PSYCH 104 Midterm 1 Flashcards
What does psychology mean in greek?
Psych - Spirit or soul
ology - the study of something
Psychology (Definition)
The scientific study of the mind and behavior
Mind (Definition)
Refers to the internal states and processes, such as thoughts and feelings that cannot be seen (observed) directly and that must be inferred from observable, measurable, responses
The four goals of psychology (What are they?)
The four goals of psychology:
1. To describe how people and other animals behave
2. To explain and understand the causes of these behaviors
3. To predict how people and animals will behave under certain conditions
4. To control behaviors through knowledge of its causes to enhance human and animal welfare
The Theory of Humourism
The theory of humourism (four categories)
- Black bile (melancholic)
○ Sad, independent, introverted, perfectionist, prudent
- Blood (sanguine)
○ Cheerful, impulsive, charismatic, optimistic, affectionate
- Yellow bile (choleric)
○ Angry, ambitious, energetic, aggressive, jealous, envious
- Phlegm (phlegmatic)
○ Sluggish, relaxed, content, lethargic, sensitive, sentimental
Rene Descartes (Who was he?)
Rene Descartes:
- Philosopher and mathematician
- Argued for a substance dualism
○ Minds and bodies are distinct substances that interact
§ Minds are immaterial
§ Bodies are material
Steven Bankart (Who was he?)
Steven Bankart (1650-1704)
- Essentially wrote a book that defined multiple psychological terms
Wilhelm Wundt (Who was he?)
Wilhelm Wundt
- Established “psychology” as a distinct discipline that was separate from physiology and philosophy
- Opened the first psychological laboratory in 1879
- Believed that psychology should be modeled after physics and chemistry
- Psychology was the study of consciousness
○ Relied on introspection
§ Introspection: the looking into our own minds and reporting what we there discover
Introspection (Definition)
Introspection: the looking into our own minds and reporting what we there discover
Structuralism (definition)
- A school of thought believing that the goal was to analyze basic elements of consciousness and examine how they are related
- Relied heavily on introspection
- Pioneered by:
- Wilhelm Wundt
- Edward Titchener (Wilhelm’s student)
Functionalism
- A school of thought believing that the goal of psychology was to analyze the function of consciousness, not its structure
- Pioneered by:
- William James
○ Inspired by natural selection
○ Consciousness should not be seen as discrete but rather continuous flow
§ Coined term: stream of conciousness
- William James
Psychoanalytics (What is it?)
Psychoanalytics: Pioneered by Sigmund Freud - early 1900s
- Developed a treatment known as psychoanalysis
○ Attempted to explain personality motivation and mental disorders by focusing on unconscious determinants of behavior
§ Unconscious: thoughts memories and desires that are below the surface of awareness and exert influence over behavior
□ Cannot be perceived
□ Cannot be observed objectively or subjectively
Occam’s razor
Occam’s razor:
- A principle that states that when we are confronted with two explanations that explain everything equally well the most parsimonious is the one we choose correct
○ The one we choose is the one that makes the least amount of new instructions
○ Example: a door slammed and one of you thinks it’s a ghost the other thinks it’s the wind
§ The ghost is the less parsimonious answer
§ The wind is more parsimonious (we choose this)
The Behavioralist Perspective (What is it?)
The behavioral perspective: john B Watsons - mid 1900s
- He worked with animals
- Psychology as the behaviorist views it as purely objective experimental branch of natural science
- He believed that most perspectives of the time were incoherent or wrong
- The theoretical goal is prediction and control of behavior
Behaviorism (What is it about?)
Behaviorism: theorhetical orientation that science should study for its own sake, it is also a philosophy however.
- There are three types of behaviorism
○ Methodological (Watsons)
§ Often called SR psychology
§ Relied heavily on Pavlovian conditioning
○ Radical behaviorism
○ Teleological behaviorism
- Its growth in popularity was greatly influenced by Ivan Pavlov’s work on condition reflexes
- Animal research was greatly beneficial to behavioral research
○ This is because we could exert massive experimental control
B.F. Skinner (What did he do?)
