Psychology's Raison D’Ëtre, Part 2

Scientific modeling of Psychological Truth is hard.  Standard nomenclature is difficult when most of our constructs are expressed in the modern languages (as opposed to having a periodic table of the emotions, let's say, that is universal).  To make matters worse, we rely on somewhat unreliable statistics to tell us whether or not we are Right.  Correct.  In the general area of Truth.

Is this a Science?

I’m going to say Yes. (Obviously.)  But ours is a developing science.  Somewhere on the continuum between Alchemy and Chemistry, Astrology and Astronomy. 

It has been suggested that Psychology is the Science before Neurology. 

I disagree.  Neurological science is going to massively inform Psychology.  But it is never going to replace it.  The reason for this is that nobody goes around saying ‘Oh my neurons are firing wrong today’.  We say ‘I feel sad!’ or ‘I feel happy!’.  And we say those things in predictable ways.  The existence of a micro-level construct does not preclude the existence of (or the importance of) the macro-level construct. 

Depression is not just a problem in the brain; it is a diseased state of mind and ALSO a problem in the brain. 

That being said, I think Psychology will split off into Science-Parts, and Non-Science Parts.  In the future,I think this is what the Science and the Non-Science of Psychology will look like:

-          Research psychology = Science in its own right.  And with major overlap in the biomedical sciences, mainly neuroscience.

-          Clinical psychology = Both science and alchemy.

-          Philosophical psychology = Philosophy.

-          Lay psychology = Some fun, some practical, some common sense.  And some derived from the above.

In short, I am trying to be clear about the Raison-D’Ëtre of psychology in modern science.  In talking to my colleagues, I think there is a shared and only half-spoken unease about the place of our science in the world today.  Who are we, and what are we good at?

I think the answers are there.  I think there will be changes to how we define ourselves.  But the issues that psychology talks about (e.g., relationships, group dynamics, mental health, how we think and why we do things) are so fundamental to our well being and operation as individuals and as a society that we have to study them scientifically, even if there are also other ways to approach them.

After all, when I think of the reasons I went into this crazy field, I remember them clearly.  I thought that a Scientific Psychology would incorporate all my favourite parts of Mathematics, Philosophy, Medicine, and Theology.  And I still do.

--

See Part 1

In Defense of The Scientific Practice of Speculation, Part 2

These days, speculation seems to be almost a dirty word.  There’s good reason for this.  Scientists, especially social scientists (especially psychologists?) are known for drawing conclusions that go way beyond their data.  We tend to be an idealist lot, and we think we have already intuited all there is to know about human nature and are really just conducting these studies and things to confirm our notions (OK – luckily this is not always true… but let’s be honest… “research is me-search” and we are often a liiiiittle more invested in our hypotheses than we should be. I think this is partly a systems issue. But I digress.)

But that's BAD speculation.  And bad science.

However, speculation before the creation of hypotheses I think is essential.  We are altogether too “in the box” these days.  We need to flatten that box into a topological map of psychic life and get some better ideas flowing!  (Kudos if you get the reference.)

And the only way to do that is by being a little bold, a little outlandish, and by being wrong.  Maybe 10,000 times.

Psychology's Raison D’Être

What are the goals of science?  We have several options:

1)      The goal is to explain the world so that we can predict and control it

2)      Goal 1 becomes Goal 2 of philanthropy

3)      Fun

4)      Exploration of the world as it exists (or doesn’t)

I feel like psychological science is having a bit of an existential crisis.  At least, I am having an existential crisis for it. 

How come all of the really cool research seems to have been done 50 years ago?  How is it that thousands of studies have been published on the relationship between depression and heart disease and we still don’t know what we’re doing? 

Is the field of Psychology really passé? I can’t believe it!  (Seriously.  I can’t.  I’m getting a degree in this here-now field.  How depressing would that be?)

But it seems clear that psychology without solid empirical and methodological anchors is doomed to failure as a science (though it can still make good philosophy, and in some cases, maybe even good therapy).  My only fear is that psychology with solid empirical and methodological anchors is doomed to failure as well.

Let me explain.

One of the most important freedoms of good science is the Right to be Wrong.  I always love it when I read posts about how important it is to allow oneself to be wrong.  There was a blogging trend along these lines on awhile back and I thought it was fabulous.  People were talking about the importance of accepting being wrong during training in medicine – a field where being wrong can be accompanied by disastrous consequences.

But this speaks to the difference between research and the clinic.  In research, and in innovation, it is not only OK to be wrong, it is frankly necessary.

To use a hackneyed example, Edison is reputed to have been “wrong” 10,000 times before he came up with the right model for a light bulb.  How often do students of science allow themselves to be wrong these days?

I noticed this when TAing over the past year.  Graduate students in Medical Psychology, both clinical students and research students, were very uncomfortable being wrong.  Students were very uncomfortable getting a grade under an A, and would often staunchly argue that they were right… even when they weren’t… or when they could have been, but they also could have been wrong.  That’s research.

