PSY 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Dependent And Independent Variables, Prefrontal Cortex, Phineas Gage

• School: University at Buffalo
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 101
• Professor: Quinton Wendy

Document Summary

Skepticism- involves questioning everything, asking why, evidence, Humility- wiling to reject yourself and realize that you are not good enough for something. Measurement and description- devise method for measuring psychological variable of interest. Characterize thoughts, feelings or behavior based on measurement- ex facebook self disclosure. Private vs. public put everything out there vs. putting very little out there. Predict under what conditions something will happen and under what conditions it wont. Disclose when help likely and when it isn"t. See value of research in the real world. Understanding how something works often leads to greater control. Analysis of the experiences of a particular person or group of people. Who do we pick?- those who extraordinary experiences are difficult or impossible to recreate in lab. Phineas gage- railroad foreman(1848) rail went through his head and survived, complete personality change, prefrontal cortex. Observing and describing naturally occurring phenomena usually with little experimenter intervention- ex.