Unit 1: Scientific Foundations of Psychology (personal edit)

Operational definition

The specific procedure used to determine the presence of a variable

Validity

The extent to which an instrument measures or predicts what it is supposed to

Ivan Pavlov

________ trained dogs to salivate in response to the sound of a tone

classical conditioning

Freud

________ believed that early life experiences shape personality and that the unconscious is the source of desires, thoughts, and memories.

Reliability

________ is consistency or repeatability.

G Stanley Hall

• Founded the American Psychological Association

• Founded a psychology lab using introspection at Johns Hopkins University (and became its first president)

Descriptive Statistics

Numbers that summarize a set of research data obtained from a sample.

Locke

• Believed that mind and body interact symmetrically (monism)

• Knowledge comes from observation

• What we know comes from experience (we are born "a blank slate”)

Participation

________ in a study should be voluntary, and not coerced or influenced as part of a grade, raise, or promotion.

Statistical significance (p)

A measure of the likelihood that the difference between groups results from a real difference between the two groups rather than from chance alone.

American Psychological Association (APA)

The ________ lists ethical principles and code of conduct for all psychologists.

Wundt

________ used trained introspection to study

• the mind's structure

• identify consciousness's basic elements (sensations, feelings, and images)

Nature vs. Nurture

If our behavior is determined by genes or learned through experience

standard deviation

The degree to which scores vary from the mean value for the set.

Neuropsychologists

________ explore the relationships between brain/nervous systems and behavior.

median

The middle score when the set of data is ordered by size.

mode

The ________ is the most frequently occurring score in a set of research data.

Case Study

An in-depth examination of a specific group or single person that typically includes interviews, observations, and test scores.

Meta analysis

________ provides a way of statistically combining the results of individual research studies to reach an overall conclusion.

Survey Method

Researchers use questionnaires or interviews to ask a large number of people questions about their behaviors, thoughts, and attitudes.

Clinical psychologists

________ treat people with temporary psychological crises like grief, addiction, or social issues and those with chronic psychiatric disorders.

Social psychologists

________ focus on how a persons mental life and behavior are shaped by interactions with other people.

Humanist Approach

Values feelings and believes people are naturally positive and growth-seeking.

Inferential statistics

Used to interpret data and draw conclusions

Psychoanalytic theory

Uses unconscious internal conflicts to explain mental disorders, personality, and motivation

Demand characteristics

cues that might indicate the research objectives to participants

Variability

The spread or dispersion of scores for a set of research data or distribution.

Double-Blind

A research design in which neither the experimenter nor the participants know who is in the experimental group and who is in the control group.

Frequency polygon

A line graph that replaces the bars with single points and connects the points with a line.

Single blind procedure

A research design in which the participants don’t know which treatment group- experimental or control- they are in.

biopsychosocial (eclectic) model

Integrates biological processes, psychological factors, and social forces to provide a more complete picture of behavior and mental processes.

Placebo effect

Cases when experimental participants change their behavior without any experimental manipulation.

Random selection

Can be achieved by putting all the names in a hat and picking out a specified number of names, by alphabetizing the roster of enrollees and choosing every fifth name, or by using a table of random numbers to choose participants.

mean

The arithmetic average of the set of scores.

Sample

a subgroup of the population

Experimental group

receives the treatment

Control group

does not receive the treatment

Between-subjects design

The participants in the experimental and control groups are different individuals

Confounding variables

a variable that influences both the dependent variable and independent variable

Placebo

an imitation pill, injection, patch, or other treatment