PSYB01H3 Lecture 1: PSYB01
Document Summary
The critical difference between psychology, as opposed to the study of philosophy, literature, or history is that modern psychology is based on the scientific method. Philosophy & humanities the themes of psychology: psychology, like the humanities, is concerned with fundamental issues concerning human experience. Natural science the methods of psychology: however, psychologies use the methods of the natural sciences to better understand psychological phenomena. The methods we tend to use are subject to severe limitations. Everyone thinks but much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, distorted, partial, uniformed or downright prejudiced. Confirmation bias and discounting problem we tend to seek out information that is consistent with our expectations and discount information that is inconsistent with those expectations: expectations/bias. The limited data problem we tend to make inferences on the basis of very little information: behavior is probabilistic and multi-determined, even highly extraverted or sociable people behave shyly in some circumstances.