Psy 1001UMNSpring 2015Psychology and Scientific ThinkingChapter 1DefinitionsPsychology: Scientific study of the mind, brain, and behaviorLevels of Analysis: rungs of a ladder. Lower=biological, Higher=Social InfluencesMultiply Determined: caused by many factors, must be skeptical of single-variable explanations of behaviorIndividual Differences: People differ in thinking, emotion, personality and behaviorNaïve Realism: belief that we see the world precisely as it is, “seeing is believing”Scientific Theory: Explanation for a large number of findings in the natural world (general)Hypothesis: testable prediction derived from a scientific theory (specific)Confirmation Bias: tendency to seek out evidence that supports our hypotheses and deny, dismiss, or distort evidence that contradicts them. Psychological tunnel vision.Belief Perseverance: Tendency to stick to our initial beliefs even when evidence contradicts themMetaphysical Claims: Assertion about the world that is not testable (God, soul, afterlife)Pseudoscience: A set of claims that seems scientific but isn’t. Lacks safeguard against confirmation bias and belief perseverance. Scientific evidence is weak.Ad Hoc Immunizing Hypothesis: escape hatch or loopholes that defenders of a theory use to protect their theory from falsificationTerror Management Theory: Theory proposing that our awareness of our death leaves us with an underlying sense of terror with which we cope by adopting reassuring cultural world views (paranormal beliefs)Fallacies: traps in thinking. Wrong conclusionsCorrelation-Causation Fallacy: Error or assuming that because one thing is associated with another, it must cause the otherVariable: Anything that can varyFalsifiable: Capable of being disprovedReplicability: when a study’s findings are able to be duplicated, ideally by independent investigatorsDecline Effect: fact that the size of certain psychological findings appears to be shrinking over timeIntrospection: Method by which trained observers carefully reflect and report on their mental experiencesStructuralism: School of psychology aimed to identify basic elements of psychological experienceFunctionalism: School of psychology aimed to understand adaptive purposed of psychological characteristics (thoughts, feelings, behaviors)Natural Selection: Organisms that possess adaptations survive and reproduce at higher rate than do other organismsBehaviorism: School of psychology focusing on uncovering general laws of learning by looking at observable behaviorCognitivism: School of psychology that proposes that thinking is central to understanding behaviorCognitive Neuroscience: New field of psych, examines relation between brain functioning and thinkingPsychoanalysis: Focuses on internal psychological processes of which we are unawareEvolutionary Psychology: Darwin’s theory of natural selectionBasic Research: examine how minds workApplied Research: examine how we can use basic research to solve real world problemsPsy 1001UMNSpring