PSYC 290

• Theme 1: Psychology is empirical. It is important to understand the need to acquire knowledge through systematic observation rather than through intuition, common sense, or speculation. Understanding this concept will allow you to recognize the problems some psychologists have with such topics as extrasensory perception (ESP) or with psychoanalytic suppositions.
• Theme 2: Psychology is theoretically diverse. This is an important concept because many students of psychology expect “black and white” solutions to their questions about psychology. The fact is that, in many areas, one of several theoretical explanations can be correct.
• Theme 3: Psychology evolves in a sociohistorical context. Unless you accept this concept, it is all too easy to ridicule or disparage previous discoveries. For example, students often mock behaviourism in favour of cognitive psychology because a strict behaviouristic interpretation of the world “simply cannot be right.” Without understanding the context of behaviourism and its once dominant position in psychology, it is far too easy to be deprecating. Simply stated, no single theory can easily explain everything that is known about behaviour.
• Theme 4: Behaviour is determined by multiple causes. It is common for introductory students to believe that there is a cause for a behaviour, rather than accepting that complex behaviours are more typically a function of multiple causation. The last 30 years have seen an increasing tendency for psychologists to accept this truism and to investigate several factors that might affect behaviour within the design of a single experiment.
• Theme 5: Behaviour is shaped by cultural heritage. Although a common definition of psychology is “the science that studies behaviour,” a more accurate perception is that, until recently, it has been largely the science of Caucasian male behaviour. Much of the early experimental psychological research was based on the findings derived from a restricted population: undergraduate students who were usually male.
• Theme 6: Heredity and environment jointly influence behaviour. While this statement may seem obvious, there was, in previous years, a tendency to believe that behaviour could be either 100% genetic or 100% environmental. For example, it used to be asked whether instinct could be described as completely genetic. Now it is recognized that all behaviours are a function of both environmental and genetic factors.
• Theme 7: People’s experience of the world is highly subjective. Students of psychology often believe that their own interpretation of the world is the correct one and that everyone else either does or should interpret the world in this way. Only when one appreciates the need to overcome subjectivity can one really understand the research approaches highlighted in Chapter 2 of the text that are referred to throughout the course.