Characteristics of the Ideal Psychology Scientist

Characteristics of the Ideal Psychology Scientist

Perceptions and inferences regarding intentionality and causality can involve a fair amount of guesswork. Their quality depends on the psychology scientist's ability to make reasonable assumptions to make up for missing information. Cheng (2002) suggested that attributions are a certain kind of inductive inference. That is, people induce a probable cause from available information. Following the British empiricists, and particularly John Stuart Mill's joint method of agreement and difference, Malle (2004) proposed that an event (e.g., a behavior) is attributed to whichever potential cause is present when the event is present and that is absent when the event is absent. The paper discusses five major characteristics of an ideal psychology scientist. In this regard paper takes in account precision, skepticism, reliance on evidence, willingness to make risky predictions and openness.

Precision

Precision and inferences regarding intentionality and causality can involve a fair amount of guesswork. Their quality depends on the perceiver's ability to make reasonable assumptions to make up for missing information (Malle, 2004). Cheng (2002) suggested that attributions are a certain kind of inductive inference. That is, people induce a probable cause from available information. Following the British empiricists, and particularly John Stuart Mill's joint method of agreement and difference, Kelley proposed that an event (e.g., a behavior) is attributed to whichever potential cause is present when the event is present and that is absent when the event is absent (Wade, 2007). The goal of these efforts for a psychologist should be to identify unique predictions for each possible configuration, and to validate these predictions with empirical data about how social perceivers actually make attributions.

Reliance on Evidence

A full suite of information concerning consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency is called a configuration or reliance on evidence. On the basis of such a configuration, a ...