Statistics is often used in psychology in order to prove certain behaviors and conditions by collecting data. I just wanted to share a quick thought about statistics that really started to bother me. Often statistics are used in order to prove something about people in our society. Nevertheless, these statistics may often be wrong and don’t really show the true results. The results can be manipulated in order to make them seem correct. The idea that that is possible really disturbed me
For example, I recently learned that according to statistics most criminals are African American. However, what statistics did not show was that most of the crimes the African Americans committed were very minor. The Whites are actually the ones that commit the dreaded crimes such as murder and rape. Nevertheless, because of the results of the statistics, most people will simply automatically believe that the Blacks are the ones that commit most crimes and will begin to form opinions and ideas that are actually false.
Another way through which statistics can be controlled is when the person conducting the research for the data only chooses subjects who will respond to his survey as he wants. For example, if one is trying to make a serve about how many people like chocolate ice cream out of 100 people, he will specifically choose 89 people about whom he is certain will like chocolate ice cream (I know it’s a dumb example but I was trying to give an easy one so bear with me).Therefore, it will look in his survey like most people like chocolate ice cream although there is no way of knowing if that is really the case.
It is troublesome that we cannot really rely on statistics all the time. Although there are ways to determine when statistics are “wrong” not everyone knows how o do some and will therefore base their opinions on incorrect ideas.
Carmit, everything you said is true.
ReplyDeleteSomeone might have statistics that make black people seem like the criminals, but someone else may have it for white people. It depends on what you are looking at.
There could be a study that says statistically, girls do better with boys in the room, and one that says girls do better without boys. They could both be true- one man used girls used to being with boys, and when they were taken away from the boys they started failing because they didn't have to try as hard.
Don't stress- you just have to look at more than one statistic. And we should hope that people want to get the facts out there, and not tell the public lies. That is why people need to be more aware of what happens in the real world instead of, say, wasting their time on pageants for their 1 year old child.