We cannot just depend on our common sense to figure things out. We need psychological science.

The tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one would have foreseen it (Also known as the I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon)

We tend to think we know more than we do.

Unanticipated scientific results and historical happenings can seem like common sense.

Errors in our recollections and explanations show why we need psychological research.

Students were shown a video of a man stealing from a store and were given a list of suspects. All of them made a false identification. Those who were told they chose the actual suspect were more confident in their identification and claimed they had felt that same confidence when choosing the suspect in the first place.

Common sense describes what has happened more easily than it predicts what will happen.

Some people distrust a scientific approach to examining things and instead prefer human intuition.

Although people believe to be right 80-100% of the time, their predictions are right only 40-70% of the time.

Used to sift reality from fantasy, sense from nonsense. It is skeptical but not cynical, open but not gullible.

Requires humility because you sometimes need to reject your own ideas, and critical thinking.

Thinking that does not blindly accept arguments and conclusions. It examines assumptions, discerns hidden values, evaluates evidence, and assesses conclusions.

Used by those with a scientific attitude

Explains through an integrated set of principles that organizes and predicts behaviors or events

A good theory needs a testable prediction

Theories need to be continuously tested to gain additional knowledge and to discard or alter false theories.

Process for asking questions and observing nature's answer.

Description

A statement of the procedures (operations) used to define research variables

Repeating the essence of a research study to see whether the basic finding extends to other participants and circumstances.