The Science of Psychology
- Psychology is the discipline concerned with behavior and mental processes and how they are affected by an organism’s external and internal environment. Psychology’s methods and reliance on empirical evidence distinguish it from pseudoscience and “psychobabble.”
- Psychological findings sometimes confirm, but often contradict, common sense. In any case, a result does not have to be surprising to be scientifically important.
- Psychology’s forerunners made some valid observations and had some useful insights, but without rigorous empirical methods, they also made serious errors in the description and explanation of behavior, as in the case of phrenology.
- The official founder of scientific psychology was Wilhelm Wundt, who established the first he psychological laboratory in 1879, in Leipzig, Germany. Wundt emphasized the analysis of experience into basic elements, through trained introspection. A competing approach, functionalism, was inspired in part by the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin; it emphasized the purpose of behavior. One of its leading proponents was William James. Psychology as a method of psychotherapy was born in Vienna, with the work of Sigmund Freud and the establishment of psychoanalysis. (For information on major contributors to the field of psychology, go to the "Psychology on the Web" module and visit web destination link #7 - "History of Psychology". )
- Five points of view predominate today in psychology. The biological perspective emphasizes bodily events associated with actions, thoughts, and feelings. A new area of speciality in the biological perspective is evolutionary psychology. This area focuses on the influence of genetics on common human behaviors and mental processes, and traits and their past and/or present adaptive function. (For information on this, go to the "Psychology on the Web" module and visit web destination link #5 – “Evolutionary Psychology”.) The learning perspective emphasizes how the environment and a person’s history affect behavior; behaviorists reject mentalistic explanations and social-cognitive learning theorists combine elements of behaviorism with the study of thoughts, values, and intentions. The cognitive perspective emphasizes mental processes in perception, problem solving, belief formation, and other human activities. The sociocultural perspective explores how the social context and cultural rules affect an individual’s beliefs and behavior. And the psychodynamic perspective, which originated with Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis, emphasizes unconscious motives, conflicts, and desires; it differs greatly from the other approaches in its methods and standards of acceptable evidence. Each approach has made important contributions to psychology, but many, if not most, psychologists are eclectic, drawing on more than one school of thought.
What Psychologists Do
- Psychologists do research and teach in colleges and universities, provide mental-health services (psychological practice), and conduct research and apply findings in a wide variety of nonacademic settings. Applied psychology is concerned with the practical uses of psychological knowledge. Basic psychology is concerned with knowledge for its own sake. (For information on this, go to the "Psychology on the Web" module and visit web destination link #10 – “Evolutionary Psychology”.)
- Psychotherapist is an unregulated word for anyone who does therapy, including persons who have no credentials or training at all. Licensed therapists differ according to their training and approach. Clinical psychologists have a Ph.D., an Ed.D., or a Psy.D.;psychiatrists have an M.D.; psychoanalysts are trained in psychoanalytic institutes; and clinical social workers, counselors with various specialties, and marriage, family, and child counselors may have a variety of postgraduate degrees. Many psychologists are concerned about an increase in poorly trained psychotherapists who lack credentials or a firm understanding of research methods and findings.
Critical and Scientific Thinking in Psychology
- One benefit of studying psychology is the development of critical-thinking skills and attitudes. The critical thinker asks questions, defines terms clearly, examines the evidence, analyzes assumptions and biases, avoids emotional reasoning, avoids oversimplification, considers alternative interpretations, and tolerates uncertainty. These activities not only are useful in ordinary life but also are the basis of the scientific method. For example, scientists are required to state hypotheses and predictions precisely and formulate operational definitions (“define your terms”); to gather empirical evidence; to comply with the principle of falsifiability (“analyze assumptions”); to be cautious in settling on a theory (“consider other interpretations”); and to resist drawing firm conclusions until results are replicated(“tolerate uncertainty”).
Descriptive Studies: Establishing the Facts
- Descriptive methods allow psychologists to describe and predict behavior but not necessarily to choose one explanation over others. Such methods include case studies, observational studies, psychological tests, and surveys, as well as correlation methods.
- Case studies are detailed descriptions of individuals. They are often used by clinicians, and they can be valuable in exploring new research topics and addressing questions that would otherwise be difficult to study. But because the person under study may not be representative of people in general, case studies are typically sources rather than tests of hypotheses.
- In observational studies, the researcher systematically observes and records behavior without interfering in any way with the behavior. ,Naturalistic observation is used to find out how subjects behave in their natural environments.Laboratory observation allows more control and the use of special equipment; behavior in the laboratory, however, may differ in certain ways from behavior in natural contexts. (To learn more about this topic, go to Live!Psych and view the "1.1 Observational Studies" module.)
- Psychological tests are used to measure and evaluate personality traits, emotional states, aptitudes, interests, abilities, and values. A good test is one that has been standardized, is scored using established norms, and is both reliable and valid. Critics have questioned the reliability and validity of even some widely used tests. (For information on this, go to the "Psychology on the Web" module and visit web destination link #8 – “Psychological Testing”.)
- Surveys are questionnaires or interviews that ask people directly about their experiences, attitudes, and opinions. Researchers must take precautions to obtain a sample that is representative of the larger population that the researcher wishes to describe and that yields results that are not skewed by a volunteer bias. Findings can also be affected by the fact that respondents sometimes lie, misremember, or misinterpret the questions.
Correlational Studies: Looking for Relationships
- In descriptive research, studies that look for relationships between phenomena are known as correlational. A correlation is a measure of the strength of a positive or negative relationship between two variables, and is expressed by the coefficient of correlation. A correlation does not demonstrate a causal relationship between the variables. (To learn more about this topic, go to Live!Psych and view the "1.2 Correlational Studies" module.)
The Experiment: Hunting for Causes
- Experiments allow researchers to control the situation being studied, manipulate an independent variable, and assess the effects of the manipulation on a dependent variable. All research in psychology must conform to ethical guidelines. (See the Web Essayquestion #3 in the Study Guide.) This is especially true when conducting studies using the Experiment. Experimental studies usually require a comparison or control condition, and often involve random assignment of subjects to experimental and control groups. In some studies, control subjects receive a placebo. Single-blind and double-blind procedures can be used to prevent the expectations of the subjects or the experimenter from affecting the results. Because experiments allow conclusions about cause and effect, they have long been the method of choice in psychology. However, like laboratory observations, experiments create a special situation that may call forth behavior not typical in other environments. Many psychologists, therefore, have called for more field research. (To learn more about this topic, go to Live!Psych and view the "1.3 The Experimental Methods" module.)
Evaluating the Findings
- Psychologists use descriptive statistics, such as the arithmetic mean and standard deviation, to summarize data. They use inferential statistics to find out how impressive the data are. Significance tests tell the researcher how likely it is that the results of a study occurred merely by chance. The results are said to be statistically significant if this likelihood is very low.
- Choosing among competing interpretations of a finding can be difficult, and care must be taken to avoid going beyond the facts. Sometimes the best interpretation does not emerge until a hypothesis has been tested in more than one way—for example, by using both cross-sectional and longitudinal methods. (To learn more about this topic, go to Live!Psych and view the "1.4 Statistics" module.)
- Statistical significance does not always imply real-world importance because the amount of variation in the data accounted for by a particular variable may be small. Conversely, a result that does not quite reach significance may be potentially useful. Therefore, many psychologists are now turning to other statistical measures. The technique of meta-analysis, for example, reveals how much of the variation in scores across many different studies can be explained by a particular variable.
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