Essay on Psych Notes

James Randi
• SKEPTIC
Thinking like a psychologist
• You need to develop skepticism and critical thinking
• Separate uniformed opinions from examined conclusions
• Use scientific approach to come to conclusions about why people think, feel & act the way they do o People often overestimate their ability to describe, predict, & explain human behavior
- We consider ourselves experts on psychology
Hindsight bias
• Things that seem obvious to us after we’ve learned the outcome
• 911
False consensus effect
• A sense that everyone believes what we do when our exposure to the rest of the world is very limited and does not represent everyone
• People in Africa don’t share our beliefs and behaviors
Scientific method
• Used to AVOID BIAS in findings, to counter the effect it has on our thinking
• Describe, predict, explain
• Make observations → formulate theories to explain observation (must be testable) → propose hypothesis → specifies which result will support/reject theory
• 5 research methods to test hypotheses
Why are the answers that flow from the scientific approach more reliable than those based on intuition and common sense?
- The answers that are found from the scientific approach are more reliable than those found through intuition and common sense because our thinking is usually clouded by bias and personal experiences and this often shows in our findings.
- Helps us distinguish reality & illusion
- There are limits to our common sense & intuition and we are easily misled in our findings

Hypothesis
• Predictions of how two or more factors are likely to be related
Control Group
• Group in an experiment that does not receive the treatment
• Randomly group that does not receive the treatment
Placebo effect
• Substance that has no direct pharmaceutical effect but can have a therapeutically effect on pain & sickness because the patient believes it will work
• The clinical response to a treatment that occurs independent of its physiological effect. In medicine, a placebo is a substance that has no direct pharmacological effect, such as a sugar pill.
Scientific
• A framework of approaches and procedures for forming a hypothesis and gathering and interpreting objective information through experimentation. Seeks to minimize sources of bias and to yield dependable, and independently testable, information.
• A set of general procedures for gathering and interpreting data
Critical

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Psych Notes Essay

psych notes Essay