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approaches to seeking truth about the world

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rationalists

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knowing by thinking

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Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz

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you can come to understand something well enough and deeply enough simply by thinking about it and discussing it with others

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empiricists

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knowing by the senses

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Berkeley, Locke, Hume

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thinking, talking and arguing wasn't enough, you could arrive at what the critical questions were but if you wanted to know the truth about the world, you can only know this ultimately through experimentation

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this is what defines anything as being a science, so when you say that psychology is a science, you mean that you determine the truths through experiments

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seeking questions

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a large part of the scientific method is coming up with the questions

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two types of research

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observational research

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correlational research

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open to alternative explanations

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seeking answers

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experiments and contrasts

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observational research

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Jane Goodall (1934-)

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world's foremost expert on chimpanzees

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45-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania

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she wanted to understand the behavior of chimpanzees

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best way was to live with them

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camped out in the same areas

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tried to mingle with them and watched, and observed their behavior

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the presence of the observer changes behavior

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the chimps behavior might have changed somewhat because of her presence

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we are all informal observational researchers

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based on your experience, what do you think are the answers to these questions:

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are males or females better at math?

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are males or females better singers?

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does memory get worse with age?

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do language abilities get worse with age?

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are old people more likely to get depressed?

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does the answer to the previous question depend on culture?

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observational research generates these kinds of questions

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Rosenhan experiment

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suspected that clinical psychologists of their day that they could not determine accurately if people had mental illnesses or not

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8 pseudopatients pretended to have hallucinations to gain access to psychiatric hospitals

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answered truthfully accept that they were hearing voices that said words like "empty" or "thud"

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all admitted then said they were fine, all were diagnosed with psychiatric disorders

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once in, acted normally again, all forced to admit to having a mental illness

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after being admitted, they acted normally to see how long it would take staff to determine that they were sane again, it took 9 to 52 days for them be released, and had to agree to take anti-psychotic drugs as a condition of their release

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"it is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals"