Unit 1: Scientific Foundations

Question 1

• Set up the first psychological laboratory in an apartment near the university at Leipzig, Germany
• Trained subjects in introspection. Subjects were asked to accurately record their cognitive reactions to simple stimuli.

Answer 1

Wilhelm Wundt (1832 - 1920)

Question 2

Technique used by Wilhelm Wundt who asked subjects to accurately record their cognitive reactions to simple stimuli.

Answer 2

Introspection

Question 3

Published The Principles of Psychology, the science’s first textbook.

Answer 3

William James (1842 - 1910)

Question 4

• Theory described by William James
• Examines how the mental processes described by William Wundt function in our lives.

Answer 4

Functionalism

Question 5

• Gestalt psychologist
• Gestalt psychology tried to examine a person’s who total experience because the way we experience the world is more than just an accumulation of various perceptual experiences.
• Argued against dividing human thought and behavior into discrete structures.
• Demonstrated that the whole experiences is often more than just the sum of the parts of the experience.

Answer 5

Max Wertheimer (1880 - 1943)

Question 6

Believed he discovered the unconscious mind - a part of our mind over which we do not have conscious control that determines, in part, how we think and behave.

Answer 6

Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939)

Question 7

• Proposed that we must examine the unconscious mind through dream analysis, word association, and other psychoanalytic therapy techniques if we are to truly understand human thought and behavior.
• Has been criticized for being unscientific and creating unverifiable theories.

Answer 7

Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939)

Question 8

First woman to earn a Ph. D. in psychology (1894)

Answer 8

Margaret Floy Washburn (1871 - 1939)

Question 9

• Declared that psychology must limit itself to observable phenomena, not unobservable concepts like the unconscious mind, if it is to be considered a science.
• Wanted to establish behaviorism as the dominant paradigm of psychology.
• Behaviorists maintains that psychologists should look at only behavior and causes of behavior - stimuli (environmental events) and responses (physical reactions) - and not concern themselves with describing elements of consciousness.

Answer 9

John Watson (1878 - 1958)

Question 10

• Performed poineering conditioning experiments on dogs.
• Performed experiments that led to the development of the classical conditioning model of learning.

Answer 10

Ivan Pavlov (1849 - 1936)

Question 11

• Expanded the basic ideas of behaviorism to include the idea of reinforcement and punishment - environmental stimuli that either encourage or discourage certain responses.
• Helped extablish and popularize the operant conditioning model of learning.

Answer 11

B.F. Skinner (1904 - 1990)

Question 12

• Student of William James
• Became president of the American Psychological Association (1905)
• Completed her doctoral studies but Harvard refused to award her a Ph. D. because, at the time they did not grant doctoral degrees to women.

Answer 12

Mary Whiton Calkins (1863 - 1930)

Question 13

• Theorists Abraham Maslow (1908 - 1970) and Carl Rogers (1902 - 1987), stressed individual choice and free will. This contrasts with the deterministic behaviorists who theorize that all behaviors are caused by past conditioning.
• We choose most of out behaviors and that these choices are guided by physiological, emotional, or spiritual needs.

Answer 13

Humanist Perspective

Question 14

• Described by Sigmund Freud
• The unconscious mind - a part of out mind that we do not have conscious control over or access to - controls much of out throughs and actions.
• Look for impulses or memories pushed into the unconscious mind through repression.
• Think we must examine out unconscious mind through dream analysis, word association, and other psychoanalytic thearapy techniques in order to understand human thought and behavior.

Answer 14

Psychoanalytic Perspective

Question 15

• Explains human thought and behavior stristly in term of biological processes.
• Believe that human cognition and reactions might be caused by effects of out genes, hormones, and neurotransmitters in the brain or by a combination of all three.

Answer 15

Biopsychology (or Neuroscience Perspective)

Question 16

• Examine human thoughts and actions in terms of natural selection
• Some psychological traits mught be advantageous for survival and that these traits would be passed down from the parents to the next generation.
• Similar to the Biopsychology Perspective

Answer 16

Evolutionary (or Darwinian) Perspective

Question 17

• Explain human thought and behavior in terms of conditioning (learning)
• Look strictly at observable behaviors and what reaction organisms get in response to specific behaviors.
• Dominant school of thought in psychology from the 1920s through the 1960s.

