Can we really hold one thing as the truth? Imagine you have been asked to help with a sketch of a culprit. Someone else has been asked to assist, but the two sketches don’t match. Who is telling the truth? Maybe you both are? What we know as the truth depends on what we currently know, which is constantly evolving. The different approaches in psychology have different views on what the truth is. Let’s look at what paradigms and falsifiability in psychology research mean.
- We will start by exploring falsifiability: psychology.
- Then we will learn about research paradigms and delve deeper into the predominant psychology approaches.
- After this, we will explore the falsifiability in research concepts, the principles of falsifiability and finally, some falsifiability examples.
Falsifiability Psychology
Paradigms in psychology are standard perspectives and concepts that concern theories and research methods. Essentially, research paradigms are a way of looking at something.
The different approaches in psychology differ in views concerning paradigms.
Humanistic psychologists argue humans have free will, whereas biological psychologists state human behaviour is deterministic.
And psychodynamic psychologists take an interactions approach that favours both qualitative and quantitative research. In contrast, cognitive psychologists prefer the nomothetic approach, i.e. quantitative (numerical) research.
Although psychologists may take different standpoints of the ‘best’ approach when investigating psychological phenomena, they typically agree that theories/hypotheses should be testable and able to be proven wrong. This is known as the theory of falsifiability.
Research Paradigms
In psychology research, paradigms are the generally accepted perspective of investigating a phenomenon during the current zeitgeist.
Zeitgeist is the spirit concerning ideas and beliefs during a certain time of history.
According to Kuhn, the purpose of a paradigm is to provide researchers with a theoretical framework (the conceptual scheme). This framework provides guidelines for assumptions, concepts, and methodological techniques that a researcher should consider when conducting research. It also provides a consensus on the direction and goals that research should follow.
Throughout the history of psychology, there have been changes in the predominant paradigm. Kuhn’s work explained the link between paradigms and the progression of research.
He proposed that researchers agree on a paradigm based on the zeitgeist.
However, when there are anomalies or inexplicable results, this causes a ‘crisis.’ As the predominant paradigm can’t explain these results, there is a paradigm shift (a paradigm is replaced with a new one.) The time during the paradigm shift is called a ‘scientific revolution.’ These shifts are what allow psychology to progress.
An example of a paradigm shift in Psychology is the emergence of the behavioural approach in the 1900s. This paradigm appeared because previous psychology approaches were unable to test hypotheses experimentally.
There had been previous research that had taken a behaviourist approach. However, it was rejected when published due to the time’s zeitgeist.
Since its emergence as a science, psychology has had different disciplines that underwent the process of acceptance or rejection. We can think of the accepted disciplines as paradigms used during those periods. Let’s discuss some paradigms that are prominent in this current zeitgeist.
Paradigms and Falsifiability: Cognitive Approach to Psychology
Cognitive psychologists believe that behaviour and psychological illnesses are a consequence of internal cognitive processes.
They take an information-processing approach to explain human behaviour. Like computers, humans receive inputted information which is then processed, leading to an outcome (i.e. behaviour).
Cognitive psychologists argue that humans use pre-existing schemas to interpret a situation and respond to stimuli. This is known as cognitive appraisal. Maladaptive appraisals can cause psychological illnesses.
Schema is a mental structure of knowledge used to facilitate cognitive processes and behaviours.
Paradigms and Falsifiability: Behavioural Approach to Psychology
Behavioural psychologists agree that the environment and human experience shape human behaviour and cause psychological illnesses.
Some examples of learning methods that behavioural psychologists describe are:
Classical conditioning is when people form associations between a stimulus and a response, causing them to repeat actions that evoke the stimulus and, therefore, the associated response.
Paradigms and Falsifiability: Biological Approach to Psychology
The consensus of this paradigm is to measure biological, physiological, and genetic factors or variables and establish a cause-and-effect relationship between these and behaviour.
Factors that may influence behaviour and illnesses include:
Paradigms and Falsifiability: Psychodynamic Approach to Psychology
Psychodynamic psychologists argue that the inner battle between aspects of the human personality is what causes human behaviour. Some of their theories include the following:
The psychosexual stages are stages a child goes through to develop their personality.
The id is responsible for our impulsive desires; the superego is responsible for emotions, such as hilt and regret. The ego tries to balance the id and prevent giving in to temptations by rationalising with potential punishments resulting from impulsive desires.
Falsifiability in Research
Karl Popper, the philosopher behind the theory of falsifiability, proposed that theories or hypotheses should be testable and able to be proven wrong. For instance, they should be observable and able to be tested via experimental or observational methods.
This means that hypotheses based on subjective opinions, such as ‘vanilla ice cream is tastier than chocolate ice cream,’ can’t be regarded as falsifiable. This is because the results will always be different when tested on a different sample, and the findings will be non-generalisable.
Examples of falsifiability include:
Principles of Falsifiability
The principles of falsifiability suggest that:
The opposite of deductive reasoning is inductive reasoning.
A deductive approach is an approach of coming up with a theory based on existing knowledge, testing it and verifying or negating it.
One of Popper’s examples was how most swans in Europe were white. Using inductive reasoning, Europeans assumed that all swans were white. However, after exploring Australia, where they saw black swans, they deduced that not all swans are white.
Figure 1. Popper proposed the principles of falsifiability after observing a black swan.
Falsifiability Examples
Let’s look at falsifiability examples for common psychological approaches.
Psychological Approach | Falsifiable Hypothesis |
| Biological | White matter reduction in the frontal lobe (brain region) is associated with difficulties controlling behaviour. |
| Cognitive | Biased schemas can lead to inaccurate memory recall. |
| Psychodynamic | Children fixated on the oral stage of the psychosexual stage are more likely to smoke during adulthood. |
| Behavioural | Learned behaviours such as phobias from a traumatic experience can be unlearned via aversion therapy. |
| Humanistic | People who have attained self-actualisation are less likely to be depressed than those who have not reached self-actualisation. |
A falsifiable statement means that it can be proven right or wrong. Still, sometimes the results are inferences rather than directly observable behaviours, e.g. we can’t directly observe depression scores or self-actualisation levels. Still, we can measure them through means such as questionnaires.
Principles of falsifiability are important because it ensures that scientific research follows similar standards and upkeeps the advancement of psychology. Can we reach an absolute truth if every human perceives the world differently? Maybe there are several truths and that’s why we need several psychological approaches.
But it isn’t easy to know when to draw the line. Does one observation disprove a whole theory? How many observations are required to disprove a theory?
Paradigms and Falsifiability - Key takeaways
- A research paradigm is the standard psychological perspectives and concepts that concern theories and research methods. Essentially, research paradigms are a way of looking at something.
- Examples of paradigms are the cognitive approach to psychology, the biological approach to psychology, the behavioural approach to psychology, and the psychodynamic approach to psychology.
- The principles of falsifiability indicate that the approaches should use deductive logic to formulate hypotheses.
- Examples of paradigms are the cognitive approach to psychology, the biological approach to psychology, the behavioural approach to psychology, and the psychodynamic approach to psychology.
- Falsifiability in research indicates that hypotheses should be testable and able to be proven wrong. For instance, they should be observable and able to be tested via experimental methods.
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