As requested by Cynaris

You probably know of my fascination with psychology and how I desire to pursue it in college and as a career. However, I rarely talk about psychology here. To remedy this, I shall inform you of my current psychology project, a psychological study of prominent Christian apologist David Wood.

I chose to study David because of his disturbed past. Throughout his high school years, David exhibited several signs of antisocial personality disorder such as a lack of emotion towards the deaths of loved ones and lack of remorse for his wrongdoings. Perceiving morality and emotion as inferior human constructs in an ultimately meaningless world, David developed a nihilistic worldview and a superiority complex. David believed he surpassed the worthless emotions and remorse that limit other human beings and therefore practiced limitless hedonism by fulfilling his own desires whenever he wished. David's worldview and disorder encouraged him to murder his father in order to finally "break free" from society's restrictions. Although his father never harmed him, David struck his father with a hammer and fled after assuring himself of his father's death.

To complete this project, I must analyze David's worldview and behavior through the lens of seven psychological perspectives: evolutionary, cognitive, humanistic, psychodynamic, biological, social, and behavioral. I have completed my analysis for all perspectives excluding the social and behavioral. Since each analysis consumes an entire page, I will consequently condense each perspective and its interpretation of David's behavior.

Warning: big words and complex ideas. Requires brain activity.

1. The evolutionary perspective, relying upon Darwin's principle of natural selection, suggests that traits and genes that assist an organism's survival and reproduction will pass onto further generations. Genes and traits influence behavior in ways helpful or harmful to an organism's survivability and reproductive ability. David's murderous behaviors directly impair his ability to survive, since American society often punishes murder with the death penalty, and his ability to reproduce, since murder is unattractive and obviously discourages potential mates from associating with him.

2. The cognitive perspective pertains to cognition, how an organism thinks, remembers, and communicates, and studies internal mental processes. Cognitive theories of motivation like the incentive theory, which suggests that positive or negative environmental stimuli motivate behavior, explains how David developed his nihilistic worldview and provides rationale for his hedonistic actions. According to David, the external world is meaningless and amoral. Therefore, David decides to simply do as he pleases at any given time.

3. The humanistic perspective emphasizes the personal growth of psychologically healthy people. David, psychologically ill, deviates from humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow's concept of self-actualization, the highest attainable level of personal growth that typically involves a positive change in one's internal and external behavior. David practices limitless hedonism rather than selflessness in order to achieve self-actualization and therefore serves as a perverse parody of the humanistic perspective.

4. The psychodynamic perspective, inspired by the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, suggests that behavior is motivated by unconscious, hidden, or childhood experiences and conflicts. The id, an unconscious dynamic that drives a person to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives, operates on the pleasure principle, the force that guides the id and demands immediate gratification, and explains David's self-satisfying and reward-seeking behavior. David's worldview, encouraging him to do as he pleases, provides near-unlimited control to David's id as it constantly drives him to fulfill his own desires.

5. The biological perspective of psychology focuses on the anatomy and the chemical processes behind behavior and cognition and therefore focuses on physiological structures and functions of the human body. David's amygdala, two neural clusters located in the limbic system linked to emotion, serve as a prime example of a biological influence upon David's aggression, physical and verbal behavior intending to hurt someone.

Of course, these explanations are only excerpts or summarizations of more in-depth analysis. But I hope you can obtain a surface-level understanding of these different perspectives and their relation to David's thinking and actions.

I greatly enjoy this project as it pertains to my interests: analysis, morality, and big words. I will continue studying psychology and may create additional chapters pertaining to interesting psychology facts or studies.

Is your brain tired yet? Mine is. Here are some psychology memes I made:

Left car: Self-actualized people like Jesus and Gandhi. Right car: "Self-actualized" people like Napoleon and Rockefeller.

Using Freudian defense mechanisms be like

^ When my sympathetic nervous system activates in response to my finals

When my teacher watches me confuse inductive and deductive reasoning for the 44th time

When you successfully survive and reproduce

Love and Peace,
Arkada