Hello and welcome to our first lecture of the course. Today I want to provide you with the foundations of what we'll be discussing throughout the entire semester and that is what exactly makes a science and how is psychology a science. Now you've probably been in a class like one of these before. Maybe biology the study of life or chemistry the study of matter or geology the study of earth. And when you were taking these classes, you probably thought of them as a science class. But what actually makes science a science is what we're really going to be talking about today. And specifically why psychology, despite it not always uh being perceived as such, is actually as much of a science as any of these other disciplines like chemistry, biology, geology, or physics. even if it might seem different based on the content of what it studies. Because what I want to really emphasize and what will be the theme for this class is that what makes a science isn't what you study, but rather it's how you study it. So, I want to begin with a few goals for the day. And as a reminder, this is a really good way to sort of outline your notes and to serve as a study guide for this week's content in that if you feel confident explaining or answering these questions or concepts, you should be feeling very good about your grasp of the material. So this week we have five general goals for the day or learning outcomes. The first is to describe the historical and philosophical roots of psychology. The next is to be familiar with the various epistemological ways of knowing. The third is to be able to differentiate between what makes a science a science and what makes a pseudocience a pseudocience. You should also be able to define and describe the major considerations and goals of what of a science. And lastly, you should be able to distinguish between basic and applied research. Now, I want to begin by discussing what psychology actually is. And psychology is essentially the study of human thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. But that's a really huge domain, right? There's a lot of different aspects of that uh field. So instead what psychologists often do is sort of specialize or break this general field of study into various disciplines. For example, clinical psychology and clinical psychologists really focus on treating mental illnesses like depression, anxiety, etc. And as such, a lot of what they focus on is research related to these concepts. In counseling psychology, they often uh help people deal with the everyday stress or life transitions. They really focus on um helping people through the challenges that they might navigate on a day-to-day basis. Social psychologists uh study how people influence one another. They look at the role of the situation and think about how say the presence of peer pressure or different societal norms might impact how we think or feel or behave in any given situation. Developmental psychologists study how we grow and change over the lifetime. Industrial and organizational psychologists study um how to improve u a person's productivity or their motivation or their own sense of well-being in workplace settings. Neurosychologists explore how different brain structures um or hormones or neurotrans uh neurotransmitters function um and relate to our behavior. So there are a lot of different fields of psychology and many of them are very very specific and make a lot of different claims. Right? You could take an entire course on any one of these fields or even do a PhD which takes five to seven years um trying to learn as much as you can about only one of these disciplines. But what this course is concerned about isn't necessarily exploring what claims each of these make, but instead it asks a fundamental question which is essential to any and all of them. And that is how do we actually know what we know? Or in other words, how do we actually justify the claims that we make in psychology? Well, before we delve into that question, I want to first provide you with a brief history of psychology. Specifically, where we started and how we came to the place that we are today. Well, first of all, what's important to know is that psychology was not always a science, but instead its roots are in philosophy with the earliest psychologists or those that study human thought, feeling, and behavior being deep thinkers who really asked early questions about who we are. For example, in many ancient western civilizations like Egypt and Greece, um a lot of philosophers were concerned with mindbody connections. In other words, are we just this biological form with all of our perception, all of our thought, all of our feeling derived from certain biological uh principles, certain physical principles? Or are we actually minds? Do we have this sort of spirit or this soul that's related to the body but not necessarily the exact same? In India, a lot of meditative uh practices were developed in order to improve mental health outcomes. Right? These are some of the earliest forms of what we might call uh um therapy nowadays. And in fact, a lot of contemporary therapies like CBT and DBT really latch on to these early ideas through their mindfulness practices. In China, there was often this emphasis on finding emotional balance um and sort of developing this sense of social uh morality and social harmony. really investigating what makes us as individuals function as a large group and a productive um and harmonious society. During the Islamic Golden Age and the European Enlightenment, many scholars began to write in depth about uh topics like u memory and specifically diagnosible mental illnesses. And in many indigenous American traditions, there was often a focus on balance between the mind, the body, the spirit, and the community. And really trying to promote a happy and healthy life by finding balance and um sort of a positive relationship with each of these. So, as you can see, psychology isn't necessarily a discipline unique to any one culture or any one society or even one time frame. For example, um one prominent uh thinker um from thousands of years ago was a um Egyptian uh doctor named Imoteep. And he was really interested again in finding these links between mental and physical health actually um beginning to develop ways of treating the mind, right? Treating things like depression or negative emotions or anxiety in order to actually promote physical healing. Another example would be the sage Patan Jali who was an Indian scholar who really was the one that first developed a lot of these um more solid meditative practices and put them into written form to disperse um throughout the subcontinent and throughout the world. really bringing awareness to how self-awareness and concentration and our own uh emotional regulation can actually provide us with more mental clarity and a better life as a whole. During the Islamic Golden Age, um a philosopher and physician named Iben Cena um really began to develop the first uh manual for diagnosing mental disorders. um actually investigating these patterns between um different memory um different emotional and different mental illnesses in order to compose um the first sort of clinical guide to early psychology. During the European Enlightenment, John Lockach was a thinker who really argued that we were a blank slate or we were born as this being that is then impressed upon based on our own lived and learned experiences which actually then forms our personality, how we want to behave. In other words, we're not born who we are, but rather we are born and then who we are is informed based on what we experience, how we're treated, who we interact with, etc. However, all