PSYC 100 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Pseudoscience, Terror Management Theory, Opportunity Cost

• School: McGill University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: Penelope Kostopoulos

Document Summary

William james (1842-1910) founder of american psychology. Psychology: scientific study of the mind, brain and behaviour. We need to keep in mind that to fully understand psychology, we must consider multiple levels of analysis. Both biological and social factors are essential for a complete understanding of psychology. What makes psychology distinctive and fascinating. Psychology is distinctive, if not unique, from other sciences. Lot of challenges that make psychology fascinating because they contribute to the mysteries that psychology is trying to solve. Almost all actions of human behavior are multiply determined (produced by many factors). Psychological influences are rarely independent of each other. Individual differences: people differ from each other in thinking, emotion, personality, behaviour different ways to respond to a situation. Challenging for psychology because there is not only one possible answer for one question. People often influence each other (what cause what?). Albert bandura (1973) talked about reciprocal determinism (the fact that we mutually influence each other"s behavior).