1 principles of science

intuition

using your gut, feelings

* pros: potential beginning to new research question, quick accessible knowledge
* cons: illusory correlation, subject to prejudice and misconceptions

common sense/folk wisdom

appealing to what one expects everyone else to know

* pros: good starting point for research ideas
* cons: most ppl only remember what they believe, can be contradictory, confirmation bias!!

authority

knowledge based on information from “credible other“

* pros: experts can be authorities, minimizes need to acquire own knowledge
* cons: not all authorities are experts, how to define authority?

personal experience/testimonial

* pros: maybe represent collection of all experiences, “sticky“, qualitative research


* cons: may not be wholly representative, can’t account for alternative explanations

logic

knowledge derived from rules of logical thinking

* pros: leads to internally consistent reasoning and decisions, easy to analyze and critique
* cons: requires correct premise/information, may have nothing to do with real world

goals of psychological science

describe, predict, determine cause of and understand/explain behaviour, apply knowledge to solve problems

how to develop research questions

question common assumptions, observations of the world around us, solving a practical problem, testing theories

thoery

overarching framework that organizes and explains phenomena and data, most broad concept

hypothesis

a tentative statement about a relationship that may or may not be true

prediction

a specific statement regarding the expected outcome of a study, ost narrow concept

deduction example

broad to narrow (theory → hypothesis → prediction)

induction example

narrow to broad (observation → hypothesis → theory)

falsifiability

the ability to show a theory/hypothesis to be wrong (means theory has capacity to be wrong), can also be considered a matter of degree (more specific = falsifiable)

good hypothesis

make predictions that expose themselves to falsification, make specific predications (strong support)

bad hypothesis

make predictions that are difficult to falsify, make general predictions (weak support)

parsimony (Occam’s razor)

simpler theories are preferred to more complex theories that can explain the same phenomenon

* requires fewer conceptual relationships/assumptions, requires fewer adjustments to established relationships in science
* more parsimonious = more falsifiable
* treat as tiebreaker