EDUC10057 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Hindsight Bias, Positive Psychology, Solution-Focused Brief Therapy
13 Jun 2018
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Lecture 3: Science foundations
Paradigm shift: shift in focus, not method: promoting positive states (eg. hope, optimism, empathy, courage, gratitude) vs
managing obstacles; solution focused approach created by building on strengths vs problem focused approach; change
created by healing disorder and distress
Research: ratio 21:1 of depressing articles (issue/problem focused) vs positive psychology articles
Human goodness and excellence are as authentic as disease, disorder and distress therefore deserve scientific enquiry
Positive psychology: empirical methods, often quantitative; goal is to discover and test, not confirm intuitions; falsifiable
hypothesis
Pop psychology: based on experience, untested, often oversimplified or misinterpreted
Psychological biases known to to affect human judgement:
●evolutionary; survival mechanism; also has some detrimental effects of decision making
●loss aversion: people prefer to avoid losses to acquiring equivalent gains
●gambler’s fallacy: mistaken belief that if something happens more frequently than normal during some period, it will
happen less frequently in the future
●groupthink
●halo effect: a few positive traits positively influence the overall evaluation of a person
●confirmation bias
●scientific method helps us overcome these biases
Positive psychology: the scientific study of what goes right in life, from birth to death and at all stops in between
Scientific method: a method of procedure that has characterized natural science in the 17th century; systematic
observation, measurement and experiment; formulation, testing and modification of hypotheses
Empirical: a source of knowledge acquired by means of observation or experiment (manipulation)
Goal: understand real world phenomena
Common study designs:
Hindsight bias: inclination that after an event has occurred, to see the event as having been predictable, despite little or no
objective basis for predicting it
Repetition is key for valuable research and experiments
Operationalization: a process of defining the measurement of a phenomenon that is not directly measurable, though its
existence is indicated by other phenomena
Case studies: issue: cannot be replicated therefore run risk of overgeneralizing
Naturalistic observation: no manipulation or control; great at describing behaviour but not explaining it
Experiments: allow investigators to isolate different effects by manipulating an independent variable and keeping all others
constant; experimental group and control group
Placebo: inert substance
Double blind procedure: researchers don’t know control group from experimental group
Evaluating quality of research: evidence of hierarchy to evaluate interventions:
Document Summary
Paradigm shift: shift in focus, not method: promoting positive states (cid:840)eg. hope, optimism, empathy, courage, gratitude(cid:841) vs managing obstacles; solution focused approach created by building on strengths vs problem focused approach; change created by healing disorder and distress. Research: ratio 21:1 of depressing articles (cid:840)issue/problem focused(cid:841) vs positive psychology articles. Human goodness and excellence are as authentic as disease, disorder and distress therefore deserve scienti c enquiry. Positive psychology: empirical methods, often quantitative; goal is to discover and test, not con rm intuitions; falsi able hypothesis. Pop psychology: based on experience, untested, often oversimpli ed or misinterpreted. Psychological biases known to to a ect human judgement: Evolutionary; survival mechanism; also has some detrimental e ects of decision making. Loss aversion: people prefer to avoid losses to acquiring equivalent gains. Gambler"s fallacy: mistaken belief that if something happens more frequently than normal during some period, it will happen less frequently in the future.
