[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.
