Psychology, like most professions, holds many little secrets. They’re well known and usually accepted amongst the profession itself, but known to few “outsiders” or even journalists — whose job it is to not only report research findings, but put them into some sort of context.
One of those secrets is that most psychology research done in the U.S. is consistently done primarily on college students — specifically, undergraduate students taking a psychology course. It’s been this way for the better part of 50 years.
But are undergraduate college students studying at a U.S. university representative of the population in America? In the world? Can we honestly generalize from such un-representative samples and make broad claims about all human behavior (a trait of exaggeration fairly commonplace made by researchers in these kinds of studies).
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When I did my doctoral research in 1999 on the effects of a trauma history on therapists treating survivors of sexual abuse, I chose to interview and work with “experienced” therapists to avoid just this bias that you discuss. Its a very important bias in social science research. Students are a captive audience and much more readily available than a more general pool of subjects. It took me quite some time and a lot of frustration to locate my sample.
Thank you for this important article. It validates my decision to market to the entire population instead of to the groups that attract people who fit their preconceived notions.
It also helps explain how a doctor can say, “I have seen many hundreds, if not thousands, of patients like Rose over the past 30 years. I have never had one–no, not one–say to me, ‘Gosh, Doctor, there are some real benefits to all this depression!’” Seems this one mistakes his small slice for the whole, while not realizing that such beliefs become wrongly validated by attracting the slice that corresponds to them.
The slice I attract is looking for insight and meaning in their depression and mania. While I recognize that some percent of the whole are incapable of it, we will never know if it is 1%, 99%, or somewhere in between, until we accept that it is possible and start teaching people how.
This was probably the best article I’ve read here ever! yes, people who have been in the mental health system for a decade may have different situations than young college students. Thanks for the awareness!!
Like any profession, we psychologists take our work seriously. I can’t stand when people think they have outsmarted men and women with PHDs by coming up with a simple idea.
I’ve had this argument with a professor a while back and it turns out psychology has done extensive research showing that many psychological principals that are found in undergraduates can also be found in adults all around the country. Students differ in only a few areas; they tend to be more educated(no surprise there) and have more money than the average American random sample. However if evidence shows that using students may middle the data WE CHOOSE TO USE OTHER SUBJECTS THAT ARE A BETTER REPRESENTATIVES.
we are not stupid.
Legally, we don’t consider folks to be responsible “adults” until 21, and yet their thoughts and behavior beforehand should still be considered “representative” of the population at large? So how does that work?
In any case, “age” is a commonsense variable, so how ’bout if researchers just make it clear when most of their participants are students? Problem solved.
Another unknown factor is that college students have a strong possibility that they have Subliminal Distraction exposure. Explained under the physiology of sight and hearing, believed to be a harmless nuisance in the Design field, visual SD is capable of causing a variety of apparent psychiatric symptoms.
That means the study might be compromised if one of the subjects had a change in their exposure.
No drug company controls for this problem Although several of them downloaded the contents of my site none ever contacted me.
Having a B.S. Degree in Psychology, this doesn’t come to me as a shock. I was a participant in a few research studies. They were always recruiting for subjects.
Not only is this a problem in psychological research. But, research methods 101 teaches that for any study to have any validity, it must have at least 100 subjects. I can’t count the number of studies I found published that have 50. Or 20 subjects in the study. These studies were a waste of time.
It promotes the belief that psychology research is not “real” science. But, no one seems to care. Or not enough people care.
Yes, a lot of studies use undergraduates as participants — this does not mean that all of them do, and it does not mean that their results cannot be generalized to the population they are trying to represent. Cognitive psychology, developmental psychology and evolutionary psychology are just quick examples of fields that are easily generalizable to human’s in general.
Also, when findings are published regarding any trait or behavior that has been shown to be universal and occurring in many cultures, those cultures are also included in the sample.
Psychology Student – Actually, all of the types of psychology fields you listed are indeed susceptible to the bias of using college students for many of their studies.
Johnny – I’d love to see a few references for this. I’m not aware of any studies (and I’ve looked) that have demonstrated that studying college students is equivalent, say, to studying 40-year-olds.
It surprises me that a serious researcher would think it’s reasonable to take a sample of college students and try to generalize to the rest of the population. I, too, think much differently about the world at age 37 than I did in my late teens/early twenties. I was a lot more idealistic back in those days and spent a lot more of my time back then under the influence.