Transcription
Oh class and welcome to psych 74 research methods in psychology and the behavioral sciences. This is our first lecture for week 1, and it's entitled ways of knowing.
In this lecture, we're going to be reviewing the various ways in which people know something to be true, and we're going to be comparing and contrasting those ways with what is implemented in research methods in psychology and behavioral sciences in general. So, the goals of science make it different from other human activities. These goals include the description and discovery of regularities, but the main goal is developing a theory to explain facts and laws. Science may be considered a problem-solving activity. Experimental psychology, as a science, is essentially like any other between psychology, biology, chemistry, or anthropology. There are considerable differences in subject matter, but the essentials are common to all. On the one hand, these differences are fairly obvious, but the similarities might not be as easy to grasp. For this reason, today we're going to be discussing how science and general addresses problem solving. First, though, we should put psychology in context by talking about the various ways of looking at behavior.
So, when we're talking about behavior, one thing is clear: that there is more than one way to learn about behavior. Whether we're talking about human or even animal behavior, every day, all of us use several methods to learn about behavior. We can divide these methods into two broad categories: empirical methods and non-empirical methods. Empirical simply means based on experience, whereas non-empirical is not based on experience. So, when discussing non-empirical methods, as a starting point, we can consider two types: authority and logic.
So, what is authority? Essentially, when we discuss authority in the context of ways of knowing, we are talking about believing something because someone respected or revered told us it is true or not true. Religious authorities proclaim the will of God to us about various matters. The government tells us that we shouldn't drive faster than 65 miles per hour on the freeway. Because these authorities often disagree among themselves, we're inclined to reject authority as a way of knowing. However, we will discuss one caveat to that statement a little bit later in this lecture. Authority has major limitations as a way of knowing, and that's because authorities are often wrong, even when they assert their beliefs most forcefully. That being said, if you didn't have any faith in authority, you probably wouldn't be taking a research methods course or going to college in the first place.
Logic is an important way of helping us know about behavior. Take the following statements, for example: The behavior of all animals is subject to the laws of natural science. Humans are animals. Therefore, human behavior is subject to the laws of natural science. Now, these statements are clearly logical. We're essentially saying that if the first two are true, then the third follows logically. And truly, the use of logic is often critical in drawing correct conclusions about the world. Yet, as important as reasoning and logic is, logic has its limitations as a way of knowing. Logic can tell you that a statement is false because it draws an improper conclusion. A statement can be logically valid but still not be true because it assumes something to be the case that is not actually the case. An example of this might be: If it rains, the Dodgers won't play today. Then, if you look out the window and you see it's raining, it would be valid for you to say, "It's raining, and there will be no baseball game today." But in reality, the truth of the statement depends on the fact that it's raining. And if, in fact, it's not raining, the statement is false. If it's an away game and the Dodgers are playing in a city where it's sunny, even if it's raining in Los Angeles, it's also inaccurate. So that is to say that it may be logically true but factually false.
Now, logic is really important to science. I don't want you all to get it the wrong way, but it cannot be a substitute for making the observation that it's raining or proving that the next time the Dodgers play, the weather will be sunny. This is another way of saying that there is no subject or no alternative for empirical evidence, which brings us to empirical ways of knowing.
So, just like we divided ways of knowing into empirical and not empirical on the basis of whether they depended on experience, we can divide the empirical methods into two categories: intuitive and scientific. Intuition is a way of knowing based on spontaneous or instinctive processes rather than logical reasoning. Think about it: we size up strangers within the first few seconds of meeting them. Intuition has a powerful effect on our beliefs about other people. We may distrust a person who seems too sincere to be true or inauthentic in some way. If someone gives us bad vibes versus good vibes, we would judge them based on that as well. We use intuition continuously in making the vast amount of decisions necessary during the course of the day. Common sense is a kind of intuition. Because of its dependence on informal methods, it has the additional characteristic of emphasizing the agreement of a person's judgment with the shared attitudes and experiences of a larger group of people. Common sense, as a way of knowing, has two basic limitations. First, standards of common sense differ from time to time and from place to place, according to the attitudes and experiences of culture. Second, common sense, as a way of knowing, lies in the fact that the only criteria common sense recognizes for judging the truth of a belief or practice is whether it works. So, if common sense says A causes B, whenever A happens, and eventually B happens, this would be enough information. Now, A and B very well might be linked in some way, but this doesn't tell us how they might be linked or prove that they are indeed linked. Given that common sense has these two basic limitations, we may speak of scientific results as being counterintuitive, that is, it goes against our notions of common sense at times.
