[calm music] >> All right. Last time, and where we're going today is we're going to look at some key themes that are going to recur throughout this class. As we introduce what psychology is, what you're going to find, first of all, is this. If I could summarize what I'm about to cover over the next hour in time, it's going to be that we humans are very complex. As we begin to study human behavior and as we begin, we have to apply a method and that method is science. And science has uncovered that you guys and all of the other humans out there have behaviors that have multiple determinations, that is what we call multiple causes as to why they occur. I'll give you an example. When we start to learn and explore why people behave, we find that they do some things very interestingly very quick. So if I was to ask you why you trusted somebody, how many met somebody recently that you never, you didn't know them at all, but your first impression of them was I like them and I trust them, how many has that happened to recently, anybody? Oh, a lot of you. Somebody tell me why, if you didn't know them and they're a stranger, why did you trust them? Why did your first thought was that? >> Female Student: They were being really open and just put off this like very [background noise drowns out female student]. >> Okay. When you met your roommate for the first time, you felt real close to her like she was friendly, she would maintain confidentiality if you shared some things with her. >> Male Student: Because people who I trusted trusted them. >> Oh, they knew people that you knew, and so you like those other people and you go okay, they trust this person, right. >> Female Student: There were like really a couple of specific situations where I needed help, and I didn't ask, they just offered it. >> They seemed to have offered and feel comfortable, and then she said, and then even offered help without even asking for it. That's good. >> Male Student: Because of their first impression. >> Maybe their first impression that they kinda give off was positive. And let me ask real quickly just the opposite. Have you ever had an interaction recently with somebody that you didn't trust and didn't like right away? Anything that gave it away to you? Most of you raised your hands as meeting somebody recently that you didn't trust and didn't really maybe like right away and maybe still don't. If they're your roommates, don't raise your hand if I ask. But you could, I don't, no, that's fine. What gave it away, why that? What did they give that made you get the opposite feeling? >> Female Student: Insincerity. >> What? >> Female Student: Insincerity. >> There was some insincerity. Is that a bad thing? If there's not a lot of sincerity, we go I'm not, that's a good thing. >> Male Student: They didn't like what I was eating. >> They didn't like what you were eating. Okay, and so like, you know, I don't like that, it's like well then, we can never eat meals together. [audience laughter] Bad start. >> Female Student: Gossip. >> They might gossip, and so you've said something to them and you heard them talking about it later on, right? >> Female Student: Or they're telling me stuff. >> Or they're telling you stuff about things. Yeah. >> Male Student: They demonstrate lots of self-interest. >> Or maybe self-interest, I'm standing at my door one night, I wasn't standing there, actually, I was at my house, it was 9:30 at night, 9:50, 9:45, whatever, like this. Kids are in bed, and here's what I heard. On my front door, [knocks]. I'm like [gasps], it's 9:45 at night. Who knocks on your door unless you live in a dorm? And even then, they don't knock. [audience laughter] But I'm in a house. I got kids, family, and all of a sudden, there's a knock on the door. And I go to, I look at Elise like, that's weird. I go to the door. And standing on my front porch is a woman. Little bitty tiny woman. Who's kind of mousey because I could barely hear her. And I open the door and I say oh, hi, stranger. Never met her before, took a look at her, thought ah. Hi, can I help you, what's up? Like that. She goes yeah. Um, in a very mousey way, it's hard for me to even say that real quiet, and I was like I'm sorry, I can't hear you, can you speak up? "Well, this is really weird. "And I'm really sorry to interrupt you and bug you, "it's so late at night, but something happened." And I went oh, what, tell me, what's going on? "Well, you see, I got a new job. "And I've been working for a couple of weeks, "but I don't get paid for about four days. "And my rent is due tonight, and I'm gonna get kicked out "of my apartment tonight if I don't pay my rent. "And I'm just wondering, I know this is really weird, "but do you think you can help?" What would you say if somebody like that, short little thing, mousey, knocks on your door? What's your, I'll tell you what I did. See, I even think about these kinds of things, I studied altruism, that's what my degree is in, master, PhD, so I understand what helping behavior is, and when someone asks, I also, as a believer, as a Christian, believe that one of the things we ought to do is when somebody asks for help, we ought to be prepared, yes? How many feel like that's an important value, we can even talk about some Biblical verses that help guide us in helping people. And so I said this to her. I said oh. Well, first of all, what would you do? And I said, well like, how much do you need? She goes, "Well, I'm looking like maybe for $75 or $100." I need about $100 to make rent. And I said this. I'm so glad you came. Yeah, God has given us so much to be thankful for and, you know, we don't have 100 just necessarily lying around, but when people need help, no problem, I'm so glad. Yeah, you know, my wife and I talk about helping people in need like this all of the time and that's great. Okay, no problem, that's my initial, that's what happened on this door, but now see, what kinds of things are going through my mind, I'm evaluating this person, I happen to know a lot about this kind of topic, and so one thing I have learned over time is that it's okay to ask questions. See, a lot of times people come up and ask for help and they don't, you ask questions and all of a sudden, you start to find out new things, but people, when they get in this other side and you know, they feel like they shouldn't ask. Well, why? Or anything, and they feel like that's maybe rude. But it's not rude at all. In fact, let me challenge you, if someone comes up and asks for aid, it's okay to not only be gracious and generous and help, but it's also okay to ask questions. You see, people sometimes react very quickly in odd situations like that. I'll continue with this story in just a minute, but we used to have people in psychology, great demonstration, people lined up to, back in the days when there were copy machines and people had to make a lot of copies, there would always be