PS101 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Naturalistic Observation, Informed Consent, Statistical Significance
Document Summary
They begin with a deductive process: identifying a hypothesis. Psychologists using inductive reasoning would begin the search for natural laws by making empirical, or objectively testable, observations of mental processes and behaviours (e. g. , things people actually do or think). Their cumulative observations would in turn lead them to develop theories, or big ideas about the laws that govern those processes and behaviours. Every scientific field must wrestle with questions of how to ethically apply the knowledge it discovers about the world, but few more so than the field of psychology. Like all scientists, psychologists try to provide society with useful information that has practical applications. But people are particularly inclined to use psychological information to decide issues that overlap with philosophy, religion, the law, and other such realms of life. Ultimately, however, science even psychology cannot answer fundamental and subjective questions about human nature, such as what are people basically like.
