Question

research methods for the behavioral sciences 5th edition pdf Chapter 1

1. Name one non-scientific way of knowing and a problem associated with it and then describe the empirical method of gaining knowledge and why it is better.

2. Describe the conditions under which a scientist would typically use the inductive method and when they would be more likely to use the deductive method of reasoning.

Answer 1

Intuition is a non-scientific way of knowing about the world that relies on an individual’s personal judgment about the world and accept it unquestioningly. Intuition is often used to gain access to a truth about something through one’s own judgement about another person's experience.
However, a major problem with intuition as a method of gaining knowledge is that it Involves cognitive and motivational biases and the knower can form negative assessments or positive evaluations about an event, object, or person based on his/her own favourable or unfavourable attitude about the issue under scrutiny. Intuition often suffers from false consensus bias wherein we may overestimate how the degree to which our own behavior, attitudes, and beliefs are shared by other people.However, this results in drawing erroneous conclusions and cannot be used as a valid approach to establishing cause and effect.

In order to overcome such shortcomings and establish objective and verifiable findings or truths, the scientific approach to gaining knowledge is a more valid choice across many academic disciplines and researches.

The empirical method is one such scientific method which involves a set of procedures that Involve observing behaviors, events as they occur eithe in an artificial setting of a laboratory or in a natural social environment. The empirical method gives the added advantage of replicability which means that other researchers can reproduce the study and findings by repeating the same procedures of the study. In the empirical method, the researcher relies on formulating a hypothesis about the relationship between the variables or knowledge about cause and effect such as in a study between external stressor and aggression in behaviour that is testable and falsifiable. The Results generated could therefore contribute to knowledge production as if they are consistent with previous studies, then they prove the theory about frustration and aggression and even if they disprove the previous theory about causality, then they add to the given pool as new knowledge about the phenomena. The empirical method therefore helps to eliminate personal biases as it is based on objectivity and replicability and they therefore help to discover more valid truths.
Empiricism

Thus, the scientific method like the empirical method has proof and evidence compared to Intuition.