Scientific Thinking as a Learning Outcome
Posted November 5, 2015
By Jeffrey Holmes
“The purpose of a college education is to teach students how to think.” This valuable objective is noted by many professors and administrators, and it is challenging to find a college mission statement that does not in some way present the claim that students attending the college learn to be critical thinkers. In psychology, thinking critically is largely synonymous with thinking scientifically. Students take courses in statistics and research methods in order to be able to effectively consume and critique information about human behavior. However, possessing a particular skill does not necessarily carry with it an inclination to utilize that skill.
For quite a few years I have been collecting data from undergraduate psychology majors and minors concerning their views of psychology, their interests in various aspects of the discipline, and their attitudes toward different types of thinking. The data are extensive but a few important patterns are noteworthy. First, nearly half of roughly 500 psychology majors I have surveyed responded “not at all” when asked how much they enjoy taking math courses—indicating not indifference but actual dislike for courses that address a core skill relevant to scientific thinking. Moreover, depending on the specific survey item, between one-quarter and one-third of psychology students express skepticism about the scientific nature of psychology. Very few psychology professors express such skepticism, so the students’ doubts are presumably not being deliberately instilled in psychology courses.
Advanced students in our department at a liberal arts college presumably learned enough about scientific thinking to progress through our research-heavy curriculum, and they also achieved higher scores on a scientific literacy test than beginning students. However, advanced students were no more inclined than beginning students to see science as integral to psychology. In other words, although the students learned something about scientific thinking, there was little evidence of any increase in the importance they assigned to—or their tendency to engage in—such thinking. The data also suggest that even among the large proportion of students who endorse the scientific nature of psychology, many express a preference for relying on their own intuition and personal experience when trying to understand human behavior. This of course does not make them unusual; it means they are like most other human beings.
Perhaps not surprisingly, many psychology students report that they intend to work as mental health clinicians. In this context, the data summarized above speak to the frequently cited scientist-practitioner gap in psychology. An important body of research indicates that psychology students with strong practitioner interests differ from those with strong scientist interests in ways not limited to their preferred professional activities. They also tend to think in different ways and value different types of evidence. This is true for both undergraduate and graduate students. Many students with a practitioner orientation successfully complete research-heavy academic programs as a means to an end, but cease consuming scientific literature as soon as they graduate—opting instead to base their work primarily on personal experience.
Scientific thinking is not merely an ability that can be taught; it also involves dispositional qualities that are far less flexible. In this sense it parallels a long-studied characteristic known as need for cognition—the degree to which a person enjoys thinking in ways that require effort. Throughout a long history of research, need for cognition has been primarily assessed and conceptualized as a personality trait rather than an intellectual ability. The tendency toward engaging in effortful thought often correlates with the ability to do so, but as noted earlier, the ability to think in a particular way does not predispose one to think that way on a regular basis.
Needless to say, most undergraduate psychology students are not going to become career scientists. Nonetheless, the development of scientific thinking skills is an important learning outcome for college students and one that is likely to yield a variety of benefits throughout life—a fact underscored by its inclusion in the American Psychological Association’s Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major. Scientific thinking can enhance students’ personal lives by improving their ability to select the most effective medical treatments and the best quality products for purchase, and can contribute to the greater good by providing students with the tools to critique broad economic and social policies. Rather than being dismissed as unnecessarily cynical about what college instructors are likely to be able to achieve, it is my hope that recognizing the limits of our ability to change students can help us to set effective parameters for our learning objectives and also motivate us to seek new ways to teach an appreciation for the importance of scientific thinking—rather than assuming we are already reliably changing the way students think. In this age of accountability and formalized assessment of learning objectives, it is more important than ever to carefully consider what we can accomplish.
Bio
Jeffrey Holmes is an associate professor of psychology at Ithaca College. His research interests include attitude measurement, psychology students’ professional interests and views of the discipline, and myths about human behavior.
References
American Psychological Association. (2013). APA guidelines for the undergraduate psychology major: Version 2.0. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/undergrad/index.aspx
Holmes, J. D., & Beins, B. C. (2009). Psychology is a science: At least some students think so. Teaching of Psychology, 36, 5-11. doi:10.1080/00986280802529350
Zachar, P., & Leong, F. T. L. (1992). A problem of personality: Scientist and practitioner differences in psychology. Journal of Personality, 60, 665-677.
