Psychology, Science, and You

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Chapter 1

• Psychology, Science, and You

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Acknowledgements

• http//www.cafeastrology.com
• www.duke.edu
• http//www.markwebtest.netfirms.com/teachRDE/C02/c
  2Lec2.html
• www.twu.edu/inspire/Images
• tutor2u.net
• graphics.stanford.edu
• www.rainbowray.com
• www.valerielorimer.com
• www.keithbond.co.uk
• brentmichaelkelley.com

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Overview

• Why Psychology Uses the Scientific Approach
• Why You Should Understand Research Design

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Why Psychology Uses the Scientific Approach

• The Characteristics of Science
• The Characteristics of Psychology

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The Characteristics of Science

• General Rules
• Objective
• Testable
• Skeptical

• Open-Minded
• Creative
• Public
• Productive

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Psychology as science

• Psychology is the science of behavior
• Alternative approaches (phrenology, astrology,
  philosophy, etc.) to studying behavior

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What science is not Common misconceptions about
science

• Science is not the same as statistics (Darwin,
  Piaget, Skinner, Gestalt Psychology all did well
  without using statistics)
• although statistics can be a useful tool for
  scientists.

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What science is not Common misconceptions about
science

• Science is not synonymous with technology.
• Polygraph and phrenometer were not scientific
• If enough technological knowledge were
  accumulated in a field, people might stop trying
  to get answers to questions and instead only
  focus on applying what we already know.

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Key qualities of science

• Objective empirical evidence "Show me" attitude
• to avoid relying on unfounded speculations or
  biased perceptions, scientists tie their beliefs
  to concrete, observable, physical evidence
• this evidence can be double-checked by both
  independent observers and skeptics

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The whole of science is nothing more than the
refinement of everyday thinking.
The most important thing to do is to not stop
questioning
Things should be made as simple as possible, but
not any simpler
Albert Einstein
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Key qualities of science

• Testable (correctable) Could I be wrong?
• scientists are encouraged to make bold, specific
  predictions and then find evidence that either
  supports or refutes their speculations
• You dont do interesting research if you dont
  take risks. Period. If you prove the obvious,
  thats not interesting research. (Bob Zajonc)
• scientists willingly put their opinions to the
  test and are ready to publicly renounce their
  previous views if proved wrong

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Key qualities of science- testable

• Why do scientists test their opinions?
• A major goal of science is to identify myths,
  superstitions, and false beliefs
• One of sciences major strengths is that its
  methods allow scientists to learn from mistakes

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Key qualities of science- testable

• so to be a scientist you need to learn when your
  predictions were wrong by making testable
  statements
• statements that may possibly be shown to be
  wrong

The scientific method requires that you struggle
exhaustively to disprove, or falsify, your best
ideas. You actually try, again and again, to find
the possible flaw in your hypothesis. We
scientists are rather accustomed to falling flat
on our faces. (Peter Doherty, 2002, p.89)
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(Un)testable statements

• Our team will win, lose, or tie its next game
• Aries Daily HoroscopeGains or advancements may
  result from good organizing ability and a
  willingness to carry out responsibilities and
  duties without hesitation. Government officials,
  those in authority, a parent, or friends with
  pragmatic attitudes may prove to be of
  assistance. There may be public recognition for
  past efforts and hard work.

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(Un)testable statements

• The earth will be destroyed in 2000.
• False?
• No, it was destroyed in 2000, and we are now
  living on an alternate earth in another
  dimension, unaware of the destruction of our
  previous world

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(Un)testable statements

• scientists try to avoid untestable statements,
  because these do not allow them to thest their
  beliefs
• so, they are skeptical of
• vague statements
• after-the-fact explanations

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Vague statements

• vague statements are often the province of
  pseudosciences, such as palmistry and astrology

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Vague statements

• scientists avoid making vague statements by
  defining their concepts in precise and objective
  terms
• they use operational definitions (specific,
  observable, concrete steps involved in measuring
  and manipulating the concept being studied)

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Operational definitions

• How do we operationalize such concepts as love,
  stress, intelligence?

