PSY 205 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Social Desirability Bias, Grapefruit Juice, Naturalistic Observation

• School: Syracuse University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 205
• Professor: S.Houck

Document Summary

All approaches to knowledge have their assumptions. Lurking behind many of the things we say we know are assumptions that have not been tested. First great assumption in science: can"t be proven or disproven. Positivism: truth exists and we can know it. There is no other standard for judging theories except how true they are. Science is about accumulation of true facts about the world. How we judge theories- how much we think they are true. Without assumption of order, there could be no such things as laws or theories about causal connections between variables. If someone eats at mcdonalds for 9 days you would assume that they would eat at mcdonalds the 10th day. Observation: taking measurements of an object or phenomenon to figure out its nature. Empiricism: an approach to understanding the world that involves collecting data or making observations.