Psych 1 - Exam 1 Flashcards
Confirmations Bias
The tendency to test one’s own belief or conjectures by seeking evidence that may confirm or verify them and ignoring evidence that might disconfirm or refute them
Phrenology
A discredited doctrine of mental faculties supposedly located in specific and detectable bumps at the corresponding points on the external skull
Germany, early 19th century
Franz Joseph Gall and Johann Kasper Spurzheim
Franz Joseph Gall
Germany, early 19th century
Known for:
- Phrenology
Three Early Psychologies
- Trained Introspection
- Functionalism
- Psychoanalysis
Trained Introspection
Method by which individuals were taught to carefully observe, analyze, and describe their own experiences
Many early North American psychologists were trained this way
Wilhelm Wundt, Germany, 1879
Wilhelm Wundt
Germany, 1879
Known for:
- Trained Introspection
- Training many North American psychologists
Functionalism
An early psychological approach that emphasized the function or purpose of behavior and consciousness
William James, US, 1896
William James
US, 1896
Known for:
- Functionalism
Psychoanalysis
A theory of personality and method of psychotherapy that emphasizes unconscious motives and conflicts
Sigmund Fraud, Austria, 1896
Sigmund Fraud
Austria, 1896
Known for:
- Psychoanalysis
- Theory that we are torn between the animalistic side of us and the side of us that wants to be a good member of society
5 major theoretical perspectives
- Biological Perspective
- Learning/Behavioral Perspective
- Cognitive Perspective
- Sociocultural Perspective
- Psychodynamics Perspective
Biological Perspective
A psychological approach that emphasizes bodily events and changes associated with actions, feelings, and thoughts
Includes:
- Hormones
- Brain chemistry
- Genes
- Evolutionary Influences
Learning/Behavioral Perspective
A psychological approach that emphasizes how the environment and experience affect a person’s actions
Includes:
- Behaviors
- Social-cognitive learning theories
Cognitive Perspective
A psychological approach that emphasizes mental processes in perception, memory, language, problem solving, and other areas of behavior
Focuses on inferring mental processes from observable behaviors
Sociocultural Perspective
A psychological approach that emphasizes social and cultural influences on behavior
Psychodynamics Perspective
An approach that emphasizes unconscious dynamics within the individual, such as inner forces, conflicts, or the movement of instinctual energy
Rooted in Freud’s psychoanalysis and has evolved into several variations
Critical Thinking
The ability and willingness to assess claim and make objective judgements rather than ones based on emotion and anecodotes
8 Critical Thinking Guidelines
- Ask questions/be willing to make mistakes
- Define your terms precisely
- Examine the evidence
- Analyze and be aware of assumptions and biases
- Avoid emotional reasoning
- Consider other interpretations
- Tolerate uncertainty
- Don’t over simplify but do pick the explanation with the fewest assumptions
Principle of Falsifiability
The principle that a scientific theory must make predictions that are specific enough to expose the theory to the possibility of disconfirmation
Representative Sample
A group of individuals, selected from a population for study, which matches that population on important characteristics such as sex, age, demographic, etc.