of these um early thinkers were very much philosophers and psychology really didn't begin to develop as a science until about the late 19th century. So, that's a fairly new phenomenon. when a psychologist um a German psychologist William Vaunt um began to actually apply the welldeveloped and well-known scientific method to study um human behavior, human emotion and human thought. In other words, he applied the scientific method that was used in other fields like biology or chemistry or physics to psychology. So V is really known as the father of experimental psychology and he was the one that really formally separated psychology as a science versus a philosophy. So thus in the modern day psychology has kind of become distinct from these early um philosophical investigations not because of the content of the subject right a lot of the questions that we're seeking to answer today are the same ones that many of these early thinkers sought to answer themselves but rather what separates us isn't this content but instead the approaches that we utilize in order to answer these questions. So this has moved away from more uh reason um based approaches or speculation about these phenomenon to actually applying the scientific method and um utilizing scientific observation to study these phenomena. So what I want to talk about now is a particular branch of philosophy that was often utilized by these early thinkers and that is epistemology which is essentially the branch of philosophy that is concerned with studying knowledge. This is the branch of philosophy that sort of tries to answer that question that I talked about earlier. How do we actually know what we claim to know or what we think we know? So there are many different approaches to this. The first one that I want to go over is the um appeal to authority approach. And this is essentially a view that something may be true due to the insistence by an authority figure or someone that we respect with keeping that knowledge. So for example, maybe a student will believe that stress causes ulcers because a professor mentioned this in class, right? It might make sense because that person might not have any experience with stress causing ulcers themselves um or among anyone they know. But rather a professor is probably a pretty smart person, right? They went to a lot of school. They hold a pretty prestigious position. So if they say it's true, they're a study person and they probably know more. though I will listen to them and believe what they say that stress causes ulcers. Now this can be a strength because often it can be helpful in cases where we lack expertise. Right? We sort of utilize this appeal to authority um approach very often. Right? If you feel sick or if you're injured, you go to a doctor, someone that knows more about this phenomenon than you do, and you probably will listen to what they have to say. Um, you'll follow their treatment. You'll do what they say you should do. However, this might not always be advantageous because authority figures can be wrong, they can be biased, or they can rely on outdated information. Right? A professor or a doctor may be very wellstied, but they're still human and as such they are vulnerable to many of the um cognitive biases that we as humans have. Or they could rely on outdated information. Right? If a doctor went to medical school 50 years ago and they've been practicing in the interim, well, medical um advances have probably developed since then. And if they haven't done a good job at keeping up to date with those, they might not necessarily be in line with the current medical opinion even though they might have this sense of authority about them. Another common approach is our own intuition, which is essentially the view that something is true because it feels so or seems obvious. So, for example, maybe you assume someone is anxious because you notice that they're fidgeting a lot or they're avoiding eye contact, right? You can't see in someone's head. You can't see directly how they're feeling, if it's anxious or happy, but we can observe their behavior and we can sort of naturally associate what we observe with a particular claim. Right? If we notice that someone is anxious, it's probably because we're observing the behavioral manifestations of that anxiety, like avoiding eye contact or fidgeting. And as such, our own intuition might lead us to think this person is anxious. So the strength about this is that it's often very fast, right? Pretty much instantaneous, and it's effortless, which makes it really astute for quick judgments, right? I can just tell someone's anxious because I can observe these symptoms of anxiety. However, there is a major weakness to our intuition and that's that this can easily be bi um influenced by our own biases or misinterpretation. Right? I could be biased and just say this is how I understand anxiety even though it could be something else. Right? I could be misinterpreting this situation. Maybe they're fidgeting because they really have to use the restroom or they're running late to another appointment and as such they're not really anxious necessarily. They're just manifesting this uh behavior that I then misinterpret. So my intuition can often be wrong. So these two approaches, authority and intuition are often kind of looked down upon because they're not very consistent and there's a lot of room for error. Instead, within current epistemology, there are two predominant positions or approaches um that have really persisted and are utilized today. The first is rationalism, which is essentially the view that knowledge comes primarily through our own reasoning or logical thinking. So, what does that mean? Well, for example, let's say that I know that trauma influences memory and PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder is often a response to trauma. Thus, it might not necessarily be unfair to make the claim that PTSD impacts memory. See what I kind of did there? I am basing my argument and my understanding of a topic based on very straightforward, very logical claims. in order to justify that belief. So the strength of this is that this approach can be really useful for generating theories and guessing about non-estable phenomena. Right? Given um psychologists often study internal experiences which aren't necessarily things we can directly observe. Using this rationalistic approach can be really helpful for helping us to understand aspects of this. However, the weakness is that conclusions are only as valid and reliable as the assumptions they are based on. Or in other words, if I'm making this sort of logical argument, if even one of these assumptions or one of these claims in this argument are wrong, then the whole thing kind of falls apart. Right? Going back to this example, if trauma influences memory, well, let's say that we don't necessarily know trauma influences memory. Then if PTSD is a response to trauma, which let's say that is accurate, then the claim that PTSD should impact memory kind of falls apart because one of these claims that got me from point A to point B to point C isn't necessarily correct. So we can often misunderstand or misinterpret phenomena based on our own unjustifiable claims. The final branch of epistemology that I want to discuss is probably the most important one and it's the one I really want you to pay attention to because it will be the emphasis of our class and that is empiricism which is the view that knowledge comes from our own sensory experiences and observation. So for example, let's say that we know that sleep deprivation reduces attention. Why do we know that? Well, let's say that I got two people. One of them got a full