Is "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman really worth reading the whole book? I feel like I understand the phenomenon it describes (and I believe a page or two is more than enough to explain it), I'm glad somebody described it popularly and attracted attention of wide audience raising their awareness. But reading a 500 pages book is a huge investment of time and mental energy. What's there one might find worth it?
I have often read books on topics I was already well-informed on. My philosophy is "think of it like a meditation". You might know very well about a psychological mechanism like the one described in Paradox of Choice (by Barry Schwartz) - you may have seen a TED talk and you already "get it". But it's rather different if you spent 10 hours of your life reading a variety of examples on the topic, and think about it (as you are reading it). The lesson sinks in far better - it is much more likely you will actually benefit from it.
This comment may be one of the best arguments I've ever heard for reading the vast majority of business/big-idea books. That it's about the repetition of the ideas, reading them over and over and ingraining them. I love this idea and it may actually encourage me to read these books or even re-read them.
For me, I'd say reading the Summary is a good start to know if you want to read a book, but just because the basic idea is in that, I don't think it's all you need. I often find myself taking notes on different things than others have and linking it to other things in different ways.
You need to fully understand the Why and although there is an argument that most books are only a few ideas, the stories in the book help argue why these are important an help you see how those ideas fit into the world and how they fit, something that is truly important if you are going to start implementing that idea or thought into your way of thinking, else it's just another article you read on wikipedia that you nod your head too.
The human brain is all about patterns and connections and that is missed on a single article that is making a big point, a summary is exactly that, a good way to explain things in a simple and quick way, but you have to understand everything else behind it for you to truly understand it and for that you really need the whole book, unless you have a badly written book that fails to do this.
I think this is vastly missed by those that just read summaries or dismiss the power of the whole book, just reading something doesn't really ingrain it into you, you have to wrestle and think about it in your own mind and being exposed to that idea from all different directions for a few hours really helps cement it.
It's also why I am considering rereading books I liked, even though I still remember the basic ideas and due to what I mentioned earlier, I think you can take different things from the same book if you read it at different points in your life, different connections will happen and different points will make more sense than they did before.
I started that book long before the controversy around the reproducibility of some of the sections was widely discussed in public.
I got to the section on priming and immediately thought "what ridiculous bullshit", looked up the original paper and saw that my suspicions we absolutely justified. The statistical analysis of the results is garbage and the experiment design doesn't pass some basic sanity checks.
If this were some sort of purely pop-psych book I would have just brushed it off. Journalists often have to write to a deadline and don't have to time to dive into the details of everything, especially if it makes a good story otherwise.
However I was completely put off by the fact that this was written by someone who made understanding how we reason his life's work. In the book he even says something along the lines of "this sounds unbelievable but you have to accept it!"
I felt somewhat validated that years later this became a more widely accepted criticism but the popularity of both that book and the unquestioned esteem that Kahneman commands really repulsed me. The biggest value of that book is as an object lesson on why we have a reproducibility crisis in the first place. If even prize winning economists/psychologists won't ask the most basic questions about what they're being told there's no hope for the field.
This! The book really should have been subtitled The Ludic Fallacy Run Amok. Even putting the priming disaster aside, it's filled with grand generalisations based on dubious conclusions from small under-powered behavioural experiments. I find it mind boggling that so many otherwise intelligent people don't find anything wrong with it.
I have not read the book yet - would you please explain what about that priming section you did not like? Is it something specific that Kahneman says or the whole concept of priming? If it is the later, I would like to know what you critique, because I have always considered priming something obvious that I use to explain common life experiences without questioning it.
I feel exactly the same for many books. If a book summary on Wikipedia, etc., neither surprises me nor teaches me anything new, I have little motivation to read the book.
It's been years since I read it (and I didn't actually finish, but that's another story), so I might not remember things very well.
I think some of the examples of bias or other cognitive misgivings that he gives throughout the book could be insightful by themselves. It might be easy to express a general idea in a couple of pages, but concrete examples of the phenomena help bridge it to real life. It could also be interesting as a quick peek at how some of the studies were designed and conducted.
The problem for me is that, since at least some (perhaps many?) of the results Kahneman presents haven't actually been replicable, and I'm not an expert in the field, I have trouble figuring out which of them to believe and which, despite his convincing tone, might not be true after all.
