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21 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Psychological Pseudoscience |
Set of claims that seem scientific but from confirmation bias and belief perseverance that characterize science |
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Confirmation Bias |
tendency to seek evidence that supports our hypothesis
neglecting or distorting contradicting evidence |
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Belief perseverance |
tendency to stick to our initial beliefs even when we are wrong |
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Warning Signs for Pseudoscience |
exaggerated claims - over reliance on anecdotes - absence of link to other research - lack of peer review - lack of self-correction - psychobabble - "proof" instead of evidence |
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Apophenia |
tendency to perceive meaningful connections amoung unrelated phenomena |
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Pareidolia |
seeing meaningful images in meaningless visual stimuli |
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Dangers in pseudoscience |
opportunity cost: ignore the scientific route - direct harm - blocks scientific thinking |
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Antidote for pseudoscience |
think scientifically - separate science from pseudoscience |
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Scientific skepticism |
a willingness to - keep an open mind to all claims - accept claims only after researchers have subjected them to experiments |
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Critical thinking |
skills to evaluate claims open-mindedly carefully -over coming our biases |
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6 Principles of Critical Thinking |
ruling out hypotheses: alternate explanations should be considered - correlation vs. causation: can we be sure a causes B - falsifiability: can this be disproven - replicability: possible to duplicate findings? - extraordinary claims: is the evidence as convincing as the claim? - occam's razor: does a simpler explanation fit the data equally well? |
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2 Core tenets of science |
the universe operates according to certain natural laws - such laws are discoverable and testable |
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Scientific theory |
an explanation for a large number of findings in the natural world - a testable prediction is called a hypothesis |
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The scientific method |
see notes |
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Independent variable |
the variable that you manipulate |
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Dependent variable |
the variable that you measure |
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Averaging |
to control for random error, we use averaging - better estimate of behaviour |
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Cognitive Biases |
systematic errors in thinking that can lead to confidence in false conclusions |
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Heuristics |
mental shortcuts or rules of thumb - they reduce the cognitive energy required to solve problems - the trouble is when they oversimplify reality |
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How do we avid biases and heuristics |
test specific hypotheses derived from broader theories - theories are never "proven" by hypotheses are confirmed of disconfirmed |
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2 basic types of Research methods |
Descriptive: observe and describe behaviour used to determine the existence of a relationship between the variables - Experimental: to demonstrate a cause and effect relationships between the variables |
