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Ontology
The search for “what is real”
Materialism (Marx): only material things exist
Idealism (Hegel): some of “reality” exists separately from the sensible world
Epistemology
The study of knowledge and how individuals gain knowledge (the method)
Empiricism (Hume)
Belief that all knowledge is derived from sensory experience
bottom-up theorizing (relies on sensory data alone)
Rationalism (Descartes)
Belief that at least some knowledge can be known independent of the senses
top-down theorizing (relies on the “whole picture”)
Realist view (Popper)
Sees theories as soft mental images involving values and beliefs while facts are hard, settled and observable
Failing to confirm the null hypothesis = probable truth
Relativist view (Foucault)
The idea that the powerful influence of our thoughts often dictates what we observe as facts
What are the two approaches to knowledge?
Logical positivism
Social constructionism
Logical positivism
Assumes reality is independent of the knower
it is possible to arrive at the unbiased truth
Auguste Comte
Social constructionism
Assumes researchers construct knowledge that is influenced by the social context of their inquiry
there is no such thing as pure, “unbiased” truth, it is always from a perspective (which impacts observations)
Berger and Luckmann
What are the different kinds of methods used in research?
Qualitative vs Quantitative
Descriptive vs Experimental
Qualitative methods
Non-numerical, statistical
naturalistic observation
narrative approach
survey, interview, focus group methods
Quantitative methods
Numerical, statistical
Descriptive, experimental
Concepts (Schema)
Mental grouping of similar objects, people, ideas, or events. Simplify and speed thinking, but can also constrain it
Algorithms
Logical, step-by-step procedure that eventually guarantees a solution but are slower
think of robots (Mattson’s Roomba will run until the battery dies)
Heuristics
Mental shortcuts or rules of thumb that allow us to solve problems faster
reduce the cognitive energy required to solve a problem
tend to oversimplify reality
Common Heuristics (Kahneman & Tversky)
Representativeness
Availability
Representativeness
Used to judge whether an instance is a member of a larger category by the degree to which the instance resembles our stereotype of members of the category
“Like goes with like”
Availability
Estimating the likelihood of an occurrence based on the ease with which it comes to our minds
“off the top of my head”
Hindsight bias
The tendency to overestimate how well we could have successfully forecasted known outcomes
Overconfidence
The tendency to overestimate our ability to make correct predictionsNat
Naturalistic Observation
Watching behaviour in real-world settings
High degree of external validity
Low degree of internal validity
High degree of external validity
The extent to which we can generalize our findings to the real world
Low degree of internal validity
The extent to which we can draw cause-and-effect inferences
Halo effect
The tendency of ratings of one positive characteristic to spill over to influence the ratings of other positive characteristics
Leniency effect
The tendency of raters to provide ratings that are overly generous
Error of central tendency
An unwillingness to provide extreme ratings (low or high)
Experimenter expectancy effect
Phenomenon in which researchers’ hypotheses lead them to unintentionally bias a study outcome
Hawthorne effect
Phenomenon in which participants’ knowledge that they’re being studied can affect their behaviour
commonly seen through demand characteristics
Demand characteristics
Cues that participants pick up from a study that allow them to generate guesses regarding the researcher’s hypotheses