lines late at night, sometimes in the library, and especially during busy times, people will be lining up trying to make copies of a book they were reading or whatever, and psychologists began to study line behavior and to find out, you know, what would give people a way, or what would allow people to be able to cut into a line? You ever wanted to know that, what would allow me to be able to cut into a line without people getting real mad at me? Do you know there's one simple thing you can do to enhance your ability to cut into a line and people letting you? What is it that you think you could do to get in, and by the way, I'm gonna tie this back to our story in just a second, but what is it I can do to get into this line, what might I do to enhance or increase my likelihood of being able to cut without people being real mad at me? >> Male Student: Ask for help to make a copy. >> Maybe I say listen, I need some help making a copy. Make yourself have-- >> Female Student: Ask questions [background noise drowns out speaker]. >> Maybe you go in, how do you cut in line, maybe you start talking to somebody, right. Like hey, just wonder if I can ask some questions of you, is that what you would do? Well, how else could you maybe enhance your likelihood of cutting? >> Male Student: Act like it's really urgent. >> Act like it's really urgent. Like I don't know how you would do that, but like oh my gosh, like that. Like that. [audience laughter] Maybe that didn't work, but I-- >> Male Student: I just need to [background noise drowns out speaker]. I just need to pay for this, everyone does, but if you say that, then people are like oh, go ahead. >> Oh, I just gotta hurry up and without thinking, and by the way, eventually, we're going to get at what I was trying to get at, which is a lot of people do things without thinking and asking questions. Anything else you would do to enhance the likelihood of you being able to cut? >> Male Student: Act really crazy so people are scared of you. >> Act really crazy so that people are scared of you. Yeah, that's always been an effective way of influencing people. Is that, how many, maybe some other things you've done? Have you done that, act really crazy so people are afraid of you? >> Male Student: I'd prefer not. >> He'd prefer not to express and tell you yes or no. >> Male Student: Act really sad so they don't want to make your day worse. >> Act really sad 'cause maybe they don't wanna make you feel worse, like oh my gosh, my life. >> Male Student: Feel sorry for you. >> Yeah, and they'll feel sorry. >> Female Student: Find someone else you know. >> Try and find somebody in the line that you know and hang out, or get to know someone in line that you would like to get to know. Okay. They did all these different things, but the single most effective one is ready? For you to cut in any line, the most effective technique they found was simply for you to have a reason. That's worked the best. You walk up to somebody near the front of the line and say I'm so sorry, I'm really late for class, could I cut in line here and make copies? Or I'm so sorry, you're not gonna believe this, but man, I gotta catch a taxi in like, well, not maybe in LA. [audience laughter] Or a bus, not even that. My roommate is leaving like in one minute, I have to make a copy, is that, and people, without thinking, go like this. Oh, sure. They don't ask questions. In fact, it's such a likelihood that they respond to you out of this script that this works just as effectively. People are standing in line and you walk up. Excuse me, I really gotta make some copies, you think I can cut in line? People go oh yeah, sure. And then they go oh, I gotta make copies. [audience laughter] You see, you just gave a reason. I gotta make copies, can I get in line? Yeah, sure. People just respond, that's weird. I gotta get come coke and I gotta stand in this line, can I cut, oh yeah, go ahead. Wait, that's what I'm doing. [audience laughter] So the lady needs help and I think, well, that's an okay thing, I just respond, if somebody asks you for something, you're like, oh, if I have it, sure. Walking down the street of Denver one day with this girl. We're on a date, we're going to a restaurant and this guy comes up to me and he says, yeah, hey, do you have five dollars? And I'm just like no, I don't, sorry. Okay, do you have like, then a dollar, do you have change for a dollar or do you have change? And I'm like no, I'm sorry, I don't have anything. And he goes nothing, not even a quarter? I said no, I'm sorry. And we walked away, we get into the restaurant, we sit down and we're eating and I say to the person that I was sitting with, I said I had change for a dollar and I also had five. And she's like, kinda like well, why did you tell him no, you lied to him, that kind of thing. Anyway, well, actually, and then I went through this whole sequence of my thoughts when he came out. You see, the first thing I thought about him was I didn't trust him, he looked dangerous to me. The way he was dressed, what he was looking for, where we were, I felt uncomfortable, and all these things went off. By the way, the reason I did all this is about now the theme we're gonna talk about is life is very subjective. You see, I also worked in a lot of homes in a lot of places with some scary people. You see, I worked with behaviorally disturbed boys that were placed there by the courts, 50 of them lived in a home, a ranch where I worked. I worked, ready, with the criminally insane on a maximum security ward at Colorado State Hospital. The most serious criminally insane people who are too dangerous to even have, up at their prisons are put into this maximum security ward. And so now I'm walking down this street, I have all of these things in my background, and I also worked with emotionally disturbed boys and girls two different homes. And now this guy comes walking up to me, everything about him said run, run, run. And so I said no, no, no fairly aggressively, stay away because, now, was I right? I don't know. How accurate? We'll never know. But he walked away, I walked away, I told her and she still didn't understand like, but why didn't you give him anything? Like well, because, I tried to explain it, she's like huh, you're weird kind of thing. That was like one of our last dates. [audience laughter] She didn't like the food I was eating. [audience laughter] >> Male Student: It's a good reason. >> So the lady at my door. I now know it's okay to ask questions instead of just going yeah, sure, we do like to help. And in fact, that's what I said. Yeah, sure. In fact, I don't think I have that much cash, but I'll give you a check, is that okay? Aha, all right. But let me ask you a couple of questions, and so I just started asking her questions, like you just got a job, where did you get a job? Is that an okay question to ask somebody? She's knocking at my door late at