scholarly journals Christian Anti-Psychology and the Scientific Method

1987 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
James D. Foster ◽  
Mark F. Ledbetter
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Scientific Psychology

Christians are becoming increasingly vocal in their criticism of scientific psychology. In their criticisms Christian anti-psychologists have devalued knowledge gained through research and suggested both that the scientific method is inappropriate for studying human behavior and that the deception inherent in psychological research is immoral. This article examines these concerns and argues that the more subjective alternatives suggested by the critics of psychology suffer from many of the same limitations as scientific psychology and that taking such an approach would amount to substituting uncontrolled error for controlled error and uncontrolled deception for controlled deception.

Different perspectives of human behavior entail different experimental practices

2001 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 429-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramzi Suleiman
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Valuable Data ◽  
Data Variability ◽  
Psychology And Economics

My main argument is that the advice offered to experimental psychologists by Hertwig & Ortmann overlooks fundamental differences between the goals of researchers in psychology and economics. Furthermore, it is argued that the reduction of data variability is not always an end to be sought by psychologists. Variability that originates in individual differences constitutes valuable data for psychological research.

Pretending to Have (or to Be) a Computer as a Strategy in Teaching

1964 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Berry
Keyword(s):  
Computer Simulation ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
First Grade ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Mental Operations

Computer simulation of human behavior has become a lively area of psychological research. Taking as his example the simple counting of first grade children,the author shows how constructing a program for a real or an imaginary computer can help both the teacher and the child to understand the mental operations involved.

scholarly journals The Dialectic Method: A Critical and Postmodern Alternative to the Scientific Method

10.18060/1905 ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phillip Dybicz ◽  
Loretta Pyles
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Narrative Therapy ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Personal Agency ◽  
Strengths Perspective ◽  
Consciousness Raising ◽  
Macro Practice

This paper introduces Hans-Georg Gadamer's dialectic method and elaborates upon its application to social work inquiry. Its strengths lie in its ability to uncover social constructed truths, to explain human behavior in a non-deterministic manner that emphasizes personal agency and empowerment, and to foster a consciousness-raising process that leads to praxis. This makes it ideally suited for knowledge gathering by practitioners in the field who seek to apply postmodern practice approaches such as the strengths perspective, solution-building therapy, and narrative therapy. Examples are given of its application to both micro and macro practice concerns.

scholarly journals Diversity in Psychological Research Activities: Quantitative Approach With Topic Modeling

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sachio Otsuka ◽  
Yoshiyuki Ueda ◽  
Jun Saiki
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Topic Modeling ◽  
Time Trends ◽  
Regional Differences ◽  
Basic Research ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Research Education ◽  
Research Activities ◽  
Quantitative Analyses ◽  
Geographic Regions

Recent cultural studies have discussed universality and diversity in human behavior using numerous samples investigated worldwide. We aimed to quantitatively extend this discussion to various research activities in psychology in terms of geographic regions and time trends. Most psychology departments have specialists in various fields of psychology. Further, research institutions in all regions typically aim to provide systematic and balanced research education. Nevertheless, most researchers recognize universal features and patterns of diversity in research activities in psychology in terms of regional differences and time trends. However, these arguments remain intuitive and vague, and no studies have conducted quantitative analyses. To this end, we conducted topic modeling for the abstracts of psychological articles with the regions of author affiliations and publication periods as covariates. The results showed that the topic proportions related to basic research were high in North-Central America, whereas those related to clinical research were high in Europe. Interestingly, the regional differences shown by topic modeling were not observed in the frequency analysis of keywords, indicating that topic modeling revealed implicit characteristics. Moreover, we observed an increasing trend of neuroscience topics across publication periods. However, this trend was not valid for the psychology journal Psychological Science. Taken together, our results suggest diversity of geographic regions and periods in research activities in psychology. More importantly, our findings indicate that universality holds neither for human behavior nor research activities on human mental processes.

Cultural diversity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shihui Han
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Causal Attribution ◽  
Imaging Techniques ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Shared Beliefs

Chapter 1 provides a brief overview of cultural differences in human behavior by giving examples of human behaviors in East Asian and Western societies. It reviews the concept of culture used by psychologists, anthropologists, and philosophers, introduces several dimensions of culture, and emphasizes shared beliefs and behavioral scripts as the key components of culture that influence human behavior. It also reviews cross-cultural psychological research that has revealed differences in multiple cognitive processes including perception, attention, memory, causal attribution, and self-reflection between individuals in East Asian and Western cultures. It gives an overview of cultural neuroscience studies that employ brain imaging techniques to reveal neural mechanisms underlying cultural differences in human behavior and mental processes.

