We swim in a sea of “facts” from people claiming they did “their research” on Google to more reputable sources of information. Governments make claims about the safety of COVID vaccines; researchers claim that implicit racism is a real thing; economists claim women make less money than men do; activists claim the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccination causes Autism; men and women are psychologically equal. How can people make sense of these claims from apparently credible people?
The best way is to cultivate a scientific mindset, one skilled in how people collect, deal with, and think about data. While there are many important areas of research, in this class we focus on one, the way of research in psychology.
This class will prepare you for scientific thinking and doing across all fields of psychology. Topics include philosophy of science, ethics in psychological research, descriptive research, and basic inferential statistics all of which serve as the foundational basis for further research in this area, for making sense of claims by psychologists, and engaging in the scientific conversation about important matters like child development, sexual health, aggression, and mate preferences.
- Docente: Peter Jonason
