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What are the 3 key elements of the ‘scientific attitude”
Skepticism, curiosity, and humility
What do the smart thinkers ask
“does it work”
What is critical thinking
Examining assumptions, appraising the source, discerning hidden biases, evaluating evidence,and assessing conclusions
Critical thinking, when informed by science, helps:
helps clear any bias
Critical thinking must also consider the
credibility of the sources used and the different prespectives
What is cognitive psychology
The study of mental processes
What is cognitive neruoscience
The interdisciplinary study of the brain activity linked with cognition
How is psychology defined today
Psych is the scientific study of the behavior and mental processes of humans and other animals
What is the nature-nurture issue
The nature-nurture issue was a question if peoples behaviors are formed by the people around them or f they are passed through generations
What is natural selection and who came up with this idea
Charles Darwin came up with natural selection and it is the belief organisms survive in a particular environment
What is culture? how has cullutre shaped our behavior
Culture is shared ideas and behaviors that are passed through generations. It has shaped our behavior by our views on abortion
What is positive psychology?
It is the study of human flourishing, focusing on human strengths and behaviors
What is the biopsychological approach
This approach uses three viewpoints to give a more complete picture of any given behavior or mental process (biologice, psychological, and social-cultural viewpoints)
What is the focus of behavioral perspective
how we learn observable responses
What is the focus of biological perspective
How the body and brain enable emotions, memories, and sensory experiences; how our genes and our environment influence our individual differenes
What is the focus of cognitive perspective
How we encode, process, store, and retrieve info
What is the focus of evolutionary perspective
how the natural selection of traits has promoted the survival of genes
What is the focus of humanistic perspective
how we achieve personal growth and self-fulfillment
What is the focus of psychodynamic perspective
how behavior springs from unconscious drives and conflicts
What is the focus of social-cultural perspective
how behavior and thinking vary across situations and cultures
How does psychology influence modern culture
knowledge transforms us learning about the solar System and the germ theory of disease alters the way people think and act. Learning about psychology's findings also changes people they are less often to judge psychological disorders or moral failings, judge women as mens mental inferiors, and view children as wild beasts.
What is psychometrics
study of the measurement of human abilities, attitudes, and traits
What is basic research
builds psychology’s knowledge base
Describe cognitive psychologists
experiment with how we think, solve problems, and perceive things
Describe developmental psychologists
study our changing abilities throughout our life
Describe educational psychologists
study influences on teaching and learning
Describe experimental psychologists
Conduct experiments to understand our behaviors and mental processes
Describe Psychometric and quantitative psychologists
They use math and stats to create, administer, and interpret tests (Intelligence or personality tests)
Describe social psychologists
They study how we interact with others and how groups impact us individually
What is applied research
The scientific study that aims to solve practical problems
Forensic Psychologists
They might develop public policy for the mentally ill, consult on jury selection, or help law enforcement in criminal cases
Environmental psychologists
How we are influenced and affected by our natural or built surroundings
Health Psychologists
They work to promote health and prevent disease
Industrial-organizational psychologists
They study the relationship between people and our work environments
Neuropsychologists
They study how our brain impacts out behavior and thoughts
rehabilitation psychologists
Help individuals who have lost functioning after an accident or illness
School psychologist
They work with kids in school dealing with problems that may negatively impact learning in the classroom.
Sports Psychologists
They work with athletes to help them improve their performance
Clinical psychologists
They promote psychological health in individuals, groups, or organizations
Community psychologist
They work with larger groups and communities and focusing on crisis management
Counseling psychologist
Help individuals cope with or make difficult life changes
What is hindsight bias
The tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one would have foreseen it.
Overconfidence
The tendency to think we know more than we do
perceiving order in random events
seeing patterns in unrelated events
What is the foundation of all science
scientific attitude that combines curiosity, skepticism, and humility
What is a theory in scientific method
an explanation using an integrated set of principles that organizes observations and predicts behaviors or events
What is a hypothesis in scientific method
a testable prediction, often implied by a theory
falsifiability
an idea, hypothesis, or theory can be disproven by observation or experiment
what is an operational definition in scientific method
A carefully worded statement of the exact procedures used in a research study
What is an example of an operational definition
A carefully worded statement of the exact procedures used in a research study
What is a replication in scientific method
repeating an experiment to see if the same results can be produced
Define and give an example of a case study
A technique in which one individual or group is studied in depth of revealing universal principles
women’s prison to see how they interact with each other
Define and give an example of a naturalistic observation
A descriptive technique of observing and recording behavior in naturally occurring situations without trying to manipulate or control the situation.
