PSY 355 Psychology & Media in the Digital Age This page was last modified on January 18, 2023

The Human Person from the Perspective
of Psychology & the Social Sciences

The Connected Baby (2011) • YouTube • 3'56"

• How are you connected now?
  

• How have you been connected in the past?

• What do you expect will be your connections in the future?

Human Persons

The fundamental way that I approach the notion of humanity posits that human persons are born into, develop, and live within a complex cosmos or world. This world comes before human beings are born (we are “thrown into” the world.)  This cosmos consists of multiple, permeable, and interacting domains, ecologies, or environments which can be termed material, biological, social, cultural, storied, and transcendent. There is a parallel between these domains and human functioning. Hence, human persons can be characterized as material beings, bio-psychological organisms, social actors, symbol-using agents, story-making authors, and witnesses to the transcendent. These realities converge such that human persons ordinarily experience themselves as conscious or self-reflective-centers of consciousness.

• The world and human beings as active and interactive

• Embeddedness within dynamic ecological systems (ecology is more than just the biological, it refers to the entire environment around someone)
  
• Change, movement, unstable

• The biological for humans is really biopsychological, that is, as living organisms we cope with the world around us by using all of the psychological abilities that we were born with and develop across our lives. Thinking is, at root, the sum of all the activities we undertake to survive and thrive.
  

• The notion of the "individual" as divorced from or somehow independent of the world's ecologies is a Western myth that increasingly we know is false.
  

Characteristics of the Human Person related to Major Subfields of Psychology

 

Biopsychological	Bio- and Neuropsychology Sensory & perceptual psychology Developmental psychology Learning
Social Actor*	Social psychology Life-span psychology Personality psychology
Symbol-using Agent*	Cognitive psychology Cultural & cross-cultural psychology Psychology of Language Psychology of Linguistics
Story-making Author*	Personality psychology Narrative psychology Cultural & cross-cultural psychology
Witness to the Transcendent	Psychology of Art, Creativity, & Aesthetics Psychology of Religion and Spirituality Positive psychology
Self-reflective Center of Consciousness	Personality psychology Cognitive psychology Bio- and Neuropsychology Phenomenological psychology Positive psychology

* These three characteristics (social actor, symbol-using agent, and story-making author) reflect the overall personality and developemental theory of Dan P. McAdams and summarized in his 2015 book, The Art and Science of Personality Development (New York: Guilford Press).

 

This page was first posted on 1/23/14