Foundations of Experimental Design in Cognitive Psychology: Scientific Method and Challenges

Hello and welcome to the course basics of experiment design for cognitive psychology. I am Ark Wharmmer from the

department of cognitive science at ID Kpur. This is the first week of the course as you know and we are sort of

covering a brief historical background of where exactly the ideas about experimental design and the experimental

method actually came through in psychology. So we'll be doing a little bit of background story. We'll basically

trace the evolution of the experimental and the quantitative methods in psychology.

In today's lecture uh I will talk to you a little bit about the obsession of psychology uh for being considered as a

scientific discipline. There are a bunch of uh very interesting nuances about psychologists

uh treating themselves or being wanted to treat uh you know being wanted being wanting to treat themselves as

scientists as similar to the natural science folk uh such as people who do physics, chemistry, biology. uh

interestingly if you see even in the Indian uh academic scene uh most universities uh for example have the

department of psychology in the arts faculty it's in a lot of places it's in the humanities and liberal arts

departments and so on. So uh is psychology a science at all? Is something that uh you know has uh

troubled a lot of people uh across time both students and practitioners of psychology and uh we'll talk about this

in some detail today. So uh as I mentioned in the first lecture itself there has been a

preoccupation among psychologists about holding the tag of being a bonafide science similar to say for example

physics, chemistry or biology as I was just saying. Now what actually makes something or what actually makes a

discipline a science? Is it the subject matter of what is being studied? Is it the methods that are being employed? And

uh you know what is what is the deal here? Let's try and explore some of these questions. So as an academic

discipline uh you know uh since its beginning where psychology was emerging uh you know as sort of sharing uh both

questions and methods with philosophy as well as physiology as an academic discipline. it needed to place itself uh

in in a way that people will distinguish psychology from mental philosophy that the American uh philosophers were doing

at the time as well as uh because the subject matter was such it was it could not be directly uh linked to physiology

as well. So psychologists wanted to place themselves as uh although related but distinguishable from both of these

disciplines. So uh the initial uh proponents of uh psychology uh you know then sought to

highlight two very important aspects of psychology as an academic endeavor. First is uh they wanted to assure the

the followers and the scholars uh you know in psychology people who were looking at the work that was coming out

that it would take forward the old and respectful tradition of moral and mental philosophy uh extending back up to the

Greek philosophers like Aristotle. So the subject matter basically uh because we're talking about the mind because

we're talking about the human behavior and there are several anticedants to human behavior that are that are being

considered. So psychologists sought to ensure that okay we're not running away from these topics too much. Uh there

might be some difference in the methods we follow and the uh you know mode of inquiries that we pursue. Also

psychologists because they wanted to slightly distinguish themselves from the you know methods that were being

followed in philosophy purely analytical and so on. Uh they wanted to uh demonstrate that psychology as a

discipline would follow very closely the scientific method for the study of human mind and behavior. uh trying to connect

it or use the methodology as a bridge to connect it closer to the uh you know uh to medicine and the life sciences which

would basically uh you know lended the same kind of uh you know equivalent status or legitimacy as a bonafide

science. So this is something that historians of psychology have actually talked about in a lot of detail but I'm

just sort of trying to use this to give you a context of where we are coming from. Now this claim to the scientific

method was very interesting because it was championed by uh you know early uh authors like Herman Abbingos, John Dei,

even William Wound who established the first scientific uh you know laboratory first psychological laboratory in 1869

in Lizig Germany. Both all of these scholars opined that it it was for too long that psychology as a subject had

suffered under the metaphysical uh you know approaches that the American philosophers and the earlier

philosophers were actually following. So there was certainly this need to you know graduate to something different.

