PSYC 102 Chapter Notes -Falsifiability, Confirmation Bias

• School: UBC
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 102
• Professor: David Klonsky

Document Summary

Given random data, we look for order and meaningful patterns. We attend to what we agree with and ignore what we don"t. Examples: study on attitudes towards capital punishment. Beliefs would go even more towards the polar extremes. Phrenology example skull shape determines personality. When it comes to knowing truth : we can"t trust our own personal experiences, we can"t trust opinions of friends, relatives, we can"t trust the opinions of smart people. Best protection against poor human thinking/ reasoning. Theories hypothesis research + observation theory. Near truth = when human reasoning is in check by scientific investigation. Two possible outcomes: inaccurate beliefs gradually get discredited and gradually replaced by more accurate beliefs.