Why does everyone shit on psychology? The field seems extremely interesting, you get to interact with a range of people rather than autists and computer screeba, and the job prospects at accreditation (usually postgraduate) level are even better than engineering in some places. Looking on seek I can see multiple jobs a day listed in my state of about 4 million people.
So, why do people act as if studying it is a death sentence?
A lot if is pseudoscience.
Oversaturate job market from what I've heard. But if it's false where you live, go ahead.
Not that psychology is strictly /his/. I think social sciences ought to be allowed on /his/.
>>387234
I don't see how any of the clinical psychologies can be seen as pseudoscience
>>387242
Because it's not, just like psychometrics is not pseudoscience.
However, many branches of psychology are complete balderdash, which gives it a bad reputation.
>>387245
Good point. What areas in particular are especially bullshit?
>>387249
Basically any sub field which doesn't apply the scientific method. For instance any subfield which still takes Freud's work seriously.
>>387221
>you get to interact with a range of people rather than autists and computer screeba
So, any job that's not computer science?
>>387253
>For instance any subfield which still takes Freud's work seriously.
So literary criticism, Argentinian psychotherapy, and psychologists on TV?
>>387260
Any job outside of CS and Engineering. I only used them for examples of this idea of the 'supreme job'.
>>387253
>Basically any sub field which doesn't apply the scientific method.
Such as?
>>387242
But it doesn't prove anything. Yes, some therapies do work. But also any therapy works at least to some degree as long as people feel they are being cared for.
Turns out even in psychiatry (which, unlike psychology, is hard science requiring lots of knowledge and preparation) the most important thing in clinical treatment is not the method, not the type of medicine or any of these things, but good contact with the doctor.
How is Cognitive Psychology a pseudoscience?
A lot of people seem to think Psychology = Psychoanalysis
>>387221
Because it started the bullshit non science that has become so popular in academia
When you have trouble reproducing studies (one of the pillars of science) you need to take a hard look at your field
It's a go-to field if you can't do anything else, but other go-to fields like nursing pay higher on average.
Also, studies have a name for not being able to be reproduced, which makes it a non-science.
>>387856
Are you me?
Psychology clings to life because it's accidentally successful at things like amphetamines helping obese people become anorexic, and it's funded as such.
Some day I intend to say the field of psychology from itself.
>>387856
The DSM5 is trying to make it a science instead of a pseudo science. They say non reproduceable results are mostly void, and some forms of autism don't actually exist.
This kind of pissed off some of the therapeutic psychologists but it's mostly accepted.
>>387535
Psychoanalysis.
>>387923
which is not a field of psychology.
Are you just shitposting?
>>387938
>Not a field of psychology
According to clinical psychologists, not according to practicing psychoanyalists.
And no, I'm not someone who believes that all of psychology is pseudoscience.
If I had to guess, it's probably because it deals with something we don't fully understand, the mind. When the focus is something that is hazy, a strict formula can't be used every single time. There are some things we can measure to a degree, like brain chemistry, but for the most part the mind is greater than the sum of its parts. Not only that, but there's free will. Even if you do everything right in attempting to fix someone's problems, they can still choose to fuck it up.
Thing is that even in hard scientific fields, if you start getting too far, it becomes theoretical. And the understanding of things change when new evidence is found, some times rewriting the entire field. Such as when finding out space and time are connected.
tl;dr the mind isn't black/white so people say it's not a science because it isn't 100% reproducible
>>387221
The Replicability Problem does not endear them to the harder sciences.
>>387938
Except people still treat it as part of psychology, and not even just as a historical development that piqued modern interest in the field. I took an intro course to psych a while back, and it touted Freud's bullshit as "one of many valid theories/methodologies."
That being said, I still think that psychology is still a valuable science, but sadly few actual psychologists I've met focus on the actual neural mechanisms that cause human behavior. Rather, they take an approach that borders sociology and try to codify human behavior as some sort of standalone phenomenon.
Math
1+1=2
Psychology
1+1=Who cares, we're all just going to die anyway
1+1=Hey, I can make a profit off this
1+1=This doesn't help me with my goals
1+1=THE VOICES IN MY HEAD SAY IT'S SEVEN IS IT SEVEN PLEASE I DON'T WANT TO UPSET THEM AGAIN
What's the most pseudo-scientifical field of psychology and why is the evoultionary one?
