Chapter 1 & 2 Flashcards
Levels of Analysis
-Social cultural (culture)
-psychological (person)
-Biological (cell)
Analysis of social cultural (culture)
-social or behavioral
-group influences, relating to others
-involves relating to others and personal relationships
-Ex: our culture has specific ways woman and men can react to things
Analysis of psychological
-Person
-mental or neurological
-personal thoughts, feelings, emotions
Analysis or biological
-cell
-molecular or neurochemical
-molecules, neurons, brain structure
Challenges of psychology (5)
-behavior is multiply determined
-Multicollinearity
-people differ from each other
-people influence each other
-influence of culture
what does behavior is multiply determined mean?
-Everyone feels certain ways for different reasons
-something that makes you feel a certain way at the moment may not make you feel the same way the next day
- EX: something that makes you angry might not make someone else angry
What is Multicollinearity?
-psychological influences are interrelated
-your behavior changes depending on their reaction, and then their reaction changes depending on your behavior.
People differ from each other
-we all see things differently, and all have different experiences
(Ex: rollercoasters)
-subjective nature of experience
-never studying a single behavior
Reciprocal determinism
persons behavior both influences and is influenced by personal factors and the social environment
-Ex: how you present yourself in class vs how you present your in your home
Psychology Debates
-Nature vs Nurture
-Free will vs Determinism
common sense
-valuable
-Often incorrect
Naive Realism
WE SEE THE WORLD EXACTLY HOW IT IS, DONT WE?
-believing is seeing
-If you believe something you’re more likely to see it
Theory
-Explain a large number of findings
-ties finding together with a single explanation
- generates predictions, that are testable
Hypothesis
-specific testable prediction of a single event
key attitudes when testing something (3)
-communalism : peer review process
-Disinterestedness : objectivity in evaluating data
-Scientific humility: I can always be wrong and allow that
Untestable does NOT mean _____
“wrong”
-EX: metaphysical claims (point of existence)
Confirmation bias
-tendence to seek out evidence that supports our beliefs and dismiss, deny or distort evidence that contradicts them
-“once you have a hammer everything starts looking like a nail”
Belief perseverance
stick to initial beliefs, even when evidence contradicts them
Pseudoscience
seems scientific, but is not
Ex: astrology
Warning signs of Pseudoscience (7)
-Exaggerated claims
-Over reliance on anecdotes
-absence of connectivity
-lack of peer review
-lack of self correction
-Psychobabble
-“proof” instead of evidence
Exaggerated claims
“you can have everything you ever wanted”
Over reliance on anecdotes
-“I know a person who”
Reality of over reliance on anecdotes
-individual cases (just because it happened for one person doesn’t mean it’ll happen for you)
-says nothing about cause and effect
-difficult to verify
what is psychobabble?
-Technical jargon gibberish (technical language that really isn’t saying anything)
Why is pseudoscience popular? (3)
-Motivational factors
-scientific illiteracy
-cognitive factors
pseudoscience - motivational factors
- WE WANT to believe
-gives hope, a sense of wonder
pseudoscience - Cognitive factors
-our brain works hard to make sense out of a complex world
-create order, sense and meaning
Pareidolia
-perception of meaningful images in meaningless stimuli
- inkblot test
-because we are social creatures we will see faces in a lot of thing
Apophenia
perception of meaningful connections between unrelated phenomena
Ration thinking
-Analysis of evidence
-slow, effortful
Experiential thinking
-intuition, emotional reactions
-Fast, effortless (easy)
Logical fallacies (6)
-Emotional reasoning fallacy
-bandwagon fallacy
-Either - or fallacy
-Not me fallacy
-Appeal to authority fallacy
-Argument from antiquity fallacy
Emotional Reasoning fallacy
-evaluating validity based on emotions
-if we like it (it must be true), if we don’t like it (there no way its true)
Bandwagon fallacy
assumption that because a lot of other people think its true, it must be true
Either - Or Fallacy
- Framing a question like it can be answered only in one of the two extremes
-Yeah, but my friends cousins brother went to an astrologer and they were completely accurate…
Not me fallacy
the belief that they are immune to the thinking errors that plague others
Appeal to authority fallacy
accepting a claim merely because an authority endorses it
EX: sports players advertising things other than their sport
Argument from Antiquity Fallacy
assuming a belief must be valid because it has been around a long time
EX: Paleo diet
pseudoscience - opportunity cost
invest resources in a fake cure, and not taking one that might have worked
pseudoscience - direct harm
- Animal deaths and extinction
-heavy metal poisoning
scientific skepticism
- Be willing to have an open mind to all claims, at all times
-fully accept only what has substantial evidence
Oberg’s dictum
be open minded but not to much that your brain falls out of your head
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary _______
-“evidence”
- Is the evidence sufficient to support the claim?
