Week 1: Psychology as a Science Flashcards
What is psychology?
from the greek psyche (soul) and logos (to study); the scientific study of mind and behaviour
What is the difference between mind and behaviour?
Mind: a set of private events that happen inside a person; thoughts, feelings, perceptions, memories
Behaviour: a set of public events that can be observed by others; the things we say and do
What is philosophical dualism, and who is it associated with?
the view that the mind and body are fundamentally different things (the body is made of material substance and the mind of immaterial substance; a person is a physical container of a nonphysical thing) [Rene Descartes]
What is philosophical materialism, and who is it associated with?
argues that the mind is what the brain does and that they are not two separate entities; the view that all mental phenomena are reducible to physical phenomena [Thomas Hobbes]
What is philosophical realism, and who is it associated with?
the idea that perceptions of the physical world are produced entirely by information from sensory organs; your body uses ONLY tangible info like light bouncing off an object to produce your perception of the object [John Locke]
What is philosophical idealism, and who is it associated with?
the view that perceptions of the physical world are the brain’s interpretation of information from the sensory organs (light bouncing off an object, PLUS all the other information your brain has about the world is used by the brain to interpret what you are seeing) [Immanuel Kant]
What is philosophical empiricism, and who is it associated with?
the view that all knowledge is acquired through experience; a newborn baby is a tabula rasa and then comes to know things by seeing them, interacting with them, or seeing others interact with them [John Locke]
What is philosophical nativism, and who is it associated with?
the view that some knowledge is innate rather than acquired; space, time, causality, and number.You can’t learn these concepts, but you can’t learn anything else without knowing them, so they must come “pre-programmed” [Immanuel Kant]
Who was Herman von Helmholtz, and what did he contribute to psychology?
scientist in physiology and physics, best known in psychology for contributions to understanding vision and hearing; calculated the speed at which nerves transmit information by measuring reaction time differences between touching someone’s toe and their thigh
Who was Wilhelm Wundt, and what did he contribute to psychology?
Helmholtz’ research assistant who taught the first course in scientific/experimental psychology (Germany,1867), published the first psychology textbook (1874), opened the world’s first psychology laboratory (University of Leipzig, 1879); his approach came to be known as structuralism
What is structuralism?
an approach to psychology that attempted to isolate and analyze the mind’s basic elements (like how natural scientists had understood the physical world by breaking it down into cells/molecules/atoms)
Who was Edward Titchener, and what did he contribute to psychology?
Wundt’s student who pioneered “systematic self-observation” (introspection); taught research assistants to “report on the contents of their moment to moment experience” in a “raw” way, not with their interpretation; believed carefully analyzing these reports would let him discover the basic building blocks of subjective experience (ex. The 3 basic dimensions of sensation- pleasure/pain, strain/relaxation, excitation/quiescence)
Who was William James, and what did he contribute to psychology?
introduced to psychology by Wundt but did not believe in structuralism (thought of subjective experience as more a “stream of consciousness” that was useless to try and isolate into basic elements, wanted to know what mental life was for more than what it was like; developed functionalism with John Dewey (1959-1952) and James Agnell (1869-1949)
What is functionalism?
an approach to psychology that emphasized the adaptive significance of mental processes (adaptive significance: James believed consciousness evolved through natural selection as Darwin had described for physical characteristics
What did the physicians Charcot and Janet contribute to psychology?
encountered patients with a variety of symptoms (blindness, paralysis, amnesia) but no obvious physical illness/injury; under hypnosis the patients’ symptoms disappeared and reappeared afterwards (referred to as hysteria, a loss of function that has no obvious physical origin); Freud did a fellowship with Charcot
What did Watson believe about psychology?
psychology would be a real science if it limited itself to studying things people do (observation, like with rats) rather than what they claim to think/feel; developed behaviourism
What is behaviourism?
an approach to psychology that restricts scientific inquiry to observable behaviour
What did B.F. Skinner contribute to psychology?
inspired by Watson and Pvalov, created the “Skinner Box” in which a rat had to pull a lever for food and the frequency of lever presses were recorded; the rat would first accidentally press the lever and get food then gradually start pressing the lever on purpose (learned to operate on their environments as opposed to monitor them like pavlov’s dogs)
What is the principle of reinforcement?
any behaviour that is rewarded will be repeated and any behaviour that isn’t won’t (rats who didn’t get food when pressing the lever wouldn’t press the lever)
What did Max Wertheimer contribute to psychology?
