Psychology and statistics: probabilities in Psychology

Mathematics is an important part of science and psychologyAs a science, it makes use of them to achieve its goals of predicting and controlling human behavior.

To this end, the use of probability is important, which allows scientists to have greater certainty when predicting how people act.

Psychology and statistics: how are they related?

The use of math has been an important part of the sciences since they emerged as such at the beginning of the era modern, to the point where the great influence of numbers in what we now call scientific knowledge. Francis Bacon proposed a strong role in mathematics as part of his new method, while Galileo he conceived mathematics as the language with which God wrote nature (Fraile, 2000).

In this way it becomes totally reasonable that the psychologyAs a science, use mathematics in one way or another in your studies, either in an auxiliary way or as part of the hypothetical deductive method. This method has been the subject of one of the constant controversies among psychology theorists (Silva, 2013).

What is the purpose of psychology as a science?

Now, in order to understand the importance of probability in psychological science, it is necessary to understand the purposes of psychology. In this regard, Coon and Mitterer (2010) tell us that psychology pursues four goals, namely: the description, understanding, prediction and control of behavior and mental processes.

It is important, however, to have a good understanding of what is meant by the concepts prediction Y control. For prediction The ability to foresee a behavior with certainty is understood, while by control it will be understood simply with the ability to modify the conditions that affect behavior (Coon and Mitterer, 2010: 15).

The moment the odds come into play

Understanding the above, it can be said that probability helps precisely to achieve the third objective and it is, in a way, the foundation of the fourth point. That is, for psychology to be able to predict and / or control behavior, it is necessary that it be able to make all the particular data that obtained through research are capable of being generalized and from there being able to infer, with a sufficient certainty rate, a behavior, action or situation.

Probability and statistics are used, on the one hand, as a way to obtain, interpret and generalize the data, and on the other, to be able predict certain future events from there. This can be clearly observed in the fact of the use of the survey, the studies correlational and case studies as research methods. The survey is used to obtain data is used to collect information from a representative sample of a population, while Correlational studies look for the relationship that may exist between two variables, which are not necessarily the cause of one another. Finally, the case study that allows studying a single subject or situation in a high degree of detail. (Halguin and Krauss, 2008).

Statistics: a key element to be able to infer results

As expected, all of these methods (and even the experimental method) require probability to be able to infer results. But it goes beyond just numbers, it touches on issues that once applied can affect people that are treated, for example, in a psychological office or in the workplace or school, for example.

The issues dealt with in these three areas directly affect people's lives and for this reason it is important to consider, on the one hand, the chances of success in therapy, or in the job interview or at school, so that a more accurate and efficient intervention can be given than can really help people and give them effective tools to achieve their goals in the best way possible.

In the end, what is sought with probability, from a scientific point of view, will be the predictability of an event. But from a personal point of view -and not infrequently existential of many people- what is sought is a certainty that gives meaning to the reality we live in.

Bibliographic references:

• Bologna, E. (2011) Statistics for Psychology and Education. Córdoba: Ed. Brujas

• Coon, D. and Mitterer, J. (2010) Introduction to Psychology. Mexico: Cengage Learning

• Fraile, G. (2000) History of Philosophy III: From humanism to the Enlightenment. Madrid: BAC.

• Halguin, R., and Krauss, S. (2008) Psychology of Abnormality. Mexico: Mc Graw Hill

• Silva, A. (2013) Philosophical foundations of Psychology. Mexico: PAX