PSY-2012 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Analysis Paralysis, Intelligence Quotient, Lunar Phase
Document Summary
Pros and cons of heuristics: pros: They help us escape analysis paralysis : cons: Research methods help us to avoid the mistakes that arise from using heuristics uncritically. Intuition vs. science: common sense can be very useful for some purposes. But it"s also completely wrong sometimes: out intuitive understanding of the world and ourselves is sometimes wrong, we cant always trust our own judgment or the judgment of others. Psychology as a science: this is the big idea that psychology is a science, in psychology we must abandon relying on opinions, instead we find out which explanations best fit the evidence. Scientific inquiry: approach the world with curious skepticism. Requires humility: we may have to reject out own ideas. Ex) publish findings in a journal: allows us to test specific hypotheses derived from broader theories of how things work, theories are never proven, but hypotheses can be confirmed or disconfirmed.
