PSYC 3402 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: William Herbert Sheldon, Cesare Lombroso, Homo Sapiens
30 Sep 2020
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Week 2 - what makes a good theory. Parsimony (occam"s razor, don"t add unneeded fluff to theory, k. i. s. s) Makes causative statements + identifies mediators and moderators. Falsifiable, testable and can disprove it (not religion) Size of bumps and grooves of skull are indicative of the size of brain regions underneath. Natural selection - interaction with diff environments, best adapted survive. Some born strong innate predispositions to behave antisocially. Psych of individual differences (variability and adaptation) Pioneered idea that tests could be used to measure differences between individuals (like intelligence tests) Proposed link between physical chars and personality (constitutional psych) Focus on interaction between organic functioning and behaviour. Dynamic p roduct of interaction between genotype and environment. Geno = what genes are, phenomenon = how they are expressed. Small number of genes come in multiple forms. Different forms of the same gene are called alleles. Eg blood type is a polymorphism with 3 different alleles a b and o.
