PSY100 1st 3rd

What is psychology?

Scientific study of thought and feelings (internal), and behaviour (easier, observable)

• the mind generates thoughts, feelings, and behaviour

Science requires

• being open to any idea

• criticizing and testing every idea

• basing your views on the amount of high-quality evidence

Scientific approach is vital when asking big questions

“Real” answers require research

• Collect information (data) via observation under different conditions

• Data can inform theories that help us understand, predict and

  manage thoughts, feelings and behavior

What causes our behavior? Many at one time

Stimuli (singular = stimulus) can trigger responses (thoughts, feelings, behaviours)

• meaning varies across individuals and context

• interpretation matters, but conscious awareness isn’t needed for

  stimulus to be influential

• stimuli can act alone or altogether

Using Psychology, we can…

• Identify, predict, and treat maladaptive behaviours (cognitive-behavioral therapy)

• Facilitate behaviours (sports psychology)

• Explain and sometimes predict population events (behavioral economics) (difficult)

Branches of Psychology — Both are inter-related; one informs the other

Pure psychology

• Explore mechanism, often through experiments

• Abstract concepts and minutiae (precise mechanism)

• In the lab

.

Applied psychology

• What predicts, changes, or manages behaviour (often in therapeutic context)

• More concrete outcomes

• Real-world settings

The hub discipline

Psychology interconnected with many disciplines

Levels of Analysis — biological factors (eating example)

Eating, fasting, and adipose (fat) storage and more change our physiology

In turn affects hunger and likelihood of eating

• Blood sugar, insulin, ghrelin (increase appetite), leptin (less hunger if more fat) levels all matter

Levels of Analysis — biological factors (eating example) (brain only)

Sight, smell, thoughts can trigger physiological cascade which prepares for eating (cephalic phase) — inside head, only sensory

• specific brain areas (e.g. hypothalamus)

• INDEPENDENT OF HUNGER

.

• genetic factors

• mutations

Levels of analysis — psychological

Mental traits (delayed gratification)

• Impulse control

• Self-control

.

Perception (mindset) — even if food is the same, hormone levels might be different because of labels

.

Also

• Incentive value (motivation)

• Hedonic value (does it taste good)

Levels of analysis — social culture influences (learned routines)

Learned routines

• consistent eating times

• conditioned (learned) cues that increase hunger (not solely based on nutrient loss)

• physiological rhythms may synchronize with our schedules

Levels of analysis — social culture influences (influences of marketing)

Influences of marketing

• Light foods marketed towards women

• Heartier foods marketed towards men

  • Across many cultures, women eat more light foods

(does marketing create or reinforce?)

.

e.g mukbang, food shows

Levels of analysis — social culture influences (environment)

Environment

• Social facilitation — perform tasks better around familiar people

• We do what others do if we are comfortable around them

• opposite in uncomfortable new situations

Understanding Behavior is Tough

1) Multifactorial (many factors influential, each of small effect, L3)

• some factors are stronger

• all factors interact

.

2) Individual differences and cultural differences are relevant

.

3) People interact with and influence each other

Psychology is a rigorous discipline

• Scientific approach

• Acting against human nature (not common sense)

• All subject to biases (preferences in judgment) and fallacies (errors in logical reasoning

  • unconscious (automatically applied without awareness)

Confirmation Bias

Overvaluing information that agrees with our beliefs and undervaluing information that does not

• common and hard to avoid

• affects public attitudes and social policies on issues

• AI is making this more prevalent

.

To think scientifically, you must acknowledge all facts – even those not in your favor

• need to look for things that disagree with you

Considering all sources

Whats the overall effect?

Hard to do, can do meta-analysis

• take an average of all the results

• trend over majority of research

Illusion of Causality

We are hardwired to form relationships between things linked in space and place (space-time contiguity)

• sometimes wrongly identify associations — threshhold is small

• random relationships

• clustering illusion — infer patterns from small, non-representative amounts of data, actually random (too little data)

Apophenia

The human tendency to perceive meaningful patterns, connections, or significance within random, unrelated, or chaotic data

• we have a clear, unidirectional (one drection) bias to detect faces in our environment

• we see faces in clouds but never clouds in faces

Fallacies

• Argument from Antiquity — idea has been around for so long

• Appeal to authority — someone important said it

• Appeal to Ignorance — idea hasnt been refuted yet

• Bandwagon — everyone else cannot be wrong

• Either/or (Dichotomous/Binary thinking) — no gradients, degrees, or complexity

• Not me — I don’t make mistakes, others do

Why do we cling to certain beliefs?

1) Many beliefs are “irrational” — no evidence or experience

• not coming from evidence anyways

• evidence doesnt matter

.

2) Helps avoid negative effects

• e.g. terror management theory (avoiding harm or death)

• or changing our mind is costly (embarassment, exile)

.

