Exam 3: Inductive Reasoning in Psychology and Everyday Life

Rotton and Kelly (1985) wrote a literature review on whether the phase of the moon was related to people's abnormal or deviant behaviors. They reported that 36 studies found no relation between the two variables, and one study that found a significant relation. Assuming that Rotton and Kelly are scientific authorities on this question, which is the BEST evaluation of the support provided for the conclusion that the phase of the moon is related to people's abnormal behavior?

Roberto's friend had an out-of-body experience one afternoon after lying down on the sofa for a nap. The friend told him that he could see his body lying full length below him as if he had perceived it and not simply dreamed it. From this incident, Roberto said that he had come to believe that the mind can actually leave the physical body. Roberto is using _____ as evidence.

According to Andrea, in the last two decades temperatures have risen at unprecedented rates, and this suggests that human activity has been contributing to global warming. Shimon responded, "No way, the earth is just going through a warming cycle." Andrea said that Shimon's counterargument is not relevant because a global warming cycle occurs over a longer period of time. Which thinking error is Shimon MOST likely making?

Inductive reasoning is often described as proceeding from:

A plausible claim is MOST related to judging that claim by:

Ravi-a Hindu from India-said, "In India, I heard about a young boy who knew details about a man who had been a soldier and was killed in a war, even though the boy had been born 10 years after the soldier's death. The soldier's wife verified the things that the young boy said about the soldier." Ravi also said, "This is proof that the soldier had been reborn, or reincarnated, in the body of the boy." Ravi made a basic argument because:

The physician and anatomist Paul Broca observed a man named Tan and other cases of people who had trouble speaking and who also had damage to the left side of the brain. When Broca generalized from these different observations that damage to the left side of the brain resulted in speech problems, he used _____ reasoning to draw a conclusion.

Whether a bit of evidence is a kind of nonscientific evidence (a statement of authority, an anecdote, or a personal experience) versus a kind of scientific evidence depends on the:

An important limitation that anecdotes and testimonials share in terms of the support they can provide is _____ evidence, with ____.