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"Authentic" psychology is definitely not just an "observational writing exercise." There's this weird…meme…that psychology is just sitting around nattering abou

"Authentic" psychology is definitely not just an "observational writing exercise." There's this weird…meme…that psychology is just sitting around nattering about feelings. Some psychology experiments are undoubtedly crap, but there are also a lot of carefully-designed and well-analyzed experiments, many of which actually are casual. Consider the vast amount of work that has gone into characterizing the visual or auditory system. In a typical experiment, subjects are shown a set of stimuli and asked to make judgements about them (e.g., "Is A brighter than B?" or "Have you seen C before?"). These results are then used to investigate the factors that affect these judgements. These experiments are definitely casual (the experimenter controls the stimulus). Empirically, these results do generalize across subjects and subpopulations and, in many cases, can be tied back to physical properties of the brain. For example, we knew that there were three color sensitive photoreceptors from behavioral data, long before the S, M, and L cones were actually identified. tl;dr: It hasn't been 1920 for a long time.

DanBC 11y ago
> There's this weird…meme…that psychology is just sitting around nattering about feelings. Look at the overwhelmingly rubbish depiction of psychology in movies. It's all people lying on couches; or tenacious psychologists breaking through with unwilling clients; or catharsis. And it's odd, because when programmers see programming in movies they see how bad that depiction is, so I'm not sure why the meme of "psychology is just sitting around nattering about feelings" is so strong.
- Nadya 11y ago
  >And it's odd, because when programmers see programming in movies they see how bad that depiction is, so I'm not sure why the meme of "psychology is just sitting around nattering about feelings" is so strong. The Gell-Mann Amnesia effect probably best explains this. I think you might find it interesting: > Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. > In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” > — Michael Crichton Also I promise it is a coincidence I've responded to you twice in such rapid succession!
- KingMob 11y ago
  There's a big gap between research psychologists and therapeutic psychologists. Their daily activities are very different. But even within therapeutic psychology, you're right. Freudian psychoanalysis (talk therapy) was huge in literature and movies, even though Freud himself has been out of influence inside the field for decades. CBT, exposure therapy, etc are much more common treatments.

DanBC 11y ago

> There's this weird…meme…that psychology is just sitting around nattering about feelings. Look at the overwhelmingly rubbish depiction of psychology in movies. It's all people lying on couches; or tenacious psychologists breaking through with unwilling clients; or catharsis. And it's odd, because when programmers see programming in movies they see how bad that depiction is, so I'm not sure why the meme of "psychology is just sitting around nattering about feelings" is so strong.

Nadya 11y ago
>And it's odd, because when programmers see programming in movies they see how bad that depiction is, so I'm not sure why the meme of "psychology is just sitting around nattering about feelings" is so strong. The Gell-Mann Amnesia effect probably best explains this. I think you might find it interesting: > Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. > In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” > — Michael Crichton Also I promise it is a coincidence I've responded to you twice in such rapid succession!
KingMob 11y ago
There's a big gap between research psychologists and therapeutic psychologists. Their daily activities are very different. But even within therapeutic psychology, you're right. Freudian psychoanalysis (talk therapy) was huge in literature and movies, even though Freud himself has been out of influence inside the field for decades. CBT, exposure therapy, etc are much more common treatments.