Psychology

Question 1

What is hindsight bias?

Answer 1

Hindsight bias is a “I knew it all along” kind of bias. It’s where the person believes the outcome is obvious or more predictable than it was.

Question 2

What is Psychology?

Answer 2

Psychology is the study of mental processes and behaviour.

Question 3

What is a theory?

Answer 3

A theory organizes and explains various observations and predicts outcomes.

Question 4

Why did structularlism not work out?

Answer 4

The method involved a lot of introspection to the point where it became too subjective. Also, psychologists cannot observe our thoughts and feelings.

Question 5

What did Freudian figure about our personalities?

Answer 5

He figured that our personalities are shaped by unconscious motives.

Question 6

William James proposed what kind of different question?

Answer 6

In functionalism, he proposed the question of why we think and feel. He focused on the function of behaviour and defined Psychology as the science of mental life.

Question 7

Discovered by Freud, what is the talking cure?

Answer 7

The talking cure is when the more you freely associate the more your symptoms decrease.

Question 8

What is operationalizing?

Answer 8

Operationalizing is when you figure out how to ask general questions about your subject, and you turn it into a measurable, testable proposition.

Question 9

What’s a hypothesis?

Answer 9

A hypothesis is a testable statement or predication about the relationship between two or more variables.

Question 10

Why is it important to use clear language?

Answer 10

So that other scientists can replicate the experiment.

Question 11

What’s the problem with case studies and the benefit?

Answer 11

By their nature, case studies cannot be replicated so they run the risk of over-generalizing, but they are good at showing us what can happen and end up framing questions for more extensive and generalized studies.

Question 12

What is naturalistic observation and what’s its con?

Answer 12

Naturalistic observation is where scientists watch their subject in their natural environment without controlling any aspect of it. Naturalistic observers are great at describing behaviour but limited at explaining it.

Question 13

Is correlation causation?

Answer 13

Correlation is not causation, correlation predict the possibility of cause-and-effect relations but they cannot prove them.

Question 14

What is an independent and dependant variable?

Answer 14

Independent variables are what you change, dependant variables is what you measure, and is affected by the independent variable.

Question 15

What do experiments do?

Answer 15

Experiments allow investigators to isolate different effects, by manipulating an independent variable, and keeping other variable constant.

Question 16

How many groups does an experiment need?

Answer 16

They need two groups, the experimental group which gets manipulated, and the control group which does not get manipulated

Question 17

What are the parts of a neuron and what do they do?

Answer 17

The cell body is the neuron’s life support, dendrites receive messages from other neurons, and the axon is the talker

Question 18

When do neurons transmit signals?

Answer 18

When stimulated by sensory input or being triggered by other neurons

Question 19

How are neurotransmitters released?

Answer 19

An action potential runs down to the end of an axon, and activates chemical messengers that jump the synaptic gap onto the receptor sites of the receiving neuron

Question 20

What is the endocrine system?

Answer 20

The endocrine system is the body’s slow chemical communication system; a set of glands that secrete hormones

Question 21

What can some neurotransmitters be?

Answer 21

Both inhibitory and excitatory

Question 22

Are Hormones like Neurotransmitters?

Answer 22

Not in the fact that they tend to linger, and that explains why it takes time to calm down.

Question 23

What do hormones help with?

Answer 23

attraction, appetite, and aggression

Question 24

Multiple sclerosis is what?

Answer 24

a chronic disease involving damage to sheaths of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, leading to lack of muscle control.

Question 25

What’s the feedback loop for your endocrine system?

Answer 25

There is a feedback loop where your nervous system directs your endocrine system which in turn directs your nervous system

Question 26

What do different parts of our brains do?

Answer 26

Different parts of our brain control specific aspects of our Behavior, function in other words is localized

Question 27

What is the peripheral nervous system composed of?

Answer 27

The peripheral nervous system is composed of scout like sensory neurons which gather information and report it back to the central nervous system

Question 28

If you were to stimulate different parts of the brain, what could you control?

Answer 28

Movement, memories, and personality

Question 29

What is sensation?

Answer 29

A bottom-up process where our senses detect stimuli and send the raw data to the brain. Example: Eyes detect light from a screen

Question 30

What is perception?

Answer 30

Perception: A top-down process where the brain organizes and interprets sensory information based on prior experience and context. Example: Recognizing light patterns as an image of a talking person.

Question 31

what is the Absolute Threshold of Sensation?

Answer 31

The minimum stimulus intensity detectable 50% of the time. For example, the faintest sound you sometimes hear represents your hearing threshold.

Question 32

What is signal detection theory?

Answer 32

Detecting weak stimuli depends on the stimulus’s strength and psychological factors like alertness and expectations (e.g., new parents are more attuned to a baby’s cry).

Question 33

What is sensory adaption?

Answer 33

Over time, constant stimuli become less noticeable (e.g., you stop feeling the weight of a watch).

Question 34

what is Difference Threshold (Weber’s Law)?

Answer 34

The smallest noticeable difference between two stimuli depends on their proportion, not the absolute amount. For instance, you’d notice a 10% change in weight regardless of whether you’re lifting a 1-pound or 10-pound object.

Question 35

What’s parallel processing?

Answer 35

The brain analyzes multiple aspects of a sensory input simultaneously.
For vision, this includes processing color, motion, form, and depth in different parts of the visual cortex and combining them to form a cohesive perception of the environment.

Question 36

What is Homunculus?

Answer 36

Homunculus is a depiction of how we’d look like if each of our parts grew in proportion to how much we sense with them.

Question 37

Why can our senses of an old smell make us emotional?

Answer 37

Our sense circuitry connects to the brain’s limbic system, right next to our emotional registry the amygdala and the memory keeper the hippocampus. Which is why our senses can be so intimately tied with our emotions and memories.