Psychology: Scientific Methodology

Scientific Methodology

• Psychology studies behavior and mental processes scientifically.
• Psychological research uses scientific methods.
• Observations occur under specific conditions systematically.
• Alternative behavior explanations are accepted or rejected through observation.

The Need for Scientific Methodology

• Commonsense psychology involves gathering everyday, non-scientific data.
• This shapes beliefs and influences behavior toward others.
• Implicit theories help in understanding people’s behavior.

Limitations of Commonsense Psychology

• Commonsense beliefs about behavior can be unreliable.
• Inferences derived from these beliefs may be imperfect.
• Commonsense beliefs about behavior come from personal experiences and learnings.
• Small behavior samples and inherent biases can limit accuracy and usefulness.

Non-Scientific Data and Inference Sources

• Confirmation Bias: Overlooking disconfirming instances leads to seeking only confirmatory instances.
• Non-Scientific Inference: Overlooking situational data can lead to substantiate trait explanations.
• People are assigned a trait and their behavior is judged according to it, ignoring additional information.
• Overconfidence Bias: Predictions, guesses, and explanations often feel more accurate than they are.
• Brains use more data to make judgments about behavior and cope with immense volumes of information.

Scientific Methodology Explained

• "Scientia" is Latin for knowledge and implies content and process.
• Content: Facts from psychology or chemistry courses.
• Process: Systematic data gathering, relationship noting, and explanation offering.
• All areas of Psychology use scientific research methods.

Characteristics of Scientific Methods

• Scientific Mentality: Behavior follows a natural order and can therefore be predicted.
• This aligns with Alfred North Whitehead's idea that faith in an organized universe is essential to science.
• Determinism: Specific causes, though complex, exist for behavior and can be discovered through research.
• Gathering Empirical Data: Aristotle advocated systematic observations and classifying events, assuming order exists in the universe.
• Empirical Data:
  • Observable and experienced.
  • Verifiable or disprovable through investigation.
• Seeking General Principles:
  • Laws: Principles generally apply to all situations.
  • Theory: Principles aiming to predict and explain behavior or phenomena.
  • Newer theories replace older ones with greater explanatory power.
• Good Thinking: This promotes systematic, objective, and rational data collection and interpretation.
  • Welcome new ideas, even those against prior beliefs.
  • Adhere to rules of logic.
• Principle of Parsimony (Occam’s Razor): It recognizes simplicity and clarity of thoughts
  • The simplest explanation is preferred.
• Self-Correction: Accept uncertainty and revise conclusions.
• Changes to the contents of science are made acquiring new scientific information, and old information is reevaluated in light of new facts.
• Explanations and theories must evolve to reflect reality.
• Publicizing Results: Sharing information is vital within science.
  • Journals publish more scientific papers year upon year.
• Replication: Experiments and procedures need to bring about the same result again.
• Objectivity and good thinking are key to gathering repeatable data.

Objectives for Psychological Science

• Four Main Research Objectives: Description, Prediction, Explanation, and Control.
• Description: Systematically and without bias accounting observed characteristics of behaviors.
• Prediction: Knowing when certain behaviors would be expected, due to knowing the conditions linked or associated with the behaviours.
• Explanation: Knowing conditions that reliably reproduce behaviors.
• Behaviors are understood and their causes become clear.
• It is important one uses an experimental design with intention of setting a specific behavior systematically through the manipulation of variables of the setting.
• Control: Applying learned information about behaviors from research.

Scientific Explanation in Psychological Science

• Focus is made on how to identify antecedent conditions
• Antecedent Conditions: Circumstances preceding an event related to the to the behavior/event you seek to to explain
• Important to compare treatment conditions too
• Treatments: Specific sets of antecedent conditions
• Systematic and scientific explanations are provided after comparison with the treatment conditions

The Psychology Experiment

• The procedure is controlled and at least two different treatment conditions applied to subjects.
• Controlled procedures ensure accurate measurements of what is intended.
• Control is the key to conducting experiments.
• An experiment which randomly assigns the subject to only one treatment type (kind) is called a between-subjects design.
• Within-subjects design means doing the experiment within the same person.

Achieving Control

• Use random assignment of subjects to treatments.
• Treatment conditions must begin the same way for all subjects.
• Keep environments, procedures, and measuring instrument consistent.
• Treatments should be the only items allowed to vary.

