PSYC 100 Study Guide - Final Guide: Absolute Threshold, Change Blindness, Edward B. Titchener
30 May 2018
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PSYC 100 Cram Session 1
PSYC 100 Midterm Review Notes — 10/26/2016
− 2 main goals in this class:
− get an overview of psychology generally
− have the tools to evaluate (pseudo) scientific claims
CHAPTER 1: SCIENCE
− science: a method of gathering empirical evidence from the world
− some scientific principles:
− falsifiability: it can be proved wrong, i.e., you could come up with some kind of study that
could at least in theory prove this wrong
− Occam’s razor (parsimony): the simplest explanation (all other things equal) is the
better one
− think of a razor trimming off the extra fat from the explanation
− replicability: you can repeat or replicate the experiment & get the same results
− testing things through observation
− ruling out rival hypotheses
− hypotheses vs. theories:
− hypothesis = prediction
− theory = explanation
− once you’ve tested a bunch of hypotheses, you’re trying to explain your results
− humans have biases
− confirmation bias: trying to confirm the hypotheses that you have & overlooking things
that would go against your claim
− belief perseverance: similar to confirmation bias à your beliefs don’t change even
when there’s more evidence against your attitudes
− overconfidence: being overconfident about your abilities relative to others
− mental set: when you come into a problem, and have a previous solution in your head à
that prevents you from finding a new solution
− fixation: like an extreme mental set à you’re fixated on one solution or use, and can’t
change that
− hindsight bias: after something happens, you think you knew that it was going to
happen the whole time
− heuristic: a mental shortcut; when you have a hard question you’re trying to answer, but it’s too
hard so you swap it out for an easy question and you don’t notice the swap
− availability heuristic: when you look at how accessible instances are in your head, and
you try to infer the probability of an event from that
− e.g., people overestimate the probability of a plane crash b/c it’s seen in the
media more (more than car crashes)
− you swap out the question of “how probable is this event?” with the question “how
readily does this event pop into my head?”
− e.g., murders are shown more often in the news than suicides, so we
overestimate the probability of dying from murder as opposed to suicide
− representativeness heuristic: when you try to judge how likely a thing is to be a part of
a category based just on appearance or how well it fits a stereotype
− replacing hard question “is this instance (thing) a member of this category (e.g.,
banker, feminist)?” with easy question “how much does this instance appear to fit
that category?”
− e.g., a stereotypical McGill student looks tired, stressed, young, backpack à say
you’re downtown and see someone who looks like all of these things
− since they match the stereotype, you would overestimate the probability
of this person being a McGill student
PSYC 100 Cram Session 2
− base rate: the probability of a random person downtown being a McGill
student, with no other information known
− we tend to neglect this
− anchoring: when something irrelevant serves as an anchor and influences your future
estimates
− priming is similar, but priming can be lower level (like flashing something on a
computer screen subliminally)
− anchoring can occur at a higher cognitive level
− think of anchoring like a subset of priming
− don’t worry too much about distinguishing between anchoring and
priming
− conjunction fallacy: if there’s two things, the probability of them happening together has to be
equal to or smaller than the probability of either occurring independently à the fallacy is when
people don’t notice this
− pseudoscience: a set of claims that seems like science but is not
− only the stuff that pretends or tries to be science
− e.g., saying that God answers prayers is not pseudoscience, because it’s not
claiming to be science
− science and religion are friends, so don’t hate on your friends who go to church
CHAPTER 2: HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY
− schools of thought, in chronological order:
− structuralism (Wundt, Titchener): conscious experience can be broken down into
separate elements
− looking at the structure of consciousness
− e.g., wetness is the combination of cold and pressure à if you put a cold piece of
metal on someone’s arm, it would feel wet
− functionalism (William James): looking at the function of different things (like memory,
etc.)
− James was inspired by Darwin à trying to look at adaptations and how they help
us survive
− behaviourism (Watson, Skinner, Pavlov): interested only in learning that you can see
(i.e., behaviour)
− psychodynamic perspective (Freud, Jung)
− cognitivism (Piaget): looking at mental processes
− research methods:
− validity: whether you’re testing the right thing
− reliability: consistency of results
− 2 types of validity
− internal validity: causation
− external validity: generalizability
− research designs
− naturalistic observation: high external validity, but low internal validity
− happening in the real world, but can’t infer causation
− e.g., observing people in a park, observing tribes
− case studies: low internal and low external validity
− it’s often not generalizable b/c it’s just one person, and it’s often a special case
− benefit: might be a situation that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to see
− e.g., looking at particular patients
− surveys: high external validity but low internal validity
− correlations: lets you see if there’s a relationship between 2 variables
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PSYC 100 Full Course Notes
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Document Summary
Have the tools to evaluate (pseudo) scientific claims. Science: a method of gathering empirical evidence from the world. Some scientific principles: falsifiability: it can be proved wrong, i. e. , you could come up with some kind of study that could at least in theory prove this wrong. Once you"ve tested a bunch of hypotheses, you"re trying to explain your results. Confirmation bias: trying to confirm the hypotheses that you have & overlooking things that would go against your claim. Belief perseverance: similar to confirmation bias your beliefs don"t change even when there"s more evidence against your attitudes. Overconfidence: being overconfident about your abilities relative to others. Hindsight bias: after something happens, you think you knew that it was going to happen the whole time. Heuristic: a mental shortcut; when you have a hard question you"re trying to answer, but it"s too hard so you swap it out for an easy question and you don"t notice the swap.
