Frequently Asked Questions

Dr. Lester M. Sdorow, author of Psychology, answers questions about psychology as a science.

1. Isn't psychology just common sense? In that case, how can it be considered a science?

One of the goals of my textbook is to demonstrate that psychology is, in fact, a science and not merely common sense. Psychology is a science because it uses the scientific method--its subject matter is simply different from the other sciences. Though common sense concepts can be subjected to scientific research to assess their validity, common sense by itself is supported by little more than anecdotal reports and folk wisdom. Note that a research study described in Chapter 2 indicates that even the common sense belief that we can detect when someone is drunk may not stand up to scientific scrutiny.

2. In the survey method, how can you be sure that respondents honestly answer your questions?

You can never be sure that respondents are answering honestly. But many decades of use of surveys have demonstrated that respondents tend to be honest in their responses. For example, surveys of potential voters have found that the percentages of those who say they intend to vote for certain candidates are close to the percentages in the actual elections. In some cases, researchers have found that permitting respondents to be anonymous increases their willingness to respond honestly.

3. What is another way of explaining the correlational method? I have read and reread the textbook chapter, and I still have trouble understanding this method.

To understand this concept you might want to stress two things. First, the correlational method lets you take information you have and use it to predict future behavior or events. For example, it would be safe to predict that the older the person gets, the less the person will sleep each night. Second, the presence of a correlation between two things does not mean that one of them has a causal effect on the other. For example, decades ago mental health practitioners attributed autism to having a "refrigerator mother." That is, because autistic children were more likely to have mothers who were emotionally cold to them, autism was attributed to maternal coldness. Later research contradicted this by finding greater evidence for a neurological problem in autistic children. Thus, if some mothers are cold toward their autistic children, it is more likely the result of dealing with autistic children than it is a cause of the autism.