Chapter 1

using her critical thinking skills

Alice is looking for an effective diet program. She is able to evaluate the claims of competing programs in an open-minded and careful fashion by _______________, the hallmark of scientific skepticism

Occam's razor

An important principle of scientific thinking states that if two explanations account equally well for a phenomenon, we should generally select the simpler one. This principle is known as __________________

level of analysis

As a discipline, psychology spans multiple _______________, which can be thought of as the rungs on a ladder

over reliance on anecdotes

Bud and Sandy are discussing the merits of new automobiles. Bud noted, "This car model has been tested by four different consumer agencies in hundreds of tests with virtually the same outcomes each time; it is ver reliable." Sandy countered, "Yeah, but my neighbor down the street bought that car, and he has had nothing but problems. I would stay away from it." Which hallmark of pseudoscience has Sandy fallen prey to?

eye-tracking studies show differences between cultures when inspecting visual materials.

Dr. Frohardt is a psychology professor who has been asked to explain what all people will look at first when they view photographs of dangerous animals. Dr. Frodhart will find this task difficult because _____________________

structuralism

E.B. Titchener was a leading figure in which framework of psychology, which advocated the use of introspection to identify basic elements of experience.

the predictions are difficult to falsify

Evolutionary psychology has been criticized because _______________

psychoanalysis

Just as behaviorism was gaining popularity in the United states, Sigmund Freud was founding a new field of psychology, one that focused on internal psychological processes such as unconscious impulses, thoughts, and memories. The approach is called ___________

rival hypothesis

Laurie told her friend Sandi, "I had a headache this morning so I used an old family cure: Three sips of ginger ale, and an hour later my head felt better." Sandi replied, "I am glad you are feeling more comfortable now, but maybe the sheer passage of time made your headache go away." Sandi is offering a(n) ________________ in response to Laurie's explanation

emotional reasoning fallacy

One reason people are drawn to believing in pseudoscience is that we use our emotions as guides to evaluate the validity of their claims. This is known as the affect heuristic or the ________________

belief perseverance

People have a tendency to continue holding on to their beliefs even when this beliefs have been shown to be wrong. This phenomenon is known as ___________________

decline effect

Psychological researchers have become more aware of the importance of replicating research results. Part of this awareness is driven by the observation that the size of certain psychological findings appears to be shrinking over time. This phenomenon is known as the __________________

The human tendency to see patterns in meaningless data

Science writer Michael Shermer coined the termed "patternicity" to refer to __________________

use of scientific-sounding terms that make little sense

Some main warning signs of pseudoscientific claims include over reliance on anecdotes, exaggerated claims, absence of connectivity to other research, lack of peer review, and ________________

direct harm

Ten-year-old Candace Newmaker died as a result of a pseudoscientific treatment called "rebirthing therapy." This is an example of pseudoscience causing _________________

Correlation is not causation.

The "third valuable problem" is associated with which scientific thinking principle?

a misconception

The idea that we can dismiss scientific theories (such as Darwinian evolution) from serious consideration because a theory "is just an educated guess" is __________________.

sequential lineup

The police have arrested a suspect in an assault case and the victim has agreed to look at a lineup to see if he can identify the person who attacked him. Gary, a police psychologist, is advising the detectives on the most accurate way to put together a lineup. What should he recommend that they use?

naive realism

Which term describes the common sense belief that we see the world as it really is?

developmental psychologist

You meet a psychologist who tells you that she conducts research on children to determine how their cognitive processes differ as the child gets older. You recognize that this person is most likely a(n) __________________