1. Psychological Science and Beliefs
Where does science fit?
Chapter 2

2. Marie, Jen, and Sara sit and chat
at the local park every Saturday. It’s a
typical day, with the kids playing while
they watch from the benches.
Jen keeps a very close eye on her
son, Tyler. She warns him about the
gravel under the swings. Then she tells
Tyler to be careful at the top of the slide.
When all of the kids climb the jungle
gym, she jumps up and runs over, telling
him to get off because it is not safe.

3. Scolded, and feeling sad, Tyler walks
over to his mother for a hug. After
comforting him, Jen tells him to go
play with the children by the swings.
Watching this, Sara and Marie exchange a
disgusted look. They can’t believe how much Jen
pampers Tyler. They have to say something.

4. Marie decides to bring it up, “Jen, you’ve got to
stop that, you know?”
Relieved that Marie said something, Sara adds,
“Yeah, Jen. You’re going to make a lot of
problems for him if you constantly treat him like
a fragile little flower. He’s a boy. Let him be a
boy.”
Surprised, Jen asks, “What’s that supposed to
mean?”

5. Marie hesitates, looking back to Sara,
exchanging glances. “Well if you don’t let him
toughen up, he’s going to end up being…you
know…”
“Jen,” Sara interrupts, exasperated, “you’ve got
to stop trying to protect him from every little
scratch and bruise. You’re going to make him a
girly boy if you keep this up.”

6. Marie nods agreement. “You know a boy has
to be a boy if you want him to grow up to be a
man. What will you do if he grows up to
be…well…” she trails off.
“Gay,” Sara states, flatly. “Just say it, Marie.
She’s going to make Tyler gay if she keeps this
up. Look, Jen, if you don’t let him be a boy,
you’re going to look back on this and know you
treated him like a little girl. You’ll only have
your self to blame.”

7. What do you think?

8. Have you heard similar discussions?

9. Marie and Sara were communicating a belief.
They believe that the way a mother parents her son can
affect his sexuality later in life.

10. This belief is not isolated to my fictional dialogue between
friends.

11. For example, this
advertisement for karate
lessons is based on a
similar belief.
The ad suggests that if
you catch your son in
mom’s shoes, you better
put him in karate lessons.
This implies that a boy’s
activities will change how
feminine or masculine he
is.

12. What is the truth?
Can you change a child’s sexuality,
or their gender identity,
by how you parent them?

13. Psychologists face many questions like this.
Many people in our society have opinions and beliefs
about topics such as sexuality. How do we navigate
through all of these opinions and ideas?

14. Why might people believe that a mother being
protective toward her son, or putting a boy into karate
lessons, will affect if he grows up to be homosexual or
heterosexual?

15. What can psychology offer us in this debate?

16. Ways of Knowing
Before we start discussing how psychologists address
these questions, it is important to recognize that
people form and hold beliefs in different ways.

17. Ways of Knowing
Psychologists base their theories and observations on
the scientific method.

18. Ways of Knowing
However, not all beliefs are based on science. In fact,
most probably are not. The following is a useful way
of categorizing how people “know” something, or how
they hold their beliefs.

19. Ways of Knowing
The next five slides introduce these five ways of
knowing.
 Experience
 Intuition
 Tenacity
 Authority
 Scientific Method

20. Ways of Knowing
Experience
Some beliefs come from experience.

21. Ways of Knowing
Experience
If you go to a new restaurant and have a good meal, it
is understandable if you tell someone that you
believe it is a good restaurant. True, you didn’t
sample everything on the menu or meet every
employee. In fact, you’re basing your
recommendation on very little evidence (one
visit, one meal, one waiter/waitress, etc.). For most
mundane beliefs, though, this is not a problem.

22. Ways of Knowing
Intuition
Some beliefs are held due to intuition. You believe it
because you feel that it is true.

23. Ways of Knowing
Intuition
For example, belief in God for many people is an act of
faith. That faith may be based on a deep feeling,
beyond words, that they feel God exists.

24. Ways of Knowing
Intuition
Not all intuitive knowledge is so serious. For example,
sometimes people buy a new item because it feels like
a good idea. There’s no thought involved, just
intuition. “That looks good.” “Why?” “I don’t know, it
just does.”

25. Ways of Knowing
Tenacity
Some beliefs become firm simply because they are
held for a long time or by a lot of people. Even if
there isn’t a good reason for the belief, it may be
held firmly just because “everyone knows it’s true.”

26. Ways of Knowing
Tenacity
For example, have you ever heard
that you shouldn’t swim right
after you eat?
It’s not true (unless you’re a long-
distance competitive swimmer), but
a lot of people believe it and keep
stating that belief.

27. Ways of Knowing
Tenacity
These commonly held beliefs can have incredible
tenacity, or persistence, making them difficult to
change.

28. Ways of Knowing
Authority
Some beliefs come from an authority. Parents,
doctors, teachers, ministers, priests…all of these can
be sources of beliefs based on authority.

29. Ways of Knowing
Authority
For example, if a doctor tells you
that you have pneumonia, most of
us take the doctor’s word for it.
We do not independently verify
the diagnosis. You believe it
because the person who told you
should know.

30. Ways of Knowing
Scientific Method
Other beliefs are held because they are reasonable.
We can use reason and logic to evaluate beliefs.
Even better, we can use reason and logic with
experiences, or observations. This is how the
scientific method works. You systematically seek
experiences, and evaluate them based on reason
and logic.

31. Review
 Ways of Knowing
 Experience
 Intuition
 Tenacity
 Authority
 Scientific Method

32. Let’s examine Marie and Sara’s belief
that a mother’s concern for her son
could affect his sexuality. Here are
examples of how each “way of
knowing” could apply to their belief.

