Research Methods- Features If Psychology As A Science Flashcards
Empiricism
is the philosophical position that factual knowledge can only come from our experience with the world. This means that ideas supported only by speculation, logical argument, belief, accepted wisdom or direct from theory are not empirical.
The empirical method
The empirical method is the process of collecting data from direct experience; in psychological research, this is the data we gather from direct observation of participants. This includes observation but also experimentation, self-report, case studies and content analysis.
Objectivity
Data should be collected and interpreted in ways that avoid bias, meaning the data is not influenced by the researcher’s opinions or expectations. Research that has been affected by bias produces subjective conclusions.
Improving objectivity
• Systematic data collection: Data gathering is carefully planned out and consistent for each participant. The data collection measures like questionnaire questions or experimental procedures should be carefully designed, or the researcher should use established questions or tests.
• Double-blind: Researchers who don’t know the research aims collect the data.
• Peer review: One purpose is to identify biased research, such as researchers making conclusions that are not supported by the data and stopping that work from being published. Knowing this, researchers carefully consider if they can justify their conclusions objectively before sending the research to peer review.
Control
In an experiment, it is assumed the change measured in the dependent variable is a result of the difference in the levels of the independent variable. But this may not be true if the experiment is not controlled, resulting in extraneous variables.
Without sufficient control (including controlling for bias), it is not possible to demonstrate a cause and effect relationship.
Replicability
Scientists are required to carefully record their methods and produce standardised procedures so that other scientists can repeat their experiments and observations.
Replicability
Positive results
Positive results could have been the result of fraud, an unknown variable in the participants or a feature of the experimental environment, or the positive result could have happened by chance.
What can increase confidence in validity?
A replication by scientists using the same methods and finding the same results increases confidence in the validity of the original experiment. As well as the validity of the theory the first experiment set out to test.
Falsifiability
Karl Popper argues that the ability to collect supporting evidence for a theory is not enough for that theory to be genuinely scientific. For a theory to be scientific, it needs to be constructed in a way that it can be empirically tested. This means the theory can be tested in a way that demonstrates it is not true.
Falsifiability
Black Swan
Popper gave the example theory “all swans are white” as an example of a falsifiable theory. While all previous observations of swans had been of white swans, one single observation of a black swan in Australia was sufficient to falsify the theory that “all swans are white”. Scientists must always be open to the possibility of contradictory evidence; this is why we can never finally “prove” a theory is
correct.
Falsifiability in Psychology.
Claiming “human behaviour is due to the existence of a soul which gives us free will” is not a scientific argument. The soul is an unfalsifiable concept; it’s used to explain, but it is not observable, so it cannot be shown not to exist.
We can criticise several of Freud’s ideas as unfalsifiable such as the ID, EGO and Superego.
They are classified as unscientific because the way Freud explains the concepts means they are not open to observation or empirical experimentation, so they can’t be falsified.
Paradigm shift
Philosopher of science Thomas Khun (1972) suggests scientific fields develop in a series of “scientific revolutions” known as paradigm shifts.
Scientist within each scientific field share a set of established known as…
paradigms, and scientists gather evidence to support these shared views. However, sometimes new contradictory evidence and theories are generated that don’t fit into the old paradigm. As most scientists are committed to the old paradigm, this conflicting evidence is initially rejected.
However, eventually, sufficient evidence to support the new paradigm is collected, and at this point, the majority of the scientific community feels they can no longer support the old paradigm and move at once to the new paradigm in a paradigm shift.
Paradigm shifts in psychology
What did early psychologists used introspection to…
develop theories of the mind, Freud used case studies, and Wundt used controlled scientific experimentation. This was a paradigm shift away from earlier religious and philosophical explanations that explained human behaviour as the result of concepts like “sin.”
The movement from …. to behaviourism is another paradigm shift
The movement from psychoanalytic approaches to behaviourism is another paradigm shift. Researchers rejected the study of internal mental processes, seeing them as unscientific as they were not directly observable, and Behaviourists instead focused on fully observable stimulus-response mechanisms. The behaviourists used large-scale and highly controlled studies that provided strong evidence to support their theories.
