PSYC 1010 Lecture 34: PSYC 1010 Lecture 34 Notes
PSYC 1010 Lecture 34 Notes
Introduction
The Case Study
• Jean Piaget taught us about children’s thinking after carefully observing and questioning
only a few children.
• Studies of only a few chimpanzees have revealed their capacity for understanding and
language.
• Intensive case studies are sometimes very revealing.
• They show us what can happen, and they often suggest directions for further study. But
atypical individual cases may mislead us.
• Unrepresentative information can lead to mistaken judgments and false conclusions.
• Indeed, anytime a researcher mentions a finding
• Smokers die younger: 95 percent of men over 85 are nonsmokers) someone is sure to
offer a contradictory anecdote
• Well, I have an uncle who smoked two packs a day and lived to be 89
• Dramatic stories and personal experiences (even psychological case examples)
command our attention and are easily remembered.
• Journalists understand that, and often begin their articles with personal stories.
• Stories move us.
• But stories can mislead. Which of the following do you find more memorable?
• “In one study of 1300 dream reports concerning a kidnapped child, only 5 percent
correctly envisioned the child as dead” (Murray & Wheeler, 1937).
• “I know a man who dreamed his sister was in a car accident, and two days later she died
in a head-on collision!”
• Numbers can be numbing, but the plural of anecdote is not evidence.
• As psychologist Gordon Allport (1954, p. 9) said, “Given a thimbleful of [dramatic] facts
we rush to make generalizations as large as a tub.”
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