fieldm1 Flashcards
Scientific Thinking in Psychology
Science is critical in two senses
1) It is open to public scrutiny
2) Empowering rather than enslaving people
WAYS OF KNOWING
1)- whenever e accept the validity of information from a source that we judge to be an expert, then we are relying on __ as a source of our knowledge
Authority
WAYS OF KNOWING
2) - we sometimes arrive at conclusions by using logic
Use of reason
WAYS OF KNOWING
3)
- another important way of coming to know things is through our experiences in the world. It is the process of learning things through direct observation or experience, and reflection on those experiences.
Experiences/empiricism
- a tendency to see and pay special attention to information that supports one’s beliefs, while ignoring information that contradicts a belief
Ex: Social Media - information we are presented on media is not only reflective of what the users wat to see but also of the designers’ beliefs and values. Today, people are exposed to an overwhelming number of news sources, each varying in their credibility.
Confirmation Bias
- It occurs when we experience unusual or very memorable events and then overestimate how often such events typically occur.
Ex: When students change their answers on multiple choice tests
Availability Heuristics
- contends simple that all events have causes. It seems to require that we abandon our belief in free will. If every event has a cause so the argument goes.
Determinism
- A major attribute of science as a way of knowing is the manner in which science goes about the business of search for regularities in nature. All of us do a lot of observing in our daily lives, and we draw conclusions about things based on those observations.
systematic observations
- Its procedures result in knowledge that can be publicly verified.
Public knowledge
- researchers are data driven. Research psychologists expect conclusions about behavior to be supported by evidence gathered through some systematic procedure.
Produces data based conclusion
- related to the data-driven attitude that characterizes researchers is the recognition that conclusions drawn from data are always tentative, subject to revision based on future research.
Produces tentative conclusion
- empirical questions are those that can be answered through the systematic observations and techniques that characterize scientific methodology.
asks answerable questions
- when designing research studies, an early step in the process is to reshape the empirical questions into a hypothesis, which is a prediction about the study’s outcome. That is prior to having empirical data, the hypothesis is your best guess about the answer to your empirical question.
1) Because students experience high levels of stress during final exam week, they will be more likely to become ill if they are exposed to a virus than student not exposed to virus
2) Students asked to exercise vigorously for an hour will perform more poorly on a test of creative problem solving than students not asked to exercise.
develops theories that can be falsified
GOALS OF RESEARCH
- providing a clear, accurate ___ is an essential first step in an scientific endeavor, without it predictions cannot be made, and explanations are meaningless.
Description
GOALS OF RESEARCH
- to say that behavior follows laws is to say that regular and predictable relationship exists for psychological phenomena. The strength of these relationships allows ___to be made with some degree of confidence.
Prediction