>let's make shit up that completely goes against history: the field
>>388685
this
>>388685
Math:
Why does 1+1=2?
I don't know lol.
Can someone fill me in on how this is /his/ related?
>>387221
This is somewhat unrelated, but am I the only person who is obsessed with examining the psychology of pornstars and the psychological effects of porn?
I don't even want to be a psychologist...
>>389338
weird fetish you have
>>389331
because one is one.
if you have one and then another one there is two.
>>387253
Lmao literally nobody in psychology takes Freud seriously.
>>388685
>I confuse psychology with how stemfaggots view philosophy
shiggy
>>389363
Why is one one, and two two?
>>389336
Social sciences are /his/.
Why was Freud called bullshit again? Was the idea that our actions are driven by sex too icky or something?
>>389505
Because even a lay-person can recognize that he was clearly projecting his cocaine-riddled mommy issues on the world.
>>389331
Because we defined it that way. You can make 1+1=3, if you want. Just take a look at the short proof for it and not the really long ine.
>>389520
>Because we defined it that way.
i.e, it's simply tautological, which means it's essentially the exact same as saying 1+1=50
>>388357
>but there's free will
most psychologists who are serious and honest about their subject matter do their work under the assumption that free will isn't a thing, and that the brain is subject to causation just as any other organ is.
But yeah, you're spot on about the rest of it.
>>389505
>Was the idea that our actions are driven by sex too icky or something?
Even though it's true that humans have instincts and basic drives that determine our behavior patterns, people don't like talking about it because it means we're just another animal.
It takes a serious degree of objectivity to look at people like that, and most of us can't hack it.
>>389749
Nobody denies his ideas were important for the field, but now we know they're almost entirely nonsense.
>>389505
His ideas weren't really open to refutation.
He achieved a cult-like following.
Behaviorism (Thorndike, James, Skinner, etc) was partly a reaction against his following, and so focused on the observable things: behavior. This new line of theories had more predictive power and offered quicker results than did psychoanalysis (that would usually take many years and be very expensive).
Only after psychoanalysis started faltering, did the opposition mellow out. Computational models and the concept of latent variables brought back mentalist concepts, and cognitivism branched out of behaviorism. Meanwhile, you start getting systemics, existentialists (seriously) and others (I can't remember more).
>>389852
>they're almost entirely nonsense
Which ones?
That bit about how sexuality and basic instincts influence human behavior to a huge degree? Or maybe you're criticizing his assertion that there are unconscious thought processes or memories that we aren't consciously aware of.
Are you actually saying that transference isn't a highly documented and accepted phenomenon, or that repression, projection, reaction formation aren't typical of people undergoing cognitive dissonance or anxiety over an undercurrent of unacceptable desires?
>>389937
I don't think you could really describe James as a behaviorist.
Also shout out to my man Tolman for the btfo of radical behaviorism.
Fuck Skinner, he wasted his life training pigeons to do circus tricks.
>>389505
Can't falsify the claims
> You like cock
It's because you like your mother
> You don't like cock
It's because you like your mother
You can't make a claim that if this is true, then psychoanalysis is false.
>>389945
>Which ones?
Mostly his model of development, personality and dream interpretation. Basically all the stuff he is most remembered for.
>Or maybe you're criticizing his assertion that there are unconscious thought processes or memories that we aren't consciously aware of.
Cognitive economy, the notion that memory is a very limited storage device and that cognitive resources in general are, at any given time, finite, explains it better than Freud's self-defense mechanisms.
>Are you actually saying that transference isn't a highly documented and accepted phenomenon, or that repression, projection, reaction formation aren't typical of people undergoing cognitive dissonance or anxiety over an undercurrent of unacceptable desires?
There are issues concerning the accuracy with which such claims are made. For example, you say a guy sleeps with 10 women a night is actually repressing his homosexuality; who's to say he isn't just really into women?
>>389763
Even if free will isn't a thing, I don't think humans could fully understand all causes and effects of the mind. At least not in our lifetime. There is a great unknowable element with psychology.
>>389982
James was very much a behaviorist, even going as far as question if the notion of "mind" had a place in psychology.
