Psychological Research : Pros, Cons And Challenges

Case studies, surveys, and naturalistic observations are a few research methods used by psychologists to facilitate the understanding of behavior. Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages that are used in particular research scenarios. Techniques like observation or interactions between the researcher and the subject(s) such as extensive interviews to restrained experiments are what some research methods heavily rely on to be validated.

Example; you have a cat and the cat just playing around with a ball and when you

This vastly researched and thriving subfield of psychology is concerned with basic methods used to identify similarities and differences among individual’s personal characteristics and capacities. Assessment involves more than mere administration of tests i.e.: collection and integration of information attained from various sources like interviews, behavioural observations, reports, psychological tests and historical documents in order to attain a complete picture of a person’s state.

The subject of this report is Sarah Hix, a junior in 2nd period AP Psychology. Based on these naturalistic observations, some conclusions were met.

Forty-four students from Western Kentucky University volunteered and participated in this study (12 men, 22 women; Mage=22.61, SDage=6.18). They were enrolled in undergraduate psychology research method classes at the University and completed the experiment in exchange for course credit. Of the forty-four students who participated, 82% identified themselves as Caucasian, 7% African American, 5% Asian, 4% Latino, 1% Pacific Islander, & 1% Native American. Also, 61% of the participants drink Coca-Cola. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions- individual or collective- with 22 participants per condition. In the individualist group, there were 4 men and 18 women with an age range of 19-47 (Mage=23.32,

1. Although intuition plays a role on what we believe to be true, it can not always be trusted. Hindsight bias and overconfidence are part of this intuition that is unreliable. Hindsight bias is when someone believes that they knew the outcome of something all along only after learning the outcome. Overconfidence is when someone thinks they know more than they really do. An example of hindsight bias is when a person is told that a couple broke up and they claim they knew it was going to happen all along. They may have never even thought of that before but after hearing about it, it seemed it was totally possible and inevitable.

Clinical psychology is a relatively newer area of study in the broad category of psychology. It is subfield of psychology that covers a wide range and variety of topics and issues such as the study, diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders. (Feldman, 2010) This paper will briefly discuss the behavioral perspective, some research methods in the field of psychology, positive and negative components associated with clinical psychology, and different controversies and ways to overcome these controversies in the field of psychology.

Participants in the study will be one hundred undergraduate students at the University of Toronto St. George, who are enrolled in the course of Introduction to Psychology (PSY100H1). Those participants will be selected randomly and participation will be voluntary for course credit or exchange for $10.

1. Empiricism states that knowledge can only be derived from the senses. Every science utilizes the empirical approach, which has developed into the utilization of the scientific method to gain knowledge. (McLeod, 2008) Since psychology depends on the scientific method to attain knowledge, psychology can conclusively be considered a science. Besides empirical evidence, some other key traits of a science are the following: objectivity, control, predictability, hypothesis testing, and replication. (McLeod, 2008) Psychology ensures objectivity via single-, double-, and triple-blind experiments. Causation can only be confirmed in psychology through an experiment where all variables (besides the independent

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The different perspectives of psychology that allow us to create a complete picture have different approaches toward explaining behaviors. A Biological psychologist may attempt to explain aggressive behavior by explaining the neural pathways involved in transferring neurotransmitters that cause anger. According to Biological Psychology the brain is full of neurons that transfer the information around our brains; this allows humans to influence those by tampering with the genes that effect neuron transmission, or heredity temperament.

Applying scientific method to psychology, helps to standardize the robust approach of measuring understandings of the human mind, behaviour and emotions. In order to have scientific knowledge both a theory and data are essential components so that it measures its claim rather than being a presumption. Initially a researcher will make an observation and come up with question. It is from this that a theory will be used to make predictions about future observations. After finding a specific question to answer, the researcher can then make a prediction (a hypothesis) about what the outcome maybe (Boundless,2016).This prediction is usually a statement about the relationship between two or more variables.

A case history supplies the clinician with a exhaustive history on a client's medical or psychological situation. It provides benefits for psychologists; like launching point understanding the patients and their communication skills, it is filled out by the patients or caregivers. It is reviewed by the clinician prior to interviewing the patient. Beneficial in foreseeing those areas that will require assessment. And also case history informations can be used to detect those things that need further clarification in the course of the interview. It can help the clinician preselect those examination materials,tools and procedures before the session starts. On the other hand, there are limitations or disadvantages for the case history data. Firstly, respondent may not comprehend all the terminology, clinician must take into consideration the readability. There may be an inadequate amount of time to fill the whole form.It takes time to complete this out and get the required information like dates of disease,surgeries. The respondents may not remember or recall exactly. Case data history influences the correctness of the knowledge or information and not every respondent will have an equal amount of knowledge on the client’s background or communication skills. A important amount of time may pass between the onset of the trouble and the assessment. Respondents will probably be better

The participants in this experiment were 20 randomly chosen first year Psychology undergraduate students from the University of Essex. 70 % of the Participants were females and 30 % were males. The mean age in this experiment was 18.5 years.

Psychology is derived from two term which are study(ology) and soul (psyche) or mind in which it bring a clear meaning of psychology is the study of mind. It was Wilhelm Wundt as known as the “father of psychology’ using scientific research methods to study non-physical structure such as thought, experiences, and emotions of human mind. He used objective introspection which is a process of examining and measuring one’s own thoughts and mental activities (Rieber & Robinson, 2001).