night's rest, right? They slept eight to nine hours and the other person pulled an allnighter because they were working on an assignment or they were spending time with friends or they were doing housework, whatever. The point is that one of them is well rested and the other is quite tired. Now, let's say I chose these two individuals because they score roughly the same on a cognitive performance exam, which essentially measures attention. Well, if I bring the two of them in after one got that full night's rest and one um pulled an allnighter and is tired and I had them take this cognitive test, I could actually directly observe that impact, right? I could observe if one scores higher and the other scores lower. So the strength of this is that claims are grounded in directly observable, measurable and replicatable data. Right? I can directly observe if someone is sleeping or if they are not sleeping. I can directly measure um attention based on that cognitive uh that validated cognitive test. And I can even replicate this because maybe there's just an outlier between these two. So I could get maybe 10 people, have five of them get a full night's rest and five of them um pull an allnighter and be tired and have all of them take that cognitive test. And again, look at these measurable differences based on um measurable differences in cognitive performance or in attention based on observed tiredness or well-restedness. And it's replicatable. So, I can keep doing this over and over again to see if I get the same result. And as a result of utilizing these methods, it's pretty fair then to make this claim that sleep deprivation reduces attention. if I am consistently seeing um decreases in a measurable phenomena based on an observed criterion. However, what are the weaknesses of this? Well, these data can be incomplete or biased. Right? Let's go back to that first example where we have one person who gets a good night's sleep and one person who doesn't get any sleep. Well, maybe there's other factors that are happening that I didn't consider, right? Maybe that person um that stayed up all night also didn't eat because they were really busy. Well, then how do I know that it's not lack of food that's causing that? Or it could be biased. Maybe that cognitive test isn't actually a very good way of measuring attention, right? Attention's pretty complex and maybe you can't actually observe how um attentive someone is based on how they do on aids test. So what I really want to emphasize about epistemology is that this is a field that has existed for thousands of years and even today there are competing approaches which have been utilized really since the beginning and each one has a strength and a weakness. So often the best approach is to really try to balance these, right? See if a claim um makes sense using both an epistem um an empirical and a rationalistic um explanation. So now that we've covered epistemology and the philosophy that underlies um psychology, what I now want to talk about is what specifically makes psychology a science. Well, often um people may assume that psychology isn't a real science because it measures internal and nondirectly observable phenomena. Right? With that empirical approach we just talked about, how can we actually observe attention when empiricism is based around observation? And as such, many times people might not view psychology as being as scientific as other fields like biology, chemistry or physics. But what I really want to emphasize is that a science is not dictated by the phenomena in which it studies. Right? It doesn't matter if you're studying motion or atoms or cells or say how extroverted someone is. That doesn't matter. Rather, what makes a science a science is the specific methods in which we use to study them. And in particular, the method that defines a science from other uh more epistemological um approaches is the use of the scientific method, which is a systematic process for collecting and evaluating evidence to test ideas and answer questions. Now, I don't want to get into this in too much detail because we're going to do an indepth look at the scientific method, what it is, how it works next week, but you can see from this little figure I have that there's really a solid way of coming to understand a phenomenon, which I'm not going to break down today because we're going to talk about it next week. But I want to flush this out briefly because it will be important for understanding some of the topics that we'll discuss later on in this lecture. And specifically, I want to illustrate what the scientific method is through an example. Utilizing the scientific method, a researcher might set up a really carefully controlled experiment where they do their very best to control for all external variables that might influence a situation. Right? We want to make sure all of our participants are well-rested. We want to make sure that they um ate. We want to make sure that they're feeling happy or within a similar emotional state. And then we might add a specific factor that causes different groups to differ, right? Maybe how well mindfulness can actually reduce anxiety. So, I'll have some people in my study who I um carefully controlled for beforehand and put them through a mindfulness intervention, right? Maybe I give them an hour um therapeutic lesson on how to meditate a little bit and be more aware of their surroundings to help them relax. And the other group, I don't really do anything. I just kind of let them uh be who they are naturally. And then what I might do is measure anxiety between these two groups. And when I measure anxiety, I can look at differences in how they reported anxiety with the claim then being that if one group differed from the other in one way, they received that mindfulness intervention while the other one didn't and they say have either higher or lower anxiety than the other group. Well, it's probably not an unfair claim to make that this mindfulness intervention had an impact on anxiety levels. So what's the strength of this? Well, it's objective, it's highly rec um replicatable, and it allows for the gradual accumulation of reliable knowledge um over time. So it's objective because I am carefully controlling for everything to the best of my ability. It's replicatable because I could do the exact same thing with different groups of people again and again and again to see if I can get the same result. And there's a gradual accumulation of reliable knowledge because unlike with rationalism um or empiricism, we're not necessarily relying only on what we perceive, but rather we're using objective measures that can then be published and shared with others so that they can actually build upon my knowledge. Let's say that I found that mindfulness reduced anxiety. Well, another researcher could actually read what I did and maybe modify in one way. We know that mindfulness reduces anxiety, but maybe this other therapeutic technique is actually better at reducing anxiety than this mindfulness intervention. And with time, there's sort of this collective, more gradual understanding of the phenomena that we're interested in. However, there are also weaknesses to this. Specifically, this is often a very slow process to actually control everything, to set things up, to write and publish. And in cases where we're not accurately measuring, not all questions can be answered, right? It's impossible for me to see in inside someone's head. I can't see how anxious they are directly. Instead, what I might have to do is try to come up with some way to assess how they're feeling, which may or may not actually um measure anxiety in a valid way. Additionally, not