Chapter 1

Question 1

what is psychology

Answer 1

it involves the study of thoughts, feelings, and behaviour

Question 2

what is psychological science?

Answer 2

the study through research of mind, brain, and behaviour

Question 3

what does it mean when we say mind

Answer 3

mental activity - the mind includes the memories, thoughts, feelings, and perceptual experiences we have while interacting with the world.

Question 4

what is behaviour

Answer 4

describes the totality of observable human/animal actions

Question 5

what is amiable skepticism

Answer 5

a way of critically weighing and evaluating information using well-supported evidence

Question 6

what is confirmation bias

Answer 6

when people overweigh evidence that supports their beliefs and downplay evidence that does not match what they believe

Question 7

what is “seeing casual relationships that do not exist”

Answer 7

there is a common reasoning error where there is a misconception that two events that happen at the same time are somehow related. Sometimes people see order that does not exist to try to find predictability in our world

Question 8

what is “accepting after the fact explanations” or hindsight bias

Answer 8

where people see many signs of a probably outcome but nobody takes any action

Question 9

what is “taking mental shortcuts”

Answer 9

taking simple little rules called heuristics to make decisions - taking things that are widely available to be more probable and forgetting the more blatant things

Question 10

what is the dunning kruger effect

Answer 10

People lack the ability to evaluate their own performance in areas where they have little expertise

Question 11

what is the mind/body problem

Answer 11

the quintessential question: are the mind and body separate and distinct, or is the mind simply the subjective experience of on-going brain activity

Question 12

what is dualism and who promoted this theory

Answer 12

Dualism is where the mind and body are separate but intertwined

Rene Descartes

Question 13

what is the nature/nurture debate?

Answer 13

another quintessential question of whether psychological characteristics are biologically innate or are they acquired through education, experience, and culture.

Question 14

who is John stuart mill

Answer 14

a philosopher, writer of “A system of logic” (1843) who declared that psychology should leave philosophy and become its own science of observation and experiment

Question 15

how does john Stuart mill define psychology

Answer 15

the science of the elementary laws of the mind

Question 16

who is is william james

Answer 16

the first major overviewer of psychology, is credited with the idea of the stream of consciousness of the human mind

Question 17

what is stream of consciousness

Answer 17

the product of interacting and dynamic stimuli coming from both inside our heads and the outside world

Question 18

what is functionalism and who began this theory/ way of thinking

Answer 18

William James began it

he argued that psychologists should examine the functions served by the mind - how the mind operates

Question 19

what is natural selection

Answer 19

where features that are adaptive are passed along and those that are not adaptive are not passed along

Question 20

what is clinical psychology

Answer 20

area of psychology that seeks to understand, treat, and characterize mental illness

Question 21

what is cognitive psychology

Answer 21

it aims to understand the basic skills and processes that are tge foundation of mental life and behavious

Topics: memory, attention, sensation, perception

Question 22

what is cultural psychology

Answer 22

the study of how cultural factors (geographical regions, national beliefs, religious values) can have profound effects on mental life and behaviour. Most closely linked to sociology and anthropology

Question 23

what is developmental psychology

Answer 23

study of how humans grow and develop from the prenatal period through infancy and early childhood, through adolescence and early adulthood, into old age.

Question 24

what is health psychology

Answer 24

how psychological processes influence physical health and vice versa

Question 25

what is industrial/organizational psychology

Answer 25

explores how psychological processes play out in the workplace. Blends social-personality psychology approaches with principles from management, marketing, and communication

Question 26

What is relationship psychology

Answer 26

the study of our intimate relationships, properties that make them succeed or fail, and the two-way effects between intimate relationships and other aspects of our lives.

Question 27

what is social personality psychology

Answer 27

the study of everyday thoughts, feelings, and behaviours - and the factors that give rise to them. Focuses on the situational and dispositional causes of behaviour and the interactions between them

Question 28

how has brain imaging helped further psychology and what is an example of brain imaging

Answer 28

Brain science and psychology are hand in hand - fMRI is an example of brain imaging that helps scientists understand what locations in the brain control certain behaviours

Question 29

what is localization of function in the brain?

Answer 29

localization is where different areas of the brain are specialized for different functions such as language, control over behaviour, and abstract thinking.

Question 30

what is the human genome

Answer 30

the basic genetic code/ blueprint for the human body

Question 31

how does studying the human genome help psychologists

Answer 31

it represents the foundational knowledge for studying how specific genes affect thoughts, actions, feelings, and disorders

Question 32

what is epigenetics

Answer 32

the study of biological/environmental influences on gene expression that are not part of inherited genes

Question 33

what is the gut brain axis

Answer 33

the two way relation between our gut microbiome and our mind and behaviour

Question 34

who is George A Miller and around when was he active

Answer 34

a psychologist who launched the cognitive revolution in psychology in the 1950’s

Question 35

what is replicability

Answer 35

a feature of a good scientific study where there is a high probability of the results being the same if it were run again

Question 36

what is the open science movement

Answer 36

a social movement among scientists to improve methods, increase research transparency, and promote data sharing

Question 37

social psychologist Richard Nisbett found this fundamental difference in westerners and easterners

Answer 37

westerners- tend to be independent and autonomous, stressing individuality. They break complex ideas up and use logic and rules to explain behaviours

easterners - more holistic thinking, tend to be more interdependent, stressing their sense of being part of a collextive

Question 38

what is the biological level of analysis

Answer 38

Deals with how the physical body contributes to mind and behaviour

Question 39

What is the individual level of analysis?

Answer 39

focusses on individual differences in personality, and in the mental processes that affect how people perceive and know the world

Question 40

What is the social level of analysis?

Answer 40

Involves a group contexts affect the ways in which people interact and influence with each other

Question 41

what is the cultural level of analysis

Answer 41

Explores how people’s thoughts, feelings and actions are similar or different across cultures

Question 42

what is distributed practice (study technique)

Answer 42

learning material in bursts over a prolonged timeframe

Question 43

what is retrieval/self testing

Answer 43

Retrieval-based learning is repeatedly recalling content from memory which makes that content stick in your mind longer and better

Question 44

what is elaborative interrogation

Answer 44

Thinking through wire fact, is true or why is true in some cases, but not others