ideological beliefs rooted in his upbringing, education, and environment that becomes apparent in his choice of words. Psychologists may be more liberalism or libertarianism  due to the inherent push and focus on individual development. 

This development should be based in the development of the individual within the social context and needs of society. To me, it would seem that basic value systems proposed by religion, despite those religious ideologies, have a positive ethical benefit for society. Human psychological development is also based in part in religious and philosophical development of the individual. Each is a potential methodology of viewing human nature. Furthermore, law and ethics also has a benefit in encouraging certain behaviors that limit the ability of individuals to damage society or for society to damage individuals unfairly. Most people may agree that religion encourages positive values but people may choose to distort those messages for personal gain.

 Critical thinking requires first to understand the appeal of particular ideological stances before adopting them or countering their premises. Without this critical analysis, we are only accepting what others desire us to believe without evaluating the merits of the claims for ourselves. We must think for ourselves and accept those beliefs for ourselves if we are to own them. To persuade others requires appealing first to their emotions and then to their logic through understanding how they view the world. No matter what our ideological leanings we must ask the question “Is it possible to even have a society if people are stealing, cheating, injuring, failing to work together, being dishonest, having disrespect, or not showing a level of societal loyalty?” If there are no basic values that apply to all members of society then society may someday cease to exist as a collective whole. Yet those values should not purposely castrate individuals who desire to be part of society but have different experiences and perceptions as this would be counterproductive by nature and limit the potential of a nation by segregating people into staunch ideological understandings that damage the potential to grow and work together. First we must understand before we can change. Few things in life are as concrete as we believe them to be. 

As Abraham Lincoln stated in his famous Gettysburg Address, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Where we see ourselves divided can we also see ourselves together? Does our American culture rest in basic values that apply to all individuals despite our ideological leanings?

Haidt, J. (2012). The Righteous Mind-Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. NY: Vintage Books. ISBN: 978-0-307-45577-2

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Channel Expansion Theory as an Online Biological Extension of Urges

Technology has huge impacts on our daily life and has encouraged new ways of communicating. Such technology is the natural extension of our biological capacities within the environment. Whether we are discussing education, government, social relationships, business development or international relations this technology now dominates our evolutionary developmental process as a powerful new tool. As this technological ability grows in society people will naturally start using this technology in new ways. According to channel expansion theory people will communicate using these new methodologies in order to expand their capabilities of reaching out in the environment.  This reaching out creates new influences on human behaviors through the process of imitation.

Most of human behavior is not within our awareness and we have a hard time reflecting on such behavior. Such behavior is below our level of conscious understandings (Barkow et. al., 1992). This means that most people act in manners and patterns without full awareness that such behavior is driven by a need to achieve certain results in the environment. Each person is driven by biological urges that manifest itself in the virtual world.

Our social behavior is learned by copying each other even when we are not aware we are doing so. Memes, or cultural transmission, are mimicked until they spread to a larger group of people (Henrich, 2004). This behavior grows and develops aspects of society through various communication mediums. In other words, technology creates expanding networks of people that form virtual communities which continue to collect new members.

Virtual communities use these same methodologies when spreading information to be emulated to other group members. Porra and Parks (2006) have used a broad model of sustainable virtual communities based on the properties of natural animal colonies. That such groups take on the form of animal colonies much like people with physical interaction taking on societal norms. The same patterns in natural are also seen online when the virtual world is an extension of the natural order. 

Such groups develop and grow in manners that help them overcome environmental challenges. Virtual groups progress in manners that copy the underlying logic of biological evolution (McElreath and Boyd, 2007). Therefore, whether groups are in virtual society or in physical society, they grow and evolve following the laws of nature. These same entities also communicate with each other, create societal norms, and adjust to new influences.

In order to foster this copying activity and societal structure the human mind has developed new methods to transferring information in human-to-human interactions. Such development is from the biological evolutionary push for survival (Kock, 2004). Even with such a push, it is possible that these same mechanisms are used in the development of virtual understandings inherent in digital information transference. In other words, our previous communication methods have adapted to an online environment.

According to channel expansion theory as people gain knowledge about particular technologies they are more able to use them for stronger communication tactics. As users become more accustomed to specific forms of communication like email, chat, video conference, etc… they also develop better methods of creating meta-language (embedded language) to communicate and receive subtle meanings (Carlson and Zmud, 1999). Thus new forms of communication methods result from the use of virtual technology that expand communicative effectiveness.

 This virtual technology has made its way into the school systems, our social affairs, and our businesses. As people become more accustomed to technology, they begin to use such tools in more efficient methods that expand the bandwidth of such mediums (Carlson & Zmud, 1994). Through this creation of expanding communication networks, higher levels of information are transferred to maintain and develop group members to certain social structures.

In modern times it is possible to develop entire societies in the virtual world that have certain orders maintained by group norms. These societies develop their own way of communicating that perpetuates their methodologies and lifestyles. Virtual colleges are testimony to the creation of rich information used in new and unique manners with multiple forms of media that can create higher forms of learning. Such communication tools become more effective over time developing new methods of satisfying biological needs and maintaining social rules that extend human capacities. As nations move into the virtual realms they may find that their societal influence grows by using existing communication channels in new ways that develop higher forms of communication methodology. The more people who become accustomed to this technology the more likely they will be attached to certain societies that resonate with their personal belief systems.

Barkow, J. H., Cosmides, L., and Tooby, J. (eds.). 1992. TheAdapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, New York: Oxford University Press.

Carlson, J. & Zmund, R. (1994). Channel expansion theory: a dynamic view of medial and information richness. Academy of management best papers proceedings, pp. 280-284.

Carlson, J. and Zmud, R. (1999) Channel Expansion Theory and the Experiential Nature of Media Richness Perceptions. Academy of Management Journal, 42 (2) pp. 153-170.

Henrich, J. (2004). “Cultural Group Selection, Coevolutionary Processes and Large-Scale Cooperation,” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (53:1), pp. 3-35.

Kock, N. (2004). “The Psychobiological Model: Towards a New Theory of Computer-Mediated Communication Based on Darwinian Evolution,” Organization Science (15:3), pp. 327-348.

Porra, J., and Parks, M. S. (2006). “Sustainable Virtual Communities: Suggestions from the Colonial Model,” Information Systems and e-Business Management (4:4), pp. 309-341.

McElreath, R., and Boyd, R. (2007). Mathematical Models of Social Evolution: A Guide for the Perplexed, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.