Midterm 1 Flashcards
Definition of Psychology
Study of the mind, brain, and behavior
Type of science
Systematic - what is planned
Empirical - what is seen
science relies on?
Empirical reasonings
Levels of analysis
Biological - on molecular/neurochemical level (molecular or brain structure)
Psychological - mental level (thoughts, feeling, emotions)
Social Culture Influences - social or behavior level (personal relationship, relating to others)
5 complexity in Psychology
- Human behavior is hard to predict
- Individual differences
- Mutual influence
- Culture difference (behavior is shaped by culture)
- Psychological influences are rarely independent of each other
Why can’t we trust common sense?
Common sense can be useful, but it can also be flawed or simply incorrect
Your common sense can be wrong and it is most of the times
Naive Realism : the belief that we see the world precisely as it is
“Seeing is believing”
Naive Realism
the belief that we see the world precisely as it is
“Seeing is believing”
Scientific Theory
an explanation for large number of findings in the natural world
- Generate hypotheses
- Hypothesis: a testable prediction derived from a scientific theory
What are some misconceptions about theories?
- A theory explains one specific event
- A theory is an educated guess
What about corrections (scientific thinking)
A scientific theory must be able to generate testable predictions
Confirmation Bias
Mother of all biases
the tendency (way) to seek out evidence that support what already believe and deny and dismiss the evidence that contradicts them
Belief Perseverance
the tendency to stick to our initial beliefs, even when evidence contradicts them
Metaphysical Claims
Claiming about the world that is not testable
Pseudoscience
a set of claims that seems scientific, but isn’t
Warning signs of pseudoscience
- exaggerated claims
- Over Reliance on anecdotes
- Talk of “proof” instead of evidence
- Lack of Self-Correction
- Overuse of ad hoc immunizing hypothesis
- Lack of review by others
Patternicity
Tendency to detect meaningful patterns in
random stimuli
Why are we drawn to pseudoscience?
- We find comfort in our beliefs
- personal benefit - believing what we want to be true
Logical Fallacies
Emotional Reasoning Fallacy: use emotions as guides to evaluate a claim
Bandwagon Fallacy: accept a claim because many people believe it
Not Me Fallacy: other people may have those biases, not me
Dangers of Pseudoscience
Opportunity cost
Direct harm
Blocking scientific thinking
Scientific Skepticism
Evaluating claims with open mind only after researchers have done scientific tests and found evidence
Scientific skepticism is characterized ______?
Critical thinking
6 principles of critical thinking
Principle #1: Ruling out rival hypotheses
- Consider alternative explanations for findings
Principle #2: Correlation is not causation
- Just because two things are associated – or correlated – does not mean that one causes the other
Principle #3: Falsifiability
- It must be possible to disprove a claim
Principle #4: Replicability
- Psychological findings must be duplicated
Principle #5: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
- Evidence must be as convincing as the
claims
Principle #6: Occam’s razor
- Principle of Parsimony
- simplest explanation is the often the best
Psychology’s past
Originally psychology was considered a part of philosophy
* William Wundt developed first psychology lab in 1800s
5 primary schools of thoughts that have shaped modern psychology
- Structuralism
- Functionalism
- Behaviorism
- Cognitivism
- Psychoanalysis
Structuralism: The Elements of the Mind
who?
goal?
lasting scientific influence?
William Wundt and E. B. Titchener
- using self-analysis to identify basic “structure” of psychological experience
- Emphasis on the importance of systematic observation to the study of the conscious experience
Functionalism: Psychology Meets Darwin
who?
goal?
lasting scientific influence?
William James - influenced by Charles Darwin
- to understand the adaptive purposes/functions
of psychological characteristics (thoughts, feelings, and behaviors)
-Functionalism does not exist in its original form
today, but has been gradually absorbed into
mainstream scientific psychology
Behaviorism: The Laws of Learning
who?
goal?
lasting scientific influence?
John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner
- to uncover the general principals of
learning that explain all human behaviors
- Influential in models of human and animal
learning
Cognitivism: Opening the Black Box
who?
goal?
lasting scientific influence?
Jean Piaget and Ulric Neisser
- Understand the role of mental processes in behavior
- influential in many areas ( language , problem solving, )
Psychoanalysis: The Depths of the
Unconscious
who?
goal?
lasting scientific influence?
