How to think straight about psychology

Preface     1. Psychology Is Alive and Well (and Doing Fine among the Sciences)    The Freud Problem    The Diversity of Modern Psychology                Implications of Diversity    Unity in Science    What, Then, Is Science?                Systematic Empiricism                Publicly Verifiable Knowledge: Replication and Peer Review                Empirically Solvable Problems: Scientists’ Search for Testable Theories    Psychology and Folk Wisdom: The Problem with “Common Sense”    Psychology as a Young Science    Summary    2. Falsifiability: How to Foil Little Green Men in the Head    Theories and the Falsifiability Criterion                The Theory of Knocking Rhythms                Freud and Falsifiability                The Little Green Men                Not All Confirmations Are Equal                Falsifiability and Folk Wisdom                The Freedom to Admit a Mistake                Thoughts Are Cheap    Errors in Science: Getting Closer to the Truth    Summary    3. Operationism and Essentialism: “But, Doctor, What Does It Really Mean?”    Why Scientists Are Not Essentialists                Essentialists Like to Argue About the Meaning of Words                Operationists Link Concepts to Observable Events                Reliability and Validity            Direct and Indirect Operational Definitions            Scientific Concepts Evolve    Operational Definitions in Psychology                Operationism as a Humanizing Force                Essentialist Questions and the Misunderstanding of Psychology                Operationism and the Phrasing of Psychological Questions    Summary    4. Testimonials and Case Study Evidence: Placebo Effects and the Amazing RandiThe Place of the Case Study    Why Testimonials Are Worthless: Placebo Effects    The “Vividness” Problem                The Overwhelming Impact of the Single Case                The Amazing Randi: Fighting Fire with Fire    Testimonials Open the Door to Pseudoscience    Summary    5. Correlation and Causation: Birth Control by the Toaster Method    The Third-Variable Problem: Goldberger and Pellagra                Why Goldberger’s Evidence Was Better    The Directionality Problem    Selection Bias    Summary    6. Getting Things under Control: The Case of Clever Hans    Snow and Cholera    Comparison, Control, and Manipulation                Random Assignment in Conjunction             With Manipulation Defines the True Experiment            The Importance of Control Groups            The Case of Clever Hans, the Wonder Horse                Clever Hans in the 1990s                Prying Variables Apart: Special Conditions                Intuitive Physics                Intuitive Psychology    Summary    7. “But It’s Not Real Life!”: The “Artificiality” Criticism and Psychology    Why Natural Isn’t Always Necessary                The “Random Sample” Confusion                The Random Assignment Versus Random Sample Distinction            Theory-Driven Research Versus Direct Applications    Applications of Psychological Theory                The “College Sophomore” Problem                The Real-Life and College Sophomore Problems in Perspective    Summary    8. Avoiding the Einstein Syndrome: The Importance of Converging Evidence    The Connectivity Principle                A Consumer’s Rule: Beware of Violations of Connectivity                The “Great-Leap” Model Versus the Gradual-Synthesis Model    Converging Evidence: Progress Despite Flaws                Converging Evidence in Psychology    Scientific Consensus                Methods and the Convergence Principle                The Progression to More Powerful Methods    A Counsel against Despair    Summary    9. The Misguided Search for the “Magic Bullet”: The Issue of Multiple CausationThe Concept of Interaction    The Temptation of the Single-Cause Explanation    Summary    10. The Achilles’ Heel of Human Cognition: Probabilistic Reasoning    “Person-Who” Statistics    Probabilistic Reasoning and the Misunderstanding of Psychology    Psychological Research on Probabilistic Reasoning                Insufficient Use of Probabilistic Information                Failure to Use Sample Size Information                The Gambler’s Fallacy                A Further Word about Statistics and Probability    Summary    11. The Role of Chance in PsychologyThe Tendency to Try to Explain Chance Events                Explaining Chance: Illusory Correlation and the Illusion of Control                Chance and Psychology                Coincidence                Personal Coincidences    Accepting Error in Order to Reduce Error: Clinical Versus Actuarial Prediction    Summary    12. The Rodney Dangerfield of the Sciences    Psychology’s Image Problem                Psychology and Parapsychology                The Self-Help Literature                Recipe Knowledge    Psychology and Other Disciplines    Our Own Worst Enemies    Isn’t Everyone a Psychologist? Implicit Theories of Behavior    The Source of Resistance to Scientific Psychology    The Final Word    References     Index