Lecture
Experiments in psychology are conducted for scientific and practical purposes. They are built according to similar norms (in that part which sets out the requirements for collecting empirical data and the possibilities of explanation).
One can distinguish norms in the regulation of the experimenter's sensory-practical activity (if the experiment is classed among the empirical methods) and norms in the structure of the method as realized (if the experimental method is understood as a certain logic of reasoning).
The norms of scientific thinking are supra-individual schemas, rules that have taken shape in science for collecting and using empirical data to draw a substantive conclusion about the object of study. They encompass the entire system of research methods employed.
These norms mean that the researcher must take into account certain rules of substantive inference when organizing experimental reasoning, and they reflect the culture of research.
A psychological experiment must satisfy the criteria of scientific rigor.
In doing so, the researcher uses supra-individual modes of reasoning (according to Yaroshevsky, these are the categorical regulators of scientific cognition).
Kuhn. The concept of the paradigm. A paradigm is the practice of scientific research that has developed by a certain historical moment, adhering to some traditional model of organizing research, including the ways of constructing a theory, its empirical testing, and its application for practical purposes.
The researcher must be guided by the established paradigms, yet at the same time have the ability to go beyond their bounds.
In the organization of an individual psychological study, it is not a paradigm that is realized but a concrete methodological way of testing a scientific hypothesis.
K. Popper introduced the norms of the experimental paradigm.
Using the example of a court trial:
- In a court trial a person is never asked to commit the crime anew;
- The evidence is examined (direct and circumstantial);
- The verdict must correspond to the materials of the case.
Guilty/not guilty → evidence: present/absent →convicted/not convicted (erroneously/correctly) (four options in all).
The situation is similar in any experimental science. (see QUESTION 10)
Norms:
A hypothesis following from a theory is tested (theory-ladenness)
Correlating the hypothesis with the empirical data at the level of «modus tollens»
- falsification (refutation)
- verification (availability for further testing).
The presence of a counter-hypothesis. That is, there must be an equal probability of obtaining data both for and against the theory.
[( p→q) & not-q] → not-p
q – the data; p – the generalized statement
A hypothesis is a statement whose truth or falsity is unknown but can be tested empirically.
The experimental method in psychology is a hypothetico-deductive path of reasoning in the testing of causal hypotheses.
The hypothetico-deductive path: the transition from general statements about theoretical relationships to the advancing of theory-laden hypotheses about the consequences of the operation of laws that can be recorded.
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