Human Behavior in the Gym

Problem Statement

The research by Bhaskar (2014) describes ‘Naturalistic’ as to the unchanged or normal environment around the research or study of a given subject. He defines Observation as the state of watching out a person’s behavior to get actual data. Therefore, Naturalistic observation refers to a form of watching and keenly observing people’s behaviors within their normal environment . Researchers who use this form of data collection method are often directly linked to the subjects and their environment by mean of an observation of behaviors . Bhaskar highlights that naturalistic behaviors often have an explanation for their occurrences with facts about the interactions of fundamental physical elements as per natural and social laws. Naturalistic observation impacts the behavior of the subject and also affects its environment. This paper aims at elaborating naturalistic behavior, in this case, the human behavior in the gym.

Naturalism claims that nothing has a basic purposeful explanation. For instance, Bhaskar claims that an individual’s free choices have purposeful explanations and that by the fact that the world holds conscious mental states in every person, such as pains, means it has a fundamental purposeful explanation too. Bhaskar (2014), suggests that Naturalism agrees that to some extent, some things have purposeful explanations for their occurrences. For example, naturalism can accept the idea of one visiting the gym just for the sake of being fit or being healthy. However, naturalism does not accept that everything has a fundamental explanation. For instance, a person visiting the gym can be explained by the purposefulness of the visit itself, which in this case is the desired health benefit. The purposeful explanation is that the person goes to the gym so as to remain fit and to manage his health but the main cause of visiting the gym is the proper personal mindset coupled with the determination to maintain a healthy lifestyle (Bhaskar, 2014).

Naturalists believe that one’s free choices and desires have purposeful explanations since the causal explanations often reflect the behaviors of the subject. However, Bhaskar argues that a person’s free choices have basic reasons hence the cause of the behavior has no cause. For instance, if a person’s free choice to write a report has a basic explanation, even if there is no cause for writing the report, there still exists a purposeful explanation for the work. Often, people experience free choices without a fundamental cause (Bhaskar, 2014).

Theory

The activities that people involve themselves in with the inclusivity of their social interactions form the basic subject elements in the observation of naturalistic behavior. According to the study by Bhaskar, an individual within such an environment, is likely to be reflected in their daily activities and interactions with others. As such, their behavior is more likely to be represented in their normal daily interactions. Theoretically, both men and women do not wipe down machines used after their workouts in the gym. Naturalistic observation can be designed in the gym, therefore, to observe whether or not fitness participants, in spite of their genders, clean their machines after their sessions. In the project to observe human behavior in the gym, the observation was carefully designed in such a way as to minimize on interferences with the usual state of affairs within the gym. The subjects in the gym may react differently in the realization of a new and unfamiliar element within their environment, and therefore, the researcher should be unobtrusive in order for the research to be a successful one.

Hypothesis

Hypothetically, women are likelier than men to clean down their machines after their respective fitness sessions. Being on the elliptical session to observe whether or not the subjects clean their machines after use, was important in getting real data. The observation was clandestine, in order to avoid the kind of creepiness that could put trainers ill at ease. This way, the people within the environment were not made aware that they were being observed. For this study to have real significance, it had to be a concealed one and done under some times. Its clandestine nature eliminated the risk of taking stock of choreographed gym sessions.

Procedure

Naturalistic observation is the one method of data collection that best assures the authenticity of research findings, seeing as the researcher doesn’t interfere with the natural order of things amongst the sample population. Such data collection methods as laboratory tests, treating groups, surveys, monitoring settings, and interviews are invasive but with varying levels of invasiveness. For instance, Surveys most of the time fail to ignite public interest and thus may be taken with little seriousness. On the other hand, close monitoring to observe a subject's behavior may cause them to choreograph their reactions which misleads findings. Laboratory tests are selectively accurate and give right findings only in exclusive cases where the subjects of the study can be put in separate rooms. All these data collection methods need care in as far as their design to carry researches is concerned and therefore, are not well suited for making an unobtrusive study of natural behavior. The naturalistic observation was, therefore, the method used in carrying out this project.

The experiment had to be undertaken several times across different gym sections in order to correlate actual results for purposes of assuring the accuracy of findings. The first phase of the observation took place on one corner and entailed writing notes on how many of the men and of the ladies cleaned their cardio machines after use. There were some ladies and men working out; In the workout, the section is a guy running for 20 minutes without actual running shoes. However, he has Ked shoes on. Also, present, are two ladies. One refuses to take off her elliptical while the other takes ten minutes to take hers off. A middle aged man is doing his workouts on the floor mat, not very far from this two. This is the upper ground section. In the underground section too, workout sections are underway. The practice sessions in this section are unsupervised and don’t seem vigorous. The participants, both male, and female don’t seem to keep a strict fitness regime.Some are talking to each other; a number are reading magazines while others are on their headphones while running. However, the interest remains on the total number who would be wiping their machines after their workouts. The gym had sections containing spray cleaners and rags used to clean the machines after workouts.

Being a naturalistic observation, only a few human behaviors needed to be observed for the study to be successful. To this end, data collection was quantitative and not qualitative. Two hours were dedicated to taking notes in relation to whoever cleaned their cardio machines after the workouts, or whoever didn’t and their gender.

Results and Discussion

During the two hours of observation, every lady in the gym wiped her cardio machine after she had finished working out. All of the ladies without exception make sure to clean their machines after having been done with their workouts; 50 in total. However, only 14 of a total of 40 men observed clean their machines at the end of their sessions. Moreover, 9 of the 14 who wipe their machines do so under duress from their training counterparts, all of whom are females. These were spouses who had come to the gym together and were doing their workouts together. In all of these cases, the female counterparts do the actual cleaning while their male companions only but clean the rags used. From experience, the number of ladies who wiped down their machines after workouts outweighed the number of men who cleaned their machines and in some cases men totally failed to wipe their machines after use in some sessions.

Experiment

The underground section was still full with people working out, and for the study to carry more weight, the data had to be quantified. After talking to the gym administrator, weighting rooms were stationed in that the people were to workout in pairs (man with a lady). Among the men who had cleaned their cardio machines, 4 of them went into the underground section, and more specifically in the weight room. Of course, they were not aware that they were being observed from a distance. After 15 minutes of weight lifting, all of the men took off after wiping the used weight lifting machines. For the ladies who were present, all of them cleaned their weight lifting machines. Typically, this change seemed to work out because any man who worked out together with a lady wiped the machines after having been done with working out.

Gender is a key influencer of the state of affairs within the gym as a choice environment. In general, male fitness enthusiasts are perceivably messier as compared to the female enthusiasts. This is with respect to the overwhelmingly perfect return of women who clean their cardio machines after having used them when relative to that of men.. Additionally, cardio machines are likelier to be cleaned after having been used as compared to weight lifting machines.

Reference

Bhaskar, R. (2014). The possibility of naturalism: A philosophical critique of the contemporary human sciences. Routledge.