Chapter 1 Psychology is Alive and Well

Thinking Straight about Psychology Chapter 1: Psychology is Alive and Well The Freud problem: Most people on the street still think of Freud as synonymous with psychology, even though there are fewer than 5% of psychologists who use his psychotherapy techniques. In addition to his embarrassing ideas, Freud’s lack of solid scientific methodology is a serious problem. [from Chapter 11: The Rodney Dangerfield of the Sciences] Psychology “gets no respect” as a discipline for several reasons. People have distorted ideas about psychology—maybe left over from Freudian doctrine. Laypeople have very little knowledge of legitimate psychological research. Then there’s the problem of what’s in the Psychology section in the local bookstores—books on parapsychology and self-help books, As far as self-help books go, most of them involve recipe knowledge—the knowledge of how to use something without knowing the fundamental principles that govern its functioning. Kind of like applied research compared to basic research. There are self-help books claiming to have the “magic recipe” for the big three concerns people have—how to lose weight, make more money, and have better sex. The media makes the situation worse by searching for that elusive magic bullet. They don’t want to hear about legitimate psychological research that involves multiple causes and complex interactions. It’s just not a sellable topic. The APA vs. APS: Sometimes, psychologists are our own worst enemies. Some areas of psychology (particularly the clinical, psychoanalytic side) traditionally have resisted scientific evaluations of their treatments. They don’t want to hear that some of their therapies don’t work. “Psychotherapy has come upon this state of confusion because…it permits too few deaths among its schools. It is incapable of killing its own. Psychotherapy is dying of dilution” (Krauthammer, 1985). For example, research has shown that in terms of psychological outcomes, the therapeutic results of non-psychologist practitioners such as social workers are equal to those of licensed clinical psychologists. More training in psychology or years as a clinician does not improve therapeutic outcomes. So why do we maintain such strict educational and licensing requirements? The APA has fostered a belief that clinical psychologists can be trained to acquire an “intuitive insight” into the behavior of individual people which the research evidence simply does not support. When pushed to defend licensure requirements, though, the APA says “Our scientific base is what sets us apart from the social workers, the counselors, and the Gypsies” (Dawes, 1994, p. 21). However, the very scientific method that the APA holds up to defend itself has revealed that the implication that licensed psychologists have a unique “clinical insight” is false! This duplicity on the part of the APA is one of the reasons that the rival American Psychological Society (now called Association for Psychological Science) was formed in the 1980s by psychologists who were tired of “an APA that was more concerned about Blue Cross payments than with science.” (Stanovich, 1996, p. 189). Implicit theories of behavior: these are own personal theories of behavior. We all have them…they mainly consist of recipe knowledge (we do certain things because we think it will lead to certain outcomes). Both personal psychology and scientific psychology contain “recipe knowledge,” but the difference is that scientific psychology attempts to validate its recipe knowledge empirically. As individuals, we are biased. The scientific method has evolved to avoid the biases of any single human observer. Donald Broadbent (1962): “The confident dogmatisms about human nature which fall so readily from pulpits, newspaper editorials, and school prize-givings are not for us. Rather, we must be prepared to live with an incomplete knowledge of behavior but with confidence in the power of objective methods to give us that knowledge some day (pp. 200-201). DIVERSITY OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY There is such great diversity in content and focus in modern psychology that it is impossible to really unify the discipline. The only true way to tie the field together is by the common methodology we use to study human behavior and thought. William Bevan (1982) said that psychology is “a domain that encompasses the functioning of all organisms in all settings.” The APA has 54 different divisions, each of which represents either a particular area of research focus or an 1 Thinking Straight about Psychology area of psychological practice. Each of these 54 divisions has a wide variety of subdivisions. The field is so diverse that some suggest that the term psychological studies rather than psychology would be more appropriate. In reality, the department of psychology could be disbanded and integrated into other fields. Physiological psychology would go into the biology dept., social psych would go into sociology and business; org behavior psychology would go into business; clinical and counseling psychologists could go into departments of social work, human resources, and education. Developmental psychologists could go into education or cognitive science. There is a big interdisciplinary focus of psychology. UNITY IN SCIENCE Many students