Whether it is in the mall, on a park bench, or just while walking to class on campus, have you ever found yourself people watching? In all honesty, I believe everyone has done it at one time or another. I think that by nature we cannot help but be overwhelmingly curious at times about what others around us look like, how they behave, their conversations, and so on. One of the concepts we learned about in our third lecture is Naturalistic Observation, which is a common method of psychological research. Specifically, Naturalistic Observation involves observing humans or animals in their natural environment. What I find particularly interesting regarding this method of research is the fact that each of us “naturally” evaluates these observations in our minds almost instinctively. For example, when we see an individual walking down the street dragging his or her feet, maybe staring at the ground, we begin to develop theories in our mind about the person. For instance, we may think to ourselves, why is the person walking like that? Is she or he depressed? Or, could the individual even be dangerous?  In all reality we might hypothesize a hundred scenarios that could be the cause of that individual’s behavior.

Another example is when I was sitting on a park bench one day not long ago and saw a couple go by holding hands. At first glance I thought both individuals were happy being with one another, but upon taking a closer look, watching the couple’s body language and hearing their tone of voice, I realized that they were actually arguing.

I believe that we instinctively psychoanalyze one another when we naturally observe each other in everyday settings. You may disagree and say that when we subconsciously watch people we are merely generating stereotypes in our minds based on misconceptions we have created over our lifetime. However, I think when we take time to observe one another it is not just because we get distracted for a moment from the task at hand, or that we suddenly care about someone’s distress, happiness, or the interesting outfit they put on today. It is because most people are genuinely curious about not only our own strange antics and habits, but also those of others. Furthermore, I think that we can find many of the answers we are looking for regarding what triggers humans to act or dress a certain way by naturally observing them as innocent bystanders.

One of the major issues that confronts researchers with Naturalistic Observations is the Hawthorne Effect, which explains how people often change their behavior when they know they are being watched. How can this problem be solved while also following ethical procedures regarding psychological research? Obviously, it would not be ethical to go to a nearby park and hide in the woods with a video camera and notebook to observe and document children’s behavior. In psychology researchers are often involved in covert naturalistic observation, which allows them to observe behaviors in their natural contexts without any intervention or influence by the researcher and without participants knowing they’re being observed. Covert Naturalistic Observation enables researchers to see people’s behavior in their natural setting, and thus to observe what is really happening outside of an official study environment.  Research psychologists believe that the best use of covert naturalistic observation is for studying how groups of people interact in public.  I think that one of the best ways for psychology to move forward and discover more about the human mind is through Naturalistic Observation, and I know that any individual can contribute to new findings regarding human behavior just from what they witness on a daily basis.

Research and data, obviously, go hand in hand. One cannot expect to have a successful research experiment without the proper representation and description of data. Data can be represented in a number of manners, but not all methods are best suited for all data. For example, a scatter plot would be acceptable to present a correlation or to illustrate a regression. To represent a comparison, however, a box plot, where each measure of central tendency is easily displayed, should be used.  There are, of course, numerous other ways to display data, but for purposes of this blog post, I only highlight these two.

As noted in lecture, the way in which data is represented can alter the perceptions of your target audience. Strides to prevent this from happening have been made and include practices such as peer review. Because of this fact, it is very rare for someone to come across scholarship containing misleading representations of data. Regardless of this fact, instances of misreported results occur.  As an example, I will describe to you a very frustrating moment in my 11 year old life. I was sitting in the waiting room of my dentist, reading one of those generic dentist magazines. While I can’t recall the title of the magazine or study, the scatter plot was displaying the relationship between how often children flossed and how likely they were to require braces. (The study was limited to the Northern New Jersey area). On the “Y” axis, they numbered how many children flossed, and on the “X” axis, they counted how many teenagers required braces. Even in my untrained, 11 year old mind, I recognized immediately the flaws in this graph. First and foremost, I remember thinking that this study did a poor job of displaying their data. You couldn’t really see any sort of trend or obvious link by simply looking at the graph.

I remember thinking that if I had the chance to display their data, I would have chosen a bar graph where the results could be easily read. I was only 11 and I felt I could have done a better job at representing this study’s results. Therefore, the study no longer held any credibility; their flawed graph was the reason I stopped flossing. Had the graph been done better, maybe I wouldn’t have required braces when I was thirteen.

When I think of psychology I think of talking about my feelings and going to see a therapist, however, this is only one aspect of psychology, but I find it to be the most interesting. Sigmund Freud, a well-respected neurologist, founded the term psychoanalysis. Psychology today is composed of five different roots: one being psychoanalysis. Freud emphasized that your early child hood experiences can have great impact on you later in life. In other words, the experiences you have as a child can influence how you develop later in life, especially affecting your personality and psychological problems. Freud believed one way you could help ease psychological problems is by talking about past times and bringing up unconscious memories to the conscious mind. This way, you are bringing up past experiences that have clearly impacted you and addressing them head on.

I personally found many things from my childhood have greatly impacted me. Growing up I have always looked towards my mother as my role model, and today I see many qualities of her with in myself. I remember one time, when I was about nine years old my mom and I were leaving a bagel shop and she noticed an elderly man whom one could tell was not in a lucrative position at the moment, and she kindly told the woman at the cash register that she would pay for his meal. My mom did not tell the man nor did she look for any kind of thank you, she was simply doing this from the bottom of her heart. She would do little things like this all the time; like helping people bag their groceries at the grocery store and on one time she offered to help an elderly woman and got chased down the street by the woman and her cane. I found that story very amusing, however the point is because my mother did all these acts of kindness around me I felt it was normal and the right thing to do. You have the ability to make some one else’s day just by “paying it forward” and help others. While my experience is not traumatizing nor did it have long lasting psychological effects on me, it did help shape me into the person I am today. Just the other day I was out shopping with friends and offered to help a woman, who could not carry every thing in her hands, bring her bags to her car. While this childhood experience was so small, it still helped make me the person I am today.

Maggie Yanowitz