Week 1: Psychology as a Science

Question 1

What is psychology?

Answer 1

from the greek psyche (soul) and logos (to study); the scientific study of mind and behaviour

Question 2

What is the difference between mind and behaviour?

Answer 2

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

Question 3

What is philosophical dualism, and who is it associated with?

Answer 3

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]

Question 4

What is philosophical materialism, and who is it associated with?

Answer 4

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]

Question 5

What is philosophical realism, and who is it associated with?

Answer 5

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]

Question 6

What is philosophical idealism, and who is it associated with?

Answer 6

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]

Question 7

What is philosophical empiricism, and who is it associated with?

Answer 7

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]

Question 8

What is philosophical nativism, and who is it associated with?

Answer 8

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]

Question 9

Who was Herman von Helmholtz, and what did he contribute to psychology?

Answer 9

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

Question 10

Who was Wilhelm Wundt, and what did he contribute to psychology?

Answer 10

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

Question 11

What is structuralism?

Answer 11

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)

Question 12

Who was Edward Titchener, and what did he contribute to psychology?

Answer 12

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)

Question 13

Who was William James, and what did he contribute to psychology?

Answer 13

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)

Question 14

What is functionalism?

Answer 14

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

Question 15

What did the physicians Charcot and Janet contribute to psychology?

Answer 15

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

Question 16

What did Watson believe about psychology?

Answer 16

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

Question 17

What is behaviourism?

Answer 17

an approach to psychology that restricts scientific inquiry to observable behaviour

Question 18

What did B.F. Skinner contribute to psychology?

Answer 18

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)

Question 19

What is the principle of reinforcement?

Answer 19

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)

Question 20

What did Max Wertheimer contribute to psychology?

Answer 20

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

Question 21

What is Gestalt psychology?

Answer 21

an approach to psychology that emphasized the way in which the mind creates perceptual experience (Wertheimer; Gestalt = whole in German)

Question 22

What did Frederic Bartlett contribute to psychology?

Answer 22

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)

Question 23

What did Jean Piaget contribute to psychology?

Answer 23

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)

Question 24

What is developmental psychology?

Answer 24

the study of the ways in which psychological phenomena change other the lifespan (Piaget, Vygotsky 1896-1934)

Question 25

Who was Kurt Lewin, and what did he contribute to psychology?

Answer 25

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

Question 26

What is social psychology?

Answer 26

the study of the causes and consequences of sociality (Lewin)

Question 27

What did Solomon Asch contribute to psychology (what "effect" did he describe)?

Answer 27

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)

Question 28

What critiques did Noam Chomsky have of behaviourist principles of learning?

Answer 28

- 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"

Question 29

What was ENIAC?

Answer 29

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

Question 30

What did John Garcia contribute to psychology?

Answer 30

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

Question 31

What did E.O. Wilson contribute to psychology?

Answer 31

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

Question 32

Who was Donald Hebb, and what phrase did he coin related to neuroscience?

Answer 32

worked with Penfield; one of the first grad students of McGill's department of psychology; "neurons that fire together wire together" (learning and memory)

Question 33

What is the difference betwen cognitive and behavioural neuroscience?

Answer 33

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

Question 34

What did Wilder Penfield contribute to psychology?

Answer 34

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

Question 35

Who was Brenda Milner, and what did she contribute to psychology?

Answer 35

studied under Hebb; most well known for the discovery of the basis of long-term memory in the hippocampus

Question 36

What is culture?

Answer 36

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

Question 37

What is anthropology?

Answer 37

the study of human societies and cultures

Question 38

What is cultural psychology?

Answer 38

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

Question 39

Who founded the APA?

Answer 39

William James and 6 other American psychologists

Question 40

Which field do most PhD psychologists work in?

Answer 40

Clinical psychology

Question 41

What is dogmatism?

Answer 41

peoples' tendency to cling to their beliefs and assumptions

Question 42

What is the scientific method?

