All the interim summaries of the second half of Historical and conceptual issues in psychology, by Brysbaert, M and Rastle, K (second edition)

Chapter 7

Introduction

Mind-brain problem: issue of how the mind is related to the brain.
Three main views

• Dualism
  The mind (or soul) is something independent of the body
• Materialism
  The mind is nothing but a by-product of the biological processes taking place in a particular brain.
• Functionalism
  The mind is indeed realised in a brain, but it could be copied in any other brain.
  Just like information on a computer can be copied to other computers

Dualism

• The mind refers to a person’s faculties to perceive, feel, think, remember and want
• In religions the mind is often equated with an immaterial, divine soul. This is an example of dualism. A similar view was defended by Descartes and, therefore, in philosophy is often called Cartesian dualism
• Dualism is an intuitively attractive model of the mind-brain relationship because it gives humans free will and it readily accounts for the existence of consciousness in humans. The latter refers to the rich and coherent, private, first-person experience people have about themselves and the world around them.
• Dualism does have problems explaining how an immaterial mind can influence the body, and how it is possible that so much information processing in humans occurs unconsciously. It also does not agree with a scientific world view, where there is no place for mysterious and animistic substances.

Materialism

• Materialism holds that there is no distinction between the mind and the brain, and that the mind is a direct consequence of the brain in operation. To make the distinction with functionalism clear, we take this to imply that the mind is linked to the specific brain in which it has been realised
• According to the strongest versions of materialism, there is no consciousness or free will. Consciousness is an illusion, a form of folk psychology, and humans are comparable to robots or machines. According to Dawkins, they are the slaves of their genes
• A fist problem with materialism was that it seemed unable to account for the identity problem: how can different exposures to the same event be experienced as the same if they are not encoded similarly? A second problem was that attempts to simulate the human mind as a by-product of biological or mechanical processes were not successful, whereas computers running sequences of instructions on stored information started to thrive

Functionalism

• Computer science has shown that information may transcend the medium on which it is realised. It can be copied from one Turing machine to another
• This insight provides a solution to the identity problem, the fact that it is unlikely that two identical thoughts are physiologically realised in exactly the same way
• This insight led to functionalism in the philosophy of mind, the conviction that philosophers of mind had to investigate the functions of information, and not the precise ways in which the information was realised in the brain
• Functionalism (and materialism) can explain how the mind is not lost in the thought experiment of teleportation, unlike dualism
• Some authors see the fact that information is a realm separate from the machine upon which it is implemented as a way in which humans can reclaim their free will; others claim it simply implies that humans are not only slaves of their genes but also slaves of the information realm
• Cognitive psychology and cognitive neuropsychology were realisations of functionalism in psychological research. They are currently questioned by the rapid expansion of cognitive neuroscience, which postulates a closer link between information processing and brain functioning. A further challenge for functionalism lies in the fact that digital computers cannot survive independently because they rely on humans for symbol grounding and to remain functional in a changing environment. This suggests that the human mind is more intimately connected to the brain and body upon which it is realised than is postulated by functionalism

Consciousness

• Information as currently implemented in computers does not seem to possess the phenomenological richness of human consciousness. Block proposed to make a distinction between access consciousness and phenomenological consciousness.
• There is a lot of empirical evidence that processing is going on in humans without them being consciously aware of it. We discussed the phenomena of masked priming, implicit memory, and Libet’s experiment on the voluntary initiation of movement.
• Unconscious processing strongly resembles conscious processing; the main differences seem to be that it is less rich and integrated than conscious processing and that humans cannot deliberately act on it
• A model of access consciousness is the global workplace model, which compares the human mind to a theatre. A lot of activity is going on behind the scenes, but the activity on the scene must be visible to all, in order to synchronise the various activities. This is the function of consciousness
• The phenomenological richness of human conscious experiences seems to require the existence of qualia. This has been illustrated by three thought experiments; the Chinese room, Mary, and the zombie world.
• Because of the differences between human consciousness and information processing in computers, Chalmers claims that the hard problem of phenomenological consciousness had not yet been solved. Others disagree and argue that it will be solved when a solution to the symbol grounding is found.
• A possible solution to the symbol grounding problem is to assume that human cognitive representations (symbols) derive their meaning from the interactions between the human body and the environment. Cognitive neuroscience has found evidence in line with this view of embodied cognition.