Now how do you go forward from here? because you've sort of said okay this is the method we going we going to follow

uh and this will be a new approach to pursuing a similar questions if not the same similar questions that were being

attacked in mental and moral philosophy so to be accepted as a science psychologist sought to emphasize the

adoption of the method and the approaches to investigate these topics of interest so again remember as I said

the questions are not entirely different they are sort of uh you know they they are more evold evolve versions more uh

pinpointed versions of what was being followed in philosophy but uh the methods are the ones that should create

this distinction. Okay. So the founders of the discipline the founders of psychology in that sense maintained that

there was nothing inherent in the subject matter of psychology that would prevent it from being studied using the

scientific method. So they said uh the issues that we are concerned with say for example what comprises the mind the

nature of human behavior uh you know aspects of personality etc could actually be studied using the scientific

method and it did not rely only on uh analytical and introspective traditions that had prevailed so far.

As a result, uh if you see a lot of early writings in psychology in the 1800s and in the very early 1900s, uh

invested heavily on the development of appropriate research designs and techniques of analysis and they were at

the forefront of the investigations using increasingly powerful research. Something that is very interesting about

psychology which I'm sure all students of psychology would appreciate is that the kind of control condition or the

kind of obsession with you know keeping out the confounding variables matching all the participants creating these

initial equivalences uh is something that psychology prides itself in it is something that psychologists actually

find missing in a lot of other disciplines say for example in engineering or even to a certain extent

in medicine. So that is something that uh is very important for psychologists and it has been so uh for the longest

time. There was also we discussed logical positivism in the previous lecture. So

there was also a considerable influence of the ideas uh from logical positivism uh on the methods that psychology was

seeking to follow. So as uh and they were basically say for example uh you know the things that we discussed in the

last class this idea uh of the tripartite process of observation reasoning through induction and

verification. So these were initially preferred methods of uh in scientific inquiry under psychology. Also

non-observables were broadly excluded and uh unless there could be a operational definition which could

quantify these non-observable variables, non-observables were not included in the analysis or in the discourse or subject

matter of psychology. Also uh interestingly most of the early theories in psychology if you see were

limited to uh descriptions of the observed facts mostly in forms of mathematical laws. So for example uh

some of the earlier theories if you remember the pleasure principle by uh you know uh uh some of these

psychologists and and a bunch of other ideas they are actually stated in terms of mathematical laws in some sense

aligning them to the natural science traditions less like in maths physics or other of these sciences

and is this a wrong thing? It's probably not because this is where a discipline is trying to distinguish itself against

the background of uh you know what has passed uh philosophy and so on. Uh so to its credit this obsession with the

scientific method had served the psychologist rather well uh until around the 19th century and a host of uh

scholars were taking up psychology and they were following it as a scientific discipline and they were uh more and

more getting interested in trying to investigate and understand the nuances of human behavior as well as the

structure of the human mind and so on. Now let's zoom in a little bit. Let's see what is the scientific method that

we are posturing with. What is the scientific method? What are the salient characteristics of the scientific method

that psychology sought to adopt in its early days. Now you can sort of say uh science as psychologists wanted to

appropriate uh must be done in a cumulative and systematic manner. So for example the idea is that whatever new

knowledge emerges it should build upon the existing knowledge. It should derive from earlier theories, a test of them,

verification of them, falsification of them. The idea is new knowledge should be building from whatever is already

available and it should be uh created in such a way in a transparent manner which should be publicly reported so that it

can be uh you know replicated by anyone. So it it's an open thing. It's cumulative. It builds upon previous

knowledge and it is systematic that you can basically look at the structure and you can uh take any study uh on an on a

given phenomena and see okay can I replicate it or not. The other thing is uh if you want to

keep things systematic if you want to uh have this train of cumulative uh development uh then one of the

requirements would be to uh follow uh very well definfined and specified methods. So in the sense uh whatever

information is being carried through uh you know whichever investigations that we are following say for example we're

conducting study uh you know analyzing people's attitudes towards a particular topic let's say homosexuality or

anything like that. Now if there is uh uh there are uh you know successive studies looking at this topic these

studies should be uh done following well- definfined and specified methods so that uh you know there is a broad

agreement about if the methods uh that are being followed are uh you know within a particular paradigm they are

agreed upon by everyone. It's not like that everybody who wants to investigate this topic will come up with their own

method and you know create their own investigation. there have to be some broad uh you know let's say agreements

within the paradigm for example uh we talked about Coon's paradigm in the previous lecture and that is something

