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SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH METHODS: Psychological Research on the Human Spirit
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Department of Psychology |
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Values and
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At its best, science is an alternative to dogma. Scientific research is a means of confirming the credibility and accuracy of differing accounts of human behavior. It enables us to choose among different accounts of a phenomenon, examine conclusions, audit decisions, and evaluate programs. Without some reliable means of evaluating claims of truth and efficacy, decisions will be limited. A program may be effective, but without documentation and hypothesis-testing, there is no way to demonstrate its effectiveness to detractors or show its failures to supporters. The process of scientific research requires honesty and willingness to be proved wrong, regardless of one's original position. As the physicist David Bohm (1993) pointed out, "Science, when done properly, acknowledges a fact whether we like it or not&emdash;that is, whether it agrees with our deeply held beliefs or not" (p. 147). A second value of good scientific research is communication. Science provides a neutral language for communicating across disciplines and value systems. Once a community has agreed on the rules of research methods, science provides a means of evaluating claims that can be shared by all. It is no surprise, for instance, that the most open discussions between Americans and Soviets during the Cold War were held not by politicians but by scientists interested in nuclear winter research. Similarly, meditation techniques became widely available to the public after they were described in the scientific literature by the Harvard physiologist Herbert Benson and his colleagues. This research did not show anything new to those who had been practicing meditation techniques that were thousands of years old. However, it was a kind of translation of that knowledge into a modern cultural context. Redefined as the Relaxation Response, his research made meditation more acceptable and accessible.
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Good Science |
What is the character of "good science"? Good science is open to new information, and it is open to all aspects of information. It urges constant examination of personal and cultural biases, while at the same time offering reminders that research is never entirely free of such biases. It facilitates discrimination of component parts from a whole identification of relationships and larger wholes. It allows creativity and a means to constantly seek new understandings that take us beyond what we knew. There is a quality of patience and tolerance for ambiguity in good science since the depth and richness of a phenomenon often takes time to emerge. There is also a quality of humility in good science. A hypothesis or explanation might be wrong. Good science is willing to say so and move on, not holding dogmatically to unsupported beliefs or positions. Good science is rooted in curiosity, joy in the process of inquiry, and what has been described in the two-year-old as a "love affair with the world" (Kaplan, 1978). A typical two-year old seems to be constantly exploring, testing, tasting, never getting enough of the world. It could be said that this "love" and curiosity matures into the driving force behind good science. In the final analysis, good science is a means to be compassionate. It is a tool for relieving suffering, finding new ways of solving and preventing problems, and facilitating the full realization of each part of the greater whole. In short, good science is a form of service to the world. Calls for an expanded approach to science which can include study of the human spirit are not new. For example, in the early 1900's, William James, the first American psychologist, included the study of consciousness and religious experience in the subject matter of psychology while advocating and practicing a thoroughly empirical approach. Abraham Maslow was one of the strongest champions of science in the service of what he called "the farther reaches of human nature." He was trained first as a behaviorist under Harry Harlow, known best for his research on attachment and love in infant monkeys, and later worked with such influential psychoanalysts as Karen Horney. While Maslow criticized the limits of behaviorism and psychoanalysis, he never sought to replace them but to extend them. He advocated a blend of good science and what he called resacralization, rediscovering a sense of the sacred in everyday life. He suggested that a science which disallows the human spirit is rooted in a psychological defense mechanism. In The Psychology of Science, Maslow (1966) wrote:
However, he maintained that this desacralization was not necessary in a scientific approach to psychology. He explained the integration of science and the spirit this way:
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Scientism
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A closer examination of two approaches to science may reveal ways to foster an integrated approach to a more adequate science. Natural science, the basis of conventional scientific methods, is rooted in the modern view of science described above, while an alternative, human science, exemplifies a postmodern view of science. Natural science is based on an interwoven set of assumptions including positivism, operationism, reductionism, and mechanism. Positivism suggests that science should study only those aspects of the world about which we can be positive, i.e., only those phenomena which can be measured, quantified, and verified by independent observation. Height, weight, miles, and hours are legitimate to scientific exploration but intangibles such as values, feelings, and states of consciousness are not, except as they can be treated as quantifiable phenomena. Closely related to positivism is the doctrine of operationism which requires that all phenomena being studied be defined a priori in terms of the operations used to observe them. This restricts scientific discovery by limiting observations to those aspects of phenomena which are already known or predicted. Reductionism suggests that complex phenomena should be explained at lower levels of analysis. For instance, emotions should be explained at the level of physics and chemistry as exclusively biochemical and neurophysiological happenings. Mechanism suggests that the world is made up of discrete objects which interact through cause-and-effects laws. A related assumption is that researchers should be distant from the phenomenon being observed so as to not interfere with it. Similarly, manipulation of independent variables and control of extraneous variables is said to allow certainty about the causes of behavior. This view of science has been responsible for substantial contributions in dealing with mechanical phenomena in the natural world but it has been found to be wanting in dealing with human experience and values. Having excluded deeper psychological values and experiences from scientific study, the only two alternatives left are to study just the surface of these phenomena, reducing them to manageable, quantifiable data or to ignore them altogether. When taken as the sole means of arriving at knowledge, natural science becomes scientism.
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