Focus on

• There is increasing evidence for two thinking systems
  • Type I, automatic and based on associative learning
  • Type 2, controlled, explicit and based on hypothetical thinking
• For a long time, cognitive psychology was only interested in type 2 thinking, which was seen as heuristic-based and prone to reasoning errors. Type 1 thinking was largely overlooked and considered as the origin of some reasoning errors.
• Currently there was a redressing of the balance, because it is now realised that system 1 thinking forms the basis of much of everyday interaction and intuitive thinking
• According to the theory of unconscious thought, it is possible to evaluate information without consciousness. Such evaluation is less susceptible to the capacity limitations of conscious thought. It does not lead to precise conclusions, but to rough estimates of the desirability of the alternatives, and can be used in combination with conscious thought when complex decisions must be made

Chapter 8

Twentieth-century changes in the treatment of mental health problems

• Before World War I psychologists were largely excluded from treatment; their main task was administering psychological tests; there were a few university-related centres
• Because of the increased need for advice and treatment during World War II, psychologists because involved in treatment
• After World War II, the position of psychologists in the treatment of mental disorders was further strengthened by:
  • The antipsychiatry movement
  • Scientific research on the efficacy of psychotherapies
  • The fact that psychiatrists became more involved with the prescription of psychoactive drugs
  • The increase of social management and individualisation in society
• Knowledge of psychology also became of public interest

Psychological testing

• Psychologists needed reliable and valid assessments. These were not provided by unstructured interviews, due to problems with first impressions and the implicit personality theories people have
• Standardised tests were proposed as an alternative. These tests were administered to a test group in a uniform way, so that the users know how new test-takers scored relative to the test group. In addition, the reliability and validity became empirically verified
• IQ tests allowed psychologists to assess an individual’s intellectual potential. Achievement tests allowed them to test the acquired knowledge about a particular topic in a reliable van valid way
• Good personality tests required empirical validation and measures to tackle the problem of social desirability
• In the non-pathological range, most personality tests are self-report questionnaires that measure traits. At the moment most researchers believe that the personality can be described accurately on the basis of five traits (the Big Five). Previously, Cattell defended a minimum of 16 and Eysenck an minimum of 3.
• Tests have become popular partly because of the increased individualisation of society

The psychology of work and organisation

• At the beginning of the twentieth century, industrial psychology was under the influence of scientific management which considered workers as dispensable ‘hands of the factory’, motivated solely by money to address physiological needs
• Based on the Hawthorne studies, Mayo pointed to the importance of social and psychological factors for the well-being and motivation of employees. This was the start of the human relations movement
• In the 1980s, human resource management stressed that the employees were the central asset of a company. Workers should not be controlled but given autonomy and responsibility so that they come to self-discipline. Works is no longer a chore, but an opportunity that can help self-actualisation

The weak methodology of the Hawthorne studies

• The Hawthorne studies were not well done, because many aspects were changed simultaneously, so tat the authors could not conclude for sure which factor was the origin of the effects they observed
• Still, strong conclusions were drawn on the basis of these findings
• These conclusions have been perpetuated in textbooks because:
  • Writers do not read the original sources
  • The story is too good not to be true
  • The basic message of the human relations movement was correct
  • The story strengthened the positions of psychologists and managers
• The idealised depiction of the Hawthorne studies is an example of the pseudohistory of science, an attempt to excite enthusiasm for science by narrating simplified and heroic stories that promote false ideas of how science works

Chapter 9

Thoughts before the twentieth century

• To a great extent, the rise of the scientific approach can be summarised as a shift in balance from deductive reasoning to inductive reasoning. Before the scientific revolution it was generally accepted that only deductive reasoning led to necessary truth (Plato, Aristotle)
• The men of science at first tried to convince their audience that the new way of thinking was very close to traditional deductive reasoning and demonstration (Galilei, early Newton)
• Gradually natural philosophers started to argue that inductive reasoning could lead to conclusions as probable as truth, when facts were collected in large numbers and without prejudice, when effects could be replicated, and when theories led to new verifiable predictions (Bacon, Huygens, later Newton, Bayes, Laplace, Herschel)
• Whelwell and Comte further pointed out that there was no clear distinction between observation and idea, between fact and theory. They are closely interconnected and influenced each other.
• As a result of the successes of science, most of the initial doubts about whether inductive reasoning could lead to true conclusions were swept under the carpet towards the end of the nineteenth century

