On Sat, 30 Mar 2002, Greg Schofield wrote:
> Sorry Miles, I know of all soughts of interesting things thrown up by
> Psychology but these are far outwieghed by the damaging crap they
> produce which unlike any other field tends to be very quickly applied to
> human lives. My conclusion is that it is a far safer practice to
> disparage Psychological conclusions and treat them with distain. If
> there is something more substantial in what they have to say they can
> provide a plain English version bereft of statistics and argue it on its
> merits, and not go around pretending that the statistics mean very much
> in themselves.
>
I can't help but fall into researcher jargon here, sorry: you've got a seriously nonrepresentative sample of psychological research. If you remember a vivid case like Jensen arguing that the racial difference in IQ performance is genetic, or Thornhill and Palmer claiming that rape is the inevitable result of natural selection in human males, you're wildly extrapolating from atypical cases. It's like reading the results of a poll in Cosmo magazine where 68% of the women say they've cheated on their husbands and then claiming that most women are unfaithful.
> In the case of TV influencing violent behaviour none of us need stats or
> correlations, but an understanable causal relationship open to
> questioning and clearly defined parameters of what indeed is the actual
> question. Less then that is unacceptable mystification.
>
> Greg
This knee-jerk rejection of statistical analysis puzzles me. Yes, statistics can obscure results and legitimate fantastic claims; but so can philosophy, political rhetoric, theology, and poetry. Statistics can also be used by competent researchers to clarify the patterns in the data and rule out the possibility that the results occurred by chance. I am astounded that anyone would claim "we don't need any more stats". Of course we do! We need rigorous data and the appropriate techniques for identifying patterns in the data (i.e., statistics) to see if the data support the research hypothesis. Statistical analysis is a crucial element of almost any scientific research; if you reject stats, you're rejecting the idea of systematically testing scientific hypotheses.
This research on violent media and behavior is pretty straightforward; the hypothesized causal relationship is right out in the open. In fact, I'd say it's much more precise and testable than any of Freud's concepts: exposure to violence in mass media will tend to increase aggressive behavior in everyday life. Researchers have clearly tested this hypothesis in many ways: experiments, surveys, observational studies, case studies, archival research. Numerous researchers over the past 40 years, using a variety of methods, have presented data that supports this hypothesis in peer reviewed scientific journals. If you're skeptical of this line of research, you might as well be skeptical of the research in biology, physics, or chemistry.
I think the real problem with psychology is that people can rely on their everyday understanding to challenge and question psychological research. This is hard to do with quantum physics, so people tend to accept arguments based on physicists' authority. But with psychological research like the effects of porn, or violent media, or whatever, people already have a well-developed everyday understanding, and they can pontificate based upon their own experience, stories they've heard, ideas that fit in with their political and religious beliefs, and so on.
But note the problem here: any everyday understanding of these topics-- "I know a guy who raped some women"--is completely irrelevant to a scientific understanding or test of the psychological hypothesis in question. In everyday life, we are not diligent scientific researchers, and we do not gather or analyze behavior with the rigor that the typical scientific researcher does. To claim that a psychological theory is invalid because it doesn't fit in with my experience or stories I've heard is like saying Galileo must have been wrong about the earth spinning on its axis because it is obvious that I don't feel the earth move beneath me and I can see the sun rising in the morning.
This does not mean psychologists are always correct, or that psychological knowledge is unassailable. But "I know a guy" stories are irrelevant to the scientific assessment of the theories. --So how can we assess psychological hypotheses? Just like any scientific researchers do: conduct rigorous research that clearly tests the hypothesis.
Miles