Psychology: Concepts and Applications 3e   Halonen
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When you first start to study psychology, you may feel a bit overwhelmed by the historical details. After all, there are so many exciting things to study in psychology...when do we get to the good stuff?? The problem is that understanding history truly does help you come to terms with why there are so few absolute answers in this field. We have a long tradition of different trends in thinking that emerge over time. In one era, one set of ideas may dominate only to be challenged successfully by a whole new way of thinking from another perspective. Learning about history helps you understand how dynamic this discipline really is. The formal study of psychology is quite young compared to other disciplines. We fully expect it will continue to grow, shift, up-end, and evolve, but always remain interesting (if you can broaden your attitude).

Yes, they can, but correlation doesn’t automatically mean causation. The trick is not to assume that a cause-and-effect relationship exists when it is only a correlation. Here’s a simple example. You put your lucky coin in your pocket right before your psychology exam. You do really well on the test. Even if you don’t believe in luck like this, you might be tempted to think the coin helped you along. Suppose the next exam, the same pattern happens. But then the final exam comes along and you forget your coin. Sure enough, you flunk! We would come up with a powerful positive correlation, but would it be cause-and-effect? No. In this case the worry that you felt when you noticed the coin was missing may be the causal agent. This would be a great example of positive correlation (coin-bearing behavior correlates positively with strong test performance) but is unlikely to be true causation.

3. I’m really interested in majoring in psychology, but all my relatives tell me you can’t get a job with a degree in psychology without going to graduate school Is that true?

No, it isn’t (and sometimes it seems like all those relatives went to the same school of “second-guessing”). Your relatives are well-intended, but misinformed. Psychology is a wonderful major whether you go to graduate school or not. In fact, the majority of psych majors don’t go to graduate school. They get interesting jobs in the human services field and business. Starting salaries with a bachelors degree may be somewhat disappointing, but they are just that--starting salaries. Keep in mind that a good liberal arts degree demonstrates to future employers your ability to function as a professional. A good liberal arts degree in psychology gives you distinct advantages in working with human beings in an amazing variety of contexts.

You don’t. Asking human beings to assist you in research can be a hazardous enterprise precisely because they may not tell you the truth, especially if the topic you are surveying is potentially embarrassing. Well-trained psychologists take this into account when they are designing their questionnaires and interpreting their results. Sometimes the best we can offer is conclusions that have a range of confidence about their accuracy (derived from statistics) to reflect all the unknowns of which we can’t be certain.

Another old saying is, “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.” The truthfulness of numbers really depends on the person doing the calculation, not on any specific statistical technique or result.

Ironically, the early years of psychology focused quite a bit on spiritual and religious matters but we have been through the domination of several popular perspectives that discouraged studying phenomena that were hard to measure. However, we have seen a resurgence of interest in this area as the result of the increased popularity of the cognitive and sociocultural perspectives. Both approaches promote the study of a wider array of behavior than earlier approaches.

You’ll find more about the psychological study of religion in a later chapter in the book.

Psychologists tend to see this challenge as far from simple. The fun of psychology is trying to identify all the different factors or variables that may play a role in behavior. They see very few behaviors as having simple causes. They have learned to “tolerate ambiguity” and approach answering questions such as yours in a tentative, hypothetical way. The more you study psychology, the more you will see how unsatisfying simple explanations can be. They simply don’t do justice to the complexity of human behavior patterns.