uh that is uh very very important that well- definfined specified methods must be clearly uh outlined and the

observations then collected using these ways are comparable to each other and they basically contribute to a

cumulative buildup of knowledge also what is this knowledge for so using the scientific method whatever

insights and conclusions one is building what are they for? Uh so one of the things that uh science or uh you know

psychological science if we uh you know limit it to that would pride itself in is that whatever conclusions and new

knowledge that we generate must be useful for must allow for making predictions about future events must be

say for example if you make uh you know a law of say for example if there is a law of uh you know effect that uh you

know doing this creates this phenomena. So remember we have this in the behaviorist uh tradition we have

similous response associations and we have you know those laws uh if you figure out something let's say the

pleasure principle that uh you know the organism tries to maximize the positive uh you know uh outputs for itself or

positive outcomes for itself. Now this should be able to predict future behavior. So next time if I you know

take a uh you know animal model or a human model for that matter we put it in a situation uh the responses of the

model uh should be in line with these predictions or at least you can check whether the behavior is in line with

these predictions or not. So cumulative and systematic well- definfined and specified methods and these uh the

knowledge what is that is generated should allow for making predictions. Finally uh whatever knowledge we

generate uh you know and it is used for predictions and it is used to understand human behavior must also just like all

natural science be open for revisions. It is possible that for some time uh you know uh these predictions work, the

model works. Uh but uh eventually if you remember the you know the paradigm shift or the scientific evolution that we were

talking about uh with regards to co it is possible that one discovers mistakes, one discovers shortcomings of a given

theory of a given model. Uh they should be open for revision. should be open for modifications for even say for example

uh discarding some theories and replacing them with new ones. So this is very unlike say for example belief based

knowledge which is very hard to reject because it uh in some sense sometimes it it hurts the feelings of the pe

proponents. It hurts the feelings of the uh followers at the same time and in that sense you will find that belief

based knowledge uh tradition based knowledge faith-based knowledge is is much less open for revision. Scientific

knowledge on the other hand has to be open for uh revisions. It has to be uh open and accessible to change and

modifications in light of new facts that are being discovered through experimentation and so on. So what are

the broad characteristics of these methods? Cumulative and scientific well- definfined and specified methods be

available for predictions and must be open for revisions. This is much in contrast with

pseudocience or common sense or belief based knowledge that I was talking about. For example, a lot of belief

based systems lack the openness of testing uh you know uh by other experts. So uh somebody say for example comes and

says I don't know I believe that ghosts exist for example and then if you say okay can I get this belief tested by

other experts uh and the person would say no maybe you you will not be able to see it you're not capable enough you

don't have the ability uh for extra sensory perception or something like that and in that sense uh this

conviction that is coming through belief is not verifiable is not something that other experts outside this particular

individual can check and verify and prove or disprove this. So this is uh very different to how scientific

knowledge is built. Also if you see a lot of uh you know belief based uh uh knowledge systems or even common sense

based knowledge systems follow very ambiguous vague or vague exaggerated or even untestable claims. If I were to say

say for example you know that uh I have six sense uh and I can predict what is going to happen in future something like

that. Uh now this is uh ambiguous because what is it that I can exactly predict or uh you know uh I am omni

omniscient or I I know everything uh that is going to happen in the world. If I if I were to make claims like that how

would you test it? All right. Uh you come up with test and I say oh this uh you know my knowledge does not apply

with this it does not agree with this kind of test and so on. So uh these claims are ambiguous. These are a vague.