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Operational definitions

• when researchers state their predictions in
  clear, concrete, and objective terms, they can
  objectively determine whether the evidence
  supports their predictions
• no matter what their biases, scientists can
  objectively establish whether scores on a given
  happiness test are correlated with scores on a
  certain IQ test

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After-the-fact (ad hoc) explanations

• how do you prove the following wrong?
• a person committed a murder because
• of event X in their childhood

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Science is skeptical whats the evidence?
Scientists have the courage to question
conventional wisdom (Carl Sagan, 1993)

• e.g., Galileo tested the obvious fact that
  heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects
• was he right?

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Science is skeptical whats the evidence?

• scientists continue to be skeptical, even after
  they have objective evidence having
  circumstantial evidence in support of a belief is
  not the same as having proof that the belief is
  correct
• so scientists ask themselves the question what
  is the evidence against this belief?, what
  other explanations are there for the evidence
  that seems to support this belief?

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Science is skeptical whats the evidence?

• what happens if you only look at the cases that
  support a belief?
• you can find support for a number of hypotheses,
  such as
• going to a physician is bad for your physical
  health (malpractice cases)
• playing the lottery is good for your financial
  health (looking at lottery winners)

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Science is skeptical whats the evidence?

• scientists also look for alternative
  explanationsfor evidence that appears to support
  the belief
• is malaria caused by bad-smelling air around
  swamps?

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Science is skeptical whats the evidence?

• being skeptical also means realizing that
  convincing proof may merely be the result of a
  coincidence
• a suspect may be near the victims house on the
  night of the murder for perfectly innocent
  reasons
• a patient may suddenly get better even after
  getting a quack treatment

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Science is open-minded

• good scientists are willing to entertain all
  possibilities
• they have the courage to be open to the truth and
  to see the world as it is
• they will not automatically dismiss new ideas as
  nonsense, not even ideas that seem to run counter
  to existing knowledge, such as telepathy

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Science is creative

• to test and formulate new ideas scientists must
  be creative
• Marie Sklodowska-Curie, Charles Darwin,
  Friederich Kekule- creative geniuses

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Science shares findings

• science is able to capitalize on the work of
  individual geniuses because scientists produce
  publicly shared knowledge
• most of this published work involves submitting
  reports of research studies
• these reports allow other scientists to replicate
  the original study

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Science shares findings

• advantages of scientists publishing their work
• biases and errors can be spotted and corrected
• researchers can build on each others work
• by combining their time, energy, and viewpoints,
  the community of scientists can accomplish much
  more than if each had worked alone

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Science shares findings

• without an open sharing of information, science
  doesnt work
• the debate on cold fusion

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Science is productive

• as a results of scientists sharing their
  findings and building on each others work,
  theories are revised, refined, replaced, and
  knowledge in some fields of science doubles every
  5 to 10 years
• remarkable progress in science
• in the 1400s people were punished for studying
  human anatomy
• 1800s, the scientific approach was not applied to
  medicine or psychology (people limited to relying
  on tradition, common sense, intuition, and logic
  for medical and psychological knowledge)

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Testable
Skeptical
Objective
Open
Public
Productive
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The Characteristics of Psychology

• General Rules
• Objective
• Testable
• Skeptical

• Open-Minded
• Creative
• Public
• Productive

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General Rules

• Can psychologists find general rules that will
  predict, control, and explain human behavior?
• cynics vs. psychologists
• psychologists make logical arguments for their
  positions and have evidence for their arguments
• they have found many rules governing human
  behavior (cf. laws of operant and classical
  conditioning, laws of perception, laws of memory,
  laws of emotions)

