PSYC14H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: The Takeaway, Operationalization, Egocentrism
Document Summary
Starting with a story: darius, a king of ancient persia, was intrigued by the variety of cultures he met in his travels. He has found, for example, that the callatians, who lived in india, ate the bodies of their dead fathers. The greeks, of course, did not do that - the greeks practiced cremation and regarded the funeral pyre as the natural and fitting way to dispose of the dead. Lack of food: overcrowding, climate change, beliefs and values, beliefs about medical and spiritual benefits, beliefs in energy transference. Imperative of war: need to return bodies of the dead from the frontlines to their family, cremation associated with valor of soldiers. Interpretation: causality, all research has the implicit goal of identifying how one (or more) variable(s) cause changes in a different variable(s), criteria for causal inference: There is an association between variable x and variable y. Need to rule out alternative explanations: correlational versus experimental research design:
