PSYA01H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter Final: Conversion Disorder, Materialism, Franz Mesmer
Document Summary
Psychological science chapter 1: introducing psychological science. Psychology is the scientific study of behavior, thought, and experience: psychology is a vast discipline. Better yet, a collection of disciplines composed of many overlapping fields of study: two unifying qualities allow us to group all these fields into the category of psychological science. Second, psychologists employ the scientific method in their work. Pseudoscience refers to ideas that are present as science but do not actually utilize basic principles of scientific thinking or procedure: astrology is a pseudoscience because unlike science, there is no scientific basis around it. Scientists are eager to test hypotheses whereas astrologists would rather you just take their word for it. In fact, any scientific theory must be falsifiable. The process helps to ensure that science is self-correcting bad ideas typically do not last long in the sciences: theories are not the same thing as opinions or beliefs, all theories are not equally plausible.
