INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGY?to different classrooms and compare outcomes. Or perhaps they’ll seek
out schools with alternative approaches and collect as much evidence as
they can for what kind of approach works best. Chapter 21 looks at what
research in this area has found.
Or consider that nurse trying to convince the stubborn patient that
he mustn’t smoke any longer. She might aim to shock him with statis-
tics about just how many people are falling victim to smoking-related
illnesses. But perhaps she’s using the wrong tactic – she might have had
more luck if she told him about the legions of people who are giving up
smoking, and how much better they’re feeling for it.
Because psychology is about people, it’s often seen wrongly as a soft
science. One reason for this is the familiarity of psychology’s subject
matter to us all. Most of us will happily trust the judgement of an astro-
physicist who advocates String Theory. But if a psychologist were to
tell an experienced teacher that their lifetime approach is sub-optimal
- well, you can imagine the reaction. Most people harbour strong beliefs
about why we and other people act like they do. This is known as folk
psychology and it can sometimes clash with scientific psychology. If
psychological scientists report a finding that is consistent with widely
held beliefs, then they tend to be ridiculed for wasting funding on
discovering the blindingly obvious (see box opposite). On the other hand,
counter-intuitive findings, especially ones that contradict age-old ways
of doing things, can provoke a hostile reaction. Few of us like to be told
that our intuition is wrong.
But far from being a soft or easy science, psychology is, at its best,
the epitome of the sceptical scientific approach. Because people and
their lives and relationships are so complicated, and because we all –
including psychologists – hold so many preconceptions, the science of
psychology must be watertight. Psychologists by necessity are ingenious
when it comes to devising ways to test their assumptions. They’re eagle-
eyed at spotting and skilful at controlling the extraneous factors that
could interfere with their results.
A brief history of
psychology
People have been asking psychological questions and proposing psycho-
logical ideas since time immemorial. It’s human nature to do so. Some
of the earliest recorded psychological ideas are found in the writings of