Goals of Psychological Enquiry

Like every scientific discipline, psychological enquiry works toward five interlocking goals, pursued objectively rather than through personal opinion. Description means recording a behaviour or phenomenon as accurately and specifically as possible - for instance, breaking down 'study habits' into concrete, observable behaviours like attending class regularly or revising on a fixed schedule, so the behaviour can be properly understood before anything else is attempted. Prediction follows once a behaviour has been accurately described: by working out how one behaviour relates to others, a researcher can forecast, within some margin of error, when or under what conditions it is likely to occur, and this forecasting becomes more dependable as the number of people studied grows. Explanation goes a step further and asks WHY a behaviour occurs - it looks for the causal or antecedent conditions that bring a behaviour about, or that stop it from occurring, so that a genuine cause-effect relationship can be established between variables. Control means being able to use that causal understanding to make a behaviour happen, stop it, or change its strength, deliberately altering the antecedent conditions - a therapist changing a client's behaviour through therapy is a real-world example. Finally, application is the practical payoff of the other four goals: research is ultimately conducted to solve real problems and improve people's quality of life, whether through therapy, education, or …