Why Psychology cannot be a science

At some point in the future when the science of psychology is well established ideas like this will be taught to undergraduates in the discipline so they can have a good laugh at foolish people who died before they were born, a bit like we do at the moment with Freud, Watson, Eysenck and so forth.

According to the standard, textbook, histories of the discipline psychology overcame the objections of Kant in establishing psychology as a discipline. Kant argued that an empirical science of psychology was impossible for two reasons. The first that psychological phenomena were not open to quantification, and so the only quantity that psychologists would be able to measure was time (either the time psychological phenomena persisted, or the time gaps between psychological phenomena). The second that psychological phenomena were subjective and would not be open to objective measurement.

Now there was a lot more going on than this, and there is a nice overview here with suggestions for further reading. I think one could plausibly argue that psychology has not been successful in meeting the objections of Kant, and one can see the impact of trying to overcome the objections in the way the discipline has changed across time. Those are not the arguments I am going to make.

The argument I am going to make is based on the work of Kurt Danziger, especially the sort of work he does here, and which is also associated with the work of Ian Hacking.

Danziger makes two points, one of which is common to all disciplines, the other of which is only common to a subset of disciplines.

The first point is, that areas of knowledge begin with a vocabulary that comes from the language of the host society, and which contains assumptions, some of which may remain unexamined for some time because they seem natural. In all disciplines the vocabulary of the area of knowledge changes across time, a specialist vocabulary comes into existence, and this specialist vocabulary may feed back to the language of the host societies. In natural sciences, to some extent, as evidence is gathered the nature of concepts and their associated vocabularies may change because of that process. However, the changing vocabulary does not affect the objects being studied; although they may change our understanding of those objects and regardless of language as knowledge increases peoples may gain technologies that can affect the objects of study.

In disciplines like psychology (other examples would include aspects of psychiatry, sociology and economics) things are different, because the description of the object of study can change the object of study.

Danziger in his 1997 book Naming the Mind makes the case for how this has happened for the concepts of intelligence, motivation and personality, attitudes, behaviour and learning; and variables. His more recent book, Marking the Mind makes a similar case for memory.

So what does this mean. I am going to use my usual teaching examples.

Natural Science

Across time our understanding of dinosaurs has changed. During the nineteenth century our understanding of dinosaurs, based on fossil evidence, was often of great lumbering creatures which inevitably became extinct. In the early twenty first century our understanding of dinosaurs is of a complex variety of animals, each superbly suited to their own ecological niche, some of which became extinct through extreme events, some of which through selection pressures evolved into different species, like, for example, chickens.

Neither of these understandings of dinosaurs affected how dinosaurs understood themselves.

Now of course the objection to this example is that dinosaurs (although not their descendants) are no longer with us, so a second example, I normally use Ether theory or Germ theory depending on how I feel.

Across time our understanding of infection and diseases has changed.

Prior to the nineteenth century the predominant theory of disease transmission was miasma theory:

The miasmatic position was that diseases were the product of environmental factors such as contaminated water, foul air, and poor hygienic conditions. Such infection was not passed between individuals but would affect individuals within the locale that gave rise to such vapors. It was identifiable by its foul smell. (wiki)

While there was earlier work leading up to it, in the nineteenth century germ theory developed, with evidence suggesting that for some infectious diseases microorganisms are the cause.

As germ theory developed and came to be accepted, how we reacted to the possibility of infection through germs changed our behaviour, and we developed technologies to ameliorate the possibility of infections.

However diseases did not change because our understanding of them changed, from being contained in Miasmas to being contained in microorganisms.


Disciplines like Psychology

Bystander inaction. People are less likely to act to help someone if they see themselves as one of many witnessing whatever it is that needs help.

There are two general exceptions to this, people who believe they have the professional skills to help, and people who have been thoroughly taught about the bystander inaction effect.

The study of psychology alters the psychology of people. Psychological research alters how people think about themselves and affects their behaviour.

It is not just psychology where this happens, there are other disciplines with similar looping effects. Belief that a certain level of government debt is harmful has led to austerity, which has because it is such a ridiculous mistake, led to government debt growing. Economic theory affects economies.

For a more fun example watch Hysteria.

Does it matter?

Yes and no. There is no point in trying to 'prove' psychology is a science by doing research that gets more and more obtuse.

There is a point in trying to make our measurement tools and theories the best we can so we can best explain what is going on now, without worrying about the universality of findings.

