Psychology 1000 Chapter Notes -Underweight, Scientific Method, Confounding

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

Document Summary

Scientific method: psychologists are interested in explaining the causes of behaviour. To examine causal relations, they use the scientific method. This means they form hypotheses, manipulate independent variables, and measure dependent variables. If not, the experiment may be confounded and experimenter makes a mistake in causal explanation. Hypothesis: tentative statement about a relation between 2 or more events. Theory: a collection of hypotheses, organizing system. A theory is more general and elaborate than a single hypotheses. Good theories generate good hypotheses (testable hypotheses). Theory of relativity: if things are moving away from us at the speed of light, they must be shifting towards the red end of the spectrum. Comparing freudian theory and behaviour theory- freudian theory is not very testable. Behaviour theory is very testable, making it better. Control: without proper control of every except for independent variable, the experiment is confounded. Present a verbal description of results at a convention (or talk)