Psychology 100 Lecture 1 Scientific Reasoning and the Scientific Method Two Major Problems Facing Psychology Psychology is supposed to give a scientific understanding of the human mind and human behavior Essentially how and why we think Right now however the science of psychology is in a bad state Pop science and pseudo science predominate in the media and are better known than the scientific version of psychology Many clinical psychologists have no scientific training Finally few people understand the basic principals of scientific reasoning and the scientific method Approaches to Understanding the Natural World What is science Science is an approach to understanding the natural world Science searches for the fundamental answer to questions about truth and knowledge For example How do we know what is true How do we know what we know The way to distinguish between what is correct and what is incorrect is to follow the prescriptions of the scientific method In science experience is the fundamental arbiter of truth In science we test our ideas hypotheses against experience by performing carefully controlled observations experiments Science is empirical it tests ideas against sensory experiments dependent on evidence that is observable by the senses Wikipedia Other approaches Rationalism French philosopher Renee Descartes started rationalism Descartes had a problem with empiricism He did not believe that empiricism should be help as the fundamental arbiter of truth since experience is easily distorted and often inaccurate Rationalism asserts that certain ides are so clear and defined in other words so obvious that they cannot possibly be false Rationalism is a theory in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive Bourke 263 Rationalism asserts that in principle all knowledge including scientific knowledge can be gained through the use of reason alone though this is not possible in practice for human beings except in specific areas such as mathematics Monadology 28 cited in Audi 772 Example 1 The Evil Demon Suppose that you think you are sitting in this room observing me talk What if you aren t in this room at all What if instead and evil demon is feeding you sensory input that is bogus but which is making you believe that you are in this room and hearing my voice How would you know that you are actually in the room not just a brain 1 Descartes claims that you wouldn t know since in a jar being fed information that is leading you to think that you are in this room empiricism bases knowledge on sensory input However if you thought to yourself I might be in class and then again I might not but I do know that I am having these thoughts A demon could not feed me this information I am having these thoughts myself Therefore I am in the room In other words Descartes reasoned that since you are conscious you think you must exist I think therefore I am I exist However Western culture went with empiricism and thus rationalism did not work The Great Man Using the Great Man approach you determine what is true and false by going to the expert Example 1 Feud ism Example 2 Creationism The Freudian method and the conclusions reached by Freud are not scientific Freudians pour over Freud s writings and debate whose interpretation of his work is correct Freud is not open to question rather the interpretation of his ideas is under scrutiny In most religions this is the method Since God created the world and wrote a book about his work you should read the book to determine the truth about the world The final arbiter of truth is the word of God after all what is higher than God The scientific approach is not the only approach nor is it the right approach It is merely the accepted approach of the Western World and therefore the one that we use We cannot really accept more than one approach because although reasonable people can disagree they cannot argue both sides of a debate Testing our Experience against the Natural World The Scientific Method In science we fundamentally want to explain how things work and what is going on We ideally want a causal explanation X causes Y For our purposes a theory hypothesis model an idea about how a system works You create a system that you think works like the real world this is your theory your fake system follows your theory therefore it is your theory Example 1 Chess Playing You want to understand how humans play chess so you need to build a system about how to play chess When people play chess they think therefore you are fundamentally asking how people think how they plan ahead etc So you build a system that simulates chess playing 2 How to Evaluate Scientific Research based on your theory about how people play chess If the system that you designed based on your theory is a good model of human playing you would figure this out by analyzing the results this information supports strengthens your theory In the process of evaluating your theory you design a formal situation in a lot of detail often mathematical detail to try and make your hypothesis fail If we assume that our hypothesis is true and we design an experiment specific to this hypothesis then we make a prediction about what will occur at the end of the experiment A prediction is a statement of what will happen if our theory is accurate and we test out the theory in an experiment To evaluate scientific research look at the experiment particularly the dependant and independent variables In an experiment something is manipulated and controlled The factor that is manipulated is the independent variable After you manipulate the independent variable you see what people do in response this response is measured using the dependant variable Example 1 the Schachter study see text pg 43 Schachter s theory was that people want to be with other people because this reduces anxiety To test this model Schachter set up an experiment He told his subjects that he was conducting a test about the affects of punishment on learning He told the subjects that they were going to be given an electric shock if they made a mistake He divided the subjects into two groups the high anxiety group and the low anxiety group they did not know this however He told the high anxiety group that the electric shock would be very serious and extremely painful He told the low anxiety group that the shock would be a very mild buzz not at all painful and nothing to worry about In this way Schachter was directly
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