How valid is Psychology?

DonQOnIce · 2022-05-18T15:36:49+00:00

Do people dismiss the actual terms or do they dismiss their incorrect usage?

If it’s the former, they’re stupid. If it’s the latter, I understand. Pop psychology is obnoxious. People who think a reading a few articles make them experts are obnoxious.

But to answer your question generally, psychology fucking rocks.

Vtridolla · 2022-05-18T15:37:57+00:00

That’s Red Pill in a nutshell though. If it’s not agreeing with their rather narrow world view its bullshit.

badgersonice · 2022-05-18T18:50:24+00:00

I think some of it can be quite useful. I also think the social sciences are not sciences— they sit in a sort of science-ish limbo.

And that’s fine. The subject matter of psychology severely limits it’s ability to be a true science. Pure science is not the only useful, nor uniformly the best, framework for solving problems. I am a scientist, but I kinda hate all this STEM supremacy nonsense a lot of people seem attached to. Science is the best at exactly the things it’s good at, and it’s actually incorrect to try to turn everything into a science just to try to gain that sense of authority.

Edit: since this is in reference to RP in particular… a whole lot, if not all, of evolutionary psychology is just junk, though.

heartheartdoki96 · 2022-05-18T16:00:35+00:00

[permanently deleted]

KirthWGersen · 2022-05-18T15:58:21+00:00

I think a major reason for this is people's abuse of those terms:

"Gaslighting" tends to be used for anything but what it actually refers to: an extremely serious form of psychological abuse. It is not finding out that your boyfriend's job title does not actually sound as good as he insinuated the night you met.

"Grooming" is enticing underage people into sex to which they cannot legally consent. Not dating someone 10 years younger than you.

"Abuse" is not saying 'no' when someone is acting unreasonably, refusing to pay for things you want, or not answering your messages with the desired celerity.

sarkington · 2022-05-18T15:29:29+00:00

I find people who prize logic and intellect and also disparage the study of brain function hilarious

cuckedalt · 2022-05-18T15:29:49+00:00

Every generation thinks they're the one who has everything figured out correctly. But knowledge evolves, and so the gaps in our current understanding if any will be revealed in the future

ErrorMacrotheII · 2022-05-18T15:35:46+00:00

I don't think psychology will ever be able to explain to people here why they can't get laid.

At least as far as they keep pointing to the other party.

Mark_Freed · 2022-05-18T16:46:09+00:00

It's a great field, we need to do a lot more to improve it.

As it stands now it doesn't deserve the respect and validity we give other hard science fields.

https://fantasticanachronism.com/2020/09/11/whats-wrong-with-social-science-and-how-to-fix-it/#There-Are-No-Journals-With-Strict-Quality-Standards

Most studies replication is a coin toss

https://www.replicationmarkets.com/index.php/2021/11/16/resolutions-for-replication-markets/#:~:text=we%20are%20revealing%20the%20overall%20replication%20rate%20(so%20far)%20was%2054%25%20%E2%80%94%20using%20all%20100%20of%20the%20non-covid%20resolutions%20we%20have%20received.%20(uses%20both%20direct%20and%20data%20analytic%20replications%20for%20a%20better%20estimate.)%20that%E2%80%99s%20unofficial%20but%20the%20the%20sample%20is%20large%20enough%20it%20should%20be%20pretty%20stable%20and%20non-identifying

Samples sizes suck,

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266681038_The_N-Pact_Factor_Evaluating_the_Quality_of_Empirical_Journals_with_Respect_to_Sample_Size_and_Statistical_Power/figures

not a representative sampling due to WEIRD bias and even the hypothesis framing is politically biased.

heartheartdoki96 · 2022-05-18T17:39:57+00:00

Very valid. Psychology is well researched and documented. It's not just psychology today lol, it's peer reviewed and tested.

And psychology, like all sciences, doesn't stand on its own. Many other studies play a factor

BrofLong · 2022-05-18T17:56:54+00:00

Most of the topics I've seen discussed here is focused on clinical and perhaps a little bit of personality psychology thrown in. Clinical psychology is actually a tiny piece of the pie - most 'psychologists' by training do not work in clinical settings or contexts. Psychology is a massive field, and some are more well-defined than others.

