Chapter 1 Reading Flashcards
data
any information collected through formal observation or measurement
research psychologists
use scientific method to explore origins of behavior
psychologist practitioners
use existing research to offer psychological help to people
people as everyday psychologists
everyday people try to understand the root causes of things in their everyday lives, so as to predict+act better next time
intuition problem
the way people gather and understand everyday info is often wrong. ex: overconfidence in visual ID of perps, ESP/astrology. Roots of this wrongness often studied in psych.
hindsight bias
When something happens and people believe that they could have predicted it, but they probably couldn’t have
scientific method
Empirical study of nature. Collect, organize, analyze data. Scientific method is the set of assumptions, rules, and procedures that scientists use to conduct empirical research.
values v facts
Values (beliefs) cannot be proven true or false, however, facts related to those values can be studied and made available to inform values. Facts can be proven false later
levels of explanation
perspectives used to understand behavior. Lower levels: biology, neurology. middle: individual characteristics, abilities. Highest: social groups and organization
example of uses of levels:
studying depression. low approach results in prozac (god bless), middle in psychotherapy, highest studying prevalence in man vs woman.
individual differences
variations among people in physical or psychological dimensions. one of the main difficulties in studying psychology, different things manifest themselves in vary different ways in different people.
multiply determined
influenced by multiple factors. something that is multiply determined is more difficult to study as you have to account of all these factors, which occur at different levels of explanation.
multiply determined example
depression: biological imbalance in brain, lashing out leads to people to treat them negatively, two become intertwined
unconcious influece
big part of freud’s thinking. a lot of what we do is outside of our consciousness, making it hard to study. repressed memories are ones we have discarded.
origins of scientific psychology
grew out of philosophy when scientific methods began to be applied
big 5 questions
Nature vs nuture (genetics vs experience), free will vs determinism, accuracy vs inaccuracy, councious vs unconscious processing, differences vs similiarities
nature v nurture
to what extent is ourselves determined by genetics vs our life experiences
heritability
Proportion of differences (physical and mental) between people that is due to genetics
free will vs determinism
how much do people have control over their own actions? Can our behaviors be predicted? recently thought: not as much control as thought
accuracy vs inaccuracy
how good are people at processing information? recent: good enough but far from perfect
concious vs unconscious processing
how aware are we of how we process information and what causes our actions?
differences vs similarities
how are we all similar and/or different? how big are the differences?
problem with philosophy as psychology
no methods to settle claims, not scientific
structuralism
from Wilhelm Wundt, field of psych that tries to identify basic elements/structures of psych experience. important the first big scientific approach to psych.
introspection
in which subjects create a “map” of their consciousness, by describing what happens as they do different mental tasks. Asks “What?”
ex of introspection
reporting WHAT sound takes longer than reporting heard sound: difference in time between sensation and perception.
functionalism
school of psych. tries to understand why animals and humans have developed psych aspects they currently possess. grew out of natural selection. no longer around but grew into evolutionary psych. the
asks “why?”
evolutionary psychology
branch of psych, applies natural selection to human and animal behavior. problem: difficult to test, no fossil record.
fitness
key component of evolutionary psych. how does having a given characteristic help an individual organism survive and reproduce at a higher rate than other members that don’t have the characteristic. i.e. men get jealous to hold+protect mate.
psychodynamic psych
most familiar to most people. approach to human understanding that focuses on role of unconscious thoughts, feelings, memories.
behaviorism
school of psych that is based on premise that it’s not possible to objectively study mind, psychologists should limit their attention to study of behavior itself
stimulus response
Ivan Pavlov’s dog. events in environment trigger specific behavioral responses.
cognitive psych
a field of psych that studies mental processes, including perception, thinking, memory, and judgment
neuroimaging
the use of various techniques to provide pictures of the structure of the living brain
socio-cultural psych
the study of how the social situations and the cultures in which people find themselves influence thinking and behavior.
conformity
changing or beliefs and behaviors to be similar to people we care about
social norms
ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving that are shared by a group and believed by them to be appropriate
example of social norms east vs west
west promotes individualism, east collectivism. westerners more interested in their own success but easterners are happy about success of others
