PSYC 107 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Belief Perseverance, Confirmation Bias, Human Behavior

• School: Texas A&M University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 107
• Professor: Clifford Patrick

Document Summary

Lecture chapter 1 psychology and scientific thinking. 5 factors: human behavior is difficult to predict, psychological influences are rarely independent to each other, people display individual differences in thinking, emotion, personality, people influence one another. Reciprocal determinism: behavior is shaped by culture. Na ve realism: the belief that we see the world precisely as it actually is in truth seeing is believing . Confirmation bias: tendency to seek out evidence that supports our hypothesis and neglect or distort contradicting evidence. Belief perseverance: tendency to stick to our initial beliefs even when evidence contradicts them. Pseudoscience: a set of claims that seem scientific, but aren"t: lack safeguards against confirmation bias and belief perseverance that characterize science, testable belies that are not supported by the evidence, warning signs. Ad hoc immunizing hypotheses: escape hatches to protect against falsification, usually a loophole or exception for negative findings lack of self correction. Lecture chapter 1 psychology and scientific thinking: opportunity cost, direct harm.