intellectual immigration and integrative thinking

[Music]

psychology is a very young field

it hasn’t been around for longer than a

little over a hundred years

and in this time there’s a lot that

we’ve been doing

so psychology has actually been

connecting with

all sorts of different fields there’s

actually

a bunch of different fields that connect

with it and we have a bunch of

interdisciplinary fields let me tell you

what a few of those are

some of you might never have heard of

engineering psychology

it exists some of you might never have

heard of psychophysics

it exists some of you might have never

heard of neuromarketing

but it exists what all of these fields

are is an amalgamation of knowledge from

different domains

in life so essentially

the journey of psychology over the last

century or so

has been an interdisciplinary journey

and today that’s what i’m going to be

talking about

i’m going to be starting you guys off

with two stories

the first is of a man named dr john

gottman

dr john gottman actually had a

background

in mathematics physics and psychology

he’s still an active researcher

dr john gottman is famous for combining

these areas of his work

and actually predicting the

possibility or the probability of

divorce

by watching couples interact with each

other so

he devised this system and through this

system

what he was able to tell was by

assessing different physiological

variables

by assessing different communication

variables dr john gottman was actually

able to tell

how likely a couple is to divorce

a few years from now with 94 percent

accuracy just think about that number

that’s staggering 94

he even came up with something he called

the four horsemen

of the apocalypse and if these four

things are present in a relationship

it’s likely that your relationship is

heading towards a divorce

i’m not going to tell you what those are

i’m going to let you google those after

the talk to see how well your

relationship is doing

so that’s dr john gottman so he’s one

example of how

that connection of different fields of

knowledge

leads to such an incredible outcome the

other one

was dr lillian gilbert

she had a background in engineering

literature and psychology and she

famously combined these

and she founded the field that is now

known as organizational industrial

psychology

and she was the first and one of the few

one of the first females in the us to

get a phd

and she also was a role model for many

women looking to get further education

in life

and she by combining all three of these

different fields

created the field of a very scientific

industrial management organizational

psychology

so the point is that these two and there

are many these are just two of them

these two individuals what they were

able to do were

they were able to combine various areas

of knowledge and create some incredible

outcomes

so the point is that intellectual

immigration begets innovation but let me

tell you what i mean when i say

intellectual immigration

it’s simple stepping slightly

outside of your area of knowledge and

into another that is a slight

immigration from one intellectual domain

into another

and when you’re able to do that that can

bring out a lot of innovative ideas from

within you

and then that sort of integrative

thinking where you can integrate

various ideas from various different

fields that can lead to very creative

solutions

to very complex problems because the

thing is that the problems of today

from climate change to artificial

intelligence to

health crisis they’re no longer rooted

in the reductionism of one field they

now require

various inputs from various different

fields for us to understand

how we can tackle the problem fair from

different areas and that requires

integrative thinking

so a little bit about what it’s like and

here in pakistan and why maybe we don’t

see a lot of interdisciplinary research

here

and maybe worldwide in general

so you see interdisciplinary research

isn’t really encouraged you have

a department of engineering you have a

department of psychology you have a

department of medicine you have a

department of dentistry

you don’t have a department of

biological psychology you don’t have a

department of neuro marketing

that’s not how departments and

universities are structured that’s

simply not the case

and since that’s not the case it’s rare

for people from one domain of knowledge

to be talking to people

in the other domain of knowledge and

saying hey what can we do together

so departments are set up

in a very narrow manner and so research

becomes narrow in that one

area of knowledge for the most part so

even the one psychology undergraduate

course that many individuals have

in university you’re taught some

freudian ideas that might not be very

relevant to you in your life

imagine if in that one undergraduate

course the knowledge you were receiving

was

actually knowledge that was relevant to

your field imagine the outcome it could

optimize the work you’re doing by

so much and give you new avenues of

thinking

so that is where the responsibility of

the student comes in and when i say

student i don’t just mean

university student i mean anyone who is

a student of knowledge anyone who loves

to learn

thomas huxley said try to learn

something about everything and

everything about something and that’s

really what i’m trying to say

your responsibility as someone who wants

to learn

is to reach into as many different

domains

as you can and create connections

because that will change the way

you think that will change the way you

behave entirely

so psychology worldwide

as i said is a young field if it is in

its early adolescence

in more developed parts of the world it

is

probably a toddler here in pakistan

because not only do we not have

interdisciplinary work going on here

we don’t even have the more narrow

fields that you see in other parts of

the world

just think for a second if we did have

those different domains of knowledge

how different things could be well let

me give you an example of how different

things could be

just a few weeks ago the supreme court

finally ended the death penalty

for mentally ill prisoners

but before that happened three

individuals

bibi and gulam abbas were on death row

for 18

30 and 14 years even though

they were all mentally ill and had

schizophrenia and should have been

receiving treatment and

many decisions were taken on this but

not a lot of change came

up until a few weeks ago and well better

late than never

but the point remains that when the

supreme court finally became aware of

the evidence of these different avenues

of thinking about mental illness and how

it impacts the law and crime

this decision happened and this is a

step in the right direction

this is a step in the humane direction

so like i said

if you can simply start viewing the

world

or viewing the way that you interact

with knowledge a bit differently

that can change your entire world view

and if you can change

your world view you can change your

world

and maybe even someone else’s

it is as edward de bono said creativity

involves breaking out of established

patterns in order to look at things in a

different way

so i don’t want to stand here and show

you these examples of these

brilliant individuals from these foreign

qualified individuals you don’t have to

be that in order to do this

you see breaking of established patterns

that means habits you can create a habit

anyone can do that you don’t have to be

from some fancy university to do that

you don’t even have to be from a

university to do that all you have to do

is

be wanting to learn and be wanting to

engage with knowledge

for today what i’d really like you to

think from my talk here

when you’re done with it when you go

back is how does

my area of work interact with other

areas of work

and how can i connect those areas of

work

to maybe change something or bring

something new

if not to my professional life if not to

my

domain of knowledge then perhaps to my

personal life because i guarantee you

that you can do that too

to end and in conclusion

complex problems require creative

solutions

creative solutions require integrative

thinking

and integrative thinking definitely

requires

a little bit of intellectual immigration

thank you

you