Research methods in psychology by B. Morling (third edition) – Chapter 2 summary

EXPERIENCE
Experience is not a reliable source of information, because it has no comparison group. A comparison group in research is a group which isn’t affected by the controlled independent variable, so it is possible to really determine whether the independent variable has the effect people think it has.

E.g: Doctors used to take blood from an ill person, because they believed that it cured the illness. Some people recovered and they concluded that they recovered because they bled the patients. This is based on experience, they have experiences that some patients recovered, but they did not have a comparison group, so they had no way of knowing that the recovery was because of bleeding the patient. To make sure that it had this effect, they should have had a group with people who were ill, but were not bled, to see what would have happened.

When we are using personal experience to determine whether something works or not, we don’t have a comparison group as well. “My knee feels better with this tape”, but you don’t know how it would’ve felt if you didn’t use that tape. There is no comparison group, so it is not possible to give a conclusive answer, based on empirical evidence.

In real-world situation situations, there are several possible explanations for an outcome. In research, these alternative explanations are called confounds. Experience is confounded, because you do not know the cause of an effect, although you might think you do. When you use tape to lessen the pain in your knee, you don’t know whether the tape caused the pain to diminish. A researcher can see the situation from outside, but you can only see one condition and all you have is your experience.

Behavioural research is probabilistic. This means that it’s findings are not expected to explain all cases all the time. The conclusions of research are meant to explain a certain proportion of the cases. The two big problems with using experience as a source of information is that there is no comparison group and that experience is confounded.

INTUITION
People use their intuition to make decisions, although it is not a reliable source of information, because intuition is biased. There are ways our intuition is biased:

1. Good Story bias
   People tend to believe a good story, but this doesn’t mean that is necessarily correct.
2. Availability Heuristic
   Things that come to mind easily tend to guide our thinking. (e.g: Aeroflot is a bad airplane company, because the bad reports about Aeroflot come to mind easier than the good stories about Aeroflot) The availability heuristic occurs because sometimes things stand out more. (e.g: shark attacks stand out more than natural deaths, which causes us to believe that shark attacks are common)
3. Present/Present bias
   This bias is the name for our failure to consider appropriate comparison groups. In this case there are comparison groups available, but you fail to consider them. (e.g: when you look at the time and it’s 22:22 and you think, I always look at the time when there is something special on the clock. This isn’t true, you just fail to remember the times you looked at the clock and it was just a regular time.) The present/present bias can be avoided by asking yourself: “compared to what?”.
4. Confirmation bias
   We have the tendency to see what we want to see and disregard the rest. (e.g: when looking for evidence that vaccines are in fact unhealthy and the first things you find are studies that support the statement that it is healthy, you disregard them until you find what you are looking for and then you don’t look any further)
5. Bias blind spot
   People believe they are less biased then others. (e.g: when we notice someone’s view on a situation is different than our own, we tend to think that they are biased and we are objective.)

AUTHORITY
Even authority is not a reliable source of information. If an authority on the subject claims something it doesn’t necessarily have to be true. It can be based on his research, which could be poorly conducted, it could be based on his experience or on his intuition. If it is based on his experience or intuition it is useless and if it is based on his research it has to be a properly conducted research before it is reasonable to accept it. The moral of the story is to never just accept something, just because an authority says it, but always check the sources and the evidence for yourself.

FINDING PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH
Psychological research is generally published in three kinds of sources:

1. Journal articles
   There are several type of journal articles. Empirical journal articles report, for the first time, the results of an empirical research study. Review journal articles provide a summary of all published studies that have been done in that research area. Review journal articles sometimes use meta-analysis: combing the results of multiple studies and it gives a number that summarizes the effect size of a relationship.
2. Chapters in edited books
   An edited book is a collection of chapters on a common topic; each chapter is written by different contributor.
3. Full length books
   Psychologists do not often write full length books, but it happens occasionally.

Most empirical journals are written in a standard format:

1. Abstract
   A brief summary of the article.
2. Introduction
   The topic is introduced here.
3. Method
   This explains how the researchers conducted their study.
4. Results
   This part shows the results of the study.
5. Discussion
   The relevance, the evidence and everything is discussed in this part.
6. References
   A full bibliographic listing of all the sources the author cited and used.