Chapter 1 Flashcards
What is psychology?
The scientific study of the mind, brain and behaviour
Define levels of analysis and list them
- rungs on a ladder of analysis, with lower levels tied most closely to biological influences and higher levels tied most closely to social influences
- biological, psychological, social cultural influences
List reasons why human behaviour is so difficult to predict
- Almost all actions are multiply determined
- Individual differences
- Reciprocal determinism
- Culture influences behaviour/thought
Multiply determined
Almost all actions are produced by many factors
Individual differences
- people differ from each other in thinking, emotion, personality and behaviour
- make psychology challenging because it’s hard to come up with explanations of behaviour that apply to everyone
Reciprocal determinism
- people influence each other
- we mutually influence each other’s behaviour
- makes it challenging to isolate the causes of human behaviour
Cultural differences
- culture shapes behaviour
- places limits on generalizations that psychologists can draw about human nature
Emic approach
- investigators study the behaviour of a culture from the perspective of a “native” or insider
- understand the unique characteristics of a culture
- overlook characteristics that this culture shares with others
Etic approach
- investigators study the behaviour of a culture from the perspective of an outsider
- better able to view this culture within the broader perspective of other cultures
- may unintentionally impose perspectives from their own culture onto others
List the 5 great theoretical frameworks of psychology
- Structuralism
- Functionalism
- Behaviourism
- Cognitivism
- Psychoanalysis
Structualism
- E.B. Titchener
- school of psychology that aimed to identify the basic elements of psychological experience
- goal was to create a comprehensive “map” of the elements of consciousness (ie. sensations, images, and feelings)
- relied upon introspection
- problematic because trained introspectionists often disagreed on their subjective reports
- also problematic because of the discovery of imageless thought
- emphasis on the importance of systematic observation to the study of conscious experience
introspection
method by which trained observers carefully reflect and report on their mental experiences
imageless thought
- thinking unaccompanied by conscious experience
- ie. if we ask an introspecting person to add 10 to 5, she’ll quickly respond “15,” but she will usually be unable to report what came to her mind when performing this calculation
Functionalism
- William James; influenced by Charles Darwin
- school of psychology that aimed to understand the adaptive purpose of psychological characteristics
- influenced by the theory of natural selection
- determine the evolved functions that psychological characteristics serve for organisms
- has been absorbed into psychology and continues to influence it indirectly in many ways
Behaviourism
- John B. Watson; B.F. Skinner
- school of psychology that focuses on uncovering the general laws of learning by looking at observable behaviour
- believed that psychology was only about observable behaviour and that subjective reports of conscious experience should play no part in psychology
- believed that we do not need to peer inside the organism but rather comprehend behaviour exclusively by looking outside the organism (ie. rewards/punishments delivered by the environment)
- believe that the human mind is a black box; we know what goes into it and what comes out of it, but we needn’t worry about what happens between the inputs and the outputs
- influential in models of human and animal learning and among the first to focus on the need for objective research
Cognitivism
- Jean Piaget; Ulric Neisser
- school of psychology that proposes that thinking is central to understanding behaviour
- ie. interpretation of rewards/punishments is a crucial determinant of behaviour
- believe that we often learn not only from rewards/punishments but by insight (grasping the underlying nature of problems)
- thriving approach today and has led to the field of cognitive neuroscience
Cognitive neuroscience
Examines the relation between brain functioning and thinking
Affective neuroscience
Examines the relation between brain functioning and emotion
Psychoanalysis
- Sigmund Freud
- focused on internal psychological processes (ie. impulses, thoughts, memories of which we are unaware)
- believe that the primary influences on behaviour was unconscious drives like sexuality and aggression
- believe that much of our everyday psychology life is filled with symbols
- influence on scientific psychology is controversial
- -relies heavily on unconscious processes that are difficult or impossible to falsify
- -contributed to understanding that much of our mental processing goes on outside of conscious awareness
List 8 different types of psychologists
- Clinical psychologist
- Counselling psychologist
- School psychologist
- Developmental psychologist
- Experimental psychologist
- Biological psychologist
- Forensic psychologist
- Industrial/Organizational psychologist
What do clinical psychologists do?
