© 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E Psychological Research and Ethics

© 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E

Psychological Research and Ethics


The Study of Psychology

• Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes

• Psychology values empirical evidence• Psychology employs critical thinking• Psychology employs systematic research

methods


Pseudopsychologies• Pseudopsychologies are unreliable approaches

that do not use the scientific method• Examples of pseudopsychologies include:

– Astrology: system that tries to relate personality to the movement of the stars

– Palmistry: idea that reading a person’s character from the lines on their palms

– Psychokinesis: notion that humans can move objects through mental concentration

– Follicology: notion that personality characteristics are related to hair color


Goals of Psychology

–Description of behavior using careful observations

–Explanation involves identifying the cause(s) of behavior

–Prediction allows for specification of the conditions under which a behavior will occur or not

–Psychological knowledge can be used to assist changes in behavior


Psychological Research

• Two forms of psychological research:– Basic research seeks answers for theoretical

questions• E.g. How is hunger controlled by the brain?

– Applied research seeks answers for specific application problems

• E.g. Organizational psychology studies leadership, job satisfaction, job training, and development


Areas of Psychology

• Clinical

• Educational

• School

• Industrial/organiz-ational

• Developmental

• Social

• Comparative

• Neuropsychology

• Health psychology

• Cognitive


Descriptive Research• Naturalistic observation refers to the systematic

recording of behavior in a natural state or habitat– Jane Goodall observing apes in the wild

• Surveys are instruments designed to sample attitudes or behaviors – Asking persons at a rally how they feel about animal

rights issues

• A case study is an in-depth study of a single person– Freud used the case study method to probe anxiety


Complexity of working with Humans

• Due to the “humanity” of humans, we can’t always perform experiments. Therefore, some knowledge is gained through correlational and descriptive methods.

• Also, humans are inquisitive and active. Rarely do they act as passive participants in an experiment (unlike a fruit fly)


Correlational Research• The correlation technique

indicates the degree of association between 2 variables

• Correlations vary in direction:– Positive association: Increase stimulus=

increases in specific behavior– Negative association: Increase

stimulus= decrease in specific behavior– No relation: No relationship between

stimulus and behavior


Correlations• Correlations also vary in the strength of

the association– Zero correlation: no relationship between the

2 variables– Strong correlation: knowing the value of one

variable permits one to accurately estimate the value of the other variable

• Strong correlation can be positive or negative

• Correlations can be seen in scatter plots


Correlation Difficulties


Ethical Issues in Research• Respecting the rights of human

research participants involves:– Informed consent is an explanation of a study and

the responsibilities of experimenter and participant– Deception involving the subjects must be justified– Confidentiality of study information must be

maintained– Debriefing refers to explaining the research

process to the subjects at the end of the study


Control versus Realism

• Desired state in an experiment is isolation and manipulation of one variable.

• Does this lead to a contrived and unrealistic situation? If so, how does that impact the validity of your findings? – Are your findings generalizable to the real world?

• Human research is a delicate tradeoff between realism and control


Realism

• Experimental Realism: impact of an experiment on a subject. Does the participant take the experiment seriously

• Mundane Realism: similarity of the experimental environment to the real world

• Experimental realism can occur in the absence of mundane realism


Ethics

• Often necessary to deceive participant during experiment: although this deception is often minor (disguising the hypothesis of interest)

• Reasons for this need:– Self Presentation Biases– Good Subject Bias

• Question arises – is this right?


Ethics, continued

• Decision on experiment and deception is based upon a cost/benefits analysis– Are the potential costs to the participant worth the

benefits of the knowledge gained?– Increasing the difficulty of answering this question

is that you can’t be sure what results the experiment will produce!!

• Problem of deception can be reduced with a thorough debriefing

Documents

© 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E Psychological Research and Ethics