Lesson 1 Flashcards
is the scientific study of behavior and men- tal processes.
Psychology
a set of hypothesized statements about the relationships among events
Theory
research conducted without concern for immediate applications
Pure Research
research conducted in an effort to find solutions to particular problems
applied research
help people with psycho- logical disorders adjust to the demands of life.
Clinical Psychologists
use interviews and tests to define their clients’ problems. Their clients typically have adjustment problems but not serious psychological disorders.
Counseling Psychologists
are employed by school systems to identify and assist students who have problems that interfere with learning.
School Psychologists
attempt to facilitate learning, but they usually focus on course planning and instructional methods for a school system rather than on individual children.
Educational Psychologists
study the changes— physical, cognitive, social, and emotional—that occur throughout the life span.
Developmental Psychologist
identify and measure human traits and determine influences on human thought processes, feelings, and behavior.
Personality Psychologist
are concerned with the nature and causes of individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and behavior in social situations.
Social Psychologist
study the ways that people and the environment—the natural environment and the human-made environment—influence one another.
Environmental Psychologists
specialize in basic processes such as the nervous system, sensation and perception, learn- ing and memory, thought, motivation, and emotion.
Experimental Psychologist
focus on the relationships between people and work.
Industrial Psychologist
study the behavior of people in organizations such as businesses.
Organizational Psychologists
make technical systems such as automobile dashboards and computer keyboards more user-friendly.
Human Factors Psychologist
study the behavior of shoppers in an effort to predict and influence their behavior.
Consumer Psychologist
study the effects of stress on health problems such as headaches, cardiovascular dis- ease, and cancer.
Health Psychologist
apply psychology to the criminal justice system.
Forensic Psychologists
apply psychology to the criminal justice system.
Forensic Psychologists
help athletes concentrate on their performance and not on the crowd, use cogni- tive strategies such as positive visualization (imagin- ing themselves making the right moves) to enhance performance, and avoid choking under pressure.
Sport Psychologist
He argued that science could rationally treat only information gathered by the senses.
Aristotle
suggested that we could think of behavior in terms of a body and a mind.
Democritus
careful examination of one’s own thoughts and emotions—to gain self- knowledge.
Introspection
attempted to break conscious experience down into objective sensations, such as sight or taste, and subjective feelings, such as emotional responses, and mental images such as memories or dreams.
Structuralism
He focused on the rela-
tion between conscious experience and behavior.
William James
which focused on behavior as well as the mind or consciousness.
Functionalism
is the school of psychology that
focuses on learning observable behavior.
Behaviorism
He believed that organisms learn to behave in certain ways because they have been reinforced for doing so—that is, their behavior has a positive outcome.
B. F Skinner
a stimulus that follows a response and increases the frequency of the response
reinforcement
Founders of Gestalt Psychology
Max Wertheimer
Kurt Koffka
Wolfgang Köhler
focused on perception and how perception influences thinking and problem solv- ing.
Gestalt Psychologist
The German word Gestalt translates roughly to
Pattern or Organized whole
showed that we tend to perceive separate pieces of information as integrated wholes depending on the contexts in which they occur.
Gestalt Psychologist
is the name of both the theory of personality and the method of psycho-therapy
Psychoanalysis
Founder of psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud
proposes that much of our lives is governed by unconscious ideas and impulses that originate in childhood conflicts.
Psychoanalysis
seek the relationships between the brain, hormones, heredity, and evolution, on the one hand, and behavior and mental processes on the other.
Biological Perspective
having to do with mental processes such as sensation and perception, memory, intelligence, language, thought, and problem solving
Cognitive
is cognitive in flavor, yet it emphasizes the role of subjective (personal) experience.
HUMANISTIC–EXISTENTIAL PERSPECTIVE
stresses the human capacity for self- fulfillment and the central roles of consciousness, self- awareness, and decision making.
Humanism
views people as free to choose and as being responsible for choosing ethi- cal conduct.
Existentialism
conscious, choice, self direction
The Psychodynamic Perspective
repetition, reward, self efficacy
Social Cognitive
gender, ethnicity, differences
Sociocultural
is an organized way of using experience and testing ideas to expand and refine knowledge.
Scientific Method
is a statement about behavior or mental processes that is testable through research.
Hypothesis
a source of bias that may occur in research findings when participants are allowed to choose for themselves a certain treatment.
Selection Factor
part of a population
sample
a complete group of interest to researchers, from which a sample is drawn
Population
each member of a population has an equal chance of being selected
Random Sample
each member of a population has an equal chance of being selected
Random Sample
which is selected so that identified subgroups in the population are represented proportionately in the sample.
Stratified Sample
a source of bias or error in research reflecting the prospect that people who offer to participate
Volunteer Bias
Nearly all kinds of psychological research involve observation of the behavior of samples of populations.
Methods of Observation
studies collect information about individuals and small groups.
Case Study
to learn about behavior and mental processes that cannot be observed in the natural setting or studied experimentally
Surveys
You use naturalistic observation—that is, you observe people in their natural habitats—every day
Naturalistic Observation
try to answer questions such as, are people with higher intelligence more likely to do well in school?
Correlation
a mathematical method of determining whether one variable increases or decreases as another variable increases or decreases
Correlation Method
a number between +1.00 and −1.00 that expresses the strength and direction (positive or negative) of the relationship between two variables
Correlation Coefficient
a scientific method that seeks to confirm cause-and-effect relationships by introducing independent variables and observing their effects on dependent variables
Experimental Method
a condition in a scientific study that is manipulated so that its effects may be observed
Independent Variable
a measure of an assumed effect of an independent variable
Dependent Variable
in experimental terminology, unaware of whether or not one has received a treatment
Blinds
a study in which neither the subjects nor the observers know who has received the treatment
double-blind study
a bogus treatment that has the appearance of being genuine
placebo
a participant’s agreement to participate in research after receiving information about the purposes of the study and the nature of the treatment
informed consent
to explain the purposes and methods of a completed procedure to a participant
debrief
to explain the purposes and methods of a completed procedure to a participant
debrief
Psychologists and other scientists frequently use animals to conduct research that cannot be carried out with humans.
ETHICS OF RESEARCH WITH ANIMALS
way of evaluating the claims and comments of other people that involves skepticism and examination of evidence
Critical Thinking
is a system of nerves involved in thought processes, heartbeat, visual–motor coordination, and so on
nervous system
consists of the brain, the spinal cord, and other parts that make it
nervous system
are specialized cells of the nervous system that conduct impulses
neurons
visualized as having branches, trunks, and roots— something like trees
neurons
remove dead neurons and waste products from the nervous system; nourish and insulate neurons
glial cell
fatty, insulating substance
myelin
extend like roots from the cell body to receive incoming messages from thousands of adjoining neurons.
dendrites
that extends like a trunk from the cell body. Axons are very thin, but those that carry messages from the toes to the spinal cord extend several feet in length
axon
the electrochemical discharge of a nerve cell or neuron
neural impulses
to ready a neuron for firing by creating an internal negative charge in relation to the body fluid outside the cell membrane
polarize
the electrical potential across the neural membrane when it is not responding to other neurons
resting potential
to reduce the resting potential of a cell membrane from about 70 millivolts toward zero
depolarized
the electrical impulse that provides the basis for the conduction of a neural impulse along an axon of a neuron
action potential
the chemical keys to communication
neurotransmitters
chemical substances involved in the transmission of neural impulses from one neuron to another
neurotransmitters