These are not specified. These are not precise. And in that sense this undermines the tradition of how

scientific knowledge is built. Also uh interestingly if you'll see most of these belief based systems rely

exclusively almost on confirmation rather than falsification. So what people do is let's say performing this

activity uh leads to longevity. uh you know something like say for example if you uh donate a particular kind of food

to a particular kind of animal it'll give you these benefits. Now the thing is uh if you do that and if something

nice happens you know just how superstitions work for example uh if I wear my right pad while walking on the

cricket field I'll make more runs now every time I do make more runs when I have worn the right pad first is counted

as a confirmation and it is basically used to sustain my superstition on the times that I do not make runs while I

have worn my right pad what I will do is I'll basically say oh you know there are these other factors. So what I will do

is I'll try and sustain my superstition by discounting the non-confirmatory or falsifying evidence. Whereas every time

I do make runs, I will actually say oh you know uh I made runs today because I wor my right pad first. Something like

that. Another very interesting aspect of common sense based or pseudocience uh pseudocience-based uh you know knowledge

uh is that it is tied to authority. It is tied to uh so-called expertise. that is tight to people rather than valuefree

or empirically grounded data. So I believe this because somebody that I know and I respect uh I know to be

scholarly has said this. Now do you go and scrutinize and verify those claims? A lot of times we don't. Uh is that the

best practice? Probably not because uh conclusions should be based on empirical data. Uh as we've learned in the last

lectures, falsification works. uh falsification provides us the you know the tenacity to see okay this is the

correct uh you know idea. So a lot of times when you are drawing our knowledge from figures of authority uh by belief

by respect or by uh you know similar uh issues this knowledge is is uh fable and it is not uh grounded on you know uh on

solid basis. Finally uh you'll see a lot of these uh these claims are sometimes they use

misleading language. Sometimes they use uh language that is is not easily understood. So which is again something

which is uh contrary to how scientific knowledge is built. You will see when you read journal articles uh care is

taken to be extremely precise, very clear and uh present knowledge gained and procedures followed in such a way

that anybody in uh you know across the world can actually follow the same procedures to see whether they get the

same results or not. So in that sense you can see there's a there's a very stark contrast between knowledge that is

uh you know arising from pseudocience and knowledge that is uh arrived at using the scientific method. And this is

basically what psychology as a discipline at least in its initial days actually even now in its initial days

was trying to emphasize upon that maybe our subject matter does overlap with philosophy does overlap with medicine

but what basically makes us uh a science so to speak is the methods that we're going to follow to make these analyses

to carry out these investigations and in that sense it's it's a good idea to basically you know perform an

interesting comparison between how psychology stands uh with respect to other disciplines. So, Boyak and

colleagues they performed an analysis of the citation data from more than 1 million journal articles appearing in

over 7,000 scientific journals uh and uh that appeared in the year 2000. Uh what did they find? They find interestingly

and I'll show you the figure uh just now. They find interestingly that if you can see here psychology is one of the

seven major uh scientific fields of inquiry. uh also uh it is uh you know forming it it has close links with you

know disciplines that also worry about uh you know human behavior such as uh the social sciences and the medical

sciences. In the order of things you will see that there is it's almost a clockwise thing. You have maths, you

have physics, you have chemistry, you have earth sciences, you have medicine, then you have psychology and then you

have sociology. So all of these disc disciplines make these clusters and psychology is

well situated. it has very good connections with disciplines that follow the same line of inquiry. So in that

sense if you see it it has a very good standing amongst the general uh you know scient sciences or disciplines that are

considered as bonafide sciences uh you know in in academia. Now uh while scient while psychologists

are posturing as scientists and they're you know following these methods and they are making all efforts to be

recognized as a bonafide science uh are there challenges why is it that you know a lot of people at least common people

around you know ourselves if you go out on the streets and ask you know I'm I'm a student of psychology oh you know is

it a science or an art or a humanities subjects uh uh a lot of people will consider these that you know it's it's

not a science, it's an art or it's a it's a humanities subject. Again, remember uh there is nothing derisive

about uh uh you know studying or being in the liberal arts. There's nothing d there's nothing uh degrading about being

regarded as a humanity subject. But the idea here that I want to emphasize is that there is a lot of effort uh at

least by the kind of methods that psychology is following to be seen as a science. So uh what are the challenges

here? So let let's see for example there are a lot of stereotypes about how psychology is is stationed and what

basically psychologists do. Uh what do students of psychology study and so on. So for example you can uh you know bris

and brazel have enlisted some of these stereotypes. Let's let's uh look at them uh rather briefly.

