PSYC 1115 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Optical Illusion, Science Studies, Clinical Psychology
2 Nov 2018
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Document Summary
Scientifically studies how minds represent the world and behave within it. Very new science: first psychology lab in canada opened less than 130 years ago. Very complex science: each human brain has many synapses (connections inside the brain) as there are galaxies in the universe. Promising: psychology can help us understand all aspects of human nature, including out ability to see, think, feel, and act in the world. Seven major subfields: intelligence, personality, emotion and motivation, health psychology, social psychology, developmental psychology, clinical psychology. We can use stats to deal with and quantify uncertainty (decide whether something is too uncertain to be considered valid: people are terrible at thinking and communicating about uncertainty. Example: 49% vs. 51% chance of rain. Words like (cid:862)i(cid:373)pro(cid:271)a(cid:271)le(cid:863) a(cid:374)d (cid:862)u(cid:374)(cid:272)ertai(cid:374)(cid:863) (cid:373)ea(cid:374) different things to scientists and non- scientists. Three sources: intuition (you just know, observation (you have experienced it as so, authority (somebody tells you it so) Problems with observation: it is not always possible.
