psychology of the bleedin' obvious

JuliusCaesar

It's a few years now since psychology featured in the igNobels - any suggestions for studies that richly deserved an award?

JuliusCaesar

This is a nice link

Old Perry

PSYCHOLOGY? Well it’s all
obvious, isn’t it? Just common
sense, but dressed up with big

words to confuse people.

No thats Sociology :P

Odysseus

JuliusCaesar wrote: »

This is a nice link

Cheers for that. A very interesting article, I enjoyed reading that.

Valmont

Very interesting! I'm not a psychologist but when I tell people that I'm studying it I always get the "oh watch out he's going to be analysing us" type of response. It's been five years now and I'm absolutely sick of hearing it. I've exhausted all the classic responses and now I just frown and look away. I relish the idea of someone telling me that it's all just obvious because then I could at least have an interesting discussion with them.

Thanks for that article, JC, it has weeks of juicy references to get through!

dambarude

The best I've heard is "I should be wearing a tinfoil hat so you can't read my mind" :rolleyes:.

I have to admit that certain areas of psychology do tend to just make up labels for things that are quite obvious. It's the findings of research, not the names invented that the matter most I suppose.

Valmont

dambarude wrote: »

I have to admit that certain areas of psychology do tend to just make up labels for things that are quite obvious.

Any examples? I ask because this seemed to be the attitude referred to in the article.

dambarude

Valmont wrote: »

Any examples? I ask because this seemed to be the attitude referred to in the article.

Well I was thinking of Social Psychology when I said that. I'm currently studying my second module of it, and while it's all valid, and the experiments have important implications, some of it seems to be just description with a label attached. Obviously phenonema need labels, I'm not saying that we should talk in descriptions all of the time.

One particular thing that annoys me personally is the likes of this example:
Lewin's (1951) field theory: B= f(P,E)
where
B= behaviour
P= personal qualities
E= social environment
This theory assumes that each person's behaviour is a function of his or her personal qualities, the social environment, and the interaction of these personal qualities with factors present in the social setting.

Obviously the fact that individuals are influenced by these factors should give rise to some discussion, but I don't think it warrants a formula which isn't really a formula at all.

JuliusCaesar

Valmont wrote: »

Very interesting! I'm not a psychologist but when I tell people that I'm studying it I always get the "oh watch out he's going to be analysing us" type of response.

Yeah, had this when I was a student too (back in the 80s). Suddenly the person you fancy at a party goes all quiet and admits they think you're reading their mind. At least now I can say "Not unless you're paying me - I don't do it free!".
Oh dear I have become cynical....

hotspur

I wish I could read the article you're talking about, the link doesn't work for me.

dambarude

hotspur wrote: »

I wish I could read the article you're talking about, the link doesn't work for me.

It's a pdf file, have you got Adobe Reader?

hotspur

dambarude wrote: »

It's a pdf file, have you got Adobe Reader?

For some reason Firefox 3.6 didn't want to co-operate with it, IE does. Yeah I have Adobe Reader.

Gibs

This issue of "obviousness" has also arisen in relation to the admissability of evidence in court. Here's an interesting article about it

JuliusCaesar

Less seriously, here are a few; mind you, one study is from the Annals of Improbable Research which has some videos on YouTube