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
Research Designs + Importance
Systematic techniques to harness the power of analytical thinking and avoid the pitfalls of intuitive thinking
Without research designs even intelligent and well-trained people can be fooled, leading to harm due to intuitive thinking
Replicability Vs Reproducibility
Replicability: ability to recreate the study
Reproducibility: ability to reproduce the same findings
Operational Definition
A concrete way to measure an abstract concept using variables, needed to study something
Variables used to operationally define a variable + Examples
- Situational Variables: characteristics of the situation or environment, can be measured and/or manipulated
Weather, rules, actions around, given objects, masks, social scenario - Response Variables
Responses: performance on tasks (memory, math, perseverance, attention), reaction time, physiology, self-report can only be measured
Behavior: helping others, tipping, donating, smiling, can only be measured - Participant Variables: characteristics that individuals bring with them, can be measured but not manipulated
Ethnicity, sex, personality, skills, culture
What are the elements of a good measurement?
Validity - accuracy
Reliability - consistency
What makes a good sample?
Population: group of interest, draw a sample that generalizes back to population
Bigger samples are more representative
Generalizability: do the samples apply equally to all members of an interested population.
- Random Selection: everyone in population of interest has equal chance of being in the sample
- Avoiding Sampling Bias: when some members of a population are systematically more likely to be selected in a sample than others, ex. Phonebook only has homeowners
3 Types of Validity
- External Validity (Generalizability): the degree that a study’s findings can be generalized back to the population of interest
- Ecological Validity: the degree that the setting of the study mirrors a real-world setting
Participants might act differently if they know they are being watched - Internal Validity: the extent to which we can draw cause-and-effect claims
High internal validity can often lead to high external validity because carefully controlled experiments are more replicable and generate conclusions that are more trustworthy & generalizable
Name & Define Un-Experimental Designs
- Case Study: study one person or a few special people over an extended period of time (advantage) to understand rare conditions and proof of their existence to generate new hypotheses on cause and effect which can be studied systematically
- Naturalistic Observation: watching & describing people’s behavior in their real-world settings without intervening
- Correlation: from a sample measure 2 or more different variables for each participant to find a correlation/association
Advantage: Helps predict behavior
Correlation (r) a statistic that indexes the degree of relationship between two variables
+/- direction of relationship - # strength of relationship/absolute value
+1/-1 perfect positive/negative linear relationship, 0 no relationship
When to use each research design? + Example
Case Study: rare individual. Phineas gage
Naturalistic Observation: studying a variable that cannot be replicated well in a lab environment. Peeing urinal anxiety
Correlation: when goal is to determine a correlation between 2 variables. Height & Weight
Experimental Design: confirming a cause & effect. Exercise vs Test Scores
Quasi-Experiment: independents variable cannot be ethically manipulated. Concussions, cocaine babies
Map Out External, Internal, Ecological Validity, Random Sampling, Random Assignment, Sample Size Importance of all research designs,
Case Study: No, Low, High, No, No, No
Naturalistic Observation: No, Low, Yes, No, No, Yes
Correlation (done well): Yes, Low, Unsure, Yes, No, Yes
Experimental Design: Yes, High, depends, Yes, Yes, Yes
Quasi-Experiment: Yes, Low, Unsure, Yes, No, Yes
Self-Report/Survey description, purpose, benefits & drawbacks
Used to assess characteristics, personality traits, mental illnesses & interests
Drawbacks: Very different answers can be obtained depending on how questions are phrased & people might not understand the answers they’re giving may be inaccurate (narcissism) & dishonest
Response Sets: answering questions about oneself inaccurately to portrait a different image of oneself to others
Socially desirable direction, look better than we are, limited by embedding questions that measure respondent’s tendency to seem more perfect
Malingering: tendency to make ourselves appear psychologically disturbed with the aim of achieving a clear-cut personal goal
Halo Effect: tendency of ratings of one positive characteristic spill over to influence the ratings of other positive characteristics (pretty privilege)
Horns Effect: ratings of one negative trait spills over to influence the ratings of other negative traits
Advantages: easy to administer, direct, more subtle information regarding emotions captured, self-reports referenced from close individual’s observations
Experimental Design + Example + Draw Process
Permit cause-and-effect inferences by creating differences in participants’ behavior through manipulation of variables.