Letting go of a narrow obsession with a limited notion of what psychology should be like because it is a science is I think a good thing. And ironically it might lead to us being better at collecting data, testing hypotheses and building theories.

Brains!

 

Journal of Serendipitous and Unexpected Results, 2010. 1(1):1-5

Unless you are a dualist who believes that consciousness exists apart from the body it will come as no shock that brains are a necessary part of human (and salmon) psychology.

However, there are some issues around what we ought to, and ought not to, say on the basis of techniques such as fMRI (Functional magnetic resonance imaging)

The first point is this is a graph, not a direct image of the brain.

The technique, as explained in the Wiki article, is to compare blood flow across time.

In the case of the graph above the dead salmon was exposed to pictures of human individuals in social situations with a specified emotional valence, either socially inclusive or socially exclusive. The salmon was asked to determine which emotion the individual  in the photo must have been experiencing.

The brain activation graph shows the difference in activation, as detected by fMRI when the dead salmon was exposed to the two types of picture.

Except of course the salmon was dead, the researchers bought it at a supermarket, and unless we have thoroughly misunderstood the difference between dead and alive there was no blood flow.

Which leads to the second point, the need for adjustment for multiple comparisons.

The anomalous graph is caused because there is no (or inadequate) adjustment made to the null hypothesis statistical tests used to 'detect' the difference given the (large) number of multiple comparisons being made.

This issue is so well documented at this point that any researcher who publishes research based on fMRI data who has failed to do appropriate adjustments for multiple comparisons ought to be seen as fraudulent. Although that may not have been as apparent in the early years of this century, and there is a technical argument about the correct way of doing these adjustments for multiple comparison.

So there we have the basics, however seductive it is to think we are looking at something akin to an X-ray of brain activation we are actually looking at a graph. Beware of any research which does not robustly adjust for multiple comparisons.

Just because it appears in brain imaging it doesn't mean it is just a biological phenomena

In the next post I will address some of the issues around the philosophy of what I am discussing, and thereafter will post something more concrete about the relationships between brains, bodies and the environment for human psychology. For right now hold on to the idea (unless you are a substance dualist) that anything that happens in the mind also happens in the brain.

So if I have learnt to fear dentistry, which I have, then that fear of dentists is materially represented in my body and brain. That is not the same as saying that my fear of dentistry is caused by my biology.

This blog post by Neurocritic illustrates the problems of inadequate reporting of research to make it sound like once a psychological issue can be 'brain scanned' it is biological and open to straightforward intervention with drug therapies. However, it is not only the reporting that is at fault here, it also appears to be a default position of at least some psychology and neuroscience authors that the 'brain scan' (graph of difference in blood flow) shows a biological reality for psychological phenomena.

Beware of the dichotomy that biological is real, not biological is false (or constructed).

This is a particular issue in sex and gender research, where if a graph of difference in blood flow can be   shown for men and women then that particular difference is seen as biological in origin. Despite the possibility that the differences between men and women, for a particular difference, can be at least as plausibly be explained by social process.

Just showing a graph of differences in blood flow in the brains of two categories of people does not equal an explanation of the differences between those categories of people.

Psychology, methods and science, why worry?

Over the last couple of months I have been toying with ideas around Psychology, methods and science.

I suspect that what I want to say will be a bit bigger than one blog post, so I intend to do a series of posts.

This installment is about why I think we have a problem.

As someone with an interest in conceptual and historical issues I tend to range a bit more freely over the psychological literature than specialists in a particular area. Some of the problems which are acknowledged in one aspect of psychology seem to be mirrored in other areas of the discipline. If the problems are even more widespread than that it seems to implicate the whole discipline.

We do not routinely test for similarity instead of difference

One of the outstanding issues in Psychology is something I first became aware of with the Psychology of Sex and Gender.

While most of us, most of the time, act and talk as if there are psychological differences between men and women the scientific evidence for those differences is at best contested, at worst none existent.

What tends to happen is that an area of possible, psychological, difference is opened up by a statistically significant difference being published. Over time a bunch of other people do similar (although not identical) work. After some more time a meta analysis is carried out on the findings, and the results of the meta analysis suggest that the original difference is small and inconsistent. This may lead us to believe that the genders are more (psychologically) similar than different.

However, while I strongly believe that psychological differences that we can detect using our current methods are small and inconsistent, that is not the same thing as saying the men and women are psychologically similar. We simply have not been testing for similarity, and lack of evidence for difference is not the same as evidence in favour of similarity.

