Research instruments critically considered (PSMIN02)
Institution
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (RuG)
Book
Conducting Research in Psychology
Summary Conducting Research in psychology (4th edition)
Course Research instruments critically considered, RUG Groningen
Minor Psychology in society
Isbn:8
Pelham, B.W. / Blanton, H
Research instruments critically considered (PSMIN02)
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Chapter 1 How do we know?
History of human knowledge
Metaphysical systems
Earliest explanatons for human behavior: metaphysical or supernatural explanatonss
Metaphysical explanatins: violate what scientsts now consider to be established physical laws, primarily
by attributng behavior or experiences to nonphysical forces such as spirits or deitess
- 1st earliest categiry: metaphysical explanatins thriugh animism: belief that natural phenomena are
alive and infuence behaviors
o A common belief among many ancient people was that possessing parts of certain animals
would endow the owner with some of the psychological propertes of the animal in questons
o Another common belief was that natural phenomena such as the wind, sun and rain were
often assumed to have wills or temperamentss (Pllato believed that the universe was literally
alive and had a soul in its center)
Most of the animistc explanatons seem naïve by today’s standards, but the animistc explanatons
has not completely disappeared from modern thought, namely:
o Any car lover who has ever assumed that his reliable old Dodge Dart will not be as good to its
new owner as it was to hims
o We stll make physical, social and emotonal cues to make automatc inferences about the
likeability or trustworthiness of a robot/car/dogs
nd
- 2 categiry: metaphysical explanatins including mythiligy and religiin: mythological and religious
systems make the assumpton that deites (who exist in a spiritual rather than physical plane) play an
important role in human behaviors
o Religious explanatons for behavior are more sophistcated and comprehensive than animistc
explanatonss
Animism & mythology and religion share the basic assumpton that nonphysical, even magical, forces
determine much of what people dos
- 3rd categiry: metaphysical explanatins triugh astriligy: frst practced by the ancient Egyptans: the
human behavior is determined by the actvity of celestal (hoe de sterren staan bepaalt wat je doet)
bodiess
o Astrology is focused on accuracy and precision in measurements For them it is necessary to
know the exact year, month, day and tme of day of that person’s birth, along with the exact
lattude and longitude of the person’s birth locatons
Plhilosophy
One of the frst competng systems of though against metaphysical systems was philisiphy: the study of
knowledge, behavior, and the nature of reality by making use of logic, intuiton and empirical observatonss
- Pisitivism: principles should only be based on observatons that can be made with absolute certaintys
- Empiricism: the idea that the best way to learn about the world is to make observatons
Plhysiology and Plhysical Sciences
Very few philosophers gather data to test their theories and hypothesess
Plsychology probably owes (heeft te danken aan) its current emphasis on systematc observaton to its roots
in the physical sciences; especially physiologys
- Physiiligy: study of the functons of and interrelatons between diferent parts of the brain and bodys
(how can diferent areas of the brain perform the same basic cognitve or emotonal functons)
o Virtually everything we know about physiology has been discovered using the experimental
methods
o Marshall Hall’s experiments: experiments with decapitated animals in the early 1800s
provided some of the frst convincing evidence that refex movements are determined by the
spinal cord and not the brain: due to the experimental methods
, o Experimental methid:
Plowerful way to answer research questons whether they are physical questons or
social psychological questonss
Owe a great deal of what is good about their discipline to the traditons and methods
developed and refned by psychologists and other physical scientstss
Experimental Plsychology
Most historians of psychology agree that experimental psychology was invented in Germany sometme
around the mid- to late 1800ss Most people thought the person who invented it, was named Wundts He was
the most psychologically minded ones He found the experimental method so crucial to understanding basic
psychological experiences
o Psychiligy has become both decidedly experimental and decidedly scientfcs
o Fundamental principles that are more or less accepted on faith are often referred to as
canins.
Four canons of science
- Determinism: causal thinking The universe is orderly: all events have meaningful, systematc
causess Even animistc and astrological systems of thought are partly deterministcs
The fact that people often perceive connectons where none truly exist plays an important role in the
development and maintenance of stereotypes (zarks, glorks, ps 11)s In this kind of experiment, the
researchers found that people falsely infer a connecton or correlaton between group membership
and the likelihood of engaging in nice versus nasty behavior = illusiry cirrelatin.