Sigmund Freud
- Uncover internal processes we are unaware
of
- Unconscious processes are nearly
impossible to verify
take away from 5 primary schools of thoughts
- Structuralism - Insisted on systematic data collection and empiricism
- Functionalism - Using evolutionary theory in modern psychology
- Behaviorism - helped to understand learning and the importance of scientific rigor
- Cognitivism - Focus on our interpretation of events
- Psychoanalysis - a place to start when imagining mental processes that are not conscious
Modern Psychology
Clinical
Counselling
School
Developmental
Experimental
Biopsychologists
Forensic
Industrial-Organizational:
- Assess, diagnose and treat people with mental disorders
- For those experiencing temporary or situational problems (e.g. marital, occupational)
- Work in schools with teachers, parents and children to overcome learning difficulties, behavioral problems, etc.
- Most work with infants and children examining how people change over time
- Research to understand memory, language, thinking, etc.
- Physiological bases of behavior
- Assess, diagnose, assist with rehabilitation of prison inmates or research on eyewitnesses or juries
- Help select employees, design equipment for
maximum productivity
What are The Great Debates of Psychology?
Nature Vs. Nurture
Evolutionary Psychology
Free will determinism
Two Modes of Thinking
System 1: Intuitive
– Fast, no effort
– snap judgments
System 2: Analytical
– Slow, requires effort
– problem solving
Heuristics
Mental shortcuts
Naturalistic Observation
Watching behavior in real-world
settings
Case Study
Studying one or a small number of people for an
extended period of time
Self-Report and Surveys
Self-report measures characteristics of a person by asking people directly (through interviews or questionnaires)
Random Selection
Essential in order to generalize findings from surveys and questionnaires
Evaluating Measures
Reliability : consistency of measurement
Validity : Extent to which a measure assess what it claims to measure
pro and cons of self-report measures
Pros
* Easy to administer
* Direct (self) assessment of a person’s state
Cons
* Accuracy is skewed for certain groups (narcissists)
* Potential dishonesty
Rating Data
(avoiding cons of self-report measures)
we can ask someone who knows the participation
well to evaluate them
Correlational Design
Examine the extent to which two variables are associated
+ve : as one increases so does the other
-ve : as one increases, the other decreases
0 : no relationship between variables
Illusory Correlation
approach of a statistical association where
none exists
Experimental Design
- independent variable
- dependent variable
The independent variable is manipulated
The dependent variable is measured
Independent variable
Dependent variable
Controlled variables
- Independent variable is the one thing you change (eg., the liquid used to water each plant)
- Dependent variable is the change that happens because of the independent variable (e.g., the height of the plant)
- Controlled variables are everything that you want to remain constant and unchanging (e.g., the type of plant, pot size, amount of liquid, soil type, etc.)
Experimentation Pitfalls
Placebo effect:
- improvement because you expect improvement
Nocebo effect:
- harm resulting from the expectation of harm
Experimenter expectancy effect:
- researchers’ hypotheses lead them to
unintentionally bias the outcome
Demand characteristics:
- cues that participants pick up allowing them to guess the researcher’s hypothesis
Ethical Guidelines for Human Research
Research Ethics Board (REB)
Informed consent
Protection from harm
Justification for fraud/lying
interrogating participants after experiment
Ethical Issues in Animal Research
7-8% of research in psychology uses animals
The majority are rodents and birds
Descriptive statistics:
numerical characteristics of the nature of the data
Variability/dispersion:
how loosely or tightly bunched scores are
Inferential statistics:
allows us to determine whether we can generalize
findings from the sample to the population
Intelligence to Psychologist:
Edwin Boring’s (1923) definition:
– “Intelligence is whatever intelligence tests measure”
Intelligence as Sensory Capacity
- Sir Francis Galton’s (1884) theory that people with better senses acquire more knowledge
First intelligence test?
by Binet and Simon in 1905
– Focused on higher mental processes – reasoning, understanding, judgment
Intelligence as Abstract Thinking today
the capacity to understand theoretical concepts, as well as to acquire knowledge and to learn and adapt
Who developed of g and s factors?
Charles Spearman
General intelligence (g)
explains the general differences in human intelligence
specific abilities (s)
Our particular skills
Who theorized that intelligence is a mix of two capacities
Cattell and Horn
Cattell and Horn
theorized that intelligence is a mix of two capacities
Two capacities?
