psychology or philosophy
Science: a set of logical and empirical methods which provide for the systematic observation of empirical phenomena in order to understand them (skeptic.com).
Psychology: an academic and applied discipline involving the scientific study of mental processes and behavior.
So then *why* is it, that whenever I mention psychology as a science, biology concentrators, chemistry concentrators and physics concentrators get all flustered? The biggest argument I always get about psychology being a *humanities* subject instead of a scientific one is that you apparantly can't prove anything in psychology. My response is the obvious (particularly to those bio people): can you really ever prove anything? What is a theory? It's not a fact. Sure it is dependable, but any person who as studied science would know that you can't *prove* a theory.
Something that really freaks out biology, chemistry and physics concentrators is the connection between their field and my field. Psychobiology (aka neuroscience) where we study the effect of certain mental illnesses on the brain, Psychopharmacology where we study the affect of certain chemicals on the brain. Psychophysics where we study sensation and perception and the relation between the stimulus and sensation (this includes differential sensitivity, absolute sensitivity, signal detection, partition scales, psychophysical ratio scaling, etc. You can borrow my book on psychophysics if you don't believe me.)
Psychology is not this whimsical, subjective study where we sit and interpret your behavior. True, it used to be like that, but then again biology used to be like that too and physics didn't exist. Things change and so does science. Most psychologists know better than to use open ended, subjective tests in order to study cognition and behavior. The reason? It's a pain in the ass to code (ie: taking an open-ended response and giving it a numerical value). No one wants to go though 45 pages of hand written notes and code them all. Furthermore, since we do (gasp) study cognition and know the brain quite well, we also know that to go through by hand and rate open ended responses could lead to a variety of problems (rater fatigue, observer bias, etc)
Furthermore, there is this ridiculous sentiment that since we all are conscious, thinking animals, psychology is common sense. Oh how the opposite is true. Anyone who has ever experienced depression could tell you that it isn't something you can control and just *snap out of*. You can't diagnose yourself, especially when you're in that state. But what about social psychology? That's definitley common sense, right? Wrong again. Social psychologists have found a number of phenomena which are actually counter-intuitive (although now, due to the widespread popularity of the results, perhaps because they are so shocking, people may consider them to be common sense. This is, however, much like the way we consider smoking to be bad for your health to be common sense- it wasn't always so obvious.) We'd all like to think we are the exception, we'd all like to think that if we saw someone getting mugged or a raped or killed, we'd intervene, we'd at least call the police. But it's not so. There are a number of factors which control our behavior in that moment. The truth is, the majority of us would keep walking, or close the windows, or turn up our ipod headphones.
Take my thesis: although I can't tell you directly what I'm studying (because many of my potential participant pool have access to this page), I can give you the gist. Basically, I'm studying unconscious attitudes (ie: the way you feel about someone without even realizing it- sort of an example would be the way you dislike someone without knowing why) and their relation to uncontrolled body movement. People get all freaked out whenever I mention the words unconscious or uncontrolled. Immediately they think of Freud and the subconscious as this like weird place (think Being John Malcovitch) were all your neuroses come together and you want to have sex with your mother etc etc. I'm not talking about that place.
Perhaps a good example is the shooting of Amadu Dialo. Dialo was an imigrant from Africa (I forget which country) who had just moved to a poorer neighborhood in new york city. He didn't speak much english and understood even less. He had heard from one of his friends that many people get mugged in that neighborhood. While he was walking home late one night, a car full of undercover police officers spotted him. They thought he looked suspicious. They got out of the car and began to follow him. When the told him to stop and turn around, Dialo did not understand. He reached for his pocket and pulled something out. The NYPD unit fired 41 rounds at the unarmed African immigrant, at point-blank range, killing him instantly. When one of the officers was called back to the scene, he was shocked to see what was in Dialo's hand. Not a gun: a wallet. Dialo thought the cops were mugging him, and tried to save himself. The shocking part was that the cops did not see the wallet: they literally *saw* a gun. When we have expectations of things, our minds can play horrible tricks on us. There is nothing whimsical or unscientific about studying the way our minds behave in these kinds of situations. We can manipulate and recreate these kinds of situations in the laboratory all the time (with less violence, of course).
Think you're different? Of course you do. Check out the demonstration:
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
The results might shock you.
Basically, my tip for anyone who confuses psychology with philosophy? Take a social-cognition course (how the thoughts you think affect your behavior and your well being in social situations). Or better yet, take a Psychopathology course (and study things like Multiple Personality Disorder, Schitsophrenia, Chronic Depression, Anorexia Nervosa, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder etc..). Maybe that will change your mind.