>radical behaviorism
Like I said, mostly a reaction against psychoanalysis. When it faltered, behaviorists stopped being so anal and many would become more than behaviorists.
Skinner's operant conditioning is one of the most solid concepts in the field, and even outside it (moving to ethology, biology). You are mad that the Freudian fashion is dead.
>>390032
>Cognitive economy explains it better than Freud's self-defense mechanisms
Maybe in areas relating to mental computation and perception, but not regarding issues of trauma or interior conflict arising from a contradiction between desire and learned social constraint (Id and Super-ego).
I dislike talking about those issues anyways, it's hard to pin them down.
>>390092
>I dislike talking about those issues anyways, it's hard to pin them down.
It's hard to pin down the difference between repressed memories and implemented false memories.
>>389409
http://homepages.math.uic.edu/~kauffman/axioms1.pdf
Math major here. Frankly, we just accept the idea that x = x axiomatically (as an assumption and without proof), because we can derive profound results from it.
>>389350
Not a fetish.
I'm just interested in finding why a woman would do those things on camera just for a paycheck, while being complacent with how that will affect all of her future relationships.
It also seems like those involved in the filming would probably develop some fucked up problems too.
>>390110
All memories are false. They change constantly.
That said, they can absolutely be manufactured.
Is anyone here familiar with Jung?
His writings are just so damn expansive, and nobody ever talked about him in any of my old classes to the extent that it seemed as if they were actively avoiding him, I really have no clue what he's on about.
I think it might be because a good chunk of it is just educated guesses and speculation. It's amazing how little we actually know about ourselves.
>>390256
>That said, they can absolutely be manufactured.
Yes, that is what I meant.
>>390268
Jung is most well-known for being the basis of the well-known myiers-biggers test or w/e it's called.
His psychology drafted heavily from mysticism, with ideas about a mass-subconscious.
19 year olds with their whole day of psych 101 think they understand how the world works and its annoys a lot of people.
>>387221
because its bullshit, and neuroscience rendered it obsolete over a century ago
>>387312
Current fmri research is proving that Freuds model of the mind is actually a lot more accurate than we give him credit.
>>387904
Your shit is retarded. Learn to write a sentence, faggot
>>388685
> the human brain doesn't fit a model that is autism level simple
> autists dislike
> shit all over everyone else trying to understand it
>>389371
Underrated post
Psychology has some problems.
Take for example research on priming. It says that if you wear an Einstein costume you will do better in mathematics than if you wear a NFL uniform. That makes no sense, right? And how does it get published?
People run an experiment. If the NFL guys perform better or if there is no difference, you don't publish it. Otherwise, you publish it.
Repeat this 500 times and eventually you will have a large literature on how wearing Einstein costume makes you smarter.
And this goes for many areas of psychology. Mostly Social Psychology.
Kicking away Freud and Jung was a good idea. Like priming stuff, that shit made no sense and had no empirical support. It was just things those guys took out of their ass and people decided to believe.
>>387249
To give you an answer that is actually seen as a valid field of psychology (so, not the classic example of psychoanalysis): evolutionary psychology.
There's absolutely no way to test any of the hypotheses of evolutionary psychology with any rigor. The field is just people making assertions about why people act the way they do and coming up with reasons for why that's been "selected" for.
>>390625
It does make sense, though. It's common knowledge that thinking you will do poorly on something often leads to indeed doing poorly, and things like priming show how subtle factors affect our expectations.
>>390631
>To give you an answer that is actually seen as a valid field of psychology (so, not the classic example of psychoanalysis): evolutionary psychology.
You got to be shitting me, is it true? Non of the people I've worked with who have major in philosophy have actually help much respect for evolutionary psychology for the reasons you laid out.
>>390641
Then, go ahead and wear an Einstein cosplay when you have a Physics exam.
It's a pseudo-science but at least it's not terrible on the level of economics.
>>390648
Well, think about how evolutionary psychology works. It's not an exaggeration to say that they can't test their hypotheses, they literally can't, since doing so would require time travel (especially based on traditionally accepted psychology methodology). The entire field is built on people working backwards to explain behaviors, making guesses, and then asserting things based on irrelevant proof. It's pseudoscience by definition.
Also, to pick on another field of psychology, cultural psychology is pretty worthless. It basically just anthropology, but made shittier because of misguided methods and too much sociological influence.
