INDIVIDUAL GROUP-DIFFERENCES IN THE PERCEPTION AND KNOWLEDGE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL-RESEARCH

Psychology, perhaps more than any other science, has been open to the erroneous criticism that much of the knowledge it yields is 'common-se nse' or 'common knowledge'. A small body of research indicates that ev en psychology students, when answering questions requiring a knowledge of psychological principles give incorrect but common-sense answers. Few studies, however, have compared psychology students' performance w ith that of other student groups. The present study administered a 38- item multiple-choice questionnaire designed to tap respondents' knowle dge of psychological research to first and final year psychology, soci ology, business studies, engineering and English students. Psychologis ts performed significantly better than did the other four groups with sociology students outscoring the engineering and business studies stu dents. Although there was a main effect of year, with the final year s tudents performing better than the first, there was no significant yea r x group interaction, indicating that individual first year groups pe rformed no more poorly than did individual final year groups. No signi ficant group difference was found when respondents were asked whether psychology was common sense. However, engineering students were less i nclined to regard psychology as a science or a social science than was any other student group. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.