Much of psychology includes the observation of behavior, however what triggers the behavior observed? Everything from the decisions we make, our personalities, movement and emotions can be studied and explained by looking at our brains and central nervous system (CNS). Scientist have been able to 'map' our brains to show which areas can be attributed to our humor, speech pronunciation and movement of our hands, just to name a few. 
All of these elements can be traced down to the very neurons (nerve cells that send messages to fulfill brain functions) which account for everything that we do. Right this second, energy is traveling through the tens of millions of axons (extensions of the neurons that receive signals) at speeds of ~220 miles per hour! Disease, injuries, psychoactive drugs can effect these connections which can cause changes in behaviors, mental degeneration/activation even treatment to illnesses such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease.
Many people question how some of their personality and emotional traits came to be which introduces the study of Nature vs. Nurture. It's true that some of our genetic information (genes) can be amplified or turned off (pruned) by the environment that we grow up in. There are also predispositions we may have to traits and diseases which can be attributed to our hereditary. Nevertheless, the study of Nature vs. Nature has been found to be far more intertwined than separate.
FUN FACT: In ancient times, people believed the heart to be the source of mental activity because when we get excited, scared, upset, etc. our heart beats more rapidly!
Writing 1; Section 5: January 2012 Archives
The main emphasis placed in chapter two is why research methods are so critical to science. As humans we have many tendencies such as being biased towards a certain view and heuristics which are mental shortcuts. One of the more interesting type is a hindsight bias where us as humans seem to think that we should have known the answer before the fact, once we already know the aftermath of the event. This is one of many varying reasons why experiments and good research design is necessary. There are a wide array of tests used to manipulate human bias such as a Naturalistic Observation, observing real-word situations without knowing the ongoing experiment. Other common experiments used are case studies, correlational designs and controls groups, which are more used as more planned and usually already expect certain results. Validity is the main limiting factor in all of these because when people answer untruthfully it creates illegitimate results.
The thing I found interesting between all the different studies is the ethical aspect to them. The line between pain and suffering in human studies versus animal studies is very different. In the early 1900's there was a test known as Tuskegee where humans had syphilis and were to not be treated simply to see what the results would be. The morality of this shocked me and made me question other human studies that have caused pain. Now instead of humans, they often do studies on small animals, which in the eyes of many are almost just as bad.
The importance of research methods and guarding against error in experiments is emphasized in Chapter 2. Humans are influenced by heuristics and biases, which can fool us into believing something that can be proven false through research. In order to guard against these tendencies, researchers must use the appropriate type of research design, which can range from naturalistic observation to experimental design. To guard against error, such as the experimenter expectancy effect where the researcher unintentionally influences the results, researchers must follow guidelines and procedures to ensure the experiment produces accurate results. For example, a double-blind experiment can guard against the experimenter expectancy effect.
While all of these details are interesting, what intrigued me the most was the ethical issues in research design. I don't believe the scientists in the Tuskegee study intentionally wanted to inflict so much pain on the subjects of their study. I believe the pursuit of knowledge consumed them and they justified what they were doing that way. While it is extremely unfortunate that such pain-inflicting studies took place, the research method "silver lining" is that they led to the strict guidelines of today. The pursuit of knowledge does not justify human suffering.
Many students probably have a basic understanding of Pavlov's foray into "classical conditioning," by which the Russian scientist trained dogs to salivate upon the sound of a metronome. But as Chapter 6 tells us, classical conditioning may extend as far as human phobias and fetishes. Each is part of the broader learning process, "learning" defined as "change in an organism's behavior or thought as a result of experience" (202).
While for Pavlov's dogs, the original response to the metronome was neutral, he started inserting meat powder into their salivary glands, upon which they began salivating. However, with the sound of the metronome and the flavor of meat powder combined, the dogs began to elicit the same response from both, and began salivating even when only hearing the metronome, a previously nonexistent response.
The same sort of conditioning may apply in developing phobias and fetishes. I, for one, have a deathly fear of mice, but maybe my phobia became engrained because of another object associated with the mice (like how the metronome became associated with the meat powder).
Fortunately, those who harbor powerful fetishes probably had a more "pleasurable" conditioning experience. Whether we learn through classical conditioning or the consequences of our actions, the learning process is shrouded in deep, dark - perhaps erotic? - secrecies.
