No subject was filled in. Social Psychology and Existence.

[Jasper]

I've been researching social psychology, and working on ways its concepts map to the human condition.  Ask me anything.

The "human condition" is a poet's way of referring to "the mess we're in".  It's the unique quality of being human in a world full of humans, and the nice and not-so-nice things about that.  We're probably the most fortunate of all species on earth, being very smart, tool using, socially motivated creatures living in an age of unparalleled technological luxury and relative ideological freedom.  But despite this privilege we're also very discontent with life.  We find ourselves searching for some kind of transcendence or epiphany, something "higher" to aspire to.  For too long scientists in the media have demurred to men of faith to address these questions.  We cope daily with conflicting emotional values.  We're social creatures, but not in the normal sense.  Other social creatures in the animal kingdom lack individuality.  While we are doubtlessly happier to exist as a part of a group, we often feel estranged or unwelcome in our chosen circles, and in addition to that we all belong to several overlapping social circles which require great social cunning to navigate, as well as a deeply reflective mind in order to resolve the identity crises they can cause sometimes.  On top of this huge mess, we are gradually becoming aware that we are part of social scenes that we were never aware of, or hadn't previously fathomed.  We're all citizens of nations, but a nation is so large that evolution has lapsed in providing us a way of truly comprehending this.  And beyond that, we are coming to understand, through the molasses flow of historical trend, that people of other skin colors and walks of life are also part of a supertribe we belong to, commonly referred to as the human race.  People mostly agree with this, but do we understand it?  It doesn't seem likely.  The human condition is a subject of stultifying immensity, so perhaps we can take it down a peg or two with the application of social psychology's findings.  How does Social Psychology apply, and how we can make advantageous these observations?  

Part of the condition in question is our identity.  The first thing an amnesiac might ask is, "Who am I?"  How do we gain identity, and what does it mean to us?  We're born to certain parents, who raise us to certain standards and expose us to certain influences as we mature.  And we make friends and acquaintances along the way, and we meet their friends and acquaintances and throughout that we're trying to appear normal, we want to look good, and seem smart.  It would seem that we learn these things by mirroring others, acquiring mannerisms and behaviors that allow us to participate in social exchanges.  As "Social Psychology" [1] says of conformity, "...the more important a decision is to us, the more we will rely on other people for information and guidance."  Humans universally cherish their individuality, and America especially has a strong cultural norm for nonconformity.  If one were to blatantly conform in America, they would be openly mocked.  Yet conformity prevails even here more subtly.  Our society divides itself into genres and subcultures that are outwardly diverse but individually limited to certain expressions.  There are different cultural expressions for boys and girls, rappers and rockers, goths and metal-heads, and so on.  It gets complicated fast, but the basic nature of it is that despite our normative lip-service to individuality, most people conform to a complex matrix of sociological influences based on things they have largely no conscious control over.  And this is in the best of cases; Sometimes we must wear uniforms, which have been experimentally shown to diminish our sense of individuality.  But, what constitutes a uniform?  Dictionary.com defines it as "an identifying outfit or style of dress worn by the members of a given profession, organization, or rank", by which may we infer that any mass-produced article of clothing is a uniform?  Or does that go too far?  Perhaps clothing is diverse and "role-neutral" enough to not affect us in the way lab coats or prison guard costumes do.

Beyond identity, we have good and evil:  A dichotomy that we have culled from our own feelings and their conflict with life and social norms.  On the one hand we have "good", which is the side of benevolence, fairness, equity, justice, and moral conduct.  Social psychological research has revealed that almost everyone wants to be perceived as being on the side of what they perceive as "good".  On the other hand we have evil, which is a faction that lurks somewhere on the edge of tangibility, where bogeymen are hiding razor blades in apples and impurifying our precious bodily fluids.  Almost nobody you will ever meet can honestly say that they actively conduct themselves in a way that is "evil", except in jest (in fact there is much comedy about this, because the idea of being intentionally evil is absurd in the extreme).  I mean to illustrate that evil is not the romanticized condition of gleeful moral turpitude that we see in television (and other children's diversions), it is that which we call "other", the feared out-group.  Those bad-smelling people from the other tribe who dance around the wrong kind of fertility totem, to put it one way.  But social psychologists have found that we humans are much too prone to assuming that another person's behavior is because of how they are, as opposed to their situation.  Evil seems to have an evolutionary role however, in that without a way to characterize a person or behavior as completely unacceptable, it is impossible to sanction antisocial behavior.  Interestingly, if you were to go to Google and start typing "Hell is", the first thing that Google will blithely suggest is that Hell is other people.  Jean Paul Sartre, not a social psychologist but a celebrated French intellectual, was the first person to make this statement in his 1944 book, "No Exit".  It is interesting that he should think so, especially at the time of it's publishing, because people will generally not experience or think anything evil except in the presence of other people.  Evil is somehow fundamentally connected to situations with more than one person, which is where social psychology becomes useful.  In his famous Stanford Prison Experiment, Dr. Philip Zimbardo showed us that a situation, not a person's character, is what can bring about evil behavior.  All of the world's villains and tyrants are not evil but products of evil circumstance.  Thus passes the glory of righteousness.  It is with this knowledge that we can confront true evil for what it is:  Not a malefic pariah, but mere complicity of circumstance.

