thoughts on psychology

This won't be a very coherent post but anyway...

I always wondered about psychology. 

 1.5kg of grey matter is what controls all our hopes and dreams, fears and sorrows.

We asked our teacher whether he thought it was a science, and he described it as a 'pseudo-science' due to the fact that it wasn't really science, but it did use the same methods. It comes up with really interesting theories and results from experiments that directly affect our lives, but due to the fact it can't be objectively determined like science, it isn't considered as such.

The history of psychology is always fascinating, and truth be told I'm not a historian so I don't know about it all. But I know of phrenology, which was the study of physical characteristics, which would in theory be able to tell you what kind of person someone was. (this was parodied by Terry Pratchett in his book Men at Arms, where retrophrenology is when someone hits you on the head, modifying your skull which in turn modifies your personality. Genius!). Then came Freud with his lovely theories about the Id, the Ego and the SuperEgo. These in turn led to Pavlov's famous experiment, and then Skinner's work on conditioning.

Little did Pavlov know, they were experimenting on us! (just like the white mice in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

Sample sizes are always a bone of contention when skeptics pick at the flaws of the experiment. A study done of university-age students may be different to a study done with retired pensioners, depending on what is being studied. I always thought there should be some sort of SUPER sample group that had a diverse mix of people from every race, gender and sex that could undergo all the experiments that require it. But then I realised they would all learn from previous studies, and results would be skewed again. Really, what would work the most is if EVERY SINGLE PERSON on the world was part of the study. But as that is impractical and uneconomical, it wouldn't work.

More after the jump!




It's very interesting to learn that unethical studies actually yield very interesting results. The Stanford Prisoner Experiment caused psychological and even physiological harm to those involved, when the participants adopted the roles they were given (prisoner and guard). We learned from that about the effect of power on people, and about obedience to authority (from a quick Wiki search :P). The Nazi's also led experiments in human experimentation, and some struck deals for their freedom in return for the results (unsure about this, couldn't remember where I read it). In a small town in South America, due to the meddling of a Nazi scientist, there is a significantly higher rate of twin births.

 

Philip Zimbardo's excellent talk on evil

I don't know if psychology has a definitive goal, but I do know that if there was one, it is to understand the human brain. Taking that further, it may be that in the future there will be people or even machines that will be able to predict human behaviour in different scenarios, and even manipulate certain events happening.

Pretty scary, pretty interesting.


(NB: every time I try to write these things I keep thinking up both sides so I never get anywhere. Sorry about that)