Psychology Unit 1

science

a passion for exploring and understanding without misleading or being misled

Psychologist seek the answers to

how and why we think, feel, and act as we do

careful testing can reveal

which of the competing ideas best fit the facts

If people or other animals don’t behave as our ideas predict,

then so much the worse for our ideas

systematic methods of inquiry to study behavior and mental processes:

• Empirical evidence

• The scientific method

• Theoretical frameworks

• Quantitative and qualitative research

• Objectivity and control

• Peer review and replication

What criteria of science does psychology meet?

It contributes valuable knowledge about human behavior and mental processes in a systematic and evidence-based manner

What three elements characterize the scientific attitude?

Curiosity, Skepticism, and Humility

Critical thinking

• Examines assumptions, checks the credibility of sources, recognizes hidden biases, evaluates evidence, and asses conclusions

• Helps check our biases

• Recognize multiple perspectives

• How do they know that? What is this person’s agenda? Etc

Plato

• Before 300 BCE

• Greek philosopher believed in innate ideas

• Suggested that the brain is the seat of mental process

innate ideas

concepts or ideas that are believed to be present in the mind from birth, and not the result of experience

Aristotle

• Before 300 BCE

• Greek naturalist and philosopher

• Denied the idea of innate ideas

• Theorized about learning and memory, motivation and emotion, perception and personality

Psychology’s first laboratory (start of scientific psychology)

• Wilhem Wundt and two grad students

• December 1879: University of Leipzig, Germany

• The experiment:

  • Press the key as soon as you hear a ball hit a platform (1/10 of a second)

  • Press the key as soon as you are consciously aware of perceiving the sound (2/10 of a second)

• Atoms of the mind

Structuralism

• Edward Bradford Titchener

• Elements of the mind’s structure

• Self-reflective introspection to report elements of their experience

  • Ex: smell this coffee

• Varied results, unreliable method

functionalism

• William James

• Considered functions of our inner thoughts and feelings

• 1875: Began teaching one of the first psychology courses in the US at Harvards

• Studied emotions, memories, willpower, habits, stream of consciousness thinking

• Commissioned to write the principles of psychology on the new science of psychology

introspection

an examination of one's own thoughts and feelings.

Mary Whiton Calkins

• 1890: Joined William James at Harvard

• Studied memory

• Completed all of Harvard’s PhD requirements and was denied the degree

• 1905 First female president of the American Psychological Association (APA)

Margaret Floy Washburn

• Mentored by Titchener

• First woman to “officially” earn a PhD

• Authored The Animal Mind

• 1921: Second female president of APA

Behaviorism

Says that psychology:

1. Should be an objective science that

2. Studies behavior without reference to mental process

John B Watson and Rosalie Rayner

• Scientific study of observable behavior

• What you cannot observe and measure, you cannot scientifically study

• “Little Albert” and learned fear

BF Skinner

• Redefined psychology as “the scientific study of observable behavior”

• Rejected introspection

• Studied how consequences shape behavior

• Behaviorism was increasingly influential well into the 1960s

Sigmund Freud

• Emphasized ways our unconscious mind and childhood experiences affect our behavior

• A personality theorist

• Views on unconscious sexual conflicts

• Mind’s defenses against its own wishes and impulses

Humanistic Psychology

• Rejected the behaviorist definition

• Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow (1960s)

  • Focus on human growth potential

  • Focus on Need for love and acceptance

  • Focus on Environments that nurture or limit personal growth

Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs

(self actualization, esteem, social, safety, physiological)

Contemporary Psychology

• 1960s- psychologists launch a cognitive revolution

• Growing interest in understanding how the mind processes and retains information

• Scientific exploration of how we perceive, process, and remember information

• How thinking and emotion interact in anxiety, depression, and other disorders

• Perceiving, learning, remembering, thinking, communication, and solving problems

Cognitive Psychology+Neurology=

Cognitive Neuroscience

Psychology is the science of

behavior and mental processes

What does Plato say about Nature-nurture?

we inherit character and intelligence, innate ideas

What does Aristotle say about Nature-nurture

there is nothing in the mind that does not forest come in from the external world through senses

What does John Locke say about Nature-nurture?

the mind is a blank slate on which experience writes

What does Rene Descartes say about Nature-nurture?

some ideas innate

Charles Darwin

• Explained species variation by proposing the evolutionary process of natural selection

• Nature selects from among chance variations, traits that best enable an organism to survive and reproduce in a specific environment

• Believed his theory shapes animal structures and behaviors

Psychologist explore the contributions of

biology and experience

Evolutionary psychology

how are humans alike bc of shared biology and evolutionary history?