Logical positivism

• Logical positivism tried to reconcile the practical success of sciences with the methodological concerns formulated by philosophers
• It tried to define demarcation criteria for science that would be universal and ahistorical, and that could be applied to other knowledge areas
• The movement found prominence with the publication of the 1929 manifesto of the Vienna Circle
• The most important demarcation criterion put forward for empirical truths was empirical verification
• Almost immediately, however, the criterion met with a series of objections
  • Verification does not solve the induction problem
  • Scientific theories are full of variables that cannot be observed directly
  • There are no demarcation criteria that unambiguously define ‘observable’
  • Sometimes things are not observable until one knows how to search for them
  • Verifiable observations do not guarantee a correct understanding
• Because of the many criticisms, logical positivism failed, which gave positivism a negative connotation of naive belief in the power and the truthfulness of scientific research

Popper’s falsification alternative to logical positivism

• Science is better considered as the formulation of theories (on the basis of inductive reasoning and educated guessing) that scientists subsequently try of falsify by deriving hypotheses which are put to the falsification test; this is the hypothetico-deductive method.
• There is no guarantee that an initially proposed theory is correct; therefore, science proceeds by trial and error
• Science differs from on science because
  • The theories can be falsified
  • There is a willingness to do so
• Falsification is a better criterion than verification, because it is logically possible to falsify a statement based on inductive reasoning
• The more falsifiable a theory is (depending on its level of detail and scope), the better the theory is
• Falsification is counterintuitive because people have a bias towards trying to confirm their opinions rather than trying to reject them
• Limitations to falsification
  • Popper’s insistence on replacing falsified theories by bold alternatives as soon as they are contradicted by empirical observations does not agree with scientific practice and would also seem to be too radical
  • When researchers are confronted with conflicting evidence, they first try to modify the existing theory so that it can account for the contradictory finding
  • According to Popper, modifications are acceptable as long as they do not make the theory less falsifiable; otherwise, they are unacceptable ad hoc modifications
  • Problem: researchers regularly propose modifications they do not test and that are not taken up by other researchers. Is this still science?

Kuhn’s theory

• A discipline needs a general theory to become scientific, otherwise it is pre-science. This theory forms a paradigm against which observations are made, questions are posed and answers interpreted
• During periods of normal science, scientists solve puzzles within the existing paradigm. They defend the paradigm and ostracise colleagues who question it. Modifications of the theory in the light of contradictory findings must stay within the paradigm. Otherwise the findings is an unexplained anomaly
• During a period of normal science, anomalies accumulate and modifications become increasingly ad hoc. This triggers a crisis
• During a crisis, scientists are more open to an alternative, incommensurable theory, if the latter provides the same level of explanation and in addition allows the formulation of new predictions that stand the falsification test. If such an alternative is found, a paradigm shift takes place, which Kuhn calls a scientific revolution
• Because of these scientific revolutions, scientific progress is not steady and cumulative. During the revolution progress is very fast; at the end of a period of normal science, progress is very slow or non-existent
• The cycle of periods of normal science followed by scientific revolutions is never-ending.
• Paradigm shifts in Kuhn’s theory do not imply that the old paradigm is replaced by a better one; it is just replaced by another one
• This means that all scientific knowledge is relative and time-dependent, because it is based on a paradigm that is bound to be replaced in the future
• The awareness that scientific knowledge is relative has elicited strong criticism from the postmodernists. In their view science is in no way superior to other types of knowledge, because it consists of social constructions made up by the scientists. Scientists have more power because they have formed strong alliances with other powerful groups

Pragmatism

• A strong component of the discussion within the philosophy of science is the extent to which human perception and understanding correspond to a physical reality. This is known as the realism vs. idealism debate.
• Another view is that knowledge of reality is derived from successfully coping with the world. Ideas that work are retained; ideas that do not make a practical difference get lost. This is the pragmatic view
• The pragmatic view has been ignored for a long time, because it does not give a special status to scientific knowledge, but currently seems to be gaining momentum

