Chapter 1

Question 1

What is Empirical Evidence?

Answer 1

Based on scientific research, evidence gathered by careful observation, experimentation, and measurement.

Question 2

Define Psychology

Answer 2

The discipline concerned with behaviour and mental processes, and how they are affected by an organism’s physical state, mental state, and external environment.

Question 3

Define Psychobabble

Answer 3

Pseudoscience and quackery covered by a veneer of psychological and scientific-sounding language.

Question 4

What does Psychobabble promise?

Answer 4

Easy fixes to life’s problems and challenges.

Question 5

What is Psychobabble based on?

Answer 5

Unsupported popular opinion.

Question 6

Define Critical Thinking

Answer 6

The ability and willingness to assess claims and make objective judgements on the basis of well-supported reasons and evidence, rather than emotion or anecdote.

Question 7

What are Critical Thinkers able to do?

Answer 7

Look for flaws in arguments and resist claims that have no support.

Question 8

What are the Eight Essential Critical Thinking Guidelines?

Answer 8

1. Ask questions, be willing to wonder2. Define your terms3. Examine the evidence4. Analyze assumptions and biases 5. Don’t oversimplify6. Avoid emotional reasoning7. Tolerate uncertainty8. Consider other interpretations

Question 9

What does “Ask Questions; Be Willing to Wonder” mean?

Answer 9

Leads to the identification of problems and challenges.

Question 10

Why is it important to “Define Your Terms”?

Answer 10

To frame questions in clear and concrete terms, because vague or poorly defined terms can lead to misleading or incomplete answers.

Question 11

Why is it important to “Examine the Evidence””?

Answer 11

Critical thinkers must consider whether evidence came from a reliable source to help fact-check the evidence.

Question 12

Define Assumptions

Answer 12

Beliefs taken for granted.

Question 13

What is a Bias?

Answer 13

Occurs when a belief or assumption prevents careful consideration of the evidence or causes ignorance of evidence.

Question 14

What can impair our ability to judge an argument?

Answer 14

Assumptions that are not made explicit.

Question 15

What is a common form of oversimplification?

Answer 15

Argument by anecdote - generalizing from a personal experience or a few examples. Often leads to stereotypes.

Question 16

What is Occam’s Razor?

Answer 16

The principle of choosing the solution that accounts for the most evidence with the fewest unverified assumptions.

Question 17

When did psychology become a formal discipline?

Answer 17

In the nineteenth century.

Question 18

What do modern psychologists want to do?

Answer 18

Describe, predict, understand, and modify behaviour in order to add to human knowledge and increase human happiness.

Question 19

What did John Locke argue?

Answer 19

That the mind works by associating ideas arising from experience.

Question 20

What is Phrenology?

Answer 20

A now discredited theory that different brain areas account for specific character and personality traits, and can be read from bumps on the skull.

Question 21

Who announced that he wanted to make psychology a science?

Answer 21

Wilhelm Wundt, late 1800s.

Question 22

What did Wundt’s researched focus on?

Answer 22

Sensation, perception, reaction times, imagery, and attention.

Question 23

What is Structuralism?

Answer 23

An early psychological approach that emphasized the analysis of immediate experience (sensations, images, feelings) into basic elements. This practice has now disappeared.

Question 24

What is Functionalism?

Answer 24

An early psychological approach that emphasized the function or purpose of behaviour and consciousness, instead of analyzing and describing it. Asks “why” and “how” instead of “what”. Includes the “stream of consciousness”. This school no longer exists but the emphasis on causes and consequences still does.

Question 25

What is Psychoanalysis?

Answer 25

A theory of personality and a method of psychotherapy, originally formulated by Freud, that emphasizes unconscious motives and conflicts. Mental, not physical, reasons for symptoms.

Question 26

What are “Mind Cures”?

Answer 26

1830-1900 movement that included efforts to correct the “false ideas” that made people anxious, depressed, and unhappy-a forerunner of modern cognitive therapies.

Question 27

What are the Major Psychological Perspectives?

Answer 27

The biological, learning, cognitive, sociocultural, and psychodynamic perspectives.

Question 28

What is the Biological Perspective?

