Chapter One

Before I started this class, I knew that psychology had to do with studying the mind, and that's all I really knew. I had no idea how complex the science of psychology actually is! I now know that psychology is the science of behavior and mental processes, and it is organized into different schools of thought-- structuralism, functionalism, Gestalt psychology, behaviorism, and psychoanalysis. I now know that psychology has different levels of analysis, psychology has spread all over the world, and the science of psychology continues to grow.

Psychology greatly affects everyone whether they know what it is or not. Everyone has thoughts and their behaviors are affected by them. Their thoughts are affected by both the environment and their genetic traits. People use psychology without even knowing it. Everyone has wondered or asked a person, "Why would you do something like that? What were you thinking?" People use it in those "big games" when they try and get in the opponents head or when they are trying to get what they want and use "reverse psychology."

I thought the section on overconfidence was very intriguing. I learned that as people, we tend to think we know more than we do. I liked the example the book gave about trying to unscramble the words. Overconfidence has a lot to do with hindsight bias. Hindsight bias is the tendency to believe, after lerning an outcome, that one would have foreseen it. People are often overconfident that they'll do something in the future or could have figured that problem out. I am often overconfident too. I see a problem and don't know how to go about reaching the answer. Then after I receive the answer I think, "duh! I knew that." Most of the time I probably wouldn't actually be able to figure the problem out though.
I also thought the section on random sampling was interesting. It is very true. Large representative samples are better than small ones, but a small representative sample of 100 is better than an unrepresentative sample of 500. A random sample is a sample that fairly represents a population because each member has an equal chance of inclusion. This can be achieved by using a random number generator or picking names out of a hat. The larger the number of samples you have, the more accurate the outcome should be. This will only be true if you have representative samples. This means a sample from all different kinds of people, from different races, backgrounds, cultures, and from different places. The names are picked completely fair with an equal chance for everyone.