>>390698
While the methods have many obvious difficulties, this doesn't mean that evolution doesn't have an effect on psychology, wouldn't it be worse to not investigate the field?
>>390686
Nah, economics can make mathematical models and predictions whereas psychology cannot (and refuses to).
>>390741
There's a difference between saying that evolution has an effect on psychology and asserting facts about how that happened based on flawed methodology. I agree that it's a valuable thing to study, but if psychologists can't figure out a good way to study it, maybe they shouldn't. Or, they could clearly indicate that it's pseudoscience instead of acting like untestable assertions are fact.
>>390753
At least psychology admits that trying to make models and predictions about human behavior is pointless.
>>390753
>Nah, economics can make mathematical models and predictions whereas psychology cannot (and refuses to).
Not even people studying economics claim this. It's a poor man's sociology based on ideal states.
>>390657
Nice rebuttal senpai.
>>390779
Economics is better than sociology.
>>387253
Jesus fuck you have no idea what you are talking about.
A good chunk of psychology is pseudoscientific bullshit, but for the opposite reason you think. They still have that phantom of Freud hanging over them, and desperately try to cling to anything measurable that can make them LOOK like proper scientists, which is where the trouble actually starts.
By placing way too much emphasis on literally anything that can be measurable with nice numbers, they badly misunderstand phenomena left right and centre. Also they are one of the fields that gets most tangled up with the sociology web of stinking bullshit, constantly creating new terminology, getting further and further from reality or any useful theories, as well as the weird fucking political shit in there.
TL;DR: Due to being a science based on human factors, psychologists have always been weirdly between the humanities and the sciences, and this has fucked them up to no small extent.
>>390802
You only went and picked the lowest hanging fruit in all of academia.
>>390802
wew lad, nice rebutal. At least give your reasoning.
No guarantee things will work the same every time.
Sounds like bullshit a lot of the time.
You can find the information easily on the internet.
People can help themselves.
Perceived as an easy out.
>>390869
>No guarantee things will work the same every time.
But that's all biological science, are you going to tell me the methods used in ecology are invalid?
>>390911
Not claiming it invalid but I place much less faith in it
>>387241
>humanities
Field sucks and the metatheories upon which the whole thing are just fucked.
Also Freud was right about a lot of shit but pseudo‐intellectuals and kids who took highschool psyc love to shit on him.
>>390753
Yeah shitty models.
There are so many different factors in play at the market and in any economic activity that it's impossible to account for all of them in an economic model and economists often fail at doing so especially on a macroeconomic level.
The whole academic discipline itself is nothing more than pseudoscience; how do you put numbers on how people makes choices? Especially since humans by nature are extremely irrational and unpredictable. As >>390779 said these models are only accurate under ideal states.
>>387221
I'm doing an undergrad in psychology at the moment and hopefully I'll do a postgrad since, as you implied, there's better work there.
A lot of the stuff is kind of wishy washy (which doesn't invalidate it totally) but a lot of it is also basically scientific, the only people I see trashing psychology are people whose only experience of it has been through a high-school introduction to Freud.
>>388685
>potato gets mad that he has to take meds
>>390134
They're whores who don't give a shit about their future, think they can get all the Alpha cock and money they want through porn, then later hide all of their past from a bet provider while promising him she's 'not like all the other girls', yet rarely ever give him the sex she gave those alphas.
>>390753
>psychology cannot (and refuses to).
But that isn't true. The whole deal with experimental studies is that the psy makes a prediction of how the experimental group will behave differently from the control group because of some isolated factors, then checks to see it it happens like predicted.
This is a oversimplification, of course, but your statement was so wrong I had to reply, albeit speedily.
>>390804
/thread
>>389367
Freud has actually been put under empirical studies in the last 5 or so years and his theories and ideas stand up when tested experimentally
His shit is solid, the only reason people shit on freud is because it's a meme. It's mainstream and popular to shit on the most famous and recognized name in psychology. I guarntee no one who says
>Freud was a joke
Read any of the volumes of work he produced over his lifetime. People never critize freud based on primary sources.
