Chapter 1 Slides - Critical Thinking
Chapter 1 Slides - Critical Thinking
INTRODUCTORY PSYCHOLOGY
The scientific study of behaviour
and mental processes.
Surveys show a large percentage of the general
public doubts that psychology is truly scientific
(Janda, 1998; Lilienfeld, 2012). Free from bias?
This is partly explained by the fact that when
psychologists appear on the news or other popular
media outlets, they’re rarely scientists.
A recent poll showed that only 30% agreed that
“psychology attempts to understand the way
people behave through scientific research”, and
53% believed that “psychology attempts to
understand the way people behave by talking to
them and asking them why they do what they do”
(Penn et al., 2008).
Because psychology seems so familiar to all of us,
we may assume that it’s easy (Lilienfeld, 2012).
Children and adults tend to regard psychology as
simpler and more self-evident than physics,
chemistry, and biology (Keil et al., 2010).
What is science?
Is it a field of study? (e.g., science, math, history,).
It is a method. It is an approach to evidence. It involves a
brutal competition of evidence”. A systematic set of strategies
for answering questions. It involves observation and testing. Any
discipline which uses the scientific method extensively, is scientific.
A set of attitudes and skills designed to prevent us from fooling ourselves.
Science is not a “brutal competition of opinion”. It’s a matter
of finding out which explanations best fit the data.
Is psychology just common sense? The results of
some experiments you will encounter will seem obvious,
because the topic of psychology is something with which we all feel
intimately familiar. This separates psychology from other sciences.
When you read about an experiment in particle physics, it is unlikely
that the results will connect with your personal experiences and ring
familiar. We bet few think “Wow! That experiment on quarks was just
like what occurred while waiting for the bus yesterday” or “My mother
always told me to watch out for quarks, positrons, and antimatter.” When
reading about the results of a study on helping behaviour or aggression,
however, it’s common to think, “Aw, come on, I could have predicted that.
It’s the same thing that happened to me last Friday!” (Aronson, 2013).
COMMONSENSE PSYCHOLOGY QUIZ
T F 1. “Psychologist” and “Psychiatrist” refer to the same profession.
T F 2. Psychologists study behaviour and the mind, but not biology.
T F 3. Evidence suggests that sugar causes hyperactivity in children.
T F 4. Environments rich in stimuli improve the brains of preschoolers.
T F 5. Research evidence suggests that police departments have
found psychics useful in helping to solve complex cases.
T F 6. People learn better when they receive information in their
preferred learning style (e.g., auditory, visual, or kinesthetic).
T F 7. Psychologists do not believe that ESP exists.
T F 8. In love and friendship, more often than not, similarities rather
than opposites attract one another to each other.
T F 9. Research evidence suggests that a full moon does not have
an effect on hospital admissions and criminal behaviour.
T F 10. Research evidence suggests that “venting” aggression is not
useful in helping a person feel less angry.
T F 11. Research evidence suggests that different weather patterns do
not affect arthritis pain.
T F 12. Pre-menstrual syndrome (PMS) does not often occur in women.
C. Murphy (1990): “Day after day [social scientists] discover that
people’s behaviour is pretty much what you’d expect.”
Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (1949) reacted with similar scorn to
social scientists’ studies of WWII Soldiers. These were the findings he
read, and the interpretations by Paul Lazarsfeld (1949) (in blue).
1. Better-educated soldiers suffered more adjustment problems
than did less-educated soldiers. (Intellectuals were less prepared
for battle stresses than street-smart people.)
2. Soldiers from southern climates coped better with the hot South
Sea Island weather than did northern soldiers. (People from
southern climates are more accustomed to hot weather.)
3. Soldiers from rural backgrounds were usually in better spirits during their
army life than soldiers from the city. (They are more used to hardships.)
4. Soldiers were more eager to return home during the fighting than they
were after the German surrender. (They didn’t want to be killed.)
Actually – every one of these findings is the direct opposite of what was
actually found. If the true results of the investigation were mentioned first in
this demonstration [as Schlesinger experienced], the reader would have
labeled these ‘obvious’ also (Lazarsfeld, 1949).
1. Human behaviour is difficult to predict because most actions are
multiply determined (produced by many factors). As a result, we
need to be skeptical of single-variable explanations of behaviour –
which unfortunately are wide-spread in the media.
2. Psychological influences don’t act in isolation. It can be
difficult to pin down which cause or causes are operating.
3. People show individual differences in thinking, emotion,
personality, and behaviour. This explains why we can
respond to the same situation differently, making it difficult
to come up with explanations of behaviour that apply to all.
