Describe THIS Grandpa! 1. I dont think psychology is worth studying, it is not a science.

Maybe you have the wrong idea? Grandpa you are a biochemical machine! Descartes, Newton, automaton theory and background. Newton said that everything discovered on Earth will hold true in whole universe and as far as we know he is right. Psychology lags because of Descartes and Freud and it is relatively young according to Stanovich and conflicts with folk psychology. The Dogma of Science is relying on faith like other religions, the falsification principle (We want to prove it false). Be careful of pseudoscience (Goodwin). Sciences goal is to approximate a way of finding the truth. There are three main types of psychology fields, physiology, cognitive, and behavioral. I understand measuring math, chemistry, etc. But not feelings. 2. But actually we can formalize theoretical constructs and make them empirical constructs. (Describe FPOT here Formal Properties of Theory.) It is a guide to finding the cause of variation. (Theoretical Construct-Empirical Construct-Characteristics-Events-Things-Undifferentiated Real World) Measurement theorys job is to relate these empirical constructs to characteristics. Measurement theory is when we measure; we are comparing how something was to how something is, after something affects it, or correlation. WTF are empirical constructs?! 3. Empirical Constructs are the use of a number system as a form of a universal language. It is a way to create a universal language using numbers for all scientists. So that it is all the same. We use these numbers as a means to describe cause and effect. We want it to be unambiguous and clear. We want it to be objective not subjective; numbers formally describe what events are doing. 4. Psychology is a science and causality lies at the heart of both. Correlational or experimental researches are the two forms of psych research that are done usually. 2 variables are correlated between reliable relationships. Positive is a direct, and inverse is a negative. Outliers mislead the correlation and range restrictions reduce the strength of the correlation. A significant correlation between A and B is not enough evidence to conclude that A causes B. Direction is hard to measure and it could also be from other variables that are unknown that cause it. Used when an ordinary study is not practical or ethical. Describe the casual model. We are estimating what is going to happen based off of what we study. (Cause and Effect). You cant measure my feelings! I have free will! 5. Yes I can! With description (FPOT) comes to predictions which leads to control. If we all describe the same way and operationalize then we can link all of our concepts together and measure them. Psychology continually seeks to redefine its descriptions in order to more accurately reflect the way the world really is.(Stanovich) 6. Ok so how do we know what to study? You see something interesting duh! Then you extract a hypothesis grandpa! This is elementary science. (Explain hypothesis here.) Lets talk about something new, this is starting to get boring.

7. How about HUME? And his casual inference? (3 points about cause and effect) 1. Cause must come before effect. 2. Spatio-temporal equal 3. Cause is essential for effect. We never know what is essential which is why Mill came up with his sufficient cause. 8. I have herd of John Stuart Mill but who was he and what did he do? 9. He gave us the Methods of agreement-The idealized standard of all non-experimental research used with agreement. Difference-Gold standard for all experimental research, and joint method of agreement and difference. Oh I see nowgo on please I am SO intrigued. 10. Well error and control now comes into play. Error and its control (Specific) There are three ways to control for this error which are to 1. Avoid 2. Distribute 3. Measure and Subtract. Reliability is making sure the information is replicable and validity is making sure that it is measuring what it intended to. 11. Then to control in a more general senseGenerally how to control for error (biggest section) a. Go to the library b. Know your stats. Means, medians, mode, ranges, etc. Descriptive Statistics=a summary of a set of data collected from a sample of participants. Which test to use? If you dont know your statistics you can make a type 1 or a type 2 error. c. Sampling-random sampling preferred. Convenient not preferred. You need adequate sampling to have external validity so you are able to be able to make generalization from your study towards a population. i. Problems-College Sophomore Effect. Small N designs. There are an infinite number of Independent variables so it is hard to choose which ones to sample. Problem with sampling DV is that it is only 1 characteristic and we are just hoping it will affect the IV. Problem with sampling response is that we are interested in change but change happens in a small window and is hard to measure. Problem with sampling experimental settings is that it is different in the natural world. Scientists do not care about people, they care about characteristics. d. Non experimental research i. Observation, survey, Naturalistic Studies e. True experimental research-requires random sampling and experimental/control group that is formed by the experimenter. f. Quasi experimental-research design is not really an experiment, always the 3rd variable problem. In and of itself, every study is perfect and contains no errors but it is the experimenter that is at fault. Do these control for error perfectly? No they dont. 12. Theoretical constructs and syntax. You can play scientists all you wantno it is more than that. It is taking all the bits and pieces and combing them to form sciences dedicated to advancing human knowledge and controlling the natural world. Ok but what about predictions? 13. Predictions and semantics. The difference between philosophy and science is semantics. Without strong semantics we cannot predict. Without predictions we cannot test and

disconfirm. If we cannot disconfirm we cannot modify it. Then it is not science. Freud. Which he did not do it himself. 14. Oh that makes sense and sounds like the beginnings to the makings of a strong inference. Yes, the strong inference steps include 1. Observe problem of interest and describe it thoroughly. 2. Devise an alternate Hypothesis to describe the problem. 3. Describe a crucial study that thatll disprove one of the hypotheses. 4. Run a clean experiment. 5. Repeat. If you do these five things many times then you can begin to make a strong inference that you can slightly trust. This requires the concept of interaction which means that it is not just one cause that makes an effect. A factor that influences behavior may have different affects depending on the presence or absence of other factors. Method of multiple hypotheses is the method of having many different conflicting hypotheses so that we may falsify certain ones in order to figure out which one is truer. 15. Theory. Then we move on to the final step. Theory does not live in the undifferentiated real world. SO basically this was all for nothing grandson? Yup pretty much we learned a bunch of useless methods that get no results, that dont apply to the real word. there are too many pit falls in one experiment , there are so many pit falls in any one experiment that we should not take the results seriously, the results of anyone experiment should be replicated by a variety of investigators who hold different theories for their adopted integral part of area interest- Ted Barber

Kait Flederbach Cristin Phibbs Charles Creager William Carpenter Cody Alloway