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Class Notes: PSY 102 Lecture 1 and Prologue

Chapter 1:
Science and Pseudoscience in Psychology
Science versus Popular Psychology

Popular psychology industry - the sprawling network of everyday sources

of information about human behaviour

Popular Psychology

Self-help - about 3,500 self-help books are published each year

The quality of the information can be good, misleading, or even dangerous

The Internet offers easy and quick information but quality is often
questionable

Common Sense Is Often Uncommon

Consider these proverbs

1) Out of sight out of mind

2) Clothes make the man
3) Better safe than sorry

We rarely notice these contradictions

Nave Realism

The belief that we see the world precisely as it is seeing is believing

Works well in ordinary life, but consider:

The earth seems flat

We seem to be standing still, yet the earth is moving around the sun
18.5 miles/sec

Common Sense

Sometimes our common sense is right

Guides us to the truth and future research ideas

BUT, sometimes research findings directly contradict expectations

Johansson, Hall, Sikstro, & Olsson, 2005 Study Video in class

Choice Blindness

Psychology as a Science

Science is an approach to evidence, a toolbox of skills used to prevent us

from fooling ourselves

Communalism - willingness to share our findings with others

Disinterestedness - attempt to be objective when evaluating

evidence

Wason Selection Task

Science as a Safeguard against Bias

Confirmation bias - tendency to seek out evidence that supports our

hypothesis and neglect or distort contradicting evidence

Scientists need to design studies that may disprove their theories

Science as a Safeguard against Bias

Belief perseverance - tendency to stick to our initial beliefs even when

evidence contradicts them

Dont confuse me with the facts!

e.g., Ross and colleagues ( 1975) and suicide notes

Scientific Thinking and Everyday Life

Strive to think scientifically - think in ways that minimize errors

Become aware of your biases

Recognize you might be wrong

Practice humility

Use the tools of the scientific method to try to overcome them

What Is a Scientific Theory?

Explanation for a large number of findings in the natural world

Not just an educated guess - some survive repeated efforts to refute

them

Hypothesis testable prediction your research question

derived from a theory

Scientific Skepticism
1.5 Identify the key features of scientific skepticism and distinguish it from
pathological skepticism

As scientists, we should

1) evaluate all claims with an open mind

2) insist on persuasive evidence before accepting these claims

Hazards of Excessive Skepticism

Pathological skepticism - tendency to dismiss any claims that contradict

ones beliefs

Disconfirmation Bias

Obergs Dictum

Keep our minds open, but not so open that we believe virtually everything

Basic Principles of Critical Thinking

1.6 Identify and explain six principles of critical thinking that will be used
throughout the text
Critical thinking - set of skills for evaluating all claims in an open-minded and
careful fashion
1. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

Basic Principles of Critical Thinking

2. Falsifiability - for a claim to be meaningful, it must be capable of being

disproved
Risky prediction - forecast that stands a good

chance of being wrong

3. Occams Razor (parsimony, KISS) - simplest explanation for a given set of data
is the best one (e.g., crop circles)

Crop circles example

4. Replicability - findings must be duplicated, ideally by independent investigators

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5. Ruling out rival hypotheses - need to consider alternative hypotheses
6. Correlation Is Not Causation
Correlation-causation fallacy
Third variable problem

Psychological Pseudoscience
1.7 Describe pseudoscience and its differences from science and
metaphysics

Pseudoscience - set of claims that seems scientific but isnt - lacks

safeguards against confirmation bias and belief perseverance

Examples: Astrology, polygraph testing, recovered memories, and

some forms of psychotherapy

Sometimes difficult to discern from bad science

Metaphysical claims are unfalsifiable

(e.g., God, the soul, or the afterlife: not necessarily wrong, but untestable)

Nonoverlapping Realms

Prevalence of
Pseudoscientific Beliefs
Survey of Selected Beliefs of Average Canadians

Reincarnation

30%

Ghosts

30%

Angels

57%

Aliens

32%

Witches

15%

Seven Deadly Sins of Pseudoscience

1.9 Identify seven key warning signs of pseudoscience
1. Ad hoc immunizing hypothesis - escape hatch that defenders of a theory use
to protect against falsification, usually a loophole or exception for negative findings
2. Lack of self-correction
3. Exaggerated claims
4. Overreliance on anecdotes

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Anecdotes are often not representative
Cant tell us about cause and effect
Difficult to verify

Seven Deadly Sins of Pseudoscience

5. Evasion of peer review - doesnt allow work to be screened by colleagues

6. Absence of connectivity - findings dont build upon prior scientific findings
7. Psychobabble - oodles of psychological or neurological language that sounds
highly scientific

Why Are We Drawn to Pseudoscience?