night, and I say oh, and she said some place, I never heard of it, but oh, it's like this industry that, really, cool. And so what do you do there, and she kind of explained. And so you're getting kicked out tonight? "Yeah." Unless you come up with the money? "Yeah." Huh. Well, I'll tell you what, that sounds fine. We'll give you, but I'll tell you what, instead of giving you money, what we'd like to do is go ahead, and another thing we do is working in these kind of environments, we've learned some other things, like we'll go pay for you. >> Female Student: Yes. >> Now, put yourself in her shoes, you're knocking on somebody's door, you're so desperate that you gotta go knock on a stranger's door to ask for $75 to $100 and you feel like led to this place and you knock and you ask for it, if the person at that door says I'll tell you what, I'll drive you or walk you, and I thought she might feel uncomfortable with that 'cause she kinda hesitated. And I said oh, well, then my wife will take you 'cause female female thing, whatever, she'll take you. Now, what if somebody offered that to you, what would you say if I said I'll go pay that $100 to your landlady, if you really want it, what would you say? >> Students: Yes. >> Yes, thank you. And so if they don't say yes, thank you, what do you think you should do? You should have all kinds of red flags go up, and she goes oh no, that wouldn't work at all. And I go oh, well, that's weird. Why not? "Well, just because it'd be just better "if you gave me the money." I said well, I'll tell you what, that's okay but you don't live that far away, you said, right? Oh no worries, don't worry. "Oh, it's so late." Oh, no worry, my wife, she'll go with you, in fact, she's getting her stuff on, yeah, come on, let's go. And she goes, "No, it'd be better "if you just gave me the money." So now these first red flags go up and I go really? Huh. Well, we kinda have a policy that we'll give the money to your landlady, not a problem, or even put you up in a hotel tonight if you need, no problem, if you're gonna get kicked out. And I said, but I think it would be good, and she said, I said why would you not want, "Well, the other thing is, my land, she goes to bed early, "and so she'll be woken up." And I went huh. And yet she's going to kick you out tonight. "Oh, yeah." And now, all of a sudden, my reading of her changed. By the way, the whole time I'm kinda like hmm, suspicious, suspicious, suspicious. [gasps] And I did something I'm not sure if I'm really proud of. I kinda got mad at her. And I said this, I said now wait a minute, hold on. You don't, we offered to go pay the rent tonight and give you money and go even put you up in a hotel if you need 'cause you're gonna get kicked out if you can't, but you're not accepting any of this, you just want me to give you the money and you're gonna walk away from here, I said I'm not sure I believe your story. And she's like oh, now, that's uncomfortable, isn't it? But by the way, I think it's very appropriate. And I'll just say here's what I wasn't really proud of, I say you know what, not only I don't wanna help you tonight because I think you're lying to me, I want you to get off my property. That's what I wasn't really proud of. [audience laughter] Was that bad? How many would've done that? How many feel like I was a bad man? I said not only do I want you off my property, then I took my finger like this, I said I don't want you to go to my neighbors either. Go on, you're lying to me, I can tell and I'm, again, I'm trained in this area. I understand things. [audience laughter] I didn't tell her that, but I understand deception and lying and she was doing it the whole way, she didn't want it, she just wanted, and I said stay off, go, leave, don't go, and if you go to my neighbors, I promise I'll go tell them what you're doing. And I'm like, gee, Elise, it's like, well, that was kind of a quick change in you. But she understands and she trusts me. I didn't feel all that good about. Next day, I went to work, I saw one of my buddies over here, a professor. And I just happened to mention to him, I said oh, this was weird last night. And he goes [gasp], "And you told her to leave?" I said yeah, I was kinda mean too, like get off my property or I'll go tell the neighbors. And he goes wow. So I told him about it. Less than 10 days later, my buddy that I told comes over to my office and he says, "Chris, you are not gonna believe what just happened to me. "Can you tell me what that lady looked like?" And I said a little mousey thing, kinda like that, she's kinda talking [gasps], he goes, "You're not gonna believe what," he lives not far, maybe about two miles from me, he goes, "You're not gonna believe who knocked "on my door last night." And I said who? He goes, "A little mousey girl, just like that, "she needed $75 for rent and was gonna get kicked out. "And I offered, I listened, I remembered your story "and I said oh, I'll go take your money to the landlady, "she said no, just give me the cash." And I said what happened, he goes, "I told her to get off my property, you were over there, "you went to my friend's house, and I told her to leave." And I went yeah. [audience laughter] She was making her way all over here making money. Because people don't like to necessarily ask these questions and do things, we like to go by scripts, they need help, well, bam, I better help. Well, hold on here, I almost got some money that I want to invest wisely in people, and it's not mine, it's all God's, I'd love to give you some, whatever I have, but doesn't mean I have to be stupid about it. Now, as we study psychology, I'm making very quick conscious and unconscious decisions in this. And we psychologists gotta study that. We have to slow things down, there are things that you have to learn and ways you have to go and study. For most of us, it's not just going oh, I think I trust or don't trust you, so therefore, I'll do this. There's also a science behind it. We are very very good at determining and detecting these things, but sometimes, it takes years to even slow this down, pay attention, watch it. Which is why I told you that there's a man out there who's watched couples for over 20 years, filmed them and has been able to say that he can predict with 90-some percent accuracy the likelihood of two people getting a divorce by just simply watching them interact with each other, by watching certain things. We're very good at this. How trustworthy is it? What are some ways that we might err? What are some things that we might need to pay attention to? How and why does the human brain work to process things? I told you about the amygdala and the speed at which we pick things up. We pick up emotions from other people by this very quick route. And when you said I trusted this person, I bet some things hit you in this what we call low road of consciousness where the amygdala