Answer 17

Behavioral Perspective

Question 18

Examine human thought and behavior in terms of how we interpret, process, and remember environmental events.

Answer 18

Cognitive Perspective

Question 19

• Look at how our thoughts and behaviors vary from people living in other cultures.
• Emphasize the influence culture has on the way we think and act.
• Interested in the emphasis some cultures place on the value of the group (collectivism) or the individual (individualism)

Answer 19

Social-Cultural (Sociocultural) Perspective

Question 20

• Tendancy upon hearing about research findings (and many other things) to think that they knew it all along.
• After an event occurs, it is relatively easy to explain why it happened. The goal of scientific research, however, is to predict what will happen in advance.
• Someone ready a study indicating that married people tend to live longer. This person says, “That’s obvious! Everyone already knew that!”

Answer 20

Hindsight Bias

Question 21

Research that psychologists conduct to solve practical problems, such as investigating how people can best resolve personality conflicts at work.

Answer 21

Applied Research

Question 22

• research that explores questions that are of interest to psychologists but are not intended to have immediate, real world applicaitons.
• An investigation into which areas of the brain are involved in seeing color.

Answer 22

Basic Research

Question 23

• A statement that expresses a relationship between two variables
• In an experimental hypothesis, the dependent variable depends on the independent variable. In other words, a change in the independent vatiable would produce a change in the independent variable.
• Example: Hypothesis = watching violent television program makes people more aggressive. IV = television violence DV = aggression
• In testing a hypothesis, researchers manipulate the independent variable and measure the dependent variable.

Answer 23

Hypothesis

Question 24

• Aims to explain some phenomenon and allows researchers to generate testable hypotheses with the hope of collecting data that supports it.
• Hypotheses often grows out of this.

Answer 24

Theory

Question 25

• Explanation of how variables are measured
• Two variables need to be defined in the hypothesis

Answer 25

Operational Definitions

Question 26

• Must be shown for good research
• Research is this when it measures what the researcher set out to measure; it is accurate

Answer 26

Validity

Question 27

• Research is this when it can be replicated; it is consistent
• If the researcher conducted the same research in the same way, the researcher would get similar results.

Answer 27

Reliability

Question 28

• The individuals on whom the research is conducted are called participants (or subjects), and the process by which participants are selected is called this.
• To select this, first identify the population from which the sample will be selected. The population includes anyone or anything that could possibly be selected to be in this. The goal in selecting this is that it represents a larger population.
• Random selection means that every member of the population has an equal chance of being selected. Random selection increases the likelihood that this represents the population and that ine can generalize the findings to the larger population.

Answer 28

Sampling

Question 29

• The group from which the sample is selected
• This includes anyone or anything that could possibly be selected to be in the sample.
• The goal in selecting a sample is that it represents a larger one of these.

Answer 29

Population

Question 30

• A method of selecting a sample from a population.
• Every member of the population has an equal chance of being selected. This increases the likelihood that the sample represents the population and that one can generalize the findings to the larger population.

Answer 30

Random Selection

Question 31

• A process that allows a researcher to ensure that the sample represents the population on some criteria, such as age or race.
• Example: A researcher thinks that participants of different racial groups might respond differently, they would want to make sure that each race is represented in the sample in the same proportion that it appears in the overall population.

Answer 31

Stratified Sampling

Question 32

• The only research method that can show a causal relationship.
• Allows the researcher to manipulate the IV and control for confounding variables.
• Compare at least two groups: experimental group and control group that differ based on the independent variable.

Answer 32

Experiment

Question 33

• Any difference between the experimental and control conditions, except for the independent variable, that might affect the dependent variable.
• An experiment allows the researcher to manipulate the independent variable and control for confounding variables.

Answer 33

Confounding Variables

Question 34

• The process by which participants are put into either an experimental or a control group.
• A random one of these means that each participant has an equal chance of being placed into any group. It limits the effects of confounding variables based on differences between people.
• Using a random one of these diminished the chance that the participants in the two groups differ in any meaningful way.

Answer 34

Assignment

Question 35

• The unconscious tendency for researchers to treat members of the experimental and control groups differently to increase the chance of confirming their hypothesis.
• Not a conscious act. If a researcher purposely distorts their data, it is called fraud.
• Using double-blind procedure can eliminate this.

Answer 35

Experimenter Bias