Psychology: From Inquiry to Understanding

Chapters 1-3

William James (1842-1910)

Founder of American psychology. Famous for writing The Principles of Psychology (1890)

Psychology

Study of the mind, brain, and behavior

Levels of Analysis

Depression at Differing Levels of Analysis

1. Molecular Level: Variations in peoples jeans that are predisposed to depression

2. Nuerochemical Level: Differences in levels of the brain’s chemical messengers that influence mood

3. Neurological/physiological Level: Deferences among people in size and functioning of brain structures related to mood

4. Mental Level: Depressed thoughts (I’m a loser), sad feelings, idea of suicide

5. Behavioral Level: Decrease in pleasurable activities, moving and talking slowly, withdrawing from others

6. Social Level: Loss of important personal relationships, lack of social support

A stepwise approach to analysis, with lower levels tied most closely to biological influences and higher levels tied most closely to social and cultural influences

Multiply determined

Caused by many factors

Single-variable explanations

Although it’s tempting to explain complex human behaviors, such as violence, in terms of a single causal factor like poverty, personality traits, bad upbringing, or genes, such behaviors are almost surely the result of the interplay of an enormous array of factors

Anorexia nervosa

A severe eating disorder

Individual deferences

Help to explain why different people respond in different ways to the same objective situation, such as an insulting comment from a boss

Variations among people in their thinking, emotion, personality, and behavior

Reciprocal determinism

The fact that we mutually influence each other’s behavior. Reciprocal determinism can make it enormously challenging to isolate the causes of human behavior

Blink

Malcolm Gladwell’s blockbuster bestseller Blink (2005), reinforce this view, implying that we should often, if not usually, trust our common sense.

Naive Realism

We assume that “seeing is believing” and trust our intuitive perceptions of the world and ourselves. In daily life, naive realism generally serves us well.

Science

A systematic approach to evidence

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, including the psychological world.

Hypothesis

Testable prediction derived from a scientific theory

Misconception 1: A theory explains one specific event.

Misconception 2: A theory is just an educated guess.

Confirmation Bias

The tendency to seek out evidence that supports our beliefs and deny, dismiss, or distort evidence that contradicts them

Belief Perseverance

In everyday language, belief perseverance is the “don’t confuse me with the facts” effect. Because none of us wants to think we’re wrong, we’re usually reluctant to give up our cherished notions.

Tendency to stick to our initial beliefs even when evidence contradicts them

Metaphysical claims

Metaphysical claims include assertions about the existence of God, the soul, and the afterlife. These claims differ from scientific claims in that we could never test them using scientific methods.

Assertion about the world that’s not testable

Misinformation explosion

On the negative side, the remarkable growth of popular psychology has led not only to an information explosion but also to a misinformation explosion because there’s scant quality control over what this industry produces

Pseudoscience

Pseudoscience lacks the safeguards against confirmation bias and belief perseverance that characterize science. We must be careful to distinguish pseudoscientific claims from metaphysical claims, which, as we’ve seen, are untestable and therefore lie outside the realm of science.

Signs of Pseudoscience

1. Overuse of ad hoc immunizing hypotheses

2. Exaggerated claims

3. Overreliance on anecdotes

4. Absence of connectivity to other research

5. Lack of review by other scholars (called peer review) or replication by independent labs

6. Lack of self-correction when contrary evidence is published

7. Meaningless “psychobabble” that uses fancy scientific-sounding terms that don’t make sense

8. Talk of “proof” instead of “evidence”

Ad hoc immunizing hypothesis

Escape hatch or loophole that defenders of a theory use to protect their theory from falsification

Over reliance of Anecdotes

A mountain of numerous anecdotes may seem impressive, but it shouldn’t persuade us to put much stock in others’ claims.

Anecdata

Informal term for anecdotal evidence

Why are we drawn to Pseudoscience

Our brains are predisposed to make order out of disorder and to find sense in nonsense.

Patternicity

The tendency to perceive meaningful patterns in their absence

Our tendency to see meaningful images in meaningless visual stimuli. Any of us who’s looked at a cloud and perceived the vague shape of an animal has experienced this version of patternicity, as has any of us who’s seen the oddly misshapen face of a “man” in the moon.

