Psych chapter 1 terms to know Flashcards
Explain, briefly, why psychology is more than just common sense.
Psychology is the scientific study of the brain, mind and behaviour. Generally common sense can be applied for understanding concepts of psychology but in many instances we may fall prey to naïve realism.
Describe naïve realism.
Seeing is believing, we see the world as is and can fall into a plethora of traps such as believing the earth is flat or that our opinion is unbiased in comparison to someone else’s, differing, opinion.
What is psychology?
Psychology is the scientific study of the mind, brain and behaviour.
What are levels of analysis?
Levels of analysis stretch from molecules to brain structures, feelings and emotions to social and cultural influences.
Define multiply determined.
As in determined by multiple factors leading to the point that single variable explanations are often wrong. (at least in psychology)
What is a scientific theory?
Explanation for a large number of findings in the natural world, including the psychological world. Offers an account that ties multiple findings together and can generate predictions regarding new data that hasn’t been observed.
What is a hypothesis?
A testable prediction.
What is confirmation bias?
The tendency to seek out evidence that supports our beliefs and deny, dismiss, or distort evidence that contradicts them. (You will see what you are looking for)
What is belief perseverance?
tendency to stick to our initial beliefs even when evidence contradicts them.
What is a metaphysical claim?
Assertions about the world that we can’t test. Ex: there is an afterlife.
What is pseudoscience?
A set of claims that seem scientific but aren’t. Lacks the safeguards against confirmation bias and belief perseverance that characterize science.
What is the ad hoc immunizing hypothesis?
An escape hatch or loophole that defenders of a theory use to protect this theory from being disproven.
What is apophenia?
Perceiving meaningful connections among unrelated and even random phenomena.
What is pareidolia?
Seeing meaningful images in meaningless visual stimuli.
What is the terror management theory?
Our awareness of our inevitable demise gives us terror, we cope by adopting cultural world views that reassure us that our lives posses broader meaning and a purpose that extends beyond our brief existence on Earth.
What is scientific skepticism?
The ability to evaluate all claims with an open mind but insist on persuasive evidence before accepting them.
What is critical thinking?
Set of skills for evaluating all claims in an open minded and careful fashion.
What is the correlation-causation fallacy?
The fact that a correlation between two things doesn’t demonstrate a causal connection between them. For example, The decrease in number of pirates correlates with an increase in healthcare in North America. This must be the cause.
What is a variable?
Condition that when tested can show different possible results.
Define falsifiable and how it pertains to a good hypothesis.
Falsifiability is crucial to a good hypothesis because it means that the hypothesis is testable and can be proven right or wrong, depending on the research’s results.
What is a risky prediction? How does it pertain to a good hypothesis?
All good theories stand a great risk of being proven wrong, but escape unscathed.
What is replicability?
The ability for a scientific study to be repeated, either exactly or more commonly with a different subset of conditions (ex: rats to humans), and produce similar results.
What is introspection?
Required trained observers to carefully reflect and report on their mental experiences.Important in structuralism.
What is structuralism?
Early theoretical framework of psychology developed by Edward Bradford titchener which aimed to identify the basic elements, or “structures” of psychological experience.
What is functionalism?
Proponents of functionalism aimed to understand the adaptive purposes, or functions, of psychological characteristics, such as thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.
What is the principle of natural selection?
Developed by Charles Darwin, a theory that explains that certain phenotypic traits are directly selected for due to an increase in relative fitness.
What is behaviourism?
Focuses on uncovering the general principles of learning underlying human and animal behaviour.
What is cognitive psychology?
Focuses not merely on rewards and punishments, but on an organisms’ interpretation of them.
What is cognitive neuroscience?
Examines the relation between brain functioning and thinking.
What is psychoanalysis?
Focuses on internal psychological processes, especially impulses, thoughts, and memories of which we are not aware. Unconscious drives such as sexuality and aggression, are primary influences on behaviour, rather than punishment and reward. (Sigmund Freud)
What is evolutionary psychology?
A discipline that applies Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection to human and animal behaviour. Assumption that many psychological systems serve key adaptive functions.
What is basic research?
Research that examines how the mind works.
What is applied research?
Research that examines how we can use basic research to solve real-world problems.
What is reciprocal determinism?
The fact that we mutually influence each other’s behaviour.
Define emic.
In an emic study, investigators study the behaviour of a culture from the perspective of the “native” or insider.
Define etic.
In an etic study, investigators study the behaviour of a culture from the perspective of an outsider.
What is empiricism?
The premise that knowledge should initially be acquired through observation.
What is peer review?
Review from other scholars in the same field for validity of a scholarly article.
What is lack of self correction? (in what concerns a theory)
Refusal to have a theory altered or disproven.
What is mortality salience?
Model used to test the terror management theory, which studies the extent to which thoughts of death are foremost in our minds.
What are logical fallacies?
Traps in thinking that can lead to mistaken conclusions.
What is an emotional reasoning fallacy?
Error of using our emotions as guides for evaluating the validity of a claim.
What is the bandwagon fallacy?
Error of assuming that a claim is correct just because many people believe it.
What is the “Not me” fallacy?
Error of believing that we’re immune from errors in thinking that afflict other people.
What is the bias blind spot?
People are aware of others’ biases but not their own.
What are opportunity costs, in what concerns pseudoscience?
Pseudoscientific treatments for mental disorders can lead people to forgo opportunities to seek effective treatment.
What is direct harm, in what concerns pseudoscience?
Pseudoscientific treatments sometimes do dreadful harm to those who receive them causing psychological or physical damage.
What is Occam’s razor?
If two explanations account equally well for a phenomenon, we should generally select the simplest of the both.
What is black box psychology?
Associated with behaviourism, we know what goes in and what goes out, but not what happens inside. More objective as a science.
What is cognition?
The term used to describe the mental processes involved in different aspects of thinking.
What is affective neuroscience?
Examines the relationship between brain functioning and emotion.
What are Freudian slips?
Mistakes stemming from the subconscious. Ex: calling a professor mom.
What is fitness?
The extent to which a trait increase sexual reproduction potential.