To attempt to define science, we often refer to the scientific method, but in reality, there are multiple scientific methods. For the purpose of this course, we'll begin by addressing the most common and most basic steps of the scientific method as it's often presented. The scientific method has four broad, sweeping steps: first, observing and defining the problem; second, forming a hypothesis; third, collecting data from the relevant population; and fourth, drawing conclusions after an analysis. Now, this recipe is usable, but it is greatly simplified. The more we discuss this, the more you will see the need to modify this and add details that will grow more apparent. So, likely a better starting point for discussing science is by looking at the characteristics of science.
So, what are these characteristics? Well, the first one is that science is empirical. The scientific attitude is to rely on experience more than authority, common sense, or even logic at times. Although empiricism is an essential characteristic of science, it is important to note that not all empirical ways of knowing are scientific.
The second characteristic is that science is objective. The most important characteristic of science is that it is a way of obtaining knowledge based on objective observations. The key word in this is objective. Objective observations are those made in such a way that any person having normal perception and being in the same place at the same time would arrive at the same observation. Objectivity in science is a concept that's often misunderstood. It does not mean that scientists are coldly detached from their subject matter. It does mean that they treat people. It also does not mean that they treat people as objects rather than persons. Objectivity does mean that other people would have seen the same things had they been looking over the shoulder of the scientist who made the initial observation. It's about consistency and uniformity of observations across observers and the pursuit of a true and honest answer to a question.
The third characteristic is that science is self-correcting. Because science is an empirical enterprise, it follows that new evidence is constantly being discovered that contradicts previous knowledge. Science is characterized by a willingness to let new evidence contradict previous beliefs. This makes science different, perhaps, from every other human enterprise. Imagine a politician or a religious leader saying, "I was wrong based on this evidence." Now, that happens, but it's rare. Science is characterized by a commitment to change based on empirical evidence. This means that science is inherently progressive. And when we say progressive, we're not saying that in the political sense necessarily, but whereas other areas of human activity may change with time, it's hard to consistently argue that that change equates to progress. With science, it's driven by tested knowledge, therefore it progresses with the amount of knowledge that fulfills or that fills in information gaps. And because our knowledge progresses with more information, science is also therefore tentative. Science never claims to have the whole truth on any question because new information makes current knowledge obsolete all the time. Because of the progressive nature of science, however, we can be reasonably confident that we're increasingly approaching the truth rather than changing our ideas according to what's popular on a whim. Now, that's not to say that we're again and again inaccurate, per se. It's more to say that as time goes on, we get more and more accurate with time.
The principle of parsimony holds that we should use the simplest explanation possible to account for a given phenomena. A good scientist will always prefer a simpler explanation to a complex one, all things being equal, that is. And that's not to say that there aren't complex explanations to certain phenomena, but it is to say that when seeking out an explanation, the simplest answer usually is the most accurate because you're limiting the amount of confounding variables from interfering in your conclusion.
Science is also concerned with theory, and that's what this all points in the direction of. A theory is the development of how something works, or how something came to be, or how a behavior functions. Now, there are a lot of similarities and differences between science and other ways of knowing. However, when we look at what really makes science significantly different than other non-scientific ways of knowing, we see that authority has a reduced role. Any people who follow scientific methodology, be them a student with no degree or a professor with an advanced degree, can contribute equally to scientific knowledge. This knowledge can change accepted conventions and can impact and redirect the course of understanding of the topic of inquiry. Now, it's true that an illustrious scientist's paper might garner more attention. There have been numerous examples of student papers and research projects leading the way in scientific communities to not only change paradigms but to encourage further study in a subject area.