-EX: (squirrel stealing vs bigfoot stealing)
Falsifiability
the capacity for a proposition, statement, theory or hypothesis to be proven wrong
Occam’s Razor
the simplest explanation that accounts for all of the data is the best
Replicability
-finding that can be consistently duplicated are better supported
representativeness
prone to judge information as correct if we feel it represents what a correct answer looks like
availability
If I easily remember a fact it must be the right fact
Hindsight Bias
- I knew it all along
-once you know the answer you think you always knew the answer
Naturalistic observation
- Observing animals/people
-watching them without their knowledge
Case studies
- in depth analysis of an individual, group, or event
-typically a very small sample
Advantages of case studies
-enable intensive study of rare phenomenon
-source of new ideas and hypothesis that are tested later
Disadvantages of case studies (3)
-not being able to determine cause and effect correlation
-poor generalizability (what is true for one person isn’t for everyone)
-researcher bias (when you follow and learn about someone for months you will form an opinion about them, good or bad)
Self report measures
-survey research
-collect information from a group using interviews or questionnaires
Drawbacks to surveys
-unrepresentative samples can lead to faulty generalization
-Surveys rely on participants’ self reports
-positive impression management
-Malingering (Ex: pretending your sick so that you don’t have to go into work)
Validity
does it measure what it claims to measure
Disadvantages of ratings
-only people who are motivated to rate will rate (only hear from the extremes)
-Halo/horns effects (seen in a negative or positive light)
-leniency effects (rated higher then they should be)
-central tendency (never rating 1 or a 5 they are to extreme)
Correlation
measures associations between naturally occurring events or variables
Disadvantages in correlation
-correlation is NOT causation
-we don’t know the direction of the relationship (what causes what)
-third variable problem (something else causing the 2)
Positive Correlation
higher scores on one variable associated with higher scores on the other
Negative Correlation
high scores on one variable are associated with lower scores on the other
Illusory correlation
-“if something happens close in time they must be related”
-Ex: effects of the moon & arthritis and weather
-more likely to remember an event than a non-event
2 essential characteristics of experiments
-RANDOM assignment of participants
-Manipulation of one or more independent variables
experimental group
Receives a treatment, as active level of the independent variables
Control group
Not exposed to the treatment, a zero level of independent variable
Independent variable
-Manipulated by the experimenter
-Multiple levels
Dependent variable
-measured by the experiment and influenced by the independent variable
-multiple levels
confounding variables
-Any difference between the control group and the experimental group other than the independent variable
Pitfalls of Experiment
-Placebo effect
-Nocebo effect
-Experimenter expectancy effect
-Hawthorne effect
Placebo effect
-Improvement resulting from expectations that “I should improve”
How to stop placebo effect
Blind procedures are key
(give everyone a pill, some sugar some actual medicine)
Nocebo effect
-Experiencing harm because you expect harm
-EX: Death from magic
Experimenter Expectancy effect
Unintentionally affecting the results of your study
How to avoid experimenter expectancy effect
Blind subjects and blind researcher
EX: you don’t know which pill your giving someone
Hawthorne effect
the impact that knowing you are being studied has on your behavior
6 principles of scientific thinking
-Ruling out rival hypotheses
-Correlation Vs. Causation
- Falsifiability
-Replicability
-extraordinary claims
-Occam’s Razor
Ruling out rival hypotheses
Have important alternative explanations for the findings been excluded
