Psychology is in a crisis. But not the one you’re thinking of
Can we still have faith in psychology in the face of the ‘replication crisis’? Perhaps, but the field has a much larger problem to tackle.
The last few years have seen a lot of discussion about a ‘replication crisis’ or ‘credibility crisis’ in psychology. Various scientific findings, it seems, don’t appear to be repeatable when other scientists run exactly the same experiments.
Most of the focus in this crisis is on how scientists behave: were the original experiments biased? Was the work sloppy? Was someone gaming the system or even cheating? But perhaps a more pernicious problem is deeply rooted in how people think.
Many people who practise, use and report on the science of psychology assume that thoughts, feelings, behaviours and other psychological outcomes are the result of one or two strong factors or causes. This is called a ‘mechanistic mindset’.
Typical experiments attempt to isolate one or two variables, manipulate them and observe moderate to strong effects that are easy to replicate.
For example, if we cause people to feel angry by showing them a film clip that violates their deeply held values, a mechanistic mindset says that they should scowl, their blood pressure should rise and they should be more likely to act aggressively.
According to a mechanistic mindset, you should be able to plop this simple experiment into any scientific lab and produce very similar results.
It shouldn’t matter what time of day the experiment is run, what country it’s run in, what sex or gender the researchers are, what culture the participants come from, what they ate for breakfast or how much they slept, whether any of them are taking medication, and so on.
Such factors are treated as noise and their influence is ignored. If the experiment doesn’t produce the same observations over and over again, then the logical conclusion is that the original study was flawed and the finding is false.
A more realistic assumption, however, is that psychological outcomes do not arise from a few simple, strong factors in the first place. They emerge from an intricate web of many weak, interacting factors.
This is called a complexity mindset. The brain and the body are complex, dynamic systems. Any single variable in the system will have a weak effect. More importantly, we can’t manipulate one variable and assume that the others remain unaffected.
If we treat the brain and body like simple mechanistic systems, targeting one or two variables and leaving the rest unmeasured, then the impact of that fuller web of weak factors masquerades as a failure to replicate.
The absence of replication may, in fact, be the presence of meaningful variation. The structure of that variation can be discovered and modelled only when scientists design experiments to measure and observe it.
As such, psychology’s most cherished experimental method – the lab experiment – may need a major overhaul in order to observe and account for complexity.
Even when scientists carefully design experiments with complexity in mind, their results, when reported in the popular press, are often explained in mechanistic terms. News stories about science are simpler and more digestible when they have a pithy headline such as, “Brain circuit X causes fear” or “Gene Y causes depression”.
Is there a credibility crisis in psychology? Perhaps, but not the one that tongues are wagging about.
Psychological science may need to get its act together, not because its findings are unreliable, but because variation is being dismissed as noise rather than being investigated as something meaningful.
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Howdy
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“Many people who practise, use and report on the science of psychology assume that thoughts, feelings, behaviours and other psychological outcomes are the result of one or two strong factors or causes. This is called a ‘mechanistic mindset’.”
Really? A rather blinkered mindset If you ask me.
“For example, if we cause people to feel angry by showing them a film clip that violates their deeply held values,”
I can assure you that doesn’t work for everyone.
A more realistic assumption, however, is that psychological outcomes do not arise from a few simple, strong factors in the first place. They emerge from an intricate web of many weak, interacting factors.
And many stronger complex, deep ones too.
When will these people learn that there are “places” that science just doesn’t work. Embrace a wider arena. Get out of the “comfort zone”. It’s the only way.
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Tom
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Seems like the psychology world invents a new mind discombobulation every few months and then big pharma is right behind with the latest mind-fixing drugs. What a sham.
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Ken Hughes
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Let’s get the important thing established first,
PSYCHOLOGY IS NOT A SCIENCE.
‘and that’s why repeatability is difficult. It is impossible to predict the behaviour of any individual with scientific accuracy and repeatability. Nobody can read minds, (although many psychologists like to think they can)
Psychology is the study of statistical behaviours in populations and I agree, there can be some degree of predictability here, but even here, nothing is certain.
So let’s stop all this crap about the “science” of psychology shall we? Let’s not elevate psychology to an undeserved level and let’s treat it with the large dose of skepticism that it deserves.
Oh, and psychiatry,…. well that’s even worse.
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DeadHeartDiary
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I have experience with psychiatrists, and I can attest to that. Saw how they casually abuse without any consideration.
Many of them are immensely stupid, btw. And incredibly arrogant, socio/psychopathic narcissist drug pushers (and/or worse).
https://scitechdaily.com/physicians-more-likely-to-prescribe-opioids-if-they-received-gifts-from-pharma-companies/
“Primary care physicians were 3.5 times as likely to be in the highest quartile of opioid prescribing if they were paid $100 or more in gifts. Psychiatrists and neurologists who were paid $100 or more were 13 times as likely to be in the highest quartile of opioid prescribing compared to their counterparts who received less.”
And the most corruptible, because of that insecure narcissistic sort of shit. It’s fucking ironic. Of the vary many professions, they are about the most likely to actually need to have their mental problems addressed.
I would not judge the average psychiatrist kindly, from my experiences.
Also, people should go look at how psychiatry was established and for what purposes (toxification and degeneration).
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DeadHeartDiary
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“Psychology is the study of statistical behaviours in populations and I agree, there can be some degree of predictability here, but even here, nothing is certain.”
I’d like to add to that…imo, there’s a reason for that “mechanistic” sort of approach, which is mostly for homogenization and conformity. It’s a problem though in any supposed “science” (like virology), where practically every unique or variable factors is ignored for singular focus for (fraudulently) furthering an abstracted projections/suggestions. Coz it’s never about “the science”.
If people are affected by the same factors, in the same environment, they will mostly behave similarly. That’s a powerful tool against the “masses”.
Shouldn’t be surprising that homogenization is so profoundly prevalent in industry, you know, being the opposition to that constant of change, in nature.
That’s also how “authorities” keep on being able to use the PRS cycle, hegelian dialectic, polarization, labeling.
It’s essentially artificial scarcity method applied to thought or behaviour with respect to people. So if people are affected by basically the same factors, believe the same things and as a result, kinda behave the same, they are redundant, so to say.
Which means if you understand or control one of them, you can understand and control the whole demographic. And of course, such a demographic is more easily controlled if it willingly subjects, is degenerated, etc. Fear, guilt, shame, etc. you know, the basics used for capitulation.
Imo, that’s why classification is so important to “science” (industry). Because then you can sort of generalize and address with homogenized degeneracy, toxins, “preferred” behavioural suggestions, changes. And you can use that classification for projected validity, affirmation. Easily understood, parroted consensus and mob mentality.
Like, I have to generalize and say “Vaxxers are retarded”, for instance. But then I also know that some vaxxers are outright pieces of shit, and some are more simply misinformed.
That classification then, is used to leverage the demographic’s mentality, as people associate with those classifications.
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DeadHeartDiary
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IOW, people are only “shaped” for industry. If they are functioning in the capacity of industry, they are furthering industry.
For instance, if you “function” in the capacity of a “doctor”, but you fundamentally, from your inherited principles, mechanisms, institutions, beliefs, peddle toxic industrial products…you’re ACTUALLY just a zealous peddler of industrial toxins, despite what you may believe. No matter what your “credentials” say, that’s basically just used to pat your ego and give you a license to be retarded, to use it as a coopted “authority”.
I mean, if industry were an archetype, I’d say that’s the biggest problem with the supposed “human” psyche. And you’d find all of it is unnatural, anti-life, insecure, destructive, exploitative and was projected at you, inherited, imposed.
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