Speaker
Ryan Barnhart (York University)
Title
Objectivity, Determinism and Measurement: A Recipe for Statistical Addiction
Abstract
Statistical methods in psychology, most notably Null Hypothesis Significance Tests (NHST), have repeatedly drawn the attention and criticism of many authors over the past 60 years. What remains an artifact of these criticisms is the lasting legacy of psychology’s unwillingness to abandon or reform these methods. Psychology, it would seem, has developed a certain addiction to their perceived utility. With regards to the historic rise and emergence of NHST as a central theme of Psychology, little is spoken in textbooks and less still is voiced by the historian. Critiques typically surround methodology and do not examine the historical root.
What is of interest then, are the general influences which shaped experimental psychology into what it is today. What conditions made it possible for Psychology to move through its changes in theoretical bent from a characteristically “Wundtian” tradition at the end of the 19th century, to a “Galtonian” and eventually “Neo-Galtonian” (Fisherian, NHST) tradition. It is my general argument that the concept of objectivity (in its early 20th century form), both as the goal of science and the scientist, along with an apparent unshakeable commitment to determinism, created the necessary conditions for psychology to adopt NHST as its central method for investigation in the 20th century and also its lasting addiction.