Chapter 1: The Science of Psychology
Chapter one of our text begins by discussing psuedoscience, or as the authors call it “psychobabble”. Basically they discuss how it is common that people are often misled by false psychology in our culture and quite often in the media. The authors compare and contrast true psychological practices with psuedopsychology, which often lacks true evidence and proper methods of research and information retrieval. I was glad to see that the authors discussed this topic and clarified the difference between “psuedopsychology” and genuine psychology. It was very helpful to have clarification of what is genuine and what is not within the field of psychology.
The remainder of chapter one discusses two other topics, Critical Thinking and the history of psychological practices. Critical thinking is an evolving process, which one uses to come to a reasonable logical conclusion. It is imperative that Psychologists use Critical Thinking when coming to a conclusion regarding the matter at hand. This section on Critical Thinking provides the reader with a good base to begin thinking Psychologically and it is very helpful in allowing one to come to an unbiased conclusion. This section was helpful in describing to the reader how psychologists reason and come to logical conclusions in their field of work. The history of Psychological practices was the section of chapter one that I least enjoyed. This was mostly due to the fact that I was already aware of most of the information that was provided. However it is important that people realize how the field of Psychology has developed and it’s different methods, so this chapter served the purpose of providing this information.
Chapter 2: How Psychologists do Research
The second chapter of our text covers the topic of how Psychologists go about obtaining results from their research. This chapter discusses the various methods and practices that Psychologists use to come to a well-supported conclusion. Much of what is covered in this chapter has do to with how psychologists make sure that all of their research, facts, studies, and especially conclusions are scientifically correct. Most of what I read in this chapter was not new information to me. I studied most of what was discussed in this chapter last semester in my Psychology Lab class and my Psychology class. Not only did I study these practices, but I also put some of them to use during many of my labs last semester, so I am fairly familiar with the subject. Although what was discussed is important and relevant, I found it to be a bit tedious because of my prior knowledge of the subjects covered. However some of the information was new to me and it is interesting to find out new things that I was not exposed to prior to this.
Psychology
sixth edition text book
by Carole Wade & Carol Tavris