- Perform assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of mental disorders
- Conduct research on people with mental disorders
- Work in colleges and universities, mental health centres, or private practice
What do counselling psychologists do?
- Work with people experiencing temporary or relatively self-contained life problems, like marital conflict, sexual difficulties, occupational stressors, or career uncertainty
- Work in counselling centres, hospitals, or private practice (although some work in academic and research settings)
What’s the difference between clinical and counselling psychologists?
Whereas clinical psychologists work with people with serious mental disorders like severe depression, most counselling psychologists don’t.
What do school psychologists do?
Work with teachers, parents, and children to remedy students’ behavioural, emotional, and learning difficulties
What’s the difference between school and educational psychologists?
Educational psychology focuses on helping instructors identify better methods for teaching and evaluating learning; school psychology focuses on remedying students’ behavioural, emotional and learning difficulties.
What do developmental psychologists do?
- Study how and why people change over time
- Conduct research on infants’, children’s, and sometimes adults’ and elderly people’s emotional, physiological, and cognitive processes and how these change with age
- Most spend their time in the laboratory collecting and analyzing data (as opposed to spending their time playing with children)
What do experimental psychologists do?
- Use research methods to study memory, language, thinking, and social behaviours of humans
- Work primarily in research settings
- Many conduct research in real-world settings, examining how people acquire language, remember events, apply mental concepts and the like in everyday life (as opposed to doing all of their work in psychological laboratories)
What do biological psychologists do?
- Examine the physiological bases of behaviour in animals and humans
- Most work in research settings
- Although many biological psychologists create brain lesions in animals to examine their effects on behaviour, others use brain imaging methods that don’t require investigators to damage organisms’ nervous systems.
What do forensic psychologists do?
• Work in prisons, jails, and other settings to assess and diagnose inmates and assist with their rehabilitation and treatment
• Others conduct research on eyewitness testimony
or jury decision making
• Typically hold degrees in clinical or counselling psychology
What do industrial/organizational psychologists do?
- Work in companies and businesses to help select productive employees, evaluate performance, examine the effects of different working or living conditions on people’s behaviour (called environmental psychologists )
- Design equipment to maximize employee performance and minimize accidents (called human factors or engineering psychologists )
- Most spend their time constructing tests and selection procedures or implementing organizational changes to improve worker productivity or satisfaction (as opposed to working on a one-to-one basis with employees to increase their motivation/productivity)
Naive realism
- belief that we see the world precisely as it is
Scientific theory
- an explanation for a large number of findings in the natural world
- they generate predictions regarding new data we haven’t yet observed
Hypothesis
- a testable prediction derived from a scientific theory
What are two common biases/traps that people often fall into?
- Confirmation bias
2. Belief perseverance
Confirmation bias
- the tendency to seek out evidence that supports our beliefs, and deny, dismiss, or distort evidence that contradicts them
Belief perseverance
- the tendency to stick to our initial beliefs, even when evidence contradicts them
Metaphysical claims
- assertion about the world that is not testable
Pseudoscience
- a set of claims that seems scientific, but isn’t
- lacks the safeguards against confirmation bias and belief perseverance that characterize science
List 8 warning signs of pseudoscience
- Exaggerated claims
- Over reliance on anecdotes
- Absence of connectivity to other research
- Lack of review by other scholars (called peer review) or replication by independent labs
- Lack of self-correction when contrary evidence is published
- Meaningless “psychobabble” that uses fancy scientific-sounding terms that don’t make sense
- Talk of “proof” instead of “evidence”
- Overuse of ad hoc immunizing hypotheses
List two reasons for the popularity of pseudoscience.
- Patternicity; seeing patterns in things where there are no patterns
- Terror management theory; believe because it brings us comfort
Patternicity
- the tendency to detect meaningful patterns in random stimuli
Terror management theory
- theory proposing that our awareness of our death leaves us with an underlying sense of terror we cope with by adopting reassuring cultural world views
Identify the fallacy:
“The idea that daycare might have negative emotional effects on children gets me really upset, so I refuse to believe it.”
