On Sat, 30 Mar 2002, Greg Schofield wrote:
> There was a recent study which I did find interesting (I cannot remember
> if it was mentioned on this list), a simple one that did not require
> much in the way of statistics. Starting with Freud's (I think this
> right) assertion that homophobia stemed from latent homosexuality, a
> number of homophobic men (based on responses to a questioniare) and
> non-homophobic self-described hetrosexual males had an a pressure gauge
> attached to them.
[snippage, the data supports Freud, etc]
>
> Psychology does not normally work this way, rather than a clear and
> theoretical hypothesis, it begins with prejudices and "common sense"
> assertions which examined by themselves have little or no validity, and
> then constructs elaborate "quasi-sciencitific" testing environments
> which like Gould's rightly famous "Mismeasurement of Man" suffer one or
> a number of gaping methodological holes, covered over by massive
> statistical proofs.
It appears you haven't studied psychological research very closely. The study you cite above is in fact typical of the research that psychologists do. Drawing on previous findings, theoretical hunches, and even sometimes common sense, psychologists find reasonable and ethical ways of testing falsifiable hypotheses about human behavior and thought. In bringing up Gould, you seem to be confusing physical anthropology in the mid-1800s with the discipline of psychology, which emerged later.
It's obvious to me you haven't spent as much time studying psychology as you have studying Hegel. That's neither good nor bad in my book, but there's way more to the field of psychology than your caricature suggests. Spend a few years reading psychology research journals, and you'll find that your facile "psychology is just gussied up common sense" claim cannot be accurately applied to the entire discipline.
Miles