ITT: Bad psychology

haha that's one type of safety I guess.

Here are some other types from wiki:
Personal security
Financial security
Health and well-being
Safety net against accidents/illness and their adverse impacts

I believe for example that having intimate human contact is more important than financial security, it's better to be broke than crazy from loneliness.

But some types of security are obviously due to dangers more immediate and more damaging than loneliness.

You might as well discover a new fluid dynamics principle while looking at your sperm, it doesn't matter.

>>>Bad psychology
>ctrl+F Jean Piaget
>0 of 0

Come on Veeky Forums

youtube.com/watch?v=Jw33CBsEmR4

Nightmare mode: post good psychology

Skinner?

What are you talking about. The pyramid starts from the bottom up. It clearly says safety comes before friendship

>Empirical evidence is important in psychology, but it's also important to get a criteria in order to predict stuff and make further studies, otherwise you're trying to make a hard science. This isn't physics and what might be true 50 years ago might not be today because humans change.

Behaviorists would disagree with this.

>behaviorism
kek

Whats wrong with behaviorism?

it relies on the powers of general intelligence or domain general learning mechanisms, which can't account for certain things humans know by a young age without any positive evidence from their environment..

>completely ignoring the mechanisms of action

it's a retarded approach, although it has it's place.
most people are too stupid to understand the underlying mechanisms anyway, so it's better to make a table listing stimuli and behavior.

the trolley problem

the trolley problem

a) Is about ethics, not psychology
b) Is a great filter to pick out morons

>b) Is a great filter to pick out morons

Please elaborate

Also curious what you mean. I always though it was supposed to be a paradox.

>Safety needs
>Safety

Why do this?

Could you clarify what you mean by this?

Its a bit more complicated then that.

I think you are confusing the environmental function of a behavior with the biological mechanisms of a behavior. They aren't mutually exclusive: knowing the mechanisms of a behavior doesn't explain why the organism would engage in such behavior.

>Could you clarify what you mean by this?
My exposure to behaviorism is through lingusitics, where the behaviorist approach has been largely discarded since Chomsky's review of Skinner's book "Verbal Behavior." The behaviorist approach assumes that, in language acquisition, all linguistic knowledge a child has is extracted from the child's environment. The idea is that when a child gets a positive response for some linguistic output, it learns that it is how to use the language. When they get a negative response, they learn that whatever they said to elicit that response is incorrect. It goes along with the intuition parents have when they attempt to teach their kids to talk; parents will constantly try to get their kids to say certain words, "mama" or "dada" for instance, and they give the kid praise when they get it right.

However, when you start to understand some of the more technical things we do with our languages, you start to realize children can't be learning these things through the trial-and-error-like method assumed by behaviorists. For example, take the phenomenon of subject-auxiliary inversion in English. In English, when we form questions (and in a few other cases), we switch the order of the subject noun phrase and the main auxiliary verb. E.g.
>The boy is happy.
>Is the boy happy?
cont.

These kinds of constructions come up all the time, so it should be no trouble for a kid to learn that's how it works. But there's a problem. What happens when there are two auxiliary verbs in the sentence, such as in the following?
>The boy who is playing is happy.
These kinds of sentences are possible in English, but they are extremely uncommon compared to single-auxiliary sentences, especially in child-directed speech. In fact, corpus studies have shown that the number of multiple-auxiliary sentences in child-directed speech is insignificant. Of course, as native English speakers, we know what to do to make a question out of this sentence,
>Is the boy who is playing happy?
The question is, how does a child know? Because children are not exposed to a significant number of multiple-auxiliary sentences, just single-auxiliary ones, the simplest hypothesis they could make given the data available to them is that question formation requires that the first auxiliary in the sentence be fronted. When put in a situation where they have to form a question from a multiple-auxiliary sentence then, you would expect the child to apply their (incorrect) hypothesis that the first auxiliary needs to be fronted. For the example sentence above, that would yield the following ungrammatical utterance,
>Is the boy who playing is happy?
The child would then receive a negative response, and try a new hypothesis next time.
The problem is, children literally never make this mistake, they will always produce the correct form,
>Is the boy who is playing happy?
It's as if they never entertain the first-auxiliary-fronting hypothesis at all, and instead resort immediately to using structural distance, not linear order, as the criterion for which auxiliary gets fronted, even though using linear order is strictly simpler.

There are also other mistakes that children never make, but which you would expect them to make if they were learning with domain-general mechanisms.

I probably should have started with this, but the whole idea is basically that children don't have enough data to learn things like the subject-auxiliary inversion rule without some innate knowledge. The argument is called the Poverty of Stimulus.