did experiments about how people percieve motion in which two dots flashed on a screen, one after the other; when there was a longer time between flashes people said there were to separate dots but when there was about 1/5th of a second less time they percieved it to be 1 dot that had moved; “illusory motion” like this happens becase the mind has theories about how the world works (ex. When something is in one place and then instantly in another, it probably moved; same idea as philosophical idealism). Wertheimer concluded that physical stimuli are just 1 part of a perceptual experience and that the whole experience is more than the sum of its parts
What is Gestalt psychology?
an approach to psychology that emphasized the way in which the mind creates perceptual experience (Wertheimer; Gestalt = whole in German)
What did Frederic Bartlett contribute to psychology?
discovered that, when asked to read a story and then recall it minutes to years later, people often remembered things that didn’t happen (what they expected to read rather than what they actually read; tendency became more pronounced with the passage of time)
What did Jean Piaget contribute to psychology?
concluded that the mind has theories about how the world works, but that children have not yet learned these theories and so they see the world in a fundamentally different way than adults do (ex. Children under 6 or 7 believing that when a ball of clay changes shape it also changes mass; a “log” has more clay than a ball of equal mass)
What is developmental psychology?
the study of the ways in which psychological phenomena change other the lifespan (Piaget, Vygotsky 1896-1934)
Who was Kurt Lewin, and what did he contribute to psychology?
fled Europe while Hitler was in power in the 1930s and went to America; started the Institure for Group Dynamics to study leadership, communication, attitude change, racial prejudice. Believed “behaviour is not a function of the environment, but of the person’s subjective construal of the environment”; responses depend more on what a person thinks of a stimuli than the actual stimuli itself
What is social psychology?
the study of the causes and consequences of sociality (Lewin)
What did Solomon Asch contribute to psychology (what “effect” did he describe)?
told people about either a man who was “envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious, and intelligent” or “intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, envious”; people liked the second man more. PRIMACY EFFECT = the mind uses the earlier words in the list to interpret the later ones (so he’s intelligent and industrious… stubborn probably just means he sticks to his principles)
What critiques did Noam Chomsky have of behaviourist principles of learning?
- children create new sentences they have never heard before using grammar; there are infinite ways to create a sentence but only some are right, and it is a statistical improbability that children would put the right words together by chance
- “If the study of language is limited in these ways, it seems inevitable that major aspects of verbal behaviour will remain a mystery”
What was ENIAC?
first general purpose digital computer, built in 1945; gave psychologists permission once again to think about how the mind works (you can see how a computer “thinks”; it contains circuits, etc. And not a soul that from the outside seem to create thought. Why couldn’t there be an explanation like this for the brain?) if the brain is hardware, the mind is software
What did John Garcia contribute to psychology?
noticed rats associated the food they recently ate (developed an aversion) with symptoms of radiation sickness, but never a light/buzzer/etc. According to Pavlov/behaviourism in general any two stimuli should be able to be paired; it wasn’t supposed to matter if it made sense. Garcia concluded that organisms evolve to respond to particular stimuli in a particular way; they are biologically prepared to learn some associations more easily than others
What did E.O. Wilson contribute to psychology?
wrote a book in 1975 supporting Garcia’s idea, using many areas of science as evidence, that social behaviour is shaped by natural selection; in the final chapter he mentioned the possible application ot humans, which got criticism like he was offering a biological justification for racism/sexism (he wasn’t) but also got interest from psychologists who thought the best way to understand the mind might be to know the specific problems it was “designed” to solve
Who was Donald Hebb, and what phrase did he coin related to neuroscience?
worked with Penfield; one of the first grad students of McGill’s department of psychology; “neurons that fire together wire together” (learning and memory)
What is the difference betwen cognitive and behavioural neuroscience?
Cognitive neuroscience: study of the relationship between the brain and the mind, especially in humans
Behavioural neuroscience: study of the relationship between the brain and behaviour, especially in non-human animals
What did Wilder Penfield contribute to psychology?
founded the Montreal Neurological Institute in the 1920s, pioneered the surgical removal of brain tissue to relieve seizure disorders; 1891-1976; discovered that stimulating different areas of the brain in awake patients brought different mental functions and behaviours
Who was Brenda Milner, and what did she contribute to psychology?
studied under Hebb; most well known for the discovery of the basis of long-term memory in the hippocampus
What is culture?
the values, traditions, and beliefs shared by a particular group of people; can be in terms of nationalist, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, religion, occupation, socioeconomic status, and any other dimension on which people differ
What is anthropology?
the study of human societies and cultures
What is cultural psychology?
the study of how culture influences mental life; research the in the last few decades have shown the influences to be profound (ex. Westerners processing visual info analytically [more in the foreground] due to an individualistic society and Easterners processing info holistically [more in the background] due to a collectivist society
Who founded the APA?
