PSYC 1150 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Malingering, Statistical Inference, Statistical Significance
26 Jun 2018
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Department
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Week five (October 16 - 20, 2017)
Introduction to Psychology as a Behavioural Science
Lecture 05: Epistemology
What Really Exists?
- Ontology: The search for “What is real”. The study of what “is”.
- Materialism (Marx):
- Only material things (ie. those that can be derived from the senses) exist.
- Idealism (Hegel):
- Some of “reality” exists separately from the sensible world.
How do we Discover/Create the Answers?
- Epistemology: the study of knowledge and how individuals gain knowledge.
- Science studies knowledge via:
-Empiricism (Hume):
- Belief that all knowledge is derived from sensory experience. Bottom-up
theorizing.
-Rationalism (Descartes):
- Belief that at least some knowledge can be known independent of the
senses; e.g., by thinking, deducing, or inferring. Top-down theorizing.
How do Facts Differ from Theory
-Realist View (Popper):
- Sees theories as soft mental images involving values and beliefs while facts are
hard, settled and observable. (Failing to confirm the null hypothesis = probable
truth)
-Realivest View (Foucault):
- The idea that the powerful influence of our thoughts often dictates what we
observe as facts. We only know the world through our consciousness, and it is
coloured by our language and subcultures.
Two Approaches to Knowledge
Logical Positivism Social Constructionism
- Assumes reality is independent of the
knowler
- If the researcher is careful, it is
possible to arirve at unbiased truth.
- Assumes researchers construct
knowledge that is influenced by the
social context of their inquiry.
- There is no such thing as pure,
“unbiased” truth, it always from a
perspective.
Research Methods
-Qualitative Methods
- Case history
- Narrative approach
- Phenomenological method
- Discourse analysis
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Week five (October 16 - 20, 2017)
- Naturalistic observation
- Survey, interview, & focus group methods
-Qualitative
- Descriptive (correlational, . . .)
- Experimental
-Hybrids
- Content analysis
- Q-Sorts
Methods: Common Features
- All are empirical.
- All are systematic.
- All are theoretical.
- All are public.
- All are self-reflective.
- All are open-ended.
The Beauty and Necessity of Good Research Design
- Often our impressions are wrong.
-Prefrontal lobotomy - example of what happens when we rely on our subjective
impressions.
- Egaz Moniz won the Nobel prize for this procedure
- Used to treat schizophrenia and other severe mental disorders
- Severed the fibres connecting the frontal lobe and thalamus
- Controlled studies showed it didn’t work
Heuristics and Biases: How can we be Fooled
-Concepts (Shema): mental grouping of similar objects, people, ideas or events. Simplify
and speed thinking but can also constrain it.
-Prototypes - mental images of pinnacle examples of certain thing.
-Problem Solving:
- Trial and Error
- Algorithms: logical, step-by-step procedure that eventually guarantees a solution
but are slower.
- Heuristics: mental shortcuts of thumb that allows us to solve problems faster.
- Reduce the cognitive energy required to solve problems.
- Tend to oversimplify reality: error-prone.
Common Heuristics (Kahneman and Tversky)
-Representativeness: “like goes with like”
- Base Rate: How common a characteristic or behaviour is in the general
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Week five (October 16 - 20, 2017)
population.
- Base Rate Fallacy: Neglecting to consider base rates.
-Availability “off the top of my head”
- Estimating the likelihood of an occurrence based on the ease with which it comes
to our minds.
Cognitive Biases: Systematic Errors in Thinking
-Hindsight Bias (“I knew it all along”) - tendency to overestimate how well we could have
successfully forecasted known outcomes (ie. “I knew they were the perfect couple”).
-Overconfidence - tendency to overestimate our ability to make correct predictions. These
errors can lead to confidence in false conclusions.
Steps of the Scientific Method
1. Observation
2. Literature Review
3. Research Question
4. Hypothesis Generation
5. Hypothesis Testing
6. Data Analysis
7. Conclusions
8. Dissemination of findings
9. Replication (Reliability and Validity)
Research Designs and Methods
- Descriptive, Correlational, (Semi-experimental,) Experimental, Review, Meta-analysis,
Naturalistic Observation
- Case Study (Descriptive)
- Naturalistic Observation (Descriptive)
- Interview (Descriptive)
- Survey (Descriptive/Correlational)
- Experimental (Experiemental)
Scientific Method: A Toolbox of Skills
- Allows us to test specific hypotheses derived from broader theories of how things work.
- Theories are never “proven,” but hypotheses can be disconfirmed
-Case study designs.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Ontology: the search for what is real . Only material things (ie. those that can be derived from the senses) exist. Some of reality exists separately from the sensible world. Epistemology: the study of knowledge and how individuals gain knowledge. Belief that all knowledge is derived from sensory experience. Belief that at least some knowledge can be known independent of the senses; e. g. , by thinking, deducing, or inferring. Sees theories as soft mental images involving values and beliefs while facts are hard, settled and observable. (failing to confirm the null hypothesis = probable truth) The idea that the powerful influence of our thoughts often dictates what we observe as facts. We only know the world through our consciousness, and it is coloured by our language and subcultures. If the researcher is careful, it is possible to arirve at unbiased truth. knowledge that is influenced by the social context of their inquiry. The beauty and necessity of good research design.