Psychometrics for example is a sub-niche that is a hybrid of psychology + statistics merged into an area of study. It's gone back 100+ years. You know those survey items on a 1-5 scale that you use? There's been an unimaginable amount of research on that. I'm not saying every survey ever designed took advantage of that research (in fact, most don't and would make professional psychometricians cry), but it's a living and breathing field with innovations even now.

Work psychology (or industrial/organizational, which is the subset I'm trained in) is another segment that's been around forever. It's getting more mainstream attention, but for the most part nobody really knows about it (we're either mislabeled as HR or misunderstood as being therapists for office workers). Yet, a metric ton of research has come out of the field, including historically, work with assessments like IQ testing (which is a settled topic in research circles, despite all the popular circle jerking).

I could go on and on (and happy to chip in for anyone who is genuinely interested in learning more about the empirical side of psychology and not the kidz bop pop version of it), but I'm convinced the reason why psych gets garbled up is that most people interact with psych-related notions every day, so they have intuitions about it (many of which aren't backed by the actual science).

Things like learning styles persist because of intuitive appeal even though the actual research has effectively concluded it's mostly just hogwash (ever tried to learn excel formulas visually/audially?). Multi-tasking for example is also mostly proven to be false (though there does seem to be like 1 in 100 who can multi-task without suffering productivity loss. Mind you, they don't actually gain productivity compared to them just taking on one task at a time).

The problem is, the actual trained scientists get crowded out by the marketers because it's much easier to make money selling people what they want to buy than the truth. And the truth often is: we don't have the data or enough evidence to definitively say. We can only say based on what we do have is that your take on things can be true.

You can see how that doesn't sell.

sernamedeleted · 2022-05-18T18:24:28+00:00

Bigots and cult members always deny science to support their bigotry and dogma. Nothing new about that.

IWillKeepYourSecret · 2022-05-18T18:40:32+00:00

I went to uni for psychology and personally feel like it's very useful and valid. The main reason why psychology is so difficult to accept as a concrete science is due to the fact that it's simply impossible to be truly absolute. However, it's objective enough to recognize patterns and connections. (E.g. You hit someone -> They feel bad -> They react accordingly.)

Psychology related to attraction is very valid. The difference between true psychology and the dismissive people on this sub is that psychology isn't just used for what is and isn't. A pretty face and charisma helps with dating; we all know that. Psychology tries to look into the why's behind those objective facts.

When psychology is used in that way, it can definitely help boost someone's dating "skills."
A pretty face helps with dating, but why? What makes someone attractive? What makes someone unattractive?

GhostofCamus · 2022-05-18T15:38:03+00:00

Psychology introduces useful concepts, but they've been co-opted by people who are only concerned with expanding their power at the expense of everyone else. Therapy itself is a useless, predatory business whose few benefits could be gained from a free peer support group.

wtknight · 2022-05-18T15:56:02+00:00

It’s valid in that it identifies patterns of thinking. However, certain psychological patterns can’t be generalized for every person, and I think that’s the issue when it comes to this sub. There is way too much over-generalizing.

just_a_place · 2022-05-18T16:13:26+00:00

Psychology is a very primitive science which women in general (and in particular) have been employing as a substitute for religion. It has also become their go-to explain all source of answers for life's more complex questions.

Notice how women explain everything through psychobabble terms: narcissism, everything is explained by narcissism. And gaslighting, if it's not narcissism it's gaslighting. Also pay attention to how they also have trendy disorders from season to season to match their mood. Remember when everyone attributed everything to being bi-polar? Then the trendy thing was to say autism? Now it's narcissism, the upcoming trend is depression used to explain away the wave of mass shootings. This is why I do not take psychobabble seriously unless it is an actual Ph.D. who is talking to me and even then ONLY with research, sources, and has to pass the rigor or academic scrutiny.

MrMushySauce · 2022-05-18T16:21:26+00:00

I don't really think psychology is that useful of a field. It's more like a tool of 'the powers that be.' Can completely control what people think if you just put it in a study. Oh wow suddenly if you disagree you're "a crazy person on FB who doesn't believe in science"

What's published is dictated by the agendas it fits, period. I got all As in a top 10 psych program just by basing my answers around what I thought the liberal establishment would put as answers, and on essays just writing what I thought the liberal establishment wanted to hear.

