Why Psychology Becomes Science
How many essay questions can determine a person's personality? A set of tests will be able to know whether it is suitable for a certain job? Can hypnosis really implant or even tamper with memory? The psychology in the rumor is not like science, but more like witchcraft. But is this really psychology? Peng Kaiping, a professor in the Department of Psychology at Tsinghua University, opened an bluntly in the preface of the book "This Is Psychology": "Psychology is a subject that is easily misunderstood." He went on to write that conscious conclusions and conclusions in daily life Psychologists’ research conclusions are not entirely consistent. “Psychologists don’t believe in personal wisdom, but in scientific methods. The essence of scientific methods is falsification, that is, to doubt and challenge our experience, attempts, and intuition. And criticism.” In fact, psychology originated from philosophy. Since the separation of psychology and philosophy and becoming scientific psychology, there has been endless discussion about the scientific nature of the former: how can it become a science? Is psychology a science?
The psychological test you like to do, is it psychology?
Disrespect and do not understand the basic methods and results of scientific research is to spread "pseudoscience" under the hat of psychology
Astrology, fortune-telling, telepathy, mind-shifting, advanced perception...These mysterious phenomena often become the "superpowers" given to psychologists by the public.
The public believes that these phenomena, in addition to adding a bit of mystery to psychology, sometimes even give wrong guidance to daily life.
Regarding the existence of these phenomena, Chen Zhiyan, a professor at the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, felt a little helpless: “Some people who love psychology like the magic of psychology, but do not respect the basic methods and results of scientific research. This is actually wearing The hat of psychology is spreading some unscientific content. The communicators lack scientific literacy, and they will borrow scientific research to make a distorted understanding. This situation is occasionally seen in society."
Chen Zhiyan believes that some phenomena can even be defined as "pseudoscience": "This kind of pseudoscience is often seen in answers to questions that are closely related to social life or popular science. In fact, most basic research needs to separate the research questions into very detailed , Variables are controlled very rigorously, so it is difficult to have a unified view of the phenomena in social life, and it is difficult to have a standard answer that can be given regardless of the situation."
Su Yanjie, a professor at Peking University’s School of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, also laughed: “There is a saying that everyone is half a psychologist. Because psychology is a science of people, everyone has a different understanding of their own psychological behavior. , You can sum up some laws related to yourself and the people around you. This is personal experience. If you really want to judge, you need to see whether these personal laws have a basis. For example, logical reasoning, experimental data, empirical research, It’s more convincing, and if it doesn’t, it’s harder to believe.”
Su Yanjie further explained the level of psychological knowledge: the research results of psychology can help us understand and explain psychological phenomena and behaviors, as well as provide some methods or suggestions to solve problems.
But the knowledge of psychology actually has three levels.
The first level is the universal law for people. For example, many studies have found that this person is like this and that person is like this.
The second level is the laws of a group of people, such as the laws of individuals of different genders, individuals in different cultures or environments, and so on.
The third level is individual differences. Everyone is different. At this level, the laws of psychology do not work for everyone.
When using these psychological laws or suggestions, you need to consider specific people, specific environments, and specific encounters, not absolute and rigid.
"In this sense, the public should not just listen to some people's so-called psychology knowledge, but believe that it is psychology and need to make corresponding analysis and judgment. This is very important." Su Yanjie said.
"The psychology that people come into contact with in daily life, such as mental health consultation, is close to clinical psychology, social psychology, personality psychology, etc. But these are really just a part of psychology." Chen Zhiyan emphasized.
"If you get a little deeper into the subject of psychology, you will find that it is a very wide-ranging subject system. Whether it is on the official website of the Chinese Psychological Association or the American Psychological Association, there are dozens of professional committees for psychology. These committees can slightly represent the common branches of psychology. In the eyes of ordinary people, psychology needs to deal with people. In fact, some psychologists do not need to deal with people. For example, physiological psychologists, in their research The very basic and very low-level content is to use mice to do experiments. Their research requires basic knowledge of science including physiology and biology, strong experimental operation skills, and even the ability to perform fine operations on mice." Chen Zhiyan Added.
