Psychology 2800E Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Weighing Scale, Operational Definition, Rationality

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2800E
• Professor: Patrick Brown

Document Summary

Saying "responses were very slow" is a poor, vague response. Saying "average response time was 850 ms per trial" is a better way of reporting: the first is an opinion, the second is a statement of fact, we should always present our data as a statement of fact. Operational definitions: we define concepts in terms of the procedures for measuring them, how good someone is at doing that particular intelligence test is exactly what we are measuring, According to it, the weight can be any of the numbers shown on the scale after, including the very moment the object is put on it. In any area of science, the current model may be disconfirmed by future discoveries: the history of science is one of new discoveries disconfirming old models. Precise instruments: we use instruments of the appropriate degree of precision for the behaviour we study.