want to go into psychology in order to “help people.” But what does that mean? In what way do you want to help people? People in other fields help people, too—in education, nursing, social work, occupational and physical therapy, police science, human resources, speech therapy, etc. If you want to “counsel” people, you could go into education, pastoral work, nursing, occupational therapy, police work, etc. We don’t need a discipline called “psychology” to train people to help others. It can be done in other fields. The two things that justify having psychology as an independent discipline are  It studies the full range of human and nonhuman behavior with the techniques of science  Applications that derive from this knowledge are scientifically based. Psychology is somewhat unique in that it tries to give the public two guarantees:  The conclusions about behavior that it produces derive from scientific evidence  Practical applications of psychology have been derived from and tested by scientific methods This focus on science and adherence to these goals justify psychology as a separate field of study. Think of how many students want to enter psychology because they “hate science.” They seem to be under the impression that psychology is not really a science. In the general public, there are pseudoscientific belief systems that try to cloak themselves in the name of “psychology.” Consider such claims as “Stop smoking through hypnosis.” “Develop your hidden psychic powers.” “Learn French as you sleep.” And then there is aromatherapy, subliminal advertising, belief in astrology, mediums, etc… WHAT, THEN, IS SCIENCE? To answer this question, we first have to know what science is not. 1) Science is not defined by subject matter. We can’t divide the universe into scientific and nonscientific areas. Throughout history, forces have tried to place human beings outside the realm of science, but those attempts have been unsuccessful. We are able to study humans scientifically. 2) Science is not defined by the use of particular experimental apparatus. It isn’t computers, white coats, test tubes, etc. that define science. **”Science is a way of thinking about and observing the universe that leads to a deep understanding of its workings” (Stanovich, p. 8). Three important and interrelated features that define science are 1) The use of systematic empiricism 2) The production of public knowledge 3) The examination of solvable problems 2 Thinking Straight about Psychology Systematic Empiricism Empiricism means “Let’s take a look.” It’s the practice of relying on observation. Empiricism seems obvious now, but it hasn’t always been that way. Where does the word “systematic” come in? We can’t simply observe without rhyme or reason. It has to be structured. Systematic means it’s structured so that the results of the observation reveal something about the underlying nature of the world. Scientific observations are usually driven by theory and test different explanations of the nature of the world. They’re structured so that after the experiment is over, some theories are supported and others rejected. Publicly Verifiable Knowledge: Replication and Peer Review Scientific knowledge does not exist at all until it’s been submitted to the scientific community for criticism and empirical testing. Science makes the idea of “public verifiability” concrete by the process of replication. A finding must be presented to the scientific community in such a way that other scientists can test the findings using the same experiment and get the same results. It lends credence to the original findings. Once a finding is presented for scientific review, it is shared by the scientific community to extend, criticize, and apply in their own ways. It becomes part of the shared scientific pool of knowledge. One way to know if a scientific finding is “true” science or pseudoscience is to see if the author went through the peer review process first or if h/she went straight to the media. Have the findings been published in a recognized scientific journal that uses some type of peer review procedure? The answer to this question almost always separates pseudoscience from actual science. Peer review is a procedure in which each paper submitted to a journal is critiqued by several scientists who then submit their criticisms to an editor, who is usually a scientist with extensive work in the specialty area. The editor decides whether the weight of opinion warrants publication, publication after further experimentation and review, or rejection because the research is flawed or trivial. **Most scientific ideas can get published somewhere in the legitimate literature if they meet some rudimentary standards. Within each discipline, a range of “stringent” criterion journals exist. The idea that only a narrow range of data and theory can get published is false. So we can’t say for certainty whether an idea that gets published is always good research, but we can say for certainty that one that does NOT get published by a legitimate journal is not scientific. Peer review is really the only consumer protection we have. It’s not perfect, but we can’t afford to ignore it. Empirically Solvable Problems: Scientists Seek TESTABLE Theories Some questions simply are not testable. Does God exist? Are humans inherently good or bad? What is the meaning of life? These are outside the realm of science. A solvable problem is a testable problem. Theories and Hypotheses A theory in science is an interrelated set of concepts that is used to explain a body of data and make predictions about the results of future experiments. 