Mars Viking Orbiter (1976)

snapped a picture on mars of what looked to be a human face called “The Face on Mars”

Mars Global Surveyor (2001)

There was no face, Nasa found nothing. All there was, was a configuration of rocks and shadows. The photograph happened to have a black dot where the nostrils should be. This is an example of patternicity

Terror management theory

theory proposing that our awareness of our death leaves us with an underlying sense of terror with which we cope by adopting reassuring cultural worldviews

Ex. astrology, paranormal beliefs, communication with the dead

Logical fallacy

traps in thinking that can lead to mistaken conclusions.

Emotional reasoning fallacy or affect heuristic

Error of using our emotions as guides for evaluating the validity of a claim

“The idea that day care might have negative emotional effects on children gets me really upset, so I refuse to believe it.”

Bandwagon fallacy

Error of assuming that a claim is correct just because many people believe it

“A lot of people I know believe in astrology, so there’s got to be something to it.”

Either-or fallacy

Error of framing a question as though we can only answer it in one of two extreme ways

“I just read in my psychology textbook that some people with schizophrenia were treated extremely well by their parents when they were growing up. This means that schizophrenia can’t be the result of environmental factors and therefore must be completely genetic.”

not -me fallacy

Error of believing we’re immune from errors in thinking that afflict other people

“My psychology professor keeps talking about how the scientific method is important for overcoming biases. But these biases don’t apply to me because I’m objective.”

appeal to authority fallacy

Error of accepting a claim merely because an authority figure endorses it

“My state senator said that psychotherapy is worthless; they know a lot so they must be right.”

genetic fallacy

Error of confusing the correctness of a belief with its origins or genesis

“Freud’s views about personality development can’t be right because Freud’s thinking was shaped by sexist views popular at the time.”

argument from antiquity fallacy

Error of assuming that a belief must be valid just because it’s been around for a long time

“There must be something to the Rorschach Inkblot Test because psychologists have been using it for decades.”

argument from adverse consequences fallacy

Error of confusing the validity of an idea with its potential real-world consequences

“IQ can’t be influenced by genetic factors because if that were true, it would give the government an excuse to prevent low-IQ individuals from reproducing.”

appeal to ignorance fallacy

Error of assuming that a claim must be true because no one has shown it to be false

“No scientist has been able to debunk every reported case of ESP, so ESP probably exists.”

naturalistic fallacy

Error of inferring a moral judgment from a scientific fact

“Evolutionary psychologists say that sexual infidelity is a product of natural selection. Therefore, sexual infidelity is ethically justifiable.”

hasty generalization fallacy

Error of drawing a conclusion on the basis of insufficient evidence

“All three people I know who are severely depressed had strict fathers, so severe depression is clearly associated with having a strict father.”

circular reasoning fallacy

Error of basing a claim on the same claim reworded in slightly different terms

“Dr. Smith’s theory of personality is the best supported because it seems to have the most evidence supporting it.”

Bias blind spot

Which means that most people are unaware of their biases but keenly aware of them in others

The dangers of pseudoscience

1. Opportunity Costs: What we give up: Pseudoscientific treatments for mental disorders can lead people to forgo opportunities to seek effective treatments, a phenomenon known as opportunity costs.

2. Direct Harm: Pseudoscientific treatments sometimes do dreadful harm to those who receive them, causing psychological or physical damage, or on rare occasions, even death

3. Inability to think scientifically as citizens: Scientific thinking skills aren’t just important for evaluating psychological claims; we can apply them to all aspects of our lives.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Focuses on changing clients’ maladaptive behaviors, as well as their unhealthy views of themselves, others, and the world

scientific skepticism

Approach of evaluating all claims with an open mind but insisting on persuasive evidence before accepting them

critical thinking or scientific thinking

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

Six Principles of scientific thinking

1. Ruling out a rival hypothesis: Is this the only good explanation for this finding? Have we ruled out other important competing explanations

2. Correlation vs. causation: error of assuming that because one thing is associated with another, it must cause the other

3. Falsifiability: Whenever we evaluate a psychological claim, we should ask ourselves whether one could, in principle, disprove it or whether it’s consistent with any conceivable body of evidence.