The blog post of the title doesn't actually seem to even mention the problems with replication at all even though they're moderately well known, which kind of makes me want to question whether the "must-read" list has been really considered that critically at all.
I highly recommend "The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making" by Scott Plous. It's a concise, 260-page survey of all the research into cognitive biases. It cites a lot of other research than Kahneman/Tversky and gets right to the heart of the topic without being dry.
I'm sorry if this goes against etiquette, but I would like to discuss with you a topic from one of your other comments here. My email is username at protonmail. Thank you and apologies for the disturbance.
I read the whole thing and you're basically right. I enjoyed it still, but it's a book where you get 80% of the insghts in the first chapter. I also heard some of the expiriemtns mentioned in the book fell afoul of the replication crisis.
I read it before the stuff about the replicability issues surfaced and got around 75% through it. There’s useful stuff in it but it’s too long and I quit because it started to feel like he was repeating himself. He needed a better editor. As I read it I wondered if his editor was too intimidated by his Nobel Prize to do their job well.
Yes, it is. On the other hand, I thought his most recent book, Noise, could have been a quarter of the size. Ended up skimming the last half and googling for cliff notes. I have no criticism on the topic - it's both useful and insightful. But way too verbose.
I have no doubt it is great. And my life is not enough to read all the great books I want to, even if I were not ADHD, slow reader and generally overwhelmed. Why should I pick this one if I know what it is about already (and have in fact already started reading it once)? What will I find there that will make me feel glad I've actually read it? Can you come up with a curious quote from there perhaps? I mean a quote which a person understanding the concept can still find interesting.
I also have ADD. (it took me 16 years to graduate college medicated.) This book is profoundly interesting and will give you many fun thought experiments and examples. This book sunk its teeth into me and I could not put it down. It's so much more than the basic concept You may already understand.
I read about a quarter of it and regret the time I wasted.
It's interesting to look at the Amazon reviews: most of the reviews give 5 stars, but if you look at the 1-star reviews you'll see that there is a significant minority of reviewers with opinions like this one, for example: "It's an overrated book that is unnecessarily long. It will suffice to read the book blurb as the rest is repetitive explanation of the same topic with endless examples."
To me it is an interesting psychological phenomenon that people find the book worth reading. Perhaps someone should write a book about that ...
> unnecessarily long... repetitive explanation of the same topic with endless examples.
This is what I actually find most of even the best books to be. This is why I am asking (also because I believe most of the people here know what this book is about and many of them have actually read it).
2) The two points being:
- What Communication and Meta-communication are, what purpose they serve and how these are a uniquely human trait.
- The role of the therapist in treating dysfunctional families.
> It is based on the idea that the same message accompanied by different meta-communication can mean something entirely different, including its opposite, as in irony.
It's the real message, communication via a false message rather than about it.
Watzlawick's take on meta-communication is this, basically:
Your cat can communicate to you that he wants some more milk. This is communication.
Your cat CANNOT communicate about its own communication, i.e. cannot "say" something like: "hey, you bastard, I meowed for milk 4 times already, are you deaf or just too lazy to pour some for me?".
This would be meta-communication, and no animal species can do it. It is like adding a whole extra dimension to it.
(The cat example is straight out of the book, as much as I can recall it, at least).
Not literally, but is that really true? Your cat could meow in a very different way, gesturing to the milk, then looking at you and scratching. It's not referencing the past communication but obviously the communication has escalated, and this could be due to the first dismissal and not that the cat is that much more hungry. It's not about the milk anymore--what's the difference?
What I wanted to say is that according to the author, Humans are unique in the way they can "communicate about communication", while any other living being on Earth uses communication just to transfer information: "I am hungry", "I am in heat", "Danger", "I am poisonous, go eat someone else"...
Adding the metacommunication layer we can do much much more than just saying "give me the milk".
W. says that the meta-communication layer, for humans, is mostly a way to broadcast your own self-image and see how the others react to it.
How many different way to ask for milk you can manage? Polite, obsequious, commanding, rude... what are you trying to say to the guy handling the milk, besides the simple fact that you want some? Are you in a position of power? or are you appealing to his kindness?
