Biologism - The Consequence of an Illusion (eBook)

Prof. Dr. Manfred Velden studierte Psychologie an den Universitäten Bonn und Berkley (University of California). Als Professor an den Universitäten Mainz, Berlin (TU) und Osnabrück vertrat er die Fächer Wahrnehmungspsychologie, Biologische Psychologie und Psychosomatik.

Contents 7
Preface 9
1. Explaining psychological processes via biology (biologism) – an apparently logical concept running into problems 15
2. Biologism as part of a more comprehensive concept with problems: psychology as a natural science 49
3. Biologism as the consequence of the illusion of psychology to be a natural science 107
4. Biologism is not a scientific misdevelopment among others 115
5. Empirical and experimental psychology – a partial success story 137
Literature 141
Index 149

"5. Empirical and experimental psychology – a partial success story (S. 135-136)

The critique of the concept of psychology as a natural science does not imply that in psychology empirical data, mostly in the context of controlled experiments, should not be collected. The critique just means that the subject matter of psychology, the psychological processes, do no allow to set up generally binding rules, ”laws of nature”, and that there are narrow limits for natural scientific methods in explaining these processes. This does not mean that individual questions may not be answered using natural scientific methods, though certainly not with the clarity and binding character called upon a natural science, where the results can be fitted into a coherent theoretical system.

A good example are the perhaps oldest experiments in psychology, Ernst Weber’s experiments about difference thresholds from the first half of the 19th century from which he concluded that a difference between two stimulus magnitudes (two weights for example) can be perceived if there is a proportional change, not a change by an absolute amount (Weber’s law). The knowledge of this fact is of considerable importance, even if the ideas that Weber developed about the concept of the threshold turned out to be wrong and we today still do not have a valid notion about the neurophysiological processes that underlie Weber’s rule.

Psychologically more interesting is the perhaps most famous psychological experiment which often is, in a more or less correct form, described in popular science, that is Stanley Milgram’s experiment about obedience toward authority (Milgram, 1965). Milgram was able to show that more than half (56%) of the participants in the experiment were prepared to give electric shocks to a putative co-participant of which they not only thought that they were extremely painful, but even possibly deadly. All that had to be pretended to the participants was that they were taking part in an experiment about the effect of punishment in the context of learning.

This degree of situational conditionality of extremely cruel behavior was totally unexpected.57 Clearly, in such an experiment the result depends on the resoluteness of the request to punish, like on the personality of the person who is demanding. Still in such an experiment the obedience rate is far beyond what one would expect, and insofar the experiment provides valuable, even though rather depressing information about human behavior, about human ”nature” one would like to say.

Stressed too little or not at all in the shortened description of the experiment is the fact that 44% of the participants broke off the experiment on reasons of conscience before the maximum stimulus intensity (extremely painful and possibly fatal) was reached, meaning that behavior in such a situation is not predictable. Obviously there is a large variation in the solidness and effectiveness of the value system of humans. Examples for reasonable, non-experimental empirical studies are such from the field of performance and attitude measurement.

The so-called PISA study provided valuable information about the education of 15-year-olds in various countries, particularly valuable, though sobering for German educators and politicians who found themselves confronted with considerable, yet unexpected deficits in the German students. In the context of the problem of immigration, attitude studies are of great relevance, particularly about the attitude toward foreigners, of course. Social, educational or psychological measures must be tested with respect to their efficiency. So we, for example, need valid empirical data about the effectiveness of the diverse forms of psychotherapy."