lOMoARcPSD|3013804
Lecture notes, Chapters 1-7,
11
Introductory Psychology I (MacEwan
University)
, lOMoARcPSD|3013804
PSYCH 104
Chapter 1: Psychology and Scientific Thinking
What is psychology? Science vs. intuition
Psychology and levels of analysis:
- Psychology: the scientific study of the mind, brain, and behaviour.
- Levels of analysis:
Higher rungs tied most closely to social influences – Involves relating to others
and personal relationship – “The mind”
Middle rungs tied most closely to psychological influences – Involves thoughts,
feelings, and emotions
Lower rungs tied most closely to biological influences – “The brain”
What makes psychology challenging – and fascinating:
- 5 challenges:
1. Human behaviour is difficult to predict
Actions are multiply determined: produced by many factors
2. Psychological influences are rarely independent of each other
3. Individual differences: people differ from each other in thinking, emotion,
personality, and behaviour.
4. People influence each other
Reciprocal determinism
5. Behaviour is shaped by culture
Emic approach: investigators study the behaviour of a culture from the
perspective of a “native” or insider
Etic approach: investigators study the behaviour of a culture from the
perspective of an outsider
Why we can’t always trust our common sense:
- Naïve realism: the belief that we see the world precisely as it is
- We assuming that “seeing is believing” and trust our intuitive perception of the world and
ourselves
- In many cases, “believing is seeing” rather than the reverse
, Psychology as a science:
- Not all common sense is wrong
Hypothesis generation
- Science is not a body of knowledge but an approach to evidence
- Science consists of a set of attitudes and skills designed to prevent us from fooling
ourselves
- Science begins with empiricism, the premise that knowledge should initially be acquired
through observation
What is a scientific theory?
- A scientific theory is an explanation for a large number of findings in that natural world.
- Generate predictions regarding new data we haven’t yet observed
- Hypothesis: testable prediction derived from a scientific theory
- Theories are general explanations, hypotheses are specific predictions derived from these
explanations
- Misconception 1: a theory explains one specific event
- Misconception 2: a theory is just an educated guess
Science as a safeguard against bias: protecting us from ourselves:
- 2 traps into which scientists can fall under:
- Confirmation bias: the tendency to seek out evidence that supports our hypotheses and
deny, dismiss, or distort evidence that contradicts them
- Belief perservance: the tendency to stick to our initial belief even when evidence
contradicts them
Science is not perfect but it’s one of the best tools we have:
- Knowledge is tentative and potentially open to revision
- Knowledge changes rapidly after a paradigm shift
- Science does not “prove” anything but it can falsify
- Not all claims can be falsified and so science has nothing to say about certain things
Metaphysical claims: The boundaries of science
- Metaphysical claims: assertions about the world that is not testable
- Differ from scientific claims in that we could never test them using scientific methods
- Testable claims fall within the province of science, untestable claims don’t
Psychological Pseudoscience: Imposters of science:
The amazing growth of popular psychology:
- Self-help books: about 35,000 published every year, 5% are tested
, What is pseudoscience?
- Pseudoscience: a set of claims that seems scientific but isn’t
- Pseudoscience lacks the safeguards against confirmation bias and belief perservance that
characterize science
Warning signs of pseudoscience:
- 3 of the most crucial warning signs:
1. Overuse of ad hoc immunizing hypotheses: an escape hatch of loophole that
defenders of a theory use to protect their theory from falsification
2. Lack of self-correction
3. Overreliance on anecdotes
Why are we drawn to pseudoscience?
- Apophenia: perceiving meaningful connections among unrelated and even random
phenomena
- Pareidolia: the tendency to perceive meaningful images in meaningless visual stimuli
- Terror management theory: our awareness of our death leaves us with an underlying
sense of terror with which we cope by adopting reassuring cultural world views
Thinking clearly: An antidote against pseudoscience
- 3 important fallacies that are essential when evaluating psychological claims:
1. Emotional reasoning fallacy: the error of using our emotions as guides for
evaluating the validity of a claim
2. Bandwagon fallacy: the error of assuming that a claim is correct just because
many people believe it
3. Not be fallacy: the error of believing that we’re immune from errors in
thinking that afflict other people
The dangers of pseudoscience: why should we care?