So the reason the cat does not need this extra layer is because he only wants his milk, and it is not trying to impress you about his own coolness, or how erudite he is, and so on.
I’ve raised both dogs and cats. They most definitely have multiple ways to ask for food, or to go for a walk, or to say they are sick.
They can do it patiently, timidly, demandingly, angrily, etc. and there’s a progression: they might not say “I’ve asked nicely, you idiot, and you didn’t respond, so now I’m no longer asking nicely” - with words, but they do act it out.
Please read the book if you want to really argue this and the other points: I am not the author, I have to titles pertaining to psychology (or ethology/animal behaviour) so I might misrepresent the topic.
You, on the other hand, may very well be a workd-renowned expert on canine/feline communication but in this specific case are barking up the wrong tree: the cat example is not the main topic but more of an example/metaphor.
According to the book theories, your real intent in commenting (as revealed by the way you framed your remarks) is that you wanted to validate your self image of being an expert on animal behaviour, having raised plenty of dogs/cats.
One of the main thesis of the book is that metacommunication is an automatic mechanisms which is used by humans as a sort of sonar signal: every time we communicate with other we are sending out an image of what our self image is, hoping that their reactions will validate it (e.g. "I am trying to look cool, or learned, or authoritative or whatever, and I hope that the way you react to it confirms that my signal was received)".
In a discussion about a Pscyhology book (by a quite influential and respected researcher) you felt you really had to make known to everyone that your superior experience as breeder of innumerable dogs and cats made amply clear that the guy was a charlatan, due to a half-page example from a 304 pages book.
A book you have not read, and you probably did not even know it existed before another random guy mentioned it.
From this I infer that what you really wanted to say is "Hey, look at me: I know lots about cats and dogs."
I am not blaming you. This is exactly what Watzlawick considers to be one of the primary "uses" of metacommunication by humans: a way to project our own self image on others.
And I am surely doing the same, just like everyone else. Maybe I am a bit more conscious about this phenomenon, thanks to having read the book. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This isn't a good pitch for getting me to read the book. Seems like too much psychology being applied where it's not warranted, possibly leading to misunderstandings of sitcom proportions.
I knew someone who couldn't smoke weed because any time she did, everything seemed loaded with intent and backstory that seemed all too true.
Communication doesn't happen in a vacuum. I hope the book at least acknowledges that metacommunication received is subjective to the receiver.
The Body Keeps Score is one of the most impactful books I’ve read in the last few years. The thesis is that trauma resides not only in the brain as an experience, but in the body (the central nervous system) as a reaction to that experience, and so resolution of trauma must be more than “talk therapy”, and indeed the research shows that all manner of physical action helps to resolve trauma. There are many components that are needed, and I can confirm with my own n=1 study of the effectiveness of many of the techniques. I hope to continue with the things I am doing and try more of the things he talks about. Highly recommended!
I'm surprised none of Robert Greene's books are on this list. Maybe they wouldn't be strictly categorized as psychology. The Laws of Human Nature delves into some psychology and personality types though, and is worth reading.
These are books that synthesize huge amounts of data. They're incredibly valuable and have plenty of third-party reviews you can read to further learn what their strengths and weaknesses are. They're not perfect, but nothing in science is.
On the other hand, the post you're linking to is a bunch of tiny hand-picked studies that haven't had replication succeed -- as would be trivial to assemble such a list in any field. Those studies don't form the main underpinning of any of these books, so they don't have anything to do with it.
The little I understood about Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart was really interesting. It's about the effectiveness of simple heuristics sometimes outshining sophisticated methods and really thriving in the unknown. Also, it's a bit weird that Gerd Gigerenzer doesn't usually appear in the same circles as Kahnemann does. His Wikipedia page alone would tell you this and his research really adds a nice counter-weight to the argument of irrationality of human minds.
The very first review I see at Amazon (Kimberly) is saying "Book's main premise is an erratic, non-peer reviewed assertion". The said review is detailed and has cited multiple references. I don't know what to conclude. Advice would help.
