lesson 1 intro

Question 1

what is psychology?

Answer 1

the science of the elementary laws of the mind and behavior

Question 2

what is empiricism

Answer 2

the belief that accurate knowledge can be acquired through observation

Question 3

what is evolution

Answer 3

saying genes make brains, and evolve over time

Question 4

what is materialism

Answer 4

brains make minds

Question 5

what is modularity

Answer 5

the mind is a collection of parts

Question 6

constructivism

Answer 6

the mind makes reality

Question 7

what are the 5 foundations of psychological science

Answer 7

empiricism, evolution, materialism, modularity, constructivism

Question 8

what are the different types of psychology

Answer 8

experimental and clinical

Question 9

what kinds of psychology fall under experimental

Answer 9

social, personality, cognitive, developmental, psychopathology

Question 10

where does the word psychology come from

Answer 10

greek “psyche” which means soul and “logos” which means to study

Question 11

father of psychology

Answer 11

william james

Question 12

what does the word mind refer to

Answer 12

a set of private events that happen in a person, which no one else can see

Question 13

what does the word behavior refer to

Answer 13

a set of public events; what we say and do that can be observed by others

Question 14

what is philosophical dualism

Answer 14

the view that the mind and body are different, that the mind is immaterial and the body material

Question 15

philosophical materialism

Answer 15

all mental phenomena are reducible to physical phenomena; anything we experience in our mind is attributed to brain structure

Question 16

philosophical realism

Answer 16

view that perceptions of the physical world are produced entirely by information from the sensory organs

Question 17

philosophical idealism

Answer 17

view that perceptions of the physical world are the brain’s interpretation of information from the sensory organs

Question 18

philosophical empiricism

Answer 18

view that all knowledge is acquired through experience

Question 19

philosophical nativism

Answer 19

some knowledge is innate rather than acquired

Question 20

helmholtz studied what

Answer 20

reaction time

Question 21

what is reaction time

Answer 21

the amount of time between the onset of a stimulus and your response

Question 22

what was helmholtz able to do with reaction time

Answer 22

calculate the speed at which nerves transmit information

Question 23

structuralism

Answer 23

an approach to psychology which tries to isolate and analyze the mind’s basic elements

Question 24

what did titchener pioneer

Answer 24

introspection

Question 25

what is introspection

Answer 25

analysis of subjective experience by trained observers (raw experience rather than interpretation of it)

Question 26

what did wundt discover

Answer 26

identified three basic dimensions of sensation (pleasure/pain, strain/relaxation, excitation/quiescence)

Question 27

problem with introspection

Answer 27

every person's inner experience is private, and there's no way to tell whose is more accurate

Question 28

functionalism

Answer 28

an approach to psychology that emphasizes adaptive significance of mental processes (if we physically adapted, why not mentally?)

Question 29

natural selection

Answer 29

the process by which the specific attributes that promote an organism's survival and reproduction become more prevalent in the population over time

Question 30

who came up with natural selection

Answer 30

darwin

Question 31

hysteria

Answer 31

loss of function with no obvious physical origin

Question 32

unconscious

Answer 32

part of the mind that contains information of which people are not aware

Question 33

psychoanalytic theory

Answer 33

emphasizes the influence of the unconscious on feelings, thoughts, and behaviors

Question 34

what was freud's discovery

Answer 34

hysteria was due to repressed memories, and the patients had gone through trauma so bad they wouldnt allow themselves to remember it

Question 35

psychoanalysis

Answer 35

therapy that aims to give people insight into the contents of their unconscious minds (what does this word make you feel)

Question 36

behaviorism

Answer 36

approach to psychology that restricts scientific inquiry to observable behavior

Question 37

what did pavlov do

Answer 37

figured out how conditioning works by associating a certain stimulus with good or bad responses

Question 38

what did skinner do

Answer 38

realized pavlov's work was good, but confined to a lab; animals had to act on environments to find food instead of waiting on it. developed skinner box where rats push lever themselves to get food

Question 39

principle of reinforcement

Answer 39

any behavior that is rewarded will be repeated and any behavior that isnt wont

Question 40

who agreed with freud and who didnt

Answer 40

experimental psychologists though this was mad, but clinicians were interested

Question 41

what did wertheimer do

Answer 41

discovered how people perceived motion and connected it to sensory data being processed (contributed to news ticker with the information that looks like it's scrolling by, but the lights are really flashing on and off)

Question 42

gestalt psychology

Answer 42

emphasizes the way the mind creates perceptual experience

Question 43

what did bartlett do

Answer 43

studied why people remember things that didnt really happen (memories distort time and we tend to remember things by how we expect them to happen)

Question 44

what did piaget do

Answer 44

studied the minds of children by analyzing the mistakes they made (the mind has theories about how the world works and children havent learned that yet)

Question 45

developmental psychology

Answer 45

study of the ways psychological phenomena change over a life span

Question 46

why was lewin against behaviorism

Answer 46

responses dont depend on stimuli, but instead on how people think about those stimuli

Question 47

social psychology

Answer 47

study of causes and consequences of sociality (like primacy effect of how people draw influences about others, making inferences based on what they hear first)

Question 48

who said behaviorism cant work

Answer 48

chomsky- said purely behaviorist account of learning cant explain how children learn grammar, and behaviorism as a whole is too robotic compared to the fluidity of psychology

Question 49

what is neuroscience

Answer 49

the mind is what the brain does; used to be studied with damaged brains, but that isnt enough to see how we work on a daily basis

Question 50

fmri

Answer 50

technology that produces brain scans

Question 51

broca's area

Answer 51

damage to this area (frontal lobe) can cause aphasia where you understand but cant speak

Question 52

cultural psychology

Answer 52

how culture influences mental life, like individualism of americans vs interdependnece of japanese and how this influences how they perceive visual information

Question 53

example of a theory

Answer 53

that the brain responds to traumatic events by producing chemicals that facilitate memory

Question 53

split-brain procedure

Answer 53

To alleviate the severity of the seizures, surgeons can sever the corpus callosum in this operation The result is that a seizure that starts in one hemisphere is isolated in that hemisphere because there is no longer a connection to the other side

Question 53

two broad approaches to treatment

Answer 53

psychological and biological

Question 54

dogmatism

Answer 54

sticking to beliefs

Question 55

how did skinner differ from pavlov

Answer 55

pavlov was in a controlled environment; the dogs knew the food was coming so they salivated ahead of time. skinner thought, in the real world the animals had to act on their environments to get food, not just wait for a person (which is why he used reinforcement in his boxes)

Question 56

give an example of a way culture influences perception

Answer 56

show two pictures with differences in the background of buildings and foreground of cars to americans vs asians; asian communities tend to be more familial and holistic so they focus on the back while americans are more individualistic so they'll focus on the front