Bernard C. Beins
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(National Science Education Standards, 1995). These are desirable outcomes; the impor-
tant question is whether learning the process of research fosters scientific literacy.
Does Psychology Promote Scientific Literacy?
Scientific literacy relates to one’s ability to describe, explain, and predict natural phenomena.
Using the National Science Education Standards (1995), it is easy to see how psychology
promotes scientific literacy, as shown in Table 17.1.
If one regards scientific literacy as a variation on general critical thinking ability, there
is evidence that psychology promotes such habits of thought, at least at the graduate level
(Lehman, Lempert, & Nisbett, 1988). Psychology graduate students in the social science
domains showed improvements in both statistical and methodological reasoning and in
conditional reasoning as applied to everyday life. After three years in graduate school,
students in the natural science areas of psychology and students in chemistry showed non-
significant declines. All three cohorts were initially comparable on the measures.
One implication of the Lehman et al. (1988) study is that the type of training accorded
psychology graduate students in the social areas promotes what the National Academy of
Sciences refers to as scientific literacy. One further question is whether the trend toward
greater critical thought at the graduate level might exist at the undergraduate level. There
is some preliminary evidence that it can (Holmes & Beins, 2008): As students progressed
through a highly empirical psychology curriculum, their level of scientific literacy increased,
and their patterns of interest converged on those seen among graduate students.
The development of science literacy (i.e., factual knowledge) is less obvious. Clearly,
psychology students learn the science of behavior. With courses in neuroscience, sensation,
Table 17.1. The Ways Psychology Promotes Scientific Literacy
How psychology research methods courses
Component of scientific literacy address the component
Asking questions about everyday occurrences Developing research questions to identify
and finding answers to the questions factors related to behaviors of interest
Describing, explaining, and predicting natural Creating well-specified variables associated
phenomena with behaviors, then using those factors to
develop knowledge about the behaviors
Reading scientific articles in the popular media Bringing examples of research reported in the
with enough understanding to engage in press and discussing strengths and limitations
discussion of the article
Evaluating the quality of scientific information Learning to spot confounds and to generate
alternate explanations for research findings
Posing and evaluating arguments based Writing the results discussion of research
on evidence projects; writing balanced literature reviews
on controversial issues