Chapter (Module) 2

Question 1

What is psychology/how to define it?

Answer 1

The scientific study of both behaviour and mind.
The study of the way people behave, think, and feel.

Question 2

What is the difference between behaviour and mind?

Answer 2

Behaviour is observable, the mind is not observable.

Question 3

Examples of observable behaviour

Answer 3

Facial expressions, screaming, laughing.

Question 4

Examples of the mind

Answer 4

An idea, having an opinion, feelings, dreams.

Question 5

Explain how psychology is observational

Answer 5

Observations are used to make inferences about the mind.
Empiricism or the idea that knowledge comes from experience (scientific method)

Question 6

What is a psychologist

Answer 6

An individual with PhD and clinical training (they treat behavioural and mental conditions)

Question 7

What is a psychiatrist

Answer 7

Is a medical doctor, they can prescribe prescriptions.

Question 8

What were Wundt and his lab’s contributions

Answer 8

Defined psychology as science of mental life
Established first psychology lab in 1879
Sensation and perception (sensory system)
Key contributions carefully measured observations, experiments, introspection

Question 9

William James’s contributions

Answer 9

Father of American psychology
Studied human thoughts, feelings, and behaviours and asked what functions might they serve
Authored principles of psychology
Caught first experimental psychology course at Harvard

Question 10

First women in psychology

Answer 10

Mary Whiton Calkins (1863-1930)
Margaret Floy Washburn (1871-1939)

Question 11

Mary Whiton Calkins contributions

Answer 11

A memory researcher
First apa women president
Worked at Harvard but was denied her PhD
Fought for right to vote

Question 12

Margaret Floy Washburn contributions

Answer 12

Second apa female president
Write the animal mind
Masters published by Wundt

Question 13

Who was left out of the field

Answer 13

People of colour, and indigenous psychologists

Question 14

Behaviourists, who?

Answer 14

John B Watson
B.F Skinner

Question 15

John B Watson Contributions

Answer 15

Famous for ‘little albert’ experiments
Conditioning method to make a baby fear certain things
Behaviourism well established by the 1920s

Question 16

Burrhus Frederic Skinner Contributions

Answer 16

Leading behaviourist by 1950s
Developed operant conditioning by working with pigeons and rats
Systematic methods

Question 17

What is cognitive psychology and why is it important?

Answer 17

Cognitive means connected with thinking or conscious mental processes.
Cognitive psychology was a return to the study of the mind. Because behaviourism could not answer questions about the mind and new methods were being applied.

Question 18

Psychoanalysis, who? methods?

Answer 18

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Believed that illnesses were psychological beginning in the unconscious mind.
He developed ‘psychoanalysis’ therapy to help clients identify their unconscious thoughts and behaviours.
Methods included: analyzing speech, free association, dream analysis.

Question 19

Humanistic psychology who? main points?

Answer 19

Was a response to Freud.
Proposed free will and capacity for change.
Study of mental process.
Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow.

Question 20

Carl Rogers Approach

Answer 20

Person centred
Role to support and not to analyze

Question 21

Abraham Maslow Approach

Answer 21

Focus on internal forces
After satisfying basic needs, people have the capacity to reach their full potential (to be self-actualized)

Question 22

Modern Humanistic Approach?

Answer 22

A recent branch of psychology
Key figure = Martin Seligman
Don’t study deficits rather focus is on characteristics such as happiness, trust, well-being.
Interested in circumstances where people do well

Question 23

What are the 4 main influences in modern psychology?

Answer 23

Evolution
Culture
Biology
Cognition

Question 24

What is evolution?

Answer 24

Because some behaviours did not make sense.
Discovery of genes.
Importance of context.
Evolutionary psychology focuses on ultimate explanations for behaviour.

Question 25

What is culture?

Answer 25

The shared set of beliefs, attitudes, behaviours, and customs belonging to a specific group.
Psychological research focuses on how children develop as part of their cultural group and differences between cultures.
Explanations are often functional (immediate cause)

Question 26

What is biology?

Answer 26

Often process oriented explanations of mechanisms in the nervous system.
Ex: study of the nervous system

Question 27

What is cognition?

Answer 27

Process oriented explanations of mental activity.
Ex: how do people learn, remember, perceive

Question 28

What are the 3 main themes of modern psychology?

Answer 28

Nature-Nurture (what are the contributions of genetics and experience to behaviours)
Evolution (does psychology evolve/change)
Mind-Body connection (how does behaviour result from Brian activity)

Question 29

What are the qualities needed to have a
“scientific attitude”?

Answer 29

Curiosity, honesty in recording data, flexibility, persistence, open-mindedness, willingness to tolerate uncertainty, and an acceptance of the provisional nature of scientific explanation.

Question 30

What are the characteristics of critical thinking? (e.g., questioning assumptions,
appraising source, evaluating evidence

Answer 30

The ability to analyze, evaluate, and synthesize information logically and objectively. It involves questioning assumptions, recognizing biases, and assessing evidence to reach well-reasoned conclusions.