picks things up. But if you stopped and thought, how can I get to know this person better, that's the high road of consciousness. How can I, what might be a good way for me to study, that thinking up here, what we call the high road, probably through the frontal cortex and the part of the brain that works this way, which we're gonna study in here. And sometimes it's very quick. But even making these statements requires people to slow down the process of studying humans and watching for a long time. And that's the things we're going to cover. You see, psychology is the scientific study of human behavior and mental processes. I put this up last time, but it's the study of the mind or mental processes and behavior. But to do it as a science is, what we're going to spend a little bit of time talking about, requires an investment and a method by which we explore things like helping or giving or lying or deceiving. We're very good quick what we call natural or maybe a better way is lay psychologists. We're very good at that. Most of your instincts are pretty good. You read people in a certain way, my guess is you're probably reading them accurately if you said I really kinda trusted this person or didn't trust them because we're pretty good detectors of that. They had people sitting just like you in a classroom, and at the end of the semester, they had them evaluate professors to say did you like that class? Was that a good, was this professor any good or not? Was the material good but did they present it in such a way, and they rated them at the end. Well, studies have shown that they've also found out, you know, these scores. And those scores were highly correlated with people who only saw, they decided, how much time do you need to be with that professor before you decide that they're pretty good? How much time do you think you need in a class in front of a particular professor to realize if they're any good or not? How much time do you think you would need to compare with the evaluations of somebody that sat in the entire semester and watched them? Do you think you can just simply watch this person for how long, how many times before you thought you could make a pretty good judgment of them? Can anyone take a guess? >> Male Student: 30 minutes. >> Ooh, 30 minutes. Could you tell in 30 minutes? >> Male Student: Probably the first minute of class. >> First minute of class? That's all you need to know? >> Male Student: Maybe a couple classes. >> Maybe a couple classes. They decided to try this out. By the way, they took snippets of faculty teaching for five minutes and they took snippets, and people were, by the way, they went ooh, and they correlated very well at the end of the semester with that. And then they said let's try a little bit lower, and they went one minute. Then they went to 30 seconds. They even found students were pretty good at determining, and were pretty strongly matched up with these professors after a five second clip of just watching this person, him or her. We're pretty good at it. But what does it mean and can it be wrong? And what about these kinds of what we call unconscious processes that are very, we call them unconscious cognition, you're good at it, ready? Think about a stranger that you've met in the last 24 hours. Somebody that may be a waiter or a waitress at a restaurant, you've never seen them before, or somebody that checked you out somewhere to, well, you know, at a grocery store. [audience laughter] Whatever, checked you out or checked you out at the grocery store, a stranger. Anybody have that, ready, think of their face. How many have, within the last 48 hours, somebody you've never seen before, how many have their face in mind? Think about it real quick. 24-48 hours, can you picture their face? Are you good, if I showed you their face, do you think if I flashed it up here, remember, you've never seen them before. Do you think you'd be able to pick their face out? Then I took another group of people, and suppose that was in this classroom, I said ready and I happened to have the picture of these strangers and I flashed them up to you and you'd go ooh, that's him, that's her, she was checking me out at the grocery store. [audience laughter] What if we took another classroom and said the same thing, somebody over the last 24 to 48 hours and you've never seen, now write down their face, tell me everything about them. What did they look like? Well, describe for me what their hair was like, what kind of features, what were they wearing? Were they tall, short? Start describing and writing down what they look like. And what if we spent like 30 minutes going over the details, who would be able to pick out the faces of the stranger better, you or classroom B when I had them go through all that scenario? >> Male Student: Us. >> Who would be better at picking out the faces of a stranger and remembering somebody you've never seen before if you just simply did it like I described it, think about the face, could you pick them out. Or we went through a detailed way in which we start to look at and think about faces. Who says this classroom would be better than the classroom that I just described? How many say the classroom I described over there where they took 30 minutes to write down the details and thought about it and kind of, hmm, how many don't know, you don't even know what I'm talking about right now? [audience laughter] The answer is the other classroom is not better at this. In fact, they do worse. Because it's something like this, your brains do something very quickly when we process information about faces we've never seen before, our brains lodge them in and we record them kind of in this facial recognition part of the brain, in something called, well, in the right hemisphere which has a lot to do, in this right hemisphere, with kinda images and pictures, not all of it, but most of the time, it's housed there. And your recall for that is pretty good. What happened to the other group when I started to ask them to tell me about the face and to write it down? It also happens to people who happen to see crimes. When they start to rehearse it and write it down and think through the face and say, well, it was kind of brown hair and I couldn't tell, it was kind of parted there and a little short, but you know, kinda weird eyebrows. And well, let me think this. The left hemisphere begins to take over. And the left hemisphere starts to write and overwrite the picture that you had in the right hemisphere by something, a process that we call verbal overshadowing. And then, as verbal overshadowing, we now find that it actually messes up their recall of the real face. Isn't that interesting? So the point is that, to get to these kinds of conclusions about human behavior, things that I think are very important because they're about us, we have to do this scientifically and it has to be done in a discipline