In Ch1, I found the section about scientific thinking principles very interesting, especially the principle #2: Correlation isn't Causation and the example that really struck me was the research on teenagers who listen to sexual lyrics have more sexual intercourse than the "typical teen".
This struck me because our society is bombarded with music about sex and other sexual activities, so my first reaction was "of course, this sounds right" but what I didn't take into account was that teens' sexual behavior might also cause teens to listen to such music, other factors such as impulsivity that may lead teens to listen to music with sexual lyrics and engage in sexual behavior. Of course, we can't stop artists from producing such
music but we, as humans have the right to choose to listen or not.
So...in conclusion, just because there is a correlation between two things, it doesn't automatically mean there is a connection between them.
You would notice if something as absurd as a person in a gorilla suit walking through the middle of the screen while you're watching a movie right? I wouldn't be so sure...
Chapter 4 of the book describes the concepts of Sensation and Perception and how we as humans sense and conceptualize the world. Though we may consider ourselves as very attentive or conscious of our surroundings, we may not be as good as we think. In fact, we're surprisingly poor at detecting stimuli in plain sight when our attention is focused elsewhere (Henderson & Hollingworth, 1999; Levin & Simons, 1997; McConkie & Currie, 1996).
Two psychologists came up with a test to showcase "inattentional blindness", where the subjects were asked to watch a movie of people passing a ball back and forth. The subjects were to count how many times they passed the ball. Midway through the scene, a "gorilla" walks straight through, taking the time to face the camera and beat his chest and proceeded to walk out of picture. Half the subjects failed to notice the gorilla at all! How can this be?
Think of all the things you may have missed...
Chapter two introduces the term ideomotor effect. The idea behind the effect is that ideas of a person can influence their actions unbeknownst to themselves. This effect brings the issue of bias to the surface as well as how naive realism clouds judgement and causes people to miss key scientific observations. An example of this was in the use of prefrontal lobotomy as an effective treatment for schizophrenia and other severe mental disorders. Scientists were so in awe at the apparent success of the technique, they failed to notice the treatment was superficial. Scientists did not perform tests for years to prove the effectiveness of the lobotomy. When they performed the experiments, the results were surprising. Not only were none of the previous disorders fixed, but other problems were formed. Scientists inability to look through the illusion of apparent good results caused harmful treatment to be carried out for years.
"http://http://www.iwatchstuff.com/2011/01/05/ouija-board-movie.jpg"
Have you ever eaten a delectable shrimp pasta and hours after thrown it up? And the next time you see or eat that yummy shrimp pasta it makes you want to vomit? That unfortunate situation right there is simply named a taste aversion. That... ladies and gentlemen is one of the ways we, as humans, learn. Throughout chapter six I found this section to be the most interesting!
Before reading about that, I "learned" (haha get it?) that learning occurs through the fun vocab words classical conditioning, conditioned response, unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, conditioned response, and conditioned stimulus. Obviously there is more to it then JUST those six statements but basically learning has shown to occur when an animal or person is put through an experiment where they give a response to a stimulus alone or a stimulus that has been paired with another stimulus.
Kind of get the jist of it?
Well if not, go look up those vocabulary definitions and ingrain them into your brain! Thank goodness for flash cards!
Any ways, back to what I thought was interesting. A taste aversion is a different way of learning than the process I just explained. The other experiments that follow those terms are usually repeated multiple times. With taste aversions it takes you ONE time of bad food poisoning to get the response that you don't want to experience that again. This strikes me as interesting because it is different than the way I normally think of learning. I usually have this concrete idea that learning is linked with school lectures and overpriced textbooks. Biologically, this is not the case when we take a look into taste aversions and it is a new way to think of learning in psychology.
The free will determinism debate- is human freedom an illusion?
The book had a pretty solid example when it came to the legal system versus the human mind. In my opinion, human freedom is an illusion. All our lives we are told what to do and how to do, and if you don't do it in a particular way then it is considered to be wrong. This also relates to human obedience. Humans are an obedient species so therefore anything that we are told is believable. America is a free country but there are laws stating what we can and cannot do.
We do not always know why we behave the way we do, but these behaviors are triggered by influences of which we are unaware. Even though there is a significant difference between criminals and the common civilian. Are they aware of their behaviors when they make a decision to commit a crime?
