Introduction
This section is just designed to start you thinking about research methods and why they are useful, not just for Psychology but for everyday life!
Lectures and quizzes
Lecture 1 will be available online
Readings
Textbook
Open Textbook Chapter 1: The Science of Psychology
Make sure you scroll through all the pages using the links at the bottom of each page.
Note that the video at the end of this chapter won’t load, but I found it online:
Confirmation Bias and Tunnel Vision
Supplementary reading (required)
How scientists fool themselves, and how they can stop
An interesting article about how easy it is to fool yourself, even if you’re a trained scientist - and some good tools to avoid doing so.
Useful links
Jamovi - free statistical software!
This is the website where you can download the software for all the stats you’ll need to do; there are also lots of free resources to get you going.
Learn Statistics with Jamovi - a free introductory textbook
This is a free PDF textbook by stats guru Danielle Navarro, and comes complete with datasets, simple exercises, and some really useful chapters about research methods as well. Highly recommended.
Forum
Topic - Science in the Media
Have you recently read a story about a scientific study that interested you? (This could be any type of study, not restricted to psychology.) Did you think it seemed accurately reported? Go back and check - does it link to the original study, or if not, is it easy to find the study? If you can find it, does the article accurately reflect what the researchers did? If you can’t find it, do the claims outlined in the story seem reasonable to you? Why, or why not?
Alternatively, have you found some outstanding examples of pseudoscience recently? This would also be interesting. How did you pick them as pseudoscience?
Any type of media is fine - TV, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, Reddit, etc.
It’s not necessary to attach the original item/article (you can if you wish), although a link would be nice. You could even photograph a billboard or leaflet if you like.