>chromsky's review
Its generally not taken serious by most psychologists. The review attempted to attack Skinner but instead attacked a position that Skinner himself debunked decades before the review. It was more an attack on methodological behaviorism which Skinner didn't adhere to nor do most modern behaviorists. Although Chromsky does attack Skinners arguments regarding "Verbal Behavior," those arguments still misrepresented Skinners positions. For example, Skinner never claimed that reinforcement was necessary for verbal behavior to occur despite Chromsky suggesting that Skinner did. I recommend reading MacCorquodale's review on Chromskys review.

I should clarify that even methodological behaviorists didn't believe that people were blank slates. People often believe Watson did due to a quote of his taken out of context (the quote was mocking biological determinism and making a contrast to show the absurdity of it).

then what is the real argument if Chomsky got it wrong

Its not something that I have enough expertise to explain it well. I recommend instead reading Skinners Verbal Behavior and MacCorquodale's review on Chromsky if you want to understand Skinners position better.

>freud is bad psychology
look if you haven't accepted the fact that you have sexual feelings about your mother that's your fault, ok? best psychologist i've seen (of 6) thought freud's theories were still useful to his field.

Freud proudly considered himself anti science, meaning that he didn't use the scientific method at all when creating his theories. This means many of his ideas are either untestable or have been shown to be inaccurate.

Behaviorism ignored genetics and anything that is not learnt. Noone is behaviorist today. Its cognitive behaviorism nowadays in academia.

ITT: people who have never taken a psychology course.

>anti science
oh, there we go, another retarded fag from reddit.

the guy that invented the wheel was anti-science, his contribution was still essential to humanity.

Freud did a great job for his time and many of the things he said are pretty much proven to be true.

The pro-Freud guy is definitely one of them.

>bad psychology
Pretty much everything that isn't evolutionary psychology.

Is Chromsky a typo?

Tigers in a desert in Africa? God damn. At least make this shit believable.

Daily reminder that psychology is gender studies tier.

all posts above mine are troll posts

I think the major revelation in psychology comes from longitudinal studies. And we all know how hard those are to maintain.

case histories.

attachment theory is pretty good famalam

psychometrics in general

the theoretic background to CBT is good

/thread

The difference is the guy who invented the wheel didn't have the scientific method yet. Freud did but denied to use it and instead just made up his own theories.

Thats not true, not even methodological behaviorists ignored genetics. Skinner repeatedly emphasized the importance of genetics and biology in a variety of his texts. Behaviorists emphasize unconditioned stimuli/responses and unconditioned reinforcers and punishers to be vital to understanding how behavior works and both of which has biological origins.

I think you might be confused about the position you're arguing against. Nobody claims that behaviorism does not believe in biology generally. The argument is that "unconditioned stimuli/responses and unconditioned reinforcers and punishers" are not sufficient to account for human knowledge, for example in language acquisition. Some innate knowledge is required. That innate knowledge must be a product of human biology and evolution.

>You might as well discover a new fluid dynamics principle while looking at your sperm, it doesn't matter.

Yeah but behaviorism has been dead for several decades now. It's much better offspring, cognitive-behaviorism, is much better on this regard.

Also, this pretty much.

Perhaps I didn't clarify well enough. Behaviorists believe that some behaviors are due to biological/genetic factors: examples include elicited responses to unconditioned stimuli, the ability to find food/water reinforcing, and fixed action patterns. Hell, even the ability for organisms to take part in operant conditioning and respondent conditioning are said to be inherited.

Behaviorists however have a problem with what is called explanatory fiction. They are mental constructs used to explain why a behavior occurred despite lackluster evidence, common examples include the idea of a mind. The problem with explanatory fiction can be explained like this (excuse the simplicity of the example): How did the person acquire language? Because of a language acquisition device. How do we know this device exists? Because the person developed language.

Freud's theories will be forever useful because they help you understand where some ideas came from in psychology. Some of Freud's ideas are still. in fact, used today, albeit in a different way.

Oedipus complex is no longer a sexual attraction, but to deny that there is a part in the life of an infant where there is a very close attachment to your mother/father/primary caretaker is dishonest. In fact, it isn't uncommon at all for children to say that they will marry their parents, but they don't actually know what that MEANS yet.

In short Freud's ideas are commonly misinterpreted and people don't realized that they have evolved.

>being this retarted

>behaviorism has been dead for decades
I love this meme. Many cognitive behaviorists consider themselves radical behaviorists (the type of behaviorism skinner described) and many of the key philosophies and methods of psychology are behavioral. Behaviorism as a field is actually growing and is the key philosophy behind the most effective treatments of developmental disorders and phobias as a few examples.

Yeah and simplified humans to a bunch of lab rats in the process.