Which brings us to the subject of free will.  It seems obvious and intuitive that we have a rational faculty which allows us the unrestricted ability to make any choice which we deem appropriate.  However, social psychology destroys the tidiness of this idea with a large body of research.  For instance, reactance theory provides that, when a person's freedom of choice is impugned in any way, we enter a state of reactance.  This state is characterized by resistance to perceived authority, disobedience to instructions, and uncooperativeness. Furthermore, social psychology provides us with the concepts of automatic and intentional thinking.  It could be argued that our intentional thoughts are, in many ways, of free will.  The same could not be easily argued for automatic thinking, which is characterized by complacency, heuristic thinking, and unintentional by definition.  In this mental state, we rely on various stereotypes and schemas, which are often misleading.  Furthermore, our free will is harmed by a host of cognitive biases, unavoidable malfunctions of our objectivity and accuracy, such as the "mere exposure effect", which directly causes us to like things more as we are exposed to them.  And there are probably more cognitive biases yet undiscovered that will further reveal how limited our freedom of choice truly is.  So how do we reconcile these things with our deeply felt apprehension that we have free will?  The answer is disappointingly simple.  The only solution is to exercise our intentional thinking as often as possible.

Another aspect of our human condition, in a yet wider scope, is the meaning of life.  One can find hints about the meaning of life in advertisements, because sadly we do not live in a world of reasoned and thoughtful consumption.  For instance, I recently noticed that the vending machine near the library advertises "Life Water", which is bottled water with vitamins, extracts, and cartoon lizards.  The water is purported to, as the advert said, "Enlighten.  Energize.  Challenge.  Calm."  That sounds amazing.  I've never felt challenged and enlightened at the same time, nor energized and calm at once, either.  A social psychologist would smell an appeal to automatic thinking here, given that the quoted text was below the sight line, and the ad implies an impossible state of being.   Social psychology has experimentally proven that materialism does not make us happy, so instead we seek the immaterial.  A curious element of human nature is the near universal wish to be more than human, or to be in contact with something better altogether, such as a god or a higher state of being.  All cultures seem to have this kind of expression.  Priests and expert practitioners of various religions seek truths and powers that are normally beyond grasp.  I think this is all in search of something called "meaning".  Meaning seems to be a nonphysical, nonphenomenal abstract concept meant to give purpose to existence.  When we're born, we become awake to find ourselves suddenly but not so suddenly inside a reality that's existed for over 13 billion years; It is as though we're stepping onto a stage that popped into existence for no reason and stood empty for billions of years, and we're our own audience and something big is supposed to happen, right?  Just thinking about it is vertigo-inducing.  Does life mean anything?  An article on social psychology research in existential themes that I found, written by Koole, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski, stated that people believe their lives have meaning more strongly in response to recollection of a grave incident, references to death and mortality, and verbal challenges to their life's basic meaning[2].  By inference, a person who is unworried by death and mortality is therefore less likely to feel that life has meaning.  The meaning of life is somehow related inextricably to the fact that it ends, as Kafka once somberly observed.

The extent to which social psychology can help us come to grips with the human condition is not fully explored here, but the research opportunities are vast.  Perhaps by better defining the human condition in philosophical terms, then addressing those definitions with data from rigorous scientific research, we can one day understand what we are and where we're headed in the grander scheme of things.  Perhaps we will one day find a scientifically supported ultimate meaning of existence.  For now, it is enough to have begun investigating some of the questions of human experience under the lens of psychological sciences.  Although I have proven nothing concrete in my research, I hope to convince you that the field of Social Psychology can be applied to some of the deeper questions of what it means to be human.


Citations

1. Elliot Aronson, Timothy D. Wilson, Robin M. Akert (2007) Social Psychology 6th Ed, New Jersey, Pearson

2. Sander L. Koole, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski (2006). Introducing Science to the
Psychology of the Soul: Experimental Existential Psychology.  
Current Directions In Psychological Science, V. 15, No.5, pages 212-216.
Retrieved from http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118000080/home?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

[The Johnny]

Perhaps by better defining the human condition in philosophical terms, then addressing those definitions with data from rigorous scientific research, we can one day understand what we are and where we're headed in the grander scheme of things.  Perhaps we will one day find a scientifically supported ultimate meaning of existence.  For now, it is enough to have begun investigating some of the questions of human experience under the lens of psychological sciences.  Although I have proven nothing concrete in my research, I hope to convince you that the field of Social Psychology can be applied to some of the deeper questions of what it means to be human.

