exam 1 Flashcards
what is psychology? misconceptions about psychology
PSYCHOLOGY: scientific study of the brain, mind, and behaviour
- psychology IS NOT common sense
- psychology IS puzzling and unintuitive
- psychology DOES NOT entail how to read people’s minds and analyze people
- psychology DOES use the scientific method to study mind, brain, and behaviour
common sense + naive realism
NAIVE REALISM:
- belief that the world is exactly how we see it
- our intuition/common sense; sometimes it can trick us
- our intuitive understanding of ourselves and others is frequently mistaken
- doesn’t realize that “appearances can be deceiving”
- ex. big ball can look small when you move away
- ex. the earth SEEMS flat, the sun SEEMS to revolve around the earth
the four goals of psychology
- DESCRIBE: what is happening?
- ASK WHY: why do people act or think a certain way?
- PREDICT: can we anticipate how people will behave? (study how they behaved in the past and predict how they will behave in the future)
- LIMIT: stop harmful behaviours or thoughts
levels of analysis
LEVELS OF ANALYSIS:
- different ways to study the brain, mind, and behaviour / the reasons people behave a certain way
BIOLOGICAL LEVEL:
- molecular or neurochemical level
- i.e. structure and function of the cells/tissues, action of the brain and neurons, putting people in scanners, anatomical images, chemical imbalance, genetic reasoning
- ex. when testing individual food preferences, we’d look at the tongue and its nerves tissues and cells
PSYCHOLOGICAL LEVEL:
- mental or neurological level
- understanding the behavioural level
- i.e. brain as a whole, what areas are active when
- ex. when testing individual food preferences, what brain areas are active when giving someone good food vs bad food and how they behave
- ex. why people remember certain things or are attracted to different things
SOCIAL/CULTURAL LEVEL:
- social/cultural level
- i.e. the influence of your culture shapes individual behaviour, parenting practices, peer influences
- ex. when testing individual food preferences, base it on upbringing like Mexicains eating sweet and spciy food
the scientific method
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD:
- best way to make inferences about stuff
- OBSERVE:
- look to see what needs explaining
- ex. seeing children behaving aggressively on the playground - HYPOTHESIZE:
- provide an explanation based on what you know/observed
- a testable prediction
- ex. violent video games make children act aggressively - PREDICT:
- make a prediction for what you expect to happen in the future if your hypothesis is correct
- ex. if the hypothesis is true, children who play video games act aggressively on the playground, and children who don’t will not act that way - TEST:
- do an experiment to make new observations
- seeing whether your prediction is likely - MODIFY:
- modify your hypothesis based on what you found - REPEAT
challenges to psychological science (multiple det., ind. differences, soc/cultural influences)
MULTIPLE DETERMINATION:
- behaviour is produced by many factors, not solely one
- make sit difficult to predict human behaviour
- ex. violent behavior cant be due to just violent video games, but also home situation, peers, etc.
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES:
- behaviours change from person to person, and aren’t always consistent (we are who we are due to our sum of experiences)
- explanations of behaviour dont apply to everyone
SOCIAL/CULTURAL INFLUENCES:
- the context of social groups and cultural backgrounds affects behaviours
- ex. maybe its more acceptable to act violently in different households
reasons for the scientific method/what it helps prevent
- the scientific method helps prevent the following:
CONFIRMATION BIAS:
- the tendency to seek out evidence that supports what we believe/our hypotheses, and deny evidence that contradicts it
- we can fool others into believing we’re right because we choose to see the information that supports what we believe
- ex. You believe that children act aggressively due to video games so you solely focus on that in your research, and declare your hypothesis right
BELIEF PERSEVERANCE:
- the tendency to stick to our beliefs even when evidence contradicts them
- ex. 1 in 3 parents continue to believe that vaccines cause autism, even though studies have shown that they dont
theories vs hypotheses
THEORIES:
- widely encompassing explanations for a large number of completed research (an explanation for a large number of findings in the natural world)
- ties multiple observations/hypotheses together
- lead to testable predictions/hypotheses
- the point at which we can no longer falsify our ideas
- ex. big bang theory
- ex. “Darwin’s evolutionary model explains the changes in species over time”
HYPOTHESIS:
- testable predictions derived from a scientific theory
- statement we use to form predictions before research/testing is done
- a theory isnt merely a guess, but is consistent with many differing lines of evidence
pseudoscience vs science
PSEUDOSCIENCE:
- claims it is scientific, but isn’t
- falls short of scientific evidence
- has no safeguard against confirmation bias and belief perseverance
signs of pseudoscience
1) EXAGGERATED CLAIMS: statements that seem TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE
- drawing conclusions about how the world works and how people interact far beyond what science can prove
- ex. replace all your medicine with just ONE natural product!
