Psychology as a Science & Research Methods

This is Unit One of Psychology, Part One: what the subject is, and how it looks at anything. Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes — and every word in that sentence was fought over. The scientific part in particular, because the field spent its first fifty years arguing about whether the mental part could be studied scientifically at all. So this part opens with six schools in sequence, and the useful way to hear them is as six answers to one question: what is psychology allowed to look at? One school said conscious experience. One said only what can be observed from outside. One said the unconscious. They are not stages of improvement — they are different answers. Then the machinery of the science itself. What makes a claim testable, what an operational definition has to contain, and who ends up in a study. And the part closes on three ways of looking at behavior without touching it — each of which carries a specific bias in with it, named at the same time. By the end you will be able to do five things. One: say what psychology studies, and what separates behavior from a mental process. Two: say which question each school was answering. Three: say what falsifiability requires, and why unfalsifiable does not mean false. Four: say what an operational definition has to contain. Five: name the three descriptive methods and the bias each carries.

Four entries defining the field. The second one draws a line the whole subject rests on — one of the two things psychology studies can be watched directly, and the other one never can. It is always inferred from the first.

The definition.

Psych 0001 What Psychology Studies

The scientific study of behavior and mental processes. Two objects rather than one — and the second is the reason the field spent decades arguing with itself.

The two, separated.

Psych 0003 Behavior and Mental Process

Behavior is action observed directly. A mental process is an internal event inferred from behavior. Nobody has ever observed a mental process — every claim about one is a claim about an inference.

The commitment.

Psych 0005 Empiricism

Knowledge comes from observation and evidence rather than from authority or intuition. That commitment is what separated the field from philosophy, and it is not a small one.

The first method, and its limit.

Psych 0007 Introspection and Its Limits

A trained report of one's own conscious experience — which cannot be checked by a second observer. The whole problem of the field's first century sits in that clause.

Six entries, and hearing them as a sequence is worth more than memorising them separately. Each is answering the same question — what may psychology study — and each is reacting against the answer before it.

The first school.

Psych 0009 Structuralism

Breaking conscious experience into its basic elements, using introspection as the method. It inherited introspection's limit along with its ambition.

The reaction.

Psych 0011 Functionalism

Asking what mental processes are for — how consciousness helps an organism adapt. A different question about the same material, not a better answer to the first one.

A different direction entirely.

Psych 0013 Psychoanalytic Theory

Unconscious processes shaping behavior, and early experience organising adult personality. It moved the object of study to something the person themselves cannot report.

The hard restriction.

Psych 0015 Behaviorism

Restricting psychology to observable behavior and its environmental causes, setting mental processes aside as unmeasurable. Not a claim that minds do not exist — a claim that science could not reach them.

The reaction to that.

Psych 0017 Humanism

Conscious experience, personal growth, and the drive toward one's full potential — putting back at the centre exactly what the previous school had excluded.

And the return.

Psych 0019 The Cognitive Revolution

Mental processes returned to psychology by treating them as information processing that can be measured indirectly. It answered behaviorism's objection rather than ignoring it — which is why it stuck.

Five entries on how behavior gets explained now. Four perspectives, each reaching for a different kind of cause — and then a model saying the honest answer usually involves all of them at once.

The first.

Psych 0021 The Biological Perspective

Explaining behavior through the nervous system, genes, hormones and brain structure. The causes are physical and in principle measurable.

The second.

Psych 0023 The Evolutionary Perspective

Explaining behavior by the reproductive advantage a trait would have conferred in ancestral environments. It explains why a mechanism exists rather than how it works.

The third.

Psych 0025 The Sociocultural Perspective

Explaining behavior through culture, social context and the expectations a group places on its members. The cause sits outside the person entirely.

All at once.

Psych 0027 The Biopsychosocial Model

Behavior as the joint product of biological, psychological and social factors. Not a compromise between the perspectives — a claim that real causes are usually multiple.

The scale question.

Psych 0029 Levels of Analysis

The scale at which a behavior gets explained, from cells to persons to societies. Two explanations at different scales can both be correct about the same event.

Two entries on practicalities. Two purposes research can have, and two credentials that get used interchangeably in conversation and are not interchangeable at all.

Two purposes.

Psych 0031 Basic and Applied Research

Basic research seeks knowledge for its own sake; applied research seeks a solution to a specific practical problem. Both are science, and they answer to different people.

Two credentials.

