The following study showed that social science majors gain better
statistical and methodological reasoning skills than natural science majors.
A longitudinal study of the effects of undergraduate training on
reasoning.
Lehman,-Darrin-R.; Nisbett,-Richard-E.
Developmental-Psychology.1990 Nov; Vol 26(6): 952-960.
The effects of undergraduate training in the natural sciences,
humanities, and social sciences on inductive reasoning requiring the use of
statistical and methodological principles and on reasoning about problems in
conditional logic were examined. Social science training produced large
effects on statistical and methodological reasoning, whereas natural
sciences and humanities training produced smaller, but still marginally
significant, effects. Natural science and humanities training produced large
effects on ability to reason about problems in conditional logic, whereas
social science training did not. The improvement in conditional reasoning
among natural science students appears to be due, in large part, to
knowledge gained in mathematics courses. The results indicate that
inferential rule systems, as taught by various fields, can affect reasoning
about a wide range of problems. The findings lend support to a version of
the premodern formal discipline hypothesis.
Marty Bourgeois
University of Wyoming
> I hesitate to bring this up as I do not have a reference, but I recall a
> study a number of years ago that concluded that psychology courses did the
>
> best job of teaching the scientific method, better than the more accepted
> sciences.
>
> Jeff Nagelbush
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Ferris State University
>
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