PSY220H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Alf Landon, Convenience Sampling
Document Summary
Many situations that we encounter in life can contain surprises and pitfalls that social psychological research can help us anticipate and avoid. Research can teach us how to interpret and predict the outcomes of various social experiences, as well as help us understand our own behaviour and the behaviour of others. Our personal opinions about why we behave like we do are often mistaken. Many of the factors that influence our behaviour are hidden from us; they are represented in nonverbal, non- conscious forms that aren"t accessible to introspection. A hindsight bias refers to people"s tendency to be overconfident about whether or not they could have predicted a given outcome after the fact. When you predict an outcome before you find out what the outcome is, then you avoid the hindsight bias. Hypotheses are predictions about what will happen under particular circumstances. A theory is a body of related propositions intended to describe some aspect of the world.
