Lecture 4 Flashcards
What is one approach to understanding behaviour?
Hindsight
What is Hindsight?
Trying to understand why something happened by speculating about it after the fact
What is Hindsight Bias?
When people tend to be overconfident in how likely they would have predicted something when they don’t think about the question until after they already know the answer
What is Hindsight reasoning?
Like betting on the outcome of a hockey game that you’ve already seen
What is an alternative to Hindsight for understanding behaviour?
The Scientific method
What does the scientific method place emphasis on?
Prediction
Control
Theory building
What are the Important Principles of the Scientific Method?
Curiosity (why does something happen?)
Skepticism (what is the evidence for a claim?)
Open-mindedness (are there other explanations?)
What are the steps in the Scientific Method?
1) Identify question of interest
2) Gather information and formulate a hypothesis
3) Test hypothesis by conducting research
4) Analyze data, draw tentative conclusions, report findings
5) Build a body of knowledge, build theory
What is Hypothesis?
A tentative explanation or prediction about some phenomenon
What type of format does a hypothesis usually take?
An ‘if-then’
What must a hypothesis be?
testable
What are the general characteristics of theories?
- Broader than any one single prediction
- Dynamic (changing)
- Change is generally incremental but paradigm shifts do occur
What are the characteristics of good theories?
- Incorporates existing facts and observations
- Are testable (falsifiable)
- Have predictions supported by research
- Conform to the law of parsimony
- Generate principles that can be applied to new situation (generalizable)
What are the Characteristics of non-scientific theories?
1) Make no predictions
2) Untestable
3) Cannot be falsified