William James and 6 other American psychologists
Which field do most PhD psychologists work in?
Clinical psychology
What is dogmatism?
peoples’ tendency to cling to their beliefs and assumptions
What is the scientific method?
A procedure for using empirical evidence to establish facts; a set of rules for how we observe reality
What are scientific theories?
hypothetical explanations of natural phenomena; good theories give rise to hypotheses that could be falsified
What is a hypothesis?
a falsifiable prediction made by a theory
What 3 qualities make people hard to study?
- People are complex
- People are variable (no two people do, say, think, or feel the exact same things)
- People are reactive (people think, feel, and act differently when they are observed)
What two things must we do before we measure something?
- Define the property we want to measure
2. Find a way to detect that property
What is an operational definition?
a description of a property in measurable terms (ex. Happiness’ operational definition may be “a person’s self-assessment”, “the amount of dopamine in a person’s brain”, or “the number of times a person smiles in 1 hour”)
What is construct validity?
the extent to which the thing being measured adequately characterizes the property (ex. Smiling is a pretty good indicator of happiness, or at least better than “number of chocolates eaten” or “number of words spoken”)
What two things make a good detector of a property?
- Power: a detector’s ability to detect the presence of differences or changes in the magnitude of a property
- Reliability: a detector’s ability to detect the absence of differences or changes in the magnitude of a property
[A good detector detects differences/changes in the magnitude of a property when they exist (power), but not when they don’t (reliability)]
What are demand characteristics?
those aspects of an observational setting that cause people to behave as they think someone else wants or expects (ex. If a researcher asks if you think it’s wrong to cheat on exams, you’ll probably say yes)
What 3 ways can we avoid demand characteristics?
- Naturalistic observation
- Privacy and control
- Unawareness
What is observer bias?
the tendency for observers’ expectations to influence both what they believe they observed and what they actually observed
What is a double-blind study?
a study in which neither the researcher nor the participant knows how the participants are expected to behave (ex. If studying how often people smile when pop vs hip hop music is on, the participants are not told what is being observed and research assistances are made to wear noise-cancelling headphones; neither group has expectations for behaviour)
What is a normal distribution?
a mathematically defined distribution in which the frequency of measurements is highest in the middle and decreases symmetrically in both directions; often called the bell curve, also called a Gaussian distribution
What are descriptive statistics?
brief summary statements that capture the essential information from a frequency distribution; tells us about our sample
What are the 2 common types of descriptive statistics?
Central tendency: statements about the value of the measurements that tend to lie near the centre/midpoint of the frequency distribution; when a friend describes that she has been doing pretty well, the approximate location of the midpoint
Variability: statements about the extent to which the measurements in a frequency distribution differ from each other (ex. A friend having “ups and downs”)
What are the 3 most common descriptions of central tendency?
- Mode (value of the most frequently observed measurement)
- Mean (average value of all the measurements)
- Median (the value that is in the middle; greater than or equal to half the measurements and greater than or equal to the other half)
What are the 2 most common descriptions of variability?
Range: the value of the largest measurement in a frequency distribution minus the value of the smallest measurement (small = less variability, large = more variability); values are metric specific
Standard Deviation: a statistic that describes how each of the measurements in a frequency distribution differs from the mean; an estimate of how far, on average, the various measurements are from the centre of the distribution; converts our range into standard units (not metric specific)
What is a positive correlation?
when two variables have a “more is more” relationship (ex. More wealth is associated with more health)
What is a negative correlation?
when two variables have a “more is less” relationship (ex. More health is associated with less poverty)
What is a correlation coefficient?
a mathematical measure of both the direction and strength of a correlation, symbolized by the letter r; r has a limited range (ex. Hours of sleep can exist in the range of 0-24; any numbers outside that are meaningless)
What is a perfect positive correlation?
every time the value of one variable increases by a certain amount, the value of the second variable also increases by that amount (r = 1)
What is a perfect negative correlation?
every time the value of a variable increases by a certain amount, the value of the second variable decreases by that amount (r = -1)
What are natural correlations?
the correlations we observe in the world around us
What is the third variable problem?
the fact that the natural correlation between two variables cannot be taken as evidence of a causal relationship between them because a third variable might be causing them both; observing a natural correlation between two variables can never tell us about whether there is a causal relationship
What is experimentation?
a technique for establishing the causal relationship between variables; if there are 3 possible causes of a correlation, we can eliminate two and the one that remains must be the real cause; uses either manipulation or random assignment
What is manipulation when it comes to experimentation?
a technique for determining the causal power of a variable by actively changing its value (ex. If your internet is slow in the evening when your roommate is playing their xbox, you could change whether the xbox is off or on to see how it impacts the internet speed)
What are the steps of experimentation?
