PSYC 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Descriptive Statistics, Frequency Distribution, Dependent And Independent Variables

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: Jill L Atkinson

Document Summary

Identify several fields in which psychologists may work: outline some of the questions psychologists ask, describe the roles of psychological research, including the different types of psychologists and the problems they study. Clinical and non-clinical, not all are doctors who diagnose problems. There are non-academic, non-clinical psychologists who work for advertising, hr, communications, government etc. Psychologists either carry out or read and apply research about behaviour and mental processes. Objectives: outline the philosophical roots of psychology, define empiricism and rationalism, explain structuralism and functionalism in relation to empiricism. Per(cid:272)eptio(cid:374)s are (cid:374)ot al(cid:449)a(cid:455)s the sa(cid:373)e as realit(cid:455) (cid:894)parallel li(cid:374)es do(cid:374)(cid:859)t (cid:373)eet i(cid:374) the dista(cid:374)(cid:272)e(cid:895) Logi(cid:272) a(cid:374)d reaso(cid:374) (cid:272)a(cid:374) (cid:271)e used to e(cid:454)plai(cid:374) people(cid:859)s (cid:271)eha(cid:448)iour but usuall(cid:455) does(cid:374)(cid:859)t stop there (empiricism) Philosophical view that we obtain all knowledge from observable facts and experiences. The belief that people can describe the world through rules coming from observation, quantification and the principle of parsimony (using the simplest testable solution and proves all evidence)