Beginning Endlessly

The Scientific Method: A Brand New Story in the Making

“Beginning Endlessly” from the album 20TEN (2010)

Have you ever wanted to conduct a psychological study of your own? I knew it! The field of psychology, like other sciences uses the scientific method when conducting research and it bases the results from research on empirical evidence (information obtained by observation or experimentation). The five basic steps of the scientific method are as follows:

1. Create a hypothesis (question) that can be tested
2. Design a study and collect data
3. Analyze results and reach conclusions
4. Share the results with the scientific community
5. Replicate the results
   Every new experiment is A brand new story in the making, the scientific process is always beginning endlessly.

Pick a problem or question to research

Why should you be satisfied with just heaven and earth? Every scientific inquiry begins with a question. From the beginning of time man has asked questions that lead to scientific discoveries. Mankind has not been satisfied with just heaven and earth but there are so many unanswered questions out there that need to be answered. Three common methods psychologists use to uncover a question to investigate are: find an everyday problem (What is the best way to deal with road rage?), investigate a societal belief (Are males more sexually active than females?) or research already published psychology literature to find a question that needs further examination.

Define your variables

Once you have your question picked out you have to define your variables. A variable is anything that could influence the results of your study. When doing experiments that involve humans there are many that have to be considered (mood, hunger, design of laboratory, etc.). Inside all of us are minerals and chemicals of space, the complexity of the human body makes experimenting accurately very challenging. When defining the variables you are using you have to describe how they are measured in the context of your study. For instance if you were conducting a study on how Prince's music affects a female's willingness to have sex you would need to concretely define what you mean by Prince's music, you might define it as: having listened to five sexually explicit songs by him (Scandalous, Insatiable, Sexy Dancer, Do Me, Baby and Shh). Willingness to have sex could be defined as: after listening to the music, increased blood flow to the clitoris. It is very important to define your variables so that they remain constant between all participants.This is especially true for the independent variable (IV). The IV is the thing that is being manipulated so that we can study it, in this experiment Prince's music is the IV. The dependent variable (DV) is the willingness to have sex.

Hypothesis

Humanity is naturally curious, we constantly ponder the sublime questions. Are we made of stardust?
If you look around there's so much more to the universe, Maybe every shining star, is just another part [of us]. As well as more vulgar one's like in our example above. Once we have our question we next formulate a hypothesis. A hypothesis is a concise statement that states what the point of the experiment is, for example: After listening to Prince's music women will be more willing to engage in sexual activity than women who do not. Once we have or hypothesis we then construct a null hypothesis. A null hypothesis is required in any experiment because it helps to show if a study is clinically significant or not. A null hypothesis is the prediction that one variable will have no association to the other variable. For our purposes that would mean that Prince's music has no affect on female whether a female will want to have sex or not. At the end of the experiment the researcher has to look at the data, analyze it and see which is true the hypothesis or the null hypothesis.

Do Your Research

History is full of praise for another's history. This is so true for this step in the process. During your research you will praise those who came before you because most of the work you will find has been done already. A great place to start is The Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) this website has over a million references that researchers commonly use. As you research take notes and gather resources that can assist you in your experiment. You can use books, peer reviewed articles and websites. I would avoid any Dr. Oz related resources though. In our example we might look for research on music's affect on the female brain, sexuality and music, pop music's affect on cultural attitudes towards sex. Stuff like that. Make sure you start creating a bibliography of all the sources you used because a study without any sources might be okay with Dr. Phil but it will not be accepted by the scientific community. How many sources should you use? The more the better.

Choose the type of experiment you want to do

There are many different experiment formats to follow but we will talk about the three most common. First up is the True Experiment Format. This is the one most of us are familiar with. In this experiment there are two groups the control group (the group of ladies who will not be hearing any Prince music instead they will hear non-sexual classical music) and the experimental group (this group will get the sexy Prince music). All participants will be randomly assigned to one of these groups. After the IV has been administered both groups will have the DV (blood flow down there) measured to see if there was a noticeable difference between the two groups. The second experiment format is the Pre-experimental one. Here there is no control group instead one group is administered the IV and then are studied. For example each participant is given a test before the experiment and then after to see if the IV had a significant affect on them. Case studies are a popular way to conduct a Pre-experimental study. The last format we will look at is the Qusai-experiment format. This format does include a control group but randomization does not take place.

Standardization of process

Left alone with our devices, whatever will be will be. This is so true, if we don't have rigid implementation in studies then reliable results cannot be obtained. It's best to have someone help you with this step so that you get another perspective to ensure that you have accounted for as many variables as possible. Standardization means you determine exactly how you are going to conduct the experiment. In other words, construct your experiment so that others can conduct it the same way you did because the last step in the Scientific Method is replication. If the results cannot be replicated they are not reliable. When testing the participants all the conditions have to be the same for all participants in the control group (if you are using one) and the experimental group. So all the women who are in the experimental group will all be exposed to the IV in the same way (same song order, temperature in the room, amount of rest, etc.). The more similar you can make the experiment the greater chance you have to have an accurate study because you didn't allow outside variables in to distort or confound the results. Of course you can never get 100% control over all the variables that's why you will never see a study that is 100% accurate.

Select Your Lab Rats

Two main ways of doing this are a simple random sample (randomly choosing people from the population) and a stratified random sample (a random sample that draws from subsets in the population, subsets could include geographic location, age, sex, race, or socioeconomic status). Once you select the group to experiment on you should ensure that each candidate is a good pick for the experiment. For instance you wouldn't want someone who only listens to Christian music, has a strong aversion towards Prince or is a Prince fanatic to be part of the study because they could skew the results. You might administer a questionnaire beforehand to help eliminate these sorts of participants.

