Description

This is an arXiv repository of materials for a lecture series offered at the University of Hamburg for undergraduate psychology students in 2022 and 2023. The original title of the lecture was Wissenschaftstheorie & Einfuehrung in das wissenschaftliche Arbeiten. The current title is a loose translation that may actually better reflect the content. The content is mainly in English, but some German might also be found.

Maybe you find something useful here – at least, that was my intention. 🤔

Topics

Intro: Organisation & Motivation

SLIDES PDF [3.1 MB]
  • zettelkasten method (Niklas Luhmann)
  • scientific psychology vs folk psychology
  • scientific and manifest images of the world (Wilfrid Sellars)

Foundations of experimental and differential psychology

SLIDES PDF [3.2 MB]
  • psychophysics
  • mental chronometry
  • psychometrics

Modelle des Menschen

SLIDES PDF [2.3 MB]
  • major schools of thought about human nature
  • psychodynamics, behaviourism, cognitivism, neuroscience

Reasoning & Truth

SLIDES PDF [1 MB]
  • inductive and deductive arguments
  • correspondance theory of truth
  • coherence theory of truth

Scientific method & explanation

SLIDES PDF [601 KB]
  • naive inductivism
  • hypothetico-deductive method
  • deductive-nomological model of explanation
  • inductive-statistical model of explanation

Epistemology & Experimental psychology

SLIDES PDF [1.4 MB]
  • bayesian epistemology
  • theory, hypotheses, statistical models, and data
  • ethical aspects

Open Science: Science in practice

SLIDES PDF [3.8 MB]
  • replication crisis
  • questionable research practices
  • Open Science tools

Course objectives

The primary goal of the lecture series is to familiarize students with the foundational principles of scientific reasoning and its application in psychological inquiry, fostering a solid base for further studies in psychology. To name a few specific goals:

  • Students can discriminate academic psychology from folk psychology and possess an attitude to reflect how their own views on human nature might be in conflict with scientific evidence, and how they may respond to such a conflict.
  • Students can identify the roots of modern psychology and its scientific methods that aim to provide explnations of human mind and behaviour using inference about unobservable phenomena from observable data. For example, they can explain the contribution of psychophysics, mental chronometry, and psychometrics.
  • Students can identify major schools of thought about human nature, describe their basic tenets, and current status in academic psychology.
  • Students can identify the structure of good arguments, and discriminate between deductive and inductive reasoning.
  • Students can identify major theories of truth and their consequences for argumentation.
  • Students can describe and apply hypothetico-deductive model of scientific method.
  • Students understand the relationships between scientific theory, hypotheses, and data in the context of statistical models in psychological research.
  • Students can identify factors contributing to replication crisis (in psychology) and are familiar with Open Science initiatives and tools to increase scientific rigour and trustworthiness.

Motivation

How did I come here? I was asked to give a lecture series that is a part of the obligatory curiculum of undergraduate psychology students at the Univeristy of Hamburg. The requirements were rather vague for me. But I was given the materials from previous instructors to get the idea about the content. Specifically, Dr. Stefan Schulreich shared with me his slides and experience with the course. 🙏 This was my starting point. Since his materials were in German, I found it difficult to simply re-use them in the same form – I did not feel comfortable presenting something I barely understand. Hence, I decided to re-work the content in line with what I am able to teach. Inspired by Stefan, I used my assignment as an opportunity to re-vive my interest in philosophy of science from a perspective of a (cognitive) psychologist. To gain a better undersanding of scientific method. To improve my own research. And finally, to pass on to my students some of my scientific values. Retrospectively, I must admit that the course probably helped more me than my students…

I selected the content that fits to the course requirements but with a general motivation to model in my students a mind-set which would let them see their studies (and beyond) as an ongoing epistemic activity rather than a fixed body of knowledge that needs to be consumed. In this context, I tried to show how psychological thought changed over time from a bird-eye perspective. Finding good solutions to scientific (academic) problems is important, but identifying the ones that truly matter may be even more crucial. The section on epistemology and theories of truth aimed to illustrate that things should not be taken for granted. At the same time, being critical just for the sake of it leads nowhere – a logical argumentation is the key. To illustrate that uncertainty seems inevitable in scientific inquiry, I included a lecture on bayesianism – it is the coherent way to link epistemology to statistical models, and hence research practice in psychology. The final lecture was on Open Science to make my students aware about the ongoing credibility revolution in psychology so that they could be a part of it, and foster scientific rigor in our discipline – I strongly belive that students should get familiar with it early on.

Reflections

After having done the lecture series two rounds, I have some reflections.

In general, I received encouraging (unsolicited) feedback from some students. Hence, I assume that those who attended my lectures benefited from it. Nevertheless, there are some things that need improvement.

  1. The first lecture on folk psychology needs to be re-worked. Typical for introductory courses, folk psychology is contrasted with scientific psychology, which uses systematic methods to study and understand the mind and behavior. To illustarte the contrast, I refered to scientific and manifest image – philosophical terms that were popularized by the philosopher Wilfrid Sellars. These terms help distinguish between two different ways of understanding the world: one rooted in everyday human experience and the other based on scientific theory. I aimed to leverage the concept of a theory of mind that we all tend to develop to explain human behaviour, and something that comes very natural to us. I thought this is a good starting point to say that both perspectives offer valuable insights, but they operate at different levels of usefulness and basis in evidence. While folk psychology is practical in daily life, it doesn’t always align with the more complex, evidence-based theories of cognition and behavior that help us to explain and predict phenomena. I then referred to an issue how we may respond when our manifest and scientific images are in contrast. In sum, this intended to develop an open and reflective stance in students. Retrospectively, this might have been too ambitious – this was very likely one of their first academic lecture ever. Neverthelss, I still strongly believe that the general idea was good. But it needs to be delivered in a better way.
  2. Lecture 3 is too long. It can be condensed. And it might be better to spend more time on a few selected seminal findings rather than listing them. Only after a while, I encountered a paper that might be worth including here: Zagaria, A., & Lombardi, L. (2024). A new perspective on trends in psychology. In New Ideas in Psychology (Vol. 74, p. 101078). Elsevier BV. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2024.101078
  3. Lecture 4 should remain. This may be un-popular opinion, but I am strongly convinced that the section on logical reasoning and theories of truth should remain. The usefulness of this lecture may not be immidiately apparent so some improvements are recommended, for example, including more examples relevant for psychology research.
  4. Lecture 6 is too long. It is enough to talk only about bayesianism and the relation between epistemology and experimental psychology.
  5. Lecture on Open Science needs to be re-worked. The content is ok, but the flow can be improved by re-aranging the order of sections.

License

This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Acknowledgment

Whenever possible, I tried to acknolwedge the sources of the included information (if not directly on the slide, then at the end of the lecture). But I am not perfect. If there is some material that is yours and you were not properly acknowledged, or wish to remove your content, shoot me an email so that I can correct myself. 🙏

Funding

The funding to develop this course was provided by the University of Hamburg in the context of teaching obligations managed by the Department of Cognitive Psychology (Prof. Lars Schwabe). 👋