Psychology studies are routinely under powered

In the paper Cohen, J. (1994). The earth is round (p < .05). American Psychologist, 49, 997-1003. Cohen argues that there are a number of problems with null hypothesis significance testing. One of the problems highlighted is that psychology studies are routinely under powered.

This suggested teaching exercise might help you grasp what this means, and may act as a useful teaching resource if you ever have to teach statistics.

One trouble with having a routine of under powered studies (studies with too few participants for a given effect size) is that we get studies published followed by a number of failures to replicate. After some time someone will do a meta analysis and suggest that the original finding is smaller and more inconsistent than originally thought. All this strikes me as a huge waste of resources.

We do not routinely try to replicate results

While the recent controversies around Bem may have put this into focus in psychology it is very difficult to get a straightforward replication published. Psychologists work around this by doing "conceptual replications" replicating the idea, but not the study. However, this is surely missing the point. When researchers do meta analyses of psychology studies they try to include unpublished studies (normally Ph.D. dissertations) that did attempt replication. Unfortunately we do not know about the missing studies because of the next problem.

We do not routinely register studies before they are run

We simply don't know how big the 'file drawer' of studies is, people occasionally try to make a guess but without routinely registering studies before they run we cannot know so fairly important information about whether an apparently interesting finding has been extensively tested.   

We do not know the relationship between our studies and the world outside of the laboratory

In order to carry out science like investigations of human psychology it is necessary to simplify phenomena so that we can test for some of the things that might affect human psychology, while concentrating on a sub-set of things that might affect human psychology. What psychologists mean when they talk about 'controlling unwanted variables'.

One of the questions is can we do that in a meaningful way. I suspect we can but all too often we do not try to. There is a famous talk given by the physicist Richard Feynman on Cargo Cult Science.

All too often we don't know what our laboratory studies, with humans, actually mean because we haven't done the basic work (Feynman also makes some points about replication, which means the problem of lack of replications stretches back at least to the mid twentieth century).

Most psychometric tests have not been tested for predictive validity

Which is ultimately the same problem as above, but for personality tests.

We routinely use poor sampling methods

Psychologists routinely use undergraduate students, self selecting samples, and samples drawn purely from clinical populations. That they/we then go on to make universal claims about human psychology from these samples is just bizarre.

Next episode being careful with 'brain scans'

Happiness, Positive Psychology and Measurement

Recently the OECD's Better Life Index has made some headlines, this example is from the Guardian and has the headline:

World's happiest OECD countries: in full

 A little reading around the headline quickly shows that this is not subjective happiness, it is based on eleven topics, Housing, Income, Jobs, Community, Education, Environment, Civic Engagement, Health, Life Satisfaction, Safety and Work-Life Balance.

 It does with the inclusion of Life Satisfaction include one subjective measure, which is assessed by survey. The ranking of the countries on this one measure can be seen here and a discussion on trying to measure subjective life satisfaction can be found here.

So this is about happiness as such, however having recently seen a talk on happiness by my friend and colleague Dave Webster I have been thinking about measuring happiness.

Measuring Happiness

Can happiness be measured?

Positive psychologists are investigating ways to measure happiness, they have one measure under construction (Authentic Happiness Inventory) and two other measures of happiness, the General Happiness Scale and the Fordyce Emotions Questionnaire. All of these are accessible via Dr. Martin Seligman's homepage, although you have to register to take the tests. In the interest of disclosure last time I took these tests my scores were, Authentic Happiness, 4.04 out of 5; General Happiness Scale, 7 out of 7; and 9 out of 10 on the Fordyce Emotions Questionnaire. All of these are quite high scores compared to most people that fill in the scales, I lost points on Authentic Happiness by scoring low on questions like question 4,

A. My life does not have any purpose or meaning.

B. I do not know the purpose or meaning of my life.

C. I have a hint about my purpose in life.

D. I have a pretty good idea about the purpose or meaning of my life.

E. I have a very clear idea about the purpose or meaning of my life.

and question 12,

A. In the grand scheme of things, my existence may hurt the world.

B. My existence neither helps nor hurts the world.

C. My existence has a small but positive effect on the world.

D. My existence makes the world a better place.

E. My existence has a lasting, large, and positive impact on the world.

I think that happiness can be measured at least as well (or as badly) as any other psychological object. As I detail in Chapter Nine of Tyson, Jones and Elcock there are problems with the whole psychometric enterprise, and measurements, be they attitudes, intelligence, personality, happiness or character strengths, are at best culturally and historically contingent and have meaning only in relation to the populations they have been developed within. For the happiness scale currently under development that population appears to be anglophone web users who are interested enough in the topic to use the website.

