Psychology and the Nature of Humanity

Introduction.

The American Psychologist Association (APA) defines psychology as ‘the study of the mind and behaviour . The discipline embraces all aspects of the human experience — from the functions of the brain to the actions of nations, from child development to care for the aged. ‘(Association, 2014). With such an extensive definition, it is not overly surprising that its scientific kudos has been used to propagate political dogma, including abominable beliefs such as the innate inferiority of black people (Howitt and Owusu-Bempah, 1994) and to facilitate the legalislation of racist laws such as the American Jim Crow laws that placed severe restrictions on the rights and privileges of African Americans in 1877 (Brown and Stentiford, 2008). Furthermore, Howitt and Owusu-Bempah emphasise how even psychologists who have claimed to abhor racism (for example, Hans Eysenck) have used so called scientific evidence to support claims about black people being intellectually inferior. As stated by Jones psychology is a socially embedded activity that uses a number of methods to produce knowledge about human nature and behaviour and that is is conducted by psychologists with many purposes behind what they do.

Certainly, psychology has tremendous power to indoctrinate government policies. These policies may include policies on welfare, education, health and economics. As such, can one universal psychology really be expected to cover the complexities of all the different cultures and societies throughout the world with their differing needs and histories? Psychology has historically been dominated by American psychology (Lunt and Poortinga, 1996) Though Americans only form less than 5 percent of the world’s population, 70 percent of...

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