4. Replicability: when a study’s findings are able to be duplicated, ideally by independent investigators

5. Generalizability: Whenever we evaluate a psychological claim, we should ask ourselves whether this claim runs counter to many things we know already and, if it does, whether the evidence is as extraordinary as the claim.

6. Extraordinary Claims: Is the evidence as strong as the claims

Variable

Anything that can vary

Third variable problem

There is a third variable which causes both A and B. Correlation isn’t causation

Sample convenience

This refers to participants who are available and easy to recruit

Culture

a set of beliefs, practices, customs and habits of a particular community

What did early psychologists rely on?

Common sense

William Wundt (1832-1920)

developed the first full-fledged psychological laboratory in Leipzig, Germany in 1879.

Introspection

Wundt used a combination of experimental methods, including reaction time procedures, and a technique called introspection, which required trained observers to carefully reflect and report on their mental experiences

Major theoretical perspectives of Psychology: Structuralism

E.B. Titchener. Uses introspection to identify basic elements or “structures” of experience

Major theoretical perspectives of Psychology: Functionalism

William James; influenced by Charles Darwin; James Angell. To understand the functions or adaptive purposes of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Major theoretical perspectives of Psychology: Behaviorism

Ivan Pavlov; John B. Watson; Edward Thorndike; B. F. Skinner. To uncover the general principles of learning that explain all behaviors; focus is largely on observable behavior.

Major theoretical perspectives of Psychology: Cognitivism

Jean Piaget; Ulric Neisser; George Miller. school of psychology that proposes that thinking is central to understanding behavior.

Major theoretical perspectives of Psychology: Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud; Carl Jung; Alfred Adler. To uncover the role of unconscious psychological processes and early life experiences in behavior

Natural Selection (Charles Darwin)

principle that organisms that possess adaptations survive and reproduce at a higher rate than do other organisms

Cognitive Neuroscience

relatively new field of psychology that examines the relation between brain functioning and thinking

Clinical Psychologist

Perform assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of mental disorders

Conduct research on people with mental disorders

Work in colleges and universities, mental health centers, and private practice

Counseling Psychologist

Work with people experiencing temporary or relatively self-contained life problems, like marital conflict, sexual difficulties, occupational stressors, or career uncertainty

Work in counseling centers, hospitals, and private practice (although some work in academic and research settings)

School Psychologist

Work with teachers, parents, and children to remedy students’ behavioral, emotional, and learning difficulties

Developmental Psychologist

Study how and why people change over time

Conduct research on infants’, children’s, and sometimes adults’ and elderly people’s emotional, physiological, and cognitive processes and how these change with age

Experimental Psychologist

Use research methods to study memory, language, thinking, and social behaviors of humans

Work primarily in research settings

Biological Psychologist

Examine the physiological bases of behavior in animals and humans

Most work in research settings

Forensic Psychologist

Work in prisons, jails, and other settings to assess and diagnose inmates and assist with their rehabilitation and treatment

Others conduct research on eyewitness testimony or jury decision making

Typically hold degrees in clinical or counseling psychology

Industrial-Organizational Psychologist

Work in companies and businesses to help select productive employees, evaluate performance, examine the effects of different working and living conditions on people’s behavior (called environmental psychologists)

Design equipment to maximize employee performance and minimize accidents (called human factors or engineering psychologists)

Nature vs Nurture Debate

Are our behaviors attributable mostly to our genes (nature) or to our rearing environments (nurture)?

John Locke on the Nature vs Nurture debate vs behavior geneticists

Locke believed our mind is a tabula rasa (blank slate) at birth, and we are influenced by behavior. Geneticists show that important psychological traits, including intelligence, interests, personality, and many mental illnesses, are influenced substantially by genes.

Evolutionary psychology

discipline that applies Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection to human and animal behavior. It begins with the assumption, shared by William James and other functionalists, that many human psychological systems, like memory, emotion, and personality serve key adaptive functions: They help organisms survive and reproduce. Darwin and his followers suggested that natural selection favored certain kinds of mental traits, just as it did physical ones, like our hands, livers, and hearts.

Fitness

fitness refers to how strong a an organism is to survive and reproducing, passing on its genes to other generations.

