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Introduction to psychology 1
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lOMoARcPSD|9881824Psych notes
Introduction to psychology I (Macquarie University)
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Week 1
Lecture
What is psychology?
The scientific study of how people think, feel, and behave.
Both a science and a profession.
The practice of psychology is an application of the science of psychology.
Fields within psychology
Learning
Biological psychology
Comparative psychology
Social psychology
Clinical psychology
Personality psychology
Cross cultural psychology
Perception
Health psychology
Organisational psychology
Neuropsychology
Forensic psychology
Cognitive psychology
Developmental psychology
Indigenous psychology
Inattentional Blindness
Naive Realism
Readings
From Inquiry to Understanding Chapter 1.1 and 1.2
Psychology is a vast discipline encompassing the study of perceptions, emotions, thoughts, and
observable human behaviours from an enormous array of perspectives.
Human behaviour is difficult to predict in part because almost all actions are produced by many
factors.
Common sense cannot always be trusted. We trust our common sense largely because we are prone
to naïve realism: the belief that we see the world exactly as it is. Sometimes what appears to be
obvious can trip us up when it comes to evaluating ourselves and others.
Science is an approach to evidence and explanations of the world around us and in us.
Pseudoscience: claims that pretend to be science. Pseudoscience lacks the safeguards against
confirmation bias and belief perseverance that characterises science. Pseudoscience’s tend to rely
heavy on anecdotal evidence.
Week 2
LECTURE 1
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Ways to Acquire Knowledge
1. Intuition: knowledge about behaviour based on opinion, faith, belief, or feelings (common sense).
2. Authority: knowledge about behaviour that comes from an expert or trustworthy source (especially
supported by prior accuracy)
3. Rational Induction: knowledge about behaviour based on the combination of known information or
'facts’.
4. Empirical Science: knowledge about behaviour tested and confirmed via the scientific method.
All are valid bases for generating hypotheses however, only empirical science is a valid method for
testing hypotheses and confirming, and therefore producing scientific psychological knowledge.
Principles of Scientific Thinking
1. Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence
2. Predictions need to be testable and falsifiable
3. Simpler explanations are better explanations (Occam's razor)
4. If it’s true, it should be replicable
5. Rival hypotheses should be excluded
6. Correlation does not equal causation
Thinking and Reasoning
1. Deduction (Aristotle)
Syllogistic reasoning or logic
- comes from Greek word for deduction
- Aristotle outlines the basic structure as consisting of accepting things that are known what can we
know of necessity
- syllogistic reasoning involves premises followed by a conclusion
Conditional Reasoning
- a conditional reasoning proposition consists of antecedent and consequent
- they are in the form if p then q - where p is the antecedent and p is the consequent
- what follows from the proposition is a re-statement of the implications of the conditional proposition
2. Induction
- associated with hypothesis generation and testing
- involves the continuous adjustments of one’s beliefs
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There are two types of inductive assertion:
a. strong - this is where there is good reason to accept the assertion under consideration.
b. weak - here there is poor or weak support.
Confirmation bias:
- humans are prone to belief persistence or 'resist belief change’.
- this has shown itself in several experimental findings around the topic of confirmation bias
3. Abduction
- this is a concept used in philosophy and computing science among others to indicate the process of
hypothesis generation
- more exactly it means that selection of the best explanatory hypothesis for a known set of facts
- abduction is almost the reverse of deduction in that the conclusion is accepted and the process involves
the selection of the best explanatory set of premises
- probable conclusion from what you know
- major premise is evident but minor premise and therefore conclusion is only probable
Psychological Theories
Structuralism
- historically, predominantly in Europe
- Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener
- they asked - what is the structure of the mind?
- similarities with philosophies of rationalists
- introspection is its main method of investigation
Functionalism
- what is the practical use of the mind?
- combination of evolution and pragmatism
- William James
- uses all methods to aid in this understanding (combine theoretical and empirical)
- interested in commonalities and individual differences
Evolutionary Psychology
- many theorists (Cosmides and Tooby)
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