Psychology as a science Psych 231: Research Methods in Psychology

Psychology as a science

Psych 231: Research Methods in Psychology

Announcements

For this week’s lab you need to download, print out, read, and bring to lab an article.– The article is: Strayer & Johnston (2001)– It can be downloaded from the Milner

library page:http://www.mlb.ilstu.edu/

The anatomy of a research article

Method - tells the reader exactly what was done Enough detail that the reader could actually replicate

the study. Subsections:

Participants - who were the data collected from Apparatus/ Materials - what was used to conduct the

study Procedure - how the study was conducted, what the

participants did


Reading checklist for Methods1 a) Is your method better than theirs? b) Does the authors method actually test the hypotheses? c) What are the independent, dependent, and control variables? 2) Based on what the authors did, what results do YOU expect?


Results - gives a summary of the results and the statistical tests Reading checklist

1) Did the author get unexpected results?

2 a) How does the author interpret the results?

b) How would YOU interpret the results?

c) What implications would YOU draw from these results?


Discussion - the interpretation and implications of the results Reading checklist

1 a) Does YOUR interpretation or the authors' interpretation best represent the data?

b) Do you or the author draw the most sensible implications and conclusions?

References - full citations of all work cited Appendices - additional supplementary

supporting material


Psychology’s goals are similar to the goals of the physical sciences (e.g., physics and chemistry)

Psychologists are concerned with the behavior of people (and animals) rather than the physical world.


How is psychology different from the physical sciences?– One big difference is that human behavior (and

animals) is typically much more variable than most physical systems.

• To address this in part, we use a lot of statistical procedures.

• We also do as much as we can to reduce variability by using various methods of control.

Goals of psychology

Description of behavior – describe events, what changes what might affect

change, what might be related to what, etc.

Prediction of behavior – given X what will likely happen

Control of behavior – for the purpose of interventions (e.g., how do we

prevent violence in schools)

Goals of psychology

Causes of behavior – sometimes predictions aren’t enough, want to

know how the X and the outcome are related Explanation of behavior

– a complete theory of the how’s and why’s

Properties of a good theory

Organizes, Explains, & Accounts for the data– If there are data relevant to your theory, that your

theory can’t account for, then your theory is wrong• either adapt the theory to account for the new data • develop a new theory that incorporates the new data


Organizes, Explains, & Accounts for the data Testable/Falsifiable – can’t prove a theory,

can only reject it

–our research goal is not to prove theories, but rather to disconfirm them. Results may “support” theories, but not “prove” them.

Support, not proof Einstein: “No amount of experimentation can

ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”

“All dogs have four legs”– hard to prove, need to examine all the dogs that

exist (and have existed). – To disconfirm all we need to do is find one dog

which doesn’t have four legs

Omnipotent Theory

Beware theories that are so powerful/ general/ flexible that they can account for everything. These are not testable– Karl Popper claimed that Freudian theory isn’t falsifiable

• If display behavior that clearly has sexual or aggressive motivation, then it is taken as proof of the presence of the Id

• If such behavior isn’t displayed, then you have a “reaction formation” against it. So the Id is there, you just can’t see evidence of it.

– So, as stated, the theory is too powerful and can’t be tested and so it isn’t useful


Organizes, Explains, & Accounts for the data Testable/Falsifiable Generalizable – not too restrictive

– the theory should be broad enough to be of use, the more data that it can account for the better

– the line between generalizability and falsifiability is a fuzzy one.


Organizes, Explains, & Accounts for the data Testable/Falsifiable Generalizable Parsimony (Occam’s razor)

– for two or more theories that can account for the same data, the simplest theory is the favored one


Organizes, Explains, & Accounts for the data Testable/Falsifiable Generalizable Parsimony Makes predictions, generates new knowledge

– a good theory will account for the data, but also make predictions about things that the theory wasn’t explicitly designed to account for


Organizes, Explains, & Accounts for the data Testable/Falsifiable Generalizable Parsimony Makes predictions, generates new knowledge Precision

– makes quantifiable predictions

Using theories in research

Induction – reasoning from the data to the general theory– So in complete practice this approach probably needs a new

theory (or an adapted one) for every new data set Deduction – reasoning from a general theory to the

data– Here the theory (if it is a “good” one) is sometimes viewed as

more critical than the data. It also will guide the choice of what experiments get done

The chicken or the egg?

Typically good research programs use both

Theory

Data

induction deduction

Research Approaches Basic (pure) research - tries to answer fundamental

questions about the nature of behavior– e.g., McBride & Dosher (1999). Forgetting rates are

comparable in conscious and automatic memory: A process-dissociation study.

Applied research – Theory sometimes takes a backseat. This is research designed to solve a particular problem– e.g., Jin (2001). Advertising and the news: Does advertising

campaign information in news stories improve the memory of subsequent advertisements?

Research Approaches

Probably the best way to think of this is as a continuum rather as two separate categories.

Basic research Applied research

• Often applied work may bring up some interesting basic theoretical questions, and basic theory often informs applied work.

Next time

Basic Methodologies Read Chapters 6 and 7

Documents

Psychology as a science Psych 231: Research Methods in Psychology