| | Understanding Ourselves and Our Universe: How Psychology Can Turn the "Mysteries of Human Nature" into Useful Tools for Self Improvement and Success in Life |
| Part 1: An introduction to Scientific Psychology |
| An old song says, "Oh sweet mystery of life, at last I've found you." If true, that was one fortunate songwriter! For throughout the long history of our species, humans have naturally sought answers to the mysteries in their lives -- both sweet and sour -- but, until quite recently, without much success. In this Introductory Module, we will first explain what we mean by scientific psychology ("SciPsy"), what alternative approaches have been used to try to understand human psychology (and with what success), and why scientific methods have proven best. After previewing the basic principles of "SciPsy", we'll end this module by introducing some scientific laws and principles that you can use to understand and answer questions about human psychology (with each subsequent Module providing even better answers, in ever greater depth and breadth). In a practical sense, all people are students of psychology, since understanding why we think, feel, and act as we do is an integral part of developing into successful adults. But for over 99% of the history of humankind, there was no real science of human psychology; thus, valid insights into the true causes for human nature were rare. From the first time millions of years ago that a humanoid thought, "Why did I [or someone else] do that?" or "...think that?" or "...feel that way?" -- humans have tried to understand themselves and others, but up until the late 19th and 20th centuries ; except the insight of Buddha's insight during his enlightenment experience, and other such insights in ancient Greek philosophers, Chines under Confucis, Iranian Zorothasht, ancient Indians as in Vedas and in other ancient and medieval philosophers ; there were very few insights and even in these cases there were poor investigative tools and theories to do so accurately. Despite these two great breakthroughs, it has only been within the last half of the 20th century that truly scientific psychology has taken hold. The previous thousands of years of "unscientific psychology" were marked by what some now call "black box psychology." That is, even after we knew that psychological phenomena were centered in the brain (while ancient texts had located all important psychological functions in the heart), due to powerful technical, social, ethical, religious, and legal constraints we were unable to "see inside" to study the brain directly. It was as if the key object of psychological research was locked away in an inaccessible, unviewable, "black box ", in some dark religious building. Thus, the study of psychology branched into two general research approaches; proto-scientific : (using the objective empirical means then available to slowly build credible evidence of the brain's functions and dysfunctions), and non-scientific: (using primarily subjective means to form hypotheses about the causes and effects of human psychological phenomena). This distinction between scientific and unscientific psychology is vital to our discussuion. A valid and useful understanding of human psychology is primarily a function of the quality of our knowledge, which is in turn primarily a function of the quality of the evidence we have, which in turn is primarily a function of the quality of the methodology used to gather that evidence. There are millions of wrong answers out there, and relatively few right answers! To repeat for emphasis, when it comes to answering key questions about human psychology, the best methods yield the best evidence of the natural principles and laws that govern human psychology. That best evidence -- properly analyzed, interpreted, and formed into theories -- produces the best knowledge and understanding of why humans think, feel, and behave as we do. In the "Maud's drinking" example : first the scientific method operationally defines and measures the quality and quantity of her drinking behaviors. (What does she drink? When? How? How much? What precipitates her drinking? What are the consequences?) This process generates a list of possible causes of Maud's drinking, as well as a list of the possible consequences of that drinking behavior. Second, scientists form causal hypotheses -- based on that causal list and their prior knowledge of these kinds of evidence. (Since causes must always precede effects, which of the already identified precipitating events, or any other known precipitating events, are the most likely causes of Maud's drinking behaviors?) In this example, let's say that we determine that most of Maud's drinking seems to be correlated with three precipitating events: being alone, being depressed, and instances of family conflict. Third, those causal hypotheses are rigorously tested -- by research design and statistical analysis techniques -- to determine not only whether one or more of the hypothesized causes really accounts for the observed results, but exactly to what extent the results are accounted for by those causes. (Do our causal hypotheses account for most of the observed results -- maybe 70% or even 90%, or more? -- or do they only account for 50% of the results, or 20%, or even less?) Let's say that "aloneness" doesn't account for much of Maud's drinking -- i.e., she drinks as frequently in the presence of others as she does by herself -- but instances of depression account for ~85% of her drinking. Fourth, if most of the effect's causes have been identified statistically, we proceed to experimental testing. We subject Maud and/or other drinkers like Maud to carefully controlled experiments on each cause, each effect, and each consequence of Maud's drinking behaviors and the result of the observation is called replication. 5th. The two forms of replication are called direct replication and systematic replication, respectively.) Replication tells us whether our original findings are real, and to what kinds of drinking, and what kinds of people, and what kinds of consequences we can apply our results. For example, we might find that both depression and family conflicts are real causes of drinking behaviors, but depression is much less of a factor for young drinkers, and that family conflicts are much less of a factor for elderly alcoholics living alone. We might also find that the primary consequences of such drinking behavior are worsened depression, more family conflicts, and several additional health problems. Finally, Step 6 of the scientific method is to take our cause:effect results from these studies and do three things with them: (1) Disseminate these results to the scientific psychology community for critical review and comment. (2) Integrate these results into current theories of the causes and consequences of alcohol drinking, and modify those theories accordingly. And (3), perhaps most importantly, apply these results to therapeutic interventions for Maud and people like Maud with drinking problems. Step 7 is to follow up on Maud's and similar people's treatments to see how effective they are (using what are called efficacy studies). This same method could have been applied to the other examples above, or any other aspect of human cognition, emotion, or behavior. Only when such rigorous research into the causes and consequences of some human psychological phenomena is accomplished, followed up with systematic and thorough statistical analyses, experimentation, and replication, and then followed through