Question 31

What is the scientific method and why do we need it?

Answer 31

The process of testing ideas about the world by setting up situations that test our ideas, making careful, organized observations, analyzing whether the data fit with our ideas. (Includes 6 steps)

Question 32

What are the 6 steps of the scientific method?

Answer 32

Identify the problem
Gather information
Hypothesis
Design and conduct experiments
Data analysis and conclusions
Restart the process

Question 33

What are the 3 research strategies in psychological science?

Answer 33

Description
Correlation
Experiments

Question 34

What are the 4 types of descriptive research?

Answer 34

Naturalistic observation
Participant observation
Case study
Survey

Question 35

What is descriptive research?

Answer 35

Is the systematic, objective observation of people.
The goal is to provide a clear, accurate picture of behaviours, thoughts, and attributes of people.

Question 36

What is naturalistic observation?

Answer 36

Observing behaviour without manipulation or any kind of intervention.
Ex: famous non-human animal studies (Jane Goodall)
Not always valid, known as the Hawthorne effect (worker knew they were being observed)

Question 37

What is a case study?

Answer 37

A report of a single person, group or situation.
It is not an experiment.
Ex: Henry Molaison (HM), had his hippocampus and entorhinal cortex removed.

Question 38

What is a survey?

Answer 38

Questions to extract specific information from a group of people.
Ex: political polls, government surveys.
Problems like sampling bias, participant bias, response rates may occur.

Question 39

What are the essentials of surveys?

Answer 39

Random sample
The sample must represent the population
Avoid double-barrelled questions
Participant bias
Response bias
Social desirability bias
Illusory superiority bias

Question 40

What is a correlation?

Answer 40

A mathematical way of looking at things.
Is an observation that two traits are related to each other (co-related).

Question 41

What is an experiment? (third research strategy)

Answer 41

Experiments are concerned with isolating cause and effect.
Researchers focus on the possible effects of one or more factors by manipulating the factors of interest to determine their effects.

Question 42

What are the types of correlations?

Answer 42

Perfect positive
Perfect negative
Zero correlation

Question 43

What is a perfect positive correlation?

Answer 43

Two variables increase at the same rate.
Will form a straight line on a graph.

Question 44

What is a perfect negative correlation?

Answer 44

One variable decreases at the same rate the other increases.
Also shows up as a straight line on a graph.

Question 45

What is a zero correlation?

Answer 45

There is no pattern or relationship between the variables. The dots are scattered across the graph.

Question 46

What is a correlation coefficient?

Answer 46

It represents the strength and size of the correlation. It is a statistic (number) calculated mathematically.

Question 47

Perfect correlation consists of what?

Answer 47

A perfect correlation will have the strength of 1 (r=1).
R is between 0 and +1.00
It indicates a direct relationship, meaning that two variables increase together or decrease.

Question 48

Negative correlation consists of what?

Answer 48

r is between 0 and -1.00
It indicates an inverse relationship, as one variable increases, the other decreases.
The close to a value of 1, the close the relationship is to perfect.

Question 49

How are correlations useful?

Answer 49

Because a strong correlation can indicate that further investigation is necessary to examine other correlations.
Correlation are useful for making predictions.
Correlational research can form the foundation for future controlled experiments.

Question 50

How can coefficients be misleading?

Answer 50

Correlation is not causation.
Knowing a correlation exists does not explain why it happened.

Question 51

What is a hypothesis?

Answer 51

Is an educated guess about the outcome of an experiment. (simple, specific, measurable)

Question 52

What variables are associated with a hypothesis?

Answer 52

Independent variable (the manipulated variable)
Dependent variable (the variable that is being measured)
Extraneous variable (the controlled variable)

Question 53

What is the placebo effect?

Answer 53

The placebo effect is when a person’s physical or mental health appears to improve after taking a placebo or ‘dummy’ treatment

Question 54

What is validity?

Answer 54

How well the experiment measures what it’s supposed to.

Question 55

What is reliability?

Answer 55

How well the experiment replicates (can it be repeated?) an experiment can be reliable but not valid.

Question 56

What is internal validity?

Answer 56

The degree to which results can be attributed to the independent variable and not other explanations.

Question 57

What is external validity?

Answer 57

The degree to which results can be generalized to other people, across settings/time.

Question 58

What is the main role of experiments?

Answer 58

To test theories and to provide the basis for scientific knowledge. Experiment can also call for a new theory, either by showing that an accepted theory is incorrect, or by exhibiting a new phenomenon, which needs explanation.

Question 59

What are the three main measures of central tendency?

Answer 59

Mean
Mode
Median

Question 60

Which is measure of central tendency is most affected by outlying scores?

Answer 60

The mean

Question 61

Mode

Answer 61

Most frequently occurring score in a distribution.

Question 62

Mean

Answer 62

Arithmetic average of a distribution (can be distorted by atypical scores)

Question 63

Median

Answer 63

Middle score in a distribution.

Question 64

What is a descriptive statistic?

