Midterm 1 - Unit 1, Introduction Flashcards
Mind
- all subjective experiences—sensations, perceptions, memories, thoughts, motives, emotions
- So mind refers really to all of those activities of the brain, all of those subjective experiences you have, your perceptions, your memories, your motivations, dreams, thoughts, emotions. But it also includes the cognitive structures, operating rules, processes that shape your experience but operate outside of your conscious awareness. So these are things that you’re not even aware of.
Psychology
- the scientific study of the mind and behavior
- Systematically tests their hypotheses about the human mind & behavior against objective data
Behavior
- observable actions of people or non-human animals
Social cognition
- thinking about oneself, other people, and oneself in relation to other people
- So I’m not suggesting that babies are actively thinking about their social worlds, but I am suggesting that perhaps we come pre programmed with a neural machinery that enables us to take an interest in our social world, to think about our social world, to understand it so
- Neural networks supporting social cognition(thinking about oneself, other people, and oneself in relation to other people) are active immediately after birth
Folk psychology
- everyday, “common-sense” understanding of the mental states and behaviors of other people (and ourselves
- comes from experience and intuition, so it is not reliable
Inattentional blindness
- failure to perceive event outside the focus of one’s attention
- we don’t see what we don’t expect to see
- study: miss gorilla in a sea of basket players
Illusion of attention
- we don’t notice how much or our world we don’t notice
- we notice much less of our world than we think we do
- study: miss gorilla in a sea of basket players
Experience (cons)
- has no control group
- in everyday life, we experience only one version of each situation
- Our personal experiences do not show us all possible events, so we shouldn’t base our conclusions simply on what we have seen or lived
- They have more than one possible explanation
Intuition (cons)
- One problem is that our ideas “feel right,” in part, because we tend to be overconfident in what we know and how well we think we understand events
- even when we notice instances that go against our ideas, our biased intuition tends to discount them
- it’s easy to see the faults in other’s intuition, but not our own
Confirmation bias
- tendency to seek out, pay attention to, and believe evidence that supports what we are already confident we know
- the tendency to seek out, pay attention, to believe evidence that supports what we already confidence we know, as opposed to evidence that disconfirms our views
- study: If perception had been a direct readout of reality, then all students should agree on the quality of the studies, right? Regardless of whether you’re a proponent or opponent of capital punishment. participants who are proponents of capital punishment and so when they read a study showing a pro deterrence effect this here in orange, they say it’s convincing. Whereas when they read the study showing an anti deterrence, the fact they say, well this was a terrible study, horribly done, not convincing at all
- So basically what’s happening here is that the students judgments of the same reality, because again, they read the exact same set of studies, depended on their initial attitudes and their initial judgments.
Belief perseverance
- Our beliefs are pretty sticky. They tend to persist. And this is because we interpret evidence in a way that will maintain our beliefs. So we’re very selective
- When we see disconfirming evidence, we really scrutinize it, pick it apart. Whereas if we see confirming evidence, we’re much more likely to take it at face volume
Misattribution of arousal
- attributing physiological arousal to the wrong source
- we will find the closest reason to what we are physically experiencing even if it is not accurate
Suspension bridge study
- the arousal from crossing the dangerous bridge is attributed to the reasonably attractive woman
- takeaway: we don’t always know what we are feeling
Summative
- Psychology is summative, meaning that it rests on a body of knowledge that is continuously growing.
- Rarely can one single research study or experiment prove anything beyond a doubt. In addition, any given human behavior has multiple causes, so psychologists rarely suggest simplistic cause-and-effect relationships.
Different areas/perspectives of psychology
Evolutionary perspective: behaviors that come from evolutionary adaptions
Cultural perspective: how culture context affects ppl’s thoughts and preferences
Cognitive perspective: mental processes that underlie perception, thought, learning, memory, language, and creativity
Emotional perspective: how human capacity to feel, express, and perceive emotions plays an important role in decision making, behavior, and social relationships
Biological-neuroscience perspective: the biological underpinnings of how we think, act, and behave
Developmental perspective: how ppl change physically, cognitively, socially, and emotionally as they age
Personality perspective: to understand aspects of behavior that are relatively stable over time and situation
Social perspective: ways in which immediate social contexts influence thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
Clinical perspective: the causes and treatments of psychological disorders, with the goal of improving human well-being, daily functioning, and social relationships