A New Narrative for Psychology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Schiff
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Scientific Psychology ◽  
Narrative Psychology ◽  
Psychological Understanding ◽  
Effective Strategies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Narrative Functions

A New Narrative for Psychology is a far-reaching book that seeks to reorient how scholars and laypersons study and think about persons and the goals of psychological understanding. The book provides a challenging critique of contemporary variable-centered, statistical methods, revealing what these approaches to psychological research leave unexplored; it presents readers with a cutting-edge, narrative, approach for getting at the thorny problem of meaning making in human lives. For readers unfamiliar with narrative psychology, this is an excellent first text, which considers the history of narrative psychology and its place in contemporary psychology. The book goes well beyond the basics, however. A New Narrative for Psychology offers a fresh and innovative theoretical perspective on narrative as an active interpretive process that is implicated in most aspects of everyday life, and the ways in which narrative functions to make present and real subjective and inter-subjective experiences. Theory is grounded in vivid illustrations of what can be learned from the intensive study of how persons, in time and space, narrate their experiences, selves, social relationships, and the world. A New Narrative for Psychology reintroduces narrative psychology as a credible, trustworthy, and useful perspective for considering the hows and whys of human meaning making and argues for the necessity of narrative as a central, and complementary, perspective in scientific psychology. It is an invitation to a conversation about the critical questions of psychology, the most effective strategies for approaching them, and the future of discipline.

Behavioral Economics

2020 ◽  
pp. 281-298
Author(s):  
Miloš Krstić ◽  
Nebojša Pavlović
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Social Behavior ◽  
Behavioral Economics ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Psychological Dimension ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
State Interference

The idea of the significance of the psychological dimension of human behavior is not new and has existed in the social sciences since ancient times. Accordingly, there is an endeavor to place economic analysis on the foundations of psychological research, which takes its form of expression in economic theory through the affirmation of behavioral economics. The aim of this chapter is to critically analyze various normative research programs in behavioral economics and to consider the importance of alternative concepts, models, and theories from the point of view of improving understanding of real economic and social behavior. The particular value of this chapter lies in affirming the importance of a program of behavioral economics known as new paternalism, which is based on challenging the concept of maximizing rationality and opens a new dimension of understanding the justification of state interference in the sphere of economy and society.

Psychologism and Phenomenological Psychology Revisited, Part II: The Return to Positivity

2002 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Cosgrove ◽  
Larry Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Practice ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Human Science ◽  
Transcendental Subjectivity ◽  
Scientific Psychology ◽  
Phenomenological Psychology ◽  
Phenomenological Philosophy ◽  
Naturalistic Approach

AbstractThe last in a series of examinations, this paper articulates Husserl's mature position on the nature of a phenomenologically informed human science. Falling between the naïve positivity of a naturalistic approach to psychology and the transcendental view of consciousness at the base of phenomenological philosophy, we argue that a human scientific psychology—while not itself transcendental in nature needs to re-arise upon the transcendental ground as an empirical—but no longer transcendentally naïve—discipline through Husserl's notion of the "return to positivity." This notion of the return allows us to avoid "transcendental psychologism," differentiating psychological from transcendental subjectivity but from a transcendental, rather than naïve perspective. In this way, the return to positivity reclaims psychology as a worldly, but no longer naïve, discipline. To facilitate an understanding of the different perspectives in question, and the process of leaving the naturalistic perspective in order to return to it once armed with a transcendental understanding and its associated tools, we continue to develop the illustrative example of anorexia provided in the first part of this series. In conclusion, we discuss the implications of this framework for transcendental reforms both of clinical practice and of psychological research.

Phenomenological Psychological Research as Science

2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Applebaum
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Human Science ◽  
Empirical Science ◽  
Scientific Psychology ◽  
Psychological Method ◽  
Perspective Drawing ◽  
Interpretive Approach

Abstract Part of teaching the descriptive phenomenological psychological method is to assist students in grasping their previously unrecognized assumptions regarding the meaning of “science.” This paper is intended to address a variety of assumptions that are encountered when introducing students to the descriptive phenomenological psychological method pioneered by Giorgi. These assumptions are: 1) That the meaning of “science” is exhausted by empirical science, and therefore qualitative research, even if termed “human science,” is more akin to literature or art than methodical, scientific inquiry; 2) That as a primarily aesthetic, poetic enterprise human scientific psychology need not attempt to achieve a degree of rigor and epistemological clarity analogous (while not equivalent) to that pursued by natural scientists; 3) That “objectivity” is a concept belonging to natural science, and therefore human science ought not to strive for objectivity because this would require “objectivizing” the human being; 4) That qualitative research must always adopt an “interpretive” approach, description being seen as merely a mode of interpretation. These assumptions are responded to from a perspective drawing primarily upon Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, but also upon Eagleton’s analysis of aestheticism.

Against the reduction of teleology to sophisticated causal explanation

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-441
Author(s):  
Nicolò Gaj
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Causal Explanation ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Replication Crisis ◽  
Pluralistic Approach

The purpose of science is to provide an account of what is going on behind the phenomena we experience. In psychology, such a task may be approached from two different perspectives. For those espousing a naturalistic–monistic approach, it implies accounting for human behavior via an appeal to explanations by causes. To exponents of a humanistic–pluralistic approach, it will instead entail adopting a teleological outlook via an appeal to explanations by reasons. While presented as an attempt to restore the latter framework to psychological research, Arocha’s account ends up unintentionally endorsing the former, which he purports to reject. It is herein asserted that psychology requires the adoption of a genuinely teleological—that is to say, intentionalistic—framework to account for what is going on behind the observable, thereby contributing to addressing the replication crisis and laying the ground for reforming psychology.

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