Chapter 1 - Introducing Psychology

Question 1

What do research psychologists do?

Answer 1

Use scientific methods to create new knowledge about the causes of behaviour

Question 2

What do psychologist-practitioners do?

Answer 2

Use existing research to enhance the everyday life of others

Question 3

what is the hindsight bias?

Answer 3

the tendency to think that we could have predicted something that has already occurred that we probably would not have been able to predict

Question 4

What do empirical methods include?

Answer 4

the processes of collecting and organizing data and drawing conclusions about those data

Question 5

What is the scientific method?

Answer 5

the set of assumptions, rules, and procedures that scientists use to conduct empirical research

Question 6

Values vs facts

Answer 6

values are personal statements.

facts are objective statements determined to be accurate through empirical study

Question 7

what are levels of explanation?

Answer 7

the perspectives that are used to understand behaviour

Question 8

What are lower level explanations referring to?

Answer 8

biological influences such as genes, neurons, neurotransmitters, and hormones.

Question 9

What do middle levels of explanation refer to?

Answer 9

the abilities and characteristics of individual people

Question 10

What do the highest levels of explanation refer to?

Answer 10

social groups, organizations, and cultures

Question 11

What are individual differences?

Answer 11

variations among people on physical or psychological dimensions

Question 12

What is structuralism?

Answer 12

a school of psychology which uses the method of introspection to identify the basic elements of psychological experience

Question 13

Who contributed to structuralism?

Answer 13

Wilhelm Wundt and Edward B. Titchener

Question 14

What is functionalism?

Answer 14

a school of psychology that attempts to understand why animals and humans have developed the particular psychological aspects that they currently posses

Question 15

Who contributed to functionalism?

Answer 15

William James

Question 16

What are psychodynamics?

Answer 16

a school of psychology that focuses on the role of our unconscious thoughts, feelings, and memories, and our early childhood experiences in determining behaviour

Question 17

Who contributed to psychodynamics?

Answer 17

Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, and Erik Erickson

Question 18

What is behaviourism?

Answer 18

a school of psychology based on the premise that it is not possible to objectively study the mind, and therefore that psychologists should limit their attention to the study of behaviour itself

Question 19

Who contributed to behaviourism?

Answer 19

John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner

Question 20

What is cognitive psychology?

Answer 20

the study of mental processes, including perception, thinking, memory, and judgements

Question 21

Who contributed to cognitive psychology?

Answer 21

Hermann Ebbinghaus, Sir Frederic Barlett, and Jean Piaget

Question 22

What is social-cultural psychology?

Answer 22

The study of how the social situations and the cultures in which people find themselves influence thinking and behaviour

Question 23

Who contributed to social-cultural psychology?

Answer 23

Fritz Heider, Leon Festinger, and Stanley Schachter

Question 24

nature vs nurture

Answer 24

the question of whether genes or environment are most influential in determining behaviour

Question 25

Free will vs determinism

Answer 25

concerns the extent to which people have control over their own actions

Question 26

accuracy vs inaccuracy

Answer 26

to what extent are humans good information processors?

Question 27

conscious vs unconscious processing

Answer 27

questions to what extent are we conscious of our own actions and the causes of them, and to what extent are our behaviours caused by influences that we are not aware of

Question 28

differences vs similarities

Answer 28

questions to what extent are we similar, and to what extent are we different

Question 29

What did Plato believe?

Answer 29

believed that certain kinds of knowledge are innate or inborn (nature rather than nurture)

Question 30

What did Aristotle believe?

Answer 30

each child is born an empty slate, and that knowledge is primarily acquired through learning and experience (nurture rather than nature)

Question 31

What did Rene Descartes believe?

Answer 31

• argued in favour of free will and believed that the mind controls the body through the pineal gland in the brain.
• believed in the existence of innate natural abilities
• believed in dualism

Question 32

What is dualism?

Answer 32

principle stating that the mind is fundamentally different from the mechanical body

Question 33

What does introspection involve? Which school of psychology utilizes it?

Answer 33

used by structuralists, introspection involves asking research participants to describe exactly what they experience as they work on mental tasks

Question 34

What does the theory of natural selection propose?

Answer 34

the physical characteristics of animals and humans evolved because they were useful, or functional

Question 35

What is fitness?

Answer 35

the extent to which having a given characteristic helps the individual organism survive and reproduce at a higher rate than do other members of the species who do not have those characteristics

Question 36

What is conformity?

Answer 36

the process by which a person frequently changes their beliefs and behaviours to be similar to those of people they care about

Question 37

What are social norms?

Answer 37

ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving that are shared by group members and perceived by them as appropriate

Question 38

What are some examples of social norms?

Answer 38

customs, traditions, standards, and rules, as well as general values of a particular group

Question 39

What is a culture?

Answer 39

the common set of social norms, including religious and family values and other moral beliefs, shared by the people who live in a geographical region

Question 40

What is individualism?

Answer 40

valuing the self and one’s independence from others (common in Western cultures)

Question 41

What is collectivism?

Answer 41

a focus on developing harmonious social relationships with other (common in East Asian culture)

Question 42

What is metacognition?

Answer 42

our ability to adequately asses our own knowledge