Introduction
Objectivism in the decision-making process is one of the most vital requirements for conducting scientific research. Striving for free-of biases academic work is exceptionally essential in psychology, where the primary number of studies are qualitative. Personally, I noted the problems with the confirmation bias, or as it is also often called, the interpretational bias. Understanding this bias’s nature and negative impact will help to conduct more reliable research.
Discussion
Biased interpretation of information for the sake of one’s own benefit and opinion harms many scientific fields, in particular psychology. When collecting data to test a specific hypothesis, scientists hope it will be confirmed, so data that contradicts this is often considered a failure (OpenStax College, 2014). As a result, a particular field remains poorly understood. The irrelevance of the methods used to test the hypothesis has already been confirmed, but only a few researchers want to publish work with negative results.
The discussed situations affected my decision-making in the past when analyzing the literature on the psychology of killers. Conducting the literature review, I unconsciously strived to find only resources confirming my hypothesis. Such actions result in the occurrence of another bias of representative, which is unaffordable in the scientific field (OpenStax College, 2014). The propensity to endorse my’s own opinion highlights the necessity to work on my thinking and analyzing process. In order to improve my decision-making, I plan to apply some principles of cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy to achieve objective data analysis.
Conclusion
Concluding the above information, it can be stated that the biases in the psychological research field damage the validity and reliability of studies. The self-observation while searching for information can help identify potential preferences in the decision-making process. The recommendations for conducting a fair scientific examination include implementing techniques such as the null hypothesis, which makes the two results potentially have the same value. By taking into consideration such a method, more valid results can be achieved.
Reference
OpenStax College. (2014). Psychology. OpenStax. Web.