Except radical behaviorism exists which emphasizes the importance of mental activity as behavior, something that Skinner actively established.

Neuropsych is pumping some pretty good shit out

Pure behaviorism isn't a thing since several years ago. Yes, behaviorist techniques are still used, especially in little children, but it isn't leading people anywhere and the general consensus is that a behaviorist approach will not solve the underlying problem.

Cognitive-behaviorism inherited the useful and practical parts about behaviorism while ditching the "humans are lab rats" part.

See . I am not sure that you understand what "pure behaviorism" is. Cognitive behaviorist and behaviorists have very similar assumptions: but the big difference is whether or not the mind is a useful mechanism for explaining behavior.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behaviorism

. It assumes that the behavior of a human or an animal is a naturally occurring reflex produced by stimuli in the environment,

Reflex, i.e., we're not active on our decision making.

I know it's a useful approach and respect it's contributions, and like with all science it's sometimes necessary to focus on an aspect of reality, but I can't agree on the underlying principle of behaviorism, and I don't think anyone else does.

Yes, maybe Skinner revised his theory later on, but so did most authors. Even Freud did that.

Wanted to add that in fact, behaviorism arose to critique depth psychology, i.e. Freud and Jung and the like, and wanted to make a fully measurable field. They wanted to make psychology a hard science.

What is wrong in my psyche if yellow and blue are very numbed down in me so I can fast forward up to spending time at the orange tip?

>thinking wikipedia would have a comprehensive definition of behaviorism
Wikipedia's definition only includes at most a portion of respondent conditioning when operant conditioning is actually the more significant factor in behavior (IE the type of conditioning where consequences affect the likelyhood of a behavior and something that isn't considered reflexive.)

Skinner revised and improved the theories of his colleagues. The definition you provided may have been accurate before Skinner's contributions, but Skinners emphasizes on behaviors based on consequences and the importance of mental activity as behavior revolutionized the field.

>How did the person acquire language? Because of a language acquisition device. How do we know this device exists? Because the person developed language.
The behaviorist position can be similarly misrepresented, presenting it as an appeal to essentially magic (mysterious general intelligence abilities).
The status of a language acquisition device is up in the air. I think the most popular stance is that Universal Grammar plus domain-general learning is sufficient for language acquisition, but the innate knowledge of Universal Grammar is certainly required. The hypothesis of Universal Grammar is motivated by the poverty of stimulus argument. It is not circular reasoning. My understanding is that behaviorism rejects the notion of Universal Grammar. Instead, they believe that unconditioned stimuli/responses can account for language learning.

Here's another example where some innate knowledge is required in language acquisition. For a long time it was thought that statistical learning could account for word segmentation without any innate knowledge. The idea was that transitional probabilities between adjacent syllables drop significantly at word boundaries, so word boundaries can be postulated by the learner at those local minima. The method works great for continuous sequences of, say, three-syllable words, because the transitional probability drops are very drastic. However, the problem is that the vast majority of speech, at least in English, consists of single-syllable words, one after the other. That means there are effectively no local minima, and the method fails when applied to actual speech. It turns out though that if you introduce the Universal Grammar principle that a word has a pitch peak, then the method starts to work.

There is nothing wrong. You are an alpha unit. Designed to be an engineer or a scientist.

You could probably figure out how the procedure works even, but it would be counterproductive as no one would believe you anyway and you would likely end up with your feet dangling in a lighthouse.

The Internet allows people to bypass yellow and makes it possible to receive esteem needs through video games and social media.

Without the belonging of yellow it's safe to say that being self-actualized means you're just a tool.

Isn't universal grammar an untestable theory though. The impression I am getting from this is that we don't know everything about verbal behavior yet therefore some aspects of language must be universal.

Both yes and no. I agree digital communication can have the effect you mention. But I really think a strong need to belong has a destructive effect on creativity. It makes us anxious to deviate which greatly limits our potential.

"our potential" seems you have ulterior motives

English is not my mother tongue, and I honestly don't care enough to learn it well because it is so redundant.

I intended to talk about a generic person.

If said person has a large need to belong he/she will not dare to deviate. The persons brain will automatically learn to weed out things which is deemed to deviate too much to protect the need to belong.

No. Universal Grammar is a theory, not a hypothesis, and as such it is no more or less falsifiable than any other theory. Hypotheses are tested which support or detract from the theory in the usual scientific way.

It isn't that we just don't know how certain things work, therefore they must be biologically innate, it's that we know that statistical learning alone cannot account for many phenomena such as the ones I mentioned. Either there's magic going on, or humans have something in addition to simple statistical learning or general intelligence at their disposal.

