PSYC 101 Test 1

Psychology

The scientific study of the mind and behavior

Mind

our private inner experience of perceptions, thoughts, memories, and feelings

private space, perceptions

Behavior

observable actions of human beings and nonhuman animals

H.M. (Henry Molaison)

Bike accident, started having terrible seizures, removed the HIPPOCAMPUS (related to the formation of memories) from his brain. The seizures were gone but he had lost his ability to FORM NEW MEMORIES

Anterograde amnesia

When you remember old memories but can’t form new ones

Retrograde amnesia

Forget past memories but can form new ones

Plato

Nativism

Nativism

Certain kinds of nature is innate or from birth

Aristotle

Empiricism

Empiricism

We are born a blank slate and our experiences are what give us knowledge

Unscribed tablet → tabula rasa → blank slate

Critical period

Must be exposed to something in this time period to learn something

BOTH nature and nurture

Franz Joseph Gall

Phrenology

Phrenology

Specific mental abilities and characteristics are discoverable by measuring the bumps and contours of one’s skull.

Gave people head massages and was looking for bumps on the skull that related to different functions of the brain/psychological function.

Paul Broca

A surgeon with a patient who had damage to only one side of their brain. Located this damaged area after his death, called Broca. When alive, the patient had a hard time with language output (Broca output). Meaning, the patient could understand language really well, but could NOT UNDERSTAND what was coming in, only being able to COMMUNICATE really WELL , can’t properly receive input → giving us clues to what this part of the brain is known for

Wilhelm Wundt

STRUCTURALISM

Founded the first psychological laboratory. Influenced by the field of chemistry. Scientists wanted to find what are all the different elements that went through the human mind, they used introspection and a field called structuralism.

Consciousness

A person’s subjective experience of the world and the mind

Structuralism

Scientists finding the structure of all the things around us

Introspection

The subjective observation of one’s own experience

William James

Drops out of Harvard Med School, ends up in Europe to study Darwinism, realized the function of our mental processes should help us survive. The structure is one thing but the function is the more important thing of the mind. The father of modern psychology, applied scientific approach to psychology

Functionalism

The function of the mind is more important than the structure. There is a purpose of these mental processes that help us adapt to our natural environment

Charles Darwin

Natural selection

Natural selection

The features of an organism that help it survive and reproduce are more likely than other features to be passed on to subsequent generations

Hysteria

A temporary loss of cognitive or motor functions, usually as a result of emotionally upsetting experiences

multiple conscious “selves”

Sigmund Freud was Charcot’s student

Hysteria used to be a functional disorder

Sigmund Freud - unconscious

The unconscious was the part of the mind that operates outside of conscious awareness. It still influences us though, still part of our mind and behaviors

Psychoanalysis

Bringing the unconscious into conscious awareness. Bring this unconscious awareness to light and then you won’t have this pain anymore, might be childhood trauma. Helps us understand our unconscious behavior

Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers

Humanistic psychology

Humanistic pyschology

Therapist and client are on equal footing

This is a heavy feeling, being trapped by our unconscious thoughts, so now we have humanistic psychology where human nature can be viewed in a much more positive way rather than this weight of trauma that weighs us down

Ivan Pavlov

Pavlov’s Dog

Psychologist who discovered classical conditioning with dogs and ringing bells

Pavlov was a physiologist studying digestion in dogs. Your dog knows to go on a walk or ___ activity when you pull out the leash, the leash doesn’t have any inherent value but it signals something. When a dog would eat, it would salivate, and Pavlov would collect the saliva. As soon as the dog sees the food or even hears the footsteps of the person who brings food, the dog would start salivating. This would lead to a field called behaviorism.

