Informal Explanations of Behavioral Research Concepts; Concept Validity
So I'm internally monologuing to myself about animal behavior research and how it compares to human research and the number of difficulties between it and the bridge between these two fields honestly highlights a great issue of concept validity which is why human behavior, emotions, and research on self have not really been able to break into the field of animal research which for stuff like medical issues has RAPIDLY accelerated findings and insights to how humans work
One of which that I've read the most on during my time studying animal behavior in academics was the idea of researching the concept of fear in animals. It sounds relatively straight forward, illicit fear in animals, measure that fear, bing bang boom easy
But you first have to ask a few questions to build that.
What is fear? How do we measure fear in humans? Is that measurement actually a good depiction of fear? Is what we think fear is a good description to what we are actually trying to study for the purposes of long term research?
Fear is a very subjective concept to start with. Ask 40 different people to describe and define fear and you will get many many many different answers. Some would describe it based on the biological reactions - amygdala activation, cortisol, etc - some might describe it on its behavioral aspects - avoidance, arousal - some might describe it on self reports - psychometrics and surveys - and some might describe it in a very ethereal manner that can't really be measured - some might mix and match these. To research fear in humans, we have to understand what fear is and what we are researching and any differences in the definition of fear that the researcher takes on will inherently change how the data is collected and interpretted. Data that talks about fear (purely biological and measuring activation of the amygdala) will likely have wildly different results than data that talks about fear (psychometrics and self reports) and data that talks about fear (behavioral measures and tracking). Which is the most accurate and most valid description and understanding? Which works the best to address the larger question in hand that you are meaning to look into? There is no real clear cut objective right answer and thus talking about "research in fear" will result many conflicting results not only due to many other complications in research but ALSO just different approaches to the concept of fear.
This is questioning the researcher's concept validity of fear in human research.
Do animals feel fear? If some do and some don't what animals do? What would fear look like in different species considering the lack of ability to directly communicate (with most) species despite the many different forms, biological and neurological differences? For species that have notably different brain structures and development (birds vs primates; insects, etc) how can we know that fear is even a possible expression that their brain can generate and not simply a human inferrence and transference assuming that our experiences are the same with animals? Additionally, how would we measure fear in animals? Is that measurement reliable? Is it actually a measurement that matches our definition of fear? Is that definition of fear actually in line with what we are trying to study for the purposes of long term research?
While humans have a tendency to assume all animals experience the same things as us, it is proven to be a very disservice assumption that underlies a lot of animal welfare issues that - as researchers realized it is often not the case - have been remedied in some locations but not others (cough cough ARAs cough cough). The truth is, animals have wildly different biologies than humans from the way they take in sound, vision, feelings, to how they process food and even their brain structures. As a result, it is heavily presumptuous to assume that any subjective and more ethereal emotional concept like "fear" is not only present but also present in the same way as humans and that stages a huge difficulty in the research of animal emotions and welfare states. Currently, this field is pretty young and in its infancy so there is limited understanding and consensus on the best way to navigate this and so there is a lot of discourse on what the HELL we are considering "fear" in animals and if it is even fair to call it that. Fundamentally, we have to heavily consider the concept validity of "fear" and even its existence and how we approach it when researching animal behavior.
Additionally, even if we do assume that, we have a large communication barrier between animals and humans and thus we are not able to rely on self reports (even with some 'communicative animals' like apes and parrots as there is discourse as to if that is "genuine" communication or learned) so we are forced to rely on behavioral and biological measurements - which in itself pose an issue due to the different morphology across species.
Additionally, when researching fear across species (particularly human and animal) - are these measurements measuring the same thing? Are the definitions the same? Do they both address the same type of fear in concept, definition, and measurements? How do they differ? How do the inherent differences in morphology impact the results and how much do those differences need to be taken into account?
ASSUMING that we take the claim that animal fear and human fear are the same and comparable, if we were to compare one to another, we would need the data and concepts of fear to be matching otherwise direct comparisons are not going to be all that fair as one measurement may be biased due to it being defined differently or measured differently. Of course it can be hard to have this ideal perfect match up and so often people accept that there will be this difference, but that does come at a cost to the validity of the concept itself. A study that measures an animals fear based on behavior would have to justify that it is a valid comparison to say a human measurement of fear through a combination of behavior and self reports and what not.
As a result to the researcher interpretting all these questions differently than another, the results can vary drastically and many many different and opposing conclusions can be made.
In turn, to the complex topic of DID and syscourse where the concept of DID and "plurality" and what not are VERY VERY VERY ethereal and esoteric, we have to ask what exactly are we defining, how are we measuring them, and how does that definition and measurement compare to the practical phenomenon itself that we are interested in?
Every approach will have its strengths and weaknesses, its more valid corners and its less valid corners, and it largely depends on what the overall long term research interest is. Someone interested in the experience of people who live as multiple people will be researching and coming to conclusions wildly different than someone who is interested in the experience of people who have survived complex and repeated trauma by developing strong dissociative states. Neither interpretation is inherently wrong or better than one another and they are answering the questions of concept validity of their research target very differently from one another simply due to the fact that the overarching interest is different.
That said, the differences and background and interpretation of the phenomenon that we are discoursing about needs to be taken into consideration when discussing and understanding research literature on the topic. A sociologist will answer it different than a clinical psychologist who will answer it differently than a neurologist because each of them are interested in a slightly different long term research goal than the other and that is netiher wrong nor bad. It is the intersection of all these different long term research interests that help build a much larger image of a very very complex and intangible concept such as DID/plurality/multiplicity etc
