PSY 2012 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Bias Blind Spot, Terror Management Theory, Belief Perseverance

• School: University of Florida
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 2012
• Professor: Phoua Yang

Document Summary

Psychology: the scientific study of the mind, brain, and behavior. Each level provides unique information and offers a distinctive view of the phenomena at hand. Interplay of an enormous array of factors. Psychological influences are rarely independent of each other. People display individual differences in thinking, emotion and personality. Naive realism : the belief that we see the world precisely as it is. It works well in ordinary life, but we are easily fooled by visual. Our beliefs shape our perceptions of the world. Common sense : it serves as a generator for hypotheses. Learning to think like a scientist means learning when or when not to trust our common sense. Begins with empiricism, but then tests those observations using rigorous methods. Scientific theory : explanation for a large number of findings in the natural world. Hypotheses: scientific prediction based on a theory which can be tested. Theory: an explanation for a large number of findings.