Question

How can you distinguish scientific psychology from the popular notions about the dicipline of psychology?

Answer 1

The popular theories of human behaviour are based on common sense and may or may not be true if investigated scientifically.

• Common sense based on hind sight. Psychology as a science looks for patterns of behaviour which can be predicted and not explained after the behaviour occurs.

• Dweck's study on children is worth mentioning here.

• Commonsense tells us to give them easy problems, first in order to increase their success rate so that their confidence goes up.

• Dweck found that children who had always succeeded because they were given easy problems could not cope up with difficult problems and gave up faster in comparison to those who had experience of both success and failure and were taught to put more effort to deal with difficult problems. Such studies prove that predictions based on empirical studies are reliable and valid.

The popular theories of human behaviour are based on common sense and may or may not be true if investigated scientifically.