Answer 28

A psychological approach that emphasizes bodily events and changes associated with actions, feelings, and thoughts. Nervous system and endocrine system. “We cannot really know ourselves if we do not know our bodies”.

Question 29

What is Evolutionary Psychology?

Answer 29

Part of the Biological Perspective, a field of psychology that emphasizes evolutionary mechanisms that may help explain human commonalities in cognition, development, emotion, social practices, and other areas of behaviour.

Question 30

What is the Learning Perspective?

Answer 30

A psychological approach that emphasizes how the environment and experience affect a person’s or animal’s actions; it includes behaviourism and social-cognitive theories.

Question 31

What do behaviourists focus on?

Answer 31

The environmental rewards and punishers that maintain or discourage specific behaviours. (Learning Perspective).

Question 32

What is Behaviourism?

Answer 32

An approach to psychology that emphasizes the study of observable behaviour and the role of the environment as a determinant of behaviour.

Question 33

What do social-cognitive learning theorist focus on?

Answer 33

The elements of behaviourism combined with research on thoughts, values, expectations, and intentions. Adapting to the environment and learning from others. (Learning Perspective).

Question 34

What is the Cognitive Perspective?

Answer 34

A psychological approach that emphasizes mental processes in perception, memory, language, problem solving, and other areas of behaviour.

Question 35

What is the Sociocultural Perspective?

Answer 35

A psychological approach that emphasizes social and cultural influences on behaviour.

Question 36

What do social psychologists focus on?

Answer 36

Social rules and roles, how groups affect attitudes and behaviour, why people obey authority, and how each of us is affected by other people. (Sociocultural Perspective).

Question 37

What do cultural psychologists focus on?

Answer 37

Cultural rules and values and how they affect people’s development, behaviour, and feelings. (Sociocultural Perspective).

Question 38

What is the Psychodynamic Perspective?

Answer 38

A psychological approach that emphasizes unconscious dynamics within the individual, such as inner forces, conflicts, or the movement of instinctual energy.

Question 39

What is Humanist Psychology?

Answer 39

A psychological approach that emphasizes personal growth and the achievement of human potential, rather than the scientific understanding and assessment of behaviour. Rejects psychoanalysis and behaviourism. Emphasizes free will.

Question 40

What is Positive Psychology?

Answer 40

Psychology that emphasizes the qualities that enable a person to be happy, optimistic, and resilient. Influenced by Humanist Psychology.

Question 41

What is Feminist Psychology?

Answer 41

A psychological approach that analyzes the influence of social inequities on gender relations and on the behaviour of the two sexes.

Question 42

What are the three main categories of psychologists?

Answer 42

1. Teaching and research in an academic setting2. Psychological practice (providing health or mental-health services)3. Research or application in a non-academic setting.

Question 43

What is Basic Psychology?

Answer 43

The study of psychological issues in order to seek knowledge for its own sake rather than for practical application.

Question 44

What is Applied Psychology?

Answer 44

The study of psychological issues that have direct practical significance; also, the application of psychological findings.

Question 45

What do Experiment Psychologists do?

Answer 45

Conduct laboratory studies of learning, motivation, emotion, sensation and perception, physiology, and cognition.

Question 46

What do Educational Psychologists do?

Answer 46

Study psychological principles that explain learning and search for ways to improve educational systems.

Question 47

What do Developmental Psychologists do?

Answer 47

Study how people change and grow over time, physically, mentally, and socially.

Question 48

What do Industrial/organizational Psychologists do?

Answer 48

Study behaviour in the workplace.

Question 49

What do Psychometric Psychologists do?

Answer 49

Design and evaluate tests of mental abilities, aptitudes, interests, and personality.

Question 50

What is a Psychotherapist?

Answer 50

Unregulated person who does any kind of psychotherapy.

Question 51

What is a Psychoanalyst?

Answer 51

A person who practises psychoanalysis, and who has obtained specialized training at a psychoanalytic institute and undergone extensive psychoanalysis personally.

Question 52

What is a Psychiatrist?

Answer 52

A medical doctor (MD) who has completed a three-year residency in psychiatry to learn how to diagnose and treat medical disorders under the supervision of more experienced physicians.