using a method that we say is empirically based. You see, just because you tell me something about oh, I like this professor or not, well, that's great, it's an armchair kind of reaction, why you trust or not trust somebody, which is accurate but also prone to error, but the only way we eventually get down to what are the factors involved, what parts of the brain are even involved, what kinds of experiences and background, we have to do this by doing something called an empirical investigation using observation and documentation. That's a theme. We'll talk about science as the method, the preferred method for psychologists to use. In fact, most of my lecture next time is going to be on the science of psychology. Another key theme is that behavior's going to be multi-determined, what that simply means is that behavior, your behavior, whether or not you like or dislike something, why in which you acted in a particular way is we call multi-determined. How do we know and explain people's behavior by narrowing it down, we try and find, but rarely do we ever find a single cause for your behavior. If you had a friend, anybody have known somebody that dropped out of college after the first semester? Dropped out, 20 hands are raised. If I asked you why did they drop out, you can probably give me an answer. Well, they didn't have enough money, they didn't do very well, they didn't connect, they didn't do, but rarely is the answer that simple. We call this that there are probably many factors related to explaining why we did what we did. Why did I get mad at this poor lady standing at my doorstep? Well, it wasn't one single thing. You see, but her behavior was determined by things, but so was my behavior, there are a lot of things that went into that. And so a theme in psychology is going to be that psychology is multi-determined. Psychology says that behavior, sorry, is multi-determined. It could be because I mentioned before, shyness has a very strong hereditary link, it's very what we call internally explainable, that is, there's some genetic reasons for a lot of our shy behavior. Or high excitability or reactivity we talked about last time. But sometimes our behavior is the result more of our experiences, I think I'm a little bit more suspicious maybe of people. Better yet, maybe I guess a little bit more skeptical because I've been around people that, you know, are disturbed. People that are criminally insane act and think differently, and it influences your worldview, yes. But that means that some of my environment, some of my experiences have shaped who I am, and so when we look at your behavior, we have to look at your genetic background and your external environment and we put it all together, it becomes what we call this multifactorial causation of behavior, okay, a multifactorial causation of behavior. There is lots of reasons, there's a man who recently claimed, well, no, he didn't claim, he confessed to a crime. He confessed to this crime this way. And it was to this person, you don't need to write this down. Colorado, JonBenet Ramsey was murdered in 1996, how many have heard of this murder? A long time ago, possibly she'd be close to your age now, I would imagine, if she had lived. No. Yeah. What year were some of you all born? [audience chatter] Yeah, she was probably around your age, 1996, she was six years old, some of you are close, not far off. You don't have to write this down, JonBenet was murdered in Colorado in 1996, her killer has never been found. Two years ago, no, four years ago, this man, John Mark Karr, was arrested and confessed to killing her. And John Mark Karr said I killed her, the investigation had been going for over, yeah, 10 years then at that point. It was later determined he was in Atlanta at the time of the murders and his DNA cleared him of being there. Why would John Mark Karr confess to killing somebody that he didn't kill? [background noise drowns out male student] >> Female Student: Maybe he has a guilty conscience so that's what-- >> Maybe what? >> Female Student: A guilty conscience. >> Maybe he had a guilty conscience about something that, maybe something else happened and he just wanted to confess it. >> Male Student: I think he was just covering-- >> Maybe to cover for somebody else, maybe there was something he did. >> Male Student: That other person who did kill forced him-- >> Maybe there was some sort of way in which the real murderer convinced him or forced him. >> Female Student: Some people like to be known for stuff. >> What's that? >> Female Student: To be popular. >> Oh, maybe he just simply wanted to be known for something and to be popular, that's a good one. >> Female Student: Maybe he was told so many times that he did it. >> Maybe he told himself or somebody told him so many times he did it, he just started believing it. >> Male Student: Maybe he was crazy. >> Maybe he was crazy. Why did he confess, no one knows. Why would an innocent man, what factors? Do you see what I mean by multi-causal, you came up with about 10 to 15, you'd have to go out and explore all of these and understand this. There's lots of reasons why somebody might do something. And this is just an odd behavior. By the way, a family spokesperson said he may have some personality problems, but he's not a killer. Is there personality issues, are there disorders, is there a way in which he wanted to maybe bring attention to himself, all kinds of things. All right. It's hard enough when a person has some struggles and issues, and let's call this, he's suffering most likely from a mental disorder, then predicting his behavior can be difficult. But what if we took people more normal? What if we tried to predict the behavior, let's say somebody like, I don't know, let's say somebody more normal, let's try Michael Jackson. [audience laughter] Okay, maybe not, let's do this person, who is that, Lady Gaga. Okay, she is not normal. Could we predict somebody's behavior, how about a bunch of you all, Biola students, at a basketball game? Or Midnight Madness. Or at some other event. Could we explain it, why would people all dress up in the same colors? Why are they screaming and lifting their hands? Why are they yelling like that? [audience laughter] Or dancing looking like that? Or is he, why would you behave that way? Could we explain their behavior? >> Male Student: Riot mentality. >> Riot mentality. They feel, what we talked about last time, maybe anonymity to act in a crazy way, how else could we explain behavior like that in groups? >> Male Student: Peer pressure. >> Peer pressure. The excitement of the moment. Maybe they just naturally kinda like to hang out in big groups and act-- >> Female Student: They could be feeding off each other's energy. >> Feeding off others' energy and the emotions that we talked about. Okay. All that aside. When we take even more normal behavior, just simply taking a snapshot, it