Part 1 Experimental Pyschology and the scientific method

content of science

content of science

what we know

process

how do we do

psychology

the study of the mind and behaviour

Psychological Science

Research about the psychological processes underlying behavior

Methodology

The scientific techniques used to collect and evaluate psychological data

Data

are the facts we gather using scientific methods

Common Psychology

• The kind of everyday nonscientific data gathering that shapes our expectations and

beliefs and directs our behavior toward others.

Nonscientific Sources of Data

Seems credible sources: friends, relatives, authority, people we admire, social media, books, etc.

Nonscientific Inference

• Fundamental attribution error (person’s behavior over situation)

The Scientific Mentality

• Behavior must follow a natural order; therefore it can be predicted.

Empirical Data

•: Data that are observable or experienced.

Laws

•

principles that have generality to apply to all situations

Theory

• pull together, or unify diverse sets of scientific facts into an organizing theme, such as general principles or set of rules, that can be used to predict new examples of behavior.

Hypothesis testing

• Testing predictions stemming from a theory has been the cornerstone of psychological science.

Good Thinking

• Systematic, objective, and rational approach to the collection and interpretation of data

• Parsimony

• simplicity, precision, and clarity of thought

Self-Correction

• The content of science changes as we acquire new scientific information, an old information is reevaluated in light of new facts.

Publicizing Results

• Scientist meet frequently through professional and special interest groups and attend

professional conferences to exchange information about their current work.

Replication

• We repeat our procedures and get the same results again to gather data objectively

and follow good thinking

Description

• Systematic and unbiased account of the observed characteristics of behaviors.

Prediction

• The capacity for knowing in advance when certain behaviors would be expected to occur.

Explanation

• Knowledge of the conditions that reliably reproduce the occurrence of behavior.

Control

Application of what has been learned about behavior. E.g. clinical, organizational researches

Observation

• The systematic noting and recording of observable events.

Measurement

The consistent assignment of numerical values to objects or events or their characteristics according to conventional rules to represent different levels of amount of the behavior of interest

Experimentation

• The process undertaken to test a predictable hypothesis that particular behavioral events will occur reliably in certain, specifiable situations.

Antecedent conditions

• : circumstances that come before the event or behavior that we want tor explain.

Treatments

: specific sets of antecedent conditions

The Psychology Experiment

• A controlled procedure in which atleast 2 different treatment conditions are applied to subjects.

Establishing Cause and Effect

If the XYZ set of antecedent lead to a particular behavior, whereas other treatments do not, therefore we can infer that XYZ causes the behavior

Necessary condition

• e.g cutting carbohydrates to loose weight

Sufficient condition

people’s mood for helping

Wilhelm Wudnt

(1832-1926)

-First Laboratory experiment in Leipzig, Germany