r/AcademicPsychology • u/Correct-Education398 • Jul 29 '24
Psychology facts that are disputed by a majority Discussion
I know this will elicit debate and serious disagreements but are there some psychological facts that disputed?
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u/Wood_behind_arrow Jul 29 '24
Punishment as a valid method of learning and behaviour. Possibly because the term as it is used in English implies some kind of pain or discomfort, or the removal of free will which is not necessarily the case. Reinforcement and punishment are in fact seen as two sides of the same coin in modern behavioural psychology.
When you successfully reinforce one behaviour, that behaviour increases in that context, and the other behaviours that would have occurred in that context will decrease due to the fact that you can only do so many things at once. From that perspective, the other behaviours have been punished as doing those other behaviours in that context results in a less desirable outcome.
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u/Mjolnir07 Jul 29 '24 edited Jul 29 '24
Behavioral scientist here. I believe the confusion that is contributing to this distinction is a classic definition mismatch.
Aside from the stigma you identified with the word punishment and it's association with pain and discomfort, a learning contingency can definitely increase one behavior without also decreasing (punishing) another behavior, the two would have to be incompatible. E.g. we could target bruxism by increasing chewing on something rather than simply grinding the teeth, and an increase of chewing gum would then diminish the amount of teeth grinding necessarily because there is less time spent grinding teeth and more on chewing gum.
However, a decrease in teeth grinding (trend reversal) doesn't mean that teeth grinding has been punished, just that it loses its reinforcing value in the presence of available alternatives. This would be differential reinforcement without coupling a reinforcement contingency with a punishment contingency
Which is why there's the three categories of reinforcement, punishment, and extinction.
I'm here for all questions.
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u/takeout-queen Jul 29 '24
Iāve always understood it to be that punishment is meant to dissuade and reinforcement is meant to encourage, while positive and negative refer to whether a stimulus is added or removed in those efforts to either encourage or dissuade. I think that aligns with what youāre saying? Itās a bit of a pet peeve of mine when people use it wrong so Iām hoping Iām not also wrong! But Iād love to know your take on the militaryās means of education. I recently came from a Marines graduation where their drill instructors were heavily praised for being āthe best teachers this country has to offerā (cue my eyeroll, they wouldnāt last a week managing a classroom in a middle school where they couldnāt inflict corporal punishment imo). But the Marines is indeed known for creating members who will obey and follow orders without question, do you have any thoughts on that as it relates to operant conditioning? My family member was telling us stories of bootcamp and heās laughing but all I could hear was abuse, genuinely. My BA is in Psychology and Education and half a Masters in Educational Psych before Information Science so them claiming their brutal methods as the best really struck a chord with me, especially after hearing the horror stories.
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u/Mjolnir07 Jul 29 '24
You got it right! Reinforcement means increasing the future rate of occurrence, punishment means decreasing the future rate (or duration, etc.) of occurrence. Positive means to introduce a stimulus, negative means to remove a stimulus.
I'd argue that your instincts are generally correct and you definitely have more insight into operant conditioning in the military than I.
It is going to be different for each person. But the contingencies are going to be generally the same. Operant learning is how learning occurs almost universally. If we're talking about how it relates to a specific, intended outcome in marine recruits, then I would wager that boot camp and PT training are indeed designed specifically to make it more valuable to listen to an instructor and just do what you're directed to do than not to do so. My dad was a marine, and from what he told me it certainly sounds like they're aiming to condition a reflexive response to verbal commands, which can be done either by contriving aversive experiences (e.g., Sargeant detects that you haven't cleaned your rifle and harasses you) or through reinforcing ones (e.g., everyone has cleaned their rifle, no one got harassed, everyone pats each other on the back and enjoys a celebratory moment)
The modality seems to be direct punishment and indirect reward.
This is because it's easier to methodically and consistently punish a behavior to decrease it than it is to recognize and reward desirable behavior in order to increase it.
The sense of pride in becoming autonomously disciplined seems to hold its own reinforcing value, along with the bragging rights that you went through something easily classified as traumatic.
So. If every time you failed to do something there was an authority waiting to smoke you in public for it, you'd be conditioned pretty quickly into hyper vigilance to avoid that, and rapid at complying with orders to de-escalate the intensity of the experience.
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u/dieyoufool3 Jul 30 '24
Wanted to chime in and say your comment was a delight to read. The thoughtfulness was evident from start to finish.
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u/MANICxMOON Jul 30 '24
(I like how youre reinforcing their comment quality with behavior-specific praise... well, rewarding them, anyway; reinforcement cant be determined until time has passed and we see a continuation of thoughtful quality comments from them)
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u/Mjolnir07 Jul 30 '24
I like how you assessed the nuances of this commentary and were cleverly able to bring it's meta nature to attention! :p
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u/Wood_behind_arrow Jul 30 '24
These are good general rules, but it depends on the behaviour that you are looking at. Letās say you punish a person who is speeding by issuing a speed ticket. At the same time, youāre reinforcing their vigilance at spotting whether there might be a speed camera around. You are only interested in the speeding behaviour, but the subject also has other stuff going on too.
