Even scientists fall victim to this all the time. Just go back and look at phrenology and crainiometry for a primer. I would agree that psychology is more prone, however. Ever since Pavlov and Watson, psychology has been trying to prove behaviorism is a thing (it's not). They keep changing the name, and trying to add layers of nuance, but a stinking pile of garbage by any other name... The most bothersome thing to me isn't these silly will power studies, but rather the whole new fields of "neuropsychology" and "behavioral neuroscience" that are getting so many billions of dollars and one press article after the next to espouse that which we know to be false (and have known since very shortly after Watson). Next week someone will come along and "prove" that the cookie-will-power theory is "correct" because they hooked the subjects up to an fMRI and their brains "lit up" every time they denied themselves a cookie. The truly sad thing isn't that there are no scientists doing psychology; it's that there are no requirements to have any kind of philosophical moorings to get into experimental science.
So, er, how do you propose studying the brain? Behavourism is bunk, brain imaging is bunk? If a brain area lights up consistently when you deny yourself something, that sounds like something is going on there, don't you think? If it was the prefrontal cortex, that would be exciting, actually. Screams cognitive control.The most bothersome thing to me isn't these silly will power studies, but rather the whole new fields of "neuropsychology" and "behavioral neuroscience" that are getting so many billions of dollars and one press article after the next to espouse that which we know to be false (and have known since very shortly after Watson). Next week someone will come along and "prove" that the cookie-will-power theory is "correct" because they hooked the subjects up to an fMRI and their brains "lit up" every time they denied themselves a cookie. The truly sad thing isn't that there are no scientists doing psychology; it's that there are no requirements to have any kind of philosophical moorings to get into experimental science.
Ya screw the mentally ill. Anybody with a real understanding of science wouldn't declare an entire field as bunk because people are questioning one theory. Do you have any idea how much shit scientist get wrong all the time in every field ? I guess they might as well all just pack up and go home. Christ I'm studying physical illnesses and the amount of them that are idiopathic is ridiculous. We don't know shit and I can't stand pseudointellects pretending like theories maybe being proven wrong somehow make scientists idiots. It makes them scientists.
Why do you say it's not? Behaviorism: That seems reasonable to me at a surface level, that one's environment and one's genetics dictate behavior... If anything it doesn't really say much in particular that's falsifiable...Ever since Pavlov and Watson, psychology has been trying to prove behaviorism is a thing (it's not).
It assumes that the behavior of a human or animal is a consequence of that individual's history, including especially reinforcement and punishment, together with the individual's current motivational state and controlling stimuli. Thus, although behaviorists generally accept the important role of inheritance in determining behavior, they focus primarily on environmental factors.
I'm not sure if I see your point... Define direct and causal? I question your assertion because I lack a general context for psychology, if we're going off of purely physical laws: some set of probabilistic rules dictated that viewing your message set off a chain of neurons firing that made me write a message in response. But maybe that's not what you're getting at...