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General Rules

• since there are so many rules that may come into
  play in a given situation, predicting what a
  given individual will do in that situation is
  difficult, even if we know all the rules
• psychologists agree with cynics- predicting an
  individuals behavior is difficult
• BUT they disagree with cynics assumption that
  there are no rules underlying behavior
• they know of rules that are useful for predicting
  the behavior of most people much of the time

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General Rules
You can never foretell what any man will do, but
you can say with precision what an average number
will be up to. Individuals may vary, but
percentages remain constant.
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General Rules

• if you cant predict an individual instance of
  behavior, then the behavior does not follow
  general rules
• is this true?
• think about coin flip- can you predict its
  outcome?
• why not?
• does it follow rules?

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Objective evidence

• Can psychologists collect objective evidence?
• Two reasons for this concern
• some people worry that psychologists cant keep
  their researcher bias in check
• some worry that psychologists wont be able to
  collect objective evidence about abstract mental
  concepts

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Objective evidence

• Worry 1 is unfounded if it were true,
  psychological researchers would prove whatever
  they wanted to prove
• Worry 2 is unfounded although we cant directly
  measure abstract concepts (attitude, aggression,
  social influence, etc.), we can develop
  observable operational definitions of them

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Objective evidence

• measuring the unobservable- cf. genetics, which
  was well advanced before anyone had seen a gene
• orcan you see gravity, time, temperature,
  pressure,magnetism, and electrons?
• unobservable events/states can be inferred from
  observable events

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Objective evidence

• psychologys reliance on operational definitions
  has made psychology more objective than physics
  (Porter, 1997)

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Testable

• can psychology make testable statements?
• psychological journals are full of articles in
  which predictions made by investigators were
  disconfirmed

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Skeptical

• Can psychologists be as skeptical as other
  scientists?
• some people fear that, rather than seeing what
  the evidence says, psychologists will base their
  decisions about what is true on logic,
  popularity, or authority

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Skeptical

• unfounded fear scientific psychologists have
  been diligent about testing the most obviously
  true of ideas
• teenagers who have jobs better understand the
  value of hard work
• drug use is the cause of psychological problems

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Skeptical

• in addition to questioning conventional wisdom,
  psychologists question observable evidence
• questioning the degree to which mental tests or
  other measures of behavior truly capture the
  psychological concepts that they claim to capture

1 LOVE SCALE 7
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Skeptical

• psychologists are skeptical about self-report
  measures
• people do not always know their own mind
• we never have a direct insight into a persons
  mind
• we cant see the mind- we can see only behavior

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Skeptical

• psychologists are skeptical about drawing
  cause-effect conclusions
• it is hard to isolate one factor that may be
  causing a certain behavior
• if better students have personal computers, can
  we say that computers cause academic success?

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Skeptical

• psychologists are skeptical about the extent to
  which results from a study can be generalized to
  the real world

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Open-Minded

• some people are concerned that psychologists are
  not open to ideas that run counter to common
  sense
• this concern is groundless
• psychologists have tested various
  counterintuitive ideas (cf. the idea that
  subliminal messages on records can lead teens to
  Satanism that people can learn in their sleep
  that ESP can be used to send messages)

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Creative

• most people believe that it takes creativity to
  come up with ideas for psychological research
• creativity is needed to
• generate a research idea
• develop accurate measures of the concepts the
  researcher plans to study
• develop a situation that will permit testing
  research ideas (a scaled-down model of a
  real-life situation that is simpler and more
  controlled than real life, yet still captures the
  key aspects of the real-life situation)

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Shares findings

• hundreds of journals where psychologists share
  their research it doesnt pay to keep secrets
  from competitors as in other sciences

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Productive

• tremendous progress over the last 100 years
• much recent research has implications for real
  life
• professionals in applied areas (education,
  communication, marketing, economics, medicine)
  are applying psychology research methods

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The Importance of Science to Psychology

• Without science, there is no psychology
• Without science, psychology would be built on
  unsupported opinion rather than on objective
  facts
• without science, psychology might merely be
  common sense, even if common sense contradicts
  itself

