[CAS PS 101] - Final Exam Guide - Comprehensive Notes for the exam (92 pages long!)

• School: Boston University
• Department: Psychological & Brain Sciences
• Course: CAS PS 101
• Professor: Natalie Emmons

Document Summary

Psychology is about you and about us. Psychologists explain human behaviors in real life contexts. Psychological science: the study of mind, brain, and behavior. Goals of psychology: understand mental activity, social interactions, and how people acquire behavior. Much of thought and behavior is outside of conscious awareness and control. Ex: participants who held a cup of hot coffee rated another person as warmer and less selfish than did those who held a cup of iced coffee. Ex: we tend to be overly optimistic for future events. Whereas when we think about the past, we don"t think as optimistically; we think about both positives and negatives. We use the scientific method to figure this out. Because not everything that appears in news and articles are hard facts. Critical thinking: systematically evaluating information to reach reasonable conclusions. Ex: researchers found listening to mozart led research participants to score higher on a test related to intelligence.