Hi
On Tue, 27 Apr 1999, Dr. Kristina Lewis wrote:
> I teach History of Psychology to our senior psychology majors--it is
> required as a "capstone" class. At the beginning of the semester we talk
> about what it means to say that psychology is a science, and we talk about
> their conceptions of science and why they might or might not believe that
> psych is a science. We read several articles on philosophy of science,
> talked about determinism, the mind/body problem, and then did a semester of
> history during which I continuously pointed out how psychology worked to
> establish itself as an empirical fied.
>
> Well, guess what? Yesterday, last class, I brought up the question again.
> Most of the students believe that psychology isn't "really a science"
> because "humans are too variable and you can't ever really understand what
> causes behavior" and "humans have too many choices". So what are we doing
> here folks? I feel like everthing I've said has rolled off their backs ( I
> also teach child development, in which I emphasize empiricism/scientific
> approach).
>
> If we can't convince psych majors that psychology is a science, is there any
> hope of convincing the world at large?
I think there is a strong lesson in this for all of us committed
to scientific psychology. Instilling that commitment in our
students (and our colleagues) is an _extremely_ challenging task.
There are numerous barriers to accepting a scientific approach to
human behavior and experience, and we need to ask seriously
whether our standard approaches are adequate to overcome those
barriers. In addition to traditional descriptions of
psychological science (i.e., its methods and findings), we may
need to develop a repertoire of responses that will undermine
some of the barriers.
The "people are too complex" position might be addressed, for
example, by observing that even the natural sciences may not
predict individual behavior well (e.g., which plant will have a
certain colour of leaves, which specific person will die of
cancer). Rather, science is concerned with observing and
explaining regularities in nature that apply probabilistically to
individual entities. Such regularities do allow us to use
psychology for individual and societal good (e.g., to use a
therapy that has the highest probability of success, to adopt
preventive practices that reduce the incidence of violence in the
population).
The "free will" position that underlies "people have too much
choice" might be more challenging. Perhaps a probabilistic
argument might work here as well. That is, one can predict the
likelihood that certain people will make certain choices (e.g.,
to drop out of school).
Does anyone know of any research and speculation about specific
cognitive and personality barriers to adoption of a scientific
approach to psychology?
Best wishes
Jim
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James M. Clark (204) 786-9313
Department of Psychology (204) 774-4134 Fax
University of Winnipeg 4L02A
Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
CANADA http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~clark
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