Psychology: The Need For Psychological Science

intuition

An effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought.

hindsight bias

The tendency to believe, after learning the outcome, that one would have foreseen it. (Example: Good inventions, once created, seem obvious like to POST IT NOTE). After stock market drops, people say "it was due for a correction."

overconfidence

We tend to think we know more than we do. (Example: Expert predictions right 40% of time, we tend to be more confident than correct when asked of our answers to factual questions)

perceiving order in random events

In our natural eagerness to make sense of our world, we perceive patterns.

Why is it importance of a student, researcher, and reader of scientific articles to think critically and skeptically?

Having curiosity, skepticism and humility helps to :

- Helps clear away the colored lenses of our biases.

- Focuses us on the evidence

-Recognize multiple perspectives

- Expose us to new sources.

-Challenge our pre-conceived notions

-Makes us aware of our overconfidece, hindsight bias and desire to percieve order in random events.

the scientific attitude

Three main components relate to critical thinking: curiousity, skepticism, and humility.

curious

a passion to explore and understand without being misled.

skepticism

sift reality from fantasy by asking the questions: what do you mean? how do you know?

humility

an awareness of our own vulnerability to error and an openness to surprises and new perspectives.

the need for psychological science

Our everday thinking sometimes lead us to the wrong conclusion. (1) hindsight bias (2) overconfidence (3) perceiving order in random events .. illustrate why we cannot rely solely on intuition and common sense.

critical thinking

Smart thinking, examines assumptions, appraises the sources, discerns hidden values, evaluates evidence and assesses conclusions. (Example: Asking questions like how do you know that, what is this persons agenda, are there alternative explanations.) (Debunked popular presumptions: Example, (Sleepwalkers are not acting out their dreams and Opposites tend not to attract.)