33. Example – Experience
It is possible that Marie or Sara watched a mother who
was protective of her child. Over the years, they saw
the mother treating the boy gingerly. Maybe they
saw the boy grow into a man who comes out of the
closet as gay.

34. Example – Experience
The problem is that they observed only one person,
over a very long time. How can we know that it was
the mother’s parenting that affected her son’s
sexuality? How do you know it was not something
else? Maybe the son would have grown up to be
gay no matter what the mother did. The problem
with experience is that it is not systematic. Also, it is
limited to only what we happened to observe, only
our experiences.

35. Example – Experience
Unfortunately, experience alone leaves many
questions.
There are too many questions for this to be useful for a
science of behavior. Psychology does not rely on
experience alone as evidence.
In fact, single, personal experiences are called
anecdotes, and anecdotal evidence is considered
very poor evidence.

36. Example – Intuition
Perhaps Marie and Sara simply feel that their beliefs
are true. If Jen presses them to explain why they
are saying she should stop looking after Tyler so
closely, they may not be able to give a reason. They
simply feel, strongly, that Jen really should change.

37. Example – Intuition
What does Jen do with this, though? Although intuition
can be very powerful for an individual’s own beliefs,
others might not share those feelings. In this
example, Jen may feel, very deeply, that Marie and
Sara are dead wrong. Now what?

38. Example – Intuition
Psychologists often use intuition as a starting point.
Intuition can offer many ideas and hypotheses to
study. But as a way of knowing, intuition is perhaps
the least useful or convincing for a science of
behavior.

39. Example – Tenacity
If Marie and Sara grew up in a community where
everyone believed that parenting affects a child’s
sexuality, they may hold the belief through tenacity.

40. Example – Tenacity
It is possible that nobody ever specifically stated that
parents affect their children’s sexuality. The belief
might be communicated subtly by many people –
little comments people make, the jokes they tell, and
the advice they give – all pointing to this belief.

41. Example – Tenacity
“Are you sure you should let your son quit football?”
“Boys will be boys.”
“Let them fight. You don’t want to raise a wimp, do
you?”
“You can’t buy that shirt, pink is for girls.”
Even name calling can be used to target behaviors
that conflict with one’s beliefs. Think about what is
being communicated when kids use terms like wimp,
girl, sissy, queer, fag, etc.

42. Example – Tenacity
People can hold on to these beliefs very firmly.
For a science of behavior, we are typically skeptical of
beliefs that can be explained only by tenacity.
Throughout history, groups of people have held
beliefs that later have been shown to be wrong,
unfair, or discriminatory.

43. Example – Tenacity
Psychologists recognize the importance of tenacious
beliefs to those who hold them, but we give these
little weight as evidence for a science of behavior.

44. Example – Authority
Marie and Sara may have had a teacher, professor,
doctor, minister, parent, or friend who told them that
a mother can affect her son’s sexuality by
overprotecting him. Maybe they found a pamphlet,
book, or website making this argument. Each of
these would be a type of authority.

45. Example – Authority
Ideally, relying on authorities should work well,
especially if the person is knowledgeable on the
topic of the belief. For this to work well, it is
important to evaluate the validity of their claim to
authority.

46. Example – Authority
This is a problem online. Anyone can publish content
online. Be very careful evaluating the reliability of
the source!

47. Example – Authority
Sometimes authorities step outside of their area of
expertise. It would probably be unwise to rely on a
teacher for religious advice, or a minister for the
diagnosis of chest pain. These are obvious
examples. However, being human, many authorities
give advice on psychological topics.

48. Example – Authority
For this course, we want you to learn enough basic
psychology to be able to critically evaluate the
statements made by people in positions of authority
who may not specialize in psychological research.

49. Example – Scientific Method
The scientific method takes thought, time, and effort.
For most things in our lives, we don’t have the luxury
of using the full scientific method.

50. Example – Scientific Method
Unfortunately, the scientific method is not easily
summarized in a single slide. Chapter 2 in your
textbook covers how the scientific method is used in
psychological research.

51. Example – Scientific Method
Also, the next couple slideshows cover how to use the
scientific method to test a belief like the one Marie
and Sara held.

52. Review
 Ways of Knowing
 Experience
 Intuition
 Tenacity
 Authority
 Scientific Method
Before proceeding, try to describe each of these ways of knowing in your own
words.

53. For the remainder of the semester, we will be focusing
our attention on the scientific method in Psychology.
This does not imply that the other ways of knowing
are inferior.

54. You can respect the way that a person holds a belief
and still discuss the scientific evidence that either
supports or does not support that belief.

55. In this class, we are interested in evidence acquired
systematically and examined critically. Choosing to
focus on that, the other ways of knowing do not have
much to contribute to our discussion.

56. Personal Experience is unsystematic and limited. We
prefer to systematically obtain evidence that applies
to many people’s experiences. Remember that
anecdotes should not be given any weight as
scientific evidence.

57. Intuition is fascinating, but it is terrible evidence.
Interestingly, though, we can study how intuition
works. Psychology includes the study of how people
come to develop these intuitive feelings. Instead of
being evidence, intuition is a topic of study.

58. Tenacity is very poor evidence. It can be interesting to
study how a belief comes to be widely held, or how it
is passed along for generations. Again, this is a
topic of study, not evidence.

59. Authority holds no weight in scientific discussions.
Scientists value having evidence that can be
collected by anyone, replicated, and shared. No
single person has privileged access to evidence. We
will respectfully examine claims by authorities.

60. Remember, we are purposefully focusing on scientific
evidence for the rest of this course.

61. Beliefs can be a powerful and significant part of how
people find meaning in their lives.
We are only focusing on one way that beliefs can be
held, and that is the main focus of our discussions
and your studies.

62. As you start working on Chapter 2, make sure you
focus on how the scientific method works for
studying human behavior.