Descriptive Method
A method that yields descriptions of behaviors but not necessarily causal explanations
Types of Descriptive Studies
- Case Studies
- Observational Studies
- Psychological Tests
- Surveys
Case Studies
A study which yields a detailed description of a particular individual being studied or treated
Most commonly used by clinicians, but occasionally used by academic researchers
Limitations:
- Limited to a single occurrence
Observational Studies
A study in which researchers carefully and systematically observe and record behavior without interfering with behavior
Guidelines:
- May not expose person
- May not ID person
- May not lead to any negative consequences
- It is best to always get approval after
Types:
Naturalistic Observations and Laboratory Observations
Naturalistic Observations
A study in which researchers observe how people or animals behave in their natural environment
Laboratory Obeservations
A study in which researchers observe how people or animals behave in a more controlled setting
Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA)
An application of principles of learning and especially operant conditioning to behavioral problems in an every day setting
Psychological Tests
Procedures used to measure and evaluate personality traits, emotional states, aptitudes, interests, abilities, and values
Characteristics of a good psychological test:
- Standardization
- Reliability
- Validity
Standardization Test
A test constructed to include uniform procedures for giving and scoring the test
To score tests in a standard way, an individuals’s outcome or score is compared to norms established by testing a large representative sample
Reliability
In test construction, the consistency of test scores from one time and place to another
Can be reliable but not valid
Validity
The ability of a test to measure what it was designed to measure
Can’t be valid unless reliable
Surveys
Questionnaires and interviews that ask people about experiences, attitudes, or opinions
Strengths:
- Get a lot of data quickly
Limitations:
- Not standardized
- Self report measures
- Loaded questions affect answers
- Volunteer bias
Unreliable because:
- People lie
- People change their minds
- People don’t know
Volunteer Bias
Volunteers may differ from those who did not volunteer
Self Selection Biases
A bias that arises in any situation in which individuals select themselves into a group
Order Affect
The order in which you ask questions affects the answer the answerer gives
Correlational Study
A descriptive study that looks for a consistent relationship between two phenomena
Limitations:
Does not show causality
Correlation
A numerical measure of the strength and direction of the relationship between two things
Variables
Characteristics of behavior or experiences that can be measured or described by a numeric scale
Variables are manipulated and assessed in scientific studies
3 Directions of Correlations
- Not correlated
- Positively Correlated
- Negative Correlations
Positively Correlated
An association between increases in one variable and increases in another, or decreases in one variable and decreases in the other
Two variables move together
Goes up to the right on a scatterplot graph
Negative Correlations
An association between increases in one variable and decreases in another
Two variables more apart
Goes down to the right on a scatterplot graph
Confounding Variable / Third Variable Problem
Variables that the researcher failed to control. or eliminate, damaging the internal validity of an experiment
Coefficient of Correlation
The statistic used to express the relationship between to variables; shows how good a predictor one variable is from another
Can range from -1.00 through +1.00
Cross-Sectional Studies
A study in which individuals of different ages are compared at a given time
Benefit:
- Easy way to study the effect of age on a variable
Limitation:
- “Cohort Effects”
Cohort Effects
Describes variations in the characteristics of an area of study over time among individuals who are defined by some shared temporal experience or common life experience such as birth year
Longitudinal Studies
A study in which individuals are followed and periodically assessed over a period of time
Benefits:
- Very powerful form of research
- Elegant
- Lots of data
Limitations:
- Very hard to do
- Takes forever
- Very expressive
- Subjects drop out
Controlled Experiment
A controlled test of a hypothesis (null hypotheses) in which the researcher manipulates one variable to discover its affect on another
Gold standard of research and only way to find causality
Controlled and randomized
Limitations:
- Representative sample
- Experiment Effect
- suddle to fraud?
- Demand Characteristics
Informed consent
Human research subjects must participate voluntarily, and much know enough about a study to make an intelligent decision about whether to participate
Experimental Variables
Independent Variable and Dependent Variable
Independent Variable
A variable that is varied by the experimenter to examine its effects on the dependent variable
At least 2 levels including a Control Group and one or more Experimental Groups
Dependent Variable
A variable that is potentially liable to be influenced by one or more independent variables
Control Condition
A comparison condition in which subjects are not exposed to the same treatment as are those in the experimental condition
Random Assignment
An experimental technique for assigning subjects to different treatment groups preventing bias in these groups
Experimenter effect
Unintended changes in subjects’ behavior due to cues inadvertently given by the experimenter
Prevented with single- and double-blind studies
Confounds
Problems that arise when two or more causal variables are not properly controlled, so that their separate effects on the dependent variable cannot be disentangle
Lethal to experiment
Demand Characteristics
An experimental artifact where participants form an interpretation of the experiment’s purpose and unconsciously change their behavior to fit that interpretation
Descriptive Statistics
Statistics that organize and summarize research data
Examples:
- Arithmetic Mean
- Standard Deviation
Arithmetic Mean
The average value in a data set
Does not provide information about the variability of the responses in a data set
Standard Deviation
The average difference between scores in a data set and the average of that set
Inferential Statistics
Statistical procedures that gives you a probability of if the differences are big enough to matter
Should be less than .05, meaning less than a 5% possibility that what you observed happened by randomness
The most common used are significance tests
Significance Test
A test which shows how likely it is that a study’s results occurred merely by chance
Statistical techniques
Help determine if results are really important
Descriptive Statistics and Inferential Statistics
Effect size
The amount of variance among scores in the study accounted for by the independent variable
Meta-analysis
A procedure for combining and analyzing data from many studies to find the overall affect
