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What has coronavirus revealed about human psychology?
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Self-perception

< (3 of 3)

The group comes first

'Tend and befriend' - responding by building community networks to help those around you, shows an individual bases their identity on that of the group.
< (2 of 2)

The Argument

Humans have evolved to depend on socialization and group settings to succeed. As we evolved it became beneficial to forage and hunt together, share, and socialize. Eventually, through evolutionary processes, humans came to use socialization as our primary advantage. Our biology evolved for us to psychologically depend on socialization.[1] When we are not able to socialize in groups, it can lead to psychological and physical health problems. This is why isolation due to coronavirus measures is so difficult for us; we biologically depend upon socialization. Coronavirus has revealed just how important groups are to us humans, and that we often are lonely, depressed, or anxious when not able to socialize. Socialization is crucial to the psychological well-being of the human race; without it, we are mentally depleted.

Counter arguments

Humans have moved past group effort being the most important thing to our psychology. The rise of capitalistic ideals shows that individual effort has taken over the limelight. There are many facets of life affected by the pandemic, and the stress people apparently feel due to no group interaction could just as easily be from another cause. The fact that a large percentage of people are disrespecting social distancing regulations and putting the human group at stake for personal gain demonstrates that humans are inherently self-serving, not group reliant.

Proponents

Premises

[P1] Coronavirus has made group socialization much harder. [P2] People are struggling psychologically due to no socialization. [P3] Humans depend upon socialization.

Rejecting the premises

References

  1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2020/03/17/coronavirus-social-distancing/
This page was last edited on Wednesday, 24 Jun 2020 at 19:57 UTC

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