3 Thinking Straight about Psychology A hypothesis: a specific prediction derived from the more general & comprehensive theories. Viable theories today are ones that are robust and have had a lot of their hypotheses confirmed. When a hypothesis derived from a theory fails to confirm the theory, then scientists start looking for a better theory to interpret the data. Theories have to have the ability to be proven false for them to be useful. Freud’s theories were not falsifiable. Theory Progression: Research on a certain problem often proceeds from a weaker method to one that allows for more causality. An observation might be made, leading to case studies, which then leads to correlational studies, and finally to experiments with manipulated variables. --Example: Doctors noticed a link between Type A patients and heart attacks. (Case studies). Then researchers developed and tested operational definitions of Type A behavior. Large-scale epidemiological studies looked at the link between Type A and heart disease (correlational studies). Regression studies were then done. Finally, studies were done that tried to manipulate variables to establish a causal link. Subjects who had had a heart attack were randomly assigned to treatment groups to reduce traditional risky behavior (smoking, eating fatty foods, etc.). One group also got treatment to reduce Type A behavior, whereas the other group didn’t. The Type A treatment group showed less recurrence of CAD than the other group did. Finally, the Type A link has been revised (showing the power of studies to change theories) since then because it turns out that only the hostility link of the personality trait predicts heart disease. Theory Evaluation: Most areas of science have competing theories. The extent to which one theory can be uniquely supported depends on the extent to which others can be ruled out. A particular experiment never equally tests ALL competing theoretical explanations. It may be a strong test of one or two theories but a weak test of others. Scientists must look at all available theories and look at trends. In contrast to what you may think about how to falsify a theory, a theory is not automatically falsified with one single piece of disconfirming evidence. There needs to be a series of findings falsifying it before it will be completely abandoned. Theories, Hypotheses, and Testing: Positing a theory based on observations of the world  deriving predictions from the theory (hypotheses) testing the hypotheses modifying the theory based on the tests. So, it goes theorypredictiontestmodification. What makes a theory testable? The theory must have specific implications for observable events in the natural world. This is what it means by empirically testable. It is often termed falsifiability criterion. Sometimes questions that were once thought untestable become testable. Here are some examples: 1) 2) 3) 4) Why do we forget things we once knew? How do children learn language? How does being in a group change a person’s behavior and thinking? What makes someone fall in love with another? Psychology and Folk Wisdom: The Problem with “Common Sense” Most of us have a hodgepodge of common sense sayings, homilies about human behavior that we draw on when we feel we need an explanation. This is “commonsense knowledge.” The problem with it is that some of it is contradictory (Birds of a feather vs. Opposites attract) and is thus unfalsifiable. “Look before you leap” vs. “He who hesitates is lost.” “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” vs. “Out of sight, out of mind.” “Too many cooks spoil the broth” vs. “Two heads 4 Thinking Straight about Psychology are better than one.” Is it better to be safe than sorry, or is it “nothing ventured, nothing gained?” Never put off tomorrow what you can do today… or should you cross that bridge when you come to it? We have an explanation for everything, and they can’t be refuted. Fischhoff (1975, 1977) talked about the hindsight effect, or the “I knew it all along” effect.” When we are given new information, we immediately incorporate it into what we already know. It becomes very difficult to discern how much of new information we previously knew and how much we have only just recently learned. Most of the time, we vastly overestimate how much we knew in advance. Hindsight effect even affects our memory of our own attitudes and behavior. We tend to think we’ve always felt and behaved the way we do now. Some of our folk beliefs that seem to make common sense are actually false. Consider the idea that working when you’re a teenager is good for you because it makes you more responsible, you’ll earn money for college, you’ll be more motivated students, and you’ll have greater respect for our economy. Developmental research has shown that every one of these beliefs is actually false. Working as a teenager is NOT good for you. What about the idea that bookworms and high academic achievers are socially awkward and not physically adept? People still believe this, but research says it’s not true. 5