Psych 0033 Psychologist and Psychiatrist

A psychologist holds a doctorate in psychology. A psychiatrist holds a medical degree and can prescribe medication. The prescribing authority is the practical difference, and it follows from the degree.

Five entries on the logic of testing. Two of them are a twin pair about a requirement that gets misapplied constantly — because saying a claim cannot be tested sounds like saying it is wrong, and it is not.

The large thing.

Psych 0035 Theory

A well-tested explanation organising many observations and generating new predictions. In this sense a theory is the sturdiest thing science produces, not the least sturdy.

The small thing.

Psych 0037 Hypothesis

A specific testable prediction derived from a theory, stated before the data are collected. The timing is part of the definition.

The requirement.

Psych 0039 Falsifiability

A claim is falsifiable when some possible observation would show it to be false. If nothing could count against it, nothing can count for it either.

The failing case.

Psych 0040 The Unfalsifiable Claim

A claim no possible observation could refute, which places it outside scientific testing. Outside the reach of the method, rather than inside it and failing.

And the correction.

Psych 0042 Unfalsifiable Is Not False

A claim that cannot be tested may still be true, interesting, or important — it cannot be settled by evidence. Ruling something outside science is a statement about the method, not a verdict on the claim.

Two entries on a requirement that sounds like paperwork and is not. If a report does not say how a variable was measured, nobody can repeat the study — and a study nobody can repeat cannot be checked by anyone.

The requirement.

Psych 0044 Operational Definition

Stating precisely how a variable was measured, in terms another researcher could repeat. Precisely and repeatable are both doing work in that sentence.

And its absence.

Psych 0045 The Underspecified Variable

A variable is underspecified when the report does not say how it was measured, making the study impossible to repeat. The finding might be real. Nobody can find out.

One procedure, and it puts the previous three topics in order. Observation, theory, hypothesis, operational definitions, data, revision — with revision as an actual step rather than an admission of failure.

Watch the cycle run.

Psych 0047 The Scientific Method in Psychology

Observe, form a theory, derive a falsifiable hypothesis, operationalise the variables, collect data, and revise. Each step depends on the one before it, and the last step returns to the first.

Three entries on a gap that is present in every study ever run. You want to describe a population. You measured a sample. Everything depends on how that sample was built.

The gap.

Psych 0049 Population and Sample

A population is every case a researcher wants to describe; a sample is the subset actually studied. The claim is about the first and the data are from the second.

Building it well.

Psych 0051 Random Sampling

Every member of the population having an equal chance of selection. That equality is what licenses generalising from the sample back to the population.

Building it badly.

Psych 0052 Sampling Bias

Some members being systematically more likely to be selected than others. Systematically is the word that matters — a sample can be unrepresentative by chance without being biased.

Six entries covering three methods that describe behavior without manipulating anything — and this course does something worth noticing. Each method is immediately followed by the specific bias it carries, rather than the biases being collected somewhere at the end.

The first method.

Psych 0054 The Case Study

An in-depth examination of one individual or small group, producing rich detail about a rare situation. Depth on one case, purchased by giving up breadth entirely.

The second.

Psych 0056 Naturalistic Observation

Recording behavior in its ordinary setting without the researcher intervening. What is gained is that the behavior is real; what is given up is control.

Its bias.

Psych 0057 Observer Bias

A researcher's expectations shaping what they record as having happened. The record is not neutral, and the person keeping it usually does not know that.

And its remedy.

Psych 0058 Blind Coding

Having observations recorded by someone who does not know which condition the case belongs to. The expectation cannot bias the record if the recorder has no expectation to apply.

The third method.

Psych 0060 Survey Research

Collecting self-reported answers from many participants using a standard set of questions. Breadth, purchased by relying entirely on what people say about themselves.

Its bias.

Psych 0061 Self-Report Bias

Participants answering as they wish to be seen rather than as they actually behave. Not lying, mostly — the gap between how someone describes themselves and what they do is ordinary and large.

Five things you can now do, and Part Two takes up measurement. You can say what psychology studies and how its two objects differ — behavior is observed directly, and every mental process is inferred from behavior. You can say which question each school was answering, and hear them as six answers to what psychology may look at rather than as six stages of progress. You can say what falsifiability requires — that some observation would refute the claim — and that an untestable claim may still be true. You can say what an operational definition contains: precisely how a variable was measured, in terms another researcher could repeat. And you can name the three descriptive methods with the bias each carries — the observer's expectations, and the gap between what people say and what they do.