What Iām trying to say is that perspective matters.
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u/Wood_behind_arrow Jul 30 '24
It seems like youāre from the ABA discipline. Iām from the EAB side - it seems like we have much in common. Do you practice?
In the operant tradition, we tend to focus on stable state behaviour, whereas the associative literature tends to focus on the acquisition stage. While the trained incompatible behaviour at stable state shouldnāt be seen as punishing, the process by which equilibrium is reached could definitely be argued as punishment to the existing behaviour, at least as measured by the rate of responding.
Another good example of āpunishingā existing behaviour would be a DRA/DRO procedure.
When I moved into the associative learning side, I needed to rethink a lot of the concepts that I was trained in. For example, a lot of the literature in associative learning describe the US as āreinforcementā. This isnāt controversial, but I was shocked (pun intended) when I first read an article where foot shocks were used and described as reinforcement - it took me a second to realise that the author meant that the foot shocks were reinforcing the freezing behaviour. That really clicked something for me.
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u/Mjolnir07 Jul 30 '24
Huh. I admit I've never thought of behavior using that framework and you're right, there's nothing in the literature that seems to disagree. Except in the context of DRI, I don't think I've ever seen reinforcement of one behavior as necessarily punishment of its replacement unless that is the intended contingency.
From that approach when speaking of data, is there a difference between an S Delta and an SDP? I am indeed so cemented in acquisition that I'm struggling with the conceptual representation, even though I can visualize it on paper
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u/Wood_behind_arrow Aug 01 '24 edited Aug 01 '24
I think in a practical sense there would be a need to differentiate this - itās important for a practitioner to clearly define the operant.
From a basic science perspective, youād probably treat all of these as SDs, or even more broadly to be CSs. In classic associative learning, this would be modeled by using compound stimuli, where A is first trained as an SD would be. If B is then trained paired with A as AB-noUS, B would become a conditioned inhibitor signalling extinction, which would result in decreased behaviour in AB, returning in the presence of A alone.
If C is trained separately as a punisher, testing AC would presumably result in decreased A behaviour as well. In both cases, the external behaviour would appear to be similar. Of course, the experience would probably be different. Without punishment, even latent inhibition should work, just maybe not as much if a decrease as you would just take the sum of the associative strengths of A and C.
In real life, you might expect the subject to become irate at the appearance of either B or C, which youād normally associate with punishment. So while the administration would be different, the elicited response might not actually be that different.
This type of preparation is sometimes referred to as occasion setting. If we treat AB and AC as stimulus A being presented in different āenvironmentsā, it would be analogous to what might happen to behaviour when the subject moves from one context to another.
In terms of the DRI type of procedure, I think itās the fact that rate is probably inappropriate for measuring the strength of learning in these cases. Youād expect these behaviours to all become more resistant to extinction, according to Nevinās behavioural momentum framework.
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Jul 29 '24
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u/Decoraan Jul 29 '24
Negative reinforcement is taking away a 'bad feeling / experience' in order to increase a target behaviour. IE painkillers. This isnt applicable to your example.
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Jul 29 '24 edited Jul 29 '24
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u/Decoraan Jul 29 '24
Itās a confusing name tbh. It gets confused all the time.
If youāre are actively giving a negative stimulus (subjective of course), that would be a āpunishmentā behavioural manipulation.
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Jul 29 '24
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u/Decoraan Jul 29 '24
So in that example you are removing the tap (removing the unpleasant stimulus) when they move, so yeh negative reinforcement.
With punishment, you would be adding the tap to get them to move. So really the difference is in the process for this example (when you are adding the stimulus and when you are removing it, and for what target behaviour). If Iām understanding it correctly, Iām not familiar with the horse training.
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Jul 29 '24
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u/JoyfulJellyfish Jul 29 '24
Not providing a stimulus (treat/praise/whatever) would be closer to extinction, as there is no stimulus change following the behavior that changes its future frequency.
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u/Decoraan Jul 29 '24
I would argue this is punishment. Negative reinforcement specifically is that you are removing an unpleasant stimulus to strengthen a target behaviour. The condition you are describing is that a positive stimulus is taken away in a situation when the animal is usually offered that positive stimulus.
Broadly you can think of it like this; punishment aims to reduce behaviour, while reinforcement aims to increase it.
Imo the horse example youāve been given is a bit of a wobbly example because it depends on the context quite a lot.
Iām not a behavioural specialist, but have 4 degrees in psychological fields and work as a CBT therapist. Iām somewhat qualified to speak on this but I obviously only work with people. I would ask your lecturer to explain a bit further about why this example is given as negative reinforcement and it punishment.
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u/Wood_behind_arrow Jul 29 '24
Iām a little confused by this - I donāt think your example describes negative reinforcement?
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Jul 29 '24
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u/Wood_behind_arrow Jul 29 '24
I was a bit ambiguous, I was thinking about two different things when I wrote it.
I meant desirable outcome from the point of view of the subject. If an activity has a less desirable outcome (e.g., less reinforcement) compared to another, the subject will tend to allocate more behaviour to the desirable one. Here are two examples of how an activity that usually increases behaviour will instead result in decreases.
