Scientific Warrant for Freud Is Freud good science NO Lecture 22 Notes o Evidence case studies o No scientifically rigorous testing o Not good evidence from Freudian theorists o Key terms in the theory are vague and hard to clearly define o Freud s theory is hard to test because it makes NO predictions it explains behavior after the fact i e why people are the way they are o LACK OF EMPIRICAL TESTABILITY MEANS THAT THE THEORY IS NOT SCIENTIFIC o When the theory is tested by non Freudians and by Freudians in partnership with scientists the theory fails or is not testable Freud s theory was rejected by the scientific psychological community Adherence to Freudian theory came from people not in the domain of scientific In the end FREUD S THEORY IS UNTESTABLE OR FAILS psychology Freud is controversial o Freud s group was a cult of personality everyone had to revere Freud If you came up with an alternate theory to Freud s you were thrown out and called names instead of the usual scientific practice of testing the theories against each other to differentiate between them o Freud s followers argue based on Freud s text this is a practice in the humanities not a way to scientifically test a theory o Freud s library was locked down due to the fact that it showed Freud in a negative light For example the stories came out Anna Oh was diagnosed with hysteria and used to show the power of Freud s diagnosis However Anna checked into a hospital years later and claimed that Freud not only did not cure her but made her problems worse Wolf man was not cured by Freud He wanted to move out of Vienna to help his issues If this happened it would become known that Freud had not cured him and the Wolf Man would become hard to control So Freudians financially ruined the man so that he could not leave o Freud s picture of humanity is very dark Preverse conflict is what defines us Women have more problems than men and that the problems that women have stem from the genital stage and penis envy The reason that women have more difficulty overcoming this because many girls at this stage in their life engage in sexual activity with their father or another adult male in their immediate family Essentially Freud claims that child abuse and molestation is Freud stuck to his guns and would not change his ideas because there rampant in his society was no scientific evidence Then he took on the daughter of his close friend as a patient The daughter has hysteria So Freud either saves his theory and diagnoses her as sexually abused by her father or he can save his friend and fail to cure her and thus lose his theory He takes a third option he modifies his theory he says that little girls didn t have sex with their fathers they just wanted to However independent evidence indicates that the friend WAS molesting his children and Freud knew this NONE OF FREUDS ETHICS MEAN ANYTHING ABOUT THE SCIENCE OF FREUD S THEORY Why was Freud s theory successful in the first place Because at the time ideas about flaws of human nature were popular Also the theory was successful in the PRACTITIONER and not the scientific community Freud s theory was very nice and fit together but IT DID NOT SURVIVE EMPIRICAL TESTS Other Theories of Personality Behaviorists personality does not exist rather it is a set of consistent responses Why Because they have been reinforced for a particular behavior they then generalize the behavior and get reinforced in other circumstances So people show consistency in behavior in a wide variety of situations because of their past learning history Why do different people do different things Because people have different learning histories Trait theory identify personality traits FAKE SCIENCE The Big 5 extroversion agreeableness conscientiousness neuroticism openness to experience Personality tests Personality tests used to identify personality traits and need to have construct validity Self report inventories tests which ask people to answer questions about their behavior thoughts and feelings professional settings o Multi trait inventories examine many dimensions of personality often used in MMPI Minnesota multiphasic personality inventory Based on scales where scales are collections of questions Has 10 clinical scales for diagnosis mental disorders and 4 validity scales which test for deception or carelessness a disorder is shown in a pattern of responses o Single trait inventories examine one personality trait often used in research settings to see how a trait interacts with other things CPI o Strengths Thorough Precise Systematic Enable comparisons across individuals because everyone is taking the same test o Weaknesses Deception it can be obvious what might be a socially wrong answer Social desirability people will give the socially acceptable answer because that is what they think they are supposed to do Get bored Projective tests ask people to respond to vague neutral or ambiguous stimuli They are based on the assumption that the answer will show hidden traits o Rorschach inkblot what do you think when you see the inkblot o TAT picture of people arranged with 1 million possible stories and you are supposed to say what you see o Scoring is a matter of hunch guesswork and intuition no coherent interpretation reasoning o These are EXTREMELY unreliable o Strengths Not obvious to subject deception not as much of a problems Conscious defense mechanisms may be avoided because subjects don t know what they are revealing about themselves so it is not possible to give a socially acceptable answer o Weakness Not standardized Reliability is extremely low Mysterious interpretation and scoring Evidence for the validity of these tests is very very weak o Using self report inventories is a strong way to identify traits
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