Psychology

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

1. Get informed consent of participants (gives more info about the experiment)

2. protect participants from greater-than-usual harm

3. make sure participants are informed

4. 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.

1. low variability

2. high variability

Describe 1.Range and 2.Standard Deviation in measures of variation

1. difference between the lowest and highest scores in a distribution

2. 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?

1. representative samples are better than biased samples

2. less variable observations are more reliable than those that are more variable

3. 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