So uh if you ask a lay person outside on the street uh you know somebody who's probably let's say not not gone to

university or something uh they'll say oh psychology you're studying psychology psychology probably uh or mainly

involves an interaction between a therapist and a client. Uh myself when I started uh you know my bachelor's in

psychology at the university of Alabad and most of my friends were doing engineering at that time. Uh this was a

common refrain. Oh now uh can you solve our you know mental problems? Can you read our minds? uh can you counsel me

for example? Uh to a certain extent yes psychology uh you know studying psychology can allow you to do this but

this is is this a main job of psychologist? No. Uh there is much more that is covered in psychology. There are

many more nuanced methods that psychologists follow. Also uh there is a broad impression that psychologists are

mainly interested in abnormal behavior. They're interested in studying when behavior is uh you know uh is afflicted

by some kind of pathology. maybe some kind of a personality disorder. Maybe uh nowadays people are very aware of terms

like ADHD and dyslexia and paranoia and and and a bunch of these things which have been presented in movies and so on

in books for example. But again psychologists are not only concerned with abnormal behavior. There is a part

uh there is clinical psychology, there are psychiatrists and people who are concerned with abnormal behavior and

helping people uh you know who are experiencing that. But that's not all that psychologists do. So these

stereotypes also have you know play a very you know interesting role in how psychology or psychologists are viewed

in our society. Also uh in in some cases you will see that psychologists are mainly seen as

social workers you know help uh uh you know people who provide help uh they help and counsel afflicted people. Say

for example when there are calamities when somebody's gone through an accident suffered some trauma uh the typical hope

is that that some psychology some psychology uh you know in uh uh practitioner counselor for example uh

will come and have a chat with them and they will help them again yes this is a part of what psychologists do but is it

it is not all that psychology is about for example I practice uh you know experimental and cognitive psychology

uh I rarely uh you know I'm sort of trying to work with some disorders but it's not all that I'm doing most of my

researches with normal individuals undergraduate students as uh you know most psychology researchers work with uh

and so it's it's not like I'm sort of uh maybe even qualified to go out and help and counsel people because that's an

entirely different stream of studying psychology also uh there's a very interesting

impression uh you know anybody who does a bachelor of arts uh uh versus a BSE or a BTech that psychology is much easier

than the natural sciences. This is something that you know people will uh automatically do and farewell in without

working very hard without going through any maths any stats any scientific studies for example. Uh so that is also

not correct. uh people who study psychology either in their bachelors or in their masters or they pursue their

PhD in psychology uh will tell you that there is a lot of uh you know work that goes in there it is sometimes I I'll say

equally hard as mathematics or or engineering or something like that or any of these uh fields like that. So

these stereotypes sometimes give an impression to the outer world that psychology is not scientific, that

psychologists are not people who work hard, who study hard and so on. Uh which is not really the case as we'll discover

during the course of this uh you know uh these lectures. Also a lot of popular opinion about psychology and

psychologist is framed by the depictions of psychologists in books and movies. uh there are uh uh you know three four

broad roles that you will see psychologists playing uh in movies and and famous books. For example, some

psychologists are presented as oracles. You know they they have deep insight into the human psyche and they can use

it to solve crimes, detect what others are thinking. Uh sometimes detect their intentions, sometimes control them and

uh you know misguide people to do stuff. Again, not what psychologists do uh you know uh at all. For example, uh social

agent as I was talking about this, you know, psych psychologists will help people social problems and counsel them

and help them. Yes, they do. But is it all what they do? All right. Uh sometimes uh as there's this you know

mad scientist stereotype uh there are these mad psychology stereotypes also that psychologists or people who

practice psychology are sometimes presented as an eccentric or romantic therapist you know who possesses empathy

and compassion uh but sometimes you know is disorganized shared it's it's almost a caricature of a normal individual uh

which again I hope you know people appreciate is not is not really the case. Also healer a lot of people would

ask you oh you're a student of psychology uh you may not uh you know you may be equipped to heal uh you know

uh our emotional and mental scars you probably will never go through depression and so on. That's also not

really correct because uh this is not all the training that psychologists get. There is there's much more to that.

