Chapter 1 - Thinking Critically with Psychological Science

Before beginning this class, I knew that psychology included the study of the mind and human behaviors. However, the mental picture I envisioned was one of a patient laying on a couch talking about his thoughts and feelings while a doctor wrote scribbled on a pad of paper. Obviously, I knew my vision of a psychologist was stereotypical and somewhat off base but I couldn’t form a better mental picture because I didn’t know enough to form new ideas. Now I’ve realized the psychology is everywhere. It’s not always apparent at the first glance, but if you really think about it becomes blatantly obvious.
Everyday we experience psychology in the way we act and interpret information. What we choose to believe is true, our dreams, and our feelings about our experiences can all be explained and studied in psychology. Every time I accept something new or form an opinion, psychology is playing a role in my life.

Two things I found interesting in this chapter were about correlation and causation and illusionary correlations. Reading about this reminded me of an activity that I participated in for CTSO State Officer Training last summer. The leader of the workshop asked for two volunteers. He told them they were going to be reporters. He was going to ask them to leave the room while he told the rest of the group about a dream he had. Then he would bring the reporters back in one at a time and have them try to figure out what is dream was about. However they could only ask yes or no questions.

Two girls volunteered to be reporters, and once they left the room, the workshop leader explained what we were really going to do. He didn’t actually have a dream to decide – when the reporters asked us questions that ended with letters between A and M in the alphabet we were to collectively respond with a “Yes.” All other questions were to be answered with a no. When the first reporter came back she was obviously shocked when her first guesses about the dream were correct and then even more confused when her guesses were wrong. The workshop leader encouraged her to believe that she was working in the right path and that she had guessed his dream perfectly. When the second reporter came in the first reporter stayed inside the room. When the two had guessed completely different dreams – their confusion only became greater.

Both girls thought they were on the right track because a whole group convinced them that they were right. As each they began eliminating possibilities their dreams became more and more far fetched and even less likely, but in their own minds they thought their ideas were plausible because the rest of the group was so convincing. But when the second reporter asked her questions she noticed the how confused the first reporter was becoming and began to doubt some of the things we were telling her. Eventually she felt like she was beginning to notice a pattern in the data. Even though her guesses were wrong, it does prove that we try to find pattern in random data as illusionary correlation suggests. Both experiments show correlation and causation – when they thought they were right it caused them to believe more and more false fact.

I think it’s very ironic that I’ve witnessed a sort of psychological experience without really realizing it. I think it’s funny, that even after reading about it I know that I have and probably still will “fall” for tricks like that.