Is psychology a science?
In principle, scientificity is the standard that guarantees psychology as an independent discipline
The division of philosophical psychology and scientific psychology has been established since 1879, when the German psychologist Wundt established the first psychology laboratory.
The experimental method makes it possible for psychology to get rid of the idea of becoming a vassal of philosophy. "Psychology is a natural science" has become the argument that the mainstream psychology field strives to uphold.
In 1962, American historian and philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn explained the idea of "general mode of scientific development" in the book "The Structure of Scientific Revolution". The core theory is that a conventional science must have a unified paradigm.
Paradigm is considered to be the "theoretical model" or "research framework" recognized by scientists engaged in a certain discipline, and is the standard for dividing science and non-scientific.
When the paradigm theory was introduced into psychology, the view that "psychology is a science" began to waver, so in the scientific forest, finding the paradigm of psychology became the purpose of many psychologists who wanted to justify psychology.
"Some people will say that psychology is called pre-paradigm science, because psychology does not have a unified theoretical framework that can explain many phenomena. The phenomena that psychology faces are too complicated. If a unified framework is used, all phenomena cannot be fully explained, so There are many theories to help psychology understand complex human psychological phenomena and behavioral laws from their respective perspectives. Psychological phenomena are multi-faceted, and it is difficult to have a unified paradigm, at least not yet at this level." Su Yanjie said on paradigm The view is very open-minded.
"I often make this analogy, like a blind man touching an elephant, you touch the legs, I touch the tail, and he touches the body. In the future, if everyone accumulates more, we will gather an elephant. I think the current situation is better and desirable. Each branch explains different phenomena from their own perspectives. Psychology should be said to be still in the process of accumulating results." Su Yanjie said.
In Chen Zhiyan's view, the paradigm of the scientific revolution is constantly changing. It reflects the overall social thought and the impact of technological progress on the subject.
Psychology, as an interdisciplinary subject, is affected by social changes. The researcher is a person living in the society, and his ideological framework is also affected by the mainstream framework of the current society.
"In the past few years, psychology has been more influenced by the theoretical framework of medicine or biology, but in reality, as far as psychotherapy is concerned, the understanding of people changes with the changes of the times. For example, in the book "The Mystery of the Absurd Change of Understanding" Here, the author mentioned that our era is divided into three different stages. In the era represented by Freud, psychologists will pay more attention to the conflict and compromise between psychological dynamics. In the second era, the whole With the development of telephone and other technologies in the world, the connection between people has become closer, and the influence of interpersonal relationships on psychology has become an element of great concern to psychotherapists. However, in the current network world, there are many clusters instead of single-line connections. The angle is connected, so the current understanding of the world will have more positions and angles and become more complicated." Chen Zhiyan explained.
Since the unified paradigm of psychology cannot be confirmed, how to confirm the scientific nature of psychology?
Su Yanjie believes that as an academic community, scientific methods and principles must be collectively recognized.
"How to control variables, how to consider the relationship between variables, how to collect data, how to describe the results through statistical methods or mathematical models, and to reveal the relationship and essence of phenomena, all these require scientific and empirical methods. That is, the research process needs to use logical scientific methods to draw repeatable and stable scientific conclusions. This is scientific."
Stanovich, the author of the book "This Is Psychology," pointed out that the conclusions about behavior in psychology are derived from scientific evidence, and the applications of psychology are derived from scientific methods and have been tested by scientific methods.
"In principle, scientificity is the standard that guarantees psychology as an independent discipline." The reason for the misunderstanding of psychology is that the author believes that "psychology is a young science" precisely because of it. Young, there are many facts that psychology has just begun to reveal, so the public still has big and small confusions and misunderstandings about psychology.
Chen Zhiyan explained from her own major: "My major is clinical psychology. Strictly speaking, this major is very similar to evidence-based medicine. In true and reliable psychotherapy, the psychologists use the ones that have been fully empirical and proven to be effective. In more detail, the research has been broken down into what kind of disease and characteristics, which combination of treatment methods are suitable for, or in the middle of large treatment methods, which technical details are used for this disease The effect will be better. All of these require a scientific basis. Because all curative effects studies are very strict in the control of confounding variables, to obtain a reliable research result about people, a large number of different researchers across samples are required, and different samples are needed. Multiple repetitions in different situations."
