Science Of Psychology

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