PSY 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Pseudoscience, Emic And Etic, Scientific Method

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 102
• Professor: Tom Malcomson

Document Summary

What is psychology: scientific study of behaviour and mind and brain, mind is just the brain in action, the mind has 2 parts: emotion and cognition, there are many ways to understand each aspect of being human. What makes psychology challenging: behaviour is multiply determined, behaviour is produced by many factors; behaviour is hard to predict, behaviour has multiple factors, we should(cid:374)"t (cid:271)elie(cid:448)e thi(cid:374)gs that gi(cid:448)e o(cid:374)e e(cid:454)pla(cid:374)atio(cid:374) for so(cid:373)ethi(cid:374)g, e. g. The development of depression depends on not just genetics, but environment. We should(cid:374)"t assu(cid:373)e depressio(cid:374) is just (cid:272)aused (cid:271)(cid:455) ge(cid:374)eti(cid:272)s: psychological influences are rarely independent of each other, so it"s difficult to pin down the exact cause, e. g. Anorexia: could be caused by: anxiety, compulsive exercising, body image, perfectionism, all of the a(cid:271)o(cid:448)e are i(cid:374)terrelated. This is (cid:449)h(cid:455) it"s important to be skeptical. Psychology as a science: use science to see if common sense-> anything someone tells us- is right, science is an approach to evidence.