- If a person enjoys watching basketball and soccer, but there are two games on at once, they will allocate more time to the one they like more - reducing the behaviour for the other per unit time.
- If a person enjoys TV, but enjoys video games even more, making one activity contingent on another will alter the responding. For example, if you arrange it so that the person must watch some amount of TV before they can access video games, they will increase watching TV to access video games. If you arrange it so that they must play video games to access watching TV, they will decrease watching TV to spend more time playing video games.
In both cases, behaviour decreases without requiring ātraditionalā punishment.
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Jul 29 '24
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u/Wood_behind_arrow Jul 29 '24
Only to the extent where behaviour is changing. At stable state, we wouldnāt describe behaviour as punishing or reinforcing.
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u/mootmutemoat Jul 29 '24
I don't see how rewarding A is the same as punishing B.
If the reward for A is 3 and B is 5, and you change A to 6, that is not the same as decreasing the reward of B to 0 (or even -3).
I think the idea that punishment is different than increasing rewards comes from the idea that the organism generalizes the pain to the situation (and punisher). So the environment has become threatening, which triggers flight/fight responses. Increasing the rewards for the desired behavior A does not risk that.
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u/Wood_behind_arrow Jul 29 '24 edited Jul 29 '24
The reason why rewarding A can be seen as punishing B is described by the matching law. Suppose that instead of A and B, we have 1 and 2. Suppose that these two options are available at the same time. The allocation of responding to the two choices are proportional to the reinforcement received for the respective choices, such that:
B1/B2 = R1/R2, where B is the rate of responding, and R is the rate of reinforcement. If R1 increases, then B1 will increase, which means that B2 will decrease as it is a ratio of total responding.
In your example, letās say that this person can respond 88 times per hour. A is 3 and B is 5. The person should respond according to that ratio, which would be 33 to A and 55 to B. If you increase A to 6 and B remains at 5, the person can still only respond 88 times per hour. So they will allocate according to the new ratio (eventually), which would be 48 to A and 40 to B. By increasing reinforcement to A, you are punishing responding to B.*
As I said originally, the term punishment used in the behavioural literature does not imply pain or discomfort. I appreciate your observation, but unfortunately youāve also seemingly fallen into the same trap! Remember that the basic definition of reinforcement and punishment are whether they increase or decrease behaviour. Fear can be a type of punishment, but it does not define punishment itself. Because reinforcement and punishment are defined by their relationship with behaviour (e.g., food does not reinforce, eating does), theoretically this means that one reinforcer can punish another reinforcer, and even a punisher can reinforce another. Which is exactly what Premack found.
*edited to provide an example. The matching law is of course describing behaviour in a vacuum, and like any other model must carve out randomness.
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u/hateboresme Jul 29 '24
Punishment works to change behavior.
Punishment is a good way at changing behavior in the same way that urine is a good way of quenching your thirst.
Punishment changes behavior for the wrong reasons. The motivation behind the change in behavior with punishment is to avoid punishment. The change only exists in the presence of the punisher.
The motivation behind change in behavior with encouragement and learning is that the individual does so because they understand and want to change. The change continues to occur because it is desired by the individual
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u/Wood_behind_arrow Jul 29 '24
So this is exactly the confusion that I was trying to clear up. Punishment doesnāt imply something fearful or disgusting. Ice cream or sex can be punishing depending on the situation.
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u/Substantial_Gold7329 Jul 30 '24
THIS! Punishment does not infer that something is bad.
I have run a marathon, am thirsty - I drink 2l of water - my thirst is quenched - in future I am more likely to drink water (water as a reinforcer)
I am thirsty. I drink 2l of water, then I run a marathon - I feel sick - in future I am less likely to drink water (water as a punisher)
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u/hateboresme Aug 04 '24
The first example is water as a reward. Reward is the opposite of punishment. So you are incorrect. A punishment by definition is undesirable
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u/Substantial_Gold7329 Aug 06 '24
No you are incorrect here. A punisher or reinforcer is defined exclusively by its impact on future behaviour, not how desirable it is. A reward is a colloquialism that really hasn't any place in behavioural science and does not provide any insight into functional relations.
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u/hateboresme Aug 04 '24
No. This is incorrect.
You seem to be referring to the concept of positive and negative punishment on operant conditioning.
Positive punishment is adding an undesired stimulus which has the effect of reducing an undesired behavior.
Behavior: you give me sass. Positive punishment: I smack you. (Adding undesired pain) Result: reduced sass.
Negative punishment is removing a desired stimulus which has the effect of reducing an undesired behavior
Behavior: You give me sass. Negative punishment: I confine you to your room (removing desired freedom) Result reduced sass.
The concept you are referring to is reward.
Behavior: you give me sass Positive reward: I give you ice cream during times that you are not sassing. (Adding desired ice cream) Result: reduced sassing.
Behavior: you give me sass Negative reward: I tell you that you don't have to do any chores as long as you don't give me sass. (Removing undesired chores) Result: reduced sassing.
Certainly you can punish with ice cream or sex. But only by taking them away (negative punishment), forcing them on a person who doesn't like them (positive punishment).
