Chapter 1: Psychology is a way of thinking Flashcards
Psychology is an empirical science (T/F)
True
What are the five different sources of knowledge we went over in class?
Authority, common sense, intuition, rationalism, empiricism
Sources of knowledge
Describe “Authority”
When someone influential says something, including scientists
What are problems with getting knowledge from authority?
- can encourage dissent
- info is only as good as the expert
- authority can be biased
such as prior to the renaissance, when questions about how the world works were answered by the works of experts
Types of knowledge
Describe “common sense”
folk wisdom, what everyone knows, corroborated by personal experience
What are the problems with common sense type of knowledge?
- people accept things they think are true and ignore counter-examples, everyone coulda gree upon something incorrect
- selectively attend to what fits
Types of knowledge
Rationalism
- a priori (from what is earlier) method; knowledge dervied from reasoning, deduction, or logic
- If given certain bits of information, you can induce/infer something else from those bits of information
- deduction/inference
What is the problem with rationalism?
Women driving example
Types of knowledge
Describe empiricism
- knowledge from experience/observation
- depends on using evidence as the basis for conclusions
- Personal experience is de-emphasized
What is the problem with empiricism?
Humans are biased
When a field is empirical, it relies on data from…
observers
What type of knowledge is best for science and technology?
Systematic/empirical observation
What type of logic is best for computer languages, math, and philosophy?
Logic/reason (rationalism)
What type of knowledge is best for family/relationships, art, and creativity?
Intuition
Theory-data cycle
- scientists collect data to test, change, or update their theories
- people do this everyday (show up to class with nobody there example)…notice we went through a specific procedure ad you asked specific kinds of questions because you were operating under a specific theory
What is a theory?
A set of statements that describe how variables relate to other as simply as possible (parsimony)
What do good theories generate?
Hypotheses
How many hypotheses do researchers have
Most researchers test theories with a number of different hypotheses
What is a hypothesis
- a prediction stated in terms of study design
- specific outcome the researcher will observe in a study
- reflects the theory its based on
Data vs datium
data plural datium singular
What are data
set of observations
What does data support
either the null or alternative hypothesis
data that support the hypotheses strengthen our confidence in a theory
Do studies prove theories
NO
What should you say instead of “prove” a theory
support or are consistent with the theory
Why not say prove
- impossible to observe all instances of an event/occurence
there may be another explanation for the data
What could be making data inconsistent/refute
- the theory
- the experimental design
- the assumptions of the experimenter
Good theories are…
- falsifiable
- you should ne able to develop a hypothesis that can fail t support a theory (invisible gnome example)
Merton’s Scientific Norms
Universality
- everyone evaluated on the same criteria
- the same criteria apply to all scientists and research
Merton’s Scientific Norms
Communality
scientific knowledge is created by the community and its findings belong to the community
Merton’s Scientific Norms
Disinterestedness
- scientists strive to discover the truth
- not influenced by conviction, idealism, politics, or profit
Merton’s Scientific Norms
Organized Skepticism
- scientists question everything including their own theories, widely accepted ideas, and “ancient wisdom”
What happens during the peer-review process?
- You test your hypothesis and collect data, then write up results in a peer-reviewed journal
- Other scientists review what you did. If you did something wrong or if other scientists do not agree with the results, you do not get published.
3.If you do get published, other researchers will design other experiments to test the hypothesis, and use your results to advance other questions - If similar researchers all get similar results, we might be onto something
Describe an original source
- aka primary source
- the article/chapter was written by the researchers
- Includes peer-reviewed journal articles and edited books
Describe a secondary source
- The media was produced by someone else who read and summarized the work
- Textbooks, blogs, newspaper articles/stories
- These can be a good way to get a lot of info easily but can often be sensationalized (more likely to be read, but makes it easy to spread misinformation)
Cycle of misinformation- Mozart Effect example
- Rausher (1993) found when students heard Mozart for 10 minutes they performed better on spatial tasts then listening to a speaker
- This was translated into “scientists say listening to Mozart makes babies smarter”
-Problems: listening to any music can help with performance on some tasks, effects are weak, will not actually change your overall IQ