Most scientists agree that one of science's fundamental assumptions is the reality of the world. Philosophers call this assumption the doctrine of realism: the notion that the objects of scientific study in the world exist apart from their being perceived by us. We assume that there is a unified reality with which we all live and that there is a truth out there that can be discovered. Another critical assumption of science is rationality: that the world is understandable by way of logical thinking. If the world were irrational, it could not be understood, and there would be no point in trying to understand it at all. Now, this may seem like a bit of a contradiction because we just got through saying that logical thinking in and of itself isn't scientific. However, it's important to understand that logic is integrally used by science. It is a format for a way of knowing, but in and of itself, logic is not enough.
Now, the reality and rationality of the world would not be much use to science without the assumption of regularity. This means that we assume the world follows the same laws at all times and in all places. Now, it's true that despite our quest for parsimony, some answers to questions may be complex, but science assumes that nothing about human behavior falls outside the laws of nature, wherever or however that behavior occurs.
Now, not only do scientists assume that the world is real, rational, and regular, but they also believe that it's possible to find out how it works. The belief in the discoverability of an answer to questions about behavior is the difference between a puzzle and a mystery. A puzzle can be solved by a person using ordinary means. Science treats each question as a puzzle to be solved in a systematic way. The belief in discoverability is one of the characteristics of science that motivates people to make the effort that is necessary to carry on experimental work for large portions of their lifetime. The idea that the question is a puzzle and that the puzzle can be solved to it. Do science or to engage in science, it is necessary to assume that events do not just happen by themselves for no reason. Thus, the idea that every event has a cause is a basic tenet of science. In fact, some have identified science as a search for causes of events. The belief that all events are caused by antecedents is called determinism. A strict determinist holds that if it were possible to know all of the laws of behavior and all the exact conditions of the persons, together with everything that was influencing them at a particular time, it would be possible to predict exactly what they would do next. But whether one is hardcore with this belief or not, determinism holds that behavior can be predicted and largely understood scientifically.
So, we also look at discovering laws. And in research psychology, a law, and in science, a law is simply a statement that certain events are regularly associated. So, when we search for causes to certain behaviors, we have key questions: What do the cases have in common? How do the cases differ from some similar cases? And does the magnitude of the effect that we're seeing vary with the magnitude of some other event? What we're trying to get at there is: Is there just a relationship between A and B, or is there some sort of intervening event that's either affecting whether the relationship exists at all between A and B, or the magnitude or direction of the relationship between A and B? So, some things to keep in mind in our search: We often overlook the real cause of a behavior. Sometimes we're redirected by our own biases or our own incomplete hypotheses. Some events are just coincidences. While we may feel very strongly that two events are related in some way, sometimes they just co-occur. Remember, correlation is not causation. Sometimes the real cause is another event that's correlated with the suspected cause.
So, one thing to keep in mind is something that you might be familiar with from your statistics classes: the relationship between ice cream sales and murder. So, for those of you who aren't familiar with that, as ice cream sales go up in this country, so does the murder rate. This is a correlation. So, does that mean that ice cream causes people to fly into murderous rages? No. What the intervening variable here is, is heat. Ice cream sales go up as the weather gets warmer, and as the weather gets warmer, people get more irritable and aggressive, which increases the likelihood that they'll engage in aggressive acts. So, that's something to keep in mind when we're looking at correlation. It's easy for us to fall into the trap that when two events co-occur, we assume causality when, in fact, there may be no causality at all.
And speaking of causes, it's important to keep in mind what seems like a simple statement but trips up a lot of people: causes cannot happen after their effects. There is a cause, and then there is an effect, not the other way around. And sometimes, when people see the relationship between variables, they're more fixated on the fact that the relationship exists than the direction of the relationship.