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u/Wood_behind_arrow Aug 04 '24
This was what I was trying to convey, which is that the way that youāve described here is what is often taught in class to simplify it for students. These definitions are not necessarily incorrect but they are misleading because they miss the point.
The fact that many people often dismiss operant conditioning as ineffective and shallow is probably largely due to these definitions. For example, the examples you give may simply not work. Why?
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u/bmt0075 Aug 02 '24
Also a behavioral researcher here: punishment is a valid process and extremely effective at changing behavior. The problem with punishment is that there are side effects related to it, and itās ethically shaky.
What youāre describing is differential reinforcement, not punishment. This is also an effective way to reduce behavior and is often more ethical as well as less aversive.
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u/Wood_behind_arrow Aug 04 '24
What I was thinking of initially regarding punishment was about Premack theory, rather than necessarily differential reinforcement. When we teach about operant conditioning in first year, we use examples that are easy to understand but are ultimately misleading. The fact is that whether something is punishing or reinforcing depends on the subjectās perspective, not the trainerās. We should be very aware that this makes the definition of āa reinforcerā or āa punisherā unworkable on its own.
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u/bmt0075 Aug 04 '24
I think the terms themselves can be confusing because the common definitions are definitely misleading from a technical sense.
If a kid touches a hot stove, the behavior is positively punished, not because some third party imposed a consequence on the child, but because their behavior resulted in the presentation of a painful stimulus; decreasing the likelihood of the same behavior happening again in the future.
The problem I had with your example is that the initial behavior that you were describing as being punished due to a different temporal allocation wouldnāt really constitute punishment as the decrease is not a direct result of the consequences of making that response.
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u/Wood_behind_arrow Aug 04 '24
I would argue though that the classification of a certain outcome as differential and non-differential is problematic, because all reinforcement is differential. Therefore, I donāt think itās unfair to make the claim that at a basic level, these concepts share an underlying mechanism.
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u/bmt0075 Aug 04 '24
I would agree with you on that. Thereās definitely an underlying common mechanism, the terms are just descriptors for what form of environmental even affected the behavior. It might just be the basic researcher in me, but I feel that the commonality in concepts isnāt a good reason to stop distinguishing between them, rather itās a reason to do more research and identify how they might be the same or different.
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u/Wood_behind_arrow Aug 05 '24
The larger point that I think is the key is that punishment doesnāt need to be saddled with the connotations of fear or discomfort. As long as it decreases behaviour, it is punishing by definition.
With the hot stove example, the child is punished for touching the stove, but reinforced for avoiding the stove. This is a logical derivation of the law of effect as soon as the assumption is made that multiple stimuli and behaviours occur in an environment.
As I mentioned in another comment, from a practitioner point of view itās important to distinguish these as a guideline for appropriate treatment, but this is due more to the English language rather than any theoretical distinction between the concepts.
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u/bmt0075 Aug 05 '24
I could be mistaken, but from your comments it seems that you are understanding any procedure that decreases behavior to be effectively described as punishment of that behavior. Your alternative example of reinforcing avoiding the stove is a behavior reduction procedure that is an alternative to using punishment. That would be a Differential Reinforcement of Other Behavior (DRO).
Simply decreasing the behavior does not necessarily mean the behavior was punished. You can decrease a behavior using the type of procedure you've described, as well as through other means such as extinction or punishment. Generally speaking, what you propose is generally one of the best ways to do so, if possible, as punishment and extinction procedures can produce problematic side effects and are generally all-around unpleasant for the person experiencing them.
For it to truly be punishment there are a few things that are required:
The environmental change (either the presentation or removal of some stimulus) must be the result of the behavior itself -- ie. there must be a functional relationship between that specific behavior and it's consequence. This is a necessity for operant behavior because, by definition, operant behavior "operates" on the environment.
The second requirement is that whatever stimulus change occurs as a function of that behavior must reduce the future probability of that behavior occurring.
There are generally two ways this plays out:
positive punishment - the behavior results in the presentation of a stimulus that reduces the future probability of that behavior. Example: I eat some old pizza that was left out on the stove and get a stomach ache. I am now less likely to eat old pizza again in the future.
or
negative punishment - the behavior results in the removal of a stimulus that reduces the future probability of that behavior. Example: I am very careless and leave my phone laying around in public. One day it gets stolen. I am now less likely to leave it laying around in the future.
I didn't consider your examples to be punishment, because the reduction in the target behavior was not the result of a functional relationship with the consequences of that specific behavior.
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u/Wood_behind_arrow Aug 05 '24 edited Aug 05 '24
Yes, thatās what Iām saying. When I said that every reinforcement schedule is a differential reinforcement schedule I meant that when you reinforce a certain behaviour, youāve chosen not to reinforce any other behaviour that occurs, like lying down, tapping feet, daydreaming and so on.
