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University of Toronto - PSY100: Intro to Psychology - All Lecture Notes
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PSY100: Introduction to psychology / Prof: Paul Whissell / Summer session 2019 Lecture notes
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MAY 7, 2019Part 1: Intro to Psych
● What is Psychology?
○ The scientific study of thought and behavior, the scientific method is used
○ Psyche - mind and logos- study
○ Understanding our thoughts which relate to our behaviors
● What is Science?
○ Science requires being open-minded and skeptical, must be open to any idea, and
must criticize every idea. IMPORTANT TO BE OPEN MINDED AND
SKEPTICAL. Some theories may make us feel uncomfy
● Why is Psych Important?
○ We collect info or data about thoughts and behavior thru intensive study
○ The more we study the better we can predict and control behavior, develop
theories that help us understand and predict
○ Breaking down all causes of behavior and finding multiple relationships
○ Psych can…
■ Facilitate certain behaviors (explains performance in athletics and helps
boost performance)
■ Identify and treat maladaptive behaviors (cognitive-behavioral therapy
for treating anxiety etc
■ Predict population events (planning or consumer habits during an
economic downturn)
● Online polls danger!!!
○ When people r anonymous ppl tend to behave differently and usually a lot
meaner. Ppl do weird and strange stuff when they know nobody is watching.
○ When you have anonymity people behave v differently
● The Study of Psych
○ Thoughts: internal mental process, you can feel diff but you can act differently
whereas behaviors are actions
○ Internal thought can be challenging to measure, and overt behaviors r somewhat
easier to measure, psych is involved w both
○ Interested in why behaviors occur, like the mechanism of it. What is it about ur
brain that makes you feel the way tht you do? Aka mechanism (cause), trying to
understand why behaviors occur
○ Behaviors are influenced by objects and events (stimuli) and the environment in
which they occur (context)
■ A context is a group of stimuli
, ○ How important is genetics vs env, or free will vs determinism; what drives the
choices we make, are we in charge all the time? Accuracy vs inaccuracy,
subconscious vs conscious
○ Types of psychologists: relationships, mental health, education system,
entertainment and media, work env, law development and enforcement, criminal
rehabilitation
Part 2: Course Info
● Office hours: monday 1-5 go
Part 3: Understanding Psych
● Why Study Psych?
○ Common behaviors: eating, factors that drive it:
■ Hunger, willpower/discipline (implies free will), anxiety, stress and
depression, learned social and societal pressures (by gender): , learned
cues (time), curiosity/hedonism (you got to try this its so cool!), other:
such as genetic drives
○ Learned food cues
■ We eat at certain times and get hungry at that time, you may get especially
hungry when someone points out the time
■ Time may be conditioned (learned) cue that increases hunger and drives us
to eat
■ Time is a factor and its a learned factor, some ppl are more vulnerable to
cues
○ Marketing- may explain a portion of our behavior and are actions towards food
■ Foods are marketed v differently to men and women
■ Food to women: are lighter like salads and yogurts
■ Food to men: heartier foods like meats and potatoes and burgers
■ Learned factors and biological factors
○ Attitudes/ Factors
■ Gender Attitudes
● A man eating in front of a woman may be diff than a man eating in
front of another man same w a woman eating in front of men
● Eating behaviors change depending on your audience
● Audience matters!!!
● Amount of control you believe you have: your belief in controlled
behavior is correlated w how you control it
■ Biological factors:
● We can’t live without eating, there are biological factors in place
that control how much you eat
, ● Brain injuries can change eating and body weight, the
hypothalamus controls your appetite. So damage to that is what
can cause changes in eating behaviours
● Lmao it says that we dont rlly make our own choices
● Genes! Eating-related disorders such as obesity runs in families
○ Gender and Eating
○ Understanding Behaviours
■ Behavior is multifactorial (many factors are influential each factor
generally has a small effect)
■ Look at all the factors and the percentage of their variability
■ All these factors interact
■ Individual differences exist and can be remarkable
■ Psychology gains insight thru the scientific approach
● Errors/Biases in Human Thinking
○ Confirmation Bias: #1 cause in human bias
■ The proportion of studies is what we look at
■ Supposed to find all the evidence and rather than ignoring what disagrees
w your ideas try to find why they disagree w you
○ Illusion of Causality
■ Humans are hardwired to find relationships between phenomena linked in
space and time
■ Kinda cause and effect: dark clouds = rain, cough= sick
■ Sometimes we’re wrong and our guesses are wrong and illogical
■ EX: spurious/ random relationships
● Divorces and margarine, you see associations tht look v strong but
sometimes they’re not right. Closely related doesnt mean it causes
each other
○ Patternicity
■ We are programmed to find patterns in nature, especially patterns of a
certain type
■ Ex: Apophenia:
● We may see meaning in unconnected things (apophenia)
○ Determining causality
■ Ohhh you need a control group to see what happens over time. You need
to see if the medication works w a control group that hasn't been given
anything. Control group can help you interpret the result. Medicine A
makes people get worse, while Med B does nothing. People get better over
time.
○ Other Fallacies
, ■ Not me fallacy (i dont make mistakes, others do)
■ Argument from antiquity fallacy (this idea has been around forever, so it
must be true)
■ Appeal to authority fallacy (someone important said this, so it must be
true)
■ Appeal to ignorance (this idea has not been refuted yet, so it must be true
■ either/ or fallacy (dichotomous/binary thinking)
● Beliefs
○ When we have a belief its not always inspired by evidence
○ Our beliefs allow us to manage other issues we may have: terror management
theory: we experience terror due to the idea that we will be dead one die. So we
seek out values and theories that provide us meaning and help us manage what we
are experiencing
○ Sometimes reluctant to change our beliefs is the danger to admitting we are wrong
aka humiliation, so that is belief perseverance: adherence to a belief in spite of
evidence to the contrary
○ Our reasons for denying evidence may be emotional
Part 4: History of Psych
● Several schools of thought
○ Psych has roots in philosophy and psychophysics (predates psychology)
○ Structuralism:
■ 1st approach in psychology
■ An approach where you study the elements (structure) of psychological
experiences such as color, smell and reading
■ Used the technique of introspection (ask somebody to write down what
they are feeling, verbal report on experience by subject) and you look for
consistent themes
● It’s subjective, interviewer effect, most of the experiences we may
not be aware of. We may only be aware of the 2% of the
processing of the color red and 98% we arent
■ Gave credibility to psych as a science, popularized psych as a science
■ Identified key difference between sensation +perception (what we see vs
what we r feeling)
○ Functionalism:
■ Most of what we do is for the survival of our species
■ Explains how thoughts and behaviors served adaptive functions that
increased survival
■ Certain emotions while unpleasant may be useful
■ Key contributor: william james
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