You should not let one review stop you from reading Barrett's book. The subject is highly fascinating and important since much of our lives are ruled by emotions and feelings. I note that the review is from one "emotion researcher" who might be focusing on finer nuances which might not be relevant for a initial broad understanding of the topic for a general audience. Also the reviewer quotes Paul Ekman (i got introduced to this subject through his book Emotions Revealed) who has had his own research questioned - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ekman#Criticisms. Nothing is set in stone here; marrying Social Psychology to concrete Neuroscience is a very difficult endeavour so an exposure to all viewpoints should be sought out.
I'm still tempted to read Emotional Intelligence. It's hard to believe it was published over 25 years ago. It's topic has been integrated a lot into work and home culture (including me), though there's still a ways to go (including for me).
Is it still a good read? Is there another book like it that hackers recommend?
I think it's still worthwhile. I first read it as a teenager, not long after it was published. It had a big impact, and I feel that since I read it, I've seen a lot in the culture that has referred to it, taken it for granted, regurgitated it, addressed individual topics from it, etc., but I'm not aware of anything that has replaced it as an overall introduction to the concept, which I think is due to quality of the writing. Even as a teenager I found easy and engaging.
The book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 is a different book by a different author. Read the Daniel Goleman book instead, or at least first.
Thinking fast and slow has profoundly changed how I view the world and continually provides me with tools I use to better myself and the organizations I'm a part of. I now regularly revisit my prior assumptions and attempt to reason from first principles and I am better at recognizing when to encourage it in others.
I've also read influence. It's Great but it didn't have near as much impact on me. but it does really drive home how people rationalize prior assumptions rather than logically arriving at conclusions.
When I was in undergrad, my psychology professor gave me a list of books[0] to read; “if you read these books, you’ll be one of the smartest people in the world.” I actually noticed one of the books on that list!
Has anybody here read Watson and Tharp's Self-Directed Behavior: Self-Modification for Personal Adjustment ? Any review/insight/recommendation would be much appreciated.
The author literally gives an individual reason why about half the books should be read by everyone and the other half by many based on their interests. What are your objections?
Flagged. Freud? Are you kidding me? Pop Psychology books? -signed, A disgruntled psychologist scientist who is tired of having his field maligned with bullshit.
I would love to get a list of even say 3 or 5 books then that you think are "real". Im genuinely curious about this, i dont mean to come of as standoffish :)
1. The Wiley Handbook on the Development of Children's Memory by Patricia J. Bauer & Robyn Fivush. (A really excellent book, even if somewhat dated, a lot of it has withstood re-examination).
2. Memory Reconsolidation, edited by CM Alberini
3. The Nature of Emotion, Fundamental Questions 2nd Edition
Edited by Andrew Fox.
I mean just go on google scholar, look for chapters on a topic you find interesting. You will more likely get the real stuff that way than pop psychology books, or by reading frauds like Freud.
But why are these books everyone should read? or can read, for that matter. You just pointed to books meant to be read by people in the field. Like, I possess a book on the neurochemistry of memory formation, but I can't make heads or tails of it, frankly, because I don't have the background.
So, the books are going to be popular psychology almost by definition (and we really shouldn't continue the academic tradition of sneering at academics who write for the popular market. We need them).
I get your irritation about Freud. Dan Ariely and Daniel Kahneman are pretty relevant today, actually. I'd add these books:
* Decisions, Uncertainty and the Brain by Paul Glimcher
* Why Choose This Book: how we make decisions by Read Montague
So Subiculum, can you recommend books on memory that aren't intended to be read by academics in the field?
Update: Subiculum indicates that they read their first suggestion, the Wiley Handbook as an undergraduate, so I'm guessing that it is accessible enough for a general audience.
I think it is still useful to read Freud, assuming you don't take it as gospel and consider when he wrote it and how little was known at the time. In my opinion, Freud was a brilliant man. The fact that some of his ideas are so obviously false today might serve as immunization against hubris, with which some of us do not realize that many of our ideas will seem absurd in a hundred years.
I think it is useful to read Freud primarily so that you can appreciate his influence on the history of ideas. The ideas themselves are not really of any contemporary interest, imo.
Here is how you could be more persuasive: use your expertise to explain why modern psychological science has moved on from Freud, how it's different from pop psychology, and to give some examples of solid, reproducible, insightful work in the field.
