Are non-scientific methods research methods meaningless?

Psychology has many approaches, some of which use scientific methods (biological) and some which use various other research methods (psychodynamic). Psychology is the science of behaviour and mental processes, so are the methods useless if they do not have a scientific basis behind them? This also looks into the idea of whether psychology is a science.

 Freud used many non scientific methods in his research; this includes his theory of consciousness and his dream theory. Freud thought that dreams were representative of unconscious desires, thoughts and motivations. We don’t consciously express these thoughts but Freud suggested that they find their way into our awareness via dreams. The problem with this theory is that dreams can not be scientifically measured and some people would argue that this makes the method less valid. Many forms of therapy make use of client’s dreams but the Freudian interpretations of dreams often have the tendency to relate back to sexual meanings. Also you cannot measure someone’s unconscious mind but it still made up a big part of Freud’s theory. However, many psychologists disagreed with his theory and instead use more scientific methods, for example Skinner’s behaviourist methods. Freud’s method can be criticised as it has been accused of only explaining behaviour after the event has happened, rather than predicting what will happen in advance, which is what scientific methods aim to do.

 I think that although non scientific methods can be useful, scientific methods are more reliable and accurate. For example, lab experiments are highly scientific and you can replicate the findings and control the variables making the method much more valid. The scientific method looks at empirical evidence which means it does not rely on argument or beliefs. The behaviourism approach is regarded as scientific and it has parsimonious theories of learning and uses only a few simple principles to explain a vast amount of behaviour.

 To conclude, I think that both methods have their strengths and weaknesses. Psychology is the study of behaviour but behaviour changes over time and it depends on the situation too. These factors and individual differences make research findings reliable for a limited time so it could be said that both scientific and non scientific methods become meaningless eventually anyway.

Should children be allowed to participate in psychological research?

Experiments are carried out within psychology all the time and many of these involve children, as young as babies. Many people may say that it is unethical to conduct experiments using children but I think that there are both strengths and weaknesses to this argument.

 Using children of varying ages in psychological experiments provides a valuable and interesting understanding of the development of a child’s mind and behaviour. This was shown in Piaget’s stages of development where he concluded that there were four different stages in the development of children: sensory motor stage, pre-operational stage, concrete operational stage and formal operations stage. Using children as the subjects of experiments can also provide an insight to how mental disorders or illnesses develop over time, for example aspergers or autism. Baren Cohen carried out research into autism in children and he carried out the Sally-Anne test, which measures a person’s social cognitive ability to attribute false beliefs to others.

 Carrying out research on children should be allowed if the parents have given consent, but the wellbeing and health of the child definitely have to be considered. However I don’t think parents would put their child forward for an experiment where they know it could cause physical or physiological harm. This was shown in the Bobo doll experiment where the children watched an adult (role model) be aggressive to the bobo doll and the children imitated the behaviour. This could be seen as unethical as it is teaching children violence at a young age and this could impact their personality in later life.

 However, some people would argue that children shouldn’t be allowed to take part in research as it can be unethical and cruel to the children. An extreme example of this was where children were drugged whilst participating in a fertility study. Researchers pumped 8 year old girls full of the diabetes drug metformin for four years to see how it would affect their fertility later on. None of the children had diabetes though and they took the drugs until they were 13. I think this is a highly unethical study and that it is an experiment that should never have been allowed to take place. Other more famous examples of psychological experiments using children include Little Albert and the Genie study.

 Overall as a research method using children as the participants of a study is good for looking at development and mental disorders. Despite this, I think there has to be a line that’s drawn as to what is acceptable for a child to take part in. An experiment where pain is caused should not be allowed at all in my opinion. Psychological research is a demanding area and researchers want to try out new experiments all the time and we have to accept that some of these are going to involve children.

 

Should all psychological experiments be ethical?

Psychology is very different to most other subject areas because its subject matter is entirely human or animal. This means that practically all of the research involves living things that can be caused physical or psychological harm. Ethics is split into three distinct areas. This aims at protecting: the individual from physical/psychological harm, the wider social group from harm or prejudice and animals from abuse whilst being used in psychological experiments.

 Guidelines and codes of conduct have been set up so that experiments are ethical. The British Psychological Society (BPS) and the American Psychological Association (APA) were set up. They both produce codes of conduct for both experimentation and for clinical practice. However a code also exists for the protection of animals during psychological experiments.

Some animal experiments have gone way beyond the realms of ethics. The monkey drug trials are an example of this.  A large group of monkeys were trained to inject themselves with an assortment of drugs, including morphine, alcohol, codeine, cocaine, and amphetamines. Once the animals were capable of self-injecting, they were left to their own devices with a large supply of each drug. The animals were so disturbed that some tried so hard to escape that they broke their arms in the process and many of the monkeys dies. The point of the experiment was to understand the effects of drug use and addiction, but I think that most ethical people would know not to treat animals in such an appalling way.

For it to be ethical psychological research has to consider the wider community. Milgram’s experiment showed deception in a lab setting. At the start of the experiment they were introduced to another participant, which was actually a confederate of Milgram.  There were two roles of either a learner or the teacher. The learner was strapped to a chair and tested on pairs of words. The teacher was told to give an electric shock every time the learner made a mistake, increasing the level of shock each time. There were 30 switches on the shock generator marked from 15 volts to 450 volts. The learner gave mainly wrong answers (on purpose) and for each of these the teacher gave him an electric shock. When the teacher refused to administer a shock and turned to the experimenter for guidance, he was given the standard order to continue giving the shocks. I think this study is unethical but deceiving the participants was needed as the study would have otherwise not have worked. If the wellbeing of the participants is being ignored then how can the study be considered as ethical?

Some research is discriminating against different races or different ethnic groups, for example studies on peoples IQ. I think that the outcomes of some research can be used to manipulate people’s behaviour and Skinner’s work on behaviour shaping could be abused and the idea of training or conditioning people to do certain actions is not ethical and takes away peoples free will.

I think that all psychological experiments should evaluate all the ethics before carrying out a study. If it puts a person in serious harm then I don’t think it should be allowed as I would consider that unethical.