all questions can be answered because especially in psychology where we're studying internal phenomena, oftentimes it can be incredibly difficult to actually um objectively measure again what is in someone's head. So, we might not be able to utilize the scientific method to directly study it. Now, next week we're going to go into a lot more detail about the scientific method. But what I want to emphasize today is really the three considerations that make up the scientific method and what distinguishes this from other branches of epistemology. So the first consideration of science and the scientific method is the use of systematic empiricism. Now this is essentially the process of acquiring knowledge through carefully structured and recorded observations. So what does that mean? Well, recall that we actually discussed what empiricism is. Essentially, it's learning through observation. Actually witnessing something occur and basing my understanding of the phenomena based on what I observed. However, with systematic empiricism, this is also systematic, which essentially refers to observations that are carefully and consistently planned, measured, and analyzed. So in other words, I'm not just making an observation and coming to an understanding based on what I observe, but rather I am coming up with specific methods or specific techniques of measuring an observational phenomena directly in a valid way. So it's not just what I'm perceiving, but it's what everyone can perceive um it using a sort of similar um framework. So I'm not observing anxiety, for example, but rather I'm coming up with a standard way of understanding anxiety that everyone has rather than relying on my own subjective understanding of it. So systematic empiricism is thus essentially acquiring knowledge through carefully structured observation or systematic um ways of engaging in empirical thinking. So this can often help us from relying on our own stereotypes, our own assumptions or our own personal biases. As I mentioned, I probably have an understanding of what anxiety is. And that may or may not be similar or identical to um what you or another person might understand as anxiety, right? I have my own understanding of it. So with systematic empiricism, we're getting rid of that um personal bias. So another example, maybe I believe that exposure to consistent sunlight will improve mood. Right? That's just a assumption that I personally make based on my own subjective experience because whenever it's sunny out or in the summertime, I often feel a little bit better. However, notice that that's just based on my own experience and instead utilizing systematic empiricism to kind of study this phenomena. I will consistently, right? So, in a similar format, I'm not necessarily letting any extrrenuous circumstances influence my mood. I'm making sure that I consistently um am well rested, consistently eaten, consistently in a starting uh or a similar base starting mood. and we'll expose not just myself but many many people to sunlight to see if maybe this is a consistent phenomena across lots of people or if it's specific to just me. And what I will do is objectively observe and analyze data. So I'm going to come up with a standardized way that each person, myself and others will be exposed to sunlight, right? the same amount of time, the same temperature, the same location, and analyze this data in a similar way. We're all going to assess our mood using the same scale, and I'll analyze it for these differences. So, notice what I'm doing. I'm engaging in empirical thinking, right? I am basing my claims off of observable phenomena, but I'm doing this in a systematic way. So, we're ensuring consistency across all of our results. So what I want to emphasize about systematic empiricism is that in science we don't ever guess and we don't ever rely on our own intuition or our own authority um or the authority of others. But rather what we always base our claims on is observations that are made intentionally and methodologically. That systematic empirical approach. The next consideration of what distinguishes a science is the use of an empirical question. So an empirical question is essentially the questions that scientists seek to answer um which are clearly answerable solely through direct observation and measurement. Notice again we're talking about the nature of empiricism here which is observational phenomena with questions only being asked about phenomena that we can directly observe. So thus an empirical question must first be based um only or the answer to it can only be based in observable and measurable data but also it has to be falsifiable or in other words the answer to that question kind of has to be a yes or no that is supported by empirical evidence. So for example, a good example of an empirical question would be does or do those experiencing sleep deprivation experience decreased attentional capacity in class? We'll notice here that this is first answerable through observable and measurable data. I can observe if someone is experiencing sleep deprivation versus if someone is not based on the amount of sleep they're getting and maybe some other symptoms of sleep deprivation. And we can um collect data in a measurable way, right? I could say measure attention in a directly measurable way. I could observe if they're sort of daydreaming. I could observe if they're maybe not quite paying attention and just playing a video game or I could observe um say attentional capacity through a particular assessment like that cognitive uh test that we discussed earlier. But notice also that this question is falsifiable. In other words, based on my observations, I can either say that sleep deprivation does reduce um attentional capacity or it doesn't and there's no real difference. This is opposed to maybe a non-empirical question, which is, is it morally wrong to sleep during class? Notice I can't necessarily um observe or measure this in any way, right? Morality is a really complex topic that varies for each of us. So there's no way I can systematically measure that. And also it's not falsifiable. I mean, we could sit here and have a debate for hours about if it's morally wrong to sleep during class. Someone might argue that if you're in class, it's your job as a student to pay attention so that you can improve um in the area of expertise that you are studying. Or someone could argue that you don't necessarily know your uh that person's life experience. Maybe they were up all night taking care of a sick relative and as such they're just too tired to pay attention in class that day and might fall asleep as a result. This is not observable or answerable through observable um and measurable data and it's not falsifiable. So science only focuses on questions that we can test directly using systematic empiricism and we never rely on our own personal opinions, values or beliefs. So the last consideration of science is the utilization of public knowledge which essentially means that scientific knowledge is shared openly. It allows for other people to evaluate, replicate and build on our findings. So unlike with other certain branches of epistemology where we may just try to understand a phenomena based on say what we hear from an authority figure or our own intuition from what we are observing. We in science always always always share our findings. These uh results are not for us. They are for the entire world for the uh collective knowledge of mankind. So in addition to this, scientists in in addition to sharing their findings also acknowledge that their methods may not be perfect. And especially in psychology where we are studying um internal phenomena or uh