B.F. Skinner: further enhanced behaviorisms prominent role in psychology
- Discovered operant conditioning
- Created new experimental methods
- Made philosophical contributions to behaviorism as a philosophy of science
- (He never viewed himself as a psychologist)
The humanistic prespective (What was it?)
The humanistic prespective: the other way of believing at the time
- Pioneered by, Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow
○ Essentially highlights that humans are greater than the sum of their parts and we are often driven by their own meaning (not just a biological product like behaviorism saw)
○ Emphasizes
§ Conscious thought
§ Freedom
§ Choice
§ Self-actualization
§ Reaching ones individual potential
The cognitive perspective (What was it?)
The cognitive perspective
- Cognitive psychology
○ An approach to scientific psychology that encourages psychologists to infer unobservable constructs on the basis of observable phenomena
○ Cognition is derived from the Latin verb “Cognito” which means “to think”
The biological perspective (What is it?)
The biological perspective
- Focuses on how brain processes and other bodily functions regulate behavior
○ Example:
§ Do certain brain regions have certain specialized functions?
§ What is the tole of genetics in determining behavior
- Has many subdomains
○ Neuroscience
○ Behavioral neuroscience
○ Cognitive neuroscience
○ Behavioral genetics
○ Brain chemistry
Sociostructural psychology (What is it?)
- Sociostructural psychology:
○ An area of research that focuses on how social and cultural aspects of the environment influence behavior
○ Cultural determinants of behavior had not been rigorously studied in the past
§ Recruited university student populations out of convenience
□ Culturally, intellectually, and economically homogenous
§ Also refered to as social psychology
What are the two biggest fields of psychology research?
Research area in psychology:
- Developmental psychology
○ Focuses on understanding human development across the lifespan
○ Primarily concerned with childhood development but also examines adolescence, adulthood, and old age
- Psychometrics
○ Concerned with the development of psychological tests to allow for assessment of aspects of a persons psychology
Naïve realism (Definition)
Naïve realism: the belief that we see the world precisely as it is
- It is flawed as if we believed this we would still believe the world was in fact flat
The scientific method (Definition)
The scientific method: a method to gather knowledge
- Science: from Latin Scientia “knowledge, a knowledge, expertness”
Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (Hospital dude)
The scientific method
- Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis
○ Hungarian physician
○ Worked at the Vienna general hospital
§ Two maternity wards
□ Both were equal in treatment
§ One contained a much higher mortality rate
The scientific method (5 steps)
The scientific method
1. Identify the question of interest
2. Gather information and formulate a testable hypothesis
3. Design a study that can test the hypothesis
4. Analyze the data and draw a tentative conclusion
5. Report the findings and ask further questions
Falsifiability (Definition)
Falsifiability
- A hypothesis is falsifiable if it is capable of being disproved
Deductive argument/Statement (Definition)
An argument in which the conclusion forms from the premises
Inductive argument/Statement (Definition)
An argument in which it is improbable that the conclusion is false given the premises are true
Mode (Definition)
The most frequently occuring number
Median (Definition)
The middle number in a set of data
Mean (Definition)
All numbers added up then divided by amount of numbers
Descriptive research (Definition)
Attempts to explain why something happens using definitions and describing what’s going on
Naturalistic observation (Definition)
Naturalistic observation:
- Recording behavior in real world settings without trying to manipulate the situation
○ Have high external validity
○ Cant make causal inferences
○ Observation can effect behaviors (reactivity)
External validity (Definition)
- External validity:
○ The extent to which we can generalize findings to real world settings
Case studies (Definition)
- Case studies
○ A research design that examines one (or a few) person in depth over an extended amount of time
○ Useful for existence proofs
§ Demonstration that a given psychological phenomena can occur
○ Provides info about rate phenomena that cant be studied
§ Example: Phineas gage - hit with a steel bar and lived
○ Highly subjective
○ Cant establish causation
○ Often relies on indirect assessments and it prone to bias
Anecdotes (definition)
- Anecdotes: a short, often interesting or amusing personal experience
- Example: i knew a woman who practiced yoga daily for three weeks and hasn’t had a single day of depression since
○ Does not establish causation
○ Can be an inaccurate or biased portrayal of events
○ May not be representative
○ May be ignoring contrary claims
ANECDOTES ARE NOT EVIDENCE
- Example: i knew a woman who practiced yoga daily for three weeks and hasn’t had a single day of depression since
Surveys and self reports (Definition)
Surveys and self reports
- Using a questionnaire or interview to gather information about specific aspects of a participants background, experience, or behavior.
