Chapt. 01-Thinking critically.ppt

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Chapter One: Thinking Critically with Psychological Science Overview  The Need for Psychological Science  Research Strategies: How Psychologists Ask and Answer Questions Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images The Need for Psychological Science...

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Chapter One: Thinking Critically with Psychological Science Overview  The Need for Psychological Science  Research Strategies: How Psychologists Ask and Answer Questions Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images The Need for Psychological Science  Humans cannot rely solely on intuition and common sense.  Three phenomena illustrate this:  Hindsight bias  Judgmental overconfidence  Tendency to perceive patterns in random events  Hindsight bias  Tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that we could have predicted it.  Also known as the I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon. REUTERS/U.S. Coast Guard/Handout Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Did we know it all along? HINDSIGHT BIAS When drilling the Deepwater Horizon oil well in 2010, oil industry employees took some shortcuts and ignored some warning signs, without intending to harm the environment or their companies’ reputations. After the resulting Gulf oil spill, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, the foolishness of those judgments became obvious. Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images WREAT → WATER ETRYN → ENTRY GRABE → BARGE • About how many seconds do you think it would take you to unscramble each anagram? The Limits of Intuition and Common Sense  Overconfidence  People tend to think they know more than they do.  This occurs in academic and social behavior. Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images The Scientific Attitude  Curiosity  Skepticism  Humility Let’s take a closer look at each of these. Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images The Scientific Attitude  Thinking critically  Critical thinking refers to a more careful style of forming and evaluating knowledge than simply using intuition.  In addition to the scientific method, critical thinking helps develop more effective and accurate ways to figure out what makes people do, think, and feel the things they do. Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images The Scientific Method  Scientific method is the process of testing ideas about the world by  Setting up situations that test our ideas  If the data do not fit our ideas, then ideas are modified and tested again.  Making careful, organized observations  Analyzing whether the data fit with our ideas Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images The Scientific Method Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images The Scientific Method  Theory  Explanation using an integrated set of principles that organizes observations and predicts behaviors or events  Hypothesis  Testable prediction, often implied by a theory  Operational definition  Carefully worded statement of the exact procedures (operations) used in a research study  Replication  Repeating the essence of a research study, usually with different participants in different situations, to see whether the basic finding extends to other participants and circumstances Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images The Scientific Method  Testing hypothesis and refining theories  Description  Correlation  Causation  Experiments Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Research Strategies: Description  Descriptive research is a systematic, objective observation of people  The goal is to provide a clear, accurate picture of people’s behaviors, thoughts, and attributes Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Description Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Research Strategies: Correlation  General Definition: an observation that two traits or attributes are related to each other (thus, they are “co”-related)  Scientific definition: a measure of how closely two factors vary together, or how well you can predict a change in one from observing a change in the other Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Correlation  Positive correlation (between 0 and +1.00)  Indicates a direct relationship, meaning that two things increase together or decrease together  Negative correlation (between 0 and −1.00)  Indicates an inverse relationship: As one thing increases, the other decreases. Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images SCATTERPLOTS, SHOWING PATTERNS OF CORRELATION Correlations can range from +1.00 (scores on one measure increase in direct proportion to scores on another), to 0.00 (no relationship), to –1.00 (scores on one measure decrease precisely as scores rise on the other). Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Correlation and Causation  No matter how strong the relationship, correlation does not prove causation.  Correlation indicates the possibility of a cause- effect relationship, but does not prove it. Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Research Strategies: Experimentation  With experiments, researchers can focus on the possible effects of one or more factors in several ways.  Manipulating the factors of interest to determine their effects  Holding constant (“controlling”) other factors  Experimental group and control group Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Experimentation Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Comparing Research Methods 

Show More Show Less