EPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY REVIEWER

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
PSYCHOLOGY- Science of behavior
-Based theories on scientific evidence accumulated through research
-Research about underlying processes is known as Psychological Science
SCIENCE-From the Latin word scientia, means knowledge
2 meanings: Content and Process (systematic ways)
THE NEED FOR SCIENTIFIC METHODOLOGY
COMMONSENSE PSYCHOLOGY-Everyday, nonscientific data gathering that
shapes expectations and beliefs & directs behavior towards other
-Clearly demonstrates the need for a more scientific approach
- 2 Factors in gathering data in systematic and impartial way: source of psych
info & inferential strategies
o NONSCIENTIFIC SOURCES OF DATA
-Psychological info offered by people we like or respect, accepted w/o
question
-Confirmation bias: beliefs tend to become stable as we overlook instances
that might disconfirm our beliefs and seek confirmatory instances, instead
-Info from popular, attractive, high status, seemingly expert or confident
-Observation and interactions w/ others
-Predict consequences and direct behavior toward desired goals
-Use beliefs and feelings to explain behavior
-Not always privy to own decision-making processes
-Unaware of factors that influence attitude
-Inferential strategies used to process data are too simple to be accurate
o NONSCIENTIFIC INFERENCE
-Traits we assigned them is one of 1st and most impt data
-All commonsense psychologist- trait theorists
-Strong bias to overlook situational data
-Ability to make accurate predictions of traits increases w/ length of
acquaintanceship
- May lead to overestimation that one acts in trait-consistent way
-Traits: predictor of long-term behaviors Situations: momentary behaviors
-Stereotypic expectations can lead us to seek confirmatory instances of
behavior
-Problem in using nonscientific data: People are not good at estimating true
probabilities
-Gamblers Fallacy: When machine has not paid off in a long time, tend to
believe that it is overdue for a payoff
-Overconfidence bias: Predictions, guesses & explanation tend to feel much
more correct than they actually are and more date available, more confident
-Scientific method: Steps scientists take to gather and verify info, answer
questions, explain relationship
CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN SCIENCE
o SC