Psychological research - Part 3 by @amitvegada

_{Source: Pexels}

This lesson is the continuation of psychological research part 2. In previous lesson we learned about how studying behavior can help us in study of psychology, We'll see more about it in this lesson.

In a pair of revolutionary texts, titled Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Female respectively, sexuality researcher Alfred Kinsey analyzed the sexual histories of thousands of men and women using this method. When it comes to gaining an understanding of consciously held attitudes and beliefs, surveys are a great tool. However, the words you use when asking questions can influence the results.

The use of words like "ban" or "censor" may evoke different responses from those like "limit" and "don't allow". Inquiring about space aliens versus asking if intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is a bit different. It's the same question, but when you ask the former, the subject might make assumptions that you're talking about aliens visiting earth, making crop circles, abducting humans, and poking them. In addition to how you phrase surveys, who you ask is also important.

Even if I asked all students who attended a pacifist club meeting what they thought about arms control, the response would be considered flawed, because there is a clear sampling bias at work here. Ideally, I would like a sample that is representative of a given population so all members of the target group, in this case, students, have an equal opportunity to be selected and answer the survey question.

_{Source: Pexels}

So after you've studied behavior through surveys, case studies, or naturalistic observation, you can begin to understand it and possibly predict future behavior. Having an understanding of how one trait or behavior is related to another is one way to do this. I would like to say a few words about my friend Parv, who seems to believe that his refrigerator is some kind of time machine that can preserve food for eternity.

Parv just tucked into a lunch that may have contained questionable leftovers, such as pizza that has been lightly contaminated with fungus. In spite of this, he doused it in Sriracha, being hungry and lazy at the time. He starts seeing armadillos with a laser beam eye: green and lumbering. In this case, eating unknown fungi may predict hallucinations, and that is a correlation. But correlation is not causation.

There is a possibility that Parv was already experiencing a psychotic episode, and those fuzzy leftovers were harmless, but it would make sense for eating fungus to cause hallucinations. It is also possible there was something else involved, such as not sleeping for 72 hours or having an intense migraine, and one of those factors caused him to experience hallucinations.

Correlations make it easy to draw conclusions, but it is critically important to keep in mind that correlations can predict, but not prove cause-and-effect relationships. Thus we have talked about how it is possible to describe behavior without manipulating it and to make predictions and connections based on those findings.

We will be talking more about this in our next lesson, until then. Take care and see you all later.