- Manipulate: the variable that is manipulated in an experiment is called the independent variable; a manipulation creates at least 2 conditions
- Measure: the variable that is measured in an experiment is called the dependent variable
- Compare: compare the value of the variable in one condition with the value of the variable in the other; if the values differ in overage we know that changes to the independent variable caused changes to the value of in dependant variable
What is self-selection?
a problem that occurs when anything about a participant determines the participant’s condition (ex. letting children decide which video game to play; those who chose the violent video game may have a tendency to be aggressive in the first place, may have different home environments than those who choose the non-violent game, etc.)
What is random assignment?
a procedure that assigns participants to a condition by chance (Ex. Flipping a coin; the children in the two conditions will, on average, be the same in terms of every imaginable variable except the one we manipulated- which video game they play- and so that variable must be the only cause of difference in average aggressiveness)
What is the issue with random assignment?
chance is not guaranteed to make things equal; We can never know if random assignment has failed (the groups are not equal/average, by chance), but we can calculate the odds that random assignment has failed each time we conduct an experiment; the results of an experiment are generally not accepted unless the calculation suggests there is a less than 5% chance that those results would have occurred if random assignment failed (these results are considered statistically significant; written as “p < .05”)
What is internal validity?
an attribute of an experiment that allows it to establish causal relationships; everything inside the experiment is working exactly as it should in order for us to use its results to draw conclusions about the causal relationship between the independent and dependent variables
What is external validity?
an attribute of an experiment in which variables have been operationally defined in a normal, typical, or realistic way; when variables are defined in an experiment as they typically are in the real world, we say that the variables are Representative of the real world
Why are experiments that are externally invalid not generally considered a problem?
Experiments are not usually meant to be miniature versions of everyday life; they test hypotheses about what happens under particular circumstances, not all circumstances (ex. A hypothesis might state how children will behave in a laboratory, not how children will behave in general)
What is case method?
a procedure for gathering scientific information by studying a single individual (usually someone with an extraordinary ability or unusual circumstance like a rare brain injury/surgery)
What is random sampling?
a technique for selecting participants that ensures that every member of a population has an equal chance of being included in the sample (NOT the same as random assignment); randomly selected sample is said to be representative of the population and allows us to generalize from the sample to the population as a whole
What is replication?
an experiment that uses the same procedures as a previous experiment but with a new sample from the same population
What is a Type I error?
occurs when researchers conclude that there is a relationship between two variables when there in fact is not; also known as a false positive (fluke; we detected something that isn’t really there)
What is a Type II error?
occurs when researchers conclude that there is not a relationships between two variables when in fact there is; also known as a false negative (flunk; we failed to detect something that isn’t here)
What two natural tendencies are the enemies of critical thought?
- We see what we expect/want to see
2. We don’t consider what we don’t see
What two codes/declarations originally spelled out the ethical treatment of people who participate in experiments?
The Nuremberg Code and the Declaration of Helinski
What is the 3 Rs Tenet that guides the ethical use of animals in science?
- Replacement: researchers must prove that there is no alternative to using animals in research and that the use of animals is justified by the scientific/clinical value of the study
- Reduction: researchers must use the smallest number of animals possible to achieve research
- Refinement: procedures must be modified to minimize the discomfort, infection, illness, and pain of animals; requires animals be treated humanely, have comfortable housing, the ability to satisfy natural instincts (ex. Mice have to make nests), and appropriate administration of painkillers
Explain the differences between Descartes and John Locke
Descartes was a rationalist and believed that experience comes from within/we are born with the knowledge we need about the world.
John Locke was an empiricist and believed that our existence stems from what we can directly observe; coined the term tabula rasa
What are the two sources of ideas?
- Senses (sight, taste, touch, etc.)
2. Reflection (perception of the inner workings of our mind)
What are some reasons that people do not believe psychology is a science?
