01:830:123 Chapter Notes - Chapter 10: Opportunity Cost, Crop Circle, High Standard Manufacturing Company

• School: Rutgers University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: 01:830:123
• Professor: Professor Lyra Stein

Document Summary

Uncommon sense: psychology and levels of explanation. Psychology defined as the scientific study of the mind, brain, and behavior. Most modern psychologists view the mind and brain as the same thing. Human behavior is difficult to predict, because almost all actions are multiply determined (produced by many factors: that"s why we need to be skeptical of single-variable explanations of behavior. People differ from each other in thinking, emotion, personality, and behavior: these individual differences help to explain why we each respond in different ways to the same objective situation. People"s behavior is shaped by culture: places limits on the generalizations that psychologists can draw about, why we can"t always trust our common sense human nature. Our intuitive understanding of ourselves and the world is frequently mistaken. Examples of this are the proverbs: birds of a feather flock together, two heads are better than one, etc. Also have contradictory proverbs such as opposites attract and too many cooks spoil the broth.