Psychology: an academic and applied discipline involving the scientific study of mental processes and behavior.
So then *why* is it, that whenever I mention psychology as a science, biology concentrators, chemistry concentrators and physics concentrators get all flustered? The biggest argument I always get about psychology being a *humanities* subject instead of a scientific one is that you apparantly can't prove anything in psychology. My response is the obvious (particularly to those bio people): can you really ever prove anything? What is a theory? It's not a fact. Sure it is dependable, but any person who as studied science would know that you can't *prove* a theory.
Something that really freaks out biology, chemistry and physics concentrators is the connection between their field and my field. Psychobiology (aka neuroscience) where we study the effect of certain mental illnesses on the brain, Psychopharmacology where we study the affect of certain chemicals on the brain. Psychophysics where we study sensation and perception and the relation between the stimulus and sensation (this includes differential sensitivity, absolute sensitivity, signal detection, partition scales, psychophysical ratio scaling, etc. You can borrow my book on psychophysics if you don't believe me.)
Psychology is not this whimsical, subjective study where we sit and interpret your behavior. True, it used to be like that, but then again biology used to be like that too and physics didn't exist. Things change and so does science. Most psychologists know better than to use open ended, subjective tests in order to study cognition and behavior. The reason? It's a pain in the ass to code (ie: taking an open-ended response and giving it a numerical value). No one wants to go though 45 pages of hand written notes and code them all. Furthermore, since we do (gasp) study cognition and know the brain quite well, we also know that to go through by hand and rate open ended responses could lead to a variety of problems (rater fatigue, observer bias, etc)
Furthermore, there is this ridiculous sentiment that since we all are conscious, thinking animals, psychology is common sense. Oh how the opposite is true. Anyone who has ever experienced depression could tell you that it isn't something you can control and just *snap out of*. You can't diagnose yourself, especially when you're in that state. But what about social psychology? That's definitley common sense, right? Wrong again. Social psychologists have found a number of phenomena which are actually counter-intuitive (although now, due to the widespread popularity of the results, perhaps because they are so shocking, people may consider them to be common sense. This is, however, much like the way we consider smoking to be bad for your health to be common sense- it wasn't always so obvious.) We'd all like to think we are the exception, we'd all like to think that if we saw someone getting mugged or a raped or killed, we'd intervene, we'd at least call the police. But it's not so. There are a number of factors which control our behavior in that moment. The truth is, the majority of us would keep walking, or close the windows, or turn up our ipod headphones.
Take my thesis: although I can't tell you directly what I'm studying (because many of my potential participant pool have access to this page), I can give you the gist. Basically, I'm studying unconscious attitudes (ie: the way you feel about someone without even realizing it- sort of an example would be the way you dislike someone without knowing why) and their relation to uncontrolled body movement. People get all freaked out whenever I mention the words unconscious or uncontrolled. Immediately they think of Freud and the subconscious as this like weird place (think Being John Malcovitch) were all your neuroses come together and you want to have sex with your mother etc etc. I'm not talking about that place.
Perhaps a good example is the shooting of Amadu Dialo. Dialo was an imigrant from Africa (I forget which country) who had just moved to a poorer neighborhood in new york city. He didn't speak much english and understood even less. He had heard from one of his friends that many people get mugged in that neighborhood. While he was walking home late one night, a car full of undercover police officers spotted him. They thought he looked suspicious. They got out of the car and began to follow him. When the told him to stop and turn around, Dialo did not understand. He reached for his pocket and pulled something out. The NYPD unit fired 41 rounds at the unarmed African immigrant, at point-blank range, killing him instantly. When one of the officers was called back to the scene, he was shocked to see what was in Dialo's hand. Not a gun: a wallet. Dialo thought the cops were mugging him, and tried to save himself. The shocking part was that the cops did not see the wallet: they literally *saw* a gun. When we have expectations of things, our minds can play horrible tricks on us. There is nothing whimsical or unscientific about studying the way our minds behave in these kinds of situations. We can manipulate and recreate these kinds of situations in the laboratory all the time (with less violence, of course).
Think you're different? Of course you do. Check out the demonstration:
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
The results might shock you.
Basically, my tip for anyone who confuses psychology with philosophy? Take a social-cognition course (how the thoughts you think affect your behavior and your well being in social situations). Or better yet, take a Psychopathology course (and study things like Multiple Personality Disorder, Schitsophrenia, Chronic Depression, Anorexia Nervosa, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder etc..). Maybe that will change your mind.
posted by Jessica @ 5:51 AM
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