Psychology And Statistics: The Importance Of Probabilities In Behavioral Science

Mathematics is an important part of science and psychology, as a science, makes use of them to achieve its objectives of predicting and controlling human behavior.

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

Psychology and statistics: what relationship do they have?

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

In this way it becomes totally reasonable that the psychology as a science that it is, 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 purposes does psychology have 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 understand well what is meant by the concepts prediction and control . By prediction It is understood as the ability to predict behavior with certainty, while for control It will be understood simply as the ability to modify the conditions that affect behavior (Coon and Mitterer, 2010: 15).

The moment when probabilities 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 to say, for psychology to be able to predict and/or control behavior at the time, it is necessary that it be able to make all the particular data obtained through research capable of being generalized and from there be able to infer, with a rate of sufficient certainty, 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 seen in the fact of the use of the surveythe studies correlational and case studies as research methods. The survey is used to obtain data and 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 allows you to study 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 the people being treated, for example, in a psychological clinic or in the work or school environment, for example.

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

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 the existential point of view of many people – what is sought is a certainty that gives meaning to the reality we live.