Behavior genetics

how do humans individually differ bc of variety in genes and environments?

Current understanding of nature-nurture

• Nurture workers on what nature provides

• Traits and behaviors arise from the interaction of nature and nurture

• Growing research on:

  • Epigenetics

  • Neuroplasticity

Epigenetics

the study of how behaviors and environmental factors can change how genes work without altering the DNA sequence

Neuroplasticity

the brain's ability to change and adapt in response to stimuli, new experiences, or other developmental factors

Cross-cultural Psychology

• Culture

• Studying culture and people around the world and underlying processes

• Studies from WEIRD cultures are not representative of all the people on our planet

• Cross cultural studies are revealing individual and cultural differences in personality, expressiveness, attitudes, and beliefs among other constructs

Culture

shared ideas and behaviors that one generation passes on to next

WEIRD

Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic

Underlying processes across cultures

• Shared biological heritage cuts across cultures

• Examples:

  • People with dyslexia

  • Shared deep principles of grammar

  • Smile vs frown

  • Children learning to walk around same time

  • Sensations of light, sound

  • Hunger, fear, ect.

Positive psychology

Key people: Martin Seligman, it asks the question: what is happiness?

• Scientific study of human flourishing

• Understanding and developing the emotions and traits that help us to thrive

• Suggest happiness is by-product of a pleasant, engages, and meaningful life

• It is not relieving suffering, it is beyond that

Integrating views to understand a complex system

• Shared biologically rooted human nature

• Psychological and social-cultural influences shape our assumptions, values, beliefs, and behaviors

• Each of us is part of a larger social system

What influences our behavior or mental process?

Biological, Psychological, and Social-cultural influences

Neuroscience

How the body and brain enable emotions, memories, and sensory experiences

Evolutionary

How the natural selection of traits has promoted the survival of genes

Behavior genetics

how our genes and our environment influence our individual differences

psychodynamic

how behavior springs from unconscious drives and conflicts

behavioral perspective

how we learn observable responses

Cognitive

how we encode, process, store, and retrieve information

social-cultural

how behavior and thinking vary across situations and cultures

Contemporary psychology

• A cluster of subfields- perfect for someone with wide-ranging interests who wants to be able understand mind-brain-behavior connections

  • Basic and applied research

• ~1+ million psychologists around the worlds

• Psychology is growing and globalizing

Psychology’s increasing diversity

• 1997 to 2021: half of elected presidents of APS were women

• In the US, canada, and europe women now earn more psychology doctorates than men

• Gender gaps in publishing psychological research in top journals, promotion to senior professorships, and salary persist

• ⅓ of recent psychology doctorates were earned by people of color

Common Sense

describes what has happened than what will happen

Hindsight Bias

after learning the outcome of an event many people believe they could have predicted that very outcome (Covid-19)

Over confidence

tendency to think we may know more than we do; we tend to be more confident than correct (Anagrams)

Perceiving order in random events

tendency to perceive patterns in random events

How do psychologist ask and answer questions

• Scientific attitude: combines curiosity, skepticism, and humility

• Scientific method: a self correcting process for evaluating ideas with observations and analysis

  • If data support a theory, the theory will stand

  • If data do not support a theory, ie, the theory gets revised or rejected

• Theory: explains behaviors or events by offering ideas that organize observations; summarizes and simplifies similar facts that may be presented in isolation

• Hypothesis: testable predictions, specifying which results support the theory and which disconfirm it

• Operational definition

• Replication

• Preregistration

• Meta-analysis

• Exploratory research

Theory

explains behaviors or events by offering ideas that organize observations; summarizes and simplifies similar facts that may be presented in isolation

Hypothesis

testable predictions, specifying which results support the theory and which disconfirm it

What is the goal of descriptive research

provide a clear, accurate picture of people’s behaviors, thoughts, and attributes

random sampling

sample that fairly represent a population because each member has an equal chance of inclusion

Case study

• Examines one individual in depth in the hopes of revealing universal truths

• Provides fruitful ideas/future directions

• Case studies can be misleading

  • To find general truths, we usually must employ other research methods

Naturilistic observation

• Record behavior in natural environment without changing or controlling the situation

