Tiffany Bui

1. The five key tenants of Realism are:

a. A definite world exists, and this definite world is comprised of definite entities
that also exist and have certain relations, properties, and powers. Additionally,
“the way the world is” exists whether the observer sees it so. For example, the
sun is shining outside regardless of whether an observer is inside and in a room
where they do not perceive sunlight.
b. The second tenant is that it is possible to acquire a good deal of information
about the world that exists outside of the observer.
c. The third tenant is that the goal of science is to acquire and/or obtain that
knowledge about the world (a definite world and information about the world
that exists independent of the observer).
d. The scientific theories proposed are deemed true or false based on their
relationship with ‘the way the world is’ (i.e., does it go against what we have
observed about the world or go for what we have observed about the world).
e. The final tenant is that science should be optimistic with our progress towards
uncovering theories that go for ‘the way the world is’ as the theories that have
historically and currently been generated reflect how we are getting closer to the
truth and ‘the way the world is’.
The implications for how science is conducted based on these tenants of Realism are
that we all essentially follow a universal set of rules in science, which is that this is the truth
regardless of our own subjective feelings about a certain measurement or a certain result.
Colloquially, “numbers don’t lie” and the core elements of Realism reflect a positive view on
the world and look to science positively, that there is truth in both the observable and the
unobservable. So, while the numbers do not lie for lack of better words and there is a
universal truth that we as scientists attempt to get closer to with each scientific theory and
discovery and that is confirmed by ‘the way the world is’ regardless of how one may feel
about it, there is also that same truth that can be applied to things like particles, atoms, and
molecules, widening the view of the world and allowing us to be more positive and
motivated for new scientific information.
2. The Popperian view of how science progresses is that you do not progress science
through proving theories right but you progress science by proving theories wrong. For
example, it the syllogism of confirmation is an invalid way to view scientific progression.
You cannot see it as if a certain theory is true, a certain predicted data pattern will be
proved, therefore if the observations confirm the predicted data pattern, that initial
theory is true.
Instead, scientific progress is made by testing competing rival hypotheses that do
not make the same predictions as the initial theory. Thus, the syllogism of falsification is
the way science progresses, meaning that if the initial theory is true, we would
hypothetically see a certain predicted data pattern. However, in this case, what we
observe fails to confirm that certain predicted data pattern, thus we know that this
certain initial theory is false.
3. To summarize, a health psychologist wanted to observe the effect of perceived risk and
the response efficacy of self-protection. The health psychologist gets funding to
investigate the effectiveness of a theoretically driven intervention in decreasing alcohol
use and illegal drugs in at-risk youth. In this psychologist’s study, she tries to display to
the disadvantaged youth the dangers of drug use by taking them to places such as youth
centers and hospitals to talk to young adults that have been negatively affected by drugs
and alcohol. Additionally, she also subjects them to discussion groups led by research
assistants about the topic of drugs and alcohol.
A negative result or even increased drug use within the middle school youth is a
possibility after this study, and the failure to find an intervention effect relates to the
caveats around falsification by causing one to question if the initial core substantive
theory is the problem or if one or more of the auxiliary hypotheses have been falsified.
A stipulation or a limitation of not being able to find an intervention effect then is that it
begins to question if in all cases that data does not follow the predicted pattern if that
makes the theory false automatically. This leads to caveats because as the textbook
mentions, the usual case is the theory AND the auxiliary hypotheses AND the boundary
conditions all together lead to the observed pattern, so all must be true or all must be
false. And often times, the auxiliary hypotheses and the boundary conditions are just as
faulty as the initial theory itself. Finally, the stipulations of falsification is that it is simply
difficult to ascertain whether a pattern is observed due through a faulty and subjective
observation, there remains how we are able to tell whether the pattern we observed is
generalizable for the population?
4. Exercise 6: In Popper’s view, falsification theories are critical for advancing science
because it is an optimistic view of science despite its pessimistic outlook and according
to Popper, it is because falsification relies on deductive reasoning, which is logically
possible. Moreover, especially in the behavioral sciences, falsification better gets at the
more general questions that psychological theories target because the psychological
and behavioral sciences are more restricted in their scope. Theories are not rejected
immediately on failure to obtain predicted results because Popper himself
acknowledges that in scientific application, singular discordant facts by themselves
rarely do and rarely should falsify theories because too many behavioral science studies
lack the statistical power to obtain the predicted pattern of results. In a lot of cases, the
lack of statistical power is enough of a reason that we did not acquire the results that
we thought we would in theory. Ultimately, Popper’s view is critical for advancing
science is because the aim is constant efforts for closer approximation to the truth, or
verisimilitude, thus we are in a constant mode of discovery, and the syllogism of
falsification allows us to make our ‘outer circle’ much smaller but refuting theories that
are false, essentially eliminating theories that are faulty and making us one step closer
to the truth.
5. Exercise 17: Attached.
6. Exercise 18: Attached.