4. People often influence each other, making psychology
unimaginably more complicated than disciplines like chemistry
in which we can isolate substances in test tubes (Wachtel,
1973). A depressed person may lower the mood of others –
and these others may then avoid the depressed person, European Americans
leading the depressed person to feel isolated.. This is called
reciprocal determinism (Bandura, 1973).
5. People’s behaviour is often shaped by cultural differences,
which place limits on the generalizations that psychologists
can draw about human nature (Henrich et al., 2010). Asian Americans
Theories organize facts and predict events. Theories are
general explanations. Hypotheses are testable predictions.
Hypotheses must be risky. Capable of being disconfirmed.
Hypotheses guide scientific research by enabling researchers
to test and reject or revise the theory.
Ad hoc Immunizing Hypothesis - An excuse
used to protect a theory or claim from falsification.
Good scientists are good critical thinkers!
Critical thinking involves….not blindly accepting arguments
and conclusions. It examines assumptions, evaluates
evidence, and assesses conclusions. Show me the
evidence! Daryl Bem – critical thinking video! Magic?
Naive Realism: belief that we see the world as it “really” is.
Sugar and hyperactivity? Research indicates that sugar does not cause
hyperactivity. Belief Perseverance – the tendency to stick to our initial
beliefs (persevere!) even when evidence contradicts them.
Sweat & Durm (1993) asked police departments of the 50 largest U.S. cities
whether they ever used psychics - 35% had. Not one found them helpful.
Illusory Correlation: The perception of
a relationship where none exists.
“You always need something after you’ve thrown it away”
“The phone always rings when you’re in the shower”
“Elevators always seem to be going the wrong direction”
“Sugar makes children hyperactive”
“A full moon is associated with more hospital admissions”
How might we test whether the full moon is
associated with hospital admissions?
How many hospital admissions during full moon?
How many hospital admissions during no full moon?
You hear about a new form of therapy that
supposedly cures anxiety. A full 63% of the
people who go through the program
improve. Aside from the therapy, what else
could account for this result? Why shouldn't
you rush out to recommend this treatment to
your friend?
Do weather
changes trigger arthritis pain?
Research studies say “no” (Quick, 1999; Redelmeier &
Tversky, 1996). For instance, Redelmeier and Tversky
followed 18 arthritis patients for 15 months.
Researchers recorded each day, both patients’ pain reports
and the daily weather – temp, humidity, and pressure.
Despite patients’ beliefs, weather was unrelated to their
discomfort on the same day or up to 2 days earlier or later.
Shown columns of random numbers labeled “arthritis pain”
and “barometric pressure,” even college students are fooled.
We are apt to seeing patterns, whether there or not.
Confirmation bias: The tendency for people to search See Table 1.2. Is there a
relationship between height
for information that confirms their preconceptions. *Think (cm) and temperament (0 =
“If you seek, you will find”. calm; 100 = highly reactive?)
Most people detect little
Business managers are more likely to relationship between height
and temperament. However,
follow the successful careers of those the correlation in this mock
they once hired than to track the example is moderately
positive (+.63). If people fail
achievements of those they rejected, to see a relationship when
data are presented
leading them to confirm their own systematically – how are
perceived hiring ability (Wason, 1981). they likely to notice them
in everyday life?
Pseudoscience: Claims that seems scientific but are not. They lack
safeguards against confirmation bias and belief perseverance.
A recent survey of the U.S. public shows that 41% believe
in extrasensory perception (ESP) over 30% believe in haunted
houses, ghosts, and telepathy; and 25% in astrology (Musella, 2005).
The fact that many entertain the possibility of such beliefs
isn’t by itself worrisome - a certain amount of
open-mindedness is essential for scientific thinking.
And even high levels of intelligence offers no guarantee against
beliefs with no evidence (Hyman, 2002). People with high IQs are
as prone as others to beliefs in conspiracy theories (e.g., the Bush
administration orchestrated the September 11 attacks (Molé, 2006).
More concerning is that many appear convinced that such claims
are correct even though the bulk of the scientific evidence reveals that
this is not the case (e.g., Extra-sensory perception; astrology).
Moreover, it’s troubling that many poorly supported beliefs are
more popular, or at least more widespread, than well-supported
beliefs. To take merely one example, there are about 20 times as many
astrologers as astronomers in the United States (Gilovich, 1991).
1. Extraordinary claims - Require extraordinary evidence (Psychics?)
2. Falsifiability - For a claim to be meaningful, it must be
capable of being disproved (some claims are not very specific).
3. Occam’s Razor - If two explanations account equally well
for an observation, we should generally select the simpler one.
4. Replicability - findings must be consistently duplicated.
5. Ruling out rival hypotheses - need to consider alternative
hypotheses (E.g., EMDR).