more subjective behavioral phenomena than maybe certain other scientists study. We acknowledge that our methods may be flawed and as such replication may be necessary in order to increase the validity of these findings. Right? Maybe it's not enough to make an assumption that um sleep deprivation causes attentional um deficits if I just um assess one person who slept a lot and one person that didn't sleep at all. Instead, maybe a scientist would read that study and say, "Yeah, but maybe there was some individual differences there." Right? Different people need different amounts of sleep. Maybe there were other factors that influenced. I want to replicate that study and maybe do something a little bit different. And this is a way that we can correct our findings um as new phenomena are introduced or as our collective knowledge increases. Now I want to talk about why this is so important through a very um complex and unfortunate situation that has kind of plagued the scientific community as a whole but particularly psychology um which is the replication crisis. So this is essentially a current crisis of failed replication of findings within the scientific community. In other words, there were a lot of studies that were conducted and published that made some claims that were backed by um evidence gathered through systematic empirical methods. However, these were never replicated. And when they were replicated, we're finding that a lot of the things we once thought were true actually might not be. And as such, a lot of the um theories and claims that are built upon those also kind of fall apart. So in psychology right now, we're really putting in a lot of emphasis to trying to replicate these findings of previous studies so that we can actually know for certain or reasonable with reasonable certainty um that the claims we're making are true. So as a result of this, we are trying to not only replicate existing studies but also add an element of transparency to the public knowledge that we share, right? We're adding extra attention into specifically detailing the methods in case someone else comes along and wants to replicate or even opening up about the data we have so that maybe someone with a little bit more statistical knowledge can do some other tests to improve on the claims that you're making. So what I really want to emphasize about public knowledge is that our confidence in scientific findings are only as good as the um replicatable uh replicatability of them. And as such transparency and teamwork as a scientific community are really important for helping us to understand the phenomena that we're interested in. thus sharing um our findings gathered through systematic empirical methods in order to answer an empirical question and then disperse it into public knowledge is what makes science um what it is. Now there are many fields that sort of portray themselves as a science even though they might not necessarily be one. And a good way to differentiate or tell if something is a science versus a pseudocience or not a science is to go back and look at those three considerations of science and ask if that field actually answers um or accurately portrays all of those. So what is a pseudocience then? Well, a pseudocience is any field that has claims that seem to appear scientific due to the use of maybe scientific sounding language or methods or ideas or or claimed methods or ideas but ultimately lack those three key features or considerations of real science. So an example of a pseudocience is bio-ythms, which is essentially the belief that there are certain physical, emotional, and intellectual abilities that we all have that sort of follow these fixed biological cycles. Or in other words, certain people might be extra emotional on the 14th of August versus the 19th just based on these natural biological cycles um that exist. Well, if you delve into the um field of bio-ythms, you'll notice that it doesn't really follow any of those three considerations of real science. For example, bioythm charts often lack in using systematic empirical methods, right? They often base their predictions off of your birth date without actually collecting any directly observable data um gathered through systematic means to study this phenomenon and instead it's just kind of based on these rough predictions not necessarily conducted in a experimental setting. It's just observed which always limits is or is always limiting because of our own biases. Bio-ythms also fail to utilize empirical questions. For example, the claim you will have low um emotional energy today is ultimately vague, right? It can't necessarily be directly measured. Um because low energy or low emotional energy isn't really um um validly defined or explained. It's just something that we might have our own perception of but might differ between people, right? low energy um by my definition might differ from yours. And this is also unfalsifiable because there's no clear way to test or disprove this claim. And lastly, it fails to really um contribute its findings and its methods to public knowledge. Right? Supporters of bio-ythms often make predictions, but they rarely openly share their data, what they're using to make these claims, or the methods that they utilize to collect this data, which ultimately makes it impossible to replicate. It's just kind of a take my word for it situation. So, even though bioythms might use a lot of um scientific sounding language, right, you hear bio-ythm and you kind of think, oh, that kind of makes sense, right? I am a biological um organism. Maybe there are certain cycles um that exist naturally but this is still not a science because it uh fails um to um consider these three considerations of science. So some other common pseudociences that exist include things like astrology, psychic powers, um graphology, numerology, etc. And pseudociences can be kind of dangerous, right? Sometimes they're relatively harmless. Like astrology oftentimes can be just a little fun activity that you might look into, right? But these can also cause um real harm because it might mislead people. Um for example, with bio-ythms, you might just naturally believe that, oh, it's the 14th of August. I'm going to feel down today. And as a result, even though you might not have any valid reason to feel sad or depressed, you might just naturally think that you should be and as such act in a way that seems like you're sad or depressing or actually alter your own emotional state because you believe you're supposed to be. So it's always important to um distinguish between a pseudocience and a science and base your understanding of a phenomena based on if it is a real science rather than a pseudocience. Another um key thing to distinguish between um a science is the use of common sense. And this is particularly dangerous within psychology because we as humans often might have a harder time objectively observing um certain behaviors or thoughts or feelings because these are phenomena that we have a lot of personal experience with. Right? If you're a biologist, you're probably not thinking at dinner with um your friends or with your family about your cellular structure or maybe the digestive process um that you're engaging in as you're eating that uh meal. Or if you're a physicist, when you're running or going on a morning jog, you're probably not running all these calculations in your head um trying to predict um your motion versus air flow or resistance or anything like that. But we as humans always on the daily basis have experiences with our own internal feelings, our own um logical uh or cognitive processes that inform our thoughts, our own behaviors or how