So, we talked a lot about science driving theory. What is a theory? A theory is a statement or a set of statements about relationships among variables that includes at least one concept that is not directly observed but that is necessary to explain the relationships. Now, in order for a theory to be scientific, it must be falsifiable. One example are Freudian theories, which get a lot of flack in the research community. And the reason why is you can always attribute a behavior to an unconscious or non-conscious motivation, which makes it impossible to study and always seems to confirm the theory's validity by saying it's unconscious or non-conscious. Now, one thing that's important to know is that's not the only way to study psychodynamic theory, but it is important to say that when conceptualizing a theory, you must have a strategy for seeing how that theory could be falsified in order to test it. Otherwise, you can't support it. Theories play three crucial roles in the development of science: they organize knowledge and they explain laws, they predict new laws, and they guide research.
A hypothesis is a statement that is assumed to be true for the purpose of testing its validity. It can be put into the form of an if-then statement: If A is true, then B should follow. A scientific hypothesis must be capable of empirical testing and, as a result, empirical confirmation or disconfirmation.
So, when we look at defining theoretical concepts, we also need to look at operationalism. Now, operationalism, which is associated with physicist Percy Bridgman, states that scientific concepts must be public in the same way that scientific data are public. According to Bridgman, a theoretical concept must be tied to observable operations that any person can observe or perform. If a concept cannot be tied to particular operations, then it's not a scientific concept. Take the concept of the will of God. If we say that everything that happens is the will of God, then the concept is without operational meaning. If it should rain tomorrow, we might say the rain was God's will. Then again, if it should not rain tomorrow, we likewise conclude that it's not raining was God's will. We have no way to define which future events would be according to God's will and which would not. Few people would say God's will is a scientific concept as such. Now, operationalism then strictly limits the kinds of concepts with which science can deal. If there is no way to defining the concept according to observable operations, the concept has to be barred from science because we can't study it. It's not to say that there isn't a new way down the road of studying it and making it scientific. It's just to say that based on our current knowledge and understanding, we can't make it scientific.
Now, we also have operational definitions. And when we're looking to study something, an operational definition is to state a procedure or operation that specifies the meaning of a concept. You're operationalizing what you're trying to study. Using different ways of honing in on a concept, the different operational definitions is called convergent operations.
Another thing to keep in mind is that certain concepts become not only common knowledge but widely accepted, and a paradigm is an example of this. It's a pervasive way of thinking about a branch of science that includes all assumptions and theories that are accepted by a group of scientists. Now, this is not to say that paradigms are static. Paradigms do shift. And one popular example of this is within the experimental psychology community that has focused on clinical psychology interventions for years. Cognitive behavioral therapy has been considered the gold standard of empirically supported psychotherapies today. Since there have been new studies that have come up the pike, in particular the Dodo Bird article, as it's called by Jonathan Shetler, we have found that when comparing CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, versus other types of psychotherapy or modalities, there are just as many benefits that have been found to these varying psychotherapeutic interventions, mainly because instead of the most powerful vehicle for change in therapy being the way the therapy has been modeled to take place or the agent of change within therapy, it has been in actuality, according to more recent research, based on the therapeutic relationship. That is to say that these various forms of therapy, that when held constant, are not as significant as the quality of the relationship between therapist and client. This was a very powerful and paradigm-shifting discovery. Another example is the idea of eyewitness testimony. Oh, Elizabeth Loftus, a famous forensic psychologist, had debunked some of the previous schools of thought around eyewitness testimony being consistent and reliable in her research on false memories, that receiving information after the fact can pollute one's recall of an event and actually create false memories in the eyewitness that had never actually occurred. Both of these studies represented dramatic paradigm shifts within experimental, clinical, and forensic psychology.
Well, that's it for this week's lecture. I'll look forward to chatting with you online, to seeing your responses to discussion posts, and to interacting with you. Should you have any questions, please be aware of not only the comments of your peers and engage in discussions, as discussions are the disguise, and questions are not only required, but your responses and replies to peers are part of your participation grade. And please let me know if there are any questions or concerns about the course as you move through. Take care.