1.1 The World of Psychology: An Overview Flashcards
Subfields of Psychology, Linkage within Psychology and beyond
Define psychology.
It is the science that seeks to understand behaviour, social interactions and mental processes, taking into account physical attributes and interactions with the environment.
What are the goals of psychology?
To understand, explain and predict human behaviour in different contexts to promote a healthy life and human welfare.
What is positive psychology?
A field of research that focuses on people’s positive experiences and characteristics, such as happiness, optimism and resilience.
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What are the nine areas of psychology that the Psychology Board of Australia has endorsed and reflect the nine colleges within the Australian Society?
- Clinical
- Clinical Neuropsychology
- Community
- Counselling
- Education and Development
- Forensic
- Health
- Organisational
- Sport and Exercise
How many special interest groups are there?
47
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The New Zealand Psychological Society has eight professional institutes and special interest groups members may join. What are they?
- Clinical
- Community
- Counselling
- Criminal Justice and forensic
- Education and Developmental
- Organisational
- Health
- Special Interest Group
Who may use the term ‘psychologist?’
It is restricted to those who satisfy the Psychology Board of Australia requirements for registration and practice. Outside those requirements it a breach of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law Act 2009.
What is biological psychology?
Biological psychologists analyse the biological factors influencing behaviour and mental processes.
Biological psychology is also called what?
physiological psychologists
What technique allows biological psychologists to study brain activity accompanying various mental processes?
1.Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
2. PET Scans
3. EEG
What topics do biological psychologists research?
- How the brain controls a person’s movement and speech.
- What organs help a person cope with stress and fight disease.
What is cognitive psychology?
Focused on analysis of the mental processes underlying judgement, decision-making, problem-solving, imaging and other aspects of human thought or cognition.
Sensation and preception, learning, memory, attention, intelligence, creativity
Cognitive psychologists have found that we don’t just receive incoming information. What else do we do to it?
We mentally manipulate, depending on which of the features you emphasise.
What is engineering psychology?
The study of human factors in the use of equipment helps designers create better versions of that equipment. For example, computer keyboards, mobile phones, TV remotes that are more logical, easier to use and less likely to cause error.
What is developmental psychology?
Psychologists who seek to understand, describe and explore how behaviour and mental processes change over the course of a lifetime, from birth through to old age.
What areas is human development being applied to by developmental psychologists?
Parenting, evaluating daycare, preserving mental capacity in elderly people.
What is personality psychology?
The study of individuality focuses on people’s unique characteristics.
What psychologists seek to assess, understand and modify and prevent behaviour disorders?
Causes and treatment of metnal disorders: Depression, Anxiety, Schizophrenia, Autism
Clinical and counselling psychologists.
Research improves the understanding of genetic and environmental forces that shape what disorders?
Anxiety, depression, schizophrenia and autism.
What work does a community psychologist do?
- Works with all types of individuals,
- communities,
- integrates social,cultural, economic, political and enviromental and
- strives for change in social systems.
What do community psychologists focus on?
Preventing psychological disorders by promoting people’s resilience and other personal strengths.
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Who do community psychologist work with?
- Communities
- Non-Government Organisations
- Neighbourhood Organisations
- Overseas Aid
- Development organisations
- Urban, regional and remote communities
- Health and education providers
Why do community psychologists work with communities, non-government organisations and neighbourhood organisations?
To reduce crime, poverty and other stressful conditions.
Community psychologists try to understand what?
The individual and system interactions and work from a preventative systemic orientation.
What are community psychologists experts in? (9 needs analysis)
Needs analysis for communities at risk, such as
1. Immigrant groups and rural and remote communities,
2. Community asset mapping of social capital and related resources;
3. Community-generated problem-solving based on collaboration and social justice,
4. Community capacity building to manage change and address risks and threats,
5. Evaluation of psycho-social environments with respect to a sense of community,
6. Quality of life,
7. Social support network,
8. Resilience,
9. Social impact assessment related to environmental issues such as drought and climate change.
What do health psychologists study?
The effects of behaviour and mental processes on health and illness and vice versa. For example, the relationship between risky behaviours, such as smoking or lack of exercise and the likelihood of suffering health issues.
Health psychologists explore the impact that illnesses, such as diabetes, cancer and multiple sclerosis has on what? (4 things)
People’s behaviour, thinking, emotions and family relationships.
When do children and adults recover more rapidly after a procedure?
When patients are mentally prepared for surgical procedures. Patients are given helpful information about what to expect before, during and after their operations.
Who researches and develops theories about teaching and learning?
Usually in very applied settings - Schools and universities
Educational psychologists
To what is the work of educational psychologists applied? (4 things)
- Programs designed to improve teacher training,
- Refine school curricula.
- Reduce truancy rates,
- Help students learn more efficiently and remember what they learn.
What is the jigsaw technique?
A classroom activity in which children from various ethnic groups must work together to complete a task or solve a problem.
What do cooperative experiences promote? (3 things)
- Learning,
- Generate mutual respect
- Reduce intergroup prejudice
What do school psychologists provide? (3 things)
- Support to teachers and students,
- Assist in identifying students’ academic challenges and opportunities, provide counselling to students,
- Set up programs to improve student achievement and aspirational growth.
