Scientific Foundations of Psychology

PART 2: RESEARCH METHODS: THINKING CRITICALLY WITH PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE

  1. Psychology and Its History

Psychology uses its research to separate uninformed opinions from examined conclusions.

Three roadblocks to critical thinking are hindsight bias, overconfidence, and perceiving patterns in random events-help illustrate why we cannot rely solely on common sense.

Hindsight biased (also known as i knew it all along phenomenon).

  1. Overconfidence

We humans tend to think we known more than we actually do. We tend to be more confident than correct when responding to a question.

  1. Perceiving Order in Random Events

In random data we often find patterns, random sequences often don’t appear like random to us.

The SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND DESCRIPTION

  1. The scientific method

The scientific method is a self-correcting process for evaluating ideas with observations and analysis. It welcomes hunches and plausible sounding theories and puts them to the test. If a theory works, the data supports its prediction. If it fails (theory) it either gets revised or rejected.

A good theory produces testable predictions called hypotheses.

  1. Methods

Descriptive: Describes behaviors, often by using case studies, surveys, or naturalistic observations

Correlational: Associate different factors or variables (anything that contributes to a result)

Experimental: Manipulate variables to discover their effects

  • case studies
  • naturalistic observations
  • surveys and interviews
  1. Naturalistic Observation

Records behavior in natural environments, doesn’t explain behavior but describes it.

  1. Surveys

Observes several cases in less depth, asking people to report their behavior or opinion.

  • wording effects
  • random sampling
  1. Review