Foundations of Scientific Psychology: The Scientific Attitude, Critical Thinking, and Research Methods

Notes

Module 0.1 The Scientific Attitude, Critical Thinking, & Developing Arguments 1. How is psychology a science? Psychology is the scientific study of the mind based on studies and experiments. 2. What are the three elements of the scientific attitude? Curiosity, Skepticism, & Humility being humble, accept when data is wrong 3. Define critical thinking. Type of thinking that examines assumptions and evidence, and does not immediately accept an argument. 4. How does critical thinking challenge common sense? Thinking critically goes deeper than asking surface level questions about a topic. It requires the elements of the scientific attitude: curiosity, skepticism, and humility. a. Hindsight bias: believing you saw the outcome of something before it happens: "I know it all along" b. Overconfidence: higher confidence that you know the faces instead of taking time to think critically c. Illusory correlation: perceiving patterns in random events. believing there's a relationship in random events "I already saw this, it won't happen again" 6. Describe how theories advance psychological science. Psychological theories are created in order to test a prediction. That prediction can be prove...