Bradley Campbell's Archive

In preparing recently for my major paper I came across some very interesting information.  My paper was over the history of the role of psychology in relation to good and evil.  I chose to drill it down a little deeper and look at the role of behaviorism and environment on the influence of evil.  I read Dr. Philip Zimbardo’s book called the Lucifer Effect in which he discusses the intense role a situation can play on a seemingly “good” person to be able to produce “evil” acts.  He discusses the American held prison in Iraq, Abu Ghraib, the genocide at Rwanda and so forth.  He makes a very convincing argument that human beings tend to change their viewpoints on what is an evil act depending on the immediate situation that they are in.

While reading Zimbardo’s book I thought to the Nuremberg trials in the late 1940’s where in the world court tried the executive branch of the Nazi military high command.  At the time many of these men were claiming that they were simply following orders, so the goal of the prosecutors was to establish that the highest ranking members of Hitler’s Military cabinet had actually conspiratorially planed to expand war.  German efficiency being what it was, the prosecutors found that the Germans kept written transcriptions on every meeting.  Evidence showing that Hitler knew that the country’s biggest problem was that of real estate, and that if they were going to expand the German holdings that it would have to be done through war.  He also speaks of knowing that the German people would need a common enemy to rally behind.  The psychological warfare against the Jewish and Polish people begins.  By dehumanizing his neighbors, imaginary, and passionate speeches Hitler slowly changed the mental mindset of his people into a weapon of hate.  It could be argued that Hitler understood human behaviorism better than any other person alive up to that point.  He shaped the mental image of an entire culture of people into a weapon of hate.

OK……I am curious if there are any other Psych majors out there who are as guilty of this one particular sin as I am, I have a tenacious habit of bringing psychological observations into the conversations that I am having with people.  I tend to be the guy who says something like “Well, certain studies have shown a strong correlation between self esteem and athletics” when someone is just trying to talk about sports or something casual.  Nobody has to bear the burden of this annoying trait more so than my wife Amanda, and this weekend gave birth to another random conversation that of course led to me taking the reigns and inevitably bring it into the world of Psychology.  I found this conversation very interesting because it just so happens to be focused on something that we are discussing in class right now.

Titus

We have a two year old puppy named Titus who is more or less the equivalent of a child, we spoil him like crazy.  Titus is only about 7 pounds and has a tendency for be a little nervous.  He loves people and other dogs, however he seems to be continually anxious.  About 16 months ago we had family in from out of town and we were grilling out in the back yard and playing cowboy golf.  Amanda’s dad threw one of the roped golf balls towards the ladder and hit Titus in the head on accident.  It really scared him and it took him days to calm down and weeks to get back to his old self.  He still to this day shows signs of nervousness and reclusiveness.  We have tried working with him to make his environment as stress free as possible and teach him that he is indeed in a safe place.  Amanda loves Cesar Millan’s show The Dog Whisperer and during lunch this weekend mentioned that maybe we should take him to a similar type dog specialist.

As our conversation progressed I explained that we are currently talking about behaviorism in history of theories right now and that essentially Cesar is simply a psychological behaviorist for dogs.  That you can train an animal thoroughly, even in the areas of behavior and emotional regulation, using just behavior modification.  Behaviorism is essentially the way an organism responds to stimuli in its environment.  Change the reaction and you change the behavior.  This is such an effective therapy for an animal because they lack introspection.  Titus doesn’t posses the ability to look at his feelings with his minds eye and say to himself, “you know I really don’t have any reason to be so nervous.  This is obviously a safe place where I am loved.  I am going to try and regulate the way I feel a little more.”  When you stop and think about it, the ability to be introspective is truly an amazing gift.  It’s our ability to look at our selves objectively, pick out areas in which we would want to improve, and then decide to proceed forth with those improvements that really make humanity unique.

During the last few classes we have really hit on some interesting concepts.  Are we simply reactive organisms based on our genetic and biological makeup, are we simply remodeling the behaviors that we have witnessed all of our lives by reacting to our environments, or are we by products of the way we think and categorize cognitively?  Or are we the sum of all of these parts, is our biology a re-enforcer to our faith or an inhibitor?  I would like to take a second and look at a couple of interesting thoughts.

Josh Hamilton

I have to take a second and explain my overall joy and enthusiasm for our very own Texas Rangers, I grew up in and around Baseball and have always loved it.  I played when I was younger and I always collected the cards.  When we are looking at what makes a champion some people would argue that its sheer performance, others would say that attitude and their public persona defines how the world looks at them.  Take a look at Josh Hamilton, he finished the 2010 regular season as the American League batting champion and had the highest ERA of any other baseball player this year in Major League baseball.  A biological viewpoint of what has made him a champion may be due to a above average reaction time.  When an average major league pitcher throws the ball from the pitchers mound it is usually thrown at around 95 miles an hour.  This means that from the time the ball leaves the pitchers hand it takes it about four tenths of a second to travel the sixty feet to the catcher glove.  This leaves the average baseball player about two tenths of a second to react and swing the bat.  The batter must take several things into account, where the ball is going, how fast, is it curving, is it dropping, or most important it hittable and is it going to be a strike. All of this must be accessed in a flash, that is why it is sometimes said that baseball is actually played on the outside edge of human perception.

Click Here to see if you could hit a Major League Fastball

Hamilton however operates even faster than average, so did he ultimately become a All-Star MLB player due to his biological responses, in other words, could he have ever been anything else other than at athlete?  Hamilton is well known for his nearly career ending lapse into drug and alcoholic abuse that completely consumed him.  His rehabilitation and recovery all started by a confrontation from his grandmother who sought to intervene on his behalf.  Now clean, Hamilton travels the county telling his story and trying to encourage all forms of drug and alcohol avoidance.  He explains his rehabilitation as a “God thing”, which would suggest that somewhere something more than biology plays a role in our decision making.  The sum of what makes him who he is is the characteristics that make him a champion. GO RANGERS!!