Where are we going? We are going to die.

Scientifically supported meaning of existence? I think the flaw is looking for one, for its different in every person.

I kind of got lost somewhere along the second paragraph...

[Jasper]

I think the flaw is looking for one, for its different in every person.

That is what we call a "hasty assumption", in the thinking business.

[The Johnny]

Anyhow, social psychology and psycho-analysis are the main inclinations of my psych college, and i do appreciate them a lot compared to behaviourism, Gestalt and the cognitive ones (except for specific cases).

[The Johnny]

I think the flaw is looking for one, for its different in every person.

That is what we call a "hasty assumption", in the thinking business.

Hasty? Isnt that what all the ideologists and prophets have attempted to do to no avail in the last 20,000 years ?

[Jasper]

I loved every second of SP, but I'm still curious about gestalt and cognitive because I wish to research neural correlates of consciousness, and eventually machine consciousness.

I think the flaw is looking for one, for its different in every person.

That is what we call a "hasty assumption", in the thinking business.

Hasty? Isnt that what all the ideologists and prophets have attempted to do to no avail in the last 20,000 years ?

That's what happens when you send a humanities major to do a scientist's job.

[The Johnny]

If i survive my finals, next trimester im gonna learn about development and socialization.

Piaget seems to be a good author in regards to that.

[The Johnny]

Last trimester i made along with a semi-functional team a research project on social psychology - i can upload it for you, if you can read spanish.

The category of "social psychology" is very ambiguous and overlaps/contradicts with what others call themselves or are defined as; social psychology has two main branches, sociological and psychological, its mostly about the latter... the deal with the definition is that its an orientation more than it is a branch.

One specific example would be Eric Fromm, who was a psycho-analyst, but made this kind of studies.

[Brotep]

But despite this privilege we're also very discontent with life.  We find ourselves searching for some kind of transcendence or epiphany, something "higher" to aspire to.

I'm reasonably content with life right now.  I reject this.

Part of the condition in question is our identity.  The first thing an amnesiac might ask is, "Who am I?"

Maybe.  Is it really that big a deal, though?  Identity is that thing you're constantly acting out.

A stupid consequence of consumerism is the prevalent idea that individuality is made up of petty distinctions.  John likes vanilla ice cream.  Betty likes rocky road.  It's so strange that they would get together--they come from two different worlds!

Another aspect of our human condition, in a yet wider scope, is the meaning of life.  One can find hints about the meaning of life in advertisements, because sadly we do not live in a world of reasoned and thoughtful consumption.  For instance, I recently noticed that the vending machine near the library advertises "Life Water", which is bottled water with vitamins, extracts, and cartoon lizards.  The water is purported to, as the advert said, "Enlighten.  Energize.  Challenge.  Calm."  That sounds amazing.

Personally, I prefer unchallenging water.

Advertising language is all about taking transitive verbs and making them intransitive.  Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.  What is really being peddled is a story about happiness in a bottle.  You're not buying the product, you're buying the story.



The idea of arriving at a meaning of life scientifically doesn't make any sense to me.

[rong]

i found this article or essay or whatever you wish to call it to be rather thought provoking.

this part stuck out to me, however:

 Does life mean anything?  An article on social psychology research in existential themes that I found, written by Koole, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski, stated that people believe their lives have meaning more strongly in response to recollection of a grave incident, references to death and mortality, and verbal challenges to their life's basic meaning[2].  By inference, a person who is unworried by death and mortality is therefore less likely to feel that life has meaning.  The meaning of life is somehow related inextricably to the fact that it ends, as Kafka once somberly observed.

based on the stated research, i agree that your inference follows.  but, personally, i'm more inclined to believe that the converse is true.  i.e. that a person who believes life has no meaning is less worried by death and mortalitly.  the fact that it ends gives it no meaning.  but if it has meaning, then the fact that it ends can be worrisome.  unless one also believes that the ending is part of the meaning.

so, i guess the question, then, is - why would recollection of a grave incident, etc. compell a person to believe their life has any more meaning than they previously believed?

[The Johnny]

But despite this privilege we're also very discontent with life.  We find ourselves searching for some kind of transcendence or epiphany, something "higher" to aspire to.

I'm reasonably content with life right now.  I reject this.

This kind of felt to me like a projection of Felix and you seem to be reacting to it; I would hold a middle ground, we are always "desiring"; it is intrinsic in everyone that "desiring", because if theres no desire we would be dead, or a hollow shell walking around.