Nice, thanks for this, I've no papers on the matter of course but this was always my issue with his drivel on an instinctive level before I was able to elucidate it - namely the lack of even vague attempts at grounding his Uber-mystic theories with empirical foundations, tests.
What may be more amazing is that scrolling through these threads treating K*hneman or others seriously. Invariably if cognitive psych or physiology make the rounds here I feel a serious case of guilty Gell-Mann Amnesia. I mean, is it too much to ask the constituents of this forum to keep the pace ahead of "Ah, Thinking Fast and Slow was really intellectually stimulating" in 2021, or... ever?.
This cliché comment and the subthread it spawned are an example of the direction we don't want threads to go on HN. That's why we have guidelines like the following, all of which you broke rather egregiously. Can you please not do that on this site in the future? If you don't find articles about psychology books interesting there are countless other things to read here.
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
I was unaware that we’re not allowed to critique posts. My comment was highly upvoted before you flagged it, so clearly the community was fine with it.
I didn’t call anyone names, and this isn’t a “flamebait” topic, so I don’t know what you mean by “egregious” violation.
Thoughtful critique is fine; this is about comment quality. I'm afraid the sort of generic dismissal you posted, repeating what has become a cliché while adding no new information, does not clear the quality bar. "The community was fine with it" is unfortunately not dispositive—indignant repetition of clichés routinely attracts upvotes. This is a failure mode of the upvoting system (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...).
Re calling names, it isn't that you called anyone names personally, it's that words like "pseudoscience" and "fiction" count as name-calling in the way you used them, since you didn't actually make an argument. Actually if one removes name-calling in this sense, there's almost nothing left of your comment, except perhaps the last sentence, and even that seems more an expression of disdain than a substantive contribution.
How is it cliche? Phychology has a well known issue with replication. Is that not worth discussing? There was actually a ton of info in this thread that you wiped.
I don’t see how your comment attacking me clears the bar you claim exists here. I can’t call this pseudoscience but you can call me cliche? That’s a blatant double standard. You’re a mod, you shouldn’t even be commenting.
I also notice I was singled out for this flag even though others in this thread made the exact same point.
Cliché comments are often about well-known things. The point is that once something has been repeated often enough, simply repeating it again without adding new information makes for a low-quality post.
Take no. 6 for example: Behave by Robert M. Sapolsky. Dr. Sapolsky is a professor at Stanford with nearly 300 publications [0] and has been teaching biology and neurology for years. I'm curious, why do you think this book is pop-pseudoscience? Have you read it? Are there certain things you disagree with or think aren't based on research or reproducibility?
I have read about half the books in the list and this is the only one I have read from that list that didn't really feel like pop science. This is an amazing book and is the only one I am familiar with from that list that I would actually recommend everyone should read.
Edit: I will also add that The Body Keeps The Score is an interesting book, but I would definitely not recommend everyone read it. If you have suffered some trauma it is definitely worth a read.
Have you read the Body Keeps the Score? It felt pop in the sense that it was on the leading edge, but I felt the author made a best effort to put forth the available science
Ha I just added an edit to my comment on that book specifically. It is definitely an interesting book and would agree that the author put forth a lot of evidence for everything he stated. I haven't tried EMDR personally but it is compelling.
Thinking Fast and Slow is also a serious book. There have been some hits on how Kahneman wrote up priming, but few dispute he and Tversky have a big body of brilliant and rigorous research. They don't deserve to be on the same list as Freud, Sacks or (probably) Ariely. While those guys are interesting, all are rather less scientific. Cialdini I'm not sure about. His "Focus Theory of Normative Conduct" has been very influential but perhaps it is a one-trick pony?
Minds aren't scientific, so psychology isn't scientific. It's that simple; you've fooled yourself into thinking that you have "a mind", a supposedly-measurable durable part of your personality which persists beyond the mere meat of your brain and neurons, not unlike a soul.
I’m not a psychologist, but I don’t think psychology is entirely comprised of studying “the mind” or the super ego/sense of self that you are referring. Specifically with human behavioral biology, it is concerned with what happens with synaptic responses influencing an action, hormonal responses influencing synapses, biological inputs (senses) triggering hormonal responses, environmental stimulus influencing the senses, and so on and so forth. It is very much rooted in evolutionary biology, and doesn’t touch on whatever is “beyond the meat.”