Free Will Determinism Debate

To what extent are our behaviors freely selected rather than caused by factors outside our control? Our sense of free will stems from the fact that we aren’t consciously aware of the thousands of subtle environmental influences impinging on our behavior at any given moment. Much like puppets in a play who don’t realize that actors are pulling their strings, we conclude mistakenly that we’re free simply because we don’t realize all the influences acting on our behavior.

Basic Research

Research examining how the mind works

Applied research

research examining how we can use basic research to solve real-world problems

Why is research design important?

naive realism/confirmation bias

Prefrontal Lobotomy

Surgical procedure that severs fibers connecting the frontal lobes of the brain from the underlying thalamus

Two Modes of Thinking: System 1 thinking (Nobel prize winner: Daniel Kahneman)

Intuitive thinking is quick and reflexive, and its output consists mostly of “gut hunches”. Ex: First impressions

Two Modes of Thinking: System 2 thinking

“analytical” thinking is slow and reflective. We engage in analytical thinking whenever we’re trying to reason through a problem or figure out a complicated concept in an introductory psychology textbook.

Heuristic

mental shortcut or rule of thumb that helps us to streamline our thinking and make sense of our world

Random Selection

every person in the population has an equal chance of being chosen to participate.

Generalize our results to the broader population.

Its better to choose a smaller random group than a larger nonrandom one.

Reliability

consistency of measurement. For example, a reliable questionnaire should yield similar scores over time.

test-retest reliability

a reliable questionnaire should yield similar scores over time.

Interrater reliability

the extent to which different people who conduct an interview, or make behavioral observations, agree on the characteristics they’re measuring. If two psychologists who interview patients on a psychiatric hospital unit disagree on most of their diagnoses—one psychologist diagnoses most of the patients as having schizophrenia and the other diagnoses most of the patients as having depression—then their interrater reliability will be low.

Validity

extent to which a measure assesses what it claims to measure. think of validity as “truth in advertising”

Replicability vs Reproducability

the ability to duplicate the original findings consistently, whereas reproducability refers to the ability to review and reanalyse the data from a study and find exactly the same results. Replicability involves collecting new data from new participants, whereas reproducibility involves repeating the same statistical analysis on already-collected data.

What have researchers begun to do to shift the landscape of psychological science to be more reliable?

1. Post and share research materials and data sets in publicly accessible research archives

2. Conduct replications of their own and others’ work before moving on to a new question

3. Pre-register research, which includes publicly posting hypotheses, research designs, and plans for analyzing and reporting the results prior to data collection

4. Encourage editors of scientific journals to publish all sound science—research that’s been carefully conducted

5. Place less emphasis on the findings of single studies, no matter how novel or intriguing, and more emphasis on systematic reviews, including meta-analyses

Naturalistic Observation

Advantages: high in external validity, Disadvantages: Low in internal validity

Case Studies

Advantages: Can provide existence proofs. Allow us to study rare or unusual phenomena. Can offer insights for later systematic testing. Disadvantages: Are typically anecdotal. Don’t allow us to infer causation.

Correlational Designs

Advantages: Can help us predict behavior. Disadvantages: Don’t allow us to infer causation.

Experimental Designs

planning a set of procedures to investigate a relationship between variables

advantages: Allow us to infer causation. High in internal validity. Disadvantages: Can sometimes be low in external validity.

Naturalistic observation

watching behavior in real-world settings without trying to manipulate the situation

External validity

the extent to which our findings generalize to real world settings

Internal validity

the extent to which we can draw cause-and-effect inferences from a study.

Case Study

researchers examine one person or a small number of people, often over an extended period of time.

Existence proofs

demonstrations that a given psychological phenomenon can occur. Ex. A recovered memory of child abuse long forgotten, until recovered in adult years

Response sets

tendency of research participants to distort their responses to questionnaire items

malingering

the tendency to make ourselves appear psychologically disturbed with the aim of achieving a clear-cut personal goal. We’re especially likely to observe this response set among people who are trying to obtain financial compensation for an injury or mistreatment on the job, or among people trying to escape military duty—in the last case, perhaps by faking insanity.

halo effect

This is the tendency of ratings of one positive characteristic to “spill over” to influence the ratings of other positive characteristics