Is psychology a meme field?
Yes.
Just like STEM, and any Physics that isn't Thermonuclear or Astro.
>>8168617
Psychology isn't really a meme, but it is largely bullshit. It's definitely not a science because psychology has some very serious problems with reproducibility, which is a core principle of the scientific method.
Maybe it is a meme too. I know quantum mechanics and game theory are both straight up memes.
>>8168637
M8, the scientific method itself is fucked up. There is no clear formulation of what it is. The one taught at schools, the inductive one, is flawed.
>>8168637
>psychology is bullshit
elaborate?
>>8168617
depends on what you mean by psych
casinos use psych experiments to design better 1-arm bandits, for example, random payoffs result in higher amount of desired behavior than scheduled payoffs (good old rat studies are sometimes the best).
gambling, marketing and sales, politics, all these things use psychology to their advantage against you. you are wise to learn at least a smidgen to protect yourself.
>>8168617
The whole " social science " thing is a meme. What did you expect?
Yes, just like the standard model.
>>8168617
Maybe.
The title "Psychologist" is a protected title that requires a license to use (they are authorized health care professionals on the same line as nurses and doctors, although their work is very different) so it's not as useless as sociology or anthropology.
psychology is pseudoscience
>>8170820
someone explain
Why do people always focus on the clinical side of psych? I can understand the issues with experimental psych having replication issues, but theirs still even more to it than that.
>>8171413
Psychology relies too much on subjective and unique experiences so a lot of it is based on "case studies" and not hard facts that can easily be replicated.
>>8168617
I would say 8 parts are meme, 2 parts are useful. On one hand you have tangible and quite scientific branches like social psychology, psychometrics etc. while the main bulk that consists of things like psychoanalysis, developmental psychology etc. is crap. And I mean utter crap. The entire discipline is a mess of unbelievable proportions once you are forced to study for exams and go past the surface stuff. It is there where "science" becomes a VERY loose term and as anons have pointed out, reproducibility and statistical rigorosity become a joke. In a nutshell, you have the useful parts of psychology branching off into their own disciplines and merging with economics or statistics, while the main parts sinks into oblivion evermore. In nations like Germany here, where you need a certain HS GPA to even enter this field (a very high one mind you, a 3.7 GPA equivalent or even higher), another problem arises: the field stagnates at an extreme pace. people that can memorize facts and nothing else go into this degree, fag everything up, and a vicious cycle ensures. ah i could go on but trust me, psychology is crap.
>>8172247
Shame. I want to become a psychologist because they make alright money and I'm good at listening to people and empathize. In this country (Norway) the GPA needed is pretty high as well straight out of HS to get in.
>>8168637
With the exception of psychometrics and IQ what you say about notconforming to the scientific method is just not there.
>>8168665
There was a study recently where a group tried to reproduce a sample of 100 studies and they couldn't reproduce like half of them.
>>8172298
And here's a source http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-fail-reproducibility-test-1.18248
>>8172290
Apparently there's a growing market for psychologists here, but I'll be honest I haven't met many. I'm currently a nurse and I have worked with psychologists before but they work at psychiatric centers and the psych ward at the hospital mostly. Seems like decent work to me if I were to change my career path.
>>8172271
>I'm good at listening to people and empathize.
Well you have to know that psychiatry isn't equal with psychology. You have to get licenses and various other crap after your degree to do this. But well, if this IS your passion, give it a go. I did it too, but was disappointed.
>>8172290
>Social psychology is stupid crasp as well, asshat.
No asshole, it actually is the single most useful branch of psychology, giving tangible results and use them in life. Not that it matters much, but still.
>>8172327
It more matters on if he wants to go the medical route and give prescriptions or not with the psychiatrist route, if not might as well just be a counselor.
>>8172327
You need a silence for both, tough. Psychiatry is a medical specialty that MDs take while Psychologist is a title reserved for people that studied the field for six years at college, which is exactly the same length as medicine. At least in this country. You need to apply to the national directory of health to get a license to practice both professions.
I need to put in a lot of money to get the prerequisites I need for psychology but medicine would take virtually the same effort to get into so I'm tempted to just take that instead since I want to become a doctor more then I want to become a psychologist.
The problem with doing any kind of meaningful psychological research is that one has to quantify subjective elements in order to measure them. This is often the case when studying behavior.
For example, how can one quantify jealousy or anger. A logical approach would be to count the instances of these emotions for each individual in the experiment. The instances are determined via visual queues that demonstrate that the subject is facilitating an emotional response.
The problem is that things get complicated rather quickly and it becomes too reliant on interpretation.
Another problem is reproducibility. A reason for this might be the problem listed above but it can also be a variety of other reasons such as not controlling all the variables well enough.
Finally there's the issue with making a claim from the evidence you have. It becomes difficult, due to the interpretation of the evidence in psychology, to actually make a legitimate claim about whether or not your evidence asserts what you think it asserts.
The nature of psychological experiments requires reducing fairly complicated behaviors to simple and measurable cues.
But to reduce requires removing. The question then becomes if the reduced concept accurately portrays the original concept to begin with.
>>8172348
I just want to add that despite all these obstacles there have been sound psychological theories that have passed tests of reproducibility such as cognitive dissonance.
Also psychology is a rather large field. While things like personality psychology or evolutionary psychology are bullshit (you can always interpret and twist things to show that there is an evolutionary advantage for them) there are fields such as cognitive psychology that are much more sound.
>>8172337
Okay sorry, I didn't know that these professions differ in different languages. But what can I say, you certainly know more about the actual work than me. I've only seen the academic side of psychology. Good luck with your decision.
Well meme is a subfield of psychology. So if psychology were a subscience of meme science, then memes = psychology.
So that would imply that we are all faggots.
So no contradiction so far.
Heres the problem with psychology.
Its barely understood.
Research programs can find patterns in all sorts of behaviors from imperical data, but asserting a unique reason for these patterns emerging has been incredibly difficult from the beginning.
Unfortunately, without a much deeper understanding of neuroscience, psychology is a meme.
>>8173047
Meant neurology, not neuroscience.