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Inconsistency of common sense

• Absence makes the heart grow fonder
• Absence makes the heart grow
• wander
• Birds of a feather flock together
• Opposites attract

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Inconsistency of common sense

• Too many cooks spoil the broth
• Two heads are better than one
• To know you is to love you
• Familiarity breed contempt

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Inadequacy of tradition and logic

• psychology is not the only science that has to
  free itself from tradition, common sense,
  quackery, and the belief that its subject matter
  follows no rules
• cf. now disconfirmed belief that stars and
  diseases follow no rules
• stars, planets, diseases, and humans behave for
  reasons that we can understand (even if complex
  and numerous)

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The Importance of Science to Psychology

• although science is only one way of knowing, it
  is our most objective way of knowing
• it can work in concert with a variety of other
  ways of knowing
• psychologists can use scientific methods to
  verify knowledge passed down by tradition or from
  an authoritative expert or to test knowledge
  obtained by intuition or common sense

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Why You Should Understand Research Design

• 1. To Understand Psychology
• 2. To Read Research
• 3. To Evaluate Research
• 4. To Protect Yourself from Quacks
• 5. To Be a Better Thinker
• 6. To Be Scientifically Literate
• 7. To Increase Your Marketability
• 8. To Do Your Own Research

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To Understand Psychology

• you cant understand psychology- the science of
  behavior- unless you understand its methods
• without understanding psychologys scientific
  aspects, you may know some psychological
  theories, but you will not understand the basis
  for these theories
• understanding the foundation on which
  psychological facts are based allows you to
  defend psychological facts from those who claim
  that such facts are baseless opinions

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To Understand Psychology

• by increasing your own credibility and that of
  your field, explaining the basis for
  psychological facts has practical implications
• when you cannot use psychologys research
  findings to tell you what will work, you can
  still use psychologys research methods to find
  out what works

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To Read Research

• you must be able to read and interpret scientific
  research reports
• knowing research terminology and logic allows you
  to bypass secondhand accouns of research and
  allows you to read the original source and come
  to your own conclusions

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To Evaluate Research

• if you understand research, you will be in a
  position to evaluate the recent information
• your critical abilities will enable you to judge
  how much weight you should place on a particular
  research finding

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To Protect Yourself from Quacks

• identifying phony experts the truth is out
  there, but there are a lot of lies
• we live in the information age, but we also live
  in the misinformation age
• without some training in research design, it is
  hard to distinguish which expert information is
  helpful and which is potentially harmful

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To Be a Better Thinker

• understanding the scientific approach can improve
  your access to psychological knowledge and your
  thinking
• the skills learned in this course-
  problem-solving, decision-making, looking for
  objective information, being able to judge and
  interpret information- are transferale to your
  everyday life

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To Be Scientifically Literate

• to learn how science works
• scientific illiteracy threatens our democracy
  being able to make intelligent decisions requires
  knowing how science works
• cf. astrology, foot reflexology, numerology,
  graphology
• cf. weak evidence in naive, nonscientific, and
  misleading techniques, which appear extremely
  persuasive

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To Increase Your Marketability

• knowing about research makes you more employable
  you will be hired in a company because you can
  find, create, and judge information that your
  company needs
• if you have the analytical skills that enable you
  to distinguish between good and bad information,
  and the ability to turn data into useful
  information, companies want you

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To Do Your Own Research

• completing a research project shows that you are
  organized, persistent, and capable of getting
  things done
• you may need to do research as part of your job
• more and more organizations are doing research
  (e.g., to find out if what they are planning will
  work)

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To Do Your Own Research

• doing research is its own reward teamwork,
  creativity, challenge of solving practical
  problems, excitement of trying to discover the
  answers to questions about human behavior

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Concluding Remarks

• Science works
• Psychological science works
• Most marketable skills that you develop in
  college will be refined in this course