we act. And as such, it can be a lot harder to sort of break away our own biases and our own understanding, thus our common sense to understanding certain phenomena based on our own experiences versus actually applying the scientific method to study them in an objective way. And as a result of this common use of uh common sense um a sort of offbranch of psychology um that isn't recognized but sort of exists in a lot of um online communities and in a lot of um communities that might not be as well-versed with the methods utilized by psychology is folk psychology which is essentially basing what we understand about psych uh psychological principles based on our own intuitive beliefs that we told about human behaviors. Now, sometimes these can be accurate, right? Maybe my own experience about being tired or skipping a night's sleep um might actually um impact my own attention the next day. And that's fine, right? We talked about within epistemology um the use of the of our own intuition to understand a phenomena. But what's important to note is that I should then study this phenomena not based on my own intuition but rather using the scientific method in systematic empiricism. So for example a claim within folk psychology might be letting anger out helps to reduce it because in my own experience if I experience frustration it might feel good if I just vent for 20 minutes and after I vent I'll feel better. This might be based on my own true experience, though in reality the opposite is actually true. And this was demonstrated through a lot of scientific literature um based on Bushman in 2002 that ultimately um disproved this hypothesis even though many people might feel that way on their own. So often our own psychological biases or our own biases to our own intuition that we use to um sort of make these snap judgments about what we expect to see about certain psychological principles um can distort our common sense. So some of these biases include heruristics which are sort of these mental shortcuts that we make to save time but reduce accuracy. So, for example, assuming someone who is quiet in class isn't interested in the topic, maybe. Or maybe they're just a little tired. Maybe they're really diligent about taking notes. Notice that this mental shortcut that I took, this sort of jumping to an instant conclusion can reduce my accuracy of actually understanding the phenomena. There's also confirmation bias which essentially states that we are more likely to notice things that support what we already believe. For example, we might believe that multitasking improves productivity because when I'm multitasking, I am making progress on a lot of different things. Maybe I clean my house a bit. Maybe I answered some emails. Maybe I worked on my essay a little bit. Seems like I'm really productive, right? But notice that you probably only base that claim off of the times that you directly noticed how productive you were. Maybe another time you were trying to clean your house while writing an essay and you were getting really anxious and did a really poor job on both. But you still might believe that you're more productive based on these times that confirm this belief that I already have. So we notice what we want to notice essentially. And lastly is wishful thinking, which is arguably the most dangerous of all of them, which essentially states that we believe what we want to be true. For example, believing that a new study method will result in an A because it seems promising. If you scroll online or on social media, you'll probably see all these ads for um different classes that might help you get rich because they promote um you know well uh founded stock trades or might cure this one condition that you might have. Well, you might be more inclined to believe it because you want that to be true, right? Maybe you're more inclined to believe this stock trading um strategy is really good because I want to be rich and as such I'm going to follow it. Or if I'm in a lot of pain, I might seek out this new medication just because I saw this ad that said it's going to help cure me and I could get back to my life. So all of these are dangerous um and sort of undermine again this uh scientific method because we base our own experiences um and sort of infuse them into our own way of understanding a phenomenon. So the scientific method sort of helps to eliminate this because again it's all based in objectivity and replicatability. So, how do we protect ourselves from these sort of cognitive traps? There's a lot of different approaches to this. The one that I would recommend is scientific skepticism. So, being human, we as psychologists, even if you are extremely well-trained, maybe have a PhD or a SID, are always prone to our own biases and assumptions as we just um discussed. However, by utilizing a more skeptic approach to what we think we know, this can actually help us to protect against certain errors that we might make in our own intuition. Um, resisting certain misleading claims that might sway us. So, scientific skepticism is essentially a thoughtful and questioning attitude that involves seeking evidence before accepting a claim is true. I'm not basing my understanding on a of a phenomena on my own experience. Rather, I'm basing it off of what I um the data that I gather utilizing the scientific method. So, this isn't necessarily um to be clear about um doubting everything, right? Maybe my own experience, my own intuition actually is accurate, but rather it's about pausing and sort of asking ourselves, is my own experience with this really enough for me to understand this phenomena in its totality? Instead, maybe I'd like to consider some alternatives, right? Maybe there's a particular method that I could use to actually answer this uh question that I might have and gather a more definitive proof. So for example, maybe I have this belief that giving children an allowance teaches financial responsibility, right? Makes a lot of logical sense if from an early age they learn that they have this strict budget and based on what they want, they have to sort of engage in certain decisions in order to get what they want. So some might automatically assume this is true based on their own experience. But a scientific skeptic might ask, is there actually any evidence or existing research that supports this claim? Or am I just understanding this phenomena based on what I have observed and experienced? Could there maybe be equally possible alternative outcomes? For example, maybe kids that um are given a standardized allowance come from more high SCES backgrounds um that can actually afford to give children um a standardized allowance. And maybe social economic status is an alternative explanation. Is there an alternative motive someone might have for stating this? Maybe a toy company puts out an ad that says, "Hey, give your kids some money so that you can teach them uh financial responsibility." when in reality they probably know that kids are going to spend that money on some of their products. As such, they benefit. So, psychologists accept that not every question may have a clear or immediate answer like you might get using your own intuition. But we also know that um knowing some or not knowing something isn't necessarily a failure. Rather, it's actually an opportunity because there's a question out there that we don't have an answer to. And by engaging with the scientific method, we can actually advance our own understanding as a species through investigation. So science ultimately provides us with a structured way to move from being curious about a particular phenomena to actually understanding it in a more objective way. And