Can Psychological Research be Scientific - Essay Example

Introduction In order to determine whether psychological research is scientific or not, it is important to define the term science, scientific knowledge as well as research. These will provide guidance about the topic with vivid psychology research examples and a final conclusion to be made. Science is defined by Marder, (2011) as systematic and organized body of knowledge in any field of inquiry. A scientific knowledge is required to be used if research in the field of enquiry is being carried out. Scientific knowledge refers to laws and theories that are generalized and which use scientific methods to explain a phenomenon or behavioral interest. Scientific method is a series of steps that can be employed in order to reach a certain objective. Scientific research deals with abstract ideas and concepts which are theories and tests the relationship between these concepts to view the reflection and comparison with reality. Over time and as maturity is reached in the phenomena or subject of discussion, these theoretical concepts are refined (Marder, 2011). In this case, psychological concepts are being studied and research carried out on them. In order to determine whether the research carried out is scientific or not, several of the steps mentioned above of scientific method should be ensured. The first step is to ensure that the concept has a theory which will be tested. A series of hypotheses should be established which are meant to agree or disagree with the theory being proposed or being tested. The next step is to have data collection methods such as observations and their results will be used to test the hypothesis as well as be generalized to the larger population or subjects. Example An example of a psychological research which has used the steps mentioned above of a scientific research is the research recently conducted by Thompson, et al (2012) on how distracted driving may become dangerous as people age. The research wanted to prove that even though the older individuals compared to the younger ones have been found to be safer drivers, they are more easily distracted while driving and hence making their driving dangerous than even that of that the younger generation. The research hypothesis indicated that elderly drivers would portray lower performance on the task than the middle age drivers. The research was carried out on a group of older drivers between the ages of 65-89 years old as well as the middle age drivers of between 40-64 years. They were provided with a standardized distractor called Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task (PASAT) which worked to provide similar distraction with that of holding conversations. The data collection method was video recording and the results indicated that the older drivers made more errors on the PASAT both in the lab and on the road compared to the younger drivers. Their baseline performance was also lower. According to the research results, the hypothesis was able to be tested positive. The results were generalized to the public represented by the two research participants. The discussion which explained the concept being proven was that the results were so because as the individuals age, their brains start being slower which leads to slowing down of their performances. They can therefore not be able to multitask and hence any distraction leads to lack of full concentration on the road hence the dangerous driving. Example The next example is a psychological research that was based on role congruity theory and wanted to find out whether the explanation of the theory that behaviors which with increased economic negotiations were more congruent with male that female was true. The research was a meta-analysis on the gender differences in negotiation outcomes and their moderators. The research hypothesis was that men achieved better economic negotiation outcomes than women. The meta-analysis comprised of 51 studies with 10,888 all of whom were drawn from several countries such as US, Netherlands, Germany, India and China. There were 4656 women and 6232 men. The participants were a combination of working people, graduates and undergraduate students. The results were based on the negotiation experience of the participants as well as self-initiated negotiation. The self-initiated negotiations were where the participants were allowed to choose which individual was to participate in the negotiation. The results were also based on integrative potential where the task of negotiation allowed tradeoffs between issues. The finals results indicated that the hypothesis was positive and the men had better economic outcomes than women generally. However, when moderator analysis was conducted, it was revealed that there were evident gender differences when negotiator experiences were concerned as well as where self-initiated negotiations were concerned. With such moderator analysis, the final results and conclusion indicated that women outperformed the men when it came to some financial negotiations. These results therefore acted to prove the theory wrong about its facts and conclusion about male being more congruent with economic negotiations (Mazei, et al 2014,). This example further cements the scientific research which aims at refining the theory used to explain the concepts under research. In this case, there is additional information in the theory which will point out to the facts depending on the self-initiated negotiations as well as negotiations experience which women seem to outperform the men and hence changed the whole fact of the theory. Conclusion The information unveiled by the research on this topic indicate that any research on any subject concept including psychology can be considered scientific as long as it follows the scientific steps mentioned above. The two examples on psychological research discussed in detail above have proven that they have followed the scientific steps strictly and hence they qualify to be called scientific research. Psychology research can therefore be confidently said to be scientific research as the researchers on these psychological topics go into the great lengths of making the research scientific and hence qualified to be generalized. With such information and support from the research evidence from peer reviewed journal articles and scientific news articles, there is no doubt that the psychological research is indeed scientific and this means that the psychological field is also scientific. References Marder, M. (2011). Research Methods for Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mazei, J. et al (2014, November 24). A Meta-Analysis on gender differences in negotiation outcomes and their moderators. Psychological Bulletin. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0038184 Thompson, K.R. et al (2012). Distracted driving in elderly and middle-aged drivers. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 45, 711–717. Doi: 10.1016/j.aap.2011.09.040 Read More