Normative Science

Now that i THINK i have a grasp of normative vs causal approaches to psychology i think i would take a normative approach. I am very scientific and like to work with straight facts and data HOWEVER humans are very complex. I believe, depending on the phenomenon, it might be difficult to try to make a cause-effect study and have it be relevant to how people react emotionally to a situation. For example, my group and i were discussing premarital sex in different countries, specifically north america vs middle east for simplicity sake. By sending out a survey with different questions regarding social aspects of the individuals life (culture, religion, upbringing etc) we would be able to have enough information to prove or disprove a hypothesis or question as to why individuals would chose to have or not have premarital sex. I believe in these types of situations there would be more then one possible reason as to why someone would or would not have premarital sex- this is a specific example. Human reasoning and thought processes may not necessarily be only from within- much of the time the why involves outside forces and influences. To try and break this down into a casual approach- attempting to control the independent variables to prove or disprove the hypothesis- would be near impossible because there are way too many possible variables to create an experiment that would create valid results. A person can have a reaction to a situation- whether it is appropriate or not- but there can be many factors effecting the way they react and for this reason human thought and emotion might be best studied socially (social norms, beliefs etc). 

Michelle