Hello Psychology Scholars!
Welcome to our 1st lecture for Chapter 2:
Psychological Research.
This chapter covers research (or scientific)
methods in psychology
On the next two slides are the learning objectives
for Chapter 2.
This is what we are going to go over and this
is what you will need to know for the proctored
exam.
Think of these learning objectives as your
road map through the chapter and your study
guide for the exam.
Take a minute.
Hit pause and read through these.
In this video, we will focus on understanding
how science works and understand scientific
ways of reasoning.
Understanding how science works and the nature
of scientific knowledge has been seen for
decades as important to the scientific literacy
of the general public.
Scientific literacy can no longer be reserved
for scientists alone because non-scientist
members of our society are and will continue
to be confronted with personal and public
policy decisions that involve science.
This demands a working knowledge of what science
is, how scientific knowledge is developed,
how to distinguish pseudoscience from valid
science, and the limitations of science.
Questions, questions, questions – everyone
has questions about behavior.
Investigating these questions is what psychology
is all about.
As you saw in Chapter 1, psychology is empirical.
Psychologists are committed to addressing
questions about behavior through formal, systematic
observation.
This commitment to the empirical method is
what makes psychology a scientific endeavor.
We use the scientific method to investigate
questions both systematically and empirically.
Why is there a need for psychological science?
We cannot rely solely on intuition and common
sense.
Intuition and common sense will more often
than not guide us in the wrong direction.
As you will see, over the course of the semester,
the research evidence often contradicts what
we think should happen.
We also make judgment errors (we will cover
the following errors in more detail in Thinking
chapter).
We are very good at looking back at events
and stating that we knew that outcome would
happen (sometimes we do know but most of the
time we really are not as sure as we are after
the fact).
This is called the hindsight bias.
We are also overconfident in our beliefs and
in ourselves.
How many of you have ever taken a test that
you were sure you knew the material for only
to get results that were less than satisfactory?
This is called the overconfidence bias.
Another error we make is the confirmation
bias…we tend to look for evidence that confirms
our beliefs rather than looking at or examining
evidence that disconfirms our way of thinking.
How many of you when you are in a hurry or
running late it seems like you stop at more
red lights than you would normally if you
weren’t in a hurry.
We tend to think this because we don’t really
count or notice the number of red lights we
stop at when we are not in a hurry (we only
notice the red lights when we are running
late or feeling frustration).
We also use confirmation bias when we become
polarized and entrenched in our political
views.
We only listen to or for our own points of
view rather than listening to the other side.
These are some of the errors in judgment that
we make.
As you can see our thinking is not flawless
and so we need science to help us reduce the
likelihood of making errors.
Scientific inquiry can help us sift reality
from illusion.
The scientific method is a way for us to determine
facts and control the possibilities of error
and bias when observing behavior.
We will talk about the scientific method in
our next video lecture.
Before we get into the specific ways that
psychologists conduct scientific research,
let’s take a look at the science process
and the key attitudes needed for scientific
inquiry.
There are three dimensions of science that
are all important.
The first of these is the content of science,
the basic concepts, and our scientific knowledge.
This is the dimension of science that most
people first think about, and it is certainly
very important.
The other two important dimensions of science
in addition to science knowledge are processes
of doing science and scientific attitudes.
The processes of doing science are the steps
that scientists use in the process of doing
science.
Since science is about asking questions and
finding answers to those questions, these
are actually the same skills that we all use
in our daily lives as we try to figure out
everyday questions.
The third dimension of science focuses on
the characteristic attitudes and dispositions
of science.
The three key attitudes of scientific inquiry
are curiosity, skepticism, and humility.
Underlying all science is curiosity, a passion
to explore and understand without misleading
or being misled.
Always asking new questions.
An attitude of skepticism is essential to
the scientific endeavor.
Continual questioning of ideas and results
is a means of overturning long-held assumptions
and uncovering new ideas.
Not accepting a “fact” as true without
challenging it; seeing if “facts” can
withstand attempts to disprove them.
Putting scientific attitude into practice
not only requires curiosity and skepticism
but also humility, because we may have to
reject our own ideas; having an awareness
that we can make mistakes.
Seeking the truth rather than trying to be
right; a scientist needs to be able to accept
being wrong.
Scientific reasoning is the foundation supporting
the enterprise of scientific research.
We have two basic approaches for how we come
to believe something is true.
(Two ways of understanding)
The first way is that we are exposed to several
different examples of a situation, and from
those examples, we conclude a general truth.
For instance, you visit your local grocery
store daily to pick up necessary items.
You notice that on Friday, two weeks ago,
all the clerks in the store were wearing football
jerseys.
Again, last Friday, the clerks wore their
football jerseys.
Today, also a Friday, they’re wearing them
again.
From just these observations, you can conclude
that on all Fridays, these supermarket employees
will wear football jerseys to support their
local team.
This type of pattern recognition, leading
to a conclusion, is known as inductive reasoning.
Knowledge can also move the opposite direction.
Say that you read in the news about a tradition
in a local grocery store, where employees
wore football jerseys on Fridays to support
the home team.
This time, you’re starting from the overall
rule, and you would expect individual evidence
to support this rule.
Each time you visited the store on a Friday,
you would expect the employees to wear jerseys.
This case, of starting with the overall statement
and then identifying examples that support
it, is known as deductive reasoning.
Now, let’s take a look at another example.
Imagine that you ate a dish of strawberries
and soon afterward your lips swelled.
Now imagine that a few weeks later you ate
strawberries and soon afterwards your lips
again became swollen.
The following month, you ate yet another dish
of strawberries, and you had the same reaction
as before.
You are aware that swollen lips can be a sign
of an allergy to strawberries.
Using induction, you conclude that, more likely
than not, you are allergic to strawberries.
Inductive reasoning can never lead to absolute
certainty.
Instead, induction allows you to say that,
given the examples provided for support, the
claim more likely than not is true.
Because of the limitations of inductive reasoning,
a conclusion will be more credible if multiple
lines of reasoning are presented in its support.
Inductive reasoning has its place in the scientific
method.
Scientists use it to form hypotheses and theories.
Deductive reasoning allows scientists to apply
the theories to specific situations.
Deductive reasoning is built on two statements
whose logical relationship should lead to
a third statement that is an unquestionably
correct conclusion, as in the following example.
Grocery store employees wear football jerseys
on Fridays.
Today is Friday.
Grocery store employees will be wearing football
jerseys today.
Unlike inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning
allows for certainty as long as certain rules
are followed.
In inductive reasoning, empirical observations
lead to new ideas; in deductive reasoning,
ideas are tested against the empirical world.
Scientists use inductive reasoning to formulate
theories, which in turn generate hypotheses
that are tested with deductive reasoning.
For example, case studies, which we will discuss
later in this chapter, are heavily weighted
on the side of empirical observations.
So, case studies are closely associated with
inductive processes as researchers gather
massive amounts of observations and look for
interesting patterns (or new ideas) in the
data.
Experimental research, on the other hand,
puts greater emphasis on deductive reasoning.
In our next lecture video, we will discuss
the steps to the scientific method.
