Ch 1: psych yesterday & today

Question 1

academic psychology

Answer 1

a branch of psychology focusing on research and instruction in the various areas or fields of study in psychology.

Question 2

applied psychology

Answer 2

the branch of psychology applying psychological principles to practical problems in other fields, such as education, marketing, or industry.

Question 3

behaviour

Answer 3

observable activities of an organism, often in response to environmental cues.

Question 4

behavioural genetics

Answer 4

a subfield of psychology looking at the influence of genes on human behaviour.

Question 5

behaviourism

Answer 5

a branch of psychological thought arguing that psychology should study only directly observable behaviours rather than abstract mental processes.

Question 6

client-centred therapy

Answer 6

an approach to therapy founded by Carl Rogers, based on the notion that the client is an equal and that positive gains are made by mirroring clients’ thoughts and feelings in an atmosphere of unconditional positive regard.

Question 7

clinical and counselling psychology

Answer 7

the study of abnormal psychological behaviour and interventions designed to change that behaviour.

Question 8

cognitive neuroscience

Answer 8

the study of mental processes and how they relate to the biological functions of the brain.

Question 9

cognitive psychology

Answer 9

the field of psychology studying mental processes as forms of information processing, or the ways in which information is stored and operated in our minds.

Question 10

collectivist

Answer 10

a culture whose members focus more on the needs of the group and less on individual desires.

Question 11

consciousness

Answer 11

personal awareness of ongoing mental processes, behaviours, and environmental events.

Question 12

cross-cultural psychology

Answer 12

the study of what is generally or universally true about human beings regardless of culture.

Question 13

cultural psychology

Answer 13

the study of how cultural practices shape psychological and behavioural tendencies and influence human behaviour.

Question 14

cultural universality

Answer 14

behaviours and practices that occur across all cultures.

Question 15

culture

Answer 15

a set of shared beliefs and practices that are transmitted across generations.

Question 16

functionalism

Answer 16

a philosophical approach that considers how mental processes function to adapt to changing environments.

Question 17

Gestalt psychology

Answer 17

the field of psychology arguing that we have inborn tendencies to structure what we see in particular ways and to structure our perceptions into broad perceptual units.

Question 18

humanistic psychology

Answer 18

theory of psychology that sought to give greater prominence to special and unique features of human functioning.

Question 19

individualistic

Answer 19

a culture that places the wants or desires of the person over the needs of the group.

Question 20

information processing

Answer 20

the means by which information is stored and operates internally.

Question 21

introspection

Answer 21

a method of psychological study involving careful evaluation of mental processes and how simple thoughts expand into complex ideas.

Question 22

mental processes

Answer 22

activities of our brain when engaged in thinking, observing the environment, and using language.

Question 23

neuroscience

Answer 23

the study of psychological functions by looking at biological foundations of those functions.

Question 24

psychoanalytic theory

Answer 24

psychological theory that human mental processes are influenced by the competition between unconscious forces to come into awareness.

Question 25

psychology

Answer 25

the study of mental processes and behaviours.

Question 26

punishment

Answer 26

an experience that produces a decrease in a particular behaviour.

Question 27

response

Answer 27

the way we react to stimuli.

Question 28

reinforcement

Answer 28

a learning process that increases the likelihood a given response will be repeated.

Question 29

social neuroscience

Answer 29

the study of social functioning and how it is tied to brain activity.

Question 30

sociobiologists

Answer 30

theorists who believe humans have a genetically innate concept of how social behaviour should be organized.

Question 31

stimuli

Answer 31

elements of the environment that trigger changes in our internal or external states.

Question 32

structuralism

Answer 32

a philosophical approach that studies the structure of conscious experience.

Question 33

voluntarism

Answer 33

a theory in which will is regarded as the ultimate agency in human behaviour

Question 34

four goals

Answer 34

describe, explain, predict, control

Question 35

Description

Answer 35

Psychologists seek to describe very specifically the things that they observe.

Question 36

Explanation

Answer 36

telling what, where, when, and how is sometimes not enough. A key goal for many psychologists is to answer the question of “Why?” As we’ll see, psychologists have developed hypotheses and theories to explain a huge variety of events, from why people develop addictions to substances to why we get hungry.

Question 37

Prediction

Answer 37

Psychologists also seek to predict the circumstances under which a variety of behaviours and mental processes are likely to occur.

Question 38

Control

Answer 38

We often encounter situations in which we want to either limit or increase certain behaviours or mental processes—whether our own or those of others.

