Chapter 1: Thinking Critically With Psychological Science
Textbook:
i. The Need for Psychological Science a) Did We Know It All Along? Hindsight Bias i. Hindsight bias = Something has happened makes it seem inevitable ii. Not because common sense is usually wrong, but because common sense more easily describes what has happened than what will happen b) Overconfidence iii. We tend to think we know more than we do c) The Scientific Attitude iv. Curiosity 1. Empirical approach v. Skepticism = persistently asking two questions: What do you mean? How do you know? 2. Scientific attitude: being skeptical but not cynical, open but not gullible vi. Humility = an awareness of our own vulnerability to error and an openness to surprises and new perspectives d) Critical Thinking ii. How Do Psychologists Ask and Answer Questions? e) The Scientific Method vii. A scientific theory explains through an integrated set of principles that organizes observations and predicts behaviour or events. viii. Hypotheses ix. We should be aware that it can bias subjective observations x. Operational functions = a statement of the procedures used to define research variables. For example, human intelligence may be operationally defined as what an intelligence test xi. Replicate – repeat xii. Finally – organizepredictionsrevised theory xiii. We can test our hypotheses and refine our theories using … f) Description xiv. The Case Study 3. The case study examines one individual in depth in hopes of revealing things true of us all. 4. Suggest directions for further study 5. Show us what can happen 6. May mislead us if the individual being