That being said what do you have to say about certain personality categorizations like the big five which were determined based off of statistical clustering [0]? Is this not science for some reason because it includes personality?
How are you going to fool yourself, qualitatively and subjectively, that you have a mind if you don't have something capable of qualia in the first place?
I'm not trying to argue for some kind of an immaterial soul, or claiming that all of psychology is scientific (many theories, at least as it appears to a layman, aren't). And sure, a durable personality and various other mental models we have might be illusions to varying degrees.
But if the lower-level immediate experiences are treated as a real (if emergent and somewhat culturally dependent) thing, I don't see why higher-level mental phenomena such as the common need for a durable sense of self couldn't be treated as real as well.
I’m still here as a direct product of treatment by induced seizures by electroshock. After finishing treatment, it’s as if the toxic narrator of my life has vanished from my life and I’m suddenly just here, myself. But it’s just pseudoscience and I would have done better to read some decent literature.
My girlfriend has had EMDR therapy that resolved her
responses to triggers (similar to panic attacks? I'm not sure how to describe it) from C-PTSD, but it's just pseudoscience and she would have done better to read some decent literature.
ECT was certainly way over applied back in the day, but it's made a bit of a comeback in recent years for treating severe depression. In the sense that clinical trials are science, it's definitely science. It's true we don't really understand why it works, but you could say the same thing about a number of drugs for treating psychiatric disease, and I doubt you would say those are not science. Here is a FAQ about ECT from Hopkins: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/psychiatry/specialty_areas/b...
1. Yes it is, or at least was. It’s a branch of psychology that developed into a science its own right. Just as physics was once “natural philosophy”. Epistemologically however neuroscience does still fall under the umbrella term of psychology.
No it’s not and this comparison is facetious. Nobody practices alchemy as a mainstream science in 2021.
There are plenty of people doing astrology for instance but in a clinical setting? In funded university programs? Producing papers that can be openly challenged? I don’t think so. Again facetious.
It’s the study of the “mind” (not brain). It’s very basis is the study of a pseudo-religious phenomenon. Neuroscience is real science because it studies the brain not the artificial and archaic concept of the mind.
There can be personal value in studying psychology. It’s just not science, it’s fictional.
How does this critique apply, e.g. to Jonathan Haidt's work on moral foundations? Or, if you want something more rigorous, to prospect theory and other decision theorists' attempts to build simple tractable models of decision-making?
I don't think a single book on that list discusses electroshock therapy. I think it could be both true that electroshock therapy works and psychology can be a pseudoscience.
I'm reading Principles by Ray Dalio. In it he mentions how Bridgewater had been using myer-briggs to test and measurement their employees personalities.
I've always been dismissive of the myer-briggs test. Since the tests are "not reproducable", must mean it's at best a pseudo-science.
But then I realized, who am I to dismiss the idea? I'm not an expert. Much smarter people than I (Dalio) believe in it. At the end of the day, does it help us move closer to understanding the differences between our minds?
I'd say yes it does. It may not be a "perfect" 100% correct model, but at least it's a step towards a direction.
Myers Briggs is the poster boy for pseudo science.
> But then I realized, who am I to dismiss the idea? I'm not an expert. Much smarter people than I (Dalio) believe in it.
This is an appeal to authority; you should stick to your original gut feeling. Dalio and the like make their money selling books and as such write what people want to hear. It’s Chicken Soup For The Soul for people with bachelor degrees.
Dalio actually made his money by operaring as he preached. Based on that we can say it did not cause critical impediment to his progress. That does not validate Meyers-Briggs. Lots of succesful leaders have loved all sort of pseudoscience.
things like the Myers-Briggs test fall on the more scientific side of a continuum of explanatory and prescriptive narratives including The likes of "surrounded by idiots" The i-ching, tarot cards, mythology etc.
They are very useful for inscribing yourself into the narrative in order to break you out of your perspective and help guide you toward a more positive direction than otherwise.
There’s plenty of reproducibility and falsifiability and all those other essential ingredients. The very fact that there is a “reproducibility crisis” at all shows that as a field it’s open to this kind of cross examination.
