Scientific Inquiry

1284 Words3 Pages

Scientific inquiry is a process of critical thinking and asking questions that helps determine factual information that has been tested and proved or disproved instead of relying on assumptions and intuition. Scientific inquiry is important in psychology, as it is in all fields of science, allowing us to examine assumptions, assess outcomes, discern hidden values, evaluate evidence, and put ideas to the test. This scientific approach guards us against hindsight bias, believing after learning an outcome that we would have foreseen it, known also as the knew-it-all-along phenomenon. It also protects us from judgmental overconfidence, the bias to seek information that confirms a judgment based on intuition. Hindsight bias and overconfidence often lead those to overestimate their intuition and common sense. Instead, scientific inquiry follows a scientific approach that is fed by a curious eagerness to skeptically scrutinize competing ideas and open-minded humility; utilized daily as critical thinking and allowing us to determine fact from fiction. With this scientific attitude we deploy the scientific method to create a theory. It begins with making observations. From these observations we form a theory, later refining the theory as new observations shed light on the subject matter. This scientific theory creates a hypothesis, the testable prediction. Psychologists use various methods of research such as the case study, the survey, naturalistic observation, correlation, and experimentation. In case studies, a psychologist will study one individual in depth. This process can show us what can happen and provide ideals which we can later infer to others. This individual though may be atypical and provide misrepresented data for the who... ... middle of paper ... ...This is due to how we process conscious and unconscious information. Conscious information is processed sequentially and slower than unconsciousness, meaning one event leads to the next and so on; as with multiple cars traveling down a one lane, one way road and stopping to pay a toll, only one car can process at a time. Unconsciousness moves faster because it processes information in parallel, simultaneously, meaning multiple events occur at once; as with a car travelling a parkway with multiple vehicles entering and exiting at multiple locations at the same time. Consciousness and unconsciousness are present in sensory processes such as hearing, seeing, reasoning, and remembering. While watching a woman jog by, you will consciously recognize that she is female, and simultaneously you will unconsciously process the fact that she is blonde and wearing black shorts.

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