Introduction to Psychology and Psychological Research

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering introductory psychology terminology, major psychological perspectives, subfields, scientific principles, logical fallacies, and research methodology concepts.

Psychology

The scientific study of the mind, brain, and behavior.

Naïve Realism

The belief that we see the world precisely as it is.

Empiricism

The premise that knowledge should initially be acquired through observation.

Scientific Theory

An explanation for a large number of findings in the natural world that survives repeated efforts to refute it.

Hypothesis

A testable prediction derived from a theory.

Confirmation Bias

The tendency to seek out evidence that supports our hypothesis and neglect or distort contradicting evidence.

Belief Perseverance

The tendency to stick to our initial beliefs even when evidence contradicts them.

Behavioral Neuroscience

A subfield of psychology that mainly examines how the brain and nervous system determine behavior.

Experimental Psychology

A subfield of psychology that studies the processes of sensing, perceiving, learning, and thinking about the world.

Developmental Psychology

A subfield of psychology that studies how people grow and change from the moment of conception through death.

Personality Psychology

A subfield of psychology focusing on the consistency in people's behavior over time and the traits that differentiate one person from another.

Health Psychology

A subfield of psychology exploring the relationship between psychological factors and physical ailments or disease.

Clinical Psychology

A subfield of psychology dedicated to the study, diagnosis, and treatment of psychological disorders.

Counseling Psychology

A subfield of psychology focusing on educational, social, and career adjustment problems.

Social Psychology

The study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and actions are affected by others.

Evolutionary Psychology

A subfield of psychology considering how behavior is influenced by our genetic inheritance from ancestors.

Behavioral Genetics

A subfield studying how individuals might inherit certain behavioral traits and how the environment influences whether those traits are displayed.

Clinical Neuropsychology

A subfield uniting the areas of neuroscience and clinical psychology.

Introspection

A procedure where observers carefully reflect and report on their mental experiences.

Structuralism

An early school of psychology aimed at identifying the basic elements or fundamental structures of psychological experience.

Functionalism

An early school of psychology that strove to understand the adaptive purposes or functions of psychological characteristics and behavior.

Gestalt Psychology

An early approach to psychology focusing on how perception is organized into a unit or whole rather than individual elements.

Psychodynamic Perspective

A psychological perspective focused on internal psychological processes, especially unconscious impulses, thoughts, and memories.

Behavioral Perspective

A psychological perspective focused on uncovering general principles of learning underlying human and animal behavior.

Cognitive Perspective

A psychological perspective arguing that thinking affects behavior, often comparing human mental processing to a computer.

Humanistic Perspective

A psychological perspective asserting that humans naturally strive to grow, develop, and reach their full potential, emphasizing free will.

Pseudoscience

A set of claims that seems scientific but lacks safeguards against confirmation bias and belief perseverance.

Emotional Reasoning Fallacy

The error of using our emotions to evaluate the validity of a claim.

Bandwagon Fallacy

The logical fallacy of assuming a claim is correct because many people believe it.

Either-Or Fallacy

The error of framing a question as though it can only be answered in one of two extreme ways.

Not Me Fallacy

The belief that we are immune from thinking errors that afflict others.

Opportunity Cost

A danger of pseudoscience where effective treatments are forfeited due to the investment of time or money in ineffective ones.

Scientific Skepticism

An approach requiring the evaluation of all claims with an open mind while insisting on persuasive evidence before accepting them.

Pathological Skepticism

The tendency to dismiss any claims that contradict one's beliefs.

Disconfirmation Bias

The tendency to seek out evidence inconsistent with a hypothesis we disbelieve, and neglect information consistent with it.

Oberg's Dictum

The premise that we should keep our minds open, but not so open that we believe virtually everything.

Critical Thinking

A set of skills for evaluating all claims in an open-minded and careful fashion.

Falsifiability

The requirement that for a claim to be meaningful, it must be capable of being disproved.

Occam's Razor

The principle of parsimony stating that the simplest explanation for a given set of data is the best one.

Replicability

The principle that research findings must be duplicated, ideally by independent investigators.

Correlation-Causation Fallacy

The error of assuming that because two variables are correlated, one causes the other.

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

A condition in response to an extreme traumatic stressor involving intense fear, persistent reexperiencing, avoidance, and increased arousal lasting more than $1$\,month.

Heuristics

Mental shortcuts or rules of thumb used daily to reduce cognitive energy required to solve problems.

Operational Definition

The translation of a hypothesis into specific, testable procedures that can be measured and observed.

Archival Research

Research examining existing data, such as census documents, college records, and newspaper clippings, to test a hypothesis.

Naturalistic Observation

Watching behavior in real-world settings without making any modifications to the environment.

External Validity

The extent to which findings can be generalized to the real world.

Internal Validity

The extent to which cause-and-effect inferences can be drawn.

Self-Report Measures

Questionnaires or surveys assessing characteristics such as personality, mental illness, behaviors, thoughts, or attitudes.

Random Selection

A procedure ensuring every person in a population has an equal chance of being chosen to participate in a study.

Reliability

The consistency of measurement.

Test-Retest Reliability

The consistency of a measure across repeated administrations over time.

Interrater Reliability

The extent to which different raters or observers agree in their findings.

Validity

The extent to which a measure assesses what it claims to measure.

Response Sets

Tendencies of research subjects to distort their responses, often in a socially desirable way.

Halo Effect

The tendency of ratings of one positive characteristic to spill over to influence ratings of other characteristics.

Case Study

A research design studying one person or a small number of people for an extended period of time.

Scatterplot

A graph depicting correlational data showing the relationship between two variables.

Illusory Correlation

The perception of a statistical association between two variables where none exists.

Experimental Group

The participants in an experiment who receive the manipulation.

Control Group

The participants in an experiment who do not receive the manipulation.

Independent Variable

The variable manipulated by the experimenter to test its effects.

Dependent Variable

The variable that the experimenter measures to see whether the manipulation had an effect.

Confounds

Any difference between the experimental and control groups aside from the independent variable that makes cause-and-effect uninterpretable.

Placebo Effect

Improvement resulting from the mere expectation of improvement.

Nocebo Effect

Harm resulting from the mere expectation of harm.

Experimenter Expectancy Effect

A phenomenon where researchers' hypotheses lead them unintentionally to bias a study outcome.

Double-Blind Design

A study setup where neither participants nor researchers know who is in the experimental or control group, reducing bias.

Demand Characteristics

Cues that participants pick up that allow them to generate guesses regarding the researcher's hypotheses.

Institutional Review Board (IRB)

A committee responsible for carefully reviewing research designs to ensure they are conducted ethically.

Descriptive Statistics

Numerical characteristics that summarize the nature of a data set.

Central Tendency

A summary metric describing where a group of data scores tends to cluster, including the mean, median, and mode.

Mean

The average of all scores in a data set.

Median

The middle score in a data set.

Mode

The most frequent score in a data set.

Dispersion

A statistical metric providing a sense of how loosely or tightly bunched scores are.

Range

The difference between the highest and lowest scores in a data set.

Standard Deviation

A measure of dispersion that takes into account how far each data point is from the mean.

Scientific Method

A process allowing researchers to formulate explanations, test hypotheses derived from theories, collect and analyze data, and communicate findings.