6. Correlation Is Not Causation – correlational designs do not
permit causal inferencing. You can’t determine cause & effect.
1. Ad hoc immunizing
hypothesis - excuse that
defenders of a theory use to protect
a theory against falsification.
Examples from “Secrets of the
Psychics”?
2. Lack of self-correction -
with pseudoscience, incorrect claims
never seem to be weeded out –
proponents cling to them stubbornly
despite contrary evidence. E.g.,
Facilitated communication?
3. Exaggerated claims - be wary of claims that suggest a “break
through” and the word “proven” because scientific knowledge is rarely, if
ever, conclusive.
4. Anecdotes – Representative? Cause & effect? Verifiable?
5. Evasion of peer review – Reluctance to be evaluated by experts.
6. No connectivity - Claims don’t build upon prior scientific findings.
7. Psychobabble - Language that sounds highly scientific?
Hindsight bias: tend to overestimate
how well we could have forecasted known
outcomes. *Think “looking behind, or
looking back”.
Naive Realism: Belief that we see the world as it really is.
*Think: Seeing is believing.
Ad hoc Immunizing Hypothesis: An excuse defenders of a
theory use to protect their theory from falsification.
Falsifiability: Ability to deem something false. Is it capable
of being disproven? Yes? Then it’s falsifiable.
Belief Perseverance: We tend to stick to our initial beliefs
(persevere!) even when evidence contradicts them.
Illusory correlation: perception of a relationship where none
exists. *Think “illusion”. You see something that isn’t there.
Confirmation bias: a tendency to search for information that
confirms one’s beliefs. *Think “If you seek, you will find”.
Ruling out rival hypotheses: the need to rule out other
important competing explanations.
1. When students begin to read through their introductory psychology
textbook, they are often surprised to learn that
a. common-sense explanations abound in the field of psychology.
b. many of their beliefs about the causes of thoughts and behaviours are
incorrect.
c. psychology is a unique field of study separate from philosophy and biology.
d. psychologists do not study people’s everyday behaviours.
2. Trying to explain complex human behaviours, like violence, in terms of
one causal factor, such as genes or video games, fails to acknowledge that
a. biological roots to behaviour are more important than other causes.
b. actions are multiply determined.
c. individual differences prevent us from making any conclusions.
d. behaviour is always reciprocally determined.
3. Professor Smith told one class that alcohol consumption has been found
to increase sexual desire. He informed another class that alcohol
consumption has been found to reduce sexual appetite. The fact that
neither class was surprised by the information they received best illustrates:
a. How psychology findings are common sense. b. the hindsight bias.
c. The need for replications. d. belief perseverance.
4. Milo and Shirley are taking a trip on a cruise ship for their twentieth
wedding anniversary. They believe they made it to this milestone because
they know each other so well. During the trip, they take part in a game show
where they find out they don’t know each other as well as they thought.
However, they still maintain they are very much in tune with the other’s
needs and thoughts. This is an example of
a. the representativeness heuristic. b. the hindsight bias.
c. belief perseverance. d. the availability heuristic.
5. When attempting to differentiate between useful and useless information
from popular psychology, what is a good rule of thumb to follow?
a. Trust nothing that you read or hear in the media about psychology.
b. Insist on evidence to accurately evaluate all claims.
c. All popular psychology claims are misinformation.
d. Common sense is often correct; go with your gut.
6. A major problem with common-sense proverbs is that they often coexist
with their complete opposite. This violates which principle of critical
thinking?
a. Replicability b. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
c. Parsimony/Occam’s razor d. Falsifiability
7. When people watch a debate, they often point out
the internal contradictions, flaws in logic, and hypocrisy in positions they
oppose while glossing over the same shortcomings for positions they
support. This is an example of
a. an illusory correlation. b. the hindsight bias.
c. the confirmation bias. d. belief perseverance.
8. In research reports, we often see the terms “suggests,” “appears,” or
“raises the possibility that” a finding is correct but also acknowledges that
we might be incorrect. The authors of your textbook refer to this as
a. naive realism. b. a prescription for humility.
c. falsifiability. d. Occam’s razor.
9. Dr. Boliba develops a herbal supplement that he claims increases
memory abilities. However, many other researchers have been unable to
replicate his findings and report that placebo pills are just as effective as his
herbal supplement. In response to these criticisms, Dr. Boliba argues that
his pills increase specific types of memory that were not tested by
researchers and that the participants must have performed poorly in other
studies because they were concerned about taking a drug. In this example,
which warning sign of pseudoscience are you witnessing?
a. Ad hoc immunizing b. Exaggerated claims
c. Overreliance on anecdotes d. Evasion of peer review