- Random assignment of participants from random selection sample into groups after we’ve chosen them through random selection
- Experimental Group: receiving manipulation
- Control Group: not receiving manipulation, better with placebo - Manipulation of an independent variable
- Avoid Confounding Variable: variable other than independent that varies between groups. Independent variable must be only difference between groups or there is no way of knowing if it was the independent variable causing the effect - Compare dependent variable averages for relationship
Qualities of Good Experimental Design
- High internal validity (only IV is changing, no confound variables, random assignment),
- temporal precedence,
- most effective the larger the same to balance out random effects
Pitfalls of Experimental Design + Solutions
- Placebo Effect: beneficial effect from expectations, not from treatment itself→ placebo given to control group so both groups are blind to who is in the experimental group
- Experiment Expectancy Effect: involuntary & unconscious cuing of researcher impacting the participants behavior, threat to internal validity
- Demand Characteristics: cue participants pick up on that allow them to generate guesses regarding the experimenter’s hypotheses causing them to act differently to align with what the experimenter wants → disguise purpose of the study, distractor or filler unrelated to question of interest
To be more socially desirable, to help or to mess up experiment - Double Blind: neither researcher performing or participant know what is the correct answer or purpose
- Deception: mask the true purpose of experiment with seemingly unrelated methods
3 Ethical Principles
- Informed Consent
- Concern for Welfare/Protection from Harm & Discomfort
- Justice/Selecting Participants
How to calculate mean, median, mode, range
Mean= (1+2+3)/3
Median= put in order, middle, if two find mean
Mode= most occurring score
Range = max-min
What is Standard Deviation & Descriptive Statistics?
Standard deviation = 34.1% of range of mean scores, purpose is to find the validity of data, how bunched up the data is.
Summarize mass of data points to help others understand & interpret & help make appropriate calculations & visual displays
- In experiments: compares averages between groups
- In correlation (r) designs: describes the magnitude and size of the relationship between two variables
What to look out for in psychology in media
- Excessive sharpening (exaggeration of central message)
- Leveling (minimizing outer details) which make good stories & a misleading picture
- Pseudosymmetry: appearance of a scientific controversy where none exists
Informed Consent
Participants should be informed of all aspects that might influence their decision to participate.
1. Purpose of study
2. Procedure(s)
3. Risks + benefits
4. Right to refuse before or terminate during
6. Compensation
7. Protection of confidentiality
8. Contact info for questions about study or ethics
9. Ensure autonomy with no coercion of participants decision
10. Deception & Debriefing: participants should be informed of deceptive techniques that would not cause physical or emotional pain and debriefed about true nature of the research as soon as possible after
Concern for Welfare/Protection from Harm & Discomfort
Reasonable steps must be taken to maximize benefits & minimize harm
- Benefits: education, skills, treatment, material, betterment of society
- Consequence of not doing research, is the harm worth it
- Risk of participation: physical/psychological/emotional harm, social risk, vulnerability, confidentiality
Justice/Selecting Participants
Treat people fairly & equitably by distributing benefits & burdens of participating in research
- Inclusion or exclusion must be scientifically justifiable
- Group studied must receive the benefits from the study
- One group cannot bear all the burden
Quasi-Experiments + Example + Draw Process
Experiment in which subjects are selected based on pre-existing values of the independent variable.
How does Squid Game violate all principles of ethics?
- Informed Consent: participants are not informed of all aspects of study, especially parts that would influence their decision to participate: purpose risks, emotional/psychological/physical harm, procedures, coercion, etc.
- Harm is not minimized, all except 1 participant dies.
- Only the poor & vulnerable bear all the burden of research.
