Intro to Research Methods

Question 1

What is psychology?

Answer 1

Scientific study of the mind, brain, and behavior; Perception, emotions, thoughts, and behaviors

Question 2

How can psychology be studied from different levels of analysis?

Answer 2

Societal, behavioral, mental, physiological, neurochemical, molecular – look close up and zoom out

Question 3

Structuralism

Answer 3

Aimed to identify the most basic elements or structures of psychological experience through introspection (what’s the recipe for the cookie)

Question 4

Cognitive

Answer 4

Demonstrate how mental processes shape our behavior (what they’re thinking about) / appraisal about if the cookie looks good and therefore you would eat or not

Question 5

Functionalism

Answer 5

Understand the adaptive purposes of thought and behavior – “the why” (why are drawn to eating cookies late at night? Or have just 1 cookie?)

Question 6

Behaviorism

Answer 6

Focus on overt behaviors only, simplify things by focus on actions people do; why people behavior differently under different conditions

Question 7

Psychoanalysis

Answer 7

Uncover mental processes in the unconscious; early life experiences (eat a cookie without realizing)

Question 8

Humanistic and positive psychology

Answer 8

Understanding how individuals find meaning and meet their full potential

Question 9

Clinical Psychologist

Answer 9

Perform assessment, diagnosis, treatment of mental disorders – both research and application

Question 10

Counseling Psychologist

Answer 10

Work with people experiencing temporary or relatively common life problems such as grief/loss, marital conflict

Question 11

School Psychologist

Answer 11

Work with teachers, parents, and children

Question 12

Forensic

Answer 12

Work in prison, jails; conduct research on testimony or jury

Question 13

Industrial-Organizational Psychology

Answer 13

Work in companies and business to help select productive employees, evaluation performance

Question 14

What is the scientific method

Answer 14

Systemic body of ideas that organizes what we know about a topic based on our past observations and makes predictions about future observations

Question 15

What are the steps in the scientific method?

Answer 15

Make an observation.
Ask a question.
Form a hypothesis, or testable explanation.
Make a prediction based on the hypothesis.
Test the prediction.
Iterate: use the results to make new hypotheses or predictions.

Question 16

What are a theory and hypotheses?

Answer 16

Hypothesis: A prediction about the outcome of our research

If a hypothesis is supported, we have evidence of the correctness of our theory. Theories with support are accepted as fact.

Question 17

What are correlational methods?

Answer 17

Correlational: Measure two variables and determine if a relationship exists between them; ; computational procedure when you know the calculation of one variable

Question 18

What is a correlation coefficient?

Answer 18

How strongly two variable are related and tells you about the form of the relationship

Question 19

How do you understand a correlation coefficient?

Answer 19

R = 1 or -1 perfect relationship
R = 0, no relationship

Going up is positive relationship / direct; going down is negative correlation / inverse relationship

R squared tells you about the strength of relationship

Question 20

What are experiments?

Answer 20

Identify causal relationship between variables; manipulate one variable, measure the other

Question 21

What are independent and dependent variables?

Answer 21

Independent variable - Manipulated variable
Dependent variable - Measured variable