2. What are the Human Sciences
List the main Human Sciences and explain what binds them together as a ‘macro discipline or
set of disciplines. What is their purpose?
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Psychology
Economics
Political Sciences
Sociology
Geography
Anthropology
The main objective for human sciences is to gain knowledge of human behaviour and how
people interact with each other in different situations. This allows people to predict behaviour of
a sing person or a group of people.
3. What are the main problems with the Human
Sciences and their methods
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Surveys
-sample size
-biased questions
-quality of answers
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Experiments
-Hawthorne effect
-margeret mead case- the observed respondto the expectations of the observer
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Control
-how many times does it need to be repeated until it becomes reliable data
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Difficulty in measuring some things e.g. happiness
4. Case Study: Correlation is not a cause
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Correlation between 2 variables does not imply that one causes the other
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Correlation is the relationship between two variables, whilst causation is an act that
occurs in such a way that something happens as a result. E.g. a study that found that
men who drink four cups of green tea a day had a lower risk of stroke than those who
did not drink it might generate the headline “Green Tea Cuts Stroke Risk.” This implies
that drinking green tea will directly lower the risk of stroke, but that isn’t proven by
the study. Other factors, like the fact that the study was conducted on men in Japan
who have different diets and exercise habits than men in Western countries, could have
influenced the results. (essentailly do not jump to theories)
5. How much do people around us affect our
decisions?
Paternal Influence is very prominent when their children are choosing what degree they want to
study in university. This is largely because the parents want their children to take what they
believe as the ‘safer’ option, possibly because they themselves opted for that decision in the
past and have since then become successful.
Social Influence is also a big factor. For example, jobs that are deemed to be more
‘respectable’ such as doctors and lawyers, are often more popular, especially comparative to
jobs such as physiotherapist, gym instructors etc.
