Chapter One - The Science of Psychology Flashcards
Nature/Nurture Debate
whether someone’s psychological characteristics are more determined by their biological makeup or their culture/experiences/etc
–>scientists realize that both are important to humans’ psychological development (“enmeshed and cannot be separated)
Mind/Body Problem
Quintessential psychological issue: are the mind and body separate and distinct, or is the mind simply the physical brain’s subjective experience?
–>dualism: mind and body are separate yet intertwined, such as the mind controls deliberate action but not physical/mental functions
Rene Descartes
*dualism (mind and body are separate yet intertwined, such as the mind controls deliberate action but not physical/mental functions - rational mind divine and separate from body)
Wilhelm Wundt
established first psychological laboratory and institute
*introspection: a systematic examination of subjective mental experiences that requires people to inspect and report on the content of their thoughts (ex. stating which object you find more pleasant) (con: subjective, changes from person to person)
Edward Titchener
student of Wundt -
*structuralism: an approach to psychology based on the idea that conscious experience can be broken down into its basic underlying components (ex. taking a musical tone and analyze its “quality, intensity, and duration”
William James
critic of structuralism
*functionalism: an approach to psychology concerned with the adaptive purpose, or function, of mind and behavior –> helps humans adapt to environmental demands
stream of consciousness
person’s continuous series of ever-changing thoughts
Charles Darwin
*evolutionary theory: views history of a species in terms of the inherited, adaptive value of physical characteristics
adaptations
physical characteristics, skills, or abilities that increase the chances of reproduction or survival and are therefore likely to be passed along to future generations
natural selection
those who inherit characteristics that help them adapt to their particular environments have a selective advantage over those who do not
Max Wertheimer
*Gestalt Theory: the whole of personal experience is different from simply the sum of its constituent elements (ex. see a triangle, not three lines)
Sigmund Freud
*psychoanalysis: attempts to bring the contents of the unconscious into conscious awareness so that conflicts can be revealed
John B. Watson
*behaviorism: emphasizes the role of environmental forces in producing behavior
cognitive psychology
the study of how people think, learn, and remember
cognitive neuroscience
the study of neural mechanisms (brain, nerves, nervous tissue) that underlie thought, learning, and memory
social psychology
the study of how people are influenced by their interactions with others
Brain chemistry
hundreds of substances are involved in mental activity and behavior
Neuroscience
study of the working brain as it performs its vital psychological functions
–>determined localization of function
The Human Genome
the basic genetic code (“blueprint”) for the human body
–>able to study how certain genes affect different parts of the body
biological level of analysis
deals with how the physical body, including the brain, contributes to mind and behavior
individual level of analysis
focuses on individual differences in personality and in the mental processes that affect how people perceive and know the world
social level of analysis
how group contexts affect how people interact and influence each other
cultural level of analysis
explores how people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions are similar or different across cultures
psychologist
broadly describes someone whose career involves predicting behavior or understanding mental life
neuroscience/biological psychologists
interested in examining how biological systems give rise to mental activity/behavior (ex. sexual behavior, environments)
cognitive psychologists
study processes such as thinking, perceiving, problem solving, decision making, using language, and learning
experimental psychologists
study basic psychological processes such as sensation and perception, movement, and learning (ex. how people see color)
developmental psychologists
study how people change across the lifespan (ex. how infants learn to speak)
personality psychologists
seek to understand enduring characteristics that people display over time and across circumstances (ex. why is someone outgoing?)
social psychologists
focus on how people are affected by the presence of others and how they form perceptions of others
cultural psychologists
seek to understand how people are influenced by the societal rules that dictate behavior in the cultures in which they are raised
clinical psychologists
interested in the factors that cause psychological disorders and the methods best used to treat them
counseling psychologists
(overlap with clinical psychologists) seek to improve people’s daily lives, but work with people facing difficult circumstances more so than disorders
school psychologists
work in educational settings, help students with problems that interfere with learning
industrial and organizational psychologists
concerned with various factors in industry and the workplace (ex. develop programs to motivate workers by building morale)
forensic psychologists
work in legal settings, identifying dangerous offenders
sports psychologists
work with athletes to improve their performance
health psychologists
study factors that promote or interfere with health
co-incidence
surprising co-occurence of events that we perceive as meaningfully related (ex. lucky song = winning streak)
selective recall
tendency to remember only facts or events that are unusual, personally enhancing, or that fit a narrative (ex. do women talk more than men? only thinking of talkative women friends)
confirmation bias
tendency to attend to and accept tacts that fit our pre-existing beliefs and to discount facts that are contradicting (ex. Jenny McCarthy - vaccines causing autism)
affect bias
tendency to make judgements based upon emotions with little input from deliberate reasoning (ex. judges making harsher decisions after an irritating morning)
availability bias
tendency to make judgements on the basis of which examples come most easily to find
gambler’s fallacy
tendency to believe that the odds for occurrence of random events in the future depends on what already happened in the past (ex. 6 tails in a row –> a heads MUST be next)
Facilitated Communication video
autistic given ability to communicate through typing
- turned out to me communicator doing the talking for the disabled person
- everyone WANTED it to be true (confirmation bias)
Scientific Thinking
- ruling out coincidence as explanation
- eliminated sources of bias