Most of the true things are common sense if you're reasonably intelligent (i.e., classical conditioning sorta stuff), and then the rest is just highly politicized

NockerJoe · 2022-05-18T15:48:59+00:00

Psychology can be valid. The way it's used generally is not. There's a difference between a trained and accredited professional who's had one on one time with a subject making a diagnosis and the pop psych version where a white girl who spent too much time on tumblr thinks she's qualified to diagnose people she doesn't actually know, or to diagnose herself with various things that she may or may not have but will excuse whatever behavior will make others uncomfortable in some ways.

Which is the actual issue. Everyone wants to grab a random psychology term and twist it to make a point but almost none of these people are. None of us are actually qualified to make these statements and at most some of us took a couple of 100 level electives in college, which in no way qualifies you to make these kinds of statements in a serious context.

One of my favorite books on this shit is No More Mr. Nice Guy, but that's because it was an actual psychologist who wrote his book after spending multiple years working with multiple actual patients and doing a lot of soul searching and homework and comparing things to find patterns before he said anything. Some of the conclusions he did eventually come to are the same ones the manosphere did, and some you did in the OP, but he has actual nuance and actual constructive solutions and an actual understanding on how to identify and treat these issues to improve people's lives rather than just throwing around buzzwords to look smart of justify his own BS.

sctbrkr · 2022-05-18T22:57:24+00:00

Psychology - statistics to derive conclusions from empirical phenotypical observations.

Neuroscience - valid as fuck, but lacks teleological theories. Very high volume of available data and studies.

Unless people speak in the language of stats or lab neuroscience, they know nothing and should be dismissed.

BlackPorcelainDoll · 2022-05-18T22:40:16+00:00

About as "valid" as music, the arts, philosophy, the law/jurisprudence.

nothatyoucare · 2022-05-18T18:24:40+00:00

Psychology is very useful in the fact it attempts to measure things instead of leaving us yelling at each other opinion vs opinion. What's really sad is how little some of 2X users understand psychology or try to claim its an illegitimate field because they don't agree with some of the findings.

Or others claiming that people weren't interested in Evo Psych until Jordan Peterson? WHAT? Talk about living in a fantasy land.

Quealpedoestoy · 2022-05-19T06:36:56+00:00

IMO, the problem is that a lot of people equates psychology (wich is a science) to psychoanalisys (wich is a pseudo science, and honestly, a very lousy one)

humdf · 2022-05-18T17:45:37+00:00

it is a art. science requires repeatable experinentation as is impossible in psychology.

but same as economy it is a scientific art. but not a science.

like medical art and medical science are two things

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2022-05-18T17:03:50+00:00

Valid but frequently misused.

There is so much shit we don't know about the human mind and behavior. Psychology acknowledges this and attempts to fill in the gaps where it can. If a person is looking for definitive answers on how any mind works besides their own there is a very real chance they are going to start making things up which may or may not be true.

RahLyt · 2022-05-18T17:25:14+00:00

I feel like human beings fight really hard to believe the notion that we're truly irrational beings. We have the illusion that we are way more rational/in control than we really are. The majority of our decisions are based on our emotions.

I feel like trp understands this better than the blue pill. But once again so does marketing, AI, UX, etc. Really world applications are completely based on psychology. But once the topic is human beings I feel like people just get defensive because they don't want to leave that illusion.

People who think they can't be manipulated are the easiest to manipulate.

2022-05-18T17:29:52+00:00

Social science research is incredibly poor in general. Pick up an arbitrary journal, read any study and you will see problems the researchers don’t address in the introduction. I’m not against the field but research findings aren’t anything anyone should hang their hat on.

Flightlessbirbz · 2022-05-18T17:47:40+00:00

It’s not a “hard science,” but it is useful as a way of categorizing patterns of thinking and behavior and communicating certain concepts. But it can definitely be used incorrectly, and evolutionary psychology is iffy. So basically, it depends on how you’re using it, descriptively, or “scientifically.”