>>388357
This, psychology will never be a solid field because
1. You can only indirectly measure what you're studying you can never directly measure the mind
2. We still haven't solved the hard problem of consciousness
Fact is you can do a brain scan of someone dreaming and say they're in REM and dreaming but you can never see the actual dream, you can never view it, you can't touch or taste it or hold it in your hands. It exists, it's real, it's there. But it's intangible, it's something that exists in the abstract and non-physical. That's why psychology is hard. How can you study something that as it exists doesn't exist as a physical construct using a method designed to test physical constructs.
>>391279
>Also Freud was right about a lot of shit but pseudo‐intellectuals and kids who took highschool psyc love to shit on him.
This, if you study psychology partically personality theory in the later years of psychology you realize freuds basic theory can be stated as
"Every human action is either a direct or indirect satisfaction of a biological instict, need or drive"
>>397876
>Freud has actually been put under empirical studies in the last 5 or so years and his theories and ideas stand up when tested experimentally
Proofs.
But we can agree that Jung is fucking awesome right?
>>387221
>Why does everyone shit on psychology?
Because people can't comprehend that as a humanitarian science psychology can not be held to the same standards as a natural science, which is why they think of it as unscientific.
>>388509
>focus on the actual neural mechanisms that cause human behavior
Well, what would be the purpose of that?
is political science psuedoscience senpai
>>389367
*American psychology
ftfy
Btw, people still take him more seriously than they do Watson and Skinner. And rightfully so!
>>389749
Yeah, this guy gets it. Those ideas were not only revolutionary but are well accepted outside of psychoanalytic theory.
>>390804
This
>>394641
lel, for a second I forgot that this was 4chan.
thanks for reminding me.
>>388685
More like
Math:
1+1=2 also don't eat beans
>>397876
Freud couldn't even apply his own theories to himself. When asked if his cigar chewing habit was oral fixation, he basically replied "lol no it's just a cigar"
>>387221
Because their field is largely unfalsifiable psuedo-science. They are a bunch of witch doctors.
>>397876
>Freud has actually been put under empirical studies in the last 5 or so years and his theories and ideas stand up when tested experimentally
That's bullshit. I follow the literature in Psychology. There was nothing of the kind.
>>387221
It's easily one of the most frustrating to study without introducing confounding errors. A lot of research is on point, but its quality mostly depends on the producer and the standards of research at the time.
It's also a very new science with big shoes to fill, but few great methods of investigation. Depression is a growing issue in the developed world, and our current treatments for it are awful. Same for most psychiatric disease. Other related fields don't have as much responsibility; we don't blame sociologists or linguistics with the failure of health responses.
Anyway, being a psych major has been awesome. I'm pre med abd the most applicable things I've learned about patient care have come from that part of my major. It will improve, and you're right about it being viable after post grad, but in the meantime I don't blame the stigma around it. Our past is damming and our present is too.
>>397898
>>388357
>>390804
These are all pretty good posts that get to the heart of the problem, even if I don't totally agree with them. There IS value is psychology, we've moved beyond Freud, but until we make real ground on the hard problem of consciousness it's going to remain a proto-science awash with fuzzy words, just like alchemy was before it became chemistry. Empiricism in studying the mind isn't a bad thing, but autistic attempts to champion it with ultra-behaviorism lead to absurd self-defeating ideas like the denial of consciousness itself due to our inability to properly measure phenomena from a third person perspective, at least with out current level of development. Likewise, discarding empiricism entirely drifts too far into unsubstantiated bullshit like neo-Jungian typology, Chalmers' panspychism or overt political agendas displayed in humanistic psychology.
We've made individual discoveries and documentation of trends, but there's currently no overarching framework that bridges personal experience and empirical study with sufficient methodological rigor, which is why psychological research has such a problem with reproducing results. Biology has evolution, chemistry has atomic theory, cosmology has big bang theory, even physics is making progress with quantum theory etching in on the foundations of relativity, but psychology is still waiting for its big "revelation" that can make it sufficiently reducible to biology in order to be studied in a scientific way.
You know how psychology isn't to be taken seriously when its rebuttal to any counter-argument is always
>you're an exception
How about explaining why I'm an exception?
Simply pointing out that I'm one isn't a rebuttal, it's just sweeping the counter-argument under a rug pretending it doesn't exist.