There are more nuances here. And in in that sense, what happens is that these stereotypes

while they may partly make psychology popular to uh you know people uh uh you know who are fascinated by these

characteristics but it does a very quiet disservice to the discipline because it paints a very wrong image of the

discipline uh amongst people who are not uh you know initiated in this. Now uh there's also uh an interesting uh

aspect here that there is there is a perceivable difference between uh researchers of psychology university uh

professors who are teaching and studying psychology as opposed to practitioners for example counselors and people who

are out there in the field and uh applying the principles of psychology. So there there are differences there as

well. For example, practitioners rarely see themselves as scientists and researchers. They basically think that

their job is mainly to apply whatever knowledge is already there uh and decide okay whether this approach say for

example whether client-based therapy works or or cognitive uh uh you know uh therapy works or rational emotive

therapy works. So the they think that you know there is this existing body of knowledge I'll take this existing body

of knowledge and see whether it suits well uh to my client or my patient and I'll apply that and that is the end of

my job. uh which a lot of times is not because uh the way a researcher would approach it will say okay let me let me

have this hypothe whether this will work or not and I'll apply this and I'll get my own findings and I'll you know maybe

publish those findings or try and advance this field of research okay also psychology researchers have also sort of

played a part uh you know in in uh uh sustaining these differences for example psychology researchers have used very

interesting terms for example uh initially they use the term new psychology ology emphasizing the use of

scientific method in contrast to philosophical or psychonalytic approaches. People have used

experimental psychology uh you know to emphasize that experiments are used uh also scientific psychology to again

stress that oh it is more scientific and so on. Again a lot of posturing for example to say okay this is what

psychologists are doing or this is what psychology researchers are doing uh which is different from practitioners of

psychology or practitioners of other behavioral sciences. also associations for example the American Psychological

Association at least initially uh was comprised mainly of researchers working in American universities uh and had

little to do with the needs of the practitioners. It's it's more recently it is sort of a more balanced approach

where researchers as well as practitioners uh combine their efforts and combine

their knowledge and share a lot of methods and procedures. But initially a lot of uh academic

uh researchers in psychology sought to distance themselves from the practitioners which probably it seemed

to them that diluted the overall uh sense of what psychologists were doing. Just continuing this uh you know as I

was saying that a lot of people consider that psychology is is you know very easy it's an art subject and so on. Uh one of

the reasons for this fact could also be that uh a lot of people think that uh findings that are generated in

psychology are not very different from common sensical intuitions. For example, if I tell you uh that you know it's not

uh a good practice to uh punish children uh when they are growing up uh and there are psychological studies which have

established uh you know uh the reasons for it and which have established the consequences of it. Uh somebody would

say that okay this is common sense. We all know that you know punishing young children is is not a great habit. Uh so

sometimes what happens is a lot of uh knowledge that psychologists generate uh seems very common sensical seems very

intuitive. Uh but again something that uh you know needs to be looked at is where is the source of that knowledge?

Is that knowledge being generated through common sense pseudocientific methods that we talked about belief and

faith and other things or it is generated through actual scientific experimentation and investigation. All

right. So uh this is again something uh that sometimes uh you know damages the case of psychology uh for being

considered as a science. Finally uh even amongst all psychologists uh there is you know this this disagreement between

whether it should follow more of basic research and investigating the topics in detail or be geared more towards the

application part and the instrumental value of psychology in the real world. For example,

you know, should we consider should we consider issues about the human mind uh as uh you know the par as paramount

questions independent of the methods uh but then more similar to the traditions uh followed in philosophy or say for

example can we apply uh psychology or insights generated from psychology uh in teacher education programs in training

teachers in training uh uh you know say for example therapists and and things like that that are that have more

practical value. You do not really need to uh you know peel the layers of the onion and go very deep into this. As

soon as you have some insights that are valuable for the word take them out, practice them and basically establish

the usability of psychology. Uh also uh as I said you know the mind and the mind initially was uh confused a lot with the

soul and so on. When you ask these questions uh you know in Indian philosophy for example the questions