o False conditoning process: supersttius cinditining: thinking there a cause for, while there
is nots
o Science is about theiriess A theory is simply a statement about the causal relaton between
two or more variabless Without determinism, there would be no theoriess Because in the
absence of determinism, orderly, systematc causes wouldn’t exists
o Although many people think of psychology as a ‘soft’ science that may not be as theoretcal
as ‘hard’ sciences like physics or biology, theories play exact the same role in psychology that
they play in physics or biology they identfy abstract, hypothetcal constructs that
presumably tell us something about how the world operatess
- Empiricism: make observatons (according to scientsts, the best method): after an extremely long and
speculatve debate about how many teeth a horse had, they made the conclusion that making an
observaton is a good way to fnd things out about the worlds
o Least controversial (twijfelachtge) method
o One of the things that distnguished Aristotle from many of his contemporaries was his
emphasis on systematc observatons
- Parsiminy: if we are faced with two competng theories that do an equally good job of handling a set
of empirical observatons, we should prefer the simpler, or more parsimonious of the two: simplicitys
o We should be extremely frugal in developing (or choosing between) theories: by steering
away from unnecessary conceptss
o Pleople often confuse science with closely related feld like technology and higher
mathematcs, that is why parsimony probably is the least consistent with most people’s
intuitons about sciences
o If something is good science, you should be able to understand it: parsimonys
o William of Occam was one of the frst who reasoned the principle of parsimony: that is why
parsimony sometmes is referred as Occam’s razors
o It may not always be parsimonious to explain human and animal behavior using diferent
theoriess (for example: complex situatons)
o As long as we are at the business of simplifying and organizing, we might as well keep at it
untl we have made things as simple as possibles
, - Testability: scientfc theories should be testable (confrmable and
disconfrmable) using currently available research techniquess
o Closely related to empiricism, because the techniques that scientsts typically use to test their
theories are empirical techniquess
o Testability is closely related to falsifiabilitys This is that scientsts should go a step beyond
putting their theories to some kind of test by actvely seeking out tests that could prove their
theories wrong Actvely seeking to prove your theory wrongs
o Pleople who used falsifability: they described their thoughts as ligical pisitivism: science and
philosophy should be based solely on things that can be observed with absolute certaintys
o Many behaviorists popularized the idea of operatonism: iperatinal definitinss Operatonal
defnitons are defnitons of theoretcal constructs that are stated in terms of concrete,
observable proceduress Due to operatonal defnitons, we can connect unobservable traits /
experiences (hunger, fear, attenton, prejudice) to things that can be observeds (if a person
hasn’t eaten in two days: there is hunger)
o Without operatonal defnitons, in a game like football, basketball or chess, it would be very
hard to know how winners and losers would be decideds Some more examples:
Cincept Operatinal definitin
Depression Total number of symptoms a person reports having experienced (sadness, sleep disturbance) in a
structured interview
Cognitve load Whether partcipants are given fve seconds or 50 seconds to estmate the answer to a problem
Attracton Whether a person is married to someone
Memory The number of words from a list a partcipant can recall after a delay
Four ways of knowing about the world
1. Intuitin
2. Ligic
3. Authirity
4. Obserivatin
-
The typical scientst and the typical philosopher might both prefer logical rather than intuitve
solutons to debate, scientsts and philosophers difer somewhat in the relatve emphasis they place
on logics
- Scientsts prefer experimentaton over argumentaton
3 notes about the four ways of knowing:
- There is no guarantee that one way of knowing will be superior to others across all possible situatonss
- The table above describes the ways in which science is supposed to be carried outs Because scientsts
are human beings, they sometmes fall back on other ways of knowing that do not represent the
ideals of the disciplines (sometmes scientsts rely on their intuitons when they should not)
- Diferent ways of knowing summarized here are convenient simplifcatonss
Good thinkers rarely limit themselves to a single way of understanding the worlds
Chapter 2 How do we fnd out?
The logic, art and ethics of scientfc discovery
Diference between descriptve and prescriptve laws = diference between what people ought to do and
what people actually dos
, - Logic of scientfc discovery
o Plrimary goal of any science: to establish laws of nature, and we distnguish laws from theories
and hypotheses
o Examining the role of observaton and reasoning in science and distnguishing between
inductve and deductve approaches to scientfc thinking
o Identfying three distnct approaches to scientfc hypotheses testng and discuss some of the
ways in which each approach is compatble or incompatble with the basic goals of science
- The art of scientfc discovery
o Reviewing a set of inductve and deductve techniques
- Ethics of scientfc discovery
Logic of scientfc discovery
Plsychologists cannot predict the behavior of one specifc person, this is the same as that meteorologists
cannot predict the behavior of one specifc clouds However meteorologists can predict the weather (a
large group of clouds), just as psychologists can predict the behavior of large groups of peoples
o That predicton is imperfect doesn’t mean that rules don’t govern human behavior:
Researcher who study interpersonal attracton couldn’t tell you for sure whether Rupert is
going to fall in love with Rita tomorrow, but they can identfy a list of conditons that would
make this much more likely than usuals
Plsychologists are in the business of seeking out laws that allow them to make precise predicton of human
behaviors
So the goal of every branch of science is to discover lawss
The person who did the most to draw attenton to the importance of laws was Sir Isaac Newtons (1642-
1727)s He invented the telescope, but also the three famous ‘laws of moton’s Second moton:
- Acceleraton of an object is directly proportonal to the net force actng upon it and inversely
proportonal to its mass
o Roughly speaking it means that it is a lot easier to throw a rock at a barn than to throw a barn
at a rocks
Newton proposed this law without any qualifcaton because he was confdent that it would predict the
acceleraton of any object in any circumstances This is like a law:
A law is a universal statement of the nature of things that allows reliable predictons of future eventss
- Like the goal of any science, the goal of psychology is to try to develop lawss
A psychologist will not always be able to predict specifc actonss A well-trained psychologist should be able
to make some predictons that untrained people would be unable to makes This is because:
o Plsychologists know more about human memory than they do about human taste in music for
example
o Plsychologists always have a lot of data about people
As said before, the goal of psychology, the establishment of laws, is not the only goals Most contemporary
psychologists are content to try to develop and test theoriess
- Theiry is a general statement about the relaton between two or more variabless
A theory should be:
o Deterministc: they should be logical and orderly, emphasizing on the systematc causal
relatons between variables
o Empirically grounded: they should generate predictons about readily observable events
o Plarsimonious: a good theory must be simple and concise that allows you to predict a wide
variety of conceptually similar behaviors
o Testable: theories do much more to advance scientfc understanding when they prove to be
wrong than when they prove to be untestables
Diference between theories and laws: breadth or universalitys
Laws are comprehensive, fundamental statements about reality
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