- Isn’t rigorous enough and data are inconclusive/can be interpreted in too many different ways
- Definitions are too abstract to be accurately tested (ex. How do you objectively define happiness? How can it be measured objectively?)
- Results cannot be reliably reproduced because people change
Some people don’t believe that psychology is rigerous enough or is too abstract to be a science. How do psychologists account for this?
- Operational/functional definitions
- Psychology isn’t looking to capture a universal human experience, because it doesn’t exist; acknowledging that work is limited is important because there are no perfect rules about how people are
What two broad concepts does empiricism inform?
- Theory of humanity
2. The foundation of modern science
What is science?
The pursuit of “truth” or “reality” through empirical methods
What is the rule of parsimony?
Any good theory is simple; you always want the shortest number of steps from point A to point B
A parsimonious theory is the simplest theory/explanation
What is a construct?
an explanatory variable that cannot be directly observed (ex. Gravity); used to explain and predict things; a cluster of variables that co-vary (they change together over time, hence why we know they are connected)
What is psychology’s “bread and butter”?
Psychological measurement/measurement sciences
What is a facet?
A core component of a psychological construct
How do we apply science to psychological constructs?
Through psychological measurement
What are the main ways that WWII influenced psychology?
- Psychological warfare
- Military screening (psychological assessments)
- Clinical treatment of soldiers
- Understanding trauma
- Emergence of social psychology (environmental factors, motivation, morale, etc.)
- Increased federal funding for practice and research
- Unification in the APA
What did personality tests originate from?
Robert Woodworth’s Psychoneurotic Inventory, meant to assess military recruits’ susceptibility to shell shock
What did psychologists initially believe caused shell shock?
The concussive impact of bombshells
After non-combat troops began experiencing shell shock, what alternate explanations were proposed?
- Sufferers were faking their symptoms in order to leave the military
- Some soldiers were of “weak constitution” and the stresses of war caused their bodies to shut down
What field of psychology did early personality tests give rise to?
Industrial psychology (ex. assessments which attempted to identify union supporters)
What is the purpose of inferential statistics?
To infer information about a population from a sample
What is probabilistic random sampling?
When each person in the population has an equal chance of being selected for the sample (rarely happens)
What is convenience sampling?
Using a sample that is accessible and easily recruited
What is purposive sampling?
like convenience sampling, but purposefully selecting individuals within a demographic so that the proportions are equal to that of the population; the sample reflects what the population looks like
What is a frequency distribution?
A graphic representation showing the number of times in which the measurement of a property takes on each of its possible values
How can you tell the difference between a negative and a positive distribution on a line graph?
A negative distribution’s tail is closer to 0
A positive distribution’s tail is closer to 100
What is skew in statistics?
how much the standard deviation is shifted to the left or right along the x axis
What is kurtosis in statistics?
How pointy or flat a distribution’s curve on a line graph is
What is correlation, and what are the 3 (linear) types?
A statistical technique used to determine the degree to which two variables are related
- Positive correlation
- Negative correlation
- No correlation
What are the two components of a correlation coefficient?
- Numerical value (between 0.00 and 1.00; indicates strength)
- Sign (+ or -; indicates direction)
What is the best sampling strategy to achieve the goal of representativeness?
Random sampling
What is the difference between range and standard deviation?
The range is always reported in the metric from which the phenomenon was measured; standard deviation converts the range into a standardized metric that allows us to make comparisons across samples and measures
What does W.E.I.R.D stand for in psychological research?
Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic
What are the 4 general principles of the Canadian Psychological Association’s Code of Ethics?
- Respect for Peoples’ Rights and Dignity (privacy, confidentiality, etc.)
- Responsible Caring (not covered in the APA’s) (caring for and nurturing society by doing treatments, assessments, research that contributes to the betterment of society)
- Integrity (be scrupulously honest)
- Responsibility to society
○ Beneficence and nonmaleficence (protect fromharm and do the greatest good)
○ Fidelity and responsibility (professionalism, aware of responsibility to society)
○ Justice (treating people fairly)
Which ethical principle in the CPA’s Code of Ethics covers research, and how?
- Respect for Peoples’ Rights and Dignity
○ Identify potential risks
○ Protect participants from harm
○ Justify remaining risks
○ Obtain informed consent
○ Take care of participants after the study (debriefing)
Ethical research must consider both how participants are treated and…
how we treat participant data:
○ results are reported truthfully
○ credit is ethically assigned
○ data are shared
What is the file drawer problem?
The act of leaving findings unpublished because they do not fit one’s hypothesis or desired narrative
