Making Causal Inferences In Psychology

Do you look forward to the birth of a new day, or do you see it as the death of the last one? If you lean toward the former than you have a high level of optimism. Optimism is the form of positive thinking that insists that a person can control their own happiness. (Williams Yolanda) In other words, optimism is basically looking at the good side of reality rather than letting it bring you down.

Burger (2008), says that there are many theories of personality and psychologists try to explain it with their own approaches. Discussed here will be the psychoanalytic approach, the trait approach, the biological approach the humanistic approach, the behavioural/social learning approach and the cognitive approach. They were devised to search for specific patterns in behaviour and ways of thinking about these

The nature vs nurture issue has been a controversial argument among psychologist for decades. This argument exposes two different views. One of them emphasizes that our personality depends solely on genetics (nature). On the other hand, the second view suggests that humans “develop through experience” (Myers 2013, SG 6) (nurture).

     Through time, psychologists have argued over whether only our genes control our behaviors in life or if the environment and the people surrounding us have any effect in our lives. This is called nature versus nurture. We do not know what dictates our behavior, or if it is a combination of both. One question is, if genes control our behavior, are we really responsible for our actions? I think that if we can make choices we are responsible for our actions. While or genes influence various aspects of our personalities, there is no denying that our environment has some effects too. Our genes make us, but our experiences and our surroundings shape the way we behave

The age-old question of whether nature or nurture determines a person’s behavior seems finally to have been decided slightly more in favor of Mother Nature. A gene is only a probability for a given trait, not a guarantee (Underwood, 1997). For

The article was written by Sharon Begley, who is a science writer. It published on December 1, 2008, and it has been illustrated by Harry Campbell for Newsweek. We always think our personality is related to our genes, which is stable or cannot be changed. However, Begley assume we can change our personality as we grow up. It depends on environment and our parents. They both play a great role in shaping our personality.

This causal thinking based on correlational findings is very similar to race theory and the obsession with finding a genetic basis to racial categorization and racial superiority among whites. As discussed on January 30th, Dr. Miller explained how Sam Morton studied skulls, creating a hierarchical system, placing Caucasians at the top and Africans at the bottom arguing that IQ was related to the cephalic index of an individual (Dr. Miller, 1/30/17, UC Berkeley). This overestimation of biological factors and a disregard of developmental and cultural factors is very similar to the desire for sex researchers to find one master gene to explain sex differentiation, not understanding the complexity and range of both genetic and phenotypic

People come in all shapes and sizes, and, certainly, every person is unique. However, you’ll probably agree that some people are much more alike than others. Moreover, behavior that may seem random is, in fact, quite understandable and often even predictable, once you understand that person’s inborn, natural personality, or genetic blueprint . . . Which describes basic psychological characteristics. Moreover, one’s personality is by far the best and most reliable predictor of behavior. (9)

While watching criminal investigation or murder mystery shows such as 20/20, there is a common scenario where a male or female appeared to have a warming personality and that they were apart of a loving, caring family with the outcome of a great upbringing, but one would wonder, "Why would this person convict such a monstrous crime if they were brought up from a perfect environment? - This wires down to nature vs. nurture. Nature vs. Nurture is one of the greatest debates in psychology to date. When deciding whether or not if biological or environmental factors are the most common denominator for human development and personality, it can be difficult issue to

Theories of personality, among many other theories in the field of psychology, must use some sort of scientific basis in order for the theory or research to be looked upon by others as credible. Psychology is the scientific study of the mind and behavior, therefore it should be crucial for theories of personality to be evaluated according to scientific criteria. Forming a hypothesis, testing it out, observing, racking up data -- it should all be used during research. There needs to always be a theory in conjunction with research (Cloninger, S. 2013). Scientific criteria gives psychologists or reseachers a firm base to follow, which makes it easier to validate theories. Evaluating a theory based on personality without using scientific criteria

But when Walter Mischel sat down to do his literature review, he didn't find much support for the idea that personality is stable. "I expected to find that the assumptions would be justified," he says, "and then I started reading study after study that found that actually the data didn't support it."

I believe that there is a correlation between the end result of a phenomenon and the thought process from an individual about that phenomenon. In other words, the way someone thinks about something as either positive or negative affects the result of that subject in a certain way. For example, if someone says they failed a test and they ended up actually doing well, then there would theoretically be an inverse correlation between their belief and their performance. However, just one incident of this occurring is not going to be enough to solidify this belief, but the repetition of this happening over and over again is what caused the belief to solidify.

4B- Experiment is the only method that gives causation or that explain cause and effect. I think that what experiments tells you about the relationship between behavior and thinking is that both are connected. However, the connections between them doesn’t mean that one thing causes the other because sometimes there are factors that might be related to the situation.

An example was used to illustrate the notion of actual causation, and more specifically, causal preemption. The example explains that person one and person two set out to poison person three. Person one’s action caused person three’s death, and preempts person two’s actions; this would have resulted in the poisoning of person three if person one had not made his move. Causal preemption is problematic for regularity and counterfactual theories of causation. In keeping with the example, person two’s role in the situation is adequate for person three’s death without the necessity to mention person one. However, person two is not the cause of person three’s death, and it would have happened if person one acted or not. Even so, person one is the cause of person three’s poisoning death. The verdict about actual causation goes like this: Person one’s actions caused person three to die of poisoning, whereas person two’s actions did not. The causal structure would be enough for us to predict what will happen, given the various combinations of causal antecedents. Indeed, the causal structure gives us the ability

Personality is a topic that has interested the human mind for millennia. As early as the fourth century BC, Aristotle was writing about the differences within individuals based on “determinants of moral and immoral behavior (Matthews & Deary),” which he identified as cowardice, vanity, and modesty. Aristotle’s student, Theophrastus, continued this thought process through a book detailing thirty personality traits, thus bringing forth the idea that an individual’s personality could be broken down into smaller, more manageable parts that could then be studied individually in order to better understand what makes humans unique.