PSYC 1010 Lecture 27: PSYC 1010 Lecture 27 Notes
17 May 2018
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PSYC 1010 Lecture 27 Notes
Introduction
Yankee Professors
• When two Yale scientists challenged the conventional opinion, Thomas Jefferson
reportedly jeered, “Gentlemen, I would rather believe that those two Yankee professors
would lie than to believe that stones fell from Heaven.”
• Sometimes scientific inquiry turns jeers into cheers.
• More often, science becomes society’s garbage disposal, sending crazy-sounding ideas
to the waste heap, atop previous claims of perpetual motion machines, miracle cancer
cures, and out-of-body travels into centuries past.
• To sift reality from fantasy, sense from nonsense, therefore requires a scientific attitude
• Being skeptical but not cynical, open but not gullible
• “To believe with certainty,” says a Polish proverb, “we must begin by doubting.”
• As scientists, psychologists approach the world of behavior with a curious skepticism,
persistently asking two questions
• What do you mean?
• How do you know?
• When ideas compete, skeptical testing can reveal which ones best match the facts.
• Do parental behaviors determine children’s sexual orientation?
• Can astrologers predict your future based on the position of the planets at your birth?
• Is electroconvulsive therapy (delivering an electric shock to the brain) an effective
treatment for severe depression?
• As we will see, putting such claims to the test has led psychological scientists to answer
No to the first two questions and yes to the third.
• Putting a scientific attitude into practice requires not only curiosity and skepticism but
also humility
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