becomes complex. You sitting here taking notes, some of you, it's pretty easy. You're sitting here taking notes, you're writing down things. And that's pretty easy to explain. Hmm, but there's lot that goes into it. And psychologists, as a key theme that we're going to explore throughout this class, has found that our behavior has lots of causes to it, and it is almost impossible for me and anybody else to give you a single answer. People say like, oh, you study psychology, can you tell me why this, it's like no, I can't. We work with couples and they get divorced, why did somebody get divorced? It's like oh my god. I could tell you like many reasons. There's no one thing, people say oh, they got divorced because he cheated on her. She just could not, you know, whatever, and that's why they got divorced. No, it was destined to fail at the beginning because of, well, guess what. As we stop and explore, these kinds of behaviors, they become very multi-determined. On top of that level of complexity is the fact that many psychologists come out of different disciplines, what we call, theologically, a theoretically diverse set of assumptions and schools exist in the field of psychology. Currently, we would say there are a number of perspectives out there in the field of psychology that help orient and guide how we even explain or study human behavior. Some of the most common perspectives out there, and you'll see these listed in your textbook, would be a neuroscience perspective. The one I've been kinda talking a little bit about when I say the amygdala has a very important role in us understanding things like emotions or fear, or even the guy who lost his sight and still saw what? [audience chatter] He saw, because of the amygdala pathway to the eyes, he still was able to pick out how he felt when he saw a picture of a human in front of him, even though he couldn't see it. Remember, he still felt happy because they were smiling. Well, that's a neuroscience perspective that says some of, and they would approach the world by looking at that, but there are others, like the evolutionary perspective is huge. Explaining our behavior and humans on the basis of understanding that we, from an evolutionary standpoint, have had millions of years, and you can explain oh, that's why people behave the way they do. That's a big common popular perspective out there. But so is behavioral genetics. Our behavior is a result of our genetic background and that which has influenced us in many ways, shape or form is because of some of the things that have occurred in our genetic history. Epigenes and every other kind of ways in which we can think through behavior that way. Or there are still even old perspective on psychodynamic or behavioral, cognitive and sociocultural perspectives. These are talked about in your book, I want you just to look at them, but they're different perspectives. That is, and they're, there's a lot of diversity. So even if you meet a single psychologist, you don't necessarily know what theoretical perspective they might be bringing. So for me, by the way, my training, my training is usually right here in social-cultural, okay, a little bit of cognitive and a little bit of behavioral, that's my training. But I have interests in some of these others, and they're very diverse. Just to show you, you don't have to write this down, psychologists have what's called this division of American Psychological Association, I'll call it APA, the American Psychological Association. And there are all these different divisions, and so just to show you how diverse this group is, you can be a member of like one or two, or you could be a member of as many divisions as you want, but most people are members of like two or three divisions and they go to these national conferences. And I'll give you two pages of these, ready? Here are all the different divisions that are recognized by the American Psychological Association of which you could be a member and go to their, and there are hundreds and hundreds of psychologists that are members of each of these divisions and they have their own little groups and they meet and they talk about research. And then, by the way, here's the next page. Right now, there's like 56, there's actually fewer than that, you know, 'cause there's a few that aren't up there, they disbanded or don't, you know, aren't around as much anymore, so they lose their number, but they, anyway. I'll tell you what, just to show you, I don't know, you might wanna see these number, different topics they might study, but let's go back, do you have a question about what might they study or might be interested in as psychologists in one of these divisions? If you have an interest, then maybe I can tell you what they do there. Just give me maybe the number that you want me to say, what do they do in like number 19 or whatever. >> Male Student: Number 10. >> Okay. Number 10, psychology in the arts. Primarily, psychologists and this connection with the art world involves lots of things. Understanding and appreciating art, but even the very fact of how we take in things. The use of, for example, three dimensions and what that does, the use of colors and its impact, how you might use contexts or locations to change how a person might feel or experience a work of art, but those are just some different ways, gosh, that's just on like the sensation side and the perception side. Escher's use of, you know, two figures. Even applying this, there's different ways in which they might apply the findings, like doing art therapy, for example, with kids. Anybody else have a number? That was a good one. If not, I'll move on, yeah. >> Male Student: 25. >> 20, what? >> Male Student: 25. >> 25 is experimental analysis of behavior, kind of what we've been talking about. All of the principles involved with understanding how and why humans behave, but even understanding the methods and the different approaches, the limitations that we have, but they would study, well, you can imagine, mostly about how you go about studying it. Okay, anybody else? >> Female Student: 21. >> 21. Oh, applied experimental and engineering psychology. Engineering psychology, this is kind of known as, if you've ever heard of human factor psychology. Human factors you can create, let's say an engineer, a product, let's say like this computer keyboard, but psychologists or human factors or engineering psychologists would come alongside and help how you design a keyboard to interact with a human, like one of my classes in this, we studied, we were looking at the space shuttle. And at the time, they were doing these man maneuvering units. These were the old things that they would be able to take space, you know, spacewalks. And you have to be tethered, but these would be untethered because they'd be in this, have you ever heard of those? They're sitting in like this chair that would kind of