Reading the Literature

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Reading the Literature The Science of Psychology

• Psych 231 Research Methods in Psychology

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Announcements

• OOPS! Error on the library exercise in PIP
  packet
• (3) Should be
• Using PsycInfo, find an article by Simone Nguyen
  Gregory Murphy that was published in 2003. (NOT
  1997)
• Download (full text available at library) and
  read the article for lab THIS week (German and
  Barrett, 2005)

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Reading a research article

• What's the goal of a research article?
• The reader to
• Know about the research
• Understand what was done
• Be convinced by the research (hopefully)
• Standardization of research report format
• APA style
• Organization and content reflects the logical
  thinking in scientific investigation
• Standardization helps with clarity
• Read with a critical eye

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The anatomy of a research article

• The basic parts of a research article
• Title and authors - gives you a general idea of
  the topic and specifically who did it
• Abstract - short summary of the article
• States the issue, the methods, major variables of
  interst, the findings, and the conclusions
• (in 120 words or less)
• First contact
• Shows up in PsycInfo
• Gets skimmed before reading the article

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The anatomy of a research article

• Introduction - gives you the background that you
  need
• What are the issues
• What is/are the theory(ies)
• What does the past research say
• What the rationale for doing this research
• What are the specific hypotheses
• Reading checklist
• 1) What is the author's goal?
• 2) What are the hypotheses?
• 3) If you had designed the experiment, how would
  YOU have done it?

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The anatomy of a research article

• Method - tells the reader exactly what was done
• Enough detail that the reader could actually
  replicate the study.
• Subsections
• Participants - who were the data collected from
• Apparatus/ Materials - what was used to conduct
  the study
• Procedure - how the study was conducted, what the
  participants did
• Reading checklist
• 1 a) Is your method better than theirs?
• b) Does the authors method actually test the
  hypotheses?
• c) What are the independent, dependent, and
  control variables?
• 2) Based on what the authors did, what results do
  YOU expect?

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The anatomy of a research article

• Results - gives a summary of the results and the
  statistical tests
• Reading checklist
• 1) Did the author get unexpected results?
• 2 a) How does the author interpret the results?
• b) How would YOU interpret the results?
• c) What implications would YOU draw from these
  results?

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The anatomy of a research article

• Discussion - the interpretation and implications
  of the results
• Reading checklist
• 1 a) Does YOUR interpretation or the authors'
  interpretation best represent the data?
• b) Do you or the author draw the most sensible
  implications and conclusions?
• References - full citations of all work cited
• Appendices - additional supplementary supporting
  material

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Psychology as a science

• What is science?

• What are the goals of science?

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Psychology as a science

• Psychologys goals are similar to the goals of
  the physical sciences (e.g., physics and
  chemistry)
• Psychologists are concerned with the behavior of
  people (and animals) rather than the physical
  world.

• How is psychology different from the physical
  sciences?
• Human (and animal) behavior is typically much
  more variable than most physical systems.
• Statistical control
• Methodological control

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Goals of psychology

• Description of behavior
• Describe events, what changes what might affect
  change, what might be related to what, etc.
• Prediction of behavior
• Given X what will likely happen
• Control of behavior
• For the purpose of interventions (e.g., how do we
  prevent violence in schools)

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Goals of psychology (cont.)

• Causes of behavior
• Sometimes predictions arent enough, want to know
  how the X and the outcome are related
• Explanation of behavior
• A complete theory of the hows and whys

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Properties of a good theory
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Properties of a good theory

• Organizes, Explains, Accounts for the data
• If there are data relevant to your theory, that
  your theory cant account for, then your theory
  is wrong
• either adapt the theory to account for the new
  data
• develop a new theory that incorporates the new
  data

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Properties of a good theory

• Organizes, Explains, Accounts for the data
• Testable/Falsifiable cant prove a theory, can
  only reject it

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me
right a single experiment can prove me wrong.
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Omnipotent Theory

• Beware theories that are so powerful/ general/
  flexible that they can account for everything.
  These are not testable
• Karl Popper claimed that Freudian theory isnt
  falsifiable
• If display behavior that clearly has sexual or
  aggressive motivation, then it is taken as proof
  of the presence of the Id
• If such behavior isnt displayed, then you have a
  reaction formation against it. So the Id is
  there, you just cant see evidence of it.
• So, as stated, the theory is too powerful and
  cant be tested and so it isnt useful

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Properties of a good theory

• Organizes, Explains, Accounts for the data
• Testable/Falsifiable
• Generalizable not too restrictive
• The theory should be broad enough to be of use,
  the more data that it can account for the better
• The line between generalizability and
  falsifiability is a fuzzy one.

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Properties of a good theory

• Organizes, Explains, Accounts for the data
• Testable/Falsifiable
• Generalizable
• Parsimony (Occams razor)
• for two or more theories that can account for the
  same data, the simplest theory is the favored one

Everything should be made as simple as
possible, but not any simpler.
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Properties of a good theory

• Organizes, Explains, Accounts for the data
• Testable/Falsifiable
• Generalizable
• Parsimony
• Makes predictions, generates new knowledge
• a good theory will account for the data, but also
  make predictions about things that the theory
  wasnt explicitly designed to account for

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Properties of a good theory

• Organizes, Explains, Accounts for the data
• Testable/Falsifiable
• Generalizable
• Parsimony
• Makes predictions, generates new knowledge
• Precision
• makes quantifiable predictions

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Using theories in research

• Induction reasoning from the data to the
  general theory
• So in complete practice this approach probably
  needs a new theory (or an adapted one) for every
  new data set
• Deduction reasoning from a general theory to
  the data
• Here the theory (if it is a good one) is
  sometimes viewed as more critical than the data.
  
• It also will guide the choice of what experiments
  get done

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The chicken or the egg?
Theory
Data driven research
Induction
Deduction
Theory driven research
Data

• Typically good research programs use both

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Research Approaches

• Basic (pure) research - tries to answer
  fundamental questions about the nature of
  behavior
• e.g., McBride Dosher (1999). Forgetting rates
  are comparable in conscious and automatic memory
  A process-dissociation study.
• Applied research Theory sometimes takes a
  backseat. This is research designed to solve a
  particular problem
• e.g., Jin (2001). Advertising and the news Does
  advertising campaign information in news stories
  improve the memory of subsequent advertisements?

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Research Approaches

• Think of this is as a continuum rather as two
  separate categories.

• Often applied work may bring up some
  interesting basic theoretical questions, and
  basic theory often informs applied work.

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Next Week

• Basic Methodologies
• Making observations and conducting experiments
• Read Chapters 6 and 7