Examples Of Inductive Inferences

Many of the experiments that established the foundation of psychology have been found to contain weak inductive inferences that do not represent humanity as a whole. Along with these founding experiments, many recent experiments continue to contain weak inductive inferences as well. This is not an effective way to continue to develop the foundation of psychology. I will argue that the recent experimental work of Audrey Parrish is invalid because of its weak inductive inferences. An inductive inference is a generalization about a whole population based on a sample of that said population. For example, if all the wild life in the ocean were sampled and it was found that a majority of ocean wildlife has gills it could be inferred that animals …show more content…
In order for an inductive inference to be strong it needs to large and representative of the sampled population as a whole. However, considering the fact that the human population is roughly 7 billion and growing, it is difficult to have a sample be large enough to represent everyone. In order to counteract this then the inference would need to be unbiased. According to Ethan Watters however, most psychology experiments are biased. In his article, “We Aren’t the World,” Watters describes the work of Joe Henrich. Henrich traveled to South America to study the Machiguenga using the Ultimatum Game, expecting to find the same results as previous experiments that supported the idea that all humans share the same cognitive make up. However, his studies did not show this. Henrich realized that almost all test subjects using the Ultimatum Game were from the West, meaning that they showed bias towards the West (Watters 374-375). When inductive inferences are strong and follow the necessary guidelines they can be used to evaluate psychology experiments that aim to understand the motivations for our …show more content…
The Solitaire Illusion is an illusion in which the number of two different elements is the same, but their arrangement is different. Arrangements in which there is one large cluster of an element tend to appear to have more of that said element. Arrangements in which there are many small clusters of an element tend to appear to have less of that said element. Previous experiments had been done on adults and older children, but no experiments had been done on younger children. Along with these experiments, an experiment using the Solitaire Illusion was done on our long distant relatives, primates. It has been found that some primates are susceptible to this illusion just like human adults. Parrish, Agrillo, Perdue, and Beran decided to compare the effects of the Solitaire Illusion on both younger children and primates that had been previous found to be less susceptible to the illusion (Parrish et al. 83-85). The experiment would help to determine if illusions such as the Solitaire Illusion emerge at a specific point in early