- ex. one therapy session will cure your depression!
- ex. one video game will improve your brain cognition!
2) OVERRELIANCE ON ANECDOTES: relying on stories from individuals as a basis for a decision, but without any scientific evidence
- someone makes a claim but doesn’t look at data to prove their claim
- ex. “i know a person who says his self-esteem sky-rocketed after receiving hypnosis!”
- ex. “Marc lost 85 pounds due to this program!” (maybe he lost it due to other reasons)
3) LACK OF EXTERNAL PEER REVIEW:
- findings aren’t verified by unbiased experts (people who don’t benefit from the product doing well)
- ex. the company did a survey on their product”
4) PROOF RATHER THAN EVIDENCE: countless studies but no data shown
- ex. “countless studies have shown that this works” but doesnt show the studies/data
- ex. “Our new program is proven to reduce social anxiety by at least 50 percent!”
5) PSYCHOBABBLE: using fancy/big words to seem valid, but they mean nothing
dangers os pseudoscience
1) OPPORTUNITY COST:
- what you give up in order to gain something else
- ex. Pseudoscientific treatments for mental disorders can lead people to forgo opportunities to seek effective treatments
- ex. Giving up the opportunity to have real benefits from dieting and instead taking “Serpessence”
2) EROSION OF TRUST: erodes trust in science
- ex. Drinking Serpesence (which claims its proven to work) and don’t see results, so you decide to stop trusting science
3) HARM: to people in your life, or yourself (physical, mental)
- ex. Candace Newmaker lost her life (direct harm)
- ex. Going to one therapy session cause it claims that it will fix all mental problems; Neglecting aspects of your mental/physical health that could be beneficial (indirect harm)
- ex. “Im going to treat my diabetes by taking Serpesence instead of taking my medications”
- ex. Doing video game training to “reduce dementia and hearing loss” (you stop doing things to benefit your health)
why we believe in pseudoscience
1) SUNK COST: investing in something (financially, mentally, physically) even when you know it’s not gonna work / waiting for the “results to work”
- ex. “i already started, i might as well keep going”
- ex. Taking pills that don’t work because you already paid for it
- ex. Going to therapy even if it doesn’t work because its part of your routine now
2) CONFIRMATION BIAS: we only seek information that agrees with what we believe
- continually engaging with an idea because you consistently think its gonna work
3) DUNNING-KERGER EFFECT: the less you know the more likely you think you’re an expert
- ex. “I did 30 mins of reading, I’m now an expert on the topic”
6 safeguards against pseudoscience (riv-hyp, cor-caus, falsif, replic, extra for extra, parscimony/occams razor)
1) ruling out RIVAL HYPOTHESES: rule out alternative explanations for what we observe
- ex. different hypotheses for children playing aggressively (violent video games, abusive home)
- ex. Serpesence (placebo, motivation)
- ex. “Study shows depressed people who receive a new medication improve more than equally depressed people who receive nothing”; the results could be due to the fcat that people who received the medication expected to improve
2) dont confuse CORRELATION AND CAUSATION: just because two things cause each other, that doesnt mean they’re related— and vice-versa
- we cant confuse correlation and causation because we first need to rule out rival hypotheses
- the correlation between variables A and B is almost certainly the result of a third variable, C
- ex. “Ice cream (A) causes homicide (B)” doesn’t take into account that ice cream and homicide can be related to the weather (C); warm weather means more people are outside and that more people crave ice cream and are also aggravated
3) FALSIFIABILITY; you have to give your research question the opportunity to be tested and to be proven wrong
- you cant truly test if someone believes something
- if something cant be tested, its not falsifiable
- ex. ex. A self-help book claims that all human beings have an invisible energy field surrounding them that influences their moods and well-being (we cant design a study to disprove this claim)
- ex. “Tomorrow, all of the major league baseball teams that are playing a game will either win or lose” (non-falsifiable)
4) REPLICABILITY:
- DIRECT REPLICATION: the study is repeated and the results replicate and repeat
- ex. I got result A for one study, and the next study i also got result A
- CONCEPTUAL REPLICATION: there are multiple lines of evidence
- ex. i didn’t do the exact steps you did, but close enough, and yet i still found the same results
- ex. A magazine article highlights a study that shows people who practice meditation score 50 points higher on an intelligence test than those who don’t; other scientific studies should report the same findings
5) EXTRAORDINARY EVIDENCE FOR EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS: the bigger the claim, the more convincing/compelling the evidence must be
6) PARSIMONY/OCCAM’S RAZOR: the simpler explanation can be the best explanation that fits the data just as well
- if you have two explanations, go with the simpler one
- ex. Your friend, who has poor vision, claims that he spotted a UFO while attending a Frisbee tournament; a simpler explanation would be that he’s mistaken a Frisbee for a UFO
philosophical roots of psychology
- at the start, psychology was difficult to distinguish from philosophy
- no experimental research was conducted
- psychology was also tied with spiritualism (ex. The power of psychics to mind read and spirit mediums)
structuralism (definition + tools + drawback)
STRUCTURALISM: school of though that aims to identify the basic elements of conscious(ness) experiences
- asks the WHAT questions
- ex. “WHAT is conscious thought like?”
- PERIODIC TABLE OF ELEMENTS (periodic table of mental experiences)
INTROSPECTION: process of reflecting/ describing mental experiences while doing something, in as much detail as possible
- ex. drink water and write down every thought you had
- can’t be too subjective, can’t be too reflective
limitations:
- subjectivity (there were individual differences in perceptions/reports)
- “imageless thought” (thinking unaccompanied by conscious experience) (ex. “what’s 5 + 10” you cant explain what came to mind in calculating this)
- its hard to make predictions about the why an how aspect
functionalism (definition + tools + drawback)
FUNCTIONALISM: why is it that we have the experiences we do?
- asks the WHY questions
- ex. “WHY do we sometimes forget things?”
- EVOLUTIONARY THEORY (things are the way they are because they’ve adapted to the way they are now) (physical and behavioural characteristics evolved because they increased the chances of their survival and reproduction)
limitations:
- hard to make predictions about the future
psychoanalysis (definition + tools + drawback)
PSYCHOANALYSIS: focuses on internal psychological processes of which we’re unaware (the unconscious)
techniques + limitations:
- 1) DREAM SLIP:
- unconscious wish fulfillment would reveal your hidden impulses
- limitation: confirmation bias (not looking at other hypotheses)
- 2) FREUDIAN SLIP:
- when you say one thing, but you mean something else (“leak” of unconscious to conscious)
- limitation: hard to falsify
behaviourism (definitions + tools + drawback)
BEHAVIOURISM: psychology built on watching observable behaviour rather than conscious experience
REWARDS AND PUNISHMENT: psychology based solely on rewards and punishment
THE BLACK BOX + limitation:
- we know what goes in the brain and what comes out of it, and we don’t need to worry about what happens between the input and output (it doesnt matter what happens in the brain)
- ignores the internal cognitive processes that underlie behaviour
- Views thinking as merely another form of behaviour
cognitivism (definition + how it differs from behaviourism + tools + limitations)
COGNITIVISM: focuses on our interpretation of rewards and punishments
- ex. a student receives a B+ on his first psychology exam; A student accustomed to getting Fs on his tests might regard this grade as a reward, whereas a student accustomed to As might view it as a punishment
difference bet. behaviourism and cognitivism:
- We can’t just look at input and output stimuli, because what happens in the brain actually matters
- the brain and thinking do matter (how the mind works matters)
brain as a computer:
- looks at the brain as a computer
- the idea that techniques used to study computers can be applied to psychology- input and output
limitations:
- The problem with this is that our brains arent computers
