PSYCH230 Lecture : Week 1

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCH230
• Professor: Chris Burris

Document Summary

We are social creatures; a necessity to live so we form communities: these communities are important, we have the capacity to care but we also have the ability to hurt and harm. Maximize pro-social cooperation and minimize anti-social competition. If there is no rules around this, it becomes war: bigger groups create more competition within them; guidelines are necessary. Need to understand: how people think, feel, behave, how people relate to each other, **these are both part of the background to the legal system. Psychology only captures a part of the legal system. Common to many concrete topics; look at it through different lenses. Sub-disciplines with psychology; different lenses or angles in psychology. Roles: understanding and intervention: understanding: basic research (general behaviour); promote change (apply research) Intervention: testing and assessment (specific behaviour); change (treatment) Ideographic: operated on a case by case basis; what actually happened.