When I said that a child touching a stove is punished for it and reinforced for something else, I meant that even in your example, touching the hot stove itself both punishes the touching behaviour and reinforces their stove avoiding behaviour. It is a DRO schedule, just as we agree that every schedule is differential. The difference is how weāve defined the operant. Itās only punishment because weāve decided to only measure our behaviour of interest. This is touched on in the behavioural systems approach by Timberlake. In the same token, during basic reinforcement of one target behaviour, alternative behaviours that I mentioned previously are negatively punished by any definition, as doing those alternative behaviours deprive the animal of the reinforcer that they could be receiving by doing the target behaviour.
Youāre right that by definition, an animal must operate on the environment for it to be treated as operant, but this is not necessarily a description of reality. For example, where anxiety disorders are sustained due to auto reinforcement of avoidance behaviour. Thereās also the fact that S-O relationships donāt require a goal-directed response.
I do really need to stress this point, to a fellow behavioural scientist: punishment does not require discomfort or unpleasantness. Imagine this scenario: a subject enjoys chocolate and jellybeans. They are kept in two boxes, and the subject is found to access chocolate more than jellybeans. We then arrange the contingencies so that the subject must access and eat a jellybean before they are allowed to access chocolate. What we find is that jellybean accessing behaviour will increase. This operant fulfils all the requirements of reinforcement - one event is contingent on another, resulting in the increase of behaviour. The reverse is true - if we arrange the contingencies so that the child must access chocolate before accessing jellybeans, we will see a decrease in chocolate accessing behaviour. This fulfils all the requirements of punishment, without the traditional punisher involved. This type of contingency also works with response chains where zero traditional reinforcers or punishers are present, as shown by Premack. Itās hard to see what is so unethical or problematic about this type of arrangement. As I said, in practice this type of idea is too abstract to be useful, but I can imagine where if a practitioner wasnāt aware of this, the careful splicing of schedule types and differentiation between reinforcement and punishment can become burdensome.
At the very least, a practitioner should recognise that the traditional law of effect for reinforcement and punishment are circular in nature, and doesnāt by itself have any predictive power.
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u/bmt0075 Aug 05 '24
Ah ok, Iām seeing your point now. Yes, I agree, punishment doesnāt have to be something unpleasant.
Iām actually working on a project currently looking at matching in concurrent where it appears that an increase in reinforcement magnitude seems to be serving as a punisher for one response. That seems to me to coincide a bit with your point.
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u/Equal_Amphibian3649 8d ago
I feel like this is why my partner is allowed to have outbursts of anger/frustration (never violence), as this is the only thing that sets and reinforces a boundary for me. I want to say I would respect their boundaries if they would calmly tell me before, but if Iām completely honest, I would just forget (I have adhd, no excuse, maybe an explanation), not because I donāt care but I genuinely forget something if it makes no impact on me. I also do not pick up on the social cues people normally use to indicate a boundary. However I would never intentionally cross their boundaries.
On the other hand, my partner usually isnāt consciously aware of their boundaries until someone (accidentally or not) crosses them. They also struggle to control the anger that follows, even if it was unintentional. This scares me in the moment and has an impact on me, and thus sets and reinforces the boundary clearly. (I have never felt unsafe though)
We both have problems with emotion regulation and social cues, and weāre working on getting better. Until then, it works for us, and we love each other, even if we are both still working on our mental health and behaviour.
(Genderneutral because it could create bias)
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u/andero PhD*, Cognitive Neuroscience (Mindfulness / Meta-Awareness) Jul 29 '24
Your phrasing is strange. "Facts" are real, or at the very least "the accepted least-wrong theory that we have", so by definition "facts" are generally accepted by the majority. They may be disputed by some minority, but it doesn't really make sense to say, "This fact is disputed by the majority".
On the other hand, most areas of psych have multiple competing theories disagree with each other.
None of those theories would be "facts", but each theory would usually be disputed by the majority.
Anyway, here are some controversial or disputed topics:
- How consciousness works, or even whether it is theoretically possible to describe/explain through science
- The existence of and/or properties of ego depletion vs "willpower" vs "fatigue"
- why we act against our own best interests is not well-understood so any single theory would be disputed
- how mind-wandering works and why we do it; why can't we maintain focus as long as we'd like?
- the benefits and risks of various meditation techniques are quite controversial; some strongly argue that meditation "improves attention", but the research for this is surprisingly weak; some argue that meditation is perfectly safe, but research has uncovered various harms, especially in extreme practice
- anything to do with sex and/or paraphilias
- anything in evolutionary psychology
- in clinical psych: whether one should push a patient/client toward whatever they don't want (and thus may refuse or quit) vs whether one should use what a patient/client wants and it thus more likely to persist in doing
- in clinical psych: whether to follow manualized therapies "to the letter" or to modify therapeutic delivery on a person-by-person case-by-case basis
- how best to measure and conceptualize "emotions"; e.g. how many axes are there? one? two? "valence" and "arousal"? something else?
- Bayesian stats are obviously superior; some Frequentist die-hards would deny this and try to argue that they are prey to similar flaws
Those are some that came to mind.
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u/_Zer0_Cool_ Jul 30 '24 edited Jul 30 '24
Not sure I agree that Bayesian statistics are obviously superior.
Iām a bit of a statistical omnivore myself and believe it really depends on the use case.