I think that when I start teaching in earnest I am going to start each class with the following quotation, from my ever-brilliant mom: “The quickest way to be right is to admit it when you’re wrong.”

After all, I like being right too.  You don’t become an over-achieving grad student if you don’t like to be right, and have everybody around you acknowledge it.

But here’s the problem: you don’t become a good scientist unless you are sometimes (often?) wrong.  And know it.   

That’s the whole point of a hypothesis.  Come up with a hypothesis, test it, go forward if it is correct – and change it if it is not!  Follow where the data lead!

Understanding Human Connections, or In Defence of The Scientific Practice of Speculation!

Ramachandran said that mirror neurons are the basis of society.  This might be considered stretching the data.  But let’s!  (It's fun!)

In studying disease, we come to see that disease spreads (Christakis & Fowler, 2007, 2008).  Why?

So, why?  We don’t really know the answer to that question (see review of Christakis & Fowler book - really worth reading).

What if neuroscience showed us a way?  What if mirror neurons – or more accurately, a neurological system that both could identify others’ goals and made us imitate them when we identify with that person whether we are aware of it and whether we like it or not – could explain it? 

The issue with the mirror neuron hypothesis is that as far as I understand it, I would have to see you eat or smoke in order to be able to internalize that goal.  But according to this research, that does not seem to be necessary.

There has got to be a mechanism though.  We just don’t know what it is yet.  And without speculation, we never will!

Oh, To Be a Real Science!!

I am not the only psychologist with Physics Envy, I see.  Check out this delightful post that makes use of the wave-particle idea on PsychCentral.

An exerpt:

"And I think we’re also getting over what the systems theory people did when they discovered that the pathology of adolescents was the function of families. They went in to work solely with families and lost the self. We lost the self in the system. Self is the system, but it’s also a location interacting with a system…

What I’m trying to do in my writing is to highlight that it is neither the self nor the system; it’s the oscillation between the two. That’s the constant; the oscillation. Self changes, the system changes, but the oscillation is constant. Maybe that’s what the self is – the oscillation.

That’s fascinating. So that oscillation between the self and the system, between self and other, and also between thought and feeling,…

And between particle and wave…

…so you’re considering that movement itself as maybe where the self resides…

Well, is there a particle? No. Is there a wave? No. There’s a wave-particle relationship, and interaction, and what’s constant is the oscillation. So that begins to provide you with a process that’s not chaotic – if everything is moving, then that movement becomes the structure."

- From  Getting the Love You Want: Interview with Harville Hendrix (Part 3) 

by Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar

Methodological Challenges in Psychology, or Why We Shy Away from Measuring Emotion.

I previously wrote regarding the difficulties of measurement in a science with no bad incomplete nomenclature.  Psychology is a scientific discipline that is concerned with the measurement, prediction, and explanation of complicated macro-level phenomena that we often have difficulty identifying and explaining.  Like emotion.

Emotion is a powerful force.  So powerful, in fact, that it can move entire populations to migrate, to fight, and to die.  And yet, in our day to day lives, many of us do not like to acknowledge how we feel.  Emotions can get in the way.  Indeed, certain psychopathologies may have their roots in emotion avoidance (think: depression, anxiety, certain somatic disorders).  In other words, you get anxious to avoid feeling sadness.  You get depressed to avoid feeling anger or pain. 

It all makes sense, really.  If emotion really is such a powerful force, then we know intuitively the devastating effects it can have on our lives, and most of us have stuff to do, and really can’t be bothered.  Some of us also are probably more prone to strong emotion than others, which makes things more difficult for those who have to sort them all out.  (This is part of my two-factor lay-theory of psychopathology:  extremes of sensitivity or intelligence = bad news for your mental health.)

But here’s the point I really want to get to: we do not know how to measure emotion.

Asking people (self-report) often doesn't work, unless they are particularly self-aware and willing to share with you.  ‘Objective’ measures (physiology) are often used, but they can be confounded by anything from hot coffee to a hot research assistant. 

Emotion used to be reviled as a topic of study in psychology because it was thought of as too fluffy: “If we can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist”.  I think this was misguided.  After all, emotion is too powerful a motivator, and I think that having ignored it in science and theory so far is part of the reason we can’t explain or don’t understand a lot of what’s going on in the world today.  We have to stop being afraid of measuring things that we don’t understand.  After all, I don’t understand what light is (a wave AND a particle?  For serious?)  But I could measure it anyway. 

We have to step up to the challenge in psychological research today of addressing the issues that matter:  motivation, beliefs, pain, emotion.  The big ones.  The scary ones. 

Yes, the methodology will be complicated and a pain in the butt.  But big deal!  Check out how complicated it is to measure light.