Week 1 INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY

Question 1

What factors impact adjustment to post-secondary education and predict success?

Answer 1

Loneliness: separation from family, high school ect.

Financial stress: faced with debt, the need to reduce expenses, and/or needing to increase income

Class format: university classes large, somewhat impersonal, and have less structure than a typical high school classroom

Freedom: Most students have much more independence. With freedom and flexibility comes the need to regulate key aspects of your life, including sleep, diet, study schedule, and exercise.

Social opportunities: University involves meeting new people. Leads to forming new peer groups and relationships. Choose whether or not to engage in certain recreation activities, and more broadly, how to balance one’s work life and social life.

Personal and emotional problems: Questioning one’s purpose, self-worth, relationships, etc. Can also contribute to emotional turmoil and personal crises

Question 2

Define trigger warnings and describe the existing evidence for why they are not used in Principles of Psychology.

Answer 2

DEFINITION: advanced notifications that notify viewers/readers of particular topics
possibly upsetting that will be mentioned

Not utilised in PSYC100 because:
▪ Often has no positive impact OR negative impact to student well-being
▪ Can lead to the avoidance of course material, thereby hindering knowledge
comprehension
▪Removes the opportunity to experience perceived “triggers”
▪Principle of exposure is a common treatment for PTSD
▪May provide a predisposed negative connotation to a particular topic

Question 3

Strategies to overcoming emotional challenges?

Answer 3

▪ understanding ahead of time that the course
▪ may cover emotionally-draining topics ▪ coping & mental hygiene
▪ self-care techniques

Question 4

What are the key characteristics of the scientific approach?

Answer 4

Systematic observation: observation of the natural world to better understand. Observations are to track and tally data

Hypothesis: observation and theories based on systematic observations

Democracy: Best data wins the argument. Scientists allow open discussions about their observations.

Culmination: Built on previous discoveries and move them farther along the path of knowledge.

Question 5

What are the ethical guidelines that psychologists follow?

Answer 5

Informed consent:
participants should know what the study is about and understand what will happen to them during the study.

Confidentiality:
Info that researchers learn about the participants must be not made public without participants consent.

Privacy:
Researchers cannot go to participants private areas of life (ie. bedroom, phone & school principles) without them knowing.

Benefits:
good things/outcomes of the study should outweigh the risks.

Deception:
Sometimes misleads the participant about the experiment’s purpose to make sure they don’t alter their behavior which is what they would do if they were to know the true meaning of the study. But, MUST debrief patients/tell them everything you can.

Question 6

How has psychological science improved the world?

Answer 6

Cognitive behavioural therapy:
indicates good and bad treatments for particular illnesses & disorders

Organizational psych:
increasing productivity and safer/more satisfaction in workplaces

Forensic psych:
more fair decisions made when psychological findings considered as eyewitness accounts can be unreliable

Question 7

What is the difference between conclusions based on scientific and everyday inductive reasoning?

Answer 7

Inductive (mostly everyday) - seeing a trend and making a generalization

Deductive (scientific) - taking factual data and making other facts about it

Question 8

Why are scientific conclusions and theories trustworthy, even if they are not able to be proven?

Features of scientific thinking?

Answer 8

Accuracy- explanations and theories match real world observations

Consistency- A theory has a few exceptions

Scope- explains a wide range of phenomena

Simplicity- when there are multiple explanations, the simplest one must be chosen

Fruitfulness- usefulness of a theory guide new research

Falsifiability- capacity for some proposition, statement, theory or hypothesis to be proven wrong

Question 8

Inductive reasoning: DEF

Answer 8

specific observations leading to general conclusion (EX. texted while drove and ran the red light ∴ text while driving is dangerous)

Question 9

Deductive reasoning: DEF

Answer 9

(associated better with proof) use general premise/idea to form a specific concussion (EX. all birds have feathers. Ducks are birds ∴ they have feathers)

Question 10

Representative: DEF

Answer 10

degree to which a sample properly exemplifies (gives good example of) the population
Anecdotal evidence: derived from personal experience (eg. common sense)

Question 11

Null Hypothesis: DEF

Answer 11

statement that two variables are unrelated

Question 12

Alternative hypothesis: DEF

Answer 12

statement that two variables are somehow related

Question 13

Ways research conclusions could go wrong?

Answer 13

Type 1 error & Type 2 error

Question 14

Type 1 error: (DEF)

Answer 14

researcher concludes there IS a relationship but there isn’t. (Rejecting the null hypothesis but it’s true)(saying that the bad implied thing is wrong but its right and there actually isn’t a relationship)

Question 15

Type 2 error: (DEF)

Answer 15

when the data fails to show a relationship between 2 variables that actually do exist. (Null hypothesis is said to be true but actually isn’t)

Question 16

Probability values(p-values): (DEF)

Answer 16

to establish whether something happens by chance. When P-value is less than 0.05, means that probably didnt happen by chance and needs to/can be researched more.

Question 17

What do good scientific theories need?

Answer 17

need to be empirically (observably) tested and possibly falsified

Question 18

Levels of analysis: (DEF)

Answer 18

idea that a single phenomenon may be explained at different levels simultaneously

Question 19

Causality: (DEF)

Answer 19

Determining that one variable affects another

Question 20

Empiricism: (DEF)

Answer 20

all knowledge comes from experience (John Locke & Thomas Reid)

Question 21

Neural impulse: (DEF)

Answer 21

electrochemical signal enables neurons to communicate (Hermann von Helmholtz)
Our senses can deceive us and are not a mirror of the external world

Question 22

Psychophysics: (DEF)

Answer 22

study of relationships between physical stimuli and the human perception of those stimuli (Weber & Fechner)

Question 23

Introspection:

Answer 23

method of focusing on internal processes

Question 24

Consciousness:

Answer 24

awareness of ourselves and environment

Question 25

Structuralism:

Answer 25

elements of the mind/conscious experience

Question 26

Functionalism:

Answer 26

what the mind does/ utility of consciousness

Question 27

Individual differences:

Answer 27

behavioral/cognitive ways people differ from one another

Question 28

Eugenics:

Answer 28

practice of selectively breeding certain desirable traits

Question 29

Gestalt psychology:

Answer 29

attempt to study the unity of experience (Max Wertheimer)

Question 30

Cognitive psychology:

Answer 30

study of mental processes

Question 31

Behaviorism:

Answer 31

study of behavior

Question 32

Flashbulb memory:

Answer 32

highly detailed and vivid memory of an emotionally significant event

Question 33

Scientist-practitioner model:

Answer 33

model of training of professional psychologists that emphasizes the development of bath research and clinical skills

Question 33

Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon:

Answer 33

inability to pull a word from memory even though there is a sensation that the word is available

Question 34

Anecdotal evidence: (DEF)

Answer 34

derived from personal experience (eg. common sense)