When I am preparing for my blog post I like to visit the WordPress site and see if there is a discussion that is already in the works that perhaps I can contribute to.  There have been many ideas that have been brought to the table in the last 15o years in the nature vs. nurture debate.  I had always leaned toward a belief that we take our strongest characteristic attributes from our upbringing.  However, when you see evidence of how much of these concepts might be things we take for granted because we do not readily see the genetic underlying influences then it can be a little intimidating.

When something as simple as a smile may be linked to thousands of years of evolution then you have to stop and rethink how you see certain things.  The evidence of what happened to Phineas Gage shows what a powerful motivator biology plays in our characteristics.  A couple of the blogs have related to the idea of a soul, and how it plays into our choices if our biological structure is changed.

This reminds me of a personal story that I encountered when I was young.  I had an Uncle Jeff (who my whole family called Uncle Jeff, however he wasn’t really related to us.  I’m sure everyone has one of those), who had been divorced.  His first wife, whose name was Becky, suffered from extreme bouts of Bipolar Disorder.  Uncle Jeff told stories of her running away, and it sometimes taking her weeks to find her and then weeks to adjust her medication to try and re-regulate her extreme moods.

He described her life as the very definition of misery.  When I was 8 years old, Becky took her own life.  I had never met her, however through all of the stories I had heard and how close I was to my Uncle Jeff I came to understand her suffering.  The reason this story sticks out in my head is this:  Uncle Jeff took her death very hard, he had feelings of guilt and felt very sorry for her, and on many levels still cared for her very much.  At her funeral, the preacher made several statements regarding her no longer having to suffer, that she had at long last found peace in heaven.  This was a statement that gave my Uncle Jeff a lot of comfort and he referred to this belief often.

What really struck me was that later, in a casual conversation between my mother and I, she stated that Becky would not be going to heaven and instead would suffer damnation due to her making the decision to take her own life.  I was greatly bothered by what she said and tried to argue that God would be able to understand her condition.  In later conversations with my preacher who backed the statement and belief that my mother shared he used the example of when the servants who were moving the Arc of the Covenant reached up and touched the sides of it to prevent it from falling died suddenly.  He argued that God had made a commandment and that commandment had been broken.  He stated that Becky had made a decision, and subsequently she had broken that commandment.  He explained that one of the true gifts of God was our ability to choose.  I have read several articles on the complex relationship between decisions made being a result of choice, Sick or Sinner?

Some of the deeper arguments would say that her soul would have been spared because she really didn’t have a choice in taking her own life, that the act was a byproduct of her illness and couldn’t be helped. What do you think?

I have linked an article that makes some interesting observations: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2280322/pdf/canfamphys00143-0077.pdf

While catching up on some daily news last week I noticed a link to a news story on the bottom of the page and clicked on it.  The story was entitled “Who is a Family? New Study Tracks Shifting US Views”  I clicked on it and read with much interest the finding of the story.

Associated Press: Who is a Family?

To summarize the report it shows that more and more Americans are able to define a non-married couple as a family unit.  ILolt goes on to show that more and more Americans are showing an increased recognition of unmairried gay couples as  being a family unit.  The part of the report that I found interesting was the showing that there is still a solid core resistance group that states that a family can only be defined by the marriage of a man to a woman.  Of this group more than 70% considered a pet to be a full fledged member of the family and recognized those pets to have full family rights.  It was interesting that they could extend the title of “A member of the family” to a pet however not to an unmarried or homosexual couple.  This made me wonder what the concept of family would be in the renaissance amongst such people as Descartes and Martin Luther.

It is interesting to note that Luther felt that a union between a husband and wife could be just as capable as doing God’s work than that of a celibate individual which would show a belief in companionship and unity.  An American viewpoint of family consists on monogamy and remaining faithful in that marriage as a solid cornerstone to a  marriage.  However, Luther didn’t hold to this ideal stating that if a wife persistently denies her husband then a husband should seek out other women, he even suggests the maid.  It seems that.

Descartes viewpoint of “I resolve to seek no other knowledge than that which I might find within myself, or perhaps in the great book of nature”.  This viewpoint being a very personal and self fulfilling goal, It would seem most likely that the idea of the family during the renaissance would have take a back seat that the idea and the discovery of the individual.

In my understanding of the allegory of the cave, it is interesting to think on one hand how enlightened of a society that we have become, how through science and global research we have universal truths and yet on the other hand how we can still reject a idea because it clashes with an emotional “truth”. Hearing the story of the cave I would like to think to myself that I would never be the person who tried to break my bonds to kill the messenger because I have enlightenment and reason on my side. However, there is constant evidence showcasing the rejection of a truth despite evidence to the contrary. For example, a Pew poll that was taken back in August 2010 shows that President Obama is still widely thought of as a Muslim.

1 in 5 Americans (18%) Think he’s a Muslim
1/3 of Adults (34%) think he’s a christian
43% say that they don’t know what his religious status

There is a large correlation between his political opponents and the belief that he is indeed Muslim, showing that this is a negative assumption. President Obama has stated many times, publicly and written, that he is a practicing christian. Then why is this, (somewhat simple belief, and by simple I mean if he was Muslim would it have that great of an impact on his ability to effectively hold the office of the president) hold so much sway and the rejection that he is christian so great? There is a large % of American troops that are healthy, safe practicing Muslim’s. Why then would it be different to have a President who was a practicing Muslim? Ultimately it seems that the simple truth that he is a christian is rejected, just like in the allegory of the cave, by those who reject President Obama as a whole. So even a simple truth, one that shouldn’t determine his presidency is rejected.

Bradley Campbell