Question 39

3 levels of analysis

Answer 39

the brain, the person, the group

Question 40

the brain

Answer 40

How brain structure and brain cell activity differ from person to person and situation to situation

Question 41

the person

Answer 41

How the content of the individual’s mental processes form and influence behaviour

Question 42

the group

Answer 42

How behaviour is shaped by the social and cultural environments

Question 43

Hippocrates

Answer 43

• believed that disease had a physical and rational explanation
• an individual’s physical and psychological health is influenced by an excess or a lack of bodily humours
• our bodily fluids (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile)
• recognize the importance of good food, fresh air, and rest
• identified the brain as the organ of mental life

Question 44

Socrates and Plato concluded what?

Answer 44

concluded that the mind and body are distinct and that the mind continues after the body dies.

Question 45

Plato

Answer 45

• believed that certain ideas and concepts were pure and signified an ultimate reality.
• we could use reasoning to uncover the core ideas deeply imbedded in every human soul

Question 46

Socrates

Answer 46

• looked for concepts that were the “essence” of human nature and searched for elements that various concepts had in common

Question 47

Aristotle

Answer 47

• sensations, dreams, sleep, and learning

- one of the first to promote empirical, or testable, investigations of the natural world

Question 48

Francis Bacon

Answer 48

-creator of empiricism: the view that all knowledge originates in experience. He established and popularized the scientific method, gathering data, analyzing data, and performing experiments.

Question 49

René Descartes

Answer 49

-the meaning of the natural world could be understood through science and mathematics
-dualism of the mind and body, believing the mind to be distinct from the body
-identified the point of contact between the two as the pineal gland
-

Question 50

John Locke

Answer 50

• we learn by our experiences
• the mind at birth is a tabula rasa—a blank slate—“a white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas”, waiting for experience to imprint knowledge.

Question 51

Johannes Müller

Answer 51

-that researchers needed to study the relationship between physical stimuli and their psychological effects—that is, the sensations and perceptions they affect.

Question 52

Herman von Helmholtz

Answer 52

• the first to measure the speed of a nerve impulse and determined that nerve impulses occur over time rather than instantaneously
• contributed to the foundation of modern physiological psychology and neuroscience

Question 53

Gustav Fechner

Answer 53

• one of the founders of experimental psychology
• lays out many of the methods and study techniques that would come to be used in the emerging field of psychology. His evidence of the relationship between physical and mental events demonstrated that psychology had the potential to become a quantified science.

Question 54

Wilhelm Wundt

Answer 54

• believed that the study of mind and behaviour ought to be conducted using the experimental methods of other sciences such as chemistry and physics
• studied the content and processes of consciousness, the awareness of immediate behaviours and mental processes
• believed that consciousness could be broken into basic elements, “atoms” of the mind, much as chemistry had identified chemical elements according to their atomic numbers, electron configuration, and so on.
• behaviour is motivated and that attention is focused for an explicit purpose
• voluntarism

Question 55

Edward Titchener

Answer 55

• expanded upon Wundt’s approach, forming a theoretical paradigm called structuralism at Cornell University.
• goal was to uncover the structure, or basic elements, of the conscious mind, much like looking at the parts

Question 56

William James

Answer 56

• He reasoned that consciousness had to serve an important biological function because it was a trait in humans that had been naturally selected, and he argued that psychologists needed to determine what those functions were
• functionalism.

Question 57

Sigmund Freud

Answer 57

• that many of our thoughts and feelings exist beyond the realm of awareness, in the unconscious
• built his theory on information from patients he saw in his medical practice who were coping with irrational fears, obsessions, and anxieties.
• believed that in most cases, the patients’ symptoms could be traced to toxic events from their childhoods

Question 58

Edward Thorndike

Answer 58

• that animal findings could help explain human behaviour.

Question 59

John Watson

Answer 59

-that animals could be useful in guiding our understanding of human psychology, and he sharply disagreed with psychoanalysis and with the notion of unobservable mental processes as appropriate approaches to studying the mind and behaviour.

Question 60

B.F. Skinner

Answer 60

-helped expand behaviourism’s perspective by acknowledging that internal, mental processes may indeed be at work in some situations, such as when an animal runs to get food.

Question 61

Carl Rogers

Answer 61

• founder of client-centred therapy, which promotes an equal relationship between therapists and clients and helps clients to achieve their full potential.

Question 62

Donald Hebb

Answer 62

• urged the psychological community to apply the rigorous experimental standards seen in behavioural studies—that is, controlled and objective methods—to the study of human thought.
• eveloped the concept of the cell assembly to describe a network of neurons that develop strengthened internal synaptic connections with repeated stimulation; this assembly activates together during particular mental processes.

Question 63

Ulric Neisser

Answer 63

-defined cognitive psychology as the study of information processing, the means by which information is stored and operates internally

Question 64

Roger Sperry

Answer 64

• severed the connections between the left and right hemispheres, or halves, of the brain
• two section function and learn differently

Question 65

pavlov

Answer 65

dogs