"But even so, when it comes to the social environment in which people live, the problem will be very complicated, and it is the same in medicine. Whether the same drug is useful for the same type of disease will vary from person to person. Drugs cannot be effective for everyone. Effective, psychotherapy is affected by drugs, therapist's professional ability and even personal charm, so the treatment effect is more different from person to person." Chen Zhiyan said.
Then, based on the differences between people, can we do general and regular research, and do research that meets the scientific requirements?
"Yes." Chen Zhiyan replied affirmatively, "But the difficulty of psychology is actually greater than that of many disciplines. The difficulty is that there are many interfering variables and confounding variables. Experiments in chemistry, physics, and biology also require a very standard environment. For example, requiring no dust in the environment, requiring a specific temperature, etc., these variables are relatively easier to measure and easier to control in limited dimensions. But for people, it is actually impossible to accurately grasp which dimensions a person has. Impact research is not a fixed answer. So inadequate consideration of interference factors will affect the results of the research."
Psychology is a system that spans science and humanities
Psychology has its own characteristics of humanities. Science and humanities have always been integrated and influenced each other in psychology.
Since the birth of psychology, science and humanities have been born together.
From Socrates' "know yourself" to Descartes' "man is a machine", philosophers explore the value and meaning of man, while scientists explain human behavior through observation and experimentation.
Chen Zhiyan said: "Psychology is a system that spans science and humanities and arts."
Su Yanjie said: "Psychology has always been to reveal people's behavior and psychological laws as the goal. Psychology has its own characteristics of humanities. Science and humanities have always been integrated and mutually influenced in psychology."
As far as the interaction between science and humanities is concerned, Chen Zhiyan and Su Yanjie both talked about the influence and development of science and technology on psychology, especially the study of the brain.
"Many researches in psychology rely on the foundations of other disciplines and technologies. For example, the commonly used technology for brain research was originally traditional brain electricity, which relied on the collection and decomposition of electrical signals. Brain imaging is now more popular. An FMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) machine, or data acquisition and signal analysis, including the software behind it, requires interdisciplinary technical advancement. If there is no basis for computer development and no fast-running computing power, then the brain will be scanned. It takes a long time for the data to be analyzed. Now thanks to these developments, we can quickly obtain analysis data and make more detailed comparisons. So it is often the technological development breakthroughs in many disciplines that bring psychological research forward The benefits of one step." Chen Zhiyan said.
Su Yanjie also paid attention to science and technology to promote psychological research, and put forward the human factors behind the policy.
“We used to be speculated by psychologists that mental function and behavior are related to the brain, and damage to certain parts of the brain will affect the mental and behavioral abilities. However, it is not possible to directly perform operations on people, and can only be inferred through animal surgery. Now Brain imaging technology can observe the state of brain activity during certain mental activities or behaviors without invasiveness and damage to the brain. Such science and technology help us get more objective data and help us open up the brain. The'black box' inside, and see what's inside."
Science and technology promote the public's cognition and understanding of psychology, but how to interpret the data obtained through new technologies and how to propose social policies based on relevant research results are issues that need to be considered in the next step, which must take into account the social and cultural background.
"For example, the question of when children should go to school, which is often paid attention to. From the perspective of psychology, whether a child can receive formal education is based on. For example, whether the functional development of the frontal lobe can help the child to a certain extent Control your own behavior. Children can sit and sit for at least 20-30 minutes, which is a prerequisite for receiving formal education. However, in real life, the educational policy needs to consider the educational environment, family conditions, regional development and other social and cultural conditions."
"Therefore, no single subject can be looked at solely, and physical chemistry and mathematics also have many humanistic factors. Psychology is even more so, many of its branches are inseparable from the humanities." Su Yanjie finally added.
(Reporter Yang Sa)