like move them around, you know, it was like a man maneuvering unit, you could, more like a, you know, I don't know. But you could do it, well, engineers created this cool thing, but then engineering psychologists came around and said look, this guy's gonna have a big old glove and you have these two buttons. This one moves you forward, this one moves you back and they're right next to each other. With the big glove, he can move them both. Or this one, you know, ejects him or something. You gotta scoot that button over. Or if they're, you know, under all these Gs of pressure, you gotta reach up should you have, ready, I had a whole class on buttons and knobs. [audience laughter] Because if you want somebody engineering, let's say you're in a fighter jet and you're flying this thing, and all of a sudden, you now have, somebody's about to shoot you down. And you have to take evasive action, you have to do it really quick. Should you have a button that you push, twist, lift up and down, punch, what should it be? You have to make the quickest decision, should it be [imitates button pressing sounds], and milliseconds matter. Well, that's what we studied, what color should they be? Does the human process certain colors faster, better, quicker? And if you wanted them to go ooh, bad, like that. Should they be in a certain way, order, sequence? And that's way cool, huh. That's engineering psychology. Any other numbers? If not, I'll, yeah. >> Male Student: 47. >> 47, exercise and sport, as you might imagine, could be almost anything related to helping athletes in particular but even, you know, people that are just exercising. How to get like, let's say the best routine, so they'll study things like exercise programs, how to like, visualization processes to get the most out of it, Olympic athletes have this great training center and you have guys that are there in exercise and sports psychology training and teaching them. My office mate, when I was a graduate student, studied exercise psychology, and she wanted to find out what's the influence of exercise on pregnant moms. Moms or pregnant, should you exercise or not? Well, she studied this by studying pregnant rats. And she put pregnant rats into this thing of water and they had to keep going in a barrel. And they had to keep going like that and like that and like that and like that and they would lift their heads up all the time, but that's how she got them to exercise without saying, you know, run a mile. 'Cause they never did. And so she just put them in the water and they'd be like, and she wanted to see does it affect their birth weight, do they have smaller, what do they call those things? [audience laughter] Smaller litters than if they had, you know, if they didn't exercise, and does exercise at certain times, and so I'd come in and she'd be, I'd be looking at the mice swimming around all the time, pregnant mice. [audience laughter] Very weird. Okay, I'll do maybe two more. >> Female Student: 46. >> 46, ooh, media psychology. We'll talk about some of these as we go along, but you could see how diverse it is, all of these areas are different. Media psychology, as you might imagine, is not only the side of presenting psychology to the media and, you know, doing things like that and how to be involved in that kind of thing and whatever, but also the study of the process, how do people understand messages, get them out of media? How does, how does, like for example, just being in a movie theater influence us? You wanna know what happened the very first movie that they ever showed to a group like this, it was about 19 when, anybody? 18, 19, something like that. They put together a film, what happened to the audience, the very first movie? Well, it influenced them in this way. They showed a train coming at the audience, and what did the audience do, first movie that they ever sat through and watched, the first film clip? >> Female Student: Ran. >> They got up and ran 'cause they thought the train was going to hit them. That's weird. [audience laughter] Could you imagine like oh, he's got a knife, run, man. We'd never get through any movie. But that tells you something about human brains and how we respond to media, ooh, that looks real to me. And you react as if it is, you've just turned off that part that says run. But you do like hold on to the seat, run, grab. That's media psychology. We gotta move on, cool stuff. These are just some different topics, whether it's addictions or adult development or conflict resolution or, like I said, engineering or history or human factors, as I mentioned, law. You name it, lots of issues, broadly diverse field. You can specialize in bigger fields, like developmental, my specialty, was in social and cognitive psych, but you could do personality, psychometrics, physiology and other, we don't know what these guys do, but they specialize in something. And where they work, if you find out, we have a whole bunch, we don't know where they work either, and so other. You can work in businesses, at government's counseling centers, hospitals, clinics, independent practices, schools, anyway. So you can see it's fairly broad and diverse. Last key theme for today. The last key theme is that our world is highly subjective. When I reacted to that lady on my doorstop, that was because of my background, my history, my culture. All the things that make me, even my mood at the time. So therefore, one of the themes we're also going to find out is the way you and the way I experience the world are highly subjective depending upon our culture, our mood, our families of origin. How much attention you pay. The other day I said this, we were in this store and this guy reached over, we were standing in front of a fast food restaurant, and the guy ordered in front of us and he distracted the lady, as he distracted her, the cashier, he reached over and grabbed all these cups, big, gigantic drink cups, and he walked over and he took them over there. And plain as day, I thought, I'm like oh my gosh, he just distracted her, reached over, look, it was pretty quick. Reached over, took them, put them over there, did some kind of ruse and walked over to, oh hey, thanks for the cups, buddy, like that, so the lady didn't think he was stealing them or whatever and he went, and he went and gave them to his family and they drank. So we're sitting down eating, I said god, that was weird. And Elise goes what? I go, that guy, he just reached out and taking those cups, she's like what guy? That guy over there, she goes, he did what? I went, when were standing over, you didn't see that? She goes no, I didn't see any of that. You didn't see him do it? No, I didn't see that. Huh, that's weird. Our behaviors are the result of the things we kind of pay attention to. It's not that she, she just was thinking about other things at the moment. But if we miss some things, then it's going to influence, and