Has anthropology/other studies helped you understand people?

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Has anthropology or other studies regarding humans helped you understand people better, and possibly helped your ability to mask? What fields are the ones that have helped you?

Having an interest in anthropology and human evolution has helped me understand other people a lot better. Learning the "logic" behind human behaviour and how our behaviour is similar to other apes/primates has given me a better appreciation for the things people do that used to confuse me. I think I am better able to empathize with others and can mask easier. I probably wouldn't "function" as well as I do socially if I never had an interest in anthropology and primatology.

It might have, but I'm not sure the insights would have occurred if it wasn't also for MDMA.

Studying anthropology can help with understanding how humans might operate, but it's still hard for me to get questions like well, why like that and not like this which anthropology really doesn't seem to address well.

I don't think it would have benefited me as much if I didn't have a vested interest in the behaviour of other animals. Being able to learn about humans like I learn about animals is super helpful, even if others think it's weird that I basically analyze people like they're chimps... lol

I also think that still confuses me sometimes, too. A lot of modern human behaviour is so varied and doesn't always match up to the logic that is given for more primitive humans and their behaviour, so I'm still left wondering why people do X over Y. I think my ASD is the main issue though. Learning about anthropology has actually made me feel even more not on the "same level" as other people, since I still don't relate with a lot of the "logic" I learn about.

I've been studying anthropology since about age 11.

It probably has helped me "understand people" better.

It certainly helped me understand cultures different from my own.

Issac Asimov coined the word "Psychohistory" which he describes large groups of humans being predictable like a volume of gas is predictable, this in spite of individual humans being inherently UN-predictable, as are individual molecules of gas.

I read someplace that a certain (well known?) economist went into his field because he was inspired by Asimov's Psychohistory - and economic theory was the closed he could get.

I have found some "business success" literature to be helpful: it has the built-in idea that you you want to become a success and good business partner by also helping other people to be a success - some anthropology is essentially de-humanizing - it looks at the groups but not at the individuals. Some books I have read on Psychology are essentially a-social - they focus only on one happy person, (the self) not on many.

The books I like are How to "Win Friends and Influence People", "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" (not all of it but part of it) and "Cheaper by the Dozen" (The book not the movie) and the subsequent "Belles on Their Toes"

I also find "Game Theory" interesting and sometimes helpful. And "Maslow's hierarchy of needs".

Yep...Maslow is definitely onto something......

Anthropology was the hardest class I ever took in Uni, and unfortunately it had nothing to do with human behaviour. It was mostly about carbon-dating science. Psychiatry is almost useless in my opinion. Psychology has been marginally helpful. I liked my work with my first trauma psychologist but that was mostly about my own trauma and not about societies. A certain former mod helped me to understand a lot of psychology theory as well, and I found that helpful.

My boyfriend also has a Master's in Counselling Psych. Some of it is useful but in general, I don't think I'll ever understand people. It's hard enough just understanding myself.

Carbon-14 dating is only accurate to about 40,000 years or so. It's pretty useless in dating non-modern humans.

They were using potassium-argon dating to date fossils in the 70s. They probably still use it now.

My only take-away from Anthro-101 was "Expect the worst from people, and they will never disappoint you again".

I've just been thinking about this more. I think I learned more about human psychology from Art History and biographies of artists, than from psychology itself.

That's often the lens I view anthropology through, like I'm trying to understand some other animal that I'm able to pass among but never really be a part of. I feel like Jane Goodall, only if she was a chimp that smelled like a human (although, more likely I just smell like a chimp...).

I feel bad when I'm watching a group of humans and I suddenly start imagining a nature documentary voice-over explaining their behaviour to me. Here we see two mobs of juvenile males attempting to assert dominance. Note how the lower ranked males are already engaging in threat displays while the higher ranking males are only standing guard.

"Not sure". I constantly analyze and compare and look for patterns in everything everywhere (I was that annoying kid who would keep indefinitely asking "why?" to successive answers given to me by adults), but I don't normally draw from any particular type of source or field of study, and I don't keep track of what exact sources I may be drawing from at any given moment. I follow a more iterative approach instead, and just keep track of the degree of uncertainty involved in my understanding of any given thing.

I've always felt similar to a chimpanzee or something that's been taught to act like a human. I think that's more relatable than comparing my feelings to feeling like an alien... lol

I also enjoy just observing people and comparing their behaviour to other apes and animals... It's interesting how similar we act sometimes, and it's kind of funny. I don't tell people I do that though because they usually think it's weird or stupid to do.

I do find the knowledge that I'm an animal to be very useful, probably more so than the knowledge that everyone else is an animal too. To that effect, I think geology and cosmology prove more useful instead. Not only will everybody alive today be dead in a century or so, but also everyone and everything ever will be dead and gone without a trace in another geological blink of an eye and nothing will have mattered. Anything is only ever relevant because my senses and instincts make it so.

How is that stuff more useful when your entire experience is a blink relative to the time scales they work on?

They're interesting topics, but largely irrelevant to day-to-day living unless you're working in a field that involves them. I like learning about dinosaurs, but knowing the social behaviour of dromaeosaurs isn't likely to help my life much, knowing about how humans and other apes behave in stressful situations might though since I do occasionally have to interact with other apes (the human sort).

I don't actually know particularly much about those fields, I just mean it in the sense I described it ("everything will be gone" and such), because it helps me disregard irrelevant information that I'm daily bombarded with (as everyone else is). Human patterns become more apparent once that veil is lifted. So I mean it as a primary filter rather than as an explanation or a framework of knowledge in itself. Whenever "lasting significance" is implicitly or explicitly given as an explanation in itself for anything, I can immediately remind myself that that's not really the actual story, and then work from there.