So, you’ve decided to major in psychology, or you’ve otherwise decided to take some psychology courses, and you’re trying to figure out the best way to succeed. One of the reasons a good psychology program is so useful is that it will teach you a number of valuable skills that can help you in many aspects of life that you might not necessarily associate with psychology. This article will discuss ways you can foster some of these key skills so that you can ace your psychology courses and get the most out of them.
Valuable skills for psychology learners
While there are a lot of different fields in psychology that deal with different types of subjects and research designs, there are a number of skills that are essential for every one of these fields, particularly in terms of reading and digesting research.
1. Know the difference between a primary and a secondary source
When you’re looking through psychology research, it is crucial to know what type of source you are looking at. Let us simplify things to the following definitions: a paper presenting the results of original research done by the author(s) is considered a primary source, while a paper discussing the results of a different paper (like a review) is a secondary source. Why is it important to keep track of these things?
Well, the main reason is that it is important to know whether you are being presented original research or whether you are reading a paraphrasing of someone else’s original research. Consider this example: An original study will include a literature review in the introduction. This study might cite another study by “Garcia et al.”, and they might claim something along the lines of “Garcia et al. showed that people who do X are happier than people who do Y” (this is just a hypothetical example). However, as a responsible researcher, it is your job to look at the original paper by “Garcia et al.” and determine whether or not that was a fair summary of the results. You might find that people who do X are happier than people who do Y, but only under condition Z. This is an important difference, and only by tracking down the original research would you be able to learn that.
Basically, if you’re reading a review paper that cites another original study, make sure that the original study actually had the same results that the review paper claimed. It is important when you are writing your own papers to mostly use primary sources, as that is a basic expectation in many psychology classes. However, it is also important for your own understanding of the topic at hand to verify the truth, because research results are often misstated by non-primary sources.
2. Make sure you know exactly what a study did
In line with the first tip discussed above, it is also important any time you are reading a paper to make sure you know exactly what the experiment(s) in that paper entailed. For example, in studies involving social interactions between two people, it is extremely important to verify to which person the results are referring. If you see a sentence along the lines of “when person A is happy and person B is sad, the resulting happiness is lowered”, make sure you comb through the methods to see what exactly is being measured (between person A’s happiness and person B’s happiness). Some studies involve complex relationships between variables, so this is a crucial point.
Other studies might even overstate their own findings to increase their publishing potential. Similar to how review papers might misstate the findings of a different paper, the authors of an original paper might misstate their own findings, intentionally or not. At the end of the day, just make sure you carefully read the methods used by a paper and the results presented so that you can make your own conclusions, then see if they line up with the claims made by the authors.
3. Be skeptical, but not overly critical
One of the most important things you learn in a Psychological program is how to skeptically examine an experiment. It is common in introductory psychology classes for students to criticize experiments for having small sample sizes, not having sufficient controls, not acknowledging certain limitations, and a wide variety of other shortcomings. However, science is a cumulative process, and no single paper can completely elucidate any topic. Therefore, it is important to know the difference between a valuable paper with certain limitations (as no paper is perfect) and a paper with suspect methods or results.
4. Be careful with assumptions about “common sense”
Since psychology affects so many aspects of our lives, we might feel that we are more familiar with psychology than other areas, such as Biology or Engineering. However, it is important to not make any decisions based on “common sense”. For example, you might think that a certain Psychological relationship is so obvious that it does not need to be researched, but that is almost never the case. It is especially important to experimentally investigate and question things that we think we already know, because making assumptions can lead to massive holes in research.
Similarly, if you see something in a study that you do not think makes sense, try not to automatically write off that study. Further examination might show that a methodological choice led to different results than expected. In addition, if the methodology seems sound, it could just be an accurate finding that runs counter to our intuition. These are the most valuable types of findings, as science is built on questioning what we know and expanding upon it.
5. Try to maintain an integrated view of the big picture
Psychology has expanded enormously from its roots to include a wide variety of topics. This means that some psychology researchers might spend their days talking to people about their problems, while other psychology researchers spend their days examining brain waves on a computer. This division can make it hard to see the connections between different types of psychology research, but it is important to keep in mind that the end goal is an integrated study of human behavior and cognition.
Therefore, if you’re reading about how rats react to being injected with cocaine, consider how the results of that research might apply to people who are addicted to drugs. If you’re reading about how children behave in different school settings, think about how that relates to animal studies examining behavior in a laboratory setting. If you consider how each study fits into an overarching framework of “psychology”, you can solidify your understanding in a more integrated way. Just try not to get overwhelmed.
Wrapping up
While psychology is sometimes disrespected as an academic field, the skepticism and scientific literacy that a student can learn from studying psychology are absolutely invaluable. These tips are good points that any psychology student should keep in mind when reviewing research to obtain the most accurate understanding. At the end of the day, the most important point I can make is that you should read, re-read, and re-re-read until you know exactly what a study is saying before you move on.
