Psychology as a Science Flashcards
What is psychology?
- The study of the mind and behaviour.
- Historically, psychology was an area within philosophy and emerged from it (epistemology).
- It is now a diverse scientific discipline comprising several major branches of research (e.g., experimental, biological, cognitive, lifespan developmental, personality, social), as well as several subareas of research and applied psychology (e.g., clinical, industrial/organizational, school and educational, human factors, health, neuropsychology, cross-cultural).
In short, psychology seeks to understand the mental processes and behaviour of human beings through utilising scientific methods that can subsequently help us to understand other people, and to also understand ourselves better.
What does research in psychology involve?
Research in psychology involves observation, experimentation, testing, and analysis to explore the biological, cognitive, emotional, personal, and social processes or stimuli underlying human and animal behaviour.
What does the practice of psychology involve?
The practice of psychology involves the use of psychological knowledge for any of several purposes: to understand and treat mental, emotional, physical, and social dysfunction; to understand and enhance behaviour in various settings of human activity (e.g. school, workplace, courtroom, sports arena, battlefield); and to improve machine and building design for human use.
Why study psychology?
- Human behaviour is difficult to predict – people often surprise us by their behaviour.
- Furthermore, behaviour is influenced by others, and by culture.
Learning about psychology can:
- teach you about your own behaviour and the behaviour of those around you,
- assist you to critically evaluate information you come across in everyday life, work and university life,
- develop your research skills,
- complement your learning in other units of study even if in a different discipline,
- enhance your listening and communication skills and
- provide you with personal development skills, such as how to manage stress.
What is the difference vs pseudoscience?
- As a discipline, psychology aims to understand, predict and explain human behaviour based upon scientific evidence.
- Whether or not something can be considered as scientific depends on the process of how the knowledge is being sought, and whether the evidence is being gathered to prove the truth of the particular idea, concept, model, or theory in question or alternatively, whether the evidence is being gathered to disprove the concept, theory etc.
- Pseudoscience, in contrast refers to a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method.
Describe the scientific method.
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What is a hypothesis?
- The hypothesis is the explanation that is put forward to interpret the behaviour that has been observed, based on the information that is available.
- It forms the starting point for further investigation and must consider the key variables that can be measured.
- It will allow behaviour to be predicted, and must be testable in an experiment.
- Hypotheses often take the form of an ‘if X happens then Y will happen’ statement.
What is a variable?
- A variable is anything that can change.
- This can be an independent variable (IV), or a dependent variable (DV).
How does an experiment work?
- An experiment needs to be designed to test the prediction made in the hypothesis.
- The independent variable can be controlled, and the dependent variable observed.
- The results of the experiment will either support or not support the hypothesis.
- One experiment may not be sufficient to prove or disprove a hypothesis, and a number of different experiments may need to be designed that all support the hypothesis.
What is the challenge facing psychology as a science?
The practice of psychology as scientific inquiry is made difficult by the fact that humans are very complex creatures and there are multiple determinants for any particular given behaviour.
Example: Schizophrenia.
- Complex genetic factors feed into what is considered a predisposition for schizophrenia.
- However, not everyone with a genetic predisposition is necessarily going to be schizophrenic: it is only when that individual is exposed to certain environmental stresses that they may present with the disorder.
- And given someone without a genetic predisposition, they will be very tolerant to a wide range of environmental stresses and not necessarily exhibit schizophrenia, whereas someone with a high genetic potential for schizophrenia may only need a limited amount of environmental pressures to then display the symptoms of the disorder.
- Furthermore, if the environmental circumstances are right, even someone with a genetic predisposition may not present themselves as schizophrenic.
- So, even in this particular disorder, both the genetic and environmental underpinnings are very complex.
- However, such complexity does not mean that we cannot apply scientific methods to the study of psychology, even though the complexity of multiple variables makes the scientific study of psychology very challenging.
- Individual differences are a huge factor within psychology.
- We are all individuals, and we all react differently to different scenarios.
- This variation makes it very hard to create universal laws of behaviour.
Explain how behaviour can occur at multiple levels.
- At the most fundamental level, one can look at molecular neurochemical processes, such as genetics, neurochemical communication and drug actions, for example.
- At the more mental level, one can look at group behaviour and social behaviour.
Examples
- Other people influence us, so there is a lot of what we call ‘group think’ that goes on within psychology.
- If you study people within groups, they will have an influence on each other.
- Beyond individual differences, there is a whole range of cultural differences in the way that we react to and behave in different types of circumstances.
- When you are studying an individual, the mere knowledge that you are being studied can influence the way you behave.
- So when you look at someone in the experimental circumstance, when they know they are participating in an experiment, that very act might make them behave differently.
- Thus, the two-way relationship between observation and behaviour is very complex.
Despite the challenges, the science practitioner model is fundamental to the practice of psychology in modern times, based on the notion that the theories we derive through scientific inquiry can inform the techniques of the practitioner.
Describe historical examples illustrating the difference between pseudoscience and science.
Pseudoscience: Sigmund Freud
- Freud was interested in early life experiences and so called “repressed memories”.
- He proposed that it was possible to understand a person’s behaviour by focusing on events from their childhood.
- During his sessions he used psychoanalysis to assist his clients to bring their unconscious memories to the surface (e.g. conscious awareness).
- Freud used his client’s memories as the basis for interpreting their mental state.
- Therefore, Freud’s process for seeking knowledge was focused backwards and evidence to support his theory was seemingly everywhere.
- The validity of his theories is questionable due to how he was searching for knowledge.
Science: Albert Einstein
- In contrast to Freud, Einstein, who was also seeking knowledge for his theories around the same point in time, was seeking knowledge by looking to the future.
- He made ‘risky’ predictions that could be refuted and thus had the potential to spell the end of his theories, including his theory of general relativity.
- Einstein’s quest for knowledge can be considered scientific, because rather than searching for information to support a prediction or hypothesis as Freud did, Einstein was searching for information to prove his prediction or hypothesis as wrong.
- This is known as falsifiability.
What is critical thinking?
Critical thinking can assist us with evaluating the quality of the evidence that we collect in our quest to prove the truth of a particular idea, concept, model, or theory.
The following questions underlie critical thinking:
- What am I being asked to believe or accept?
- What evidence is available to support the assertion?
- Are there alternative ways of interpreting the evidence?
- What additional evidence would help evaluate the alternatives?
- What conclusions are most reasonable?
What is confirmation bias?
Confirmation bias is where someone selectively looks for evidence, which is consistent with their hypothesis.
Example: Customer Testimony
- This is often used to support a manufacturer’s product and selective examples of when people believe that the product has been effective in their case.
- A lot of the time, this is related to things such as a placebo effect.
What is belief perseverance?
-Belief perseverance is when one continues to selectively look at things that supporting a hypothesis.
-They chose to ignore alternate ways of explaining
their observations.