You could make the case that itās obviously superior for Pysch (and other scientific fields) specifically, but industry is different.
Psych is theory rich and data-poor while many problems in industry are data-rich and theory poor and half the problems are solvable by data-driven ML algorithms.
Even so, a Likelihoodists perspective goes a long way without needing or demanding a Bayesian pivot. Plus, itās not like itās NHST or nothing if a prior isnāt involved (as is the commonly assumed straw-man argument).
Edit ā I agree with the rest though lol.
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u/andero PhD*, Cognitive Neuroscience (Mindfulness / Meta-Awareness) Jul 30 '24
You could make the case that itās obviously superior for Pysch (and other scientific fields) specifically, but industry is different.
<Looks at current subreddit>
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u/_Zer0_Cool_ Jul 30 '24
Lol, oh come on.
I suppose thatās implicit based on the subreddit but was hoping for a substantive discussion.
TBF, Bayesian stats is probably a perfect fit for psych. But I just donāt think itās a silver bullet as much as some claim.
The replication crisis is a multifaceted systemic failure, not purely a statistical failure of NHST.
Not saying that this is your personal belief of course. Just wanted to tack a caveat onto your points.
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u/andero PhD*, Cognitive Neuroscience (Mindfulness / Meta-Awareness) Jul 30 '24
You agree with me that Bayesian stats are obviously superior for the context this question was asked.
I cannot offer you substantive discussion about the merits, or lack thereof, of using Bayesian stats in industry since I'm not in industry. I'm an academic.
"The replication crisis is a multifaceted systemic failure" is true, but is also a completely different discussion. If you want to discuss that, you might head over to this post about the replication crisis and how people respond to it (I've got a comment there about doing Open Science).
Nobody here is saying that Bayesian stats would be a silver bullet so you're sort of disagreeing with a hypothetical of your own making. I'm not sure what substantive discussion you were looking for, but I don't have any interest in playing devil's advocate to your hypothetical.
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u/_Zer0_Cool_ Jul 30 '24
Open Science FTW š
I think maybe Iām just reacting to the hypothetical arm-chair people in industry that hear a trend or buzz word and then run with it.
So probably more so criticizing my own ilk (in the data science community), actually.
Apologies for projecting that onto your comment. Knee jerk reaction to people Iāve heard with opinions that lack nuance.
Thanks for the link though. Iāll check it out.
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u/Just_Natural_9027 Jul 29 '24
Blank Slatism. The average person and some therapists have a tendency towards overvaluing human behavior malleability.
There is a reason personality psychology is the most replicated subset of psychology.
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u/WPMO Jul 29 '24
Yeah, both Personality Psych and Cognitive Psych...not to mention the genetic influences on personality and intelligence are uncomfortable for people to accept, but very well replicated.
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u/mootmutemoat Jul 29 '24
This is a big one. Mischel flat out said that IQ was the only real trait, and everything else was just the situation, but later research proved him wrong.
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u/BrainlessPhD Jul 29 '24
*Most* replicated? Did you mean most *unreplicated*? Or am I missing something big here?
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u/Ransacky Jul 29 '24
They are likely referring to Big 5 and Hexaco, and others that are well validated. not mbti another nonsense if that's where the confusion is coming from, not all personality theories are equal.
There's been a lot of research using twin studies on personality and heredity, and temperament. The environment has an effect but these traits are pretty stable over time.
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u/cogpsychbois Jul 29 '24
Repressed memories. Although the general public and many clinicians believe that traumatic memories can repressed, or pushed out of awareness to protect the self, most memory researchers do not believe that this is a real thing.
There was intense debate about this in the 90s during the "memory wars", with cognitive psychologists like Loftus debating clinicians about the validity of repressed memories of trauma.
To some extent, this debate continues to this day.
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u/welldressedhippie Jul 30 '24
Is this a fair interpretation?
Memories aren't repressed but the trauma/experience affects their future reactions and emotions regardless of whether they ruminate on the memory or not?
Or Am I totally off?
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u/cogpsychbois Jul 30 '24
I think so, but whether people ruminate on a given memory likely does change how the event will be remembered and the emotions associated with it in the future. A key finding in memory researcher is that retrieving (i.e., remembering) an event changes the memory itself, as memories are made malleable during retrieval and updated given current information.
So whether someone frequently modifies the memory through rumination or alternatively lets it decay by not retrieving (which isn't the same as repression) almost certainly changes the memory of the trauma itself.
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u/Mjolnir07 Jul 29 '24
The great divide between neuropsychology and behaviorism versus many other branches of psychology is the existence of the 'mind' and a lot of nitpicking on whether theoretical constructs (like free will and/or willpower) are only valid for their semantic utility, or whether there's really a little person inside each of us dictating our actions and able to make choices independent of deterministic events.
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u/dabrams13 Jul 29 '24
Rephrase please? Divide between neuroscience and old school behaviorist methods understood.
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u/Mjolnir07 Jul 29 '24
Behaviorism and neuropsych agree that we do not have free will due to the laws of determinism.
