PSY-0031 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Naturalistic Observation, Central Tendency, Dependent And Independent Variables
24 Jan 2017
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Document Summary
Humans want to know the truth about things - four methods to acquire knowledge. Authority - something is true because of tradition or some person of distinction says it"s true. Does frequently lead to error, but is used a lot. Rationalism - uses only reasoning to arrive at knowledge. Assumes that premises are sound and reasoning is carried out correctly based on logic. There are situations where reasoning alone doesn"t quite cut it. Intuition - get knowledge through sudden insight after conscious reasoning has failed. Scientific method - uses both reasoning and intuition. Scientist develops a hypothesis and then designs an experiment to objectively test the hypothesis. Variable - property or characteristic of some event, object, or person that may have different values at different times depending on the conditions. Independent variable - the variable that is systematically manipulated by the investigator. Levels of the variable are controlled by the experimenter, independent of any change in other variables.