One of the dangers of all of these measuring tools is that they reify a particular working through of a concept, and that in turn may act as a political tool to promote one notion of what human beings are like.

All such measuring tools suffer from what Rom Harré called the 'meaning problem' which he applied more generally to the testing conditions in which psychology investigations take place. The problem is that people participating in a psychological experiment or survey may bring a variety of meanings to the situation, only some of which will match with what the investigator intends them to be. In effect these measuring scales may be measuring a varieties of happiness, not a single thing.

Multi-item scales tend to have better psychometric validity than single item scales, which leads to a second problem, people can respond to the individual items completely differently and yet be given the same overall score.

Finally there are a set of technical problems because the basis for these scales being equal interval scales is a, probably misapplied, principle of psychophysics, the just noticeable difference, which makes sense for an individual case, but may not when using aggregated data.

So can happiness be measured, a qualified yes. I prefer the types of metrics that the OECD use rather than the attempts to measure individual subjective happiness. If you believe personality tests measure personality, attitude scales measure attitudes or intelligence tests measure intelligence then happiness scales are just as good!

 

 

Division of Clinical Psychology Position Statement on Classification

The British Psychological Society, Division of Clinical Psychology, released this position statement yesterday. Some elements of it were discussed on Sunday in the Observer and on other media outlets.

What I intend to do here is briefly comment on each of the major sections of the statement.

Context

Much of the emphasis is on schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, personality disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorders rather than dementia, neuropsychology and learning disability. As the positions statement makes clear there has been considerable disquiet and debate about those diagnostic categories for over a decade. There is also growing disquiet about the ever increasing reach of diagnostic categories into everyday life and the medicalising of more and more aspects of everyday life.

The position statement is careful to note that biological factors are not being ignored, but that the primacy given to them by a disease model needs to be challenged.

The Role of Clinical Psychologists

Obviously the position statement re-affirms the role of clinical psychologists.

The Rationale for a Paradigm Shift

I am normally uneasy with the term paradigm shift being used in the social sciences, however this position statement does the use the term to mean a fundamental shift in world view, which would seem to fit well with the original meaning.

Core Issue 1: Concepts and models

Six conceptual issues are described:

1. Interpretation presented as objective fact
2. Limitations in validity and reliability
3. Restrictions in clinical utility and functions
4. Biological emphasis
5. Decontextualisation
6. Ethnocentric bias

While these are not a surprise to me it is apparent that much of that debate has not penetrated that far outside of the academy.

Core issue 2: Impact on service users

1. Discrimination
2. Stigmatisation and negative impact on identity
3. Marginalising knowledge from lived experience
4. Disempowerment

The hope is that this paradigm shift can address these issues.

There then follow five action points.

Action point 1
To share within the DCP and through pre-qualification training and continuing
professional development, the issues raised by this statement. The aim is to
achieve greater openness and transparency about the uses and limitations of
the current system, and enhance service users’ and carers’ awareness and
understanding of the issues.

Action point 2
To open up dialogue with partner organisations, service users and carers,
voluntary agencies, and other professional bodies in order to find agreed ways
forward. This will necessarily include safeguarding access to health and
social care, benefits, work support, and legal and educational services that are
currently diagnosis-based.

Action point 3
To support work, in conjunction with service users, on developing multifactorial
and contextual approaches which incorporate social, psychological
and biological factors.

 Action point 4
To ensure that a psychosocial perspective and psychological work are
included in the electronic health record.

Action point 5
For the DCP to continue to promote the use of psychological formulation as
one response to the concerns identified in this statement. 

 I feel in addition to these actions there is a need to enter into dialogue with people in general, as well as service users, carers and partner organisations.

Brains, Reality and Mental Distress

The Observer today has a number of interesting articles.

How to Spot a Murder's Brain

Psychiatrists under fire in mental health battle
  
Medicine's big new battleground: does mental illness really exist?
 
Do we need to change the way we are thinking about mental illness?

Although the comments section after each of them are frustrating and annoying.


Three of them, all but the 'Murder's Brain' are part of a series brought about by the statement to be released on Monday 13 May from the Division of Clinical Psychology of the British Psychological Society calling for a fundamental re-thinking of how professionals understand and treat mental distress.

After that statement is released I will have a go at saying more about it.