Psych makes plenty of fairly reliable predictions around social behaviour, childhood development and human machine interaction.
Only somebody who didn’t understand psychology would say it produces no reproducible results.
It’s not physics. You can’t do it in a lab. But it can explain and predict within bounds of certainty.
DSM is often wielded as a criticism but this is strictly speaking a psychiatric i.e “medical” tool which strictly speaking should be used as a basis for making diagnosis not for diagnosis itself. It’s limitations are well understood in the field of psychology and again somebody who understood the field would know this.
> Can you provide an example of a prediction that can accurately be made with psychology?
In any given internet discussion on a non-deterministic topic, there will be at least one person (usually several) who speaks as if they are omniscient (have the ability to accurately read minds, predict the future, know comprehensive reality, etc).
Psychology is a big field. A lot of the work in the psychology of judgment and decision-making is very reproducible, especially in the area of cognitive bias.
At its very best and most rigorous, psychology is pseudoscience.
Perhaps that is true with the old literature (Freud, Jung, etc), even if parts of it also offer some insight on human behaviour.
But from what I have read, the turning point was when Albert Ellis and Aaron T Beck developed the idea of Cognitive Therapy, which started the whole evidence based therapy movement (they diverged a bit with Ellis calling his talk therapy "Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy").
Aaron T Beck perhaps laid the foundation by testing out his research theories with actual clinical studies (like pharma companies do, for e.g. conducting studies like treating one group with anti-depressants, another group with a placebo, and treating a different group of patients with his talk therapy and proving that Cognitive Therapy was just as effective as anti-depressants in alleviating anxiety and depression, and in many cases better than anti-depressants for the long-term). Since then, there have been a lot of similar studies done on the efficacy of such therapies for treating Schizophrenia and various personality disorders.
(Interestingly, Aaron T Beck actually believed in Freudian psychology and practiced it as a psychoanalyst and one of his earlier studies was to prove that it was effective. But his study proved him wrong and thus he went on to develop CT, along with Ellis' and Buddhist ideas.)
So it is no longer fair to call psychology as a pseudo-science anymore, in my opinion. (For those who like to use capitalism as some kind of yardstick / indicator of the efficacy of some new technology / science, it is interesting to note that most insurance companies now cover and push for such evidence based therapies.)
But yes, a lot of self-help books are indeed based on pseudo-science or pop-psychology.
Psychology is probabilistic science, that's the best we can do given the complexities of the mind. If you want to get a taste of rigor in psychology I suggest you read some of the works by Carl Jung.
Agreed, most people looking to understand the psyche would be better off reading literature / art.
If the probabilities are reproducible it is still science I would say. Take quantum mechanics for example. It can not predict what exactly is going to happen, only how likely each outcome would be.
> It can not predict what exactly is going to happen, only how likely each outcome would be.
Yeah but the key difference is that QM is a mathematically solid theory starting from a couple basic laws to yield predictions with p-values of 0 (for all intents and purposes anyway). Also note that there are non-probabilistic measurements in QM, be they measurements of aggregate behavior or just pure states [1]. In that respect, QM and most physical sciences really are miles ahead of psychology (though I don't think that's reason to discredit the latter, as it has obvious empirical merit).
If I may be a bit bolder still, I'd argue that it's not merely a quantitative difference. As pointed out by many other comments, psychology completely lacks any sort of unifying framework, except perhaps for small clusters of thematically similar phenomena. A collection of empirical facts does not a scientific theory make, or--taken to the cheeky extreme--"All science is either physics or stamp collecting" [2].
I can understand why you feel this way about popular Psychology literature, but I would encourage you to read some introductory textbooks on Psychology, like _Basic Vision: An Introduction to Visual Perception_.
I too don't consider psychology to be a science, but I also realize that my operational definition of science is quite restrictive (from your other comments it appears that so is yours). As a result, I think that there are plenty of disciplines that fall outside of the realm of science but still end up being rather insightful, like medicine--I sure don't think doctors work according to the "scientific method" (whatever that is), but I certainly wouldn't discount a good book written by a doctor as being on the same level as fiction.
tl;dr: it not being science doesn't make it fiction
