PSYC 1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: B. F. Skinner, Experimental Physiology, Imaginary Friend

• School: Carleton University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 1001
• Professor: Elaine Waddington Lamont

Document Summary

Basic assumptions: events are governed by some lawful order. What this means is we do science because we want to know why things happen, but also that there is a reason for the way things happen. That there is some lawful order to how things work in the universe. There are reasons of why people act the way they do. Measurement and description- we want to be able to describe what people do, and measure. Understand and prediction- understand why they are this way and understand certain events, predict what they will do under certain circumstances. Application and control- understand how and why, and. Psychologists assume that behaviour is governed by discernible laws or principles; these just need to be uncovered. The goals of the scientific enterprise of psychology are: To measure and describe a phenomenon, for example sociability. To understand and predict psychologists form hypotheses about how variables interact.