This potato really does look like face, doesn't it? This type of phenomena can be referred to as pareidolia, which means seeing meaningful images in meaningless visual stimuli. In other words it is when people see images in random objects such as toast, fruit, chips, etc. The concept of pareidolia was just one of many interesting introductory topics discussed in chapter one. Chapter one also introduces topics such as scientific thinking, replicability, the major departments of psychology, different types of Psychologists, and Pseudoscience.
Pseudoscience was particularly interesting to me because I myself have believed some pseudoscientific claims! Pseudoscience is a set a claims that seem to be true but in reality they are unable to be backed by scientific evidence. One Pseudoscientic claim that I have heard is "you can lose up to 15 lbs in two weeks!"
Another section in chapter one that I found interesting was the section about apophenia. Apophenia indicates perceiving meaningful connections among unrelated and random phenomena. The example that the textbook provided was about the many similarities between Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. Some similarities included that Lincoln was elected president in 1860 and Kennedy was elected president in 1960 and both were succeeded by a president named Johnson. The amount of similarities was very surprising to me; how could these two people have so many similarities?
I thought that the chart that listed a wide variety of job opportunities that involve psychology was informative. I learned that counseling psychology is practically the same as clinical psychology and most forensic psychologists are actually criminal profilers just like people in the FBI.
Working Out Image:
http://www.fortyfitandfabulous.com/secrets-to-losing-weight
Potato Face Image:
http://bitsandpieces.us/2010/10/05/mr-potato-face/
Cartoon Image:
http://www.offthemark.com/psych.htm
How do people come to do the things that they do? Where do phobias, fetishes, and tastes come from? In chapter six, it is pointed out that a lot of it has to do with learning. This may seem like a really obvious fact, but in some cases I was surprised to discover just how much learning, specifically observation as well as conditioning, affect a our day to day lives. One can be conditioned, for example, to find a food distasteful. Everyone has experienced it: you have something for lunch, get sick later on, and as a result cannot even look at that food again. What is really interesting is that people are able to take this knowledge and use it to their advantage in many ways. One example from chapter six is ranchers who place a mild poison in sheep carcasses in order to keep coyotes away from their flock. Any coyote that eats the poisoned sheep will become sick afterward, and consequently avoid eating sheep in the future. It is techniques such as this that show just how useful insight into the psychological learning process can be for our world.
In chapter 7 in our textbook, it mainly talks about the Memory. When I read through the chapter, I am really interested in the section about " The Three Process Of Memory". When we memory some new things like cell phone numbers, or some math equations, we can easily remember it in a very short time. However, after several days or even several hours, we will find that we start to feel not sure about the cell number. That is the feature of the memory.
When human start to memory something, it usually will follow two aspects. First aspect is encoding. It refers to the process of organizing and putting the information into human's memory space. When we start to encoding, pay the highly attention is pretty important. When we pay a lot attention, our brain will easier to remember those memories. Encoding helps to explain the familiar next-in-line effect. When we answer the questions during the class, we always feel that the person answer the question before we did got a better memory than you. However, it is because when you hear the question, you start to focus on the answer, you pay your attention on the answer, not the person before you was saying. Second part of the process is mnemonics, which is the way to help us recall our memory. There are three methods for mnemonics. First one is the Pegword Method, this method often use the rhyming to help us recall the loss memory. Make us easy to read, easy to understand will help us to memory a lot. Second is the Method of Loci, it need us to "think of a path with which you're familiar and can imagine vividly". This method use the imagination of human, to make the things we need to remember become more interesting and easy to accept and remember. Last method is keyword Method. As the name of the method, we use the keyword of the things we need to remember, the keyword is short, that will be much easier to remember, when we remember the keyword, imagine the things related to the keyword will help us to memory the things we want.
In all, memory things need to use specific method, use the right way and right method will make our life, study, work more efficiency and easier.
Chapter 5 talks about topics relating to our consciousness. When looking through the chapter what I found most interesting was the section about Out-of-Body experiences because I have seen them in TV shows and movies but was curious to learn more about them.
An Out-of-Body experiences (OBE) is when one feels that their soul is leaving their body and watching themselves from above. "About 25 percent of college students and 10 percent of the general population report having experienced one or more of them (Alvarado, 2000)." This seems to be quite common however it is questionable whether or not the people are actually leaving their body or if their brains are tricking them. This claim however, is very hard to prove it is wrong because no one knows when they will have an OBE, therefore no one can document to phenomenon. However, H. Henrik Ehrsson used a visual sensory test to try and replicate what happens in OBE and found that when visual sensory is combined with physical sensations it is possible for a person to feel like they are out of their body when really they are not. This experiment suggests that OBE may not be real and it is just has to do with our brain and our situation.