Conduct the experiment and collect the data

Safety first, before you start experimenting on anyone you have to make sure that your experiment is ethical. The famous Stanford Prison Experiment today would be considered unethical if you are not familiar with that study please visit here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment. It was a fascinating study that will make you lose faith in humanity (think Abu Ghraib). Whatever institution you are conducting the experiment for will require you to submit the details of your study to their Institutional Review Board to make sure you are ethically sound. Next you would obtain written consent from your participants letting them know of the process and the potential risks they could encounter. Now you are free to start experimenting and collecting data! If you are like me and have a strong aversion to numbers than use the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), it is a computer program that will do all the computations for you as you collect your data. The internet is great!

Analyze the data

Did the data support your hypothesis or the null hypothesis? This is the tricky part of the scientific method you have to determine did Prince's music truly cause increased blood flow to the clitoris or was it something else? Or was there no noticeable difference? This is where a Type I error and Type II error can derail an experiment. Type I error is when the researcher rejects the null hypothesis when they should accept it. A Type II error is when you accept the null hypothesis when you should reject it.

Peer Review

You've made it to the last step. You write up your results using the APA (American Psychological Association) professional journal format which has the following sections: title page, abstract, introduction, method, results, discussion, references, tables and figures. Finally you submit it to the board of a professional journal so that they can review it and determine if your experiment was executed correctly. If so congratulations you now have added to the scientific process! Now wasn't that fun?

Reference

Mitchoff, Kate Houston. "Scientific method." Teacher Librarian 34.4 (2007): 51.

Positivity

Gestalt Therapy: An Overview

“Positivity” from the album Lovesexy (1988)

Gestalt therapy (German for “the whole”) is defined as an existential form of psychotherapy. Existentialism is primarily concerned with affirming or implying the human experience. What this means is that we find truth through experience. It is noted as being highly experiential because counseling sessions include active exercises such as role plays and the “empty chair” technique (where a client would talk to an empty chair as if it was another person or another part of them). This form of therapy stresses personal responsibility and focuses on the individual's experience in the here-and-now. Counselors who operate from this theoretical background believe that a person's socioeconomic situation, physical environment, the therapeutic relationship and the internal constructs they have created results in their current life situation. This is why it is called gestalt/whole therapy because the whole of the person is examined not just the cognitive part like so many other theories.

Fritz Perls circa 1922, the father
of Gestalt Therapy

Fritz Perls, Laura Perls and Paul Goodman first created Gestalt Therapy (GT) in the 1930's. It is focused on the process of counseling (what is literally happening) instead of the content (what is being talked about). For example a client might say, “I think about killing my wife sometimes” and instead of addressing the statement the counselor might address the fact that the person's hands were trembling when they made that statement. Prominence is given to what is physically happening, the thoughts, and feeling at the present moment for both the client and counselor instead of what should have been, what was, could be, or might be. This form of therapy these days is called “mindfulness” therapy. The purpose of GT is to empower the client to become free from barriers caused by unfinished business that usually hampers fulfillment, satisfaction, growth, and the discovery of new ways of being. Unfinished business is any unresolved feeling(s) or thought(s) and this is what causes mental dysfunction. GT therapists do not believe that people are bad or good; therefore people should be viewed in light of their environment. The song Positivity shares this worldview. In the opening chorus we are introduced to a man that has presumably committed a criminal act:

Is that a good man, Walking down that street with that money in his hand, Is that a good man? Why do you dog him, If that was your father, tell me, Would you dog him then? Here the narrator is asking us to view this man in the context of his environment. Sure he committed a criminal act, does that mean he is a bad man? Or is he a product of his environment? Would teaching him new ways of living (being) change our view of him? In the third verse we meet a young boy who is in a less than desirable socioeconomic situation. Can a boy who drops out of school, At thirteen years of age, Answer the truth about life and death, When it slaps him in the face? Who's to blame when he's got no place to go? And all he's got is the sense to know, That a life of crime'll help him beat you in the race. More cognitive minded people might label this child with Oppositional defiant disorder, Fritz Perls and those of his ilk would say he just needs to resolve the unfinished business in his life and change his environment.

During counseling sessions the GT therapist is attempting to find out what mechanism the client is using to deal with the unfinished business. Are they in denial, suffering from cognitive dissonance, abusing drugs, etc.? A Gestalt based session might have an exchange like this:

Client: I feel so stressed.

Counselor: What has caused this stress?

Client: My kids made a mess of the house before I left to come over here now I have a huge mess waiting for me at home!

Counselor: Why is having to clean up a mess in the future causing you stress now?

Client: Cleaning up has always caused stress in me. My mother use to always tell us how much of a pain it is to clean up after us.

The counselor would then get the client to focus on the stress she is feeling right now and describe the thoughts that are going through her mind. By doing this he is “anchoring” her to the stressful feeling so that she can process through them and see that the cause is due to unresolved feelings towards her mother. By focusing on the here-and-now the client can make those connections so that they can resolve them in the present. GT therapists do not like to talk about the past much so you will not hear them ask questions like, “Tell me about your childhood...” or “How did your mom and dad get along growing up?” This theory is about finding your true self - mind, body and soul and making it one complete whole, not fragmented. Mankind is inclined to seek out Love and honesty, peace and harmony and during that search you must hold on to your soul so that the whole you can experience life to the fullest.

References

Sommers-Flanagan, J. & Sommers-Flanagan, R. (2012). Counseling and Psychotherapy Theories in Context and Practice: Skills, Strategies, and Techniques, 2nd edition. John Wiley & Sons: New York.

Woldt, A. & Toman, S. (2005). Gestalt Therapy: History, Theory and Practice. Sage Publications: New York.