as such we in as psychologists um and as scientists at large ultimately engage with the scientific method because of four key reasons which are the goals of science. So the first goal of science is to describe or in other words we want to carefully observe and document what specifically a thought, feeling or behavior of interest is. Right? Take anxiety for example. Well, anxiety is an internal phenomena characterized by maybe some um external behaviors like as we discussed earlier avoiding eye contact, maybe fidgeting, maybe um a little bit of perspiration. So, if I'm studying anxiety, I can't necessarily just say I'm observing anxious behavior. Maybe I'll say I am observing the frequency of symptoms of anxiety, right? and my participants, I'm going to observe if they're fidgeting. I'm going to observe if they're avoiding eye contact. I'm going to observe if they're persspiring a bit. So ultimately with describing, there are two key parts. The first is to define or essentially describe what something is, right? We have an exact definition of schizophrenia. We have an exact definition of anxiety, an exact definition of depression which you can essentially look up in the DSM5. But also it's to categorize. So we are also trying to in addition define say particular psychological phenomena based on observable symptoms um or experiences or behaviors. We are also trying to identify subtypes or groupings within the concept because oftent times this phenomenon that we're studying are far more complex than just anxiety or depression or schizophrenia. Right? For example, the DSM5 also considers um different sort of typings or subgroups of schizophrenia as well. So how do we actually do this in psychology? Well, there's two real approaches. The first is the nomiathetic. And in this approach, we essentially focus on describing a concept based on its most common um observable characters or characteristics in a general sense. So for example, I might categorize my understanding of schizophrenia based on the directly observable symptoms. Maybe I'll look for auditory or visual hallucinations. Maybe I'll look for disorganized speech. And then my understanding of schizophrenia is composed of these common patterns. So that is how I form my understanding based on similar patterns of directly observable phenomena. However, the other one is the ideographic approach which essentially focuses only on describing a specific instance or case of something. Right? I can broadly categorize what schizophrenia is across say thousands of different people. But in the end, while it is important to have that broad definition and understanding um just for standardization purposes, it's important to note that each person who might have schizophrenia is a unique individual and the symptoms might manifest differently um for each person. So I might look at a specific um individual who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and try to note their specific experiences. What symptoms are the hardest to manage? What symptoms seem to be less common or maybe non-existent at all? What about their own life and their own experiences inform the prevalence of these symptoms? So, what I'm talking about here is a concept that we're going to talk about in a lot of detail later on, but it is what we call a psychological construct, which is essentially an abstract concept defined by researchers to study an aspect of the human experience. So for example, we have certain understandings of personality, right? I can describe someone as extroverted or introverted. I can describe someone as being high in conscientiousness or low in conscientiousness. But in the end, these aren't phenomena that actually exist. Like say in other scientists um or in other sciences, we can directly observe a cell can't directly observe extraversion. Instead, we sort of come to this understanding of what extraversion is based on a particular description of it. I might describe extroversion as how outwardly social um or socially engaged and assertive a particular individual is when around others or when in the presence of a social situation. And based on that description of a psychological construct, which is extraversion, I can then begin to understand how that particular definition or description can actually be utilized um and studied in different situations to actually predict how extraversion might affect some other concepts of interest. So speaking of prediction, the next goal of science is to predict. In other words, we seek to identify patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors so that we can anticipate these in the future. So this goal is specifically interested in looking at the relationship between two or more constructs of interest. And based on say one level or one outcome in one of those um phenomena, I can actually predict maybe how someone will act in another. Take extraversion for an example. Well, if I can assess someone as being highly extroverted and I also have some definition of social anxiety, maybe I'll predict that higher extraversion results in lower social anxiety in particular situations. So, it's important to note that just because two constructs are related, however, this doesn't necessarily mean that one causes another. So for example, let's say that I'm interested in seeing if self-esteem predicts GPA. And I might hypothesize or believe just initially that as self-esteem goes up or how someone's self-worth goes up um GPA will also go up. But what is causing the other? Maybe as someone gets more confident in their own abilities, they actually do better on tests and assignments and as such their GPA will increase. But maybe as someone's GPA just goes up, right? Maybe they're doing really well in their classes this semester, that will also increase their own self uh sense of self-worth. So even though we're sort of developing this association between two variables, um and we're trying to predict which one causes the other, this isn't often the case. Another example might be the association between stress and GPA, right? I might hypothesize that as stress goes up, GPA goes down. But again, which one is causing the other? Maybe if someone's really stressed, they're not going to do as well on their assignments or a particular exam because they're too anxious to really focus on it. Or maybe if your GPA is dropping really rapidly, maybe you're having a really tough semester, this will actually increase how stressed you are. So in psychology, we can do our best to predict phenomena, but we might also have to engage in some way of actually explaining these predictions, which leads us to the third goal of science, which is to explain the phenomena we're studying, which essentially involves discovering the underlying causes or mechanisms behind our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. So often times once we understand that there is a relationship say we know that as self-esteem goes up GPA also goes up or as stress increases GPA will go down. We now want to know why there's a relationship right we want to actually know which variable is leading to the other one. If self-esteem is causing increased GPA or if higher GPA is causing higher self-esteem. So what we're trying to do here is co establish causality or essentially which variable or which phenomena is causing the other one. So, for example, with self-esteem and GPA, again, we can directly maybe manipulate um self-esteem, right? We could put someone through a particular intervention meant to increase their sense of self-worth and see if this affects their GPA, right? Maybe if they go through this intervention, their GPA will go up. Or with stress in GPA, maybe we can actually