PSYC 180 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Selection Bias, Partial Correlation, Parapsychology
14 Mar 2013
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Document Summary
The notoriety of freud undermines the scientific nature of psychology and how it is perceived by the public. Psychology is diverse; there are many different fields: not the only science to lack a unifying conceptualization. Psychology is an independent discipline because: it studies the full range of human behavior with scientific techniques, applications derived from this knowledge are scientifically based, psychology is the data-based scientific study of human behavior. The defining features of science are: the use of systematic empiricism, the production of public knowledge, the examination of solvable problems. Psychological research is often avoided because people fear the answers, not because they do not think it is accurate. The falsifiability criterion states that, in order for a theory to be useful, the predictions drawn form it must be specific: if it does not rule out any possible observations, then the theory can never be changed.
