Studied by 16 people
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?
descriptive
correlational methods
experimental methods
What do operational definitions do?
define specifically what we mean
Replication isā¦
confirmation
The three types of descriptive studies areā¦
case study- one person or group
naturalistic observation- naturally occurring situation
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 (donāt 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
Correlationā¦
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 positiveā¦
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 donāt 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?
āhumane care and healthful conditionsā and āminimize discomfortā
What are the four ethical guidelines for experiments with humans?
obtain participants informed consent
protect them from greater-than-usual harm and discomfort
keep information about individual patients confidential
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
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