Answer 64

Simple, quantitative (numbers) descriptions.
A descriptive statistic is a summary statistic that quantitatively describes or summarizes features from a collection of information.

Question 65

What is an inferential statistic?

Answer 65

Statistical inference is the process of using data analysis to infer properties of an underlying distribution of probability.

Question 66

Why is statistical understandings important?

Answer 66

Representation of the distribution of a village’s income, how it illustrates the three measures of central tendency.
Ex: note just a few high incomes (outliers) make the mean- the fulcrum point that balances the incomes above and below- deceptively high.

Question 67

What is range?

Answer 67

The difference between the highest and lowest scores in a distribution.

Question 68

What is variability?

Answer 68

The difference in the spread of numbers in a set.

Question 69

What is standard deviation?

Answer 69

Computed measure (represented by a number) of how much scores vary around the mean score.
It is a measure of variability.

Question 70

What is a normal distribution?

Answer 70

A symmetrical, bell shaped curve that describes the distribution of many types of data.
Normal distributions are histograms.

Question 71

What is a histogram?

Answer 71

A histogram is a type of chart that shows the frequency distribution of data points across a continuous range of numerical values.
Ex: arranged in a bar graph.

Question 72

What is variance?

Answer 72

Average of squared deviation scores.

Question 73

How do you calculate variance?

Answer 73

Calculate the mean of the data.
Find each data point’s difference from the mean value.
Square each of these values.
Add up all of the squared values.
Divide this sum of squares by n – 1 (for a sample) or N (for the total population).

Question 74

How do you calculate standard deviation?

Answer 74

Step 1: Calculate the mean of the data—this is ‍ in the formula.
Step 2: Subtract the mean from each data point. …
Step 3: Square each deviation to make it positive.
Step 4: Add the squared deviations together.
Step 5: Divide the sum by the number of data points in the population.

Question 75

What is statistical significance?

Answer 75

If the probability is less than 5%, it is a rare event. Put another way, is the probability of this result occurring by chance is p <.05
When this is true we can say that the result is statistically significant.
The results are significant if the odds (probability) of their occurrence by chance are less than 5% (p < .05

Question 76

What is a p-value?

Answer 76

The P value is defined as the probability under the assumption of no effect or no difference (null hypothesis), of obtaining a result equal to or more extreme than what was actually observed.

Question 77

What is research ethics?

Answer 77

It is a set of general principles of how people should be educated, treated, and respected when participating in any study.

Question 78

What is the Tuskegee study?

Answer 78

Syphilis study (1930s-1970s)
Unethical medical study
Used a sample of black participants and offered free meals and treatment for ‘bad blood’
Participants were never treated for their disease
Researchers continued to follow up and let people die
The study prompted the development of research ethic guidelines in the US

Question 79

What is the Milgram experiment?

Answer 79

A study to understand how people would obey even to the point of killing (influenced by the Nuremberg trials that took place after WW2)
1960s, used a fake shocker to test the memory of words
The learner was the researcher
The teacher provided the fake shock

Question 80

What are the 5 principles of ethics in psychology?

Answer 80

Beneficence and no maleficence
Fidelity and responsibility
Integrity
Justice
Respect for people’s rights and dignity

Question 81

What is beneficence and no maleficence?

Answer 81

It means do good, not harm; weigh costs and benefits of research.

Question 82

What is fidelity and responsibility?

Answer 82

Means to develop trusting relationships with participants; protect them.
Concept of informed consent.

Question 83

What is integrity?

Answer 83

To be accurate, honest, and non-biased.
Communicate results clearly and with no manipulation of data.

Question 84

What is justice?

Answer 84

Refers to who benefits.
Don’t exclude groups for no reason.
Exceptions for specific purpose of studies (eligibility criteria)

Question 85

What is respect for people’s rights and dignity?

Answer 85

Protecting rights, privacy, and welfare of participants.
Anonymity.
Awareness of vulnerability.
No coercion.

Question 86

What is an IRB?

Answer 86

Internal review board reviews and assess for application of principles.

Question 87

What is an REB?

Answer 87

Research ethics board reviews and assess for application of principles.

Question 88

What are the key elements in ethical practice?

Answer 88

Informed consent
Confidentiality
Debriefing

Question 89

What is informed consent?

Answer 89

Each participant must be informed of the nature of the study before signing on.

Question 90

What is deception?

Answer 90

Deception can occur when something takes place in the study that was not mentioned in the informed consent.
Ex: Milgram experiment

Question 91

What is debrief?

Answer 91

Debrief after the study (explain and answer questions about the study). Participants should leave in the same mental state in which they arrived.

Question 92

What is a vulnerable population?

Answer 92

People who are vulnerable due to their environment (situational vulnerability).
People who cannot make legal decisions/understand instruction.

Question 93

What is a special population?

Answer 93

Special population refers to groups of people who have been historically underserved in terms of their need for substance abuse treatment programs. These groups are defined based on factors such as age, race/ethnicity, gender, and health status.