Answer 42

A procedure for using empirical evidence to establish facts; a set of rules for how we observe reality

Question 43

What are scientific theories?

Answer 43

hypothetical explanations of natural phenomena; good theories give rise to hypotheses that could be falsified

Question 44

What is a hypothesis?

Answer 44

a falsifiable prediction made by a theory

Question 45

What 3 qualities make people hard to study?

Answer 45

1. People are complex 2. People are variable (no two people do, say, think, or feel the exact same things) 3. People are reactive (people think, feel, and act differently when they are observed)

Question 46

What two things must we do before we measure something?

Answer 46

1. Define the property we want to measure | 2. Find a way to detect that property

Question 47

What is an operational definition?

Answer 47

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")

Question 48

What is construct validity?

Answer 48

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")

Question 49

What two things make a good detector of a property?

Answer 49

1. Power: a detector's ability to detect the presence of differences or changes in the magnitude of a property 2. 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)]

Question 50

What are demand characteristics?

Answer 50

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)

Question 51

What 3 ways can we avoid demand characteristics?

Answer 51

- Naturalistic observation - Privacy and control - Unawareness

Question 52

What is observer bias?

Answer 52

the tendency for observers' expectations to influence both what they believe they observed and what they actually observed

Question 53

What is a double-blind study?

Answer 53

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)

Question 54

What is a normal distribution?

Answer 54

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

Question 55

What are descriptive statistics?

Answer 55

brief summary statements that capture the essential information from a frequency distribution; tells us about our sample

Question 56

What are the 2 common types of descriptive statistics?

Answer 56

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")

Question 57

What are the 3 most common descriptions of central tendency?

Answer 57

- 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)

Question 58

What are the 2 most common descriptions of variability?

Answer 58

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)

Question 59

What is a positive correlation?

Answer 59

when two variables have a "more is more" relationship (ex. More wealth is associated with more health)

Question 60

What is a negative correlation?

Answer 60

when two variables have a "more is less" relationship (ex. More health is associated with less poverty)

Question 61

What is a correlation coefficient?

Answer 61

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)

Question 62

What is a perfect positive correlation?

Answer 62

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)

Question 63

What is a perfect negative correlation?

Answer 63

every time the value of a variable increases by a certain amount, the value of the second variable decreases by that amount (r = -1)

Question 64

What are natural correlations?

Answer 64

the correlations we observe in the world around us

Question 65

What is the third variable problem?

Answer 65

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

Question 66

What is experimentation?

Answer 66

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

Question 67

What is manipulation when it comes to experimentation?

Answer 67

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)

Question 68

What are the steps of experimentation?

Answer 68

1. Manipulate: the variable that is manipulated in an experiment is called the independent variable; a manipulation creates at least 2 conditions 2. Measure: the variable that is measured in an experiment is called the dependent variable 3. 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

Question 69

What is self-selection?

Answer 69

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.)

Question 70

What is random assignment?

Answer 70

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)

Question 71

What is the issue with random assignment?

Answer 71

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")

Question 72

What is internal validity?

Answer 72

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

Question 73

What is external validity?

Answer 73

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

Question 74

Why are experiments that are externally invalid not generally considered a problem?

Answer 74

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)

Question 75

What is case method?

Answer 75

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)

Question 76

What is random sampling?

Answer 76

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

Question 77

What is replication?

Answer 77

an experiment that uses the same procedures as a previous experiment but with a new sample from the same population

Question 78

What is a Type I error?

Answer 78

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)

Question 79

What is a Type II error?

Answer 79

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)

Question 80

What two natural tendencies are the enemies of critical thought?

Answer 80

1. We see what we expect/want to see | 2. We don't consider what we don't see

Question 81

What two codes/declarations originally spelled out the ethical treatment of people who participate in experiments?

Answer 81

The Nuremberg Code and the Declaration of Helinski

Question 82

What is the 3 Rs Tenet that guides the ethical use of animals in science?

