The Mythology of Psychology
Psychology uses the scientific method to conduct experiments. Research scientists start by asking a question and coming up with a hypothesis, and then they begin to collected data. A research scientist uses many different methods in order to collected data (Bawden 2017). Psychology utilizes case studies, surveying, and observations to help measure correlation (Morling 2015). A correlation coefficient is how research scientist measures the strength of a relationship between two variables in the experiment (Bawden 2017).
A case study is an “in-depth study of single person or group to reveal a universal principle” (Yin 2013). It is among one of the oldest research methods, case studies examine an individual
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For, example the number of drownings rises in the summertime and the amount of cream ice that is sold also goes up. Is ice cream causing drownings? No, this is what correlation without causation is. The scientific method isn’t perfect, research is proven wrong all the time because science is always changing; an example of this is phrenology. Phrenology is the theory that the head and skull shape can help discover the development of one’s personality or character traits (2012 Stiles p.11). The theory of phrenology was thought up by German physician Franz Gall (2012 Stiles p.11). Historians believed that the idea of phrenology came from looking at brain tumor, because brain tumors can alter the personality (2012 Stiles p.34). Phrenology was very popular in Britain, America, France, and Germany throughout the early 1800’s (2012 Stiles p.11). By studying bumps on the skull it was believed that it could reveal a person’s mental abilities (2012 Stiles p.11). It was later proven that a skull tells us nothing about the function of the brain (Wyhe 2017). Even though Gall’s theory was disproven the theory did teach us that there was link between biological activity and psychological events (Wyhe 2017). Some people believed in phrenology today, to a degree. The belief in “left and right brains” is the modern version of phrenology; the belief that left brain people are more logical and the right brain people are more artist. It has been proven false but people continue to believe in left brain and right