OBEs are found to occur during near death experiences (NDEs). Which are cases when a person almost died or believed they almost did. The people experiencing this phenomenon say that they: were in a tunnel, saw a light, or talked to dead relatives before coming back to themselves. However, studies suggest that what one experiences during a NDE is based on the beliefs a person has on what happens after death. "People from christian and Buddhist cultures frequently report the sensation of moving through a tunnel, but native people in north America, the Pacific Islands and Australia rarely do (Kellehear, 1993)." This suggests that a person reacts to NDEs how they have been taught by their culture to act.
I found the subject of OBEs and NDEs interesting because as its been shown it is hard to prove whether or not these really occur. However, it would be interesting to hear first hand from an individual who "experienced" it because they will give a different view on the matter. They may believe that they really did leave their body and be convinced that scientists do not know what they are talking about. It would be interesting to hear their side of the story because the chapter really only talks about the science of OBEs and NDEs and what it suggests but it is not for sure one hundred percent correct.
Chapter three focused on the biological aspect of psychology. The key points that were covered were nerve cells, the brain and its use, the endocrine system, and genetics. These things all combine together to make the body function and help us go about our lives.
The thing that I found most interesting in this chapter is a section called "How Much of Our Brain Do We Use?" This section discussed the common myth in psychology that we only use 10% of our brain. A movie called "Limitless" came out in recent years supporting this myth despite it being false. The truth is that we use just about all of our brain capacity. Each part of the brain serves a purpose to help us function. If we were only to have access to 10% of our brain, than many of those purposes would not be fulfilled. The authors discuss that even if a small area of the brain is damaged, we might lose complete function from that area. So if each person was only using 10% of their brain, than the way we function would be completely different and probably result in our body not being able to function.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xH0mBP9jcc
In chapter 16 of the textbook there is a section that talks about projective tests. A projective test is one that asks the subjects to examine or interpret various ambiguous stimuli. One of these tests is the Rorschach Inkblot Test. This was developed by Hermann Rorschach in the 1920's. It was a simple yes consisting of 10 different inkblots and all you had to do is tell the examiner what you say in the inkblots. The results of these tests widely varied and depending on how you interpreted the inkblots, you could be deemed obsessive compulsive, narcissistic, emotional, and so on. One thing that this test was greatly scrutinized for was for its lack of evidence for incremental validity. Incremental validity is the extent to which a test contributes information beyond other, more easily collected, measures (Lilienfeld, et al. pg. 571). The test itself takes approximately 45 minus and about twice as long to inexpert, so wouldn't it be easier and more time efficient to use another method to get the same answers?
I think that this would be a very interesting test to take because I don't think that by saying what you see in an image can determine you psychological makeup. The results of these tests were ver controversial and I agree with that. Also, the test-retest reliabilities were unknown and often problematic. So does this really work as an effective psychological analysis?
Psychology, founded in part by William James, is the scientific study of the mind, brain, and behavior. Chapter one covers the basic concepts of psychology, focusing on how scientific the study is and the common misconceptions that come along with it. Another important concept covered in the chapter is the introduction of the six scientific thinking principles: ruling out rival hypotheses, correlation verses causation, falsifiability, replicabillity, extraordinary claims, and occam's razor. For me, the most interesting topic covered in this first chapter was that which put psychology into perspective for me. I, like many others, was under the impression that psychology would tell me why common sense, is common sense; however, I was quickly put in my place.
Remember those silly proverbs you always heard as a child? The ones your mom told you when life got tough, or your grandparents said when trying to teach you a lesson? Well, it turns out many of these famous proverbs exist in a world of contradiction. The Lilienfeld text presents five widely known proverbs with their respective contradiction.
1. Birds of a feather flock together.
2. Opposites attract.
3. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
4. Out of sight, out of mind.
5. Better safe than sorry.
6. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
7. Two heads are better than one.
8. Too many cooks spoil the broth.
9. Actions speak louder than words.
10. The pen is mightier than the sword.
What I found most surprising about this section of the text, is the fact that I can recall using every one of these cliches in conversation before, yet never made the connection of how contradictory they are to one another. One would think, after common use of phrases such as these, a human, designed to recognize patters, would take note of the contradictory beliefs. However, the Lilienfeld text makes an important observation, supporting one of the chapter's main concepts: psychology is not as easy a concept as we humans tend to believe.