manipulate GPA in some way, right? We can tell someone that maybe they're failing a class and see if this actually affects their stress levels. So based on the causality assumption or how we explain a particular prediction, this can actually help us to understand which phenomena or which variable is causing another phenomena or another variable. But all of this is really just studying a phenomena that we might be interested in. And the last goal of science is ultimately to create change. Right? Why do we study the things that we do? Yes, it's important to understand them, but ultimately the most important thing is to actually apply our knowledge and utilize it in a way that can benefit us as a society and as a species. So research is ultimately conducted for a specific purpose, right? Often this is to solve a problem or to advance our own knowledge to create change in some way. So for this reason, science is really imperative for our society because we often utilize this manner of thinking, right? the scientific method in order to help us understand and solve certain problems. So, for example, if we say are a college administrator or counselor and we notice that self-esteem um results in higher GPA, well, that's a good um claim to make and understand, right? Okay, it advanced our knowledge, but maybe now we can look at ways to actually increase self-esteem so that students will actually do better academically, right? we're creating positive change. Or with the association between stress and GPA, maybe if we find that stress is leading to um decreased GPA, well, we can look at ways of helping students cope with stress or decrease their stress levels in order again to help them academically. So by trying to um achieve each of these goals to first describe a phenomena, predict its association with other phenomena, explain which phenomena is causing another and based on that observed um causal relationship, try to create some positive change um in society. We're using this knowledge to not only understand more, but also to improve our own um both as individuals and as a society again um our own well-being, perhaps develop new psychological treatments to help others um or understand how we may interact um collectively in order to improve society. So, I kind of touched on this already, but why then do we use scientific research? Well, psychologists use research to move beyond the base assumptions that we might have based on that appeal to authority, that appeal to intuition and try to uncover instead accurate and evidence-based insights about what we are interested in studying in psychology without any of our own personal biases. And specifically, there's sort of two ways that we can apply the scientific method. The first is utilizing basic research, which is essentially just research that we use um or we conduct to expand on the general knowledge that we um on a phenomenon that we're interested in studying, right? We're trying to understand more about the foundational principles of our behavior. So this is often used by experimental psychologists who take the um this these early ideas and conduct research to understand the general principles of them. And this can be done in a laboratory setting, a university setting or a field setting. And often experimental psychologists are really focused um more so on those first three goals of science. to describe, to predict, and to explain um a phenomena. So, an experimental psychologist might try to um define and describe what exactly a negative thought is or what an emotional stress is or what a stressor is. They might then try to predict, right? I can predict if negative thoughts have a relationship with emotional responses. And then I can try to explain, right? I can actually try to develop that causal relationship that if you have negative thoughts, this will cause you to be more reactive emotionally to stressors. So it's primarily um focused, basic research is primarily focused with those first three goals. Applied research on the other hand is much more focused on all four goals of science to define or describe to predict to explain and to create change but particularly emphasizes that fourth one creating positive change. And this is really a research that is conducted solely to solve a real world problem. And this is often utilized within psychological communities more by clinical and counseling psychologists who apply the same methods experimental psychologists do but particularly to treat a specific problem or a specific mental health concern. So for example, a clinical psychologist may choose to assign thought records to a client with the intention of helping them overcome their depressive symptoms. First they're going to describe what exactly a thought record is and what specifically a depressive symptom is. Then they will try to predict understand if there's an association between thought records and depressive symptoms. They'll then try to explain right develop that causal relationship that if you um engage in thought records then you will experience lower co um depressive symptoms. But then lastly, why are they doing this? Not really to understand the phenomena. More so maybe in their own practice to create positive change and say because I observe this phenomena, I am going to actually apply it to my practice in order to help my clients create positive change. So psychology is both a science and a helping profession, right? Sometimes we try to just understand a particular aspect of human behavior. Other times we might try to solve a particular problem. But what they both have in common is that they rely on empirical evidence, particularly systematic empirical evidence rather than our own intuition in order to either understand a topic or to help other people. So whether you are trying to go into psychology in order to be a researcher or maybe to provide therapy or maybe apply psychological principles to other fields like in industrial or organizational psychology, it's really important that you as a psychologist develop scientific fluency in order to both um know how to conduct research but also how to understand the research conducted by other people so that you can become a better psychologist yourself in whatever field you choose. So now that we've introduced um why research matters and what a science is, I want to talk a little bit about the class as a whole. In this class, we are going to be talking about the research process or psychology as a science or as an experimental discipline as a whole. Specifically, we're going to talk about the specific techniques or methods that we might engage in, the different study designs, the different analysis procedures. We might talk about the tools that we utilize as psychologists. How do we actually know what we're measuring is accurate? And we're also going to talk about the ethical considerations which are incredibly important given we as psychologists often work with other people and oftent times particularly in certain fields like social and clinical psychology might be studying phenomena that can be harmful to a participant um in our study. But we're going to focus on that throughout the entirety of the semester in more depth. Next week, we're going to continue our discussion on psychology as a science by delving into the scientific method in detail, talking about the exact steps that we utilize. And then going forward from there, we'll talk about many of the um particular methods and analyses that can be applied to the scientific method in order to help us understand the phenomena that we seek to understand. I hope you all have a wonderful day and I look forward to continuing this discussion next week.