My real-life situation is based on a TED talk video made by the psychiatrist Robert Waldinger. It discusses the results of a 75-year-old study on adult development, where 2 groups of 724 men were studied throughout their whole lives to see what really makes people healthy and happy. This test was made to a group of teenagers from two contrasting contexts. The study showed that working harder, money or fame are not the answers for a quality life as many people think, instead, good relationships are.
This real-life situation links to the human sciences, specifically to psychology, as the knowledge gathered helps us understand the ways in which individuals' experiences in life could be affected by external factors, in this case, the people around them (family, friends). It also links to the natural sciences, specifically biology, because it states how relationships can have an effect in our brain functioning, health and memories, therefore, impact our knowledge.
This leads me to ask the knowledge question, ‘How reliable are studies that analyze human behavior?’ This is an important question to answer because psychological studies play an important role in society as they contribute to public policies and the analysis of human behavior such as decision making, temptations, communication, etc. Having knowledge of reliability and validity of them will be essential for development in economics, politics, and social aspects. The real-life situation is important because it relates to the idea of how we learn through mechanisms such as sensations of external factors (relationships). And, It also claims that the knowledge gained from it is a tool for the pursuit of your happiness.
The way we answer this question will change depending on certain perspectives. Scientists or people that believe scientific research proves everything might categorize psychological studies as unreliable. The main reason for this is the 'replicability crisis', meaning that if you repeat psychological experiments they might lead to different results. This contradicts scientists' belief in repeating work to make sure their findings are real. Also, if you are an economist or tilt into their ideologies, they will say psychological experiments help to find correlations between variables rather than giving specific conclusions that will always work. Thus, they think these studies might be trustworthy to a certain extent. If they are random then they are more accurate but still, this doesn’t mean the policies made based on these studies will work in every context.
ToK journal by Nour. M
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