Chapter 10

Reasons why psychology is claimed to be a science

• The founders have defined psychology as the study of the human mind with the scientific method
• They further argued that whether or not a discipline is a science depends on the research methods used and not on the topic investigated: psychology used the scientific method and, therefore, was a science
• The scientific method has proven to be a fruitful approach and is fully integrated within mainstream psychological research
• Psychological research is fully integrated within other scientific research. It is one of the seven major areas with strong links to two other major areas. It forms a hub for a series of less central sciences related to human functioning

Reasons why psychology is not seen as a science

• The stereotypical view people have of a psychologists is that of a clinical psychologists treating patients. This view does not overlap with the stereotypical view people have of a scientists as a loner who is obsessed with his work and which he studies in an uncreative way, making use of instruments.
• Professional psychologists largely outnumber psychology researchers, and they are users of scientific knowledge rather than creators of such knowledge. There is even evidence that many practitioners return to their intuition once they have finished their studies
• People are convinced that they have as much knowledge about psychological issues as psychologists, or at least that they can keep up with psychologists as long as they pay attention to the psychological research that is described in the media
• Next to the mainstream scientific tradition in academic psychology, there is a hermeneutic approach that is more in agreement with the public’s view of psychology as non-scientific

The critique of experimental psychology

• Dilthey: psychology belongs to the Geisteswissenschaften (mental sciences) because
  • It deals with the content of the human mind
  • It describes the human experience in its totality
  • It sees a person’s life within its context
  • Only the method of understanding can study the full human experience
• Psychoanalysis used the hermeneutic approach because it tried to understand the content of the human mind through interpretation on the basis of the psychoanalytic theories
• The client-centred approach also stressed the importance of understanding the other in psychotherapeutic relations.
• Allport criticised experimental psychology because it ignored individual differences
• In the natural-scientific approach the interesting research questions are too much defined as a function of what can be examined with the scientific method
• Experimental psychology is partly the result of the dominance of white Western males in psychological research. Gave rise to feminist and postcolonial psychology
• The natural-scientific approach ignores the fact that all knowledge is relative, depending on the prevailing research paradigm and influences from society
• The strongest criticism of experimental psychology currently comes from critical psychology
  • Knowledge is not a mirror of reality
  • Science is a social construction
  • Psychologists have a moral responsibility because their research changes the social reality
• Criticisms of experimental psychology has had an influence on mainstream research, but mostly indirectly (through unconscious plagiarism)

Focus on

• Each history is relative and conveys only part of the rich raw material that is available
• In the history of psychology a distinction is often made between the traditional approach (largely seen as a legitimisation of the current state of affairs) and the new approach (more critical, has an eye for the relativity of knowledge, tries to expose the assumptions that have rise to current opinions).
• An extra problem is that book authors and lecturers may have vested interests, which bias the coverage of history
• The history described in the present summary is not the history of psychology. It is only one of the possible stories, which we hope will not be perceived as being too biased

Chapter 11

The essence of quantitative research

• Quantitative research methods refer to research methods based on quantifiable data and the following assumptions
  • There is an objective reality to be discovered
  • The main aim of scientific research is to find universal cause-effect relations
  • To do this, one has to rely on the hypothetico-deductive method and avoid confounds and sources of noise
• A distinction can be made between descriptive, relational and experimental research
  • Descriptive research: trying to express variables as numbers, usually involves a few measures from a large group of participants
  • Relational research: searching for statistical correlations in order to understand relationships between variables. Use of factor analysis to find the structure in datasets with many variables
  • Experimental research: searching for cause-effect relationships by excluding confounding variables. Experiments are often not possible.
  • Status of the different types of research can be understood by analogy with the hierarchy of evidence in medical science
• Strengths
  • Inherits the strengths of the natural sciences
  • Application of powerful statistical techniques enables researchers to detect every pattern of association in large datasets
• Weaknesses
  • No interest in the person behind the participant
  • Research too much driven by what can be measured numerically and tested experimentally
  • The falsification test is not primarily geared towards the generation of new ideas and finding practical solutions to specific problems