- Opportunity cost
- Direct harm
- Blocks scientific thinking
Scientific Thinking: Distinguishing fact from fiction:
Scientific skepticism:
- Scientific skepticism: approach of evaluating all claims with an open mind but insisting
on persuasive evidence before accepting them
- To be a scientific skeptic, we must adopt 2 attitudes:
1. A willingness to keep an open mind to all claims
Lecture notes, Chapters 1-7,
11
Introductory Psychology I (MacEwan
University)
, lOMoARcPSD|3013804
PSYCH 104
Chapter 1: Psychology and Scientific Thinking
What is psychology? Science vs. intuition
Psychology and levels of analysis:
- Psychology: the scientific study of the mind, brain, and behaviour.
- Levels of analysis:
Higher rungs tied most closely to social influences – Involves relating to others
and personal relationship – “The mind”
Middle rungs tied most closely to psychological influences – Involves thoughts,
feelings, and emotions
Lower rungs tied most closely to biological influences – “The brain”
What makes psychology challenging – and fascinating:
- 5 challenges:
1. Human behaviour is difficult to predict
Actions are multiply determined: produced by many factors
2. Psychological influences are rarely independent of each other
3. Individual differences: people differ from each other in thinking, emotion,
personality, and behaviour.
4. People influence each other
Reciprocal determinism
5. Behaviour is shaped by culture
Emic approach: investigators study the behaviour of a culture from the
perspective of a “native” or insider
Etic approach: investigators study the behaviour of a culture from the
perspective of an outsider
Why we can’t always trust our common sense:
- Naïve realism: the belief that we see the world precisely as it is
- We assuming that “seeing is believing” and trust our intuitive perception of the world and
ourselves
- In many cases, “believing is seeing” rather than the reverse
, Psychology as a science:
- Not all common sense is wrong
Hypothesis generation
- Science is not a body of knowledge but an approach to evidence
- Science consists of a set of attitudes and skills designed to prevent us from fooling
ourselves
- Science begins with empiricism, the premise that knowledge should initially be acquired
through observation
What is a scientific theory?
- A scientific theory is an explanation for a large number of findings in that natural world.
- Generate predictions regarding new data we haven’t yet observed
- Hypothesis: testable prediction derived from a scientific theory
- Theories are general explanations, hypotheses are specific predictions derived from these
explanations
- Misconception 1: a theory explains one specific event
- Misconception 2: a theory is just an educated guess
Science as a safeguard against bias: protecting us from ourselves:
- 2 traps into which scientists can fall under:
- Confirmation bias: the tendency to seek out evidence that supports our hypotheses and
deny, dismiss, or distort evidence that contradicts them
- Belief perservance: the tendency to stick to our initial belief even when evidence
contradicts them
Science is not perfect but it’s one of the best tools we have:
- Knowledge is tentative and potentially open to revision
- Knowledge changes rapidly after a paradigm shift
- Science does not “prove” anything but it can falsify
- Not all claims can be falsified and so science has nothing to say about certain things
Metaphysical claims: The boundaries of science
- Metaphysical claims: assertions about the world that is not testable
- Differ from scientific claims in that we could never test them using scientific methods
- Testable claims fall within the province of science, untestable claims don’t
Psychological Pseudoscience: Imposters of science:
The amazing growth of popular psychology:
- Self-help books: about 35,000 published every year, 5% are tested
, What is pseudoscience?
- Pseudoscience: a set of claims that seems scientific but isn’t
- Pseudoscience lacks the safeguards against confirmation bias and belief perservance that
characterize science
Warning signs of pseudoscience:
- 3 of the most crucial warning signs:
1. Overuse of ad hoc immunizing hypotheses: an escape hatch of loophole that
defenders of a theory use to protect their theory from falsification
2. Lack of self-correction
3. Overreliance on anecdotes
Why are we drawn to pseudoscience?
- Apophenia: perceiving meaningful connections among unrelated and even random
phenomena
- Pareidolia: the tendency to perceive meaningful images in meaningless visual stimuli
- Terror management theory: our awareness of our death leaves us with an underlying
sense of terror with which we cope by adopting reassuring cultural world views
Thinking clearly: An antidote against pseudoscience
- 3 important fallacies that are essential when evaluating psychological claims:
1. Emotional reasoning fallacy: the error of using our emotions as guides for
evaluating the validity of a claim
2. Bandwagon fallacy: the error of assuming that a claim is correct just because
many people believe it
3. Not be fallacy: the error of believing that we’re immune from errors in
thinking that afflict other people
The dangers of pseudoscience: why should we care?
- Opportunity cost
- Direct harm
- Blocks scientific thinking
Scientific Thinking: Distinguishing fact from fiction:
Scientific skepticism:
- Scientific skepticism: approach of evaluating all claims with an open mind but insisting
on persuasive evidence before accepting them
- To be a scientific skeptic, we must adopt 2 attitudes:
1. A willingness to keep an open mind to all claims
