PSYC 1011 Lecture Notes - Naturalistic Observation, Experimental Psychology, Confirmation Bias
Document Summary
Psychology is the scientific study of the mind, brain, and behavior. As a discipline, psychology spans many levels of analysis: biological social influences. Need to examine all of them: genetic/neurochemical/physiological and mental/behavioral/social level. Challenging and fascinating 1. 1 explain why common sense isn"t always wrong. 5 difficulties: human behavior difficult to predict many causes, these causes influence one another. Individual differences in thinking, emotion, and personality: we influence one another reciprocal determinism, behavior shaped by culture emic (culture from inside) vs. etic (culture from outside) Belief see world precisely as is seeing is believing : example: which table is longer (optical illusion). Point of it is, we need to look further. When common sense is right: not all common sense is wrong, can serve as generator of hypothesis, test the hypothesis! Psychology as a science 1. 2 explain the importance of science as a set of safeguards against biases. Is an approach to empiricism: tests observations using rigorous methods.