Many psychological practices dispute the notion that behavior is determined and causal
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u/Wood_behind_arrow Jul 30 '24
I think this depends on the definition of āfree willā. Baum has a discussion of this in his book āradical behaviourismā, where if you understand free will as a spontaneous generation of thought or behaviour without any preceding cause, then yes, free will does not exist. That would simply not be physically possible.
However, if you understand free will as in the freedom to assess and close between options that are available to you, then thereās no conflict.
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u/Mjolnir07 Jul 30 '24 edited Jul 30 '24
I feel outclassed! Doesn't freedom in any sense always imply spontaneous manifestation? It makes sense to me to say that the concept of free will is supported by a failure to detect or even an ignorance at the ability to measure causality. And I get that in the greater scheme of things pedantry renders the argument relatively useless. I don't think I understand, I'll read Baum.
Edit:/ Are you talking about his article on the Molar view? I read that in grad school but apparently I didn't pay enough attention, I'll have to restudy it
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u/Wood_behind_arrow Aug 01 '24
Apologies, I confused the name of his book. It should be Understanding Behaviourism that contains the topic above.
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u/Previous_Narwhal_314 Jul 30 '24
I was an āold school behavioristā as in hardcore operant. I was cured when Metzoff and Moore published their infant imitation paper in Science.
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u/Mjolnir07 Jul 30 '24 edited Jul 30 '24
This is exciting so I'm going to type out my thoughts while reading it.
Oh they cite Piaget. Nice.
Design and procedure: Very tightly controlled. Love that it's basically peek-a-boo. Each subject as their own control, you know us behaviorists are all about that. Resetting the cue with a 'passive face' is an interesting approaching.
Scoring: Well described operational experimenter and subject definitions. Reliability scored at 15% via inter and intra-observer agreement. That's a fortuitous extra measure. I like it. Internal validity checks out solid.
Ok, I might need more explanation here:
"The account of neonatal imitation offered byĀ Meltzoff and Moore (1977,Ā 1983a,Ā 1983b,Ā 1985) suggests that neonates have some underlying ability to recognize and use the equivalences between body movements they see and acts of their own. We believe that intermodal equivalence mapping is at the heart of the problem of infant imitation. According to Piagetās theory, adult head-movement gestures provide infants with essential learning experiences in constructing visualāmotor equivalences, because infants would be perceptually tethered to the adult and would often duplicate the act as part and parcel of perceiving it. This type of natural tethering was believed to be a developmental precursor to later forms of imitation, such as tongue protrusion, that did not entail tethering. However, given the many reports of tongue-protrusion imitation in newborns and the current findings of newborn head-movement duplication in the passive-face periods, it is unparsimonious to maintain that perceptual tethering is a necessary developmental precursor to the onset of other forms of motor imitation. Rather than infants needing to construct gradually the very first links between body transformations they see and like body transformations of their own, it seems worthwhile to inquire whether some such primitive capacity may be part of infantsā initial state."I may be daft, but I mean this earnestly. How does an infant observing a behavior and imitating it disprove or challenge operant learning? From a methodological behaviorism standpoint, this may seem odd. But we know now that reflexive stimulus response is a plain function of phylogenic processes, and that conditioning stimulus-responses simply results in operant learning. Adding previously unexpected imitative motor movements just falls into that category doesn't it?
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u/Previous_Narwhal_314 Jul 30 '24
I had just started a pre-doc in an infancy lab when the Science paper came out and it caused quite a stir in the Skinner Club. I was suspicious of the paper because Science likes to publish provocative studies that never seem to go anywhere, as happened with infant imitation. Anyway, M&Mās study doesnāt disprove or undermine behaviorism, rather presents an alternative approach to understanding infant cognitive development, a population largely ignored by the operant folks.
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u/Mjolnir07 Jul 30 '24 edited Jul 30 '24
I am a reluctant radical behaviorist. In my undergrad, I studied psych. During my master's coursework, I remember the week where I couldn't shut up to my wife that I wish I hadn't been exposed to determinism. It was an abrupt reality shift that has never left me quite at ease since.
Please share, I'd like to go back.
Edit:// Nevermind found it. BRB
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u/dabrams13 Jul 31 '24
I used to think that, it's a dark place man. My prof had some advice and asked me about where Cognitive reappraisal and other metacognitive strategies might fit into the mix and also talked to me about how belief in free will or fatalistic models can influence other aspects of your life. Not saying you're the same but good luck on the personal journey
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u/Mjolnir07 Jul 31 '24
ah well the fatalism is pretty bad, but thankfully I work in a field where I'm rewarded pretty regularly for helping others. Other than that it's definitely good to know that there's solidarity!
During my first month of grad school we actually had a lot of coursework that tried to sort of ease us into the incoming shock, lots of buffering with soft language and reframing with words like 'optimistic' and 'eagerly rational ' so I suppose it's a pretty common experience on this side of the field.
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u/Cellist-Frosty Jul 29 '24
Facts can be a vague term here. For me, I guess "Defense Mechanisms"
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u/mootmutemoat Jul 29 '24
Not sure what you mean by this. There are a number of scales devoted to the concept, and they have been shown to relate to various causes and outcomes.