Part of the condition in question is our identity.  The first thing an amnesiac might ask is, "Who am I?"

Maybe.  Is it really that big a deal, though?  Identity is that thing you're constantly acting out.
A stupid consequence of consumerism is the prevalent idea that individuality is made up of petty distinctions.  John likes vanilla ice cream.  Betty likes rocky road.  It's so strange that they would get together--they come from two different worlds!

Castoriadis once said that identity is antagonistic to adaptation (or something like that im not sure)... but identity isn't necessarily linked to individuality...

Another aspect of our human condition, in a yet wider scope, is the meaning of life.  One can find hints about the meaning of life in advertisements, because sadly we do not live in a world of reasoned and thoughtful consumption.  For instance, I recently noticed that the vending machine near the library advertises "Life Water", which is bottled water with vitamins, extracts, and cartoon lizards.  The water is purported to, as the advert said, "Enlighten.  Energize.  Challenge.  Calm."  That sounds amazing.

Personally, I prefer unchallenging water.

Advertising language is all about taking transitive verbs and making them intransitive.  Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.  What is really being peddled is a story about happiness in a bottle.  You're not buying the product, you're buying the story.
The idea of arriving at a meaning of life scientifically doesn't make any sense to me.

You are in contradiction, either the message signifies nothing, or the message is peddling consumption through manipulation?
Taken non-methaphorically, arriving at the meaning of life scientifically sounds silly to me too... but I do think that thru "science" one can understand humans better and that maybe can lead to an easier arrival of meaning for individuals (subjectively).

[Cramulus]

Good essay, Felix.

I trust psychology in some form or another will one day do away with that phantom called free will. I wonder what comes after that?

[Brotep]

Part of the condition in question is our identity.  The first thing an amnesiac might ask is, "Who am I?"

Maybe.  Is it really that big a deal, though?  Identity is that thing you're constantly acting out.
A stupid consequence of consumerism is the prevalent idea that individuality is made up of petty distinctions.  John likes vanilla ice cream.  Betty likes rocky road.  It's so strange that they would get together--they come from two different worlds!

Castoriadis once said that identity is antagonistic to adaptation (or something like that im not sure)... but identity isn't necessarily linked to individuality...

I don't know who that is, but I think I see where they were going with that.  If we're defining identity as the self-concept that you hold up against everything you might do, that makes a lot of sense.

I was defining identity as the self that is performed.  While there is overlap, the performed self is not the same as the self-concept.

Individuality is a funny thing.  We recognize it by deviations from the norm, and yet deviating from the norm is not sufficient for individuality.  It is more than just details--it is the cohesion between them.  The overall sense of preferences, principles, tendencies.  I guess.

Personally, I prefer unchallenging water.

Advertising language is all about taking transitive verbs and making them intransitive.  Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.  What is really being peddled is a story about happiness in a bottle.  You're not buying the product, you're buying the story.
The idea of arriving at a meaning of life scientifically doesn't make any sense to me.

You are in contradiction, either the message signifies nothing, or the message is peddling consumption through manipulation?

The words and images signify nothing but allude to much.

It's harder to argue with metaphors, allusions, and nonsense (e.g., advertising slogans) than it is to argue with simple ordinary statements.
What is the truth-value of "It tastes better"?

Taken non-methaphorically, arriving at the meaning of life scientifically sounds silly to me too... but I do think that thru "science" one can understand humans better and that maybe can lead to an easier arrival of meaning for individuals (subjectively).

Can't argue with that one.

I trust psychology in some form or another will one day do away with that phantom called free will. I wonder what comes after that?

I'm not so sure.  Makes for a great writing prompt/thought experiment, though.

[Jasper]

Good essay, Felix.

I trust psychology in some form or another will one day do away with that phantom called free will. I wonder what comes after that?

Thanks.

I think that if scientific inquiry ever manages to bust the free will myth, people won't take much notice.  People will think, "Oh scientists, you so crazy." and move on.  La la la.

But the people who do notice, care, and accept the notion will probably turn out pretty normal too.  People have cognitive means of dealing with this sort of problem.

A thought-experiment:  Imagine you read in the news that researchers have found a mechanism or collection of mechanisms that solidly constitute what we know as "free will", and they are soundly proven with exhaustive experimentation.  What does this mean for you and the world in general?  My response would be, I think, bittersweet relief that machine consciousness is possible in theory. 

[Cramulus]

  I like that thought too! That had never occurred to me.

Personally, I would be running through the streets, laughing as madly and irresponsibly. Also I would grab people's fists and make them punch themselves in the face going "why you hitting yourself, spag? huh? are you just an automaton? can't you choose to stop?"