There is a stimulus and there is a response, food/footsteps/door à salivating

John Watson

Behaviorism, Watson’s famous case is about Little Albert

Behaviorism

Believes that psychologists should focus on behaviors. We need to restrict psychology to things that are objective and observable, not subjective

Science

Replicable

Objective measures observable by others

B.F. Skinner

Animals learn by interacting with their environment (not passive like Pavlov’s dogs)

Can shape any behavior with REINFORCEMENT, questioned free-will

Consequence: if we do something and we get good consequence, we’ll do it again, but if we do something and receive a negative consequence, an electric shock, we won’t do it again. What happens after you engage in a behavior that determines if you’ll do it again. Skinner said we don’t have free will, based on consequences, you can shape what other people do. Ex: the billion dollar industry for marketing and social media influence

B.F. Skinner Box

Skinner would put animals in a little box and motivate them with food, if they press a button or spin in a circle, reinforced behavior. Ex: giving students golden stars for good behavior

Illusions

Errors of perception, memory, or judgement in which subjective experience differs from objective reality

Gestalt psychologists

“The whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts” – Aristotle. Gestalt psychologists took hold of this idea and emphasized that you can give us these illusions of different people but when you put them together there is something different or even more unimaginable, more to it

The Mueller-Lyer Line Illusion

The lines on the edges are changing the perception of the middle lines, causing the top middle line to look longer than the bottom even though both are equal. The difference between senses and perception, perception varies more subjective

Cognitive Psychology

Sir Federic Bartlett

–People remember how a story “should” end rather than how it actually did end

–Our memory is influenced by our mind (our knowledge, hopes, aspirations, and desires) rather than a photographic representation of actual events.

Behavior has told us to ignore these processes in our mind that affect our story, but cognitive psychology investigates these spots and gaps in our memory that we fill in

The scientific study of all these mental processes, our perceptions, thoughts, memories, reasoning, etc.

Information Systems Model

Found we don’t have photographic memory, we fill in spots we don’t remember and there is something that changes memory and fills in these gaps

Karl Lashley

Removed parts of rat brains

Observed deficits

Did animal research and removed parts of the brain to find deficits, finding where in the brain the memory of memorizing a maze and its structure is found. Now, we have incredible brain scanners that are non-invasive

Behavioral Neuroscience

Where our behaviors are linked to the parts of our brain. You’re in an MRI scan and you move your left foot and it finds where in the brain that registered

Cognitive neuroscience

When you’re thinking of a joyful memory or a sad, traumatic memory, studies where in the brain that fired

Non-invasive “brain-scanning” during mental activities

PET scan

fMRI

John Garcia

Evolutionary psychology

Gave a bunch of rats brain radiation, made them sick and found that these rats would associate food with what made them sick, resulting in them avoiding the food rather than the lights and sounds. Ex: when you get food poisoning you avoid it, food aversion

Evolutionary psychology

Explains mind and behavior in terms of the adaptive value of abilities that are preserved over time by natural selection

The idea that we inherit information and mental processes or things that are adaptive to our environment from our ancestors that helps us survive

Jealous genes

There is a benefit to being conscious, almost “jealous” of where your partner is, this emphasizes your want to care for your offspring. This is what evolutionary psychologists study

Norman Triplett

Cyclists rode faster with peers. Our behavior is influenced by the presence of others

Social psychology

Being near people doesn’t actually make you go faster but it influences your behavior, why is that?

•Our behavior is influenced by the presence of others

Cultural psychology

The study of how cultures reflect and shape the psychological processes of their members

Culture

The values, traditions, and beliefs that are shared by a particular group of people

Absolutism

There are certain psychological phenomenons that are shared across cultures like honesty

Relativism

The variations of cultural things across cultures like depression

Margaret Mead

Anthropologist, traveled to far regions to study cultural differences in behavior and practices

Francis Cecil Summer, Ph.D.

The father of Black psychology

American Psychological Association (APA) 1892

–Researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students

–Mission: to promote the advancement, communication, and application of psychological science and knowledge to benefit society and improve lives

Association for Psychological Science (APS) 1988

–The leading international organization dedicated to advancing scientific psychology across disciplinary and geographic borders

Three things that make people especially difficult to study

VRC

Variability, Reactivity, Complexity

We have billions of neurons and are reacting to many different environments. We are super variable so we respond differently and have many emotions. We are also incredibly reactive, we aren’t a single cell organism in a lab and we as people are hard to do research with.