Emotional reasoning fallacy
Identify the fallacy:
“Lots of people I know believe in astrology, so there’s going to be something to it.”
Bandwagon fallacy
Identify the fallacy:
“I just read in my psychology textbook that some people with schizophrenia were treated extremely well by their parents when they were growing up. This means that schizophrenia can’t be due to environmental factors and therefore must be completely genetic.”
Either-or fallacy
Identify the fallacy:
“My psychology professor keeps talking about how the scientific method is important for overcoming biases. But these biases don’t apply to me because I’m objective.”
Not me fallacy
Identify the fallacy:
“My professor says that psychotherapy is worthless; because I trust my professor, she must be right.”
Appeal to authority fallacy
Identify the fallacy:
“Freud’s views about personality development can’t be right, because Freud’s thinking was shaped by sexist views popular at the time.”
Genetic fallacy
Identify the fallacy:
“There must be something to the Rorschach Inkblot Test, because psychologists have been using it for decades.”
Argument from antiquity fallacy
Identify the fallacy:
“IQ can’t be influenced by genetic factors, because if that were true, it would give the government an excuse to prevent low-IQ individuals from reproducing.”
Argument from adverse consequences fallacy
Identify the fallacy:
“No scientist has been able to explain away every reported case of ESP, so ESP probably exists.”
Appeal to ignorance fallacy
Identify the fallacy:
“Evolutionary psychologists say that sexual infidelity is a product of natural selection. Therefore, sexual infidelity is ethically justifiable.”
Naturalistic fallacy
Identify the fallacy:
“All three people I know who are severely depressed had strict fathers, so severe depression is clearly associated with having a strict father.”
Hasty generalization fallacy
Identify the fallacy:
“Dr. Smith’s theory of personality is the best, because it seems to have the most evidence supporting it.”
Circular reasoning fallacy
List 12 logic fallacies
- Emotional reasoning fallacy
- Bandwagon fallacy
- Either-or fallacy
- Not me fallacy
- Appeal to authority fallacy
- Genetic fallacy
- Argument from antiquity fallacy
- Argument from adverse consequences fallacy
- Appeal to ignorance fallacy
- Naturalistic fallacy
- Hasty generalization fallacy
- Circular reasoning fallacy
Emotional reasoning fallacy
Error of using our emotions as guides for evaluating the validity of a claim
Bandwagon fallacy
Error of assuming that a claim is correct just because many people believe it
Either-or fallacy
Error of framing a question as though we can answer it only one of two extreme ways
Not me fallacy
Error of believing we’re immune from errors in thinking that afflict other people
Appeal to authority fallacy
Error of accepting a claim merely because an authority figure endorces it
Genetic fallacy
Error of confusing the correctness of a belief with its origins or genesis
Argument from antiquity fallacy
Error of assuming that a belief must be valid just because it’s been around for a long time
Argument from adverse consequences fallacy
Error of confusing the validity of an idea with its potential real-world consequences
Appeal to ignorance fallacy
Error of assuming that a claim must be true because no one has shown it to be false
Naturalistic fallacy
Error of inferring a moral judgement from a scientific fact
Hasty generalization fallacy
Error of drawing a conclusion on the basis of insufficient evience
Circular reasoning fallacy
Error of basing a claim on the same claim reworded in slightly different terms
What are the dangers of pseudoscience?
- Opportunity cost
2. Direct harm
Scientific skepticism
- willingness to keep an open mind to all claims
- willingness to accept claims only after researchers have subjected them to careful scientific tests
- willingness to change their minds when confronted with evidence that challenges their preconceptions
Critical thinking
- a set of skills for evaluating all claims in an open-minded and careful fashion
- aka scientific thinking
List the 6 scientific thinking principles.
- Ruling out rival hypotheses
- Correlation vs. causation
- Falsifiability
- Replicability
- Extraordinary claims
- Occam’s razor
Basic research
- examines how the mind works
Applied research
- examines how we can use basic research to solve real-world problems
Ad hoc immunizing hypothesis
- escape hatch or loophole that defenders of a theory use to protect their theory from falsification