• describes , but does not explain behavior

• Can be revealing (eg: chimpanzees use tools)

Surveys and Interviews

• Obtaining the self reported attitudes or behaviors of a group, usually by questioning a representative, random sample of that group

• Examine many cases in less depth

• Wording effects

  • Skews more approval, skews less approval

• People may shade their answers in a socially desirable direction

Variable

includes anything that can vary and is feasible and ethical to measure

Independent Variable

factor that is manipulated, the variable whose effect is being studied

Confounding variable

factor other than the independent variable that might produce an effect

Dependent variable

factor that is measured; the variable that may change when the independent variable is manipulated

Correlation

Measure of the extent to which two factors vary together, and thus of how well either factor predicts the other

Correlation coefficient

statistical index of the direction and the strength of the relationship between two things (from -1 to +1)

Positive correlation

Direct relationship, both increase or decrease together

negative correlation

Inverse relationship, as one increases the other decreases

Scatterplots

Graphed cluster of dots, each of which represents the values of two variables to show the patterns of correlation

Slope of the points (scatter plots)

suggests the direction of the relationship between the two variables

Ammount of scatter (scatterplots)

suggests the strength of the correlation (little scatter indicates high correlations)

Unlike experiments, correlations tell us nothing about_____. They help us determind if the two are related.

Cause and effect

Experimentation

• Used to explore cause and effect

• Researchers can focus on the possible effects of one or more factors in several ways

  • They can manipulate the factors of interest to determine their effects

  • They can hold constant (“controlling”) other factors

    • Experimental group

    • Control group

    • Random assignment: experimenters randomly assign people to each condition to minimize any preexisting differences between the two groups

Double-blind procedure

• Neither those in the study nor the researchers collecting the data know which group is receiving the treatment

  • Commonly used in drug-evaluation studies

Placebo effect

• Treatments actual effects can be separated from potential placebo effect

• Just thinking you are getting a treatment can relieve your symptoms

Ethics codes

• Obtain potential participants’ informed consent before the experiment begins

• Protect participants from harm and discomfort

• Keep information about individual participants confidential

• Fully debrief people (explain the research afterwards)

Ensuring scientific integrity

• Leading scientists cite honestly as the most important scientific value, followed by curiosity and perseverance

  • The worldwide general public rates doctors and scientists as the most trusted professionals, followed by judges and members of the armed forces

Statistics

the science of collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and presenting data

Statistical Literacy

 involves understanding statistics and what they mean in context

Descriptive statistics

• Summarize and describe the main features of a dataset

• Understand the characteristics and patterns within the data without making any inferences beyond the dataset

• Visualizing descriptive statistics

  • Bar graphs- ideal for data that falls into distinct categories

  • Pie charts- shows relative proportion of categories to a whole 

What are the 3 measures of central tendency

Mean, median, and mode

mean

average of a set of values

median

 the middle number when values are arranged in order; half the values are above it and half below

mode

most frequently occurring value in distribution

what are the 3 methods of variation

range, standard deviation, and normal curve (normal distribution)

How do psychologists know whether what they are observing in a sample can be generalized to a larger population?

inferential statistics and significant differences

inferential statistics

• Used to make generalizations or predictions on a population based on data from a sample

• Inferential statistics rely on probability theory to assess the reliability of conclusions drawn from the sample

• Used to determine whether observed patterns in the sample data are likely to reflect true patterns in the population or if they occur by chance

significant differences

Researchers use probability testing to estimate the likelihood of the result occurring by chance

Null hypothesis

assume that no difference exists within the groups

• Goal is to reject the null hypothesis

P-value

indicates the probability that the results occurred by chance, assuming the null hypothesis is true

• p<0.05 is the most commonly agreed upon threshold value

• It means that there is a 5% or lower probability that the results would have occurred by random chance if the null hypothesis were true

Type 1 error

• When a researcher concludes that their results are statistically significant, when they are not

• A false positive, the results are just due to chance

Type 2 error

• When a researcher concludes that their results are not statistically significant, when they really are

• A false negative, there is a statistically significant difference, but missed detecting it

are your results generalizable?

1. Representative samples are better than biased (unrepresentative) samples

2. Bigger samples are better than smaller ones

3. More studies are better than fewer studies - when possible, combine and conduct a meta-analysis