PSYC 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Flat Earth, Animism, Leon Festinger
Document Summary
Most of our knowledge does not come from direct observation of the world, it comes from others (indirectly, by collecting info from other sources) Testimony- telling what you observed (ex- on witness stand in court) After the process is explained, the person will conclude that they had previously overestimated how well they knew how the object worked before. This occurs for objects like toilets, light switches, etc. and also for: solution to these problems is to weight the likelihood that beliefs are true scientific theories (like gravity) that we take for granted. Ex) objects passing through one another (solidity violation), not falling off a cliff (gravity violation), or objects appearing and disappearing (object permanence violation) Phenomena that violate basic constraints lead to skepticism: the status of the source. Ex) national enquirer vs. ny times: assess info compared to prior experience. Need to decide which information to believe if they do conflict.
