Annals of Pop Psychology

The Times links to this Psych Central piece that attempts to make connections between how we treat our pets and our spouses. The Times article asks key questions:

Greetings: Even on bad days, we greet our pets with a happy, animated hello, and usually a pat on the head or a hug. Do you greet your spouse that way?

Why in fact, the key to my relationship is patting my partner on top of the head when I come home. I then give her some partner treats and fill her food bowl.

Holding grudges: Even when our pets annoy us by wrecking the furniture or soiling the floor, we don’t stay mad at them.

Precisely. I find my relationship works because when my partner uses the couch as a bathroom, it doesn't bother me at all!

The Psych Central piece makes even more relevant points:

Acceptance
Few pet owners personalize their pets’ reactions to others to an extreme that makes them so embarrassed that they fear their image is tarnished or they become resentful of their pets. The fact that the dog is licking every part of the arriving guest’s body is cause to pull him away or laugh it away. The cat that will not come out of hiding or the parrot that is screeching is left without judgment or excuses. That’s them!

In fact, I am completely supportive when my partner dives under the bed when the garbage truck comes by.  Moreover, when she is cleaning herself with her tongue, I totally understand.

The Rorschach Test, Wikipedia, and Psychologists' Outrage

There was an interesting article regarding research and wikipedia in the Times today. Specifically, the 10 images of the Rorschach exam up on the entry's page, as well as the most common answers offered to each of the inkblots. This seemingly innocuous posting has led to outrage and the threat of lawsuits from psychologists, who fear that the publication of the most common answers may lead, among other things, to patients "gaming" the test in the future, as well as undoing decades of papers and conclusions based upon the Rorschach test (which, I did not realize, is "one of the oldest continually used psychological assessment tests"). Wikipedia's defenders argue that the images are public domain (the copyright expired years ago), and suggest that lawsuits from companies that charge $110 to $185 for the images should be clearly risible.

Admitting my knowledge of the field of psychology is limited to an undergrad course and some readings in grad school, I have to say that I side with the Wikipedia defenders on this. Even if it is a useful tool in helping determine patients' psychological states, it cannot be the only one. I also fail to see how the publication of the images now undoes the validity of the work of "tens of thousands" of papers that base their arguments, results, conclusions, etc., on the Rorschach test, as one of the opponents suggests will happen. Likewise, I don't buy that new images can't be created because there's no "normative data" about them. If that were the case, then psychology could never use any "new" methods and tests, because the "normative data" to legitimate them is always absent at the point of initiation. Finally, as a good historian, I don't really buy into the whole "scientific" arguments of the psychologists. One of my pet peeves is when history gets lumped in with the social sciences. You can easily say that the social sciences and history unquestionably influence and dialogue with each other frequently. Yet the whole notion that there can be some "scientific" "truth" behind a lot of the social sciences is....suspect, and psychology is one of the grosser offenders in this regard.

The one thing the article never really gets into is the answers, though. Both the psychologists wanting the images removed and the site's defenders really avoid the fact that "common" answers are included. It strikes me that putting the images up by themselves in no way substantively leads to patients being able to "game" the test, but including common answers could influence the outcome, I suppose. Yet this complaint doesn't really register in either the psychologists' attacks nor in the site's defenders' arguments, which would make me think it's really not so important after all, and that it really is more a matter of control than of damaging research.

I don't think this spells doom for people who are issuing new research (like, say, oh, I don't know, publications on universities in Brazil during the dictatorship...), primarily because newer publications remain in copyright, and if anybody really wanted to learn what somebody was saying without buying the book, they can easily use a library. Still, it raises some interesting questions and debates over the role of research ("scientific" or otherwise) and publications/summarizations/etc. on public sites.

Psychology in Modern Torture

In an open letter to the President of the American Psychological Association, a group of private sector psychologists and professors have demanded an explanation of the APA's role in developing the methods of torture currently in use for "terrorists." In their words:

Every report of horrific abuses occuring at Guantanamo and elsewhere has not only cast doubt upon this basic premise of APA policy, these reports have repeatedly highlighted psychologists' abuse of psychological knowledge for purposes of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Yet the APA has never made any public attempt to investigate such reports. Even if certain psychologists attempted to "keep interrogations safe and ethical," the OIG [Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General] report demonstrates once and for all that BSCT [Behavioral Science Consultation Teams] and SERE [Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape] psychologists, among others, were responsible for the development, migration, and perpetration of abuses.

The ideas of using medical, biological, and other scientific knowledge is certainly not a new idea, but do we really want to have our psychologists referred to in the same ways as the Nazi Doctors or the "scientists" at Japan's "Unit 731?" From how it appears, after it's all over, we'll treat the officials at our facilities as we did those from Japan: exonerate them of their crimes and give them high level positions in thanks for their innovative work in destroying people (specifically, on that subject, after General MacArthur commuted the death and prison sentences of the officials, Lieutenant General Shiro Ishii became the supervisor of biological research at the University of Maryland).

Steven Soldz, who's signature leads on the letter, also wrote this for the Atlantic Free Press.