with treatment hypotheses, testing, and efficacy studies, can the best answers to psychological cause and effect questions be found. The strength of science is in its methodology. Only the scientific method goes to these great lengths of rigor, objectivity, thoroughness, and follow-through in search of answers; no other method comes close! (Once completed, others can use these results without going back through all these steps.) Thus, scientific methods are best because they are the most rigorous, objective, systematic, thorough, testable, verifiable, replicable, and self-correcting ways to investigate anything! (The best aspects of all the methods of gaining knowledge ever used in the history of our species have thus been boiled down to their best elements, and combined into what we now call the scientific method.) Likewise, unscientific methods are inferior because they produce unnecessary errors (e.g., more "false positives" -- leading people to believe something that isn't true -- and "false negatives" -- not believing something that is true). Unscientific methods lead to unreliable evidence and invalid "understandings" because they are often Unfortunately, just because unscientific information and theories are neither valid nor useful, that doesn't mean they aren't useful or popular, especially among the more scientifically illiterate, less knowledgeable, and more gullible members of the public, including celebrities, social leaders, and political officials. One of humanism's and humanity's biggest problems is overcoming the invalid "knowledge," misleading propaganda, and bad decisions based on supernatural and paranormal beliefs -- which we may call "dangerous nonsense" -- so widely advocated by powerful people and factions in America, Asia and other religious and backward societies today. By many measures, the U.S. is the most superstitious, religious, and mentally backward society in the modern europeanized world, and we pay a high price for those false beliefs every day. While there are many factors that distinguish between scientific and unscientific theories in psychology. That distinction is between two types of hypothetical constructs; empirical constructs and non-empirical constructs. Hypothetical constructs are agents or factors that are hypothesized (guessed) to cause one or more aspects of human cognition, emotion, or behavior. These are "educated guesses" as to what might determine some aspect of human psychology, and they are called "hypothetical" because they are based on evidence. All scientific theories are built through successively better and better hypothetical constructs, and they are a necessary part of the hypothesis generating and testing process of the scientific method. 1. Empirical means real, tangible, observable, and testable. Thus, empirical constructs (ECs) are hypothetical constructs based on real evidence, and which eventually can be tangibly defined, observed, and measured using the scientific method. (Just as importantly, incorrect empirical constructs can eventually be non-verified, proven not to be true causal agents, and thus discarded by the scientific method.) (This is one important reason why the scientific method is self-correcting.) On the other hand, non-empirical constructs (NECs) are hypothetical constructs that -- intentionally or unintentionally -- cannot be tangibly defined, observed, measured, or tested. They are in every meaningful sense unreal, like a figment of someone's imagination. Not surprisingly, such NECs do not lend themselves to objective testing, or disproof. NECs' glaring weaknesses are that they can never be ordinarily proven true, and cannot generally contribute to valid understandings or make useful predictions, and thus have no scientific use. (For naive or unscrupulous theorists and believers, however, NECs can also never be proven to be untrue). Psychology students and humanists can take no greater step forward in their understanding and development than to learn the difference between theories based on valid, useful, empirical constructs, and those based on invalid non-empirical constructs. Just because we are advocating science to you as by far the best means to answer questions about human psychology -- or any other natural phenomena -- we must also note that science, unlike religions, is also very careful and conservative in its claims. Science never claims to have the "final answer" or "total truth" because there is always the possibility -- no matter how small -- that some as yet undiscovered law of nature will intervene, and the best scientific knowledge of today will be disproven tomorrow. For example, five hundred years ago most scientists didn't believe in meteorites. According to the Newtonian physics of that day, stones were too heavy to be up in the air, so how could they fall out of the air?! Of course, meteorites are real (the black sacred stone in Allah's House in Mecca, Arabia, « Sang-e-Aswad » is a metorite), but they are subject to natural laws of weightlessness in space unknown to scientists of that day, and the ancient Bedouins of Arabia. Similarly, up until the 20th century, many taught that a terrible form of psychosis called general paresis was « God or Allah's punishment for "wantonness," because many of its victims led promiscuous lives ». Through scientific study, it was shown that general paresis was caused by syphilitic infections reaching and damaging the brain. So while the scientific explanation still carried a warning regarding unprotected sex, it wasn't supportive of the "God's or Allah's wrath" hypothesis. (Just as science doesn't support many religionists' claims that AIDS is "God or Allah's wrath" against very loose sexual morals.) In fact, one of psychology's greatest achievements in the 20th century has been finding the natural, organic causes for psychopathologies (diseases which effect brain and show themselves in psychological ways( that were previously believed to have been "functional" (of unknown, non-physical causes). So even though science provides the best answers to any question, its answers are cautiously stated in probabilities or confidence levels; e.g., "We're 95% [or 99%+] confident that this answer is correct." Ironically, other less rigorous methods of answering questions are much less likely to be correct, yet they paradoxically claim to be the "absolute truth." Theistic religion, for example, claims to answer questions by "supernatural revelation" or "sacred dogma or faith" -- and cries "blasphemy" or "heresy" if anyone dares to question those flawed answers -- but it can almost never provide logical reasons or credible evidence to prove its claims. Unlike science, most religious answers are not falsifiable; i.e., they are conceptualized and stated using supernatural terms and non-empirical constructs (i.e., imaginary causal variables) for the specific purpose of not being testable. In fact, when religionists provide testable and disprovable explanations or predictions, they are usually proven to be wrong! Thus when their explanations or predictions fail -- as they routinely do -- religionists simply make up another hypothetical construct to try to explain the failures away. This "circular reasoning" leads nowhere, but it is highly valued by religionists because it is technically not disprovable by science. Given a choice between the hard won "best answers" provided by science, or easier but functionally sterile answers by "mystical or religious" means, we should choose science every time! |
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