Fluid intelligence: capacity to learn new ways of solving problems
Crystallized intelligence: accumulated knowledge of the world we gain over time
Multiple Intelligences
According to a number of theorists, there are completely separate intellectualskill
Triarchic Model
three largely distinct types of intelligence
Analytic
Practical
Creative
Analytical intelligence
ability to reason logically
Practical intelligence
ability to solve real world problems
Creative intelligence
ability to come up with novel and creative/effective answers
Persons with higher intelligence show?
quicker reaction times and less overall brain activity
The Location of Intelligence
Prefrontal cortex is especially active during highly “g-loaded” tasks
Stanford-Binet IQ test
—intelligence test based on the measure developed by Binet and Simon, adapted by Lewis Terman of Stanford University
it works for children, not adults
intelligence quotient (IQ)
(Mental age/chron. age ) x 100 = IQ
deviation IQ
Modern IQ tests that eliminates age effects
Compares each person to what is normal for his or her own age group
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)
Most commonly used IQ test for adults that consists of 15 subtests that give five scores:
– Overall IQ
– Verbal comprehension
– Perceptual reasoning
– Working memory
– Processing speed
Childhood IQ Tests
WISC-V - older children and adolescents
WPPSI-IV - 2 ½ to 7-year-olds
Eugenics Movement and abuse of IQ
Tests were biased - relied heavily on language and culturally-specificknowledge
The two most obvious effects on society were immigration rules and forced sterilisation.
Culture-Fair IQ Tests
Consist of abstract-reasoning items that do not depend on language
Post-Secondary Admissions Tests
designed to measure general skillin a particular field or measure academic progress
Reliability of IQ Scores
In adults, scores tend to be highly stable over long periods of time but prior to age three, IQ tests are very unstable and poor
predictors of adult IQ
Validity of IQ Scores
Moderately successful at predicting grades
Intellectual Disability
identified by the development of low IQ (below roughly 70) in childhood and an inability to carry out basic everyday functions
Four levels: mild, moderate, severe, profound
Causes of Intellectual Disability
there are over 200 causes, but most common are are Fragile X syndrome and Down syndrome
Mental Giftedness
- top 2% of IQ scores
- professions: doctors, lawyers, engineers, professors
What makes a genius?
- Genetic factors play a role, but so do practice and dedication
- intellectual brilliance with a lot of efforts
Heritability
% of an individual’s diversity in a trait that is caused by genes
Misconceptions About Heritability
1: Heritability applies to a single individual rather than to differences among individuals.
2: : Heritability tells us whether a trait can be changed
3: Heritability is a fixed number.
Estimating the Heritability of Traits
– Family studies
– Twin studies
– Adoption studies
Family Studies
researchers examine the extent to which a
trait “runs” in healthy families
– Pro: useful for estimating risk of disorder
– Con: relatives share a similar environment as well as similar genetic material
Twin Studies
Investigate differences between twins
- Monozygotic twins share 100% of their genes
– Dizygotic twins share ~50% of their genes – just like ordinary siblings
Adoption Studies
investigate how much a child who is adopted into a new family resembles their adoptive versus their birth parents.
Environmental Influences
Those that think IQ is fixed tend to take fewer academic risks and challenge themselves less
- Later born children tend to have slightly lower IQs than earlier-born children
- Children from larger families have slightly lower IQs than children from smaller families
- Amount of schooling seems to have a causal affect on IQ
Poverty and IQ
Jensen’s cumulative deficit study in poor area of rural Georgia
* Lack of proper nutrition and exposure to lead may lead to lower IQs
Flynn Effect
the average IQ of the population has been rising by
about 3 points every 10 years
why Flynn Effect?
- Increased test sophistication
- Increased complexity of modern world
- Better nutrition
- Changes at home and school
Sex Differences in IQ
few or no average differences between males and females but, males are more variable in their
scores
- differences in terms of specific mental
abilities
- Females tend to do better on some verbal tasks and recognizing emotions in others
- Males tend to do better on cognitive ability tests, like mental rotation and geography
Causes of Sex Differences
Some, like physical ability, may be biological
Most appear to be due to environmental differences
Racial Differences in IQ
differences appear to be largely or completely environmental in origin
Reconciling Racial Differences
Within-group vs between-group heritability
– The differences between groups are due to environment;
– The difference within groups are due to genetics
Stereotype threat
– fear that we may confirm a negative group
stereotype
