User:LGreg/sandbox/Approaches to Knowledge (LG seminar 2020/21)/Seminar 18/Evidence/Evidence in Psychology

Background
Psychology is a human science that focuses on "the mind and how it dictates and influences our behavior, from communication and memory to thought and emotion." Psychology could be seen to have deep roots in Philosophy, however, the main differences between these disciplines are the methods used to obtain an answer/conclusion. Modern psychology has a more scientific-based approach compared to old philosophy to collect data and obtain knowledge, similar to the methods used in the natural sciences.

Evidence in psychology
Within psychology, both qualitative and quantitative data are used. Qualitative evidence is data that is collected through the observation of phenomenons where obtaining a numerical value is not possible and quantitative evidence is data collected through measurement, numerical values are collected and then analyzed through data processing and statistics. There are 5 main methods within psychology: 1. Case Study: Individuals are observed over a specific time period.

2. Experiment: There is a controlled, independent, and dependent variable.

3. Observation Study: A form of "qualitative research".

4. Survey: A form of "quantitative research".

5. Content Analysis: observing many forms of "media", using "mathematical data about the words or concepts to study things like stereotyping".

Limitations
Due to the lengthy process of data collection within psychology, there is generally a small sample size that may lead to hasty generalizations causing possible limitations in the accuracy of data and conclusions. This may be due to the financial pressures that scientists in both the human and natural sciences face, constantly aiming to discover new findings to increase funding. Another phenomenon that is present within psychology that may hinder the reliability of knowledge is p-hacking "where researchers select the analysis that yields a pleasing result", additionally confirmation bias may also be present- especially in qualitative data. Individuals may view things in a specific way to suit their biases and confirm their predictions. Publication bias is another limitation within psychology where the accuracy of conclusions is skewed. Within a scientific field, papers that have discovered new phenomenons are most likely to be published, causing scientists to constantly try to discover new phenomenons (to increase funding) instead of repeating past experiments to confirm the accuracy of data. Another limitation of evidence in psychology is the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance, first explored by Leon Festinger in 1957. The theory stipulates that, if a person believes in two conflicting things (which are said to be dissonant towards one another), this leads to psychological stress or discomfort, which in turn influences the person to minimise the dissonance. This is done by altering, or disputing evidence for one of the beliefs, so that it becomes more in-line (consonant) with the other.