PSYCH101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Genital Stage, Albert Bandura, Phallic Stage

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCH101
• Professor: Steve Spencer

Document Summary

Anthropomorphism: the act of treating objects/animals like people. Psychology is a collection of disciplines, composed of many overlapping fields of study. Two unifying qualities allow us to group all these fields into the category of psychological science. (1) psych involves study of behaviour that can include perceptions, thoughts, emotions. (2) psychologists employ scientific method in their work. Psychology: the scientific study of behaviour, thought, and experience. A person who carefully follows a system of observing, predicting and testing is conducting science. Science isn"t based on subject, based on use of scientific method. Scientific method: way of learning about the world through collecting observations, proposing explanations for the observations, developing theories to explain them and using the theories to make predictions. Involves dynamic interaction b/w hypothesis testing & construction of theories. Hypothesis: testable prediction about processes that can be observed and measured. Testable hypothesis: one that can be confirmed or rejected (you don"t prove a hypothesis)