Scientific approach

Theory

Hypothesis

Gather Evidence

Modify Theory

We are constantly evolving. Theories are basic explanations rooted in evidence, we have a theory and that leads us to a hypothesis à a formalized preposition. Based on evidence, we can modify our theory

Ways to collect data

Case Study

Observational Study

Psychological Test (Assessments)

Surveys

Case Studies

A case study is when we really delve deep into one specific example or person. Some limitations of a case study are generalizability and observer bias. Observers can be biased to their experiments, e.g., those who drew too close and invested in Genie

–Observations, formal psychological testing, drawings, clinical interviews, questionnaires, family interviews

•Example: Genie

•Generalizability

•Information is often missing and hard to interpret

•Observer Bias

Observational Study

Researcher observes, measures, records behavior while trying to avoid intruding on the people being observed

Studying many people

Merely observing, no prescribing medication, no changing the environment, just collecting data on what the observer is observing.

Naturalistic observation

Seeing how students engage in the classroom or home visits and seeing how children live or what environment or family dynamics people are living in

Laboratory observation

A laboratory built for studying things and in a laboratory environment you have control of the environment and are usually studying just one thing/dynamic

Problems with observational studies

ONLY correlational and NOT causal

Mere presence of researchers and equipment

Observation causes discomfort, your body reacts and just observing changes outcomes. When we observe, we cannot make any assumptions about what is causing what, “correlation does not establish causation.” You have to adjust variables to fully understand and establish what affects what. If you’re solely observing then you cannot come to a full conclusion

Psychological Tests (Assessments)

Measure personality traits, emotional states, IQ, abilities

Objective tests (inventories)

Measure beliefs, feelings, or behaviors of which people are aware

Projective tests

Are meant to project into an unconscious motive, drive, or experience. Whatever is going on with you internally is projected out of you through this assessment. Based on what a child draws, a cloud with rain vs. a colored cloud with larger raindrops, projective testing might show that the child is dealing with something difficult

Standardized tests

Scores are based on NORMS

Assessments and Reliability

Tests must be RELIABLE: produce same result across time, place, and scorer

what variables, time, place, administration, etc., affect an assessment

Test-retest reliability

The consistency of scores obtained when the same test is administered to the same people on two separate occasions

The score is not affected by such variables.

But people tend to do better the second time

Reliable measure but an invalid: a scale or an alarm set five minutes before an event

Alternate-forms reliability

Multiple choice versus True/False

Method for checking test consistency by giving two different versions of the same test to the same group of people

Assessments and Validity

A test must also be VALID: it must measure what it sets out to measure

Construct Validity

Items broadly represent the trait in question job satisfaction: have you reached a dead end at work? Are you bored with your assignments? versus How do you feel about your salary?

Predictive Validity

Ability to predict other measures of the trait in question, related traits

high school GPA predicts college GPA

Assessments and Power

Let’s say that if we suspect someone to have depression we want the assessment to assess even the mildest form of depression. But you don’t want a false negative, like a blood test to test if you are HIV positive, so you want the test to be powerful enough to detect even if you’re one day positive, pregnancy and COVID tests are also examples. Detecting a difference when one exists

Surveys

Questionnaires and interviews that gather info by asking people directly about their experiences, attitudes, opinions

(Surveys) NEED Representative sample

a group of participants that accurately represents the larger population the researcher wishes to describe.

•Age, sex, ethnic groups, etc…

Problems with Surveys

Volunteer bias (call radio station, social anxiety study)

People lie

Researchers bias

People who sign up for surveys differ from those who don’t volunteer. Volunteers might have preconceived notion or motive.

Some of the hardest groups of people to study are those with social anxiety, outreach is hard and people usually end up not showing up. People with mild social anxiety tend to show up in larger groups and affect the survey.

People sometimes misremember the truth or want to be seen in a good light because they don’t want to be misjudged.