about chit and man and a bunch of other uh very similar concepts also draw a lot of interest from religious studies and

religious studies have their own methodology have their own way of you know acrewing and stating facts. So a

lot of people also say maybe psychology should talk more about these topics and establish itself in in the uh you know

common parliament in how people talk about other subjects. So uh while not everyone agrees that

psychology uh you know should follow or stick to the you know basic scientific methods uh that it has uh you know uh

been trying to uh from its inception. An interesting aspect also that probably I was going to miss here is that uh this

obsession with the scientific method uh has been criticized for the fact that uh it is too individual uh specific or it

in in that sense actually not individual specific. The knowledge that is generated is generated in a form that it

ignores the individual completely. It ignores the personal and the social cultural history of the individual. it

ignores the context of the behavior completely because it is trying to uh you know come up with uh generalizable

knowledge. So when you when you're trying to come up with generalizable knowledge, you're trying to say that

okay say for example individuals try to maximize uh positive outcomes for themselves, you're basically saying that

this will apply to all humans as a species. You will ignore cultural differences. You will ignore personal uh

uh histories. will ignore the intentions and will and choice of an individual and so on. And in that sense, a lot of

researchers, psychologists uh following slightly different traditions have actually criticized it and they've said

that you know this empoweres the data. It empowers and weakens the conclusions that we draw from psychological

investigations. So we'll talk a little bit more about this uh in in the in the uh uh next lectures.

An interesting critique uh you know that arises out of this uh you know uh ignorant uh this uh ignoring or this

aligning with natural sciences and ignoring the individual uh was basically offered by uh you know this German

historian and philosopher William Dily. Uh William Dilty distinguishes between natural sciences and mental sciences. He

says natural sciences should uh try to distill laws from a limited set of observations and then basically explore

them uh you know extrapolate them uh so that they can be applied to all natural phenomena or all similar natural

phenomena. Whereas mental sciences like psychology should mainly aim at understanding and interpret interpreting

an an individual or a person by analysis of his own personal and cultural history. Who is the individual? You know

say for example um there are there are many sources of information gender uh uh you know soio economic status cast

religion country a bunch of these things should help uh should contribute to interpreting the person's behavior and

not generalizable laws that are derived in say for example physics and chemistry etc.

So there are four uh very interesting points that Dily offers and he says you know psychology should follow these four

points and basically adopt a slightly different method that it has been trying to since its inception you know the

vontian psychology and the the obsession with the uh objective uh almost the logical positivist methodology of doing

research. So, Dilly says psychology should be contentbased. You know, it should not focus on how the brain

functions but on what the mind is composed of. What is this mind? What is this abstract entity the mind that we

talk about and what does it take into account? Does it take into account let's say for example I am a male or a female.

Does it take into account that I'm born in a rich or a poor family? Things like that. And in that sense he says that

psychology should probably align more with fields uh you know such as history, political science, law, theory,

sociology, uh literature and arts. So this is again one view of what psychology should be doing. Also uh as I

was just saying psychology should aim to sample human experience in its totality. It should consider thoughts, emotion and

valition. And it should basically look at human behavior as an interaction between what is the person thinking?

What are the mental processes that you know are operating? How is the person feeling? What is its what is the

person's phenomenal experience? He's feeling happy, sad, hopeful, dejected, any of those things. And what does the

person want to do? What does he want to achieve? What are the motivations that drive this person's behavior? And they

basically say that these things are best understood in the individual context of the person. And in that sense the

scientific method that we have been advocating for so far will not do a great job of this. And hence we should

follow something uh you know similar to uh you know uh this kind of analysis that Dily is saying. The mental sciences

approach also context is central. You know when you talk about the interaction between

uh you know thoughts, emotion involution the context is extremely important. The context of a individual's personal and

socioultural history the factors that uh contribute to the identity of this individual that factors that contribute

to the you know specific situation of that individual in the society. The final element of uh you know Dily's

recommendation for psychology was that it should not you know the main tool in psychological investigation should not

be experimentation because experimentations provide ultra sanitized data. They basically control for all the

possible confounding variables. They they create this initial equivalence this and that and they basically create

