UNIT 1 PSYCH FINAL EXAM- lse summer IR110

human variation

• Human variation- weird people problem, western students were studied, but this does not capture the general human nature

why are humans so different from other species?

• Humans are more intelligent?, let go of basic assumptions when doing research,similar to the research paper about crabs

  • What defines us as .. chimps have better memory 

Replication crisis

• Daryl bem in 2010 “feeling the future: experimental..” published for esp 

• Humans are  psychic for porn or the psych field was broken

• 2011- false positive psychology, and people were finding false positives- p-hacking and researcher degrees of freedom… finding nonsense

• 2014- p-curve, would see a bump right about .5 if its faking 

• 2015- replication crisis - means that 50 percent of research was nonsense

• 2019- theory crisis- problem in theory, you need a basis to work

the 5 mental models

scientific methods and its logic tools like abduction, selecting between theories (model selection) like Ockham’s razor, arguing from first principles, systems level thinking as opposed to narrow thinking, and finally ultimate vs proximate explanations

1st mental model: scientific method

• Scientific method- narrowing the hypothesis space, 

• 1. deduction= general principle to specific observations

• 2. induction= specific observations to general principle

• 3. abduction= inference to the best explanation

Science is process of abduction

• The mystery of broken vase: a case in abduction- you see the cat before you

• 
  

Deduction example

all Facebook users have access to the internet, your all Facebook users, you have access to the internet

induction example

you are all Facebook users, you are all very intelligent, all Facebook uses are intelligent

2nd mental model: model selection

Ptolemaic model was used for with the data , but copernicus had different model with sun in middle , then kepler comes and everything makes since

mental model- Ockham's razor

• Figure out to a differentiate between two

• The more simple, is the right one, and fewer assumptions  

• Arguing from first principles, and watching out for hidden assumptions 

• Galileo said sun was in middle, but pope 

Systems level thinking

Sugar cane toads introduced , destyoyed ecosystem, didnt think about the whole systems , self esteem

Ultimate vs. Proximate

• Know how to why we like chocolate/sex- like we like chocolate because it's good, release chemicals, stems from sweetness of fruit and this translate to sweets, bitterness is similar to toxins when eating vegetables

• You got the cues without the vitamins and good things, mismatch to modern environment

• Demographic change- north korea less kids now and less working age population , and lose 70 percent of korean population

• We have psychology for having sex, but not reproduction and this is bc of contraception

• You need to make a culture for it to have kids

• Chili peppers- culture

Information theory and information compression

How much info is predictable?, want to know basic principles so we don't have to memorize like pie

roots of psych

adi shankara 700 ce and siddhartha guatam buddha in 500 bce, have Confucius in 500 BCE, abu ali allah (avivenna) 980, then rene descartes in 1637, and Wilhelm Wundt in 1879

the 18th century

• colonization is going on, also time of enlightenment, industrial revolution where people

• Adam smith wealth of nation- “it is not from the benevolence..” economy is never planned

• Thomas malthus- principles of population- the malphsium dilemma, reproduction is exponential bc, not enough food for the pop.

19th century

• napoleon rises, jean baptiste lamarck, lamarke revolution 1809 think of giraffes,

• Herbert spencer 18555 psychology principles 

• 1859 charles darwin origin of species

• Lamark vs darwin that nature does it evolution***

• Thomas henry huxley- darwin's bulldog, evidence of man's place in nature, human evolution

• Herbert spencer - survival of the fittest

• Edward burnett Tylor 

• Glaton, royer, darwin- nature vs nurture

• Antoinette brown blackwell-

• Wilhelm Wundt 

• William james 1890 and makes the foundation of psych

• Morgan Baldwin, 1896 baldwinian evolution learning and genetic evolution can be learned together 

• Evolution can evolve through learning, genes that do a better job at say learning a language, we are now more susceptible to choking, but we can talk

• Reading changes the brain

20th century

• innovation of cars, quantum theory, google,

  • Introspection and psych of mind, freud, jung

  • Work on scientific method, john stuart mill ideas homo economicus

  • Psych of mind not scientific so behaviorism 

  • John braodus watson 1913, gets into marketing coffee break

  • Game theory

  • We talk about the brain as a computer, a metaphor and this moves to behavior of cognitive revolution 

  • Loss aversion

  • John bowlby attachment theory 

P values replication crisis

• probability of randomness like .75 is 75 percent chance that values random and 25 percent that it is successful , so not good

Weird people problem and replication

• Weird people problem (comes from western data) and replication, want lower p values that experiment is good

• .05 is good

p-hacking

• P-hacking is when people collect the data, and once they reach it, its done, if not you collect more data, so its skewed data

why do we have a replication crisis?

• like publishing bias, manipulation of results

  • BLOG- maybe a p-hacking of skin care?

open science framework- answer to replication crisis

• meant to makes science fair/less easy to manipulate

  • When publishing paper, you also publish your data, and pre-registrations with their hypothesis before they do their collection of data 

problem in theory? possible cause of replication crisis

• A problem in theory by michael adn joseph, a problem in theory not method

  • Proposed that we have a more formal theoretical work like mathematical and take away personal experience/ and come up with a better hypothesis 

  • Ex. Like the lotka volterra simulation- mathematical equations on how predator prey relationship works, takes away the human experience and look at actual populations, idea is not that we remove hypothesis, but base this on math

  • There should be a unifying theory of psychology- to help with this problem

WEIRD people problem

• When we test on western participants, this is not necessarily true on non-western participants

• Western participants are exception rather than the rule, and we are making them the rule

• Psychology papers from 2003-2007 comes mostly from western and people creating the data are from western

• Problematic that undergraduate psych students are leading these trials bc they are already aware of what it is, they aren't unbiased

• Also history- most of humans history we have been hunting and gathering, then agriculture, then more recently tech- we don't know if this all humans so we must sample from modern to historic , and money 

illusion that demonstrate how culture influences how we interpret the world

•  Muller-lyer same size optical illusion b is longer, carpenter cultures vs non carpenter culture , westerns say same bc we are use to ninety degree angles, if we are literally seeing the world different, hard to bridge gaps

• Western participants go in relative direction over north,west, etc

• Dictator game- usually western does 50/50, since money is seemed as fairness

• Item paring- animas it's a cultural difference