Putting mics on college students to hear their conversations
Define and give an example of a survey ( not a method)
A descriptive technique for obtaining the self-reported attitudes or behaviors of a particular group
Using random selection to ask others what they are for breakfast
How does wording influence responses on a survey
If they wording is written in a way that people don’t like, it can make the persons choice biased
What is sampling bias
a flawed sampling that produces an unrepresentative sample
When dealing with research, what is the population
all those in a group being studied
what is a random sample
a sample that fairly represents a population
Describing a behavior is a first step towards…
predicting it
What is correlation
to measure the extent to which two factors vary together
What are the variables when discussing correlation
Positive and negative
What are scatter plots
Scatter plots are graphed clusters of dots
What is a positive correlation and give an example
When both of the numbers ( x and y) on the graph go up
example : When candy sales go up, so does obesity rates
What is a negative correlation
When one number on the scatter plot goes up and the other goes down
example: if anti-depressant drug sales go up, depression rates go down
What is an illusory correlation
Perceiving a relation where none exists
What is meant by regression toward the mean
tendency for extreme scores or events to fall back toward the average
What is an experiment
a research method where psychologists conduct tests to observe behaviors
What is an experimental group
the people that receive the treatment
What is a control group
the people that don’t receive the treatment
What is random assignment
assigning participants to experimental and control groups by chance to minimize bias
what is the point to remember when dealing with experiments
an experiment manipulates a variable to determine its effect
What is a double-blind procedure? Why is it used?
When the participants nor the person doing the experiment knows which group is receiving the treatment. It is used to get rid of bias
What is the placebo effect
When a person feels as if they are receiving treatment when they arent
what is an independent variable and give an example
Something in the experiment that isn’t being manipulated
New drug is being given to students with ADHD to reduce hyperactivity (the drug)
What is a dependent variable and give an example
the thing in the experiment that is being manipulated
New drug is being given to students with ADHD to reduce hyperactivity (the students)
What is a confounding variable
a factor other than the factor being studied that might influence a study’s results
What is validity in an experiment
The extent to which a test or experiment measures or predicts what it is supposed to
What is key to approaching all of psychology
understanding how research is done, how testable questions are developed and studied
What is quantitative research and give examples
A research method that relies on quantifiable, numerical data
Survey research
What is qualitative research and give examples
research method that relies on in-depth, narrative data that are not translated into numbers
pictures
What does the experimenter intend in a lab environment
simplified reality that has features of every day life
What is the main purpose of an experiment
test theoretical principles
What are 2 reasons why psychologists study nonhuman animals
They find them interesting and we are very similar to them
What are 2 issues that emerge when debating if its ok to test on animals
They must provide humane care and good health conditions and make sure that labs are up to code with the health of animals
What are the 4 ethics codes when working with humans
Get informed consent of participants (gives more info about the experiment)
protect participants from greater-than-usual harm
make sure participants are informed
fully debrief people after experiment
How do values affect psychological science
Values affect what we study, how we study it, and how we interpret the results
For psychologists, stats are the tools that allow them to:
measure variables and interpret results
What are descriptive statistics
numerical data used to measure and describe characteristics of groups
What is a histogram
a bar graph depicting a frequency distribution
Describe mode, mean, and median
Mode- most frequently occuring
mean- average
median- middle
What is a skewed distribution
a representation of scores that lack symmetry around their average value
What does a variation in the data mean
how similar or diverse the scores are
Averages derived from scores with 1. are more reliable than averages based on scores with 2.
low variability
high variability
Describe 1.Range and 2.Standard Deviation in measures of variation
difference between the lowest and highest scores in a distribution
average difference between each score and mean
What is a normal curve ( normal distribution)
a bell shaped curve that describes the distribution of many types of data.
What are inferential statistics
a numerical data that allows one to infer from sample data the probability of something being true about a population
What is meta-analysis
a statistical procedure for analyzing the results of multiple studies to reach an overall conclusion
What three principles must be kept in mind when deciding when it is safe to generalize from a sample?
representative samples are better than biased samples
less variable observations are more reliable than those that are more variable
most cases are better than fewer
What is the underlying logic when it relates to the possibility of obtaining results by chance?
When averages from 2 samples are each reliable measures of their respective populations, then their difference is probably reliable as well
What is statistical significance
difference observed is probably not due to chance, the difference is instead likely to be due to a real difference between the samples
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