PSYB32H3 Lecture Notes - Tabula Rasa, Developmental Psychology, Erik Erikson
Document Summary
What is a theory in general: a set of concepts or propositions that describe and explain some aspect of experience. To organize our knowledge and helps us understand broad range of topics. What is a scientific theory: a public pronouncement indicating what a scientist believes about his or her area specific area of investigation. What are the characteristics of a good theory: parsimony, concise, yet able to explain a wide range of phenomena. Theory that has few principles and explains large number of observations wins to one with many principles but not many observations: falsifiability, capable of making explicit predictions. Allows you to test the theory: heuristic value, can be applied to unknown situations and cases. Good theory lets you investigate other theories from it. You are able to apply the theory outside of the reason it was developed for. Question and controversies about human development: assumptions about human nature.
