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1Ā Ā Ā Introduction
Welcome to this study guide for psychology students. I think I know something about you. Since you have bought this book, I'm fairly safe in assuming you're a psychology student. If not, you're almost certainly studying a science of some sort and you perhaps feel a little tinge of anxiety about whether this book is applicable to your subject (don't worry ā it is). As a student, money is a little tight for you and you're hoping this was a good investment (don't worry ā it was).
What else do I know about you? I might deduce that you're one of the people who actually cares about their course and you want to get something out of it. You bought or otherwise obtained a study guide, after all. You want a good grade; you have a career goal in psychology or maybe you're just the type of person who likes to do a good job in everything they do. Maybe you're already doing fairly well on the course but you feel some motivation to do better. This is not the first study guide you've read, is it? It's OK, I'm not the jealous type; you can read around.
Or maybe I've mistaken you for someone else. You're on the eve of a deadline or your exams are looming. You bought this book to help you get through this ordeal alive! Left it all to the last minute again, didn't you? Don't worry; everyone does that. But, you've bought a study guide; that means you care. You have ambition in you. Admit it: you secretly believe you're capable of doing really well on this course. I bet sometimes, when you're on the train or the bus, you even allow yourself to daydream about getting top marks. It's OK, your secret is safe with me. By the way, de-clutter your desk ā you'll feel better.
Whoever you are, you feel pressured sometimes. There's a lot to do on this course, isn't there? It feels like there's so much to remember, so much to do and so little time! Sometimes it's hard to find a balance between studying and having a social life. Sometimes you have to make a choice between the two. Social life usually wins but you wish you could have both. That's part of your motivation in buying this book ā you want to do well academically without sacrificing your personal life ā or vice-versa!
Have I described you? Maybe I haven't pinpointed you exactly but you recognize bits of yourself here and there. So as you sit there, hopefully having made the decision to put this book at the top of your āto readā list (which is the right decision, incidentally), let me thank you for your purchase and express my hope that this book won't end up on your ābooks to read laterā list.
The philosophy behind this book
If you break a task down into its constituent parts, then figure out better, quicker or more efficient ways of doing those individual parts, you can improve your performance on the overall task. The organization of this book is based on my subjective breakdown of what is fundamentally involved in studying for a psychology degree and a collection of different ways you can improve within each of these areas.
But, we're all different. Not everything in these pages will appeal to you ā or work for you ā in your specific situation. If you're struggling with a particular class or aspect of studying in general, figure out where the problem lies, within the areas I'll describe, and try to fix it using some of the suggestions. Customize: try things out, notice the results and feel free to modify and adapt the ideas as you go. As Bruce Lee famously said: āAbsorb what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.ā
How the book is broken down
I have broken down the studying process in psychology into seven main sections. These are:
Ā Ā Ā Research methods in psychology
Ā Ā Ā Getting information in
Ā Ā Ā Keeping information in
Ā Ā Ā Understanding information
Ā Ā Ā Getting information out
Ā Ā Ā Organization and productivity.
Most of these are self-explanatory. After getting an understanding of the foundations of the field (trust me: they're not as scary as you might think), we move on to actual study skills; how to find, not forget, and understand the information you need for your course. Getting information out gives you strategies and tips for your written assignments and exams and the final section explains how you can make better use of your time.
How to use this book
If you want to read this book cover to cover, you certainly can. But it's not necessary to read it in that way. You are supposed to read it all but the order is up to you. It's a reference book, leave it on your desk, coffee table or even in your bathroom ā I don't mind. Just refer to it regularly and try to read whole sections at a time.
To start with, I recommend that you skim through the book and the contents and identify the sections that you think are most pertinent to you. Then read those first. If you're doing research for an essay, go to page 51. If you're having trouble understanding something, go to page 73. And so on.
If you're reading this book linearly, we're going to start by looking at research methods and statistics. I know, I know, you probably hate them. But don't worry, we're not going into too much depth and there are no scary equations or anything like that. This stuff is the foundation of your subject and it will be a huge advantage for you to ā at the very least ā get a broad understanding of why all this stuff needs to be a part of the study of the mind and behaviour. But I hope to give you a bit more than that.
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2 Research methods in psychology
Richard Feynman once said āSocial science is an example of a science that is not a science. They follow the forms; you gather data, you do so and so [to it] ā¦ but they don't get any laws! They haven't got anywhere. Yet.ā If I was there at the time Feynman said that, I might have debated the point with him. Since he was a Nobel prize-winning genius, I'd have lost, of course; but that's not the point. In my view, a field isn't classed as a science based on whether it has discovered any laws but, rather, on whether they āfollow the forms.ā In other words, whether they use the scientific method to try to find out about the world.
Much to the dismay of many first-year psych students, fresh with enthusiasm from the latest episode of Profiler or Lie to Me, psychology does use the scientific method. So, if you want to understand the field or do well in your course, the first step is to build an understanding of what science is, what it is not, and why. This feels like the donkey work for most people and maybe you'd rather get stuck into theories of behaviour than the philosophy of science. However, the scientific method is the foundation on which all that other stuff is built. If you don't get a handle on this, you will:
- find every journal you read difficult to understand
- be liable to make mistakes in your work and have a weaker grasp of the subject
- get lower marks than your classmates who do understand it
- become more frustrated as time goes on.
But if you do get a grasp of this, you will:
- be able to understand journal papers more easily
- be able to criticize studies and theories more easily ā which is essential if you want to get a good grade
- have a better grasp of the field as a whole
- have the edge over your peers, most of whom do not have this knowledge (you do know you are graded relative to your classmates, don't you?).
If you've seen The Matrix, you'll remember the scene where Neo finally saw the matrix for what it was; from that point on, everything changed for him. That's what you'll be like when you understand these foundations. Everything will just make sense. You're The One! And you don't need to be a Nobel prizewinner to get these benefits either. Just a basic grasp will be enough and these sections will give you that. I'm not going to tell you how to do all the calculations and analyses, only how to understand journal papers. So don't worry; the technical terms might seem complicated at first but you'll get used to them and there's no maths or calculation to do (I promise!).
The truth of the matter
All scientists, including psychologists, are seeking āthe truthā. Like most people, they believe that there is an objective world āout thereā, in which we all live, and that having accurate information about this world is āa good thingā. These are pretty much the only assumptions scientists make.
So what's the best way to find out about the world? Well, we could make some observations and jot them down. That could work. But what if you observe one thing and I observe something else? Or what if we observe the same thing but interpret it differently? We both have our own perceptions, biases and, perhaps, even reasons to lie. How would a third person determine, to the highest level of accuracy, which one of us was right?
What is science?
Science is simply a tool, a system that people use to get around problems like the one above. Every rule and procedure of the scientific method exists because it is the best way we currently know to get objective information about the world and to get around problems like our biases, propensity to lie and inaccurate perceptions. What scientists are looking for, specifically, are cause and effect relationships between different things (the technical term for āthingā being variable).
But the scientific method is not always followed so precisely. Even with all the rules and procedures that have been devised, it is not a perfect system. That's why you need to know the rules so you can see when they've been broken. Scientists are human and this does happen, particularly, you might argue, in psychology. When these different rules are broken, it calls the results of a study ever-so-slightly into question. The bigger the rule that is broken, the more suspect are the results. You need to be able to recognize this.
You also need to know the rules so that you can weigh up the evidence of competing theories. Very often, there are two or more different theories claiming to explain the same thing. You might look at the research for these theories and think āIn these studies they did not select participants randomly; in this one they didn't use enough participants; here they used the wrong type of analysisā. When you can work out the strength of the evidence, you're in a better position to know which of the theories is the strongest, the most likely to be correct. Don't worry; I'll tell you specifically what to look for in the pages ahead.
The scientific method
The following sections explain each step of the scientific method and some of the issues involved with them. This is not a comprehensive coverage; I've cut it down to the minimum you need to know to get the largest initial benefit and you should continue your study using the books I recommend throughout.
There are many technical terms and issues involved in science and in research methods, and unfortunately they all have intimidating names. When your lecturers throw terms at you like āindependent variableā, āstatistical significanceā, and āunfalsifiabilityā, it can be quite intimidating. It was for me, anyway.
What I have done with the following sections is describe each of these terms at the most relevant part of the scientific process, so you can see how everything fits into the overall process. I'll also give a few examples along the way which I hope will be memorable.
Take a few minutes to skim through all the steps before returning he...