Answer 82

1. 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 2. Reduction: researchers must use the smallest number of animals possible to achieve research 3. 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

Question 83

Explain the differences between Descartes and John Locke

Answer 83

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

Question 84

What are the two sources of ideas?

Answer 84

1. Senses (sight, taste, touch, etc.) | 2. Reflection (perception of the inner workings of our mind)

Question 85

What are some reasons that people do not believe psychology is a science?

Answer 85

- 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

Question 86

Some people don't believe that psychology is rigerous enough or is too abstract to be a science. How do psychologists account for this?

Answer 86

- 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

Question 87

What two broad concepts does empiricism inform?

Answer 87

1. Theory of humanity | 2. The foundation of modern science

Question 88

What is science?

Answer 88

The pursuit of "truth" or "reality" through empirical methods

Question 89

What is the rule of parsimony?

Answer 89

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

Question 90

What is a construct?

Answer 90

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)

Question 91

What is psychology's "bread and butter"?

Answer 91

Psychological measurement/measurement sciences

Question 92

What is a facet?

Answer 92

A core component of a psychological construct

Question 93

How do we apply science to psychological constructs?

Answer 93

Through psychological measurement

Question 94

What are the main ways that WWII influenced psychology?

Answer 94

- 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

Question 95

What did personality tests originate from?

Answer 95

Robert Woodworth's Psychoneurotic Inventory, meant to assess military recruits' susceptibility to shell shock

Question 96

What did psychologists initially believe caused shell shock?

Answer 96

The concussive impact of bombshells

Question 97

After non-combat troops began experiencing shell shock, what alternate explanations were proposed?

Answer 97

- 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

Question 98

What field of psychology did early personality tests give rise to?

Answer 98

Industrial psychology (ex. assessments which attempted to identify union supporters)

Question 99

What is the purpose of inferential statistics?

Answer 99

To infer information about a population from a sample

Question 100

What is probabilistic random sampling?

Answer 100

When each person in the population has an equal chance of being selected for the sample (rarely happens)

Question 101

What is convenience sampling?

Answer 101

Using a sample that is accessible and easily recruited

Question 102

What is purposive sampling?

Answer 102

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

Question 103

What is a frequency distribution?

Answer 103

A graphic representation showing the number of times in which the measurement of a property takes on each of its possible values

Question 104

How can you tell the difference between a negative and a positive distribution on a line graph?

Answer 104

A negative distribution's tail is closer to 0 A positive distribution's tail is closer to 100

Question 105

What is skew in statistics?

Answer 105

how much the standard deviation is shifted to the left or right along the x axis

Question 106

What is kurtosis in statistics?

Answer 106

How pointy or flat a distribution's curve on a line graph is

Question 107

What is correlation, and what are the 3 (linear) types?

Answer 107

A statistical technique used to determine the degree to which two variables are related 1. Positive correlation 2. Negative correlation 3. No correlation

Question 108

What are the two components of a correlation coefficient?

Answer 108

1. Numerical value (between 0.00 and 1.00; indicates strength) 2. Sign (+ or -; indicates direction)

Question 109

What is the best sampling strategy to achieve the goal of representativeness?

Answer 109

Random sampling

Question 110

What is the difference between range and standard deviation?

Answer 110

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

Question 111

What does W.E.I.R.D stand for in psychological research?

Answer 111

``` Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic ```

Question 112

What are the 4 general principles of the Canadian Psychological Association's Code of Ethics?

Answer 112

1. Respect for Peoples' Rights and Dignity (privacy, confidentiality, etc.) 2. 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) 3. Integrity (be scrupulously honest) 4. 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)

Question 113

Which ethical principle in the CPA's Code of Ethics covers research, and how?

Answer 113

1. 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)

Question 114

Ethical research must consider both how participants are treated and...

Answer 114

how we treat participant data: ○ results are reported truthfully ○ credit is ethically assigned ○ data are shared

Question 115

What is the file drawer problem?

Answer 115

The act of leaving findings unpublished because they do not fit one's hypothesis or desired narrative