Why psychologists need to understand research
From time to time I get asked by psychology students I lecture why they need to learn about research and statistics, as after all “I am studying psychology because I want to help people.”
The answer is threefold:
1. We need to legitimise Psychology as a proper profession. Maybe you have a friend who is the source of all knowledge, who can cite matching proverbs whenever you offer some insights you gained from your psychology classes. In fact, he might even be so cheeky and say “I could have told you that without studying psychology”. Proverbs are interesting as they often describe a situation rather accurately. But it is also interesting to note that proverbs are often contradicting each other, eg “The more, the merrier” vs “Two’s company; three’s a crowd”. In fact, a funny exercise is to ask him which of these two is the right one, and you would probably see him struggling. However, with the help of research we would learn when the first proverb applies and when its opposite is true, and this would separate you from your friend.
2. We need to replicate findings from other studies. Imagine that there are two competing Burger restaurants; Big Joe’s and Big Moe’s. Big Joe’s then publishes a study saying that their hamburgers are the best in the neighborhood. Now, I would hope that the owners of Big Moe’s would challenge that by asking for details on how the research was conducted. Once we know this the next step would actually be to copy the same steps to see if we would get the same results. This is called replication. One reason to do so is to verify that the results found in a particular study would be found again should we do the study again. This is a way of ensuring that the results really are trustworthy or genuine. This is especially important if you have research done in a different country or culture, as what goes or is found in for instance in USA might not be applicable in China.
3. Finally, a part of doing research is actually to communicate your findings. Researchers have to follow an agreed structure when it comes to how to write about their research and their findings. Since this structure is standardised, it is easier to communicate the findings to interested people all over the world, ensuring that those who would be interested in the study would get to know the results. New groundbreaking results on how to treat people with schizophrenia would for instance be shared across the world and not just known to those conducting the research. By sharing the results we would also avoid spending resources on reinventing the wheel over and over again.
As you can see, part of your success in psychology depends on your ability to understand and evaluate the research done in psychology. But the same can be said about any profession, especially in the business context – something I will get back to later.
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