Lecture 16 Myths

Question 1

Folk Psychology

Answer 1

The psychology we use everyday to make assumptions on why people are doing things
(he is drinking because he is thirsty)

Question 2

We only use 10% of our brain

Answer 2

We actually use all of our brains function

Only when we lose brain parts do we lose brain function

Hungry organ consuming much oxygen and glucose

Question 3

When you’re just sitting

Answer 3

Your brain goes into default mode

Question 4

Wishful thinking

Answer 4

People like to believe in the paranormal, like to think that things are true even though they aren’t

Question 5

Availability Cascade

Answer 5

The more you here about things the more likely you are to believe it

Question 6

Brain redundancy

Answer 6

Your brain has multiple parts that function in the same way.

Question 7

Neurons

Answer 7

Babies have more neurons, and you lose neurons as you age because it is more efficient.

Question 8

Psychic powers

Answer 8

They are not real, cognitive biases make us think that it is real

Question 9

File drawer problem

Answer 9

Science studies that aren’t published because they don’t prove what you want.

Question 10

Conformation bias

Answer 10

Neglect and ignoring of negative or different results

Question 11

IQ Tests

Answer 11

People think they are biased, in reality the IQ tests have predictable outcomes.

Question 12

Frontal lobe

Answer 12

Allows us to think hypothetically

Question 13

Happiness

Answer 13

Money correlated with happiness until you’re making about $105k per year (in our society)
After that income doesn’t add on to happiness

main sources of happiness
Pleasure, day to day
Life satisfaction

Question 14

Childhood abuse and trauma

Answer 14

its very weakly correlated 0.09 (close to zero)

A conflict-ridden home is much more likely to cause anxiety, depression, eating disorders.

Question 15

Artificial Intelligence

Answer 15

people tend to think AI is not that intelligent, but AI has made tremendous strides

Question 16

Mysterians

Answer 16

People who want mystery and don’t want to think that creativity can be explained.

Question 17

Generation of a theory

Answer 17

A theory is broad characterization of how something works.

Cant improve a theory you can only add facts that prove the theories predictions.

Question 18

Experiments

Answer 18

have control over participants and conditions. They manipulate something.

Question 19

Quasi-experiments

Answer 19

are observations in the real world. Most political science lessons are learned from quasi-experiments.

Question 20

Falsifiability

Answer 20

You can look anywhere you want and you cant find a black swan, stating this makes the theory falsifiable.

Question 21

Science as a culture

Answer 21

It is a culture of sharing knowledge, the search for replicability, science self-correcting