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II. Thinking Critically about Psychology:

II. Thinking Critically about Psychology:. Why science and not intuition?. A. Introduction. Where does intuition/common sense start? Perceptions - Noticing, attending to, interpreting, remembering stimuli...experiences YOU encounter Are these carbon copies of “reality”? Consider this:

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II. Thinking Critically about Psychology:

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  1. II. Thinking Critically about Psychology: Why science and not intuition?

  2. A. Introduction • Where does intuition/common sense start? • Perceptions - Noticing, attending to, interpreting, remembering stimuli...experiences YOU encounter • Are these carbon copies of “reality”? • Consider this: • How many stimuli could you focus on at this moment? • 50,000 facts about every topic! • 500 times the Encyclopedia Britannica!

  3. B. Perceiving our world • How do we manage to navigate our perceptions? • 1. Tendency to categorize • a. Schemas: Cognitive structures that represent knowledge about a concept, event, person, etc, Categories then make us efficient – but...

  4. B. Perceiving our world. • Folk • Croak • Soak • Folk • Croak • Soak

  5. B. Perceiving our world. • Categories/expectations can lead to biases... • 2. Biases in perceptions and thinking: Expectations - the“filter” or “lens”of your perceptions a. Assimilation: Interpreting new information in terms of our existing beliefs. • “Rebellion is a good thing”

  6. B. Perceiving our world. • Quick demo…. • b. Confirmation Bias: Tendency to search for information that confirms our preconceptions (expectations). • Darley & Gross (1983): “Hannah Study”

  7. B. Perceiving our World • d. Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: People’s expectations lead them to act in ways that cause others to confirm those expectations. • Rosenthal & Jacobson (1968): “Bloomers Study”

  8. B. Perceiving our world • e. Belief Perseverance: Persistence of one’s initial conceptions, even when they are proved to be incorrect. • Anderson et al., (1980): Firefighter Study • Conclude: Why is intuition problematic? • Based on perceptions - which can be biased due to our tendency to be efficient processors of stimuli (i.e. we use “short cuts’ - categories and expectations)

  9. Aren’t we “right” sometimes? • Nisbett & Wilson (1977): “Pantyhose Study”

  10. C. Attempting to problem solve: Efficient or accurate? • 1. Algorithm: Step-by-step exhaustive procedure, using trial and error to solve problems. • 2. Heuristics: Simple, rule-of-thumb strategies for solving problems.

  11. C. Problem Solving • 2. Heuristics • HHTTHTTH HHHHTTTT George… a. Representativeness: Making a judgement about something based on how similar it is to a typical case in its category. - may lead to ignoring base-rate information.

  12. 2. Heuristics Which is more common or more likely?... b. Availability: Judge the likelihood of something happening in terms of how easy examples come to mind.

  13. Important to think critically about psychology and how we interpret our world • Can’t rely ONLY on intuition, common sense, or folk wisdom... • When perceiving our own and others’ behavior, we are vulnerable to biases. • However, those biases serve us well most of the time. • Make us capable of dealing with the enormous amount of stimuli and information we encounter.

  14. Conclusions..... • Psychology is: • Very broad and diverse. • Findings/conclusions not always obvious. • Why we are science (more on this to come)

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