Psychology and Statistics

Human activities are organized in structures to serve particular functions. Each activity is designed to play a role or serve a purpose that goes beyond the activity itself. Each discrete activity (such as eating) belongs to a pattern of organized activities that serve a common purpose or function , for instance, maintaining the body’s homeostasis. All activities in the system are connected with each other through the common function they serve. The discrete activities of eating, drinking, excreting and resting are designed to replenish and balance the body's energy and materials, which are constantly expended in physical and mental activities, such as work and recreation. Even when one sleeps, the body spends a certain amount of energy to sustain basic physiological functions, such as heart beat that drives blood flow, breathing that replenishes oxygen and etc. The energy we spend on activities need to be replenished through eating and drinking, a process that produces waste tha...

There are many great resources of knowledge in social psychology. This page explains various compliance techniques. https://www.psychologistworld.com/behavior/compliance/strategies/overview

In social psychology experiments, researchers often use “confiderates”. These are research assistants who pretend to be a participant in an experiment in order to set up a deception on the real participant. Solomon Ash used five confiderates in his 1951 experiment on conformity.

Over confidence is also called naïve realism. It is the belief that one’s subjective experience faithfully reflects objects and events out there in the world. Because as humans we have this tendency of being over confident, we need systematic research methods to verify our ideas. This is the rationale for emphasizing empirical verification in scientific research.

Here is an open source textbook on social psychology. https://opentextbc.ca/socialpsychology/ Social psychology covers a wide range of topics. It is easy to get disorganized and disoriented when explaining the field at an introductory level. Many textbooks make the field sound trivial. This one is good.

I have set up this site for students of AP Psychology, Introductory Psychology and Social Psychology classes. I also share some learning materials on AP Statistics. Peizhong Li