To start off, take a second and try to recall how many times you have been annoyed by someone complaining about how late they were up studying the night before (if you can actually count that high let me know because you deserve a medal). The bottom line is that college students generally get less than six hours of sleep when they should get nine, no surprises there (Maas, 1999).
Previously, I had always assumed that when you were asleep, you were asleep, but I was fascinated to learn that is not the case. In order to feel truly rested, we must experience at least several cycles of delta sleep, which takes about 10 to 30 minutes to set in. So, while the naps students squeeze in between, or during, classes might sound appetizing, they generally won't do a whole lot of good without a solid night of delta, or deep, sleep.
A very common response to this lack of sleep is sleeping in on the weekends. However, with a somewhat alarmingly high percentage of college students that abuse alcohol, about 31%, this may not be effective (Knight et al., 2002). Even minor alcohol use before bed suppresses delta sleep. So, although many students are able to sleep longer on the weekend, it may not even help with the midday drowsiness.
This chapter shoots down one of college students' favorite misconceptions. That quick naps can make up for a legitimate night's sleep. Although a few "all-nighters" won't hurt you much, it is important to remember to keep track of those precious hours of sleep and make sure that you make time for a good, full night of sleep.
Have you ever thought about how much psychology affects our daily lives? In chapter one, many different topics are discussed. However the one subject that caught my attention the most was about how much psychology affects our daily lives.
As we go about our daily routine, we don't often stop and think 'How does psychology have something to do with that?' However, psychology is in more of our daily lives than we would originally think. One example involves our firetrucks. The common color for firetrucks was always red, but now more firetrucks are being painted lime-yellow because they are easier to see.
Psychology also affects how our advertisements are being run. Ads in magazines commonly put a picture on the left hand side of the page and put the words or descriptions on the right. Advertisers use this arrangement because it better attracts customers' attention.
Psychology in our daily lives was not the only thing discussed in chapter one however. Topics also covered were major debates in psychology such as the nature-nuture debate which talks about the controversy of whether our behaviors are from our genes or our environments. 
Another major topic mentioned is pseudoscience which is basically claims that seem scientific but aren't. Other things discussed are the history, how to think scientifically, jobs within psychology, fallacies, and what psychology is.
The human memory is a very complex system. Why is it that people can remember some things for years while other things we forget almost immediately? Or why is it that sometimes we say that we remember things that we never actually saw? This is what Chapter 7 of the text is all about. It talks about the three different types of memory, sensory, short-term and long-term memory, and how different experiences affect these sectors of memory.
The thing that struck me as most interesting about this chapter was the paradox of memory. The paradox of memory states "the same memory mechanisms that serve us well in most circumstances can sometimes cause us problems in others. This was interesting to me because it is odd to me how one person can have an extremely good memory on a specific subject but then forget seemingly simple things such as where they left their phone or keys. A good example of the paradox of memory out of the text was that of Rajan Mahadevan. Rajan could recite the value of pi to 38,811 digits, but he continuously forgot where the bathroom was. This example shows just how complex and interesting the human memory is.
In chapter 6 of the Lilienfeld text, the focus is on classical conditioning, operant conditioning, cognitive models of learning, biological influences on learning, and the effectiveness of different learning styles. What struck me in particular was the research and discoveries of Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov's classical conditioning experiments used canines and he studied the responses of these canines to hearing the sound of a bell, and feeding them.
I found it fascinating how upon hearing the bell, the dog had learned to expect food immediately afterwards and would begin to salivate, even though this should not have been an expectation, the dog had been conditioned over time to act this way.
I also found it incredibly interesting that classical conditioning can take place in people who are in a vegetative state. This was discovered by playing a musical note and then using a puff of air to induce blinking. Eventually, when the music note would be played, blinking would take place, even though there was the absence of the puff of air.
This first chapter of the book was a fairly general overview of psychology as a whole. The first section basically defined psychology as the scientific study of the brain mind, and behavior. I found that the interesting information came later in the chapter. I really enjoyed learning about pseudoscience. It was a semi- new concept to me, and I thought that it was interesting to see how predominant it is in my everyday life. Pseudoscience is all over, and is something that is somewhat over looked because it is so "normal" to us. An example of pseudoscience is the advertisements associated with weight loss, and how ridiculous their claims are.I really enjoy learning about things that pertain to me everyday life.
