What Is Psychology Flashcards
What is psychology
The scientific study of the mind, brain and behavior
What makes psychology challenging and rewarding?
1.Human behavior is difficult to predict
2.Psychological influences are rarely independent of each other
3. Individual differences among people
4. People influence one another
5. Behavior is shaped by culture
Naive realism
The belief that we see the world precisely as it actually is in truth
Hypothesis
A specific prediction based on a theory which can then be tested
Emic vs etic
Emic is the study of behavior of a native from an insiders perspective
Etic is study of behavior from an outsiders perspective
Empiricism
The premise that knowledge should initially be acquired through observation
Confirmation bias mother of biases
The tendency to seek out evidence that supports our beliefs and deny dismiss or distort evidence that contradicts them
Belief perseverance
Tendency to stick to our initial beliefs even when evidence contradicts them
Pseudoscience
A set of claims that seem scientific but aren’t
Lacks safeguards against confirmation bias n belief perseverance
Testable beliefs not supported by evidence
Warning signs of pseudoscience
Ad hoc immunizing hypotheses
Lack of self correction
Over reliance on anecdotes
Apophenia
Finding connections among unrelated or random phenomenon
Pareidoila
Seeing meaningful images in meaningful visual stimuli
Emotional reasoning fallacy
Using emotion rather than evidence as the guide
Bandwagon fallacy
Lots of people believe it so it must be true
Not me fallacy
Other people may have those biases but not me
Pseudoscience disadvantages
Dangerous
Opportunity cost
Direct harm
Inability to think scientifically
Critical thinking
A set of skills for evaluating all claims in a open minded and careful fashion
Critical thinking principles
Ruling out rival hypotheses (alternate explanation for considered finding)
Correlation vs causation ( can we be sure a cause b)
Falsifiability
Can the claim be disproven
Replicability (duplication)
Extraordinary Claims (convincing evidence)
Occam’s razor or KISS
Does a simpler explanation fit the data just as well
Frameworks that shape psychology
Structuralism (Wundt n EB titchner
Functionalism (William James)
Behaviorism (Watson and skinner)
Cognitivism (Piaget and neisser)
Psychoanalysis (Freud and Jung)
Structuralism
Insistence of systematic data collection and empiricism
Functionalism
Influence of evolutionary theory on modern psych
Behaviorism
Helped to understand how we learn and the importance of scientific rigor
Cognitivism
Focus on not only reward or punishers but on our interpretation of events
Psychoanalysis
May have actually retarded scientific advances of clinical psych but Theories of mental processing outside of conscious awareness are holding up
Types of psychologists
Clinical
Counseling
School
Developmental
Experimental
Bio psychologists
Forensic
Two debates
Nature vs nurture
Free will determinism
Broad categories or research
Basic - how the mind works
Applied - how we use basic research to solve real world problems
Founder of psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud
Founder of modern psychology
Wilhelm Wundt
First phd female first female Apa president
Mary whiton calkins
Founder of behaviorism
John B Watson
Famous psychologist; behaviorism focused on responses
B.F Skinner
Author of first psychology text book
William James
First American male earn a phd in Psyc opened first lab in US; first apa president
G Stanley hall
First African American female to earn phd in psychology
Inez Beverly prosser
Developmental and cognitive psychologist
Jean Piaget
First African American male psychology phd recipient
Francis Cecil summer
Cognitive biases
Systematic error in thinking
Hindsight bias
Overconfidence
Scientific method tools
Naturalistic observations
Case study designs
Self report measure and surveys
Random selection
Evaluating measures
Rating data
Correlational designs
Scatterplots
Naturalistic observation
Watching behavior in a real world setting
High external validity (generalize our findings to the real world)
Low internal validity (extent in which we can draw cause n effect interferences)
Case study designs
Studying one person or a small number of people for an extended period of time
Common w brain damage n mental illness
Provide existence proofs but may be misleading and anecdotal
Self report measures and surveys
Questionnaires that assess characteristics such as personality or mental illness
Survey are peoples opinions or abilities
Random selection
Key to generalizability
Ensure every person in a population has an equal chance of being chosen to participate
Evaluating measures
To trust results measures must have
Reliability - consistency of measurement
Validity - extent to which a measure assesses what it claims to measure
Self report measures
Pros
Easy to administer
Direct self assessment of persons state
Cons
Accuracy is skewed for certain groups (narcissists)
Potential for dishonesty
Response sets - tendency to distort their responses
Positive impression management
Malingering
Rating data
People can be asked to rate others on different characteristics
Correlational designs
Examine how two variables are related
Illusory correlation- perception of a statistical association where none exists
Determining causation
The only way to determine if one thing is casually related to another is via an experimental design
What makes a study an experiment?
Random assignment to the
Experimental group n control group
Manipulation of an independent variable
Confounds - any difference between the experimental and control groups aside from IV
Cause and effect - infer w/ random assignment n manipulation of IV
Pitfalls of experimental design
Placebo effect
Nocebo effect
Experimenter expectancy effect
Demand characteristics
Ethical guidelines
Institutional review board
Informed consent
Justification of deception
Debriefing of subjects afterwards
IACUC - institutional animal care and use committee
