Originally published: . Volume 10, No. 8. Source pages: 2.
Everybody thinks they're an expert when it comes to psychology, a factor that makes it hard to maintain our brand as the elite providers in the science of human behavior.
One reason for this, explained Scott Lilienfeld when he was here last year, is because of the "little psychic psychologist" that everyone already has built-in from birth. We have evolved an automatic analysis of the inner emotions and motivations of other humans to help us adapt. We trust that inner psychologist a lot more than an expert. So, notwithstanding that we seem to do our best to make things even worse for ourselves, psychologists are up against serious odds in our branding efforts.
Once upon a time, the banner for psychology was carried by scientific minds like Eysenck. It is demoralizing now to watch standards in the public forum drop to modern lows, and it is also wretched to watch others take a swing at an analysis of human behavior with no clue as to how flawed their efforts are, at the core.
After watching 10 minutes of the nightmarish group process and testimony by Robert Mueller before Congress, I decided to stop procrastinating and read the report. I've never needed confirmation that Russia and the U.S. spy on each other every chance they get, at least as far back as Goldwater. What is From Russia with Love or Bullwinkle's Boris & Natasha about after all? It would be news if Russians hadn't found a way to goof with us. So that leaves Volume II and Trump's emotions and motivations.
The Mueller report is as bad as the Hoffman Report, which was paid for by APA to deal with internal conflicts. In neither of these analyses is there any quantification of data, or frequency tables or collapsing of themes. There are no methods for coding or use of standardized measures––but of course without themes, what is there to measure? The “process” amounts to reviewing millions of documents and interviewing thousands of people, which of course is not a process or method, but a list of actions. In short, there is no quantitative reasoning.
In the Hoffman report, observations were mixed with opinions, opinions mixed with conclusions, and unproven hunches about inner motivations and personality characteristics. The Mueller Report is not quite that bad but is still full of vague ideas and anecdotal scenes that seem more like teenager gossip than actual "evidence" of something.
Psychologists have been trained to guard against intuitions, even in qualitative research, that sneak ad hoc into our explanations. We know that a couple of solid categories and a 2 X 2 table can help us avoid what our minds naturally do––which is to truncate, delete, and distort, which make our final judgments no better than dart-throwing chimpanzees.
It concerns me that these attorneys who have no training in the science of human behavior, and no understanding of the pitfalls of observing human behavior, have so much power and influence.
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