Читать книгу Methods in Psychological Research - Annabel Ness Evans - Страница 14

We professors hear our students make the following kinds of statements all the time: “I read that . . . ” “I heard that . . . ” “I saw somewhere that. . . . ” We often reply, “Just because you read it, heard it, or saw it doesn’t make it true.” Accepting an idea as true because it was claimed to be so by a source we respect is the method of acquiring knowledge by authority. This method of acquiring knowledge is pervasive in our world. We learn from our parents, from our teachers, from our religious leaders, and from the media.

Sometimes the authority figures from whom we acquire knowledge are good authorities, and by accepting what they tell us, we avoid having to evaluate the evidence ourselves and save ourselves an enormous amount of work. Unfortunately, often we do not discriminate between good and bad authorities. You have heard the adage Consider the source. We often don’t consider the source—sometimes we don’t even remember the source! Recall our students who heard it somewhere, read it somewhere. . . .

Consider the following dialogue:

“Women are more emotional and less rational than men.”

“How do you know that?”

“My philosophy professor said so.”

The belief expressed in this example is a belief acquired through authority. The truth of the belief depends on the credibility of the authority.

Uncritical acceptance of an idea acquired through tradition, intuition, or authority is a flawed method of acquiring knowledge. An intuitive belief that eating pizza late at night will make you dream about dying is probably not going to adversely affect your life. Likewise, not eating pork because your pastor says it is a sin or never wearing white shoes after Labor Day will have few negative consequences in the larger scheme of things. But feeding your infant nothing but eggs for the first year of her life on the advice of your meditation guru (as a relative of one of the authors of this book did) is a decision better made after a more rigorous evaluation of information. Accepting such advice on the basis of this particular authority is doubly flawed: a flawed source and a flawed process.