Consequently, different principles are hypothesized to be innate. For instance, one principle might be that human language makes use of syntactic structure, not linear order of words, in dependency formation. We would then hypothesize that this principle is part of UG. That's a falsifiable hypothesis. All it would take to disprove it would be to find a linguistic phenomenon which uses linear order when it could use syntactic structure, and the hypothesis is out.

Of course, the outcome of that single hypothesis does not confirm or deny the theory of UG (the idea that we need more than just general intelligence for language), it only supports or detracts from it.

you talk as if there is free will and you can choose to deviate

Well assuming there is no free will then this discussion would be meaningless and you would know that in which case you would have no interest in asking it except for to waste my time.

There is a free will to some extent or what you are trying would not be necessary to get me to do what you want me to do.

>implying free will exists
No. Behavior can be explained through environmental and or biological/genetic factors: hence free will not existing.

The discussion would be meaningless if you and I were not participants that are changed by the discussion. All I want you to do now is accept that there is no free will.

>confusing psychology with psychiatry

>antiquated

So Psychiatry is the fake one?

>hence
Wow what a fancy word you knew. You sure convinced me. It's still not even meaningful to discuss "free will" before defining it.
First define free will. Any discussion of it's existence on non-existence is meaningless without a definition.

>define free will
Being able to act outside of the influences of your environment and genetics.

How is that measurable? How do you measure if an action is to be attributed to environment or genetics?

Of course. It is just shit.

Free will is the phrase given to the idea that you could have done other than you did.

youtube.com/watch?v=Ca7i-D4ddaw
There are also a couple of >hour long talks by Sam Harris on the topic.

>could have done other than you did

That is neither reproducible or falsifiable since any event only occurs once so you can only have responded to it once.

Environment is easy. Just change key parts of the environment and see what happens to behavior. For example, reduce the temperature of a room and see if people put on warmer clothing. This is the more important of the two as environmental factors are responsible for the vast majority of "voluntary" behaviors: its dependent on both antecedent events within one environment and the consequences of a behavior: in other words, not free will.

Genetics is harder, but manipulating genes can create changes in behavior. This one isn't that concerning considering these are mostly "hardwired" behaviors such as reflexive responses, things that certainly aren't done "voluntarily."

Now that I answered that, how do you measure free will?

But people can be aware of the changes you made and then choose to act in a way they normally would not or deliberately act erratically just because they feel you deserve the confusion. Any change in behavior does not prove anything because the situation simply is not the same.

Explain to me how to alter a gene to get a change in the phenotype in an organism more than a few cells old.

free will is in the arena of philosophy. and anyways, pretty much nothing is strictly falsifiable. if it were that simple we would have a lot fewer problems.

Wait what. You now say that free will is not psychology. Falsifiability is one of the cornerstones of theory of science. If something is not falsifiable it is not scientific. And then you introduce a concept called a "problem" without first defining it. This gets fuzzier and fuzzier.

That applies to everything, hence the problem of induction.

In practice science is like any a gentlemen's club which has a sign on the door "get published or get out".

You should not bother about falsifiability you should bother about how to get published so they don't throw you out of that arbitrary club of theirs.

the problem of free will is a philosophical one. I don't see how psychology has anything to do with it.

Those are both reasons for a behavior occurring though. Either reacting to the change in temperature or deliberating acting in contrast against you as an act of counter control.

I don't have the expertise to describe gene altering in detail, but changes in genes in mice have been able to cause changes in behavior such as causing mice to eat significantly more than average (albeit this example is operant as opposed to reflexive). This demonstrates that genes have an effect on behavior.

No it doesn't because an individual being in an event changes the individual. If you have an experiment with a ball all measurable things the same starting conditions - the same thing should happen. But a human is not a ball. Once you have done the experiment the human is not in the same state and you can't rewind and put it in the same state either. Something simple like physical objects you can isolate and study and reset the conditions over and over but a human you can't do that with.

I disagree. It is not even a problem until you clearly have defined the concept. And even if it were a philosophical problem why even start an argument about it in a thread about psychology?

you didn't consider that your expectation for the mice changed, which altered the unconditioned stimuli you projected to them.

Free will: the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate
The problem of free will: do we have that power?
The answer: no, and we don't need psychology to figure that out.

>Why bring up a philosophical problem in a psychology thread
Good question, you should ask the person who brought it up.

Or choose to not act at all or to do something third completely random just to fuck up your experiment for you. And you still claim to be able to attribute that choice to either environment or genes? The argument seems really fuzzy to me.

Yes mice have a shorter lifespan as far as I know so they are easier to experiment on with genetics. You would have to rebirth a whole new human to do the same experiment over again on a human though. It's not really practical (or ethical for that matter).