Question: Do you believe old psychological research techniques that are not back up by neuroscience (eg. introspection) are still useful in modern psychology?

Ella Svahn answered on 16 Nov 2020:

In general, the main problem with ‘old’ psychology studies is that many cannot be replicated; meaning if we repeat the same experiment, we get a different result. Since the scientific method relies on repeated observations, it is hard to conclude anything from experiments where we can’t find the same results twice. But, if we can repeat a study and get the same result again, we can always get some useful information from that. Older studies have often shown a simplified theory or principle of something we understand better today. Some examples are the famous Stanford prison experiments (showing us that we change our behavior based on the social role in a group), or case studies of people with damage in different brain regions, indicating the function of that region (e.g information on how memory works from patient H.M).

Psychology studies might make get quite vague information about very complex things, whilst neuroscience experiments can get more detailed information from simpler things. It can be very hard for neuroscientists to try to break down a complex thing (e.g our thoughts, feelings or introspection) to its simpler parts that we can easily measure in numbers. Therefore, neuroscience cannot always provide evidence for psychology research. However, both parts are needed to fully understand how the brain & mind works on a detailed level all the way up to our complex experience of being alive, such as thinking.