1.10 Describe the motivational factors that predispose us to
pseudoscientific beliefs

Were all prone to pseudoscientific beliefs

Rational (careful reasoning)versus Experiential thinking (intuitive

judgments)

Motivational Factors

Transcendental temptation - desire to alleviate our anxiety by embracing

the supernatural

Need for wonder - fulfills our intrinsic fascination with the nature of our
existence

Why Are We Drawn to Pseudoscience?

1.11 Describe the role that scientific illiteracy may play in the publics
acceptance of pseudoscience

Scientific illiteracy - half of Americans dont know it takes a year for the
earth to revolve around the sun; about two-thirds believe humans and
dinosaurs coexisted

Making sense out of nonsense - our brains are preprogrammed to make

order out of disorder

Brain as interpreter - making sense of the world, but going beyond the
information it receives

Why Are We Drawn to Pseudoscience?

1.12 Explain the importance of cognitive factors as contributors to
pseudoscientific thinking

Pareidolia - tendency to perceive meaningful images in meaningless visual

stimuli

Apophenia - tendency to perceive meaningful connections among unrelated

phenomena (coincidence)
Note: we discussed chapter 1 before the prologue the following
notes are based on lecture and prologue.
Prologue:

How Psychology Became

a Science

Five Major Theoretical Perspectives

Structuralism

Functionalism

Behaviourism

Psychoanalysis

Cognitivism

Great Theoretical
Frameworks of Psychology

2) Functionalism - aimed to understand the adaptive purposes of psychological

characteristics (thoughts, feelings, behaviours)

Psychologists must act as detectives to discover these purposes

Founded by William James

Evolutionary aspect still influences modern psychology

Great Theoretical
Frameworks of Psychology

3) behaviourism - focuses on uncovering the general laws of learning by looking

outside the organism to rewards and punishments delivered by the environment

Psychological science must be objective, not relying on subjective

reports

Founded by John B. Watson, B.F. Skinner was follower

Black box - their view of the mind: an unknown entity which we need
not understand in order to explain behaviour

Great Theoretical
Frameworks of Psychology

4) Cognitivism - proposes that our thinking (cognition) affects our behaviour in

powerful ways

Rewards and punishments cant fully explain behaviour because our

interpretation of these is a crucial determinant of behaviour

We also learn by insight

Jean Piaget and Ulric Neisser are cognitivists

Great Theoretical
Frameworks of Psychology

5) Psychoanalysis - focuses on internal psychological processes (impulses,

thoughts, memories) of which were unaware

Maintains that our everyday lives are filled with symbols, which
psychoanalysts must decode

Emphasis on the role of early experiences

Problem: unconscious processes are difficult to verify

Psychologys Liberation from Philosophy

In the late 1800s, William Wundt followed William James lead and developed
the first official psychology laboratory in Germany, launching psychology as
an experimental science

From Physiology to Psychology: A New Science is Born

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)

founded the first psychological laboratory.

consciousness: a persons subjective experience of the world and the

mind (i.e., sights, sounds, tastes, smells, bodily sensations).

Great Theoretical
Frameworks of Psychology

1. Structuralism - aimed to identify the basic elements of psychological

experience

Map the elements of consciousness (sensations, images, feelings)

using introspection

Introspection refers to the subjective observation of ones own

experience.

Edward Titchener (1867-1927)

Two major problems:

Findings lacked reliability

Imageless thought

Underscored importance of systematic observations

James and the Functional Approach

2. Functionalism: the study of the purpose mental processes serve in

enabling people to adapt to their environment.

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

natural selection: the features of an organism that help it survive

and reproduce are more likely than other features to be passed on to
subsequent generations.

Structuralism vs. Functionalism

Structuralists focused on sensation and perception

Functionalists investigated mental testing, effectiveness of educational

practices

Watson and the Emergence of Behaviorism

Freud and Psychoanalytic Theory

Great Theoretical
Frameworks of Psychology

Maintains that our everyday lives are filled with symbols, which psychoanalysts
must decode

Emphasis on the role of early experiences

Problem: unconscious processes are difficult to verify

Great Theoretical
Frameworks of Psychology

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Cognitivism - proposes that our thinking (cognition) affects our behaviour in
powerful ways

Rewards and punishments cant fully explain behaviour because our

interpretation of these is a crucial determinant of behaviour

We also learn by insight

Jean Piaget and Ulric Neisser are cognitivists

Modern Psychology

Critical Multiplism - approach of using many different methods in concert

(surveys, laboratory experiments, real-world observation, etc.)

Basic and applied research

Translating research findings into real-world applications

third brake light

sequential police lineups