Psychology questions?

Question

Hi, I'm currently taking Psych in 11th grade, and I'm struggling a bit on my homework any help would be very much appreciated = )

1.)Explain ways in which psychologists deal with ethical issues in their research.

2.)Give an example of pseudo-psych and explain how it is not a trustworthy source of explaining behaviour.

3.)How dependable is psychological information found in popular media?

Help please.

Answer 1

1. One way psychologist deal with ethical issues is to provide full disclosure to the patient or test-subject and to maintain their records confidential. The psychologist also explains the limits of confidentiality. For example, if a person makes a serious threat to himself or someone else, and the psychologist thinks he will go through with it, confidentiality s lost and the authorities must be informed.

2. One example of pseudo-psychology is folklore or your grandmother's sayings, such as spare the rod and spoil the child. These sayings have no scientific evidence to verify the information. Pseudo-psychology is non-scientific and may be based on casual observations.

3. Psychological information in the popular media may be very unreliable. Often a review of the psychological study would reveal that the conclusions are very limited and caution should be taken. The media may not explain under what conditions an effect is likely to take place. Finally, I went to a hearing and then read the news article of that hearing and I found many cases where the information was exactly the opposite of what went on, so I am always cautious of what I read in popular media. Some popular or review scientific magazines I would accept more than newspapers.

Answer 2

Most people post their replies in a section they feel comfortable. If they've spent time on this section, they will post it here because they know: 1. there will be responders 2. there may be some good responses. Life struggles would be classified into the "counseling" section of psychology---and technically, it is psychology. There are many relationship questions and they really don't belong here, but since many of them are emotion-laden and confused, they might as well belong in the imaginary counseling section of the psychology.

Answer 3

Okay, i'm not going to do your homework for you but will give you some ides.

1.) Experimental design and ethics boards/commitees - Psychologsts have strict procedures regarding what is appropriate in experiments and all research proposals have to be approved by an ethics committee before they proceed to ensure no psychological or physical damage or distress will be endure by participants (think about concepts like deception, google milgram's conformity experiment)

2.) dream interpretation, phrenology, psychoanalysis, ink blots etc all the things people on yahoo answers think Psychology is. Basically things that can't be examined scientifically aren't real psychology.

3.) Popular media psychology is unregulated, so for example answers on yahoo answers psychology section are usually nonsense and inaccurate as there are very few scientists such as myself who post here.