History and Perspectives of Psychology (Prologue, Ch 1) Flashcards
Empiricism or empirical approach
an approach used to prove or disprove an idea, by solely relying on facts. involves skepticism, humility, and curiosity.
Ex: Disproving that people can see auras around people’s bodies by asking if they can see an aura around osmeone if that person is behind a wall sligthtly taller than another person is.
Statistical significance
when the difference between the values in the degendent variables in the control group and experimental group happened not due to chance variation.
Statiscial signifiance indicates the likelihood that a result will happen by chance. but this does not say anything bout the importance of the reult.
For example comparisons of IQ scores show older siblings have IQ scores that are 1 to 3 points higher on average than younger siblings. But since the scores differ by only one to three points,, the difference has little practical importance. Such findings have caused some psychologists to adcocate alternatives to signficance testing.
Operational Definition
a statement of the procedures (operations) used to define research variables
e.g. human intelligence may be measured as what an intelligence test measures (IQ)
or generosity may be defined as “money contributed”
Case study
examines one individual in depth in hopes os revealing things true of us all
among oldest of research methods
- much of our early knowledge about het brain came from case studies of individuals who suffered a particular impariment after damage to a certain brain region
- eg. Andwea Yates case study documented her childhood behaviors, medical visits, influencer’s beliefs etc.
Random Sample
sampling that fairly represents a populatation because each member has an equal chance of inclusion.
ex: for a representative sample, you must randomly choose people (e.g. using a computer) and give them a survey, rather than sending out a survey - as only the conscientious people may return the survey
Illusory correlation
- a perceived but nonexistent correlation
- when we believe there is a relationship vetween two things, we are likely to notice and recall instances that ocnfirm our belief
eg. when one couple who can’t give birth adopts a baby and sudednly becomes pregnant, onlookers may falsely assume that adopting increases fertility.
Biological Psychology
- a branch of psychology thatl inks vetween biology and behavior
- aka. behavioral neuroscience, neuropsychology, behavior genetics, physicolgical psychologists, biopsychology
biopsychologist: “I can explian your behavior of having diarrhea. It’s heridiatry. It runs in your jeans”
structuralism
the branch of scientific psychology that aimed to “discern the structural elements of the mind”
- introspection: self-reflective reports, process of observing the observations of one’s own mind with a view to discovering hte laws that govern the mind
- Edward Bradford Titchener, who was Wilhelm Wundt’s student
As your smelled a a scent, looked a rose, listened to a metronome, or tasted a substance, what are your immediate sensations, your images, your feelings? And how do these relate to one another
introspection
self-reflective reports, process of observing the observations of one’s own mind with a view to discovering the laws that govern the mind
As your smelled a a scent, looked a rose, listened to a metronome, or tasted a substance, what are your immediate sensations, your images, your feelings? And how do these relate to one another
waned because results varied from person to person and experience to expienrec. it also required people who were smart and verbal. also people just dont always know why we feel what we feel and do what we do.
as introspection waned, so did structuralism
Psychodynamic Psychology
focuses on how behavior springs from unconscious drives and conflicts
Cognitive psychology
our thoughts and actions arise from how we intrepret experiences
eg. Andrea Yates (case study) : Andrea intrepreted that her children’s behavior was so bad that as a consequence sheneeded to be punished, by killing them. this was also partially due to her interpretation of the radical preacher.