- Makes it easy to collect large amounts of data on numerous factors
- Does not establish causation between variables
- There are infinite ways to conduct them and format them
Random sampling (Definition)
Random sampling: a procedure that ensures every person in the population has an equal chance of being chosen to participate
- Need to consider the method in which the survey is administered
○ Example: an email isnt likely to generalize to populations of senior citizens
- Required for generalizable results in any form of research
Interobserver reliability (Definition)
○ Interobserver reliability
§ Two or more people using the same test measure should arrive at the same conclusion (essentially all interpretations of the data should be same as another analyst)
§ They also are called interrater reliability
Correlational design (Definition)
Correlational design
- Used to examine the relationship between two variables
- Relies on the correlation coefficient
○ A measure of the degree to which two variables are related
○ Denoted with r value
○ 0 is no correlation
○ Is between 1 and -1
○ There are different types of correlation
Availability heuristic (Definition)
Availability heuristic: when you estimate the likelihood of an occurrence based on the ease at which it comes to mind
The third variable problem (What is it?)
The third variable problem:
- Two variables may be related to one another (are correlated) only because they are both causally related to a third variable
Observational study (Definition)
- Observational study:
○ we randomly sample two types of people
○ Then we give them a test and observe their performance
Experimental study (Definition)
- Experimental study
○ Randomly assign participants into two different types of people
○ Then we give them a test and observe their performance
Error bars (What can they illustrate)
Error bars: they are often used to illustrate
- 95% confidence interval
- Standard error of the mean
- Interquartile range
- Standard deviation
- Range
- Prediction intervals
Statistical significance (What is it?)
Statistical significance (p values)
- Same as stats
Confounding variable (Definition)
- Confounding variable: any difference between the experimental and control groups other than the independent variable
Random assignment (Definition)
- Random assignment: randomly sorting subjects into the experiments groups
Blinding (Definition)
Blinding: a subject is unaware of what group (experimental or control) they are in
Experimenter expectancy effect (Definition)
- Experimenter expectancy effect: a phenomenon in which a researchers hypothesis leads them to unintentionally bias the outcome of a study
Clever Hans (What was he?)
- Clever Hans: a horse that could do math
○ It was later discovered that this was actually because of his owners physical touch as it did not work with anyone else
Demand charactaristics (Definition)
Demand charactaristics: cues that participants pick up from a study that allow them to generate guesses regarding the researchers hypothesis
Little albert experiment (What was it?)
Little albert
- Using a 9 month old baby
○ Using noises to strike fear and other emotions into a baby
○ Used some controls
○ Albert was not reconditioned to not be afraid
Mother did not consent
The Monster study (What was it?)
The monster study
○ Recruited 22 children
○ One group was told they had no stutter
○ Other group told they had stutter
Children weren’t debriefed
The Milgram experiment (What was it?)
- The Milgram experiment
○ Used one experimenter a teacher and one learner
Gave a shock with every wrong answer
The bystander effect (What was it?)
The bystander effect
○ Someone was murdered but nobody responded
○ Found that it took more time to respond when there are more people present
The Stanford prison experiment (What was it?)
The Stanford prison experiment
○ 24 male college students
○ Half were given inmate status
○ Half were guard status
○ People were beat and harmed in other ways
○ Concluded that people will often internalize their roles
Research ethics board (What are they and do they do?)
- Research ethics board
○ A committee of researchers and officials at an institution charged with the protection of human research participants
§ Refered to as institutional review boards (IRBs) in the USA
○ Ensure that researchers abide by the rules of the tri-council policy statement: ethical conduct for research involving humans
○ REBs function:
§ Weigh risks to volunteers against the benefit of research
§ Requires that volunteers give consent
Nuremburg code (What did it stand for?)
- an experiment should be designed so its performance on animals and based on historical results should be no different when performed on humans