2022-05-18T18:05:49+00:00

Like any soft science, it's extensively captured by bourgeois institutions and will reflect the mores of that class while serving to entrench their power; while it's not necessarily invalid, one should always keep this in mind.

Smitten_Squire · 2022-05-18T18:33:00+00:00

Some of it is legit. Some of it is pseudo science

abaxeron · 2022-05-18T19:00:07+00:00

I’ve seen multiple comments from users that seem to dismiss psychological terms, both formal and informal - ‘gaslight’, ‘grooming’, ‘abuse’, ‘validation’, ‘social anxiety’, ‘depression’, ‘insecurity’, ‘narcissism’ etc

‘IQ’, ‘heritability’, ‘sexual imprinting’, ‘kin detection’.

Yes, I've seen multiple such comments too. When it's something they already agree with, it's "science". When not, it's some kind of -ism.

The Red Pill seems to both accept psychology is a thing and dismiss it’s validity in other subjects.

There's nothing wrong with dismissing a hypothesis when a person you're talking to insists it's a theory or a fact.

Pigeon_of_the_sea · 2022-05-18T19:09:29+00:00

Real psychology is rooted in neuroscience and is very valid. The brain can have problems the same way any other organ can. Your friend Bill calling his ex a narcissist isn't psychology.

Devourer_of_felines · 2022-05-18T21:11:15+00:00

There’s a reason it’s considered a soft science; the amount of data that is replicable is very limited and most of the contemporary literature is passing off speculation as fact.

Goes without saying most people are very fond of regurgitating said baseless speculations however. Ie nearly all of Freud’s works, the whole “muh pair bonding ability” bs, etc

fakingandnotmakingit · 2022-05-18T21:36:55+00:00

Psychology has certain fields that are more valid than others such as neuropsychology and the study of mental disorders that are caused by hormonal imbalances in the brain.

Some are a bit more... Well let's say they can have replication issues and that's social psychology. This is where the realm of dating falls into and data can be wishy washy and harder to determine. For example generally a marriage lasts longer if people don't co-habit before hand. But also people who don't co-habit beforehand tend to be religious people. And religious people are less likely to divorce even if they're outright miserable. So is it the co-habitation? Or is it being confounded by another variable? (religion)

Then we have evolutionary psychology which as far as I can tell have no correlation/causation data What they do have is speculation and linking together concepts. Some of which makes sense and some of which don't, but they do not have the data to apply it to the current human population. Which is why I laugh at it.

At least all the other types of psychology have a scientific methodology like an experiment or something. These guys just... I don't know.. Pull stuff out of their ass. Something something apes. Something something evolution. Therefore women should just do what men say idk.

gardenfan167 · 2022-05-19T02:28:50+00:00

I say psychology has liberal bias in that it follows liberal understanding of problem. My main issue it sort of discounts soical and economic reasons for mental illness and tends to blame chemical imbalances or negative thought patterns. But in my opinion negative thought patterns and chemical imbalances could be contributed to harmful cultural norms that exist in society or poor economic conditions. If we want to help people therapy is not enough we need to foster healthier environment.

NotQuiteHapa · 2022-05-19T14:30:59+00:00

It's pretty soft. A completely western invention. Not emergent among and intuitive to all populations. It serves a purpose and has its uses but should be taken with a huge grain of salt. The replication crisis in the field is severe.

2022-05-19T16:04:06+00:00

I work at a school and you can tell from a child's behaviour what their attachment style is - it's really fascinating.

It's a well established theory and tbh there's just logic behind it.

hhhhhhikkmvjjhj · 2022-05-19T17:28:24+00:00

There is a general problem with science where none scientists use “scientificy” words to win debates without understanding the nuances to the terms. It’s the same with mental health diagnoses and how people build identities around them. Toxic masculinity is perfectly fine to use in an academic setting or in medical journals but it’s terrible when it’s used in political debates to silence or shame people. I really hate people who do that. I also admit to doing it myself from time to time lol.

Title	How valid is Psychology?
Author	decoy88
Upvotes	14
Comments	131
Date	May 18, 2022 3:22 PM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/usfdge/how_valid_is_psychology/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/how-valid-is-psychology.1209857 https://theredarchive.com/post/1209857

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