Chapter 1 - Psychology and Scientific Thinking Flashcards
What is psychology?
The scientific of the brain, mind and behaviour.
List some ways psychology can be applied.
- Promote mental well-being
- Make cars safer to drive
- Trigger sustainable actions
- help people learn
Define naive realism.
Belief that what we see the world precisely as it is
“Seeing is believing”
Differentiate psychology from related disciplines
Psychology is a young discipline, all drawn from different disciplines:
Anthropology: takes on the ethnographical approach of it, rather than historical approach anthropology usually takes
Sociology: focus on the person (cultural experiences of the person)
Medicine: health psychology (bridges the two disciplines)
Philosophy: consciousness/perception
Biology: connection to people rather than animals; human experience
Explain why psychology uses the scientific method.
Science is an approach to evidence; uses a set of attitudes and skills designed to prevent us from fooling ourselves. It uses the scientific method as a means of finding out which info best fits the data about how the mind works.
What is confirmation bias and how do we combat it.
Tendency to seek out evidence that supports our beliefs/claims and refute those that distort it
-Use safeguards
Three key features of science
Communication of findings: don’t communicate, will never be exposed
Cumulative: build off the work of others
Humility: aim for objectivity, accuracy
Difference between scientific psychology and pseudoscience
No safeguard against bias
sometimes difficult to judge
Sometimes trying to trick you
List and explain the six principles of scientific, critical thought
- Parsimony: choose the simpler of two explanation
- Extraordinary claims come with extraordinary evidence: is the evidence as strong as the claim?
- Correlation doesn’t equal causation: Can we be sure that (A) doesn’t cause (B)?; the thought that one thing causes another, alternative options may also be an option
- Replicability: can the results be duplicated in other studies? Should be skeptical if no other scientific studies have reported the same findings
- Falsifiability: if claim is fake, can show it by using data; experiment can be done to show that it can be proven wrong
- Ruling out rival hypothesis: have important alternative explanations for the findings been excluded? Should note if any plausible explanations have been excluded.
List and describe the seven examples of pseudoscience.
- Exaggerated claims: making claims that sound too good to be true, does not deliver their claims (eg. Three simple steps will change your love life forever!, Eat this and you’ll lose 30lbs in two weeks!)
- Overreliance on anecdotes: usage of ‘real’ stories to deliver their message; does not tell you about then cause and effect (ie. Any background info to why they had lost 80lbs, did they just take this supplement or did they exercise as well) (eg. This woman ate this supplement for two weeks and lost 80lbs!)
- Absence of connectivity to other research: Does not connect their ‘amazing’ findings to previous research; findings don’t build upon prior scientific findings
- Lacks peer review from scientific community: shows adequate research, but not those that have been peer reviewed
- Lack of self-correlation when contrary evidence is published: Though there is evident information published to contradict one’s claims, they fail to update their claims (eg. You only use 10% of your brain)
- Psychobabble: Words made up by a company to make something sound more ‘scientific’ even though there are no scientific information/meanings behind the words. (eg. Sine-wave filtered auditory simulation)
- Talks of ‘proof’ instead of ‘evidence’: usage of words such as ‘proven’ shows a definitive conclusion to a study. However, scientists tend to avoid this word, as science is constantly evolving and past theories have been countlessly proven wrong.
Why are we drawn to pseudoscience?
Because of the way we think: two different types: experimental thinking and rational thinking. Experimental thinking (default motif): intuitive judgment, fast, effortless, emotional Rational thinking: careful reasoning, objective analysis, slow, effortful
Define belief perseverance.
tendency to stick to our initial beliefs even when evidence contradicts them
Define ad hoc immunizing hypothesis
escape hatch or loophole that defenders of a theory use to protect their theory from falsification
- excuses to define their theory
Compare rational and experimental thinking
Experimental thinking (default motif): intuitive judgment, fast, effortless, emotional Rational thinking: careful reasoning, objective analysis, slow, effortful
Identify examples of the five logical fallacies
Emotional reasoning fallacy: the error of using our emotions as guides for evaluating the validity of a claim (eg. The idea that daycare might have negative emotional effects on children gets me really upset, so I refuse to believe it.)
Bandwagon fallacy: the error of assuming that a claim is correct just because many people believe it (eg. Lots of people believe in astrology, so there’s got to be something to it.)
Not me fallacy: the error of believing that we’re immune from errors in thinking that afflict other people (eg. My psychology professor keeps talking about how the scientific method is important for overcoming biases. But these biases don’t apply to me, because I’m objective.)
Naïve realism: the belief that the world is just as it is (seeing is believing)
Either or fallacy: error of framing a question as though we can answer it in only one of two extreme ways
