Welcome to PSY206F

• Get a copy of the handout and read it well.

• Course Convenor: Andy Dawes• Lecturer: David Nunez

• Contact at 650-3424• Secretary: Sheila Bishton

• Contact at 650-3417

Textbooks / Readings / Goodies

• Research In Practice, Terra Blanche & Durrheim (Eds)

• Fundamental Statistics for the Behavioural Sciences, D.C. Howell (any edition)

• Handouts from work-return room, occasionally in lectures

• A calculator (any type) is useful

Student Evaluation

• Exam in June (50%) covers whole course• MCQ Test (18 April 2001) at 16h00. (20%)

• Make arrangements now• Assignment due the afternoon of 11 May

2001 (25%)• 5 Problem Sheets during the tuts (5%)

Tutorials

• One tut a week - sign up on the noticeboard• 5 problem sheets plus handin dates on a

booklet (to come soon)• 2 weeks for a problem sheet, 2 sessions with

tutor• NO late handins/extensions on problem

sheets

Mathematics Requirement

• Need to know fundamental maths• Arithmetic• Substituting into an equation• Reading a graph

• Will have sessions to bring people up to speed (announced later).

• Start revising now – stats starts mid-march

How do we know things about the mind?

• We claim to know things about the mind:• Eg: With rewards, we can get someone to

repeat a behaviour

• Philosophers, psychologists, lawyers and others constantly making statements about the mind

• Some of things we claim to know are false:• Eg: Freud: traumatic events are easily forgotten

(repression) – WRONG: traumatic events are most often vividly recalled (as in PTSD)

• Having false ideas about the mind is bad:• Waste of resources (10 years in psychoanalysis,

no results)• Dangerous (thinking that suicide threats are a

call for attention)

How do we distinguish between True and False?

• Need some system for evaluating the truth of mental concepts

• Some systems in use:• Authority• Observation• Immediacy• Many others…

Examples: Authority Method

• Dr Phil (as seen on TV)

On making a romantic evening:

“4-minute rule: You can predict the rest of the night based on the first 4 minutes, so make those minutes count!”

Examples: Observation Method

• John Gray (Men are from Mars women are from Venus)

Interviewed hundreds of couples, and found patterns of difference between men and women. He then gives advice for you & your partner based on these patterns.

Example: Immediacy Method• Mike Lipkin (motivational speaker, author of Lost and found: my journey

through hell and back, as seen on TV

Suffered a terrible bout of depression, recovered, now tells how his exploits can help you too!

“You can attract your own Eland just by thinking about it.

If you dream about it while you're awake'

it will cross your path.You have the magic. Use it. Or lose it.”

Do these methods establish truth?

• Need to consider why we have psychology• Know about the human (?) mind• Apply that knowledge (eg. clinical application)

• In order to apply knowledge, it must be true of most people.

• Need to know that it almost always happens

Problems with example methods

• Authority method - what makes Dr Phil an expert about romance?

• Observation method – Just because it worked in the US, why should it work in SA?

• Immediacy method – How do we know it doesn’t only happen to you? Why should the same thing work fore me?

What do we use then?• All of these methods have been used in

psychology:• Authority Method (Psychoanalysis)• Observation Method (Early Piagetian school)• Immediacy Method (Humanistic psychology)

• Have been rejected due to lack of usefulness• Modern psychologists rely on “scientific

method”

The scientific method

• The “original” (19th C.) scientific method was little more than observation

• These observations were made under strict conditions• Prevents unknown factors from affecting the

thing being observed• Allowed others to observe the same phenomena

The scientific method

• From these observations, “laws” were derived• Eg. Ivan Pavlov and his dogs

These laws were thought to be universal, and interventions (clinical etc) were derived on them

But many didn’t work under many conditions! (the scientific method was flawed)

Opposition to “science”• In the late 1920s Karl Popper spotted a

problem in science:• Scientists were trying to prove their “laws”

correct, but this is impossible!

To show Piaget was correct, we would have to test every child on earth!

This cannot be done – scientific hypotheses cannot be proven correct

Popper’s falsification idea• Popper suggests that scientists should be

trying to prove their hypotheses are false

We want scientific hypotheses to be universal

So to prove them wrong, we simply find cases where the hypothesis does not work.

If a hypothesis often fails, then it is discarded (it is useless)

Scientific vs Pseudoscientific• Popper distinguishes between scientific and

psuedoscientific ideas• Scientific ideas are constructed so that it is

possible to try to prove them false (falsifiable)• Pseudoscientific ideas are not falsifiable

• Simply making a falsifiable claim does not mean we should believe it (must still be shown to be not false)

Evolutionary Epistemology• Popper saw hypothesis as “Evolving” in a

Darwinian sense• The good ones survive, the weak ones are

discarded

• Popper was only partly right – hypotheses are discarded for other reasons too• Authority (“good journals” theories are preferred)• Political reasons• Personal preferences

How statistics fits in• We want to show that hypotheses work

most of the time• Statistics gives us a way of showing the

probability (i.e. how likely) an event is• This allows us to reject unlikely hypotheses as

false (a la Popper)• If a hypothesis is unlikey (e.g. only going to

happen 5% of the time or less), we say it is false

Theories and Hypotheses• Difference between models, theories and

hypothesis (not the same!!)• Model: Very general idea of how something

works• Theory: derived from a model, used to

make predictions• Hypothesis: derived from a theory, it is a

specific prediction about something

Example

• Model: Freud’s tripartite model (id, ego, superego)

• Theory: Projection theory

• Hypothesis: more strongly repressed homosexuals will tend to “see” more homosexuality than less repressed homosexuals.

Researching theories

• Models and theories cannot be researched directly – only hypotheses

• Try to falsify hypotheses in studies• Each study is a piece of evidence

• If many of the hypotheses are proven false, this leads us to believe the model/theory is flawed

• If many of the hypotheses are not proven false, this gives more credibility to the model/theory

Research & Rhetoric• Models/theories are used because scientists are

convinced that they are useful• A scientific study is one way (very powerful) of

convincing a scientist• The status of other scientists using the model/theory is

also convincing (“disciple effect”)• The way the results are presented (which journal they

appear in, they way they are written) is also convincing

• In the end, the most convincing theory becomes most widely applied (for better or worse)