PSYC 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Longitudinal Study, Naturalistic Observation, Serendipity

• School: McGill University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: Jens Pruessner

Document Summary

Critical thinking skill: identifying the need for control groups, recognizing that large samples are more reliable than small samples. It is a way of finding answers to empirical questions that can be answered by observations or measure. It has 4 goals: describing what happened, predicting when it happened, controlling what causes it to happen, and explaining why it happened. The scientific method depends on theories hypotheses and research. A theory (model of interconnected ideas and concepts that explains what is observed and makes predictions about future events) should generate a hypothesis (a specific prediction of what should be observed in the world if the theory is correct). If the theory is accurate the hypothesis should be supported. Once hypotheses have been developed research, which involves the systematic and careful collection of data, or objective information that provides a test of the hypothesis, and ultimately says if the theory is likely to be supported.