Task 8 - Is Psychology A Science?

Question 1

Philosophy of Science

Answer 1

A branch of philosophy that studies the foundations of scientific research.

Question 2

Logical positivism

Answer 2

A philosophical movement in the first half of the 20th century, claiming that philosophy should stop thinking about metaphysics, and instead try to understand the essence of scientific approach.

Question 3

Karl Popper

Answer 3

1902-1994
Based his ideas on the ideas of Comte and Whewell, who argued that human observation is not theory-independent.
He stated that what distinguishes science from non-science is not that science is based on facts (observations, verifications) and the latter on ideas (dogmas, prejudices)
• both involve constant interactions between observation and interpretation.
What distinguishes science is that it constantly questions its explanations, unlike nonscientific movements.

Popper argued that what distinguishes scientific from non-scientific theories is that scientific theories are empirically falsifiable.

Question 4

Falsificationism

Answer 4

A view within the Philosophy of science that statements are scientific only if they can be falsified empirically.
A theory is falsifiable it it rules out a range of observations, or if there is a set of observations that would refute the idea.
E.g. “God shows his love in multiple ways” (unfalsifiable), “It rains more on Wednesday than on Thursday” (falsifiable)

Question 5

Hypothetico-deductive method

Answer 5

A model introduced by Popper to understand the scientific method as including both inductive and deductive reasoning:

On the basis of observation, induction and educated guesswork, a theory (interpretation) of a phenomenon is formulated. The correctness of the theory/interpretation is evaluated by the formulation of a testable prediction (hypothesis) on the basis of deductive reasoning.
The prediction is put to a falsification test (experiment), which provides new observational data for further theorizing. This model existed before Popper, but the new element his added is that hypothesis testing must be based on falsification instead of verification.

Question 6

Confirmation bias

Answer 6

The natural tendency of people to search for evidence that confirms their opinion.

Question 7

Ad hoc modifications

Answer 7

Modifications to a theory that that makes the theory less falsifiable and decreases scientific value.

Question 8

Thomas Kuhn

Answer 8

1922-1996
Proposed a theory of scientific progress in which:
Each discipline starts with an unorganized set of facts, observations and models to explain small-scale phenomena. Researchers try to understand isolated facts without having an idea of the wider framework. As a consequence they use different methods and their explanations contradict each other.
At some point, a general framework/theory is proposed, which informs researchers about the relationship between the facts and the methods they should use. At this point, they share a paradigm. This is the start of the stage of normal science.

Question 9

Paradigm (Kuhn)

Answer 9

A set of common views shared by scientists referring to what the discipline is about and how problems must be investigated. It determines:
▪ What is to be observed and scrutinized?
▪ Which questions should be asked?
▪ How the questions are to be structured?
▪ How the results of scientific investigations should be interpreted?

Question 10

Imre Lakatos

Answer 10

(1970) distinguished between 2 types of research paradigm

Question 11

Degenerative Research Program

Answer 11

A paradigm that does not allow researchers to make new predictions and that requires an increasing number of ad hoc modifications to account for the empirical findings.

Question 12

Progressive Research Program

Answer 12

A paradigm that allows researchers to make new, unexpected predictions that can be tested empirically.
During a paradigm shift described by Kuhn, a degenerative research program is replaced by a progressive research program.

Question 13

Postmodernism

Answer 13

A view in the Philosophy of Science that is skeptical about the special status of science and sees scientific explanations as stories told by a particular group of scientists.

Question 14

Science Wars

Answer 14

A notion used by the postmodernists to refer to their attacks against the special status of science and their unmasking of scientific knowledge as a social construction.
• Postmodernism & the science wars revived the debate between realism and idealism.

Question 15

Charles Peirce

Answer 15

1839-1914
Argued that success in coping with the physical reality should be taken as the criterion to decide how worthwhile knowledge was.

Question 16

Pragmatism

Answer 16

A view within philosophy that human knowledge is not a reflection of reality (as defended by realism), nor a subjective construction (as claimed by idealism), it is simply information about how to cope with the world.
Within this view, the truth of a scientific theory is only of interest if the theory makes a practical difference. Because the world constantly changes, truth is not fixed either.

Question 17

Hermeneutics

Answer 17

An approach in psychology according to which the task of the psychologist is to interpret and understand people on the basis of their personal & sociocultural history.
Hermeneutics, for example, pays attention to the motives people give for their actions and the purposes they want to achieve in life. Experimental psychologists tend to see hermeneutics as a threat to the scientific status of psychology. Hermeneutically-oriented academics maintain that the experimental approach overlooks essential skills practitioners need for their profession.

Question 18

Carl Jung

Answer 18

1875-1961
He made a distinction between the personal unconscious (forgotten & repressed contents of the individual’s mental life) and the collective unconscious (acts and images shared by all human beings or by a particular culture; manifest themselves inarchetypes of people).

Question 19

Humanistic Psychology

Answer 19

A psychological movement promoted by Rogers and Maslow as a reaction against psychoanalysis and behaviourism;
Stressed that people are human, inherently positive, endowed with free will and living within a socio-cultural context.
Maslow did not state that science was worthless in psychology. He stated that a new type of science needs to be used in psychology, which was not exclusively based on Descartes’ mechanistic worldview.

Question 20

Critical Psychology

Answer 20

A movement in psychology that criticizes mainstream psychology for failing to understand that:
•Knowledge does not refer to an outside reality (idealism). Human language does not represent things in the world but is meantto facilitate social interaction.
•Scientific knowledge is not cumulative but consists of social constructions in which scientific statements are primarily determined by the language and the culture of the scientists. • Scientific writings must be read as history texts: as just one of the possible accounts ofwhat is/was going on. Psychological theories change the perception of people and, as a result, the world in which they live. Psychologists thus have a moral responsibility.

Question 21

Integrative Model of Organizational Trust

Answer 21

The trustworthiness of a trustee is made up of 3 components:
• A trustee should possess ability, the domain-specific skills and competencies that enable the trustee to have influence within the same domain.
•Benevolence, which describes his/her acting independently from an egocentric profit motive and in a beneficial interest for the trustor
• Integrity, he/she should act according to a set of rules of principles acceptable to the trustor.

These components describe the features of experts that determine whether recipients will depend on and defer to them when therecipients’ own resources are limited.

Question 22

Epistemic Trust

Answer 22

The truth in knowledge that has been produced or provided by scientists. 2 components:

Default trust - people are generally trustful to others as a predisposition for communication & cooperation.
Vigilant trust - includes cognitive mechanisms that allow people to make rather fine-grained attributions of trustworthiness before accepting what others say.