Asking questions like do you usually have sex with a condom vs when was the last time you had sex with a condom

Types of studies

Correlational studies

Experiments

An experimental study tests for cause and effect by changing one variable

A correlational study only looks at how naturally occurring variables are related

Correlational Studies

A descriptive study that looks for a consistent relationship between two phenomena

–Correlation: a measure of how strongly two variables are related to one another

•Strength of a relationship (IQ & income)

–Positive Correlation: high and high

»GPA and SAT scores

–Negative Correlation: high and low

»Average family income and dental disease

–Uncorrelated: shoe size and IQ

•Coefficient of Correlation (+1.00 to -1.00)

Cautions about Correlations

“Correlation does not establish causation”

A does not necessarily cause B

TV watching causes attention problems (Cannot say that TV causes ADHD because there are too many explanations without running an experiment)

Attention problems cause TV watching: these children are more attracted to TV

Inattentive kids have more stressed parents who may be more likely to resort to using TV to calm kids

Experiment

A controlled test of a hypothesis in which a researcher manipulates one variable to discover its effect on another

Can draw conclusions about what causes what

Smoking and Driving Experiment

Have participants smoke before getting into car seat

–Real cigarette OR placebo cigarette

Then have them drive simulated car

Record number of collisions

Variables:

Independent variable: type of cigarette (real or placebo)

Dependent: number of collisions

Control group

Need a control group to be sure that the behavior you are interested in would not have occurred anyway by chance

•Smoking experiment: PLACEBO cigarette group

Random Assignment

A procedure for assigning people to experimental and control groups in which each individual has the same probability as any other of being assigned to a give group

Experimenter Effects

•Experimenters can influence the results of a study (facial expressions (smile), tone of voice)

•Rosenthal (1966)

– “maze bright” and “maze dull” rats

Participants want to please (may act in ways that they ordinarily would not)

Single-blind study

When the researcher knows but the patient doesn’t who’s prescribed

–still have EEs (experimenter effects, expectations, etc.)

–Also helpful for participants NOT to know purpose of study

Double-blind study

When both the researcher and patient don’t know who’s prescribed

Side effect profiling can make double-blind studies difficult

Descriptive statistics

Statistical procedures that organize and summarize data

Arithmetic mean

an average that is calculated by adding up a set of quantities and dividing the sum by the total number of quantities in the set

Standard Deviation

a commonly used measure of variability that indicates the average difference between scores in a distribution and their mean.

How clustered or spread out the scores are around the mean

Inferential statistics

Allow researchers to draw inferences about how statistically meaningful a study’s results are

Significance test

show how likely it is that a study’s results occurred merely by chance

Types of experiments

Cross-sectional

Longitudinal

Cross-sectional

A study in which subjects of different ages (or any groups) are compared at a given time.

-IQ at age 20, 40, 60, 80

-Different groups compared at one time

Longitudinal

A study in which subjects are followed and periodically reassessed over a period of time

-Test a person’s IQ 4 times in their life

-Same group compared at different times

Longitudinal study difficulties

lose participants over the process, major life events can happen that take you out of the study, cost is expensive (keeping patients, storing data), the desire to publish and find results asap

Ethical Considerations

General Principle: Psychologists strive to benefit those with whom they work and take care to do no harm

All experiments cause some stress and anxiety

Is the information worth the pain?

Who is benefiting?

Who decides?

Informed consent

–a written agreement to participate in a study made by an adult who has been informed of all the risks

–freedom from coercion.

–protection from harm.

–risk-benefit analysis.

Debriefing

–a verbal description of the true nature and purpose of a study that psychologists provide to people after they have participated in the study

Tuskegee Syphilis Study

Untreated syphilis in African American Male (399 positive, 201 controls)

1932-1972 despite penicillin proved effective sin 1947

Never told of Dx, never given Tx,

Spread to 40 wives and 19 children born with congenital syphilis

Reparations ($, lifetime medical benefits, burial expenses, also for widows and children)