WSRt, critical thinking - a summary of all articles needed in the second block of second year psychology at the uva
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Critical thinking
Article: Dennis & Kintsch
Evaluating Theories
A theory is a concise statement about how we believe the world to be.
Theories organize observations of the world and allow researchers to make predictions about what will happen in the future under certain conditions.
Science is about the testing of theories, and the data we collect as scientists should either implicitly or explicitly bear on theory.
The characteristics that lead a theory to be successful from those that make it truly useful:
Descriptive adequacy
The extent to which it accords with data.
In psychology, the most popular way of comparing a theory against data is null hypothesis significance testing.
Determining whether a theory is consistent with data is not always as straightforward as it may at first appear.
Some of the the subtleties involved in determining the extent to which a theory accords with data
Precision and interpretability
When evaluating a theory, pay close attention to how well the constructs in the theory and the relationships between them are defined. Can you be confident that you could apply the theory in a related domain unambiguously?
Conversely, when articulating a theory, ask yourself what implicit assumption you may be making that may not be shared by your readers.
Coherence and consistency
Although it may seem obvious that theories should be free form logical flaws, it isn’t easy to spot these flaws, particularly when theories are presented in verbal form.
Another common problem that one must look for in evaluating theories is circularity.
Beyond ensuring that theories are free form logical flaws, it is important to ask how consistent a theory is, both with other theories within psychology and also with theory outside psychology.
Our current understanding remains our best guess of how the world operates, and so theories that are consistent with this approximation are more likely to endure.
Prediction and falsifiability
Ideally, one should be able to make unambiguous predictions based on the theory and conduct empirical tests that could potentially bring the theory into doubt.
Although falsification provides the most useful information in advancing scientific knowledge, it is sometimes the case that verifying predictions can increase our confidence in a theory.
However, not all predictions are equally diagnostic.
Postdiction and explanation
Prediction is possible under well-controlled laboratory conditions, but hardly ever under natural conditions.
Postdictive explanations are weaker than predictive explanations, but they are still explanations.
Prediction cannot be our goal.
Explanation after the fact (postdiction) is possible and worthwhile.
To predict we need to understand what is going on and have sufficient control over the relevant variables.
Postdiction also implies understanding, though not control.
The true goal of science is understanding, not necessarily prediction.
Postdiction can be based on formal theories as much as prediction.
Parsimony (Occam’s Razor)
The principle of parsimony states that theories should be as simple as possible.
In choosing between models of a given phenomenon, we would like to favor the one that fits the data well and is as simple as possible.
Breadth
Theories should attempt to be as broad as possible, while maintaining the other criteria such as descriptive adequacy and the ability to provide genuine explanations of phenomena.
Originality
Great care must be taken when comparing theories against each other, even when they are stated formally.
Usability
Good scientific theories should be useful in addressing societal problems.
Rationality
Does the theory make claims about the architecture of mind that seem reasonable in the light of the environmental contingencies that have shaped our evolutionary history?
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This is a summary of the articles and reading materials that are needed for the second block in the course WSR-t. This course is given to second year psychology students at the Uva. This block is about analysing and evaluating psychological research. The order in which the
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