Later in the chapter the different types of psychology were mentioned, and I think it might be hard to keep them separated from one another. The definitions of each type is very similar to me. In the next portion I enjoyed learning about the different people associated with each section of psychology, and what they each had to contribute to what I will be learning about this semester. Overall, reading the first chapter got me excited for the semester, yet the idea of all of this memorization kind of freaks me.
Chapter four of our textbook explored the roles of sensation and perception and their relation to one another. In short, sensation is the detection of physical energy by our sensory organs, and perception is simply our brain's interpretation of these senses. One section that caught my attention discussed parallel processing; specifically talking about bottom-up processing, processing in which a whole is constructed from parts, and top-down processing, conceptually driven processing influenced by beliefs and expectancies. Take for instance this picture:
Depending on your expectation, you may have either perceived a rat or an old man with spectacles. In other words, if you are more familiar with, or have encountered more often, an old man, you most likely saw the old man first. Likewise, if you have encountered or are more familiar with rats, then you most likely saw the rat first. The authors term this as perceptual sets, sets formed when expectations influenced perceptions. However our minds choose to interpret pictures or the like, we must always keep in mind that what we see may not always be what we get.
In chapter 2 you are introduced to the human brains faults. Because we are cognitive misers we are mentally lazy and try to conserve our mental energy by using heuristics. Heuristics are mental shortcuts that helps us to streamline our thinking and make sense of the world. There are two types of heuristics: representative and availability. Representative heuristics involves judging the probability of an even by its superficial similarity. This heuristic is like the saying judging a book by its cover. The availability heuristics involves estimating the likelihood of an occurrence based on the ease with which it comes to our minds like past knowledge or memories.
To help us over compensate these faults we have a toolbox of skills. We have the ability to do naturalistic observation by watching behavior in real world setting without trying to manipulate the situation with gives us high external validity but low internal validity. Second, we can use case studies to examine one person of a small number of people for an extended period of time to create existing proofs. Third, we have self-report measures, questionnaires, by using random selection to receive answers from a group. The negative part of using self-report is the halo effect and people are not always honest with their answers which could scew results. Fourth, we can look at the correlation between two things using a scatter plot.
The best way to make sure you have reliable information is using experimental design. Key aspects of an experimental design are that there is random assignment of participants to the conditions and manipulation of an independent variable. When doing any experiment ethical issues arise. In history scientist were testing what would happen to a patient if syphilis was untreated so without the patients consent they were never made aware that they have syphilis and were going untreated. In the end many died. Now, there is law that states there needs to be an informed consent.
Whenever you look at the data you need to be aware that information is not always portrayed truthfully. To make sure you are getting accurate information consider the source of the information and look out for sharpening and leveling and misleading balancing of opinions and sides.
This chapter was so interesting because it points out every day things that happen to me that did not realize. I am a person who says this happened because the "stars are aligned right." I after reviewing this chapter I think that my perception on things are going to be altered.
Another interesting part was looking at psychology as a experimental scientists. I have used the scientific method in science all through grade school. Now seeing it in a psychology class surprises me. This class is going to be a lot different then I expected. I am now excited to get in to the work and see what I discover.
Is Psychology a "hard" science? Many people debate that Psychology is not a "hard" science, such as Chemistry, Physics, or Biology. For my first blog entry I was assigned to take a closer look at chapter one, Psychology and Scientific Thinking. Let's find out what it entails!
Chapter one introduces the reader to the basics of psychology. It discusses Psychology as a study that has multiple levels of analysis that go from biological influences to social and cultural aspects. This introductory explained the differences between a scientific theory, an explanation for a large number of findings, and a hypothesis, which is a testable prediction from a theory.
What struck me the most interesting in the chapter was pseudoscience, which is defined as a set of claims that might seem scientific but really aren't. Pseudoscience is all around us in everyday life in ads like extreme weight loss diets, newspaper articles, surgical procedure claims, and many more! I can admit I have fallen for some pseudo scientific claims myself! A few warning signs the chapter gave for this include exaggerated claims, absence of other research, use of fancy scientific-sounding terms, and talking about "proof" rather than "evidence". A pseudoscience claim could be "A breakthrough new Chicken noodle soup diet can help loose 20 lbs a week!"
Other topics the chapter covered included logical fallacies, how to think scientifically, a bit on Psychology's history, theoretical perspectives of Psychology, and some typical jobs for Psychologists!
