How To ask good questions
•	Theory Falsifiability
•	Definitions
•	Essentialism
•	Escaping sensationalism
•	Probabilistic reasoning
•	Escaping intuitionism 
•	Psychological myths
Falsifiability
•	Theories must be falsifiable
•	Examples
–	Freudian
–	Creation “science”
–	ESP controls
–	Homosexuality as a disease
The importance of definition
•	Starting point of all research
•	Determine what you can study
–	Only exemplars included in the definition
–	The case of violence
•	And how
–	Can only use variables that map onto the definition
•	Which may limit methods used – the case of violence
Purpose of definitions
•	Definitions fence
–	Keep exemplars you want 
–	Keep out other exemplars
•	Fences change depending on purposes
•	Terms that qualify definition
–	Useful
–	Accepted
•	Terms that do not
–	True or false
–	Right or wrong
Essentialism 
•	What is essentialism
–	The idea that everything has an essence, a (usually) hidden driving force
–	Scientifically
•	DNA
•	Molecular structure
•	Essentialism is part of our mental mental apparatus
–	Child show it from an early age
–	And we never quite outgrow it.
Problems with essentialism
–	Often interferes with science
•	Search for essence leads to infinite regress
•	And to understand the nature of something is often diverting
–	Usually more productive to understand function
–	Or structure
–	Essence changes depending on purpose
•	Medievalism
•	Science
•	Religion
Do humans have an essence
•	Unclear what that might be
•	Doesn’t work well with many qualities
•	Intelligence
•	Depression
•	Athletic ability
•	Mischief
–	Gender
–	Race
Operational definitions
•	Used by all science
•	Escapes essentialism
•	Variables defined in terms of operations
•	Adequacy of definition depends on how well it works in practice
•	Often such definitions do not match everyday ones
–	Frustrating
–	And often confusing
Escaping sensationalism
•	People like weird and interesting answers
•	Vividness and salience
•	Single cases and coincidence
And think that big effects should have simple, but big, causes
•	But sometimes small causes do have large effects
–	Medicine
–	Genetics
–	Elections
•	Review multiple causation
•	Columbine – law of rare events
•	And interactions
Vividness and salience effects
•	Events that are vivid or striking seem to call for immediate and simple explanation 
–	Especially true for case studies
–	Or events made salient by the media
Affects public policy
–	Spend more money for AIDS than most forms of cancer despite death rates
–	Pets vs. humans
–	Welfare queens
–	9/11
Pay too much heed to single case coincidence
•	Striking correlations
–	ESP and dreams
–	Astrology
•	Single cases prove little
People have a hard time reasoning statistically
•	Hate randomness
•	Probabilistic reasoning
•	Base-rates
•	Cognitive errors
People hate randomness
•	We think that all things must have an explanation
•	Many events are random
–	Not easily predicted
–	Causes complex or unknown
–	Just accidents
Consequences of randomness aversion
•	Ascribe meaning to meaningless events
•	Beliefs in occult and other mysterious causes
•	Bad solutions to problems
•	Blaming victims – just world
•	Projecting meaning – terror management

Probabilistic reasoning
•	People not well equipped to reason in probabilities
–	Usually singe events are critical
–	Stereotypic thinking
Single examples don’t disprove association
•	Most causes even in the physical world are correlated a small amount with effects
–	Lung cancer and smoking
–	Reverse probabilities
•	Therefore even strong causes don’t always cause event
–	My grandfather lived to be 95 and smoked all his life
The issue of base rates
•	Have to compare any event against probability
•	But even low probability events occur sometimes and are too salient
•	Examples
–	Hot hand in basketball
–	Dreams as predictions
–	Buying a car
Escaping intuitionism
•	People have strong intuitions about psychology
–	Not a problem in most other areas of science
–	But everyone thinks they know “what makes people tick”
•	They reject scientific answers to issues if it disagrees with their intuitions.
The inadequacy of intuition
•	Often in error even for physical and biological events
–	Intuitive physics
–	Intuitive biology
•	The arrogance of self-reference
•	Intuitive vs. statistical prediction
–	Configural prediction?
–	Errors that hurt: the case of risk management
Psychological myths
•	Deterrence effects of punishment
•	Using 10% of brain
•	Abstinence based programs
•	Astrology
•	ESP
•	Right brain projects
•	Backward lyrics
•	Satanism
Disentangling such myths
•	Use some common sense
•	And logic
•	Fit with general scientific principles – connectivity
–	Small changes in scientific theories
–	New theories incorporate the old
•	Worry about source
–	Generally respected?
–	Have an agenda?