PSYCH100 Unit Exam 1

Plato

Mind has 3 parts: logic, emotion, & basic desires

Aristotle

mind & body cannot be separated; you learn through senses and memory

Hippocrates

Mental health comes from body (four bodily functions control our moods)

Socrates

“know yourself,” looking inward/introspection

Empiricism

belief that using our senses & observation will allow us to interpret reality, opposite of rationalism (Aristotle = empiricist)

Mind vs Brain

Mind = software, not physical but made possible through the brain

Brain = hardware, physical mass

Wilhelm Wundt

opened first psychological laboratory, experimental introspection, wrote foundational textbooks, student Tichener brought “structuralism” which focuses on what the mind is

Functional Psychology

what mental processes do and how they help people adapt to their environments

Gestalt Psychology

Kurt Lewin, early predecessor to cognitive psychology, “the whole is greater than its sum of parts”

Behaviorism

focused on what was observable behavior, ultimate goal was to predict and control behavior, learning & behavior were controlled by events in the environment, cannot fully explain human behavior because it neglects mental processes

Inductive Reasoning

discovers patterns from raw observation (observation → rule/theory)

Deductive Reasoning

proves patterns under rigorous testing (rule/theory → observation)

Theory Building

“if X is true, then Y must yield exactly result Z,” removes human bias

Theory → Hypothesis

deductive science requires a hypothesis to be explicitly stated before data collection

Falsification

filtering out wrong data

Features of Good Scientific Research

accuracy, consistency, scope, simplicity, productive

Absolute Threshold

minimum intensity of a stimulus needed for a person to detect it at least 50% of the time (line between detectable/undetectable)

Difference Threshold

noticeable difference in stimulus

Weber’s Law

at high levels of sensation, we are less able to differentiate between increase/decrease in stimuli

Multimodal Perception

many senses work together to produce a richer experience

Sigmund Freud

founded psychoanalysis, experimented with hypnotism as a cure, psychotherapy (“talking cure,” Anna O.)

Fundamental Assumptions

1. Primary of the Unconscious

   1. most mental activity occurs outside awareness

2. Importance of Early Experience

   1. childhood influences personality development (ACE = adverse childhood experiences)

3. Psychic Casuality

   1. thoughts, feelings, & behaviors have underlying causes (mostly unconscious)

Conscious

smaller part, accessible mind

Preconscious

dream state, recent experiences

Unconscious

large storehouse of impulses, passions, and inaccessible memories (free association, dream analysis, Freudian slips)

Id

primitive and instinctual, seeks immediate gratification (pleasure)

Ego

realistic and rational, balances demands of id & superego (reality)

Superego

morality and ideals, strives for perfection (moral)

Confounds

factors that undermine the ability to draw casual inferences from an experiment

Correlation

measures the association between two variables, or how they go together

Dependent Variable

the variable the researcher measures but does not manipulate in an experiment

Independent Variable

the variable the researcher manipulates and controls

Experimenter Expectations

when the experimenter’s expectations influence the outcome of a study

Longitudinal Study

study that follows the same group of individuals over time

Operational definitions

how researchers specifically measure a concept

Participant Demand

when participants behave in a way that they think the experimenter wants them to behave

Placebo

when receiving special treatment or something new affects human behavior

Quasi-experimental design

an experiment that does not require random assignment to conditions

Random assignment

assigning participants to receive different conditions of an experiment by chance

Experimental Studies

whether one variable causes changes in another

Correlational Studies

examines relationships between variables