AP PSYCH Unit 0

What is psychology based on?

research and experiments

What is the Scientific Attitude?

curiosity, skepticism, humility

Wilhelm Wundt

first-ever psych experiment, first psych lab

William James

functionalism: everything has a purpose, creates the first psychology textbook: Principles of Psychology

Mary Whiton Calkins

denied a Ph.D. due to her gender, first female president of the APA

Margaret Floy Washburn

first female to earn a Ph. D. in psychology, studied animals and discovered that they are very thoughtful creatures

Kenneth Bancroft Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark

African-American psychologists famous for the Doll Studies

The Doll Studies

asked black kids 3-7 to pick a favorite doll

What percent of kids picked a white doll?

67%

What is psychology?

the science of behavior and mental processes

Nature-nurture issue

the relative contributions that genes and experience make to the development of psychological traits and behaviors

biggest issue in psychology

Biopsychosocial approach

an approach that incorporates biological, psychological, and social-cultural viewpoints

Example of biopsychosocial approach

hunger-

• biological-need fuel

• psychological-eat when bored, comfort food

• social-cultural-certain times of day eat meals

Three roadblocks to critical thinking

hindsight bias, overconfidence, and perceiving patterns in random events

What is hindsight bias?

the tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that we would have foreseen it

What is a theory?

an explanation using an integrated set of principles that organizes observations and predicts behaviors or events

What does a good theory provide?

a hypothesis

What are operational definitions?

a carefully worded statement of the exact procedures used in a research study

What do operational definitions allow?

anyone to replicate the research

What are the three ways to test a hypothesis?

1. descriptive

2. correlational methods

3. experimental methods

What do operational definitions do?

define specifically what we mean

Replication is…

confirmation

The three types of descriptive studies are…

1. case study- one person or group

2. naturalistic observation- naturally occurring situation

3. survey

What are issues that can come up in research?

• wording effects (aid to those in need vs. welfare)

• social desirability bias (people do what they think people want them to do)

• self report bias (don’t report or remember our own behaviors)

• sampling bias: a flawed sampling process that produces an unrepresentative sample

What is a population?

all those in a group being studied from which samples may be drawn

Where does a sample come from?

population

What is a sample?

the people in a study

What is a random sample?

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

What is correlation?

a measure of the extent to which two variables change together, and thus of how well one variable predicts the other

Correlation…

DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION

What is a correlation coefficient?

a statistical index of the relationship between two variables (from +1.0 to -1.0)

What is a good way to show a correlation?

a scatter plot

If the slope is positive…

the correlation coefficient is positive (or vice versa)

What is illusory correlation?

the perception of a relationship where none exists

What is regression toward the mean?

the tendency for extreme or unusual scores or events to fall back (regress) toward the average

What is an experimental group?

the group exposed to a treatment (otherwise known as one version of the independent variable)

What is a control group?

the group not exposed to the treatment (serves as comparison)

What is random assignment?

assigning participants to experimental and control groups by chance

What is a single-blind procedure?

the participants don’t know whether they received the treatment

What is a double-blind procedure?

the research participants and the research staff are unaware of who received the treatment or the placebo (reduces experimenter bias)

What is a confounding variable?

a factor other than the independent variable that might produce an effect in an experiment

What is validity?

the extent to which a test or experiment measures or predicts what it is supposed to

What do Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) do?

decide if someone can perform an experiment

Why do we study animals?

humans are animals and we have similar underlying processes

What are the guidelines for research with animals?

“humane care and healthful conditions” and “minimize discomfort”

What are the four ethical guidelines for experiments with humans?

1. obtain participants informed consent

2. protect them from greater-than-usual harm and discomfort

3. keep information about individual patients confidential

4. fully debrief people

What is psychological research affected by?

culture and values

What are WEIRD participants?

Western, Educated, from Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic countries

What is descriptive statistics?

numerical data used to measure and describe characteristics of groups (measures of central tendency and measures of variation)

What are measures of central tendency?

mean, median, and mode

What is mean?

the arithmetic average of a distribution

What is median?

the middle score in a distribution

What is mode?

the most frequently occurring score

What is percentile rank?

percentage of scores less than the given score (79th percentile = better than 79% of scores)

What is a skewed distribution?

not symmetrical around its average value

What are the measures of variation?

range and standard deviation

What is range?

the difference between the highest and lowest scores in a distribution

What is standard deviation?

a computed measure of how much scores vary around the mean score

What is an outlier?

one data point that is extremely different from the others

What is a normal curve?

large numbers of data that often form a symmetrical, bell-shaped distribution

What is inferential statistics?

numerical data that allows one to generalize or infer from sample data the probability of something being true of a population

What is statistical significance?

a statistical statement of how likely it is that an obtained result occured by chance

What is effect size?

the strength of the relationship between two variables

What are the three guidelines to see if results can be generalized and are reliable?

• representative samples are better than biased samples

  • less variable observations are more reliable than those that are more variable

  • more cases are better than fewer

What is falsifiability?

the possibility that an idea, hypothesis, or theory can be disproven by an observation or experiment

What is the placebo effect?

experimental results caused by expectations alone

What is quantitative research?

a research method that relies on quantifiable, numerical data

What is qualitative research?

a research method that relies on in-depth, narrative data that are not translated into numbers

What is informed consent?

giving potential participants enough information about a study to enable them to choose whether they wish to participate