PSYC Term 1 Flashcards
What do psychologists do?
Psychologists study behavior, the mind and the brain with rigorous scientific methods. With a PhD or a PsyD, they treat and conduct research with a focus on cognition & behavior, but cannot prescribe medication, only psychiatrists with a medical degree can. Most psychologists are clinical over 50%, focusing on helping others through mental health, more severe forms, the other types are counseling, educational, industrial, etc.
Levels of Analysis + Examples
- Biological: molecular & neurochemical, genetics, brain systems, neurochemistry
- Psychological: mental & neurological, personality, perceptions, cognition, emotions
- Social: Interpersonal behavior, social cognition
Reciprocal Determinism: we mutually influence each other’s behavior making it challenging to isolate the causes - Societal/Cultural: society & culture’s impact on an individual’s thoughts, actions & behaviors
Emic study of the behavior of a culture from a perspective of someone who grew up in the culture, however unable to compare with other cultures
Etic studies the behavior of a culture from an outsider perspective, however may have biases and impose own culture onto others
Cultural Differences: westerners view emotion stemming from the individual while eastern find it from the group.
5 Unscientific non-data-driven methods to studying behavior + Examples.
Folk Wisdom: beliefs of elders and tradition
Common Sense: beliefs generally agreed upon at times contradicting, however sometimes correct
Authority: blind trust in the belief of an expert
Intuition: immediate feeling or perception
Naive Realism: belief that we see the world precisely as it is, leads us to draw incorrect conclusions of others, ourselves and our surroundings
3 Key Characteristics of Scientific Approach + Example
- Systematic Empiricism: structured observation to reveal important info and discard those that don’t reveal a credible relationship
- Production of Public Knowledge: peer review or replication
Good scientific research is public & repeatable, with a goal of advancing knowledge, slow and incremental, always open to revision - Search for Solvable Problems
Existing knowledge → unanswered Qs → research → map evidence → publish communicate >
No metaphysical questions or unfalsifiable pseudoscience.
Ways to make science more public & transparent?
- Post and share research materials and datasets in publicly accessible research archives, inviting reanalyzing, replication
- Publish in Peer-review journal: editor takes paper and selects reviewers in field to comment and suggest to editor whole will make a decision, either:
Accept paper (pretty rare)
Revise & Resubmit
Reject - Place less emphasis on the findings of single studies, rather on systematic reviews/meta-analyses that consider findings across multiple research programs
- Adversarial Collaboration: researchers with disagreeing theories have banded together to co-construct studies
Why is science more than common sense? Examples?
Guidelines are put into place so that heuristics & biases do not interfere in the validation of studies that uncover the truth of a natural event.
Random sampling + assignment, placebo effect, empirical observations, double blinding, deception, falsifiable claims, etc.
Unifying feature of psychology?
Scientific Method.
Differentiate between scientific theory & hypothesis. Examples.
Hypothesis: a testable prediction derived from theories to strengthen or revise them
Theory: an explanation for a large number of natural findings
-supported by multiple streams of evidence
-generates predictions regarding data we still haven’t observed
Misconceptions about scientific theories.
Not an educated guess.
Not a hypothesis.
Name the 5 major schools of thought and their pioneers.
- Structuralism - Titchener
- Functionalism - William James inspired by Darwin
- Behaviorism - Skinner + John B Watson
- Cognitivism - Jean Piaget
- Psychoanalysis - Sigmund Freud
Structuralism - goal, influence, limitations
G: To use introspection to identify basic elements or “structures” of experience to form a map/periodic table of sorts with sensations, images and feelings
I: emphasized the importance of systematic observation to the study of conscious experience
L: subjective reports, unaware of the unconscious mind, the imageless, introspection did not provide enough info and lack of research methods
Functionalism - goal, influence
G: To understand the functions or adaptive purposes of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
I: absorbed into psychology and influences indirectly
Behaviorism - goal, influence
G: to uncover the general principles of learning that explain all behaviors: focus on observable behavior not introspection or within the organism
I: models of human and animal learning and among the first to focus on the need for objective empirical research, to join the ranks of hard sciences like math, physics, etc.
Cognitivism - goal, influence, limitations
G: To examine the role of mental processes/thinking on behavior, connections between input and output
I: influential in language, problem solving, concept formation, intelligence, memory, and psychotherapy, & the connection between biological processes (neuroscience) and cognitive processes (thinking, emotion)
L: Differences between individuals; Reward and punishment (behaviorism) doesn’t always work depending on the differences in interpretations
Psychoanalysis - goal, influence, limitations
G: to uncover the role of unconscious psychological processes (impulses, thoughts and memories we are unaware of) and early life experiences in behavior
I: our mental processing goes on outside of conscious awareness
L: hindered scientific psychology, difficult to falsify unconscious processes
Two Great Debates + Examples
- Nature-Nurture Debate: are our behaviors attributable to mostly our genes or our rearing environments?