an impoverished understanding of human behavior and the individual. Di says understanding should be

emphasized in psychology and he talks about understanding at three levels. He says elementary forms of understanding

should focus on simple problems of life. How does a person say for example uh you know get food form an opinion about

about himself or people around him and so on. Uh and then empathy. Uh psychologist tool should be empathy. uh

using which the observer or the person who is carrying out this investigation can actually try and reexperience

someone else's experience. Say for example, if you're talking to a patient or a client or if you're trying to

understand how does how does a person remember information, you should be able to put yourself in the person's shoes

and then say okay, if I were that person, how would I try to remember and organize information? Things like that.

Also there is a a recommendation uh to uh towards this hermeneutic level of understanding. What is hermenetic level?

Basically in which an observed person is better understood or at least you try to better understand a person than a person

understands himself or herself. So that uh idea of that a psychologist because he had so much knowledge and training he

will be able to understand you and your problems better than you yourself can. Okay. So this is again a a very

interesting theoretical stance that is offered to understand psychology. We will discuss more about this in the next

lectures. Now uh some of these uh recommendations were probably reflected uh you know in the uh schools of

psychology that followed for example the school of psychoanalysis championed by sigman Freud and allied uh you know

schools in the in the same tradition. Also there are other critiques of the scientific method. All right. Say for

example that it ignores individual differences. I was just talking about it because we are trying to generalize. So

when we are trying to generalize, we will ignore that one individual is different from another. We are treating

the data that I have gained from both of them as similar and comparable. Similarly, uh a lot of times people find

that methods the choice of method governs the questions asked rather than the other way around. It should be the

question that should govern what kind of method I'm going to follow. So uh uh there is this preoccupation with a lot

of psychologist that say oh I want to follow the experimental method and I will attack only those questions that

are tangible and can be handled within the experimental tradition and not anything else. So it again uh prevents

you from uh doing uh you know from approaching a lot of uh important questions and from developing a holistic

picture of human behavior or the human mind also. Uh is scientific knowledge

actually objective? Uh is scientific knowledge actually universal? Again a lot of people a lot of psychologists

even have uh claimed that these claims of objectivity and these claims of universality in scientific knowledge or

psychological scientific knowledge are actually exaggerated because uh there are confounds there is the individual

who's carrying out the research. There are other things uh that may have an impact. Say for example a lot of

findings uh people have seen are actually affected by cultural variables. Say for example

general behavior analyses about attitudes towards power or attitudes towards gender and attitudes towards how

a person should be are actually affected by cultural constructs. You know you have this classic Marcus and Gayama

distinction between the western and the eastern uh world. the western uh idea of individualism versus the eastern idea of

collectivism and so on and in that sense are the findings that are generated in psychology actually universal. So a lot

of research is done on on these parts as well. So uh while I started talking uh you

know started this lecture talking about the scientific method and its characteristics and to a some extent

advocating for the scientific method uh I ended this lecture with talking about the possible critiques and shortcomings

in this method. So what is it uh that uh you know I am saying should we stop talking about the scientific method

should we uh unfollow the scientific method and uh you know try and look for other approaches. Uh the idea is that uh

there are probably more gains than losses. Uh there are obviously trade-offs. There is say for example

when you are carrying out an experiment there is an understanding uh that the generalizability of the data gained

through this experiment will uh not be as much uh as say for example if you were following some other approaches. So

those things are there but these are these are informed choices. These are uh not guesses. This is not de you know not

guided by belief or fate rather an informed choice that an individual makes that some phenomena are best studied if

you want to say for example decipher causal relationships are best studied using the scientific experimental method

and some other phenomena may be better understood by something else. Say for example if you want to sample the human

experience of calamities for example you know when people are afflicted with earthquake tsunami riots and this and

that maybe that is better studied through uh uh you know a qualitative method of semiructured interviews

phenomenal uh experiences and so on. So uh there is obviously merit to both kinds of traditions and in the next

couple of lectures we will uh go uh slightly in more detail uh with respect to the quantitative and the qualitative

methods. All right. Thank you.