What Do You See?

Psychology 1001: Introduction to Psychology. Probably, this course is the first psychology course to many of us. Even though this may be our first psychology course, we all kind of know what psychology is, right? Well, psychology sounds friendlier than apiology to me (apiology is the scientific study of honey bees for those who are curious). So what do we know about psychology? What is psychology? As it is the first chapter, chapter one focuses on basic knowledge of Psychology--defining and giving examples of psychology, psychological pseudoscience, scientific thinking and brief history of psychology. The text book defines psychology as the scientific study of the mind, brain, and behavior.The part I found most interesting in chapter one was "Naive Realism: Is Seeing Believing?." Naive realism is the belief that we see the world precisely as it is (Lilienfeld, Lohr, & Olatanji, 2008; Ross & Ward, 1996). The book says that we assume "seeing is believing" and trust our intuitive perceptions of the world and ourselves. Say if you are walking on campus--heading for psychology discussion--and you see a bicyclist come towards you really fast, you would get out of the way because you know if you don't you will get hit by the bike. You are trusting your perception. However, in many cases, the reverse happens. Believing is seeing! Our beliefs shape our perceptions of the world (Gilovich, 1991). What do you guys see in this picture?
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