- Free Will-Determinism Debate: to what extent are our behaviors freely selected rather than caused by factors outside of our control?
Pseudoscience + Examples
Knowledge, methodology, beliefs, practices, claimed to be science or appear to be scient, but does not adhere to scientific method, often used to sell a product, service, therapy. Lacks safeguards against confirmation bias and belief perseverance
We can test pseudoscientific claims not as rigorously, unlike metaphysical claims we cannot test at all.
7 Common markers of pseudoscience + Examples
- Exaggerated Claims: too good to be true
- Over Reliance on anecdotes, unverifiable & handpicked, unscientific, no context on external factors
- Psychobabble: overuse of scientific terminology to make it seem like it has scientific basis
- Lack of connection with other studies
- Absence of peer review
- Lack of self correction: only pointing evidence that confirms, ignoring contradictions, belief perseverance without update while science is always correcting itself
7.Unfalsifiable: Ad hoc immunization, falsifiability,
7 Reasons why do people believe in pseudoscience? + Examples
- Trust “authority, experts, scientists”
- Natural progression of ailment or Placebo Effect: beneficial effect from expectations, not from treatment itself
- Confirmation Bias: tendency to pay attention to or overweigh the evidence that supports our beliefs and dismiss or distort evidence that contradicts our beliefs
- Salience (noticeable) of 5. Testimonials/Anecdotes:
Humans fail to use probabilistic information in decision making: not thinking about non-events and noticing prominently rare events - Simplifies the world and life: Our brains are predisposed to make order out of disorder and find sense in nonsense. Patternicity: tendency to find patterns in data even when they do not exist
- Sense of Comfort in our Beliefs
- Terror Management Theory: sense of terror from our awareness of our own inevitable death → many adopt reassuring cultural perspectives and pseudoscience
Consequences of Pseudoscience + Examples
- Opportunity Cost: pseudoscientific treatments for mental disorders can lead to people to forgo opportunities to seek effective treatments, wasting valuable time and money
Ex. CHEO, wanting to spread hemp oil on their kid, a dad loses access to son who has leukemia - Direct Harm: are they safe, not scientifically tested, Pseudoscientific treatments may lead to psychological or physical damage, occasionally death
- Inability to Think Scientifically as Citizen’s: need scientific thinking skills to reach educated decisions about society, vaccinations, parenting, genetic engineering, etc.
5 Common logical fallacies pseudoscience can exploit? Examples?
- Emotional Reasoning Fallacy (Affect Heuristic): the error of using our emotions as guides for evaluating the validity of a claim, usually whether they confirm or disconfirm our preconceptions
- Bandwagon Fallacy: the error of assuming that a claim is correct just because many people believe it
Not Me Fallacy: the error of believing that we’re immune from errors in thinking that afflict other people, leading to ignorance of scientific safeguards
- Bias Blind Spot: most people are unaware of their own biases but keenly aware of them in others, grown accustom to our own perspective - Correlation-Causation Fallacy: the error of assuming of one this is associated to another, it must be the cause
- Gambler’s Fallacy: believing in streaks, tendency to link past and future event although they are independent
Scientific Skepticism
open to all claims but insisting on persuasive evidence before accepting them
1. Keep an open mind to all claims
2. Accept only claims that have been tested (properly & in many different ways)
3. Basis of authority alone is not enough
4. Re-evaluate claims when presented with new evidence
6 Principles of Critical Thinking + Examples
- Ruling out rival hypotheses: have alternative explanations been considered
- Correlation vs Causation: can we be sure that A causes B
Correlation: an association or relationship between two variables, positive, negative or none: 3rd variable causes both creating correlation between A-B, third variable problem - Falsifiability: for a theory to be meaningful it must be a testable scientific idea, can be proven false, but might not, finding that would count as evidence against and for must be stated in advance of the findings. Best theories are risky predictions
- Replicability: can the results be duplicated in other studies, is it questioned and reviewed could be a fluke. Replicate with people of different cultures, ethnicities, geographical locations
Initial positive findings are more reported on then failures to replicate - Extraordinary Claims: do the claims counter what we know already and is the evidence as strong/extraordinary as the claim
- Parsimony/Occam’s Razor: does a simpler explanation fit the data just as well, KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)
Heuristics
Mental shortcuts, rules of thumb