Establishing Cause and Effect

• Experiments have the greatest ability to show relationships can be shown (cause and effect)
• Experiments can display a cause and effect
• Temporal relationship: Events where Event A is followed by Event B
• Necessary vs Sufficient Conditions:
  • Necessary: Conditions must be present to see an event is possible (but not guaranteed)
  • Sufficient: Events will occur (guaranteed) if it (the condition)is there

The Shift From Pseudoscience to Psychological Science

• Pseudoscience is a field given the appearance of science, without scientific basis, and has not been confirmed using scientific method ("pseudo" means false)
• Psychology as an experimental science emerged in the late 1800s and it was part of Philosophy.
• *Psychology did not use a scientific method previously
• Pseudoscientiific practices:
  • Phrenology: assessing traits via skull measurements
  • Physiognomy: Using features to assess capacity and skills
  • Mesmerism: Aligning fluids by magnetic principles cures physical and mental illness
  • Spiritualism: Contact with the dead to speak and give advice to those that paid

Key Figures in Psychology

• Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1926): First experimental psychologist; Opened the Laboratory in Leipzig, Germany, in 1879
• Granville Stanley Hall: Wundt student, and founded the first United States Psychology Lab in John Hopkins in 1883

Key Terms

• Data: Facts & figures from research.
• Psychology Experiment: Controlled Procedure where treatments are applied behaviors are measured and a hypothesis is verified.

Ethical Ideals in Research

• Respect for people
• Aiming to provide beneficence
• Upholding justice

Research Ethics Goals

• Researchers must concern themselves foremost with the ethical and responsible use of subjects
• Aims to improve understanding about thoughts / feelings that benefits humanity
• Researchers must have legal responsibility involving participants in experiments and research
• Governments have drawn up the ethical and legal guidelines over research to protects subjects

National Laws and Guidelines

• Research and Development will need to collaborate with research institutions and health organizations, as well as non-government organizations in order to develop and formulate a culturally relevant mental health program that incorporate indigenous concepts and practices related to metal health. High ethical standards in mental health research shall be promoted to ensure that research involve the free and informed consent of persons that do not give privileges to researchers etc unless approved by and ethical standards committee.

Review and Ethical Board

• In place to assess the studies/experiments proposed before they take place
• Checks for safety of the subjects being studied. Has to ensure safety/adequacy
• Perform assessment if risks outweigh benefits
• Safe guard for individual rights to participates with informed consent
• Informed consent (agree before you participate etc)

Poor Research is Unethical

• Participants can come to unwarranted conclusions that can damage society
• Money/Resources spent on it should be kept away from improving better sciences
• Robert Rosenthal (1994)

Informed Consent - Writing and Guidelines

• Consent to be writing, provided to all subjects
• Consent acquired from a parent/legal guardian if someone is mentally impaired and/or below age
• Assent of minor children ages 7 and above is usually a requirement of their participation
• Specific experiment's hypothesis and experiment information not typically disclosed but the following must be provided
  • Specific procedure
  • Overview and process and what it will take
  • Risks Involved so that people can make a solid decision
  • Their freedom to opt in and or out whenever/time and freely.

Evolution of Ethics

Ethics on rise

• After WWII (following the discoveries of experiments performed by Nazis on Jewish concentration prisoners)
• Creation of national code (international code too (War Crime Trials)). National Research Act
• Belmont Report by US department of Health Education 1979

The Three Ethical Principles (Belmont Report)

• Respect for Persons: Autonomous and needs extra protection + greatest extent determination
• Beneficence: Aims risk reduction and maximize potential risks and benefits
• Justice: Samples can not be easy influenced, and research subjects should be from those that likely reap the benefits

American Psychological Association Guidelines

• Students, research, practice and procedures applies
• Researchers should seek advice from committees (ethics)
• Fully informed content can be requires in risky research
• The law defines minimal risk that does not alter participant

Deception Considerations

• Relationship of both researcher, participant should be open and honest
• Research participants should not perceive the research negatively (minimized)
• Just use deception of necessary for new important information
• Adhere to the principle by full closing (debriefing) that is explaining study

Data and Anonymity and Confidentiality

Protect Data when possible from being identified through the use of code numbers Be serious over anonymity and ethical/data online handling