PSY 2174 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Peter Medawar, Pharmacology, Personnel Selection

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 2174
• Professor: Keith Busby

Document Summary

Theories represent (cid:498)ideas(cid:499) about how nature functions. Psychologists suggest ideas about why behaviour occurs the way it does. A psychological theory can be developed on different levels: example: theory of schizophrenia may offer biological causes (genetics), psychological causes (emotional conflict or stress), or both. Theoretical propositions expressed as verbal statements, as mathematical equations or as computer programs. Theories vary in scope and level of explanation. Scope: the range of phenomena that it tries to explain: example: theory of (cid:498)flashbulb memory" tries to explain why personal circumstances surrounding surprising and emotional events are recalled better than everyday events (destruction of wtc) Scope of flashbulb memory relatively restricted very specific memory phenomenon. Theory of human cognition is larger in scope, which accounts for how cognition works in general: the greater the scope of the theory, the more complex the theory becomes. Theories are a mixture of intuition, personal observational and discovered knowledge.