Chapter 1 Flashcards
Psychology
is delined as the scintific study ol bchavior and mental processes. As a science, psychology uses scientific methods to observe, describe, and predict behavior.
Behavior
everything that a person does that can be directly observed.
Mental processes
are the thoughts, feelings, and motives that each of us experiences
privately but that cannot be observed directly.
At the core of the scientific approach that psychologists use are four attitudes:
critical thinking, curiosity, skepticism, and objectivity
Critical thinking
is the process of thinking deeply and actively, asking questions, and evaluating the evidence.
Scientists are critical thinkers.
empirical method
is gaining knowledge through observation, collecting evidence, and logical reasoning.
For thousands of years, people have been trying to answer the basic questions of human
behavior, such as:
a) How do we learn?
(b) What is memory?
(c) Why does one person grow and flourish while another struggles?
Early philosophers, such as? debated the nature of thought
and behavior, including the possible link between the mind and the body.
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle,
Wilhelm Wundt.
German philosopher-physician, created the academic discipline of psychology.
Psychology has
its roots
its roots not only in philosophy but also in biology and physiology.
Structuralism
first studied by Wundt and his collaborators. They locused on the
basic elements or structures of mental processes. Introspection was the method used to
study these mental structures. Individuals were asked to think about what was occurring
mentally as events were taking place. While were looking inside the mind
Functionalism,
William James’ approach to mental processes, was concerned with the
functions and purposes of the mind in individuals’ adaptation to the environment.
Functionalists were focusing on how humans interacted with the outside world.
Charles Darwin’s
Functionalism fit well with another intellectual development’s,
Principle of natural selection, an evolutionary process in
which organisms that are best adapted to their environment will survive and, importantly,
produce offspring.
The biological approach
emphasizes the study of the body, especially the brain and the
nervous system.
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the structure. function, development, genetics, and biochemistry of the nervous system. It emphasizes that the brain and nervous system are central to understanding behavior, thought, and emotion.
The behavioral approach.
The behavioral approach emphasizes the scientilic study ol’ observable behavioral responses and their environmental determinants.
John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner
were the first behaviorists.
Behaviorism dominated psychological research during the first half of the
twentieth century
The psychodynamic approach s.
Emphasizes unconscious thought, the conflict between biological instinets and society’s demands, and early family experiences.
Sigmund Freud
founder of the psychodynamic approach, theorized that early interactions with parents shape
an individual’s personality.
His theory was also the basis for the therapeutic technique that he called psychoanalysis, which involves an analyst unlocking a person’s unconscious conflicts by talking with the individual about his or her childhood memories, dreams, thoughts, and feelings.
The humanistic approach
emphasizes a person’s positive qualities, capacity for positive
growth, and the freedom to choose any destiny.
Humanistic psychologists stress that people have the ability to control their lives and are not simply controlled by the environment.
cognitive approach
cognitive approach emphasizes the mental processes involved
directing attention,
perceiving, remembering, thinking, and problem solving.
The evolutionary approach
uses evolutionary ideas such as adaptation, reproduction, and
the concept of the survival of the fittest as the basis for explaining specific human behaviors
The sociocultural approach
Emphasize the ways in which the social and cultural environments influence behavior.
cross-cultural rescarch,
meaning research that compares individuals in various cultures to see how they differ on important psychological attributes.
Cross-cultural research is important for testing the assumption that findings for one culture also generalize to other cultural contexts, and as such it allows psychologists to test for the possibility that some characteristics are universal.
These seven approaches to studying psychology
provide different views of behavior, and
therefore each may contribute uniquely valuable insights.
These broad approaches are reflected in the variety of specialties within which psychologists work (e.g., neuroscience, learning, and development)
first step: scientific method
The first step in conducting scientific research is observing some phenomenon.
variable
The phenomena that scientists study are called variables. A variable is anything that can change.
theory
a broad idea or set of closely related ideas that attempts to explain
observations.
A scientific theory must be falsifiahle, which means a scientist who
believes a theory is true must be able to generate ideas about research that would prove the theory wrong and test those ideas.
The second step:scientific method
in conducting scientific research is stating a hypothesis, a testable prediction that derives logically from a theory.
Third step:scientific method lol
is to test the hypothesis by collecting
and analyzing data (i.e., doing empirical research).
One of the key aspects of testing a hypothesis is data
analysis, which applies mathematical procedures to understand what the data means. Data is the information collected in a study
operational definition
provides an objective definition of how a variable is going to be measured and
observed in a particular study.
Drawing Conclusions
Based on the results of the data analysis, researchers can draw conclusions from their rescarch.
A rescarch finding is considered reliable when a study has been replicated again
and again and yields similar findings.
Evaluating Conclusions
Evaluation never really ends. Conclusions become part of the research community, which continues to question them.
In sum, steps 3, 4, and 5 of the scientific method are part of an ongoing process.
- Types of Psychological Research
A. Descriptive Research
Descriptive research is about describing some phenomenon.
Research allows the researcher to develop a sense for something but does not answer questions of causality.
Descriptive research methods include
observation, surveys and interviews, and case studies.
