Summary Introduction to Research Methodology: Research Methods in Psychology
Part 1 Introduction to scientific reasoning
C1 ‘Psychology is a way of thinking’
• Psychologists are empiricists. Being an empiricist means basing one’s conclusions on
systematic observations.
• We can become a producer of research or a consumer of research information (or
both). When you are a producer of research you are doing research yourself. When
you are a consumer of research you read studies and interrogate information.
• Evidence-based treatments: therapies that are supported by research.
• The fundamental ways psychologists approach their work:
1. Act as empirics in their investigations
- They systematically observe the world
- Empiricism (empirical method / empirical research): involves using
evidence from the senses of from instruments that assist the senses as the
basis for conclusion. Empiricists aim to be systematic, rigorous, and to make
their work independently verifiable by other observers or scientists.
2. Test theories through research and, in turn, revise their theories based on the
resulting data.
- The theory-data cycle: scientists collect data to test, change or update their
theories (e.g.: cupboard theory vs. contact comfort theory)
o Theory: a set of statements that describes general principles about
how variables relate to another.
o Hypothesis (prediction): the specific outcome the researcher
expects to observe in a study if the theory is accurate.
o Data: a set of observations that either support of challenge the theory
o (see figure 1.5 p.13)
- Features of good scientific theories
o Good theories are supported by data from research studies
▪ Good theories are consistent with our observations of the
world
▪ Scientists need to conduct multiple studies, using a variety of
methods, to address different aspects of their theories
▪ A theory that is supported by a large quantity and variety of
evidence is a good theory
o Good theories are falsifiable
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, ▪ Falsifiability: a theory must lead to hypotheses that, when
tested, could actually fail to support the theory.
o Good theories have parsimony
▪ Parsimony: theories are supposed to be simple
- The word prove is not used in science. Researchers will say that some data
support or are consistent with a theory or some data are inconsistent with or
complicate a theory. Rather than thinking of a theory as proved or disproved
by a single study, scientists evaluate their theories based on the weight of
the evidence.
3. Take an empirical approach to both applied research and basic research
- Applied research: research that directly targets real-world problems. Applied
research is done with a practical problem in mind; the researchers conduct
their work in a practical real-world context.
- Basic research: research that is intended to contribute to the general body of
knowledge. Basic research is not intended to address a specific, practical
problem; the goal is to enhance the general body of knowledge.
- Translational research: research that is the use of lessons from basic
research to develop and test applications to health care, psychotherapy, or
other form of treatment and intervention. It represents a dynamic bridge from
basic to applied research.
4. Do further research
- Psychological scientists rarely conduct a single investigation and then stop.
Instead, each study leads them to ask a new question.
5. Make their work public
- Through publishing their work, scientists make the process of their research
transparent, and the scientific community evaluates it.
- When scientist want to tell the scientific world about the results of their
research, they write a paper and submit it to a scientific journal.
- The articles in a scientific journal are peer-reviewed. The journal editor sends
the submission to three or four experts on the subject. The experts tell the
editor about the work’s virtues and flaws, and the editor, considering these
reviews, decides whether the paper deserves to be published in the journal
o The peer-review process makes sure that research with major flaws
does not get published
o Scientists who find flaws in the research (after the peer-review
process) can publish letters, commentaries, or competing studies
- Journalism concludes the kinds of news and commentary that is meant to
reach the general public and is written by journalists or laypeople, not
scientists. Journalism can be beneficial depending on two things:
o Journalists need to report on the most important scientific stories
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, ▪ Sometimes journalists choose the sensational story over the
important one. Some journalists base their story on research
that has not been peer-reviewed.
o Journalists must describe the research accurately
▪ Even when journalists report on reliable, important research,
they don’t always get the story right. In this way science can
be misrepresent by the journalists.
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, C2 ‘Sources of Information: Why Research Is Best and How to Find It’
The research vs. your experience
• Experience has no comparison group, research on the other hand does. A
comparison group enables us to compare what would happen both with and without
the thing we are interested in. (e.g. yellow fever and bloodletting). Systematic
comparison is needed to show something.
• Experience is cofounded, research on the other hand is not. Alternative explanations
for an outcome are called confounds. In a research setting, scientists can use
careful controls to be sure they are changing only one factor at a time
• Confederate: an actor playing a specific role for the experimenter. (e.g. a controlled
study with systematic comparison: catharsis hypothesis)
• (Behavioral) research is probabilistic: its findings are not expected to explain all
cases all the time. Instead, the conclusions of research are meant to explain a certain
proportion (preferably a high proportion) of the possible cases. So there is a strong
probability that something will be the case.
The research vs. your intuition
• Biases in our thinking / ways that intuition is biased:
- Being swayed by a good story: we tend to believe good stories (e.g. bottling
up + The Scared Straight program)
- Being persuaded by what comes easily to mind: the availability heuristic:
things that pop up easily in our mind tend to guide our thinking (e.g. shark
attacks + hijab + overestimation)
- Failing to thing about what we cannot see: we forget to seek out the
information that isn’t there: we fail to look for absences. The present/present
bias: our failure to consider appropriate comparison groups. (e.g. Sherlock
Holmes + bloodletting + psychic + frustration
- Focusing on the evidence we like best: confirmation bias: the tendency to
look only at information that agrees with what we already believe: “cherry-
picking” (e.g. opinion polls + IQ test + interview + hypothesis)
- Biased about being biased: bias blind spot: the belief that we are unlikely to
fall prey to the other biases previously described (e.g. travelers)
• Scientific researchers are ware of their potential for biased reasoning, so they create
special situations in which they can systematically observe behavior. They create
comparison groups, consider all the data, and allow the data to change their beliefs.
Trusting authorities on the subject
• Authorities might want to convince us to accept their claims. Authorities’ claims can
also be based on personal experience and intuition. When their claims are based on
research, they are more reliable
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