so therefore, I pay attention to you, you pay attention to me, but sometimes we're distracted. And when we're distracted, we don't always comprehend or record experiences. >> Female Student: Does the actual like training that helped you to decide if someone has something specifically medically wrong with them, it's if I step on [background noise drowns out student] tell that this person is like a child pedophile? >> No, there are very clear, your experiences, your life backgrounds do influence lots of things that, even attention, right, that what you pay attention to, if you come from a background in a certain area, you're gonna pay more attention to that area, right. By the way, she's, you know, you work around behaviorally disturbed kids or people that are in locked up facilities, you start to be able to pick them out a little bit easier. Even walking down the, I pay attention to people. The other day, a guy was wearing a Troy Polamalu jersey from the Pittsburgh Steelers, he walks in, we're in another restaurant, he walks in and he orders some food, he's on his skateboard. Walks out, I'm my family, whole family. He comes in, takes his food, he walks out and walks away. And I noticed the Troy Polamalu jersey, but I noticed him, what he looked like, long hair, young guy, blah blah blah, walking out, he walks out with his bag. And then he came back right around the restaurant and he went past us a few minutes, and he didn't have the bag. And then about five minutes later, he went the other way on his skateboard, and we're still eating and I'm noticing all of this. And then we walk out to the car, we get ready to go in, and the same guy is on his skateboard coming down right by us. And one of my kids goes whoa, look at that guy, he's got a Troy Polamalu jersey on. And I said yeah, is that, and they're oh, cool, look at it. And I said, well, haven't you guys seen him before? And they're like what do you mean? And none of them saw him before. I'm like he's been here three times, he came in, he ordered this, and they look at me like who are you? [audience laughter] Why do you care about that? Because he came in and he did this, and they just look at me like, we don't think about those kinds of things. [audience laughter] We're more normal than you. But they get used to it, so we all look at different things based upon our experiences. By the way, we do start with some assumptions. In the idea of how we take some, the relationship between Christianity and science, I just really wanna switch over to this and just say this. Our experience and the way we look at even the field of psychology has been impacted by some of the ways in which we even make assumptions about the field. So we make assumptions about like science. Do Christians make assumptions about science that might be different than what maybe some that are not Christian make about science? Some Christians take assumptions about science like things like this, ready? Scientists, as a general rule, but not all of them, what we might call naturalists, those who say there is no maybe a supernatural world out there, make an assumption that there is a world based upon natural principles. By the way, we call that very thing naturalism. But they make some other assumptions that maybe are different than what some people might make, and because of this, there's been some conflict at times between a Christian worldview and a scientific worldview. Mostly because a naturalistic worldview would say oh, everything is about nature, you don't have to appeal to anything supernatural, you don't have to appeal to an immaterial, we don't have an immaterial soul, you're not gonna find a lot of psychologists that believe in an immaterial soul. Christians have, however, this very powerful idea, notion that we're not just composed of matter, there is something else there. And so ideas like reductionism, assumptions like evolution or relativism all are some of the most basic assumptions you'll find in science, but it doesn't mean that they are assumptions that you have to have if your worldview is different, and mine and many of your worldviews are different because we do believe that there is a god who exists, that we have souls that do have an immaterial sense. That sometimes we can't explain behavior just by simply reducing it down to its most basic parts. Now, not all naturalists necessarily believe in all of these, things like determinism or evolution, but I'm telling you, these are assumptions that a lot of scientists make because they believe, and these all depend very heavily upon what's called a natural basis for the origin and operation of the universe. But I'm here to say that you could be a very good scientist and not make any of these assumptions. In fact, some of the best scientists had been those who didn't necessarily buy into a naturalistic worldview. They did and were open to the possibility that God did come in and create and do some things and this created order. And therefore, we can find design or evidence of design in creation. Or that maybe, just maybe, there's the chance that there's a way to explore and understand some things about the created order that would give us some sense about order that we find. And so all of these assumptions of science aren't necessarily bad or good, it's just that when we sometimes make these assumptions and we say everybody else has to have these, and then we will find ourselves at differences and at odds with some scientists out there, and it's like oh, just if they believe these things. Many of them are not talked about though. Did a whole PhD, ready, in a scientific field, experimental social psychology, we never once talked about assumptions like, well, only in the history class, we just didn't talk about it because they were what? >> Female Student: Assumptions. >> 'Cause they were assumptions. Lastly, I'm just going to put up the last thing, and then we go. Some Biblical presuppositions, I'll just put up these three, that there are presuppositions we make, a creator God, an immaterial essence of humans and of human nature, ready. Some Biblical presuppositions that are in kinda contrast is that there was a creator God, there is an immaterial essence to human nature and there is a sinful fall in human nature and then God ultimately sanctifies. Those assumptions do bring a needed balance, I think, to this perspective, and this kind of what I think is a somewhat limited view of human nature if we stick with just simply a materialistic, naturalistic assumption. All right. You're done, we're going to talk next time about a very quick, who psychologists are, a history of psychology, and then the methods of. [calm music] >> Narrator: Biola University offers a variety of Biblically centered degree programs, ranging from business to ministry to the arts and sciences. Visit biola.edu to find out how Biola could make a difference in your life.