The essence of qualitative research

• Qualitative research methods are directed at understanding phenomena in their historical and socio-cultural context. They are based on the following assumptions
  • In psychology there is little or no evidence for a reality outside people’s perception and experience
  • Attempts to control the situation make the setting artificial and no longer meaningful
  • Researchers must immerse themselves in the situation so that they can understand the meaning of the situation
  • Qualitative research is in the first place meant to understand specific situations (ideographic) and not come to general rules (nomothetic)
  • Induction is more important than deduction
  • Qualitative research must remain evidence-based, starting from a careful and verifiable collection of data
• Data collection usually occurs by means of semi-structured interviews with a limited number of participants; increasingly also focus groups are used
• The data need to be transcribed and analysed up to saturation along the lines proposed by the qualitative method that is used
• Three methods
  • Grounded theory: tries to understand the phenomenon
  • Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA): tries to understand the ways in which the phenomenon is perceived and experienced
  • Discourse analysis: tries to understand how language constructs human interactions
• Strengths
  • Directly focuses on understanding situations and solving problems
  • Generation of new ideas and elaboration of theories
  • More attention to the participant’s needs
• Weaknesses
  • Based on induction and verification
  • No external criterion to decide between theories
  • Based on introspection
  • Input from the researcher may be a problem in high-stake situations

How do quantitative and qualitative research methods relate to each other?

• Some psychologists see them as incompatible and argue that psychology must make a choice
  • The underlying philosophies are mutually exclusive
  • Attempts to combine both approaches are disguised attempts to improve the standing of the natural-science research line or the hermeneutics oriented research line at the expense of the other
• Other psychologists see both types of research methods are complementary; they focus more on the type of information provided by each method rather than on the philosophies that underlie them
  • Fervent supporters of each approach tend to depict an exaggerated view of the other approach
  • The weakness of one approach are the strengths of the other

Is philosophy of science useful for psychology?

• Psychology has tried to follow the directives from philosophers of science on how to do ‘proper’ science, but has been confronted with changing and at times conflicting advice
• The problem may be that philosophy of science in vain tries to distil a limited set of rules that would govern a process which is not deterministic
• An alternative view that may be more in line with the stochastic nature of scientific discovery is the evolutionary account. According to this model, the rise and fall of scientific ideas follow Darwinian principles of random variation and natural selection
• Because natural selection depends on the fir of an idea in the environment and because science depends on the wider culture to be financed, the ultimate criterion determining whether an idea will survive may be whether society at large finds the idea interesting and useful
• This may entail a return to the pragmatic criterion

Chapter 13

The ways in which society has influenced psychology

• A first factor in the growth of psychology was the decline of the impact of religion and the increase of scientific thinking in Western society
• Society also provided topics and metaphors to the psychological researchers.
• Because science is a social enterprise, socio-political values have influenced the ideas psychologists put forward and the theories they examined.
• Society also influences the daily practice of psychologists.
• According to sociologists, psychologists have been used in power games that are going on in society. Foucault argued that psychologists were used for surveillance of various groups. Psychology’s findings have also been used by pseudo-scientists, who freely combined evidence-based statements with made-up claims. There is the concern that psychological knowledge may be misused against people. Some authors argue that psychologists have not played their cards well in power games so far, so that their standing in society is lower than it could be.

Critical views about the ways in which psychology has influenced society

• Psychology has contributed to the psychologisation of society.
• Labels introduced by psychology have become social realities, because their influenced the way people saw themselves and others, and because society adapted itself to the new labels, despite the fact that they were to some extent arbitrary
• Psychologists have tried to increase their power by making alliances with established groups, such as the natural sciences, and by extending their research to new, upcoming groups
• Psychologists also tried to increase their power by creating new needs for which they claimed to have solutions (Illich). They also export these values to the rest of the world
• Psychologist s are not politically neutral, but promote liberal values. This decreases the help they can give to people with conservative values
• Psychologists tent to promote science in the ‘two cultures’ competition (humanities and academic) and have difficulty endorsing religion as a meaning provider

To what extent is the psychologisation of society steered by psychologists?

• There is a discrepancy between the degree to which Western society has become psychologisted and the impact of psychologists
• This is because the psychologisation of society is driven to a larger extent by the popular image of psychology than by what happens in psychological research itself
• Knowledge of psychology is largely driven by the media, which often brings a simplified and sensationalised story in line with popular beliefs and social biases