What do social psychologists study? (2 things)
- How people influence one another’s behaviour,
- Social interactions and attitudes individually and in groups.
Who studies ways to improve efficiency, productivity and satisfaction among workers and the organisations that employ them?
Organisational psychologists
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What do organisational psychologists research? (10 things)
- Leadership
- Stress
- Competition
- Pay rates
- Factors that affect the efficiency
- Productivity and satisfaction of people in the workplace.
- Worker motivation
- Work team cooperation,
- Conflict resolution procedures
- Employee selection methods
What does the research from organisational psychology promote the development of?
Positive organisational behaviour.
What does the results of positive organisational behaviour include? (4 things)
- More effective employee training programs
- Ambitious but realistic goal-setting procedures
- Fair and reasonable evaluation tools
- Incentive systems that motivate and reward outstanding performance.
Who explores the relationship between athletic performance and such psychological variables as motivation and emotion?
Sports and exercise psychologists
Four points
What do forensic psychologists assist in?
- Jury selection.
- Evaluate defendants’ mental competence to stand trial
- Deal with other issues involving psychology and the law
- Assist police and other agencies in understanding criminals
What do environmental psychologists study?
The effects of the physical environment on behaviour and mental processes.
In these transactions, individuals change the eviroment, and their behavour and experieces are changed by the environment.
What are the results of environmental psychologists applied to?
Architects and interior designers as they plan or remodel university residences, shopping malls, auditoriums, hospitals, prisons, offices and other spaces to make them more comfortable and functional for the people who occupy them.
Who helps us to better understand the experiences of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers as they build new lived for themselves in places that are unfamiliar to them?
Cultural and cross-cultural psychologists
What do cultural and cross-cultural psychologists help us understand?
The way culture affects our lives and to better understand our and others’ place in the world.
Psychology is the science that seeks to understand _______________, social ______________, and _______________ processes, taking into account __________________ attributes and interactions with the ________________.
- behaviour
- interaction
- mental
- physical
- environment
Cognitive psychologists focus on __________ of the mental processes underlying judgement, __________ -making, __________ - solving, imaging and other aspects of of human thought and __________.
- analysis
- decision
- problem
- cognition
Clinical psychologists seek to assess, __________ modify and __________ behaviour disorders.
- understand
- prevent
Social psychologists study how people influence one another’s __________, social __________ and __________ individually and in __________.
- behaviour
- interactions
- attitude
- groups.
Culture and cross-culture psychology help us to better understand the way __________ affects our lives and can help us to better understand our and others __________ in the world.
- culture
- place
Community psychologists work with all types of __________ and __________ and strive for __________ in social systems.
- communities
- individuals
- change
Once behaviour can be described and explained it be be__________
Predicted
Once behaviours are predicted, they can be __________
Changed.
What is the psychological phenomenon = serial postion effect?
The primacy and recenty effects
When we are stretched, we tend to use other strategies to encode and retrieve information
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What is the Big Five Factor Personality Inventory?
Agreeableness - Relates to people, more empathetic, quite sociable
Conscientiousness - Good impulse control, goal directed behaviours
Extraversion - Quite social, talkative, assertive and emotional expressiveness
Neuroticism - Periods of sadness, moodiness, emotional instability
Openness to experience - Imagination and insight, eagerness to learn
Three things
What is the Dark Triad?
Narcissism - Selfish, arrogant, sensitive, ruthless
Psychopathy - Lack of empathy or remorse
Machiavellianism - Self-interested, manipulative, lack of morality
What is the most common, well-know therapy appproach in clinical psychology?
CBT - Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
What is considered the ‘gold standard’ for treating common psychological disorders?
CBT - Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Due to having the largest evidence base
What does Cognitive Behavioural Therapy focus on?
Chinging beliefs and behaviours in a highly structured therapy session.
5 Points
What does social psychological phenomena include?
- Conformity
- Obedience to authority
- Prejudice and stereotypes
- Groupthink
- Influece of the media on attitudes and behaviour
What is the Hawthorne effect?
The awareness of being studied
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What area of work do health psychologists work in?
- Health promotion
- Lifestyle changed (stress management)
- Promotion of exercise and healthy eating behaviours
- Managing diseases or death and dying
- Behavioural strategies relevant to disease prevention (addition treatments)
- Assessment and treatment of chronic or acute health problems (pain or sleep disorders)
Environmental psychology includes __________, __________ and __________ aimed at improving our relationship with the natural environment and making buildings more human
Theory
Research
Practice
What is an interdisciplinary field that focuses on the interplay between individuals and their surroundings?
Environmental psychology
The term environment is broadly defined , encompassing natural environments, social settings, built environments, learning environment and information environments
What performance services do sports and exercise psychologists provide?
- Assessment of barriers to optimal performance
- Supporting mental preparation
- Design/ implementation of group mental skills
- Team selection and enhancement
- Concentration strategies
- Team building and leadership
- Communication skills
- Conflict resolution
What well-being services do sports and exercise psychologists provide?
- Managing work-sport balance
- Career transitions and retirement
- Managing overtraining
- Sports rehabilitation
- Counselling to overcome stress, anxiety and interpersonal conflict
- Implementation of interventions
