The Science of Psychology

Psych 231: Research Methods in Psychology

Announcements

Download (full text available at library) and read the article for lab THIS week (Raz, Kirsch, Polard, & Nitkin-Kaner,2006)

The anatomy of a research article

Discussion - the interpretation and implications of the results Reading checklist

1 a) Does YOUR interpretation or the authors' interpretation best represent the data?

b) Do you or the author draw the most sensible implications and conclusions?

References - full citations of all work cited

Appendices - additional supplementary supporting material

Psychology as a science

Write down the names of three scientists What field of science do they belong to?

Write down the name of a famous psychologist Dr. Sigmund Freud, Dr. Phil Do they represent the standard psychologist?• NO!

Psychology is a diverse discipline • APA has 53 different divisions of psychology• And each of these has many different subgroups

Psychology as a science

What is science? What are the goals of science?

Is psychology a science? Yes

• Studies the full range of human behavior using scientific methods

• Applications derived from this knowledge is scientifically based

Psychology as a science

Psychology’s goals are similar to the goals of the physical sciences (e.g., physics and chemistry) Psychologists are concerned with the behavior of people (and animals) rather than the physical world.

How is psychology different from the physical sciences? Human (and animal) behavior is typically much more variable than most physical systems. • Statistical control• Methodological control

Goals of psychology

Description of behavior Describe events, what changes what might affect change, what might be related to what, etc.

Prediction of behavior Given X what will likely happen

Control of behavior For the purpose of interventions (e.g.,

how do we prevent violence in schools)

Goals of psychology (cont.)

Causes of behavior Sometimes predictions aren’t enough, want to know how the X and the outcome are related

Develop specific theories Explanation of behavior

A complete theory of the how’s and why’s Given the diversity of psychology, some argue that we may never have a universal theory• This is a problem in other disciplines too

Theories

Link to entire Monty Python’s “My theory” transcript

“My theory by A. Elk. Brackets Miss, brackets.This theory goes as follows and begins now.All brontosauruses are thin at one end, much thicker in the middle and then thin again at the far end. That is my theory, it is mine, and belongs to me and I own it, and what it is too.”

Theories

Link to entire Monty Python’s “My theory” transcript

Theory: “An interrelated set of concepts that is used to explain a body of data and to make predictions about the results of future experiments”

Hypothesis: Are specific predictions that are derived from theories (more specific than the theories)

(Stanovich, 2007: How To Think Straight About Psychology)

Properties of a good theory

Properties of a good theory

Organizes, Explains, & Accounts for the data If there are data relevant to your theory, that your theory can’t account for, then your theory is wrong• either adapt the theory to account for the new data

• develop a new theory that incorporates the new data

Properties of a good theory

Organizes, Explains, & Accounts for the data

Testable/Falsifiable – can’t prove a theory, can only reject it“No amount of experimentation can

ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”

Omnipotent Theory

Beware theories that are so powerful/ general/ flexible that they can account for everything. These are not testable

Omnipotent Theory

Beware theories that are so powerful/ general/ flexible that they can account for everything. These are not testable Karl Popper claimed that Freudian theory isn’t

falsifiable• If display behavior that clearly has sexual or aggressive motivation, then it is taken as proof of the presence of the Id

• If such behavior isn’t displayed, then you have a “reaction formation” against it. So the Id is there, you just can’t see evidence of it.

So, as stated, the theory is too powerful and can’t be tested and so it isn’t useful

Properties of a good theory

Organizes, Explains, & Accounts for the data

Testable/Falsifiable Generalizable – not too restrictive

The theory should be broad enough to be of use, the more data that it can account for the better

The line between generalizability and falsifiability is a fuzzy one.

Properties of a good theory

Organizes, Explains, & Accounts for the data

Testable/Falsifiable Generalizable Parsimony (Occam’s razor)

for two or more theories that can account for the same data, the simplest theory is the favored one

“Everything should be made as simple

as possible, but not any simpler.”

Properties of a good theory

Organizes, Explains, & Accounts for the data

Testable/Falsifiable Generalizable Parsimony Makes predictions, generates new knowledge a good theory will account for the data, but also make predictions about things that the theory wasn’t explicitly designed to account for

Properties of a good theory

Organizes, Explains, & Accounts for the data

Testable/Falsifiable Generalizable Parsimony Makes predictions, generates new knowledge

Precision makes quantifiable predictions

Using theories in research

Induction – reasoning from the data to the general theory So in complete practice this approach probably needs a new theory (or an adapted one) for every new data set

Deduction – reasoning from a general theory to the data Here the theory (if it is a “good” one) is sometimes viewed as more critical than the data.

It also will guide the choice of what experiments get done

The chicken or the egg?

Typically good research programs use both

Theory

Data

Induction Deduction

“Theory driven research”

“Data driven research”

Research Approaches

Basic (pure) research - tries to answer fundamental questions about the nature of behavior e.g., McBride & Dosher (1999). Forgetting rates are

comparable in conscious and automatic memory: A process-dissociation study.

Applied research – Theory sometimes takes a backseat. This is research designed to solve a particular problem e.g., Jin (2001). Advertising and the news: Does

advertising campaign information in news stories improve the memory of subsequent advertisements?

Research Approaches

Think of this is as a continuum rather as two separate categories.

Basic research Applied research

• Often applied work may bring up some interesting basic theoretical questions, and basic theory often informs applied work.

Next Week

Download (full text available at library) and read the article for lab THIS week (Raz, Kirsch, Polard, & Nitkin-Kaner,2006)

Basic Methodologies Making observations and conducting experiments

Read Chapters 6 and 7