CH 1: Thinking Critically Flashcards
(1) The History and Scope of Psychology - (2) Research Strategies: How Psychologists Ask and Answer Questions.
Critical Thinking
Thinking that does not blindly accept arguments and conclusions. Rather, it examines assumptions, appraises the source, discerns hidden biases, evaluates evidence, and assesses conclusions.
What is the Scientific Attitude and What are the Scientific Attitude’s 3 main components?
Being skeptical but not cynical, open but not gullible.
- Curious
- Skeptical
- Humble
As Scientists, Psychologists approach the world with a ‘Curious Skepticism’, persistently asking what 2 questions?
1) What do you mean?
2) How do you know?
Humility
Awareness of our own vulnerability to error and openness to surprises and new perspectives.
What are some Questions Critical Thinkers ask?
- How do they know that?
- What is this person’s agenda?
- Is the conclusion based on a personal story and gut feelings, or on evidence?
- Does the evidence justify a cause-effect conclusion?
- What alternative explanations are possible?
“For a lot of bad ideas, science is society’s garbage disposal.”
Describe what this tells us about the scientific attitude and what’s involved in critical thinking.
Many ideas and questions may be scrutinized scientifically, and the bad ones end up discarded as a result.
1) Curiosity about the world around us.
2) Skepticism about unproven claims and ideas.
3) Humility about one’s own understanding.
This process leads us to evaluate evidence, assess conclusions, and examine our own assumptions, which are essential parts of critical thinking.
From a psychologist’s perspective, What does it mean to be human?
To be human is to be curious about ourselves and the world around us.
Who created Psychology’s first Laboratory?
Wilhelm Wundt
Who is Wilhelm Wundt?
Wundt established the first psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig, Germany in 1879. Wundt was seeking to measure ‘atoms of the mind’ -the fastest and simplest mental processes.
What are two of Psychology’s first schools of thought?
Structuralism and Functionalism
Structuralism
Early school of thought promoted by Wundt and Titchener; used introspection to reveal the structure of the human mind.
Functionalism
Early school of thought promoted by William James and influenced by Darwin; explored how mental and behavioral processes function - how they enable the organism to adapt, survive, and flourish.
Self-Reflective Introspection
External observation of oneself - Looking Inward
Who is William James?
American philosopher - psychologist, and first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James has been labeled the “Father of American psychology”.
How does Consciousness serve as a Function?
It enables us to consider our past, adjust to our present, and plan our future.
Who is Mary Whiton Calkins?
A pioneering memory researcher and the first woman president of the American Psychological Association in 1905.
Who is Margret Floy Washburn?
The first woman to receive a Ph.D. in Psychology. She also wrote an influential book, The Animal Mind in 1908, and became the APA’s second female president in 1921.
What event defined the start of Scientific Psychology?
Scientific Psychology began in Germany 1879 when Wilhelm Wundt opened the first Psychology Laboratory.
Why did introspection fail as a method for understanding how the mind works?
People’s self-reports varied depending on the experience and the person’s intelligence and verbal ability.
Fill in the Blank:
The School of _____ used introspection to define the mind’s makeup; _____ focused on how mental processes enabled us to adapt, survive, and flourish.
Structuralism; Functionalism
Psychology
The science of behavior and mental processes.
Behaviorism
The view that psychology,
1) Should be an objective science that
2) Studies behavior without reference to mental processes.
(Most scientists agree with (1) but not with (2).
- Became one of psychology’s two major forces in the 1960’s.
Freudian Psychology
Emphasizes our unconscious thought processes and emotional responses to childhood experiences affect our behavior.
Humanistic Psychology
Historically significant perspective that emphasizes human growth potential.
Behavior
Anything an organism does; any action we can observe and record.
What are Mental Processes?
The internal subjective experiences we infer from behavior - sensations, perceptions, dreams, thoughts, beliefs, and feelings.
Fill in the Blank:
From the 1920s through the 1960s, the two major forces in psychology were _____ and _____ psychology.
Behaviorism; Freudian
Cognitive Psychology
How we perceive, process, and remember information, and the cognitive roots of anxiety, depression, and other psychological disorders.
Cognitive Neuroscience
The marriage between Cognitive Psychology (The science of the mind) and Neuroscience (The science of the brain).
It is the interdisciplinary study of the brain activity linked with cognition (including perception, thinking, memory, and language).
What is the Nature-Nurture Issue?
The longstanding controversy over the relative contributions that genes and experience make to the development of psychological traits and behaviors. Today’s science sees traits and behaviors arising from the interaction of Nature and Nurture.
Describe what “Nurture works on what nature endows” means?
Our species is biologically endowed with an enormous capacity to learn and adapt. Moreover, every psychological event (every thought, every emotion) is simultaneously a biological event. Thus, depression can be both a brain disorder and a thought disorder.
How did the cognitive revolution affect the field of psychology?
It recaptured the field’s early interest in mental processes and made them legitimate topics for scientific study.
What is Natural Selection?
This is the process by which nature selects from chance variations the traits that best enable an organism to survive and reproduce in a particular environment.
What is contemporary psychology’s position on the nature-nurture issue?
Psychological events often stem from the interaction of nature and nurture rather than from either of them acting alone.
Evolutionary Psychology
The study of the evolution of behavior and the mind, using principles of natural selection.
What is the WEIRD cultures?
W - western E - educated I - industrialized R - rich D - democratic
Culture
The enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions shared by a group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next.
Behavior Genetics
The study of the relative power and limits of genetic and environmental influences on behavior.