>>399938
Doesn't that apply to Medicine, too? Or biology? As in, you can have idiopathic conditions and not fit neatly into taxonomy, respectively?
>>399998
The difference is that they can explain the exception.
For example if I pointed out how smoking didn't kill my father they could easily explain why.
>>400000
>>400006
>The difference is that they can explain the exception.
Do you not understand the meaning of "idiopathic"?
>>397898
The hard problem of consciousness is in reality a hard pill for people to swallow, that qualia and the "philosophical zombie" are nonsense.
>>390753
And the successful economic models are microeconomic gains for playing trading games and the like.
>>390631
Evolutionary psychology has been used to make predictions about numerous things that would´t be discovered without it. Like the fact that humans are more attracted to ovulating females and that your fathers father care less about you than your mothers mother.
Any psych majors here? Haven't done shit in my Psych100 class and I'm gonna probably fail the final this week, any good resources I can skim over to try to pass?
>>387221
It's a science that hipsters can do along with their arts subjects because "science is borang!11"
>>400116
evo psych is fucking garbage and it's literally the gender studies of the tradionalistic right
>every modern evo psych study goes against everything the progressive left claims totally not a coincidence you guys
>>400116
I know for a fact that my grandfather cared more about me than my grandmother.
> But I was talking about during an ideal state without anything interfering
Wow so you're just as fucking useless as sociology but unless them you won't admit it.
>>400322
If you consider that there is that much consensus within evo psy, you haven't been keeping up with literature.
>>400405
Well at least the pop version is that way, I actually don't know much about the actual field.
>>400413
You must've have heard some conflicting views, surely.
Like, the hypothesis concerning the shape of the human penis or the odd lagging behavior of some spermatozoa. These ideas conflict with the notion that human females were tendentiously monogamous.
Of course, even in biology and ethology there is a strong belief nowadays that infidelity is closer to the norm than to being a deviancy within monogamous couplings.
But I digress. I just really like comparing humans to the rest of the animal kingdom.
>>400489
No I haven't, my experience with evo psych is retards on the internet sperging over muh bio-truths and muh hypergamy.
Is the actual field any better?
>>400501
There is a lot of wild speculation. Not as much anymore. The best constructive critique to the field was by an author I cannot recall. I never could find the article again. I believe his name related to "gold" somehow and there was a great architecture analogy. If I ever find it again, I'll post it in /his/ or /sci/.
This article touches the subject:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/09/17/it-aint-necessarily-so
It works as an introduction to the field and has some criticisms. An adequate starting point.
>>400584
Ok, you do realize the pop version of your field is literally what feeds incel communities like /r9k/ or MGTOW?
Why do you think that is? Where did everything go so wrong? This shit ruins lives.
>>387221
It has completely failed in its purpose and now serves as a pill dispensary more than a means of curing mental health issues. Add on to that the fact that they've almost completely retreated from long term care for the insane and now they leave the completely unqualified families to care for people with severe problems while committing to only occasional therapy sessions and repeated emergency care for people when things get too bad.
Basically they torture the families of the insane because they are too afraid to take responsibility or admit that many insane people are lost.
>>400611
Evolutionary psychologists aren't Social Darwinists or anything like this. Don't conflate these.
Both the people that use evo psy to push their agenda or argue against it because it hurts their agenda, both incur the naturalistic fallacy in their critiques. Say, I explain how rape can increase a male's "fitness" within a selfish gene framework: this doesn't mean that rape is moral, simply that rape (and a lot of other behaviors that may be deemed immoral) can sometimes be adaptative.
The goal isn't to explain how things ought to work, but how they work.
"If there being a psychopath was so detrimental to the individual itself or to the whole of the group, wouldn't genetic predispositions for this condition have been weeded out of the gene pool?" - No one is arguing that it is good that there are psychopaths, only that these "immoral tendencies" are no less natural than whatever you may deem "good".
It's the is-ought issue all over again.
And I'm not really in the field. Just interested and may pursue it in the distant future.
>>400677
>The goal isn't to explain how things ought to work, but how they work.
Well too bad most autists did not get this and now because of your theories they think their views are right
>>400684
They already thought their views were right. Confirmation bias and all that. If they didn't hold on to these theories they would hold on to the something completely different with the exact same intent.
>>398169
Jung was a violent schizo who sexually molested his patients