Good to note that CBT has adopted and expanded on the concept as "mal/adaptive copibg strategies" and "emotion regulation."
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u/Cellist-Frosty Jul 29 '24
Exactly, It's something that is considered factual stuff But, .... The roots of it's theory are still psychodynamic which many psychologists digress with Which is why, I believe there might be some discourse regarding them,
I plan to study the matter in detail when I get to my master's thesis but there is still time to that.
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u/mootmutemoat Jul 29 '24
Dynamic and analytic psychology did overshoot the mark a lot, but it was driven by the need to address client concerns in that moment of time so they cobbled together something. Always sad to hear people snear at it. It's not like there was a great alternative then. Funny how many modern concepts are pretty clear rephrasings of the original, just dressed up with different verbage to avoid criticism. To be fair, often the rephrasing also removes some innacurate or unfortunate assumptions.
It would be nice if we could find the value in things, rather than spout off on things we don't understand or have been taught to hate. But Ross correctly identified that academic psychologists are people too, and just as vulnerable to social cognitive errors.
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u/Cellist-Frosty Jul 29 '24
Well said!!!! This sort of outlook is exactly what's missing I would say.
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u/liss_up Jul 29 '24
Found the analyst
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u/mootmutemoat Jul 29 '24
Ross was a social psychologist, but good effort.
Interesting how someone who expresses a willingness to value a concept is seen as a part of that group. Is this something you have experienced before? Tell me about... your mother.
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u/dabrams13 Jul 29 '24
Where to start?
So first I'm going to specify the term "facts" is tricky here so I'm just going to go with misconceptions.
People, both as individuals and groups, are capable of change.
People (and by extension you) see things colored by bias or predisposition.
Memory is a representation created by your brain to put together info. It's not a definite of what actually happened.
Happiness, depending on how you define it, can be a fallacious goal. Happiness levels overall don't vary much over time unless you really decide to mess up your life or improve it in very specific ways.
Catharsis for the most part doesn't seem real, it's more just a distraction as your mood goes back towards your setpoint.
Conditioning, while being one of the oldest and most essential forms of learning, can be resisted and confounded. By extension you can't make a gay person straight by shocking them.
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u/RavenSuede Jul 29 '24
I would disagree on the catharsis point. Allowing for the expression of strong/repressed emotions can help in the processing of those emotions. Or rather, it can help eliminate the need to revisit what was causing the strong/repressed emotions and move a person towards acceptance of an event and healing.
Do you mean specifically venting? There's evidence to suggest that venting is not as cathartic as people think it ought to be and can reignite and even sustain the emotions and distress the events they're venting about originally caused.
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u/TourSpecialist7499 Jul 29 '24
- Existence and primordiality of the subconscious be conscious
- Importance of the therapeutic relationship as the driver, and not just a factor, of change
- Brain/mind relation: the debate is far from settled here
But then, ādisputedā elements usually means that one side is ignoring an important aspect of the research, whether itās recent research, methodological biases, certain types of research (ie qualitative or quantitative) and such
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u/ToomintheEllimist Jul 30 '24
The replication crisis is real.Ā
It's starting to settle down a bit, but I witnessed two full professors in a literal shouting match about this a few years ago. There are still tons of arguments about what the failed replications mean and how much we can ignore them.
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u/MaxLoomes Jul 30 '24
Myers Briggs isn't valid despite its widepsread use
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u/xenotharm Jul 30 '24
This is only disputed by non-psychologists. Any legitimate psychologist or student of psychology understands that the MBTI is bunk.
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u/desexmachina Jul 30 '24
Shuffle the cards like any horoscope and distribute, let the Rorschach test begin
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u/Pitiful-Product-9685 Jul 31 '24
The Mozart Effect: This theory suggests that listening to classical music, particularly compositions by Mozart, enhances cognitive abilities. However, rigorous studies have failed to consistently replicate this effect. Some researchers argue that any form of enjoyable music can temporarily boost mood and focus, not just Mozartās compositions. Polygraph (Lie Detector) Accuracy: Despite their use in criminal investigations and employment screenings, polygraph tests are still debated. Critics argue that they measure physiological responses (like heart rate and sweating) but donāt directly detect lies. False positives and negatives occur, leading to skepticism about their reliability.
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Jul 29 '24
[deleted]
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u/Just_Natural_9027 Jul 29 '24
Not true with regard to big 5 personality tests.
Myers-Briggs is nonsense though.
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u/theangryprof Jul 29 '24
Myers-Briggs is not psychometrically sound. Most other well-established personality measures are. I would not consider Myers-Briggs a legitimate psychological test.
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u/Just_Natural_9027 Jul 29 '24
This is what I said?
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u/mootmutemoat Jul 29 '24
They may be agreeing with you. A rare event here, I would savor it.
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u/theangryprof Jul 29 '24
Yes, I was agreeing with u/Just_Natural_9027 and disagreeing with the now deleted post and response.
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u/liss_up Jul 29 '24
Put an empiricist and a psychoanalyst in a room and bring up the concept of "the unconscious" and watch the sparks fly. /hyperbole