PSYA01H3 Study Guide - Quiz Guide: B. F. Skinner, Psychosomatic Medicine, Scientific Literacy
Document Summary
Appeal to authority: expertise is not actually evidence; expert describes the person making the claim, not the claim itself. It is entirely possible that the expert is mistaken, dishonest, overpaid, or misquoted. An independent variable is the variable that the experimenter manipulates to distinguish between two or more groups. In this case, the independent variable is whether the beetles swam in shampoo or water. Phrenology: the logic behind phrenology was based on empiricism. If certain people had more pronounced areas in their skull and exhibited certain personalities, then as more data was collected, patterns would emerge and so generalizations were done. We now know that this notion is extremely silly but at the time, it was very popular and supported by a lot of people (even those in the scientific community). Cartesian dualism refers to his idea that there are two fundamental kinds of substance; mental and material.
