PSYC 215 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Hindsight Bias, Cognitive Dissonance, Thought Experiment

• School: McGill University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 215
• Professor: Mark Baldwin

Document Summary

Hindsight bias = the tendency to be overconfident about whether they could have predicted a given outcome (e. g. looking at the results before guessing them and you believe that you have predicted those same results by yourself) We often couldn"t have predicted those results. Once we hear some new fact, we can think of reasons why it might be expected. A range of methods are used to test hypothesis. If an experiment can"t be done due to ethical reasons or insufficient resources, then we can do a thought experiment = thinking about how you would get a given idea which can lead to a new hypothesis. Hypothesis = a prediction about what will happen under particular circumstances. Theory = a body of related propositions intended to describe some aspect of the world. In science, theories generally have support from empirical data. Participant observation = observing some phenomenon at close range.