Confounding variable
a variable that makes it impossible to deremine what caused hte results in hte study
aka. a variable that is correlated with both the independent and the dependent variable
As an example, suppose that there is a statistical relationship between ice-cream consumption and number of drowning deaths for a given period. These two variables have a positive correlation with each other. An evaluator might attempt to explain this correlation by inferring a causal relationship between the two variables (either that ice-cream causes drowning, or that drowning causes ice-cream consumption). However, a more likely explanation is that the relationship between ice-cream consumption and drowning is spurious and that a third, confounding, variable (the season) influences both variables: during the summer, warmer temperatures lead to increased ice-cream consumption as well as more people swimming and thus more drowning deaths
functionalism
what function do our emotions/behaviors serve
William James
Influenced by Darwinism
little impact on modern Psychology
Jimmy the evolving monkey
Behaviorism
science is rooted in observation
John b. watson and b. f. skinner
Skinner’s box
-experiments
Structuralism
-Edward Bradford titchener 1890s + Willhem Wundt
- to discover elements of consciousness
- -ie. memory, attention, emotion
- mind works by combining most basic processes
- testing via introspeciton (e.g. Wundt’s experiment”
Titchener, by sniffing this rose, tell me if your mind is made out of Titanium
Independent Variable
the experimental factor that is manipulated, the variable whose effect is being studied
-aka “IV”
hindsight bias
tendency to believe after learning an outcome, that one would have foreseen it
aka “I knew it all along” phenomenon
John McCain
2002- “ This war in Iraw qill be quick and easy”
2007 - “I knew from the beginning this would be a long, hard war”
Nature vs. Nurture issue
The long standing controversy over the relative contributions that genes and experience make to the development of psychology traits and behaviors. Today’s science sees traits and behaviors arising from the interaction of nature and nurture.q
Wilhelm Wundt
First psychology lab
First psychological science experiment
-measuring the “atoms of hte mind” - hte fastest and simplest mental processes
–measured the time lag vetween people’s hearing a ball hit a platform and their pressing a telegraph key. Curiously, people responded in about 1/10 of a second when asked to press the key as soon as the sound occured and 2/10 of a second when they were consciously aware of perceiving the sound. (to be aware of one’s awareness takes a little longer”
Random assingment
assinging participants to experimental and control groups by chance,, thus minimzing pre existing differences between those assigned tothe different groups
-different than random sampling which is randomly assigning people into the experiment
Psychiatry
a branch of medicine dealing with psychological disorders
-practiced by physicians who sometimes provide medical (for example, drug) treatments as well as psychological therapy.
Human Factors psychology
how machines and environments can be optimally designed to fit human abilities and be made safe
ex: ATM’s which had human factor pschologists working with the engineers - are easier to use than VCRs which did not
- USer Interfaces/User Experience (UI/UX)
- Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)`
Industrial-Organizatinoal (I/O) Psychology/ists
studies the relationship vetween people and their working envirnoments
0may develop new ways to incraes productivity, improve personnel seleciton 9Hiring), and training
ex: boss paiting cubicle walls yellow to increase productivity, because yellow walls increase productivity more than blue walls
Confounding Variable
a variable that if you dont take into account, may make your data and conclusions innacurate
ex: if you ar doing a study on hte relationship vetween # hours studied and IQ, and if you don’t take into account that 60% of your participants had special needs, then your participants having special needs would be a confounding variable
History of Psychology (2/3 Revolutionary Ideas)
- Darwin: survival of fittest
- Pavlov: learning, dogs
- Development of periodic table => wundt to discover “elements of unconcscious experience”
Functionalism
- studied the evolved functions of our thoughts and feelings.
- studies how our mental and behavioral processes function and how they enable us to adapt,survive, and flourish
- encouraged explorations of down to earth emotions, ememories, willpower, habits, and moment-tomoment streams of soncsciousness
- William James
“Jimmy studied how our functions adapted so we can function”
Behavorial psychology
states that psychology:
1 should be an objective science that
2 studies behavior without refence to mental processes
–most psychologists today agree with (1) but not (2)
- John B Watson., B.F. Skinner
- Dominant approach from 1920-s to 1960s
ex: Skinner’s Box, in which mice were taught colors through stimuli
Developmental psychology/ists
Conducts research in age-related behavioral changes and apply their scientific knowlede to educational, childcare, policy, and related settings.
ex: conductin research in a pre-school to pass laws on pre-k education mandates and standards
William James
- functionalist
- wrote first textbook - allowed psychology to spread - Principles of Psychology”
- influenced by Darwin’s survival of the fittest
said he would take only 2 years to write the book, but it took him 12. introduced psychology elegantly and brilliantly to the educated public
Socio-Cultural Psychology
how behavior and thinking vary across situations and cultures
Someone working from the social-cultural perspective might explore how expressions of anger vary across cultural contexts
-Outliers (Malcom Gladwell) - people from South US tend to fight more, as in fist fighting
Debriefing
when the hosters of an experiment inform the participants of the experiment the details and results of the experiment
E.g. in Milgram experiment, infomring hte participants that hte electricity was fake and that the “students” were really actors pretenting to be electrocuted… saying that the study was on obedience/morality
humanistic psychology:
historically signifiacant perspective that emhasizet hte growth potential of healthy people and hte individual’s poential for personal growth
- carl rogers
- abraham maslow
cognitive neuroscience
the interdiscilinary study of hte brain activity linked with cognition (including perception, thinking, memory, and luanguage
