Undergraduates' Perceptions Towards Psychology As A Science: Differentiating Explicit Responses From Implicit Associations

It appears your Web browser is not configured to display PDF files. Download adobe Acrobat or click here to download the PDF file.

Click here to download the PDF file.

Creator: 

Plagianakos, Demi Marie

Date: 

2018

Abstract: 

Research has primarily adopted explicit measures to examine students' scientific attitudes towards psychology (Friedrich, 1996). Such measures have been found to be influenced by social desirability characteristics, however (Bartels et al., 2009). Moreover, explicit measures that are more direct tend to yield less scientific attitudes towards psychology compared to less direct ones (Hartwig & Delin, 2003; Provost et al., 2011; Webb, 1988). In this experiment, introduction to psychology students and upper year psychology students completed a go/no-go LDT to explore students' implicit attitudes towards psychology (Perea et al., 2002). Using this procedure, psychology's implicit associations with "science", methodological terminology, as well as scientific and psychological attributes were assessed. The data showed that implicit "science-psychology" and "psychology-methods" associations increase with greater exposure to the psychological curriculum. These results suggest that students' propensity to associate psychology with science after obtaining greater psychology-specific education can be observed at an implicit level.

Subject: 

Psychology - Cognitive

Language: 

English

Publisher: 

Carleton University

Thesis Degree Name: 

Master of Arts: 
M.A.

Thesis Degree Level: 

Master's

Thesis Degree Discipline: 

Psychology

Parent Collection: 

Theses and Dissertations

Items in CURVE are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated. They are made available with permission from the author(s).