Chapter 1 Notes Terms Psychology and Scientific Thinking Psychology the scientific study of the mind brain and behavior literally means the study of the psyche spirit or soul Levels of analysis lower levels are more closely related to the brain biological influences higher levels are more closely related to thoughts feelings emotions and social and cultural influences to fully understand psychology we must consider multiple levels of analysis Multiply determined produced by many factors for this reason human behavior is difficult to predict Single variable explanations of behavior explaining complex human behaviors in terms of a single causal factor i e violence due to poverty Individual differences variations among people in their thinking emotion personality and behavior makes it difficult to come up with explanations of behavior that apply to everyone 5 Challenges in Psychology 1 Human behavior is difficult to predict because almost all actions are multiply determined 2 Psychological influences are rarely independent of each other making it difficult to pin down which cause or causes is operating 3 People have individual differences in thinking emotion personality and behavior 4 People often influence each other making it difficult to pin own what causes what 5 People s behavior is often shaped by culture cultural differences place limits on the generalizations that psychologists can draw about human nature Na ve realism the belief that we see the world precisely as it is Scientific theory an explanation for a large number of findings in the natural world offers an account that ties multiple findings together into one package account for existing data and generate predictions regarding new data that we haven t yet observed must generate novel predictions that researchers can test Hypothesis a testable prediction derived from a scientific theory Confirmation bias the tendency to seek out evidence that supports our beliefs and deny dismiss or distort evidence that contradicts them seek and ye shall find Belief perseverance the tendency to stick to our initial beliefs even when evidence contradicts them Metaphysical claims assertions about the world that we can t test assertions about the existence of God the soul and the afterlife Pseudoscience a set of claims that seems scientific but isn t lacks the safeguards against confirmation bias and belief perseverance that characterize science warning signs of pseudoscience 1 Ad hoc immunizing hypothesis escape hatch or loophole that defenders of a theory use to protect their theory from falsification 2 Exaggerated claims 3 Overreliance on anecdotes based on subjective impressions I know someone who 4 Absence of connectivity to other research 5 6 7 Meaningless psychobabble that uses fancy scientific sounding terms that don t make sense 8 Talk of proof instead of evidence Lack of review by other scholars peer review or replication by independent labs Lack of self correction when contrary evidence is published Patternicity our tendency to see patterns in meaningless data term given by Michael Shermer 2008 stems from an evolutionary adaptive tendency our brains are predisposed to make order out of disorder and find sense in nonsense leads us to embrace conspiracy theories Terror management theory theory proposing that our awareness of death leaves us with an underlying sense of terror with which we cope by adopting reassuring cultural world views suggests that we are likely to hold many paranormal beliefs regardless of whether they are correct Logical fallacies traps in thinking that can lead to mistaken conclusions 3 important logical fallacies that are essential to bear in mind when evaluating psychological claims 1 Emotional reasoning fallacy the error of using our emotions as guides for evaluating the validity of a claim findings that challenge our existing beliefs make us angry while findings that confirm our beliefs make us happy 2 Bandwagon fallacy the error of assuming a claim is correct just because many people believe it 3 Not me fallacy the error of believing that we re immune from errors in thinking that afflict other people Bias blind spot most people are unaware of their own biases but keenly aware of them in others 3 major reasons we should all be concerned about pseudoscience 1 Opportunity cost what we give up 2 Direct harm pseudoscientific treatments sometimes do harm to those receiving them 3 An inability to think scientifically as citizens Scientific skepticism approach of evaluating all claims with an open mind but insisting on persuasive evidence before accepting them Critical thinking set of skills for evaluating all claims in an open minded and careful fashion scientific thinking allows us to evaluate scientific claims and overcome our own biases 6 scientific thinking principles 1 Ruling out rival hypotheses whenever we evaluate a psychological claim we should ask ourselves whether we ve excluded other plausible explanations for it 2 Correlation vs Causation don t conclude that when two things are associated with one another correlated that one must cause the other correlation isn t causation correlation causation fallacy a Variable anything that can vary b Third variable problem a third variable C causes both A and B this scenario mistakenly leads us to conclude that A and B are causally related 3 Falsifiability capability of being disproved if a theory isn t falsifiable it can t be tested a theory that explains everything in effect explains nothing whenever we evaluate a psychological claim we should ask ourselves whether one could in principle disprove it or whether it is consistent with any conceivable body of evidence 4 Replicability means that a study s findings can be duplicated consistently if they can t be duplicated it increases the likelihood that the original findings were due to chance a Decline effect fact that the size of certain psychological findings appears to be shrinking over time 5 Extraordinary claims whenever we evaluate a psychological claim we should ask ourselves whether this claim runs counter to many things we know already and if it does whether the evidence is as extraordinary as the claim 6 Occam s razor principle of parsimony KISS keep it simple stupid if two explanations account equally well for a phenomenon we should generally select the more parsimonious one Wilhelm Wundt 1832 1920 developed the first psychological laboratory in Leipzig Germany in 1879 used technique known as