Psychology 1000 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Jean Piaget, Gustav Fechner, Ethology

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 1000
• Professor: Mike Atkinson

Document Summary

Chapter 1 psychology: the science of behaviour. It doesn"t matter what order letters in a word are, as long as the first and last letters are in the right place, one will be able to read the word. Jumbled paragraph raises other psychological issues like how we acquire knowledge and form beliefs about our world. What we know about behaviour is based on observation, theory, and research methodology. Note that theory is much more useful than common sense , and that to be a scientific theory, it must be testable. This criterion more than any other distinguishes scientific theory from other types of explanations regarding human behaviour. Whenever you are presented with a theory (or claim) about behaviour, ask yourself, how would i test that? . If you can not come up with a reasonable answer, then the theory is not likely to be based on scientific principles.