Meanwhile mental distress exists and sometimes people need help with it from a range of sources including medicine. One of the potential upsides is that people will start looking beyond medicine at ways to make mental distress less likely and to ameliorate its effects. One of the potential down sides of moving away from the medical model is that it will become an excuse for further cutting the already inadequate services for people with mental distress. It is also important that we do not jump into the Positive Psychology position of just helping individuals with building up resilience but look at broader social and societal issues as well.

Positive Psychology, the Nudge Unit and 'Sham Tests'

There are a couple of articles in the Guardian about a 'sham test' that jobseekers are being compelled to do.

Main Guardian article

Follow up article

The video at the top of the article is worth looking at.

As is the original blog post about the test, and the test itself is worth looking at, signature strengths test.

I am horrified that people are being told that they have to take the test, with the threat of a sanction (removal of benefits) if they do not.

Having completed the test these were my results:

Thanks for completing the signature strengths questionnaire, your results are below.



This exercise has been shown to find peoples' strengths in scientific studies and you may find it useful to identify your strengths and use them to inform your job search, CV or use in interviews. You may also find it useful to try to incorporate your strengths in your daily life and play to them whenever you can.



You should aim to use your strengths whenever you can. This could be in the your job search choices, your CV or at interviews. You could also apply these to your daily life. <strong> You should aim to use each one of your signature strengths in a new way everyday for at least a week.</strong>



Strength 1. Fairness

Treating all people fairly is one of your abiding principles. You do not let your personal feelings bias your decisions about other people. You give everyone a chance.



Strength 2. Love of learning

You love learning new things, whether in a class or on your own. You have always loved school, reading, and museums-anywhere and everywhere there is an opportunity to learn.



Strength 3.  Originality

Thinking of new ways to do things is a crucial part of who you are. You are never content with doing something the conventional way if a better way is possible.



Strength 4. Bravery

 You are a courageous person who does not shrink from threat, challenge, difficulty, or pain. You speak up for what is right even if there is opposition. You act on your convictions.



Strength 5. Loving

You value close relations with others, in particular those in which there is sharing and caring. The people to whom you feel most close are the same people who feel most close to you.

As far as I can tell this is a shotened version of the VIA character strengths survey, available upon registration here. That test has 240 items, compared to only 48 on this version, last time I took the VIA these were my top five.

Here are your scores on the VIA Survey of Character Strengths. For how to interpret and use your scores, see the book Authentic Happiness. The ranking of the strengths reflects your overall ratings of yourself on the 24 strengths in the survey, how much of each strength you possess. Your top five, especially those marked as Signature Strengths, are the ones to pay attention to and find ways to use more often

Your Top Strength

Curiosity and interest in the world You are curious about everything. You are always asking questions, and you find all subjects and topics fascinating. You like exploration and discovery.

Your Second Strength

Fairness, equity, and justice Treating all people fairly is one of your abiding principles. You do not let your personal feelings bias your decisions about other people. You give everyone a chance.

Your Third Strength

Forgiveness and mercy You forgive those who have done you wrong. You always give people a second chance. Your guiding principle is mercy and not revenge.

Your Fourth Strength

Love of learning You love learning new things, whether in a class or on your own. You have always loved school, reading, and museums-anywhere and everywhere there is an opportunity to learn.

Your Fifth Strength

Judgment, critical thinking, and open-mindedness Thinking things through and examining them from all sides are important aspects of who you are. You do not jump to conclusions, and you rely only on solid evidence to make your decisions. You are able to change your mind.

There are a number of issues that arise for me.

Coersion

Forcing people to take a test under threat of stripping their benefits does not seem a good way to get people to reflect upon themselves. (I know I've already mentioned this, but it is very important).

Lack of Validity of a Short Form

There are twenty four character strengths in the VIA, with ten  questions per strength.
 That allows for each character strength to have a score of (depending on scoring system, but lets assume 1-5 per question) of between 10 and 50. The short form allows between 2 and 10. With the possibility of multiple ties. Indeed completely tied responses give a 'top 5' character strengths. Precisely how those are chosen is very difficult to know and might be a propaganda tool.

This is not a personality test

This has been talked about as if it were a personality test. It is not. I obviously (see previous posts) have issues about positive psychology but it is deliberately trying to achieve something different to personality testing.

The allegiance between positive psychology and government

In my conference presentation, and in the paper I am working on, I am worried about the ways that positive psychology appears to be forming allegiances with aspects of state power. This continues to worry me and needs a more thorough analysis.