3) Gives positive feelings, resolves discomfort

• if beliefs dont match evidence, become uncomfortable and act to resolve discomfort

• cognitive dissonance theory

Early perspectives in Psychology

• Philosophy

• Psychophysics

• Structuralism (regarded as the first field)

• Functionalism

• Gestalt psychology

• Psychoanalysis

• Behaviourism

• Cognitivism

• Social psychology

Perspectives — key details

• Differ in many ways (e.g. assumptions, tools, objectives, context)

• Some may have been abandoned, but all have been influential

• Different perspectives are not in conflict, apply several perspectives at once to understand an issue

Structuralism

Experiences are composed of many different elements (or parts)

• do not combine automatically

• merged into an experience via attention, volition, and creativity of the individual

• to study an experience (via introspection), identify the parts

• also involved mental chronometry (study of decision-making time)

Structuralism — introspection

Examination of one's own conscious thoughts and feelings

• introspection involves verbal report on experience

• compare to others

  • couldn’t find any connection

structuralism — key notes

• Gave credibility to psychology as an experimental science

• Introspection proved unreliable and was abandoned, though mental

  chronometry remains today

.

• Unconscious processing was not addressed, practical applications

  were discouraged (e.g. mental health)

• Little use of animals

Functionalism

Explain how behaviors served adaptive functions that increased fitness (purpose)

• why is the behaviour useful?

• related to evolutionary theory by darwin

• William James

Functionalism — cont.

• Led to the development of many new theories — easier to understand emotions/behaviours

• Attached to evolutionary psychology, which remains today (very hated tho)

.

• Transformed public perspectives

• Theoretical and not experimental; difficult to falsify

• Mostly descriptive and not predictive

Gestalt Psychology

Emphasized that “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts” (contrasts with structuralism)

• stimuli is different in different contexts

• largely visual perception

• Wertheimer, Kohler and Koffka

Gestalt Psychology — cont.

• Led us to reconsider the reductionist approach (the whole always matters, stimuli are interpreted in context)

• Identified key perceptual principles — still used today!

.

• Only exhaustive focus was visual perception

• Descriptive rather than predictive; did not address mechanism/why

Psychoanalysis

Study unconscious through various methods

• Free association, dream analysis, talk therapy

• Emphasis on childhood experiences

• Freud and Jung

Psychoanalysis — cont.

• Popularized psychology and revolutionized mental health care (L10)

• Highlighted the importance of unconscious processing

.

Many issues

• fixation of case studies (maybe generalization?)

• many theories untestable, not supported

• overvalued environmental influences

• overemphasized secual function and development

Behaviorism

Focused on behavior — believed that the mind and mental processes could not be easily examined

• contrasts with psychoanalysis

• not interested in thoughts, just behaviour

• stimulus —→ results

• Watson and Skinner

Behaviorism —cont.

• Experimental rigor

• Identified learning principles and informed mental health care (L10)

• Animal models

.

Many issues

• overvalued environment

• undervalued the importance of interpretation and mental processes

• could not explain certain behaviours adequately (no genetics, biology, creativity)

• lack of consideration for species differences

Cognitivism

In direct contrast to behaviorism, studied mental processes (e.g. perception, thinking, memory, and judgment)

• innovative models, experimental designs and approaches

• Piaget, Ebbinghaus, Neisser

Cognitivism — cont

• Focused on mental processes (rather than just on behavior)

• Developed influential models of information processing, made many fields

.

• Accompanying roles of emotion interact

• neuroimaging

Social/Cultural Psychology

Study how social situations and culture influence decision making

• e.g. bystander effect — reduced tendency to help when many others present

• Lewin, Festinger and Schachter

Social/Cultural Psychology — cont.

• Helped us better understand contexts, cultures and people better

• Broad implications

.

Issues

• low effect sizes, replicability issues

• weak effects

• lab environments criticized as artificial, non-representative

What is a variable?

• An attribute that assumes different values across people, places and

  timepoints

• Thoughts, feelings and behaviors

• Variations between people (individual differences) and within people

Conceptual Variables

We cannot prove they are real, but we pretend they are because it is useful

• cant be measured directly

• look for things associated with conceptual variables and measure those

Approximating intelligence — conceptual variable example

Intelligence is conceptual variable (capacity to acquire and apply knowledge and skills)

• can measure other associations, such as cognitive abilities

• Intelligence quotient (IQ) score is calculated from many other cognitive

  abilities

Defining conceptual variables

There may be more than one way to define a variable

• effective definitions rely on criteria validated by the community (standardized tests)

• Choose one definition in a study — operational definition

  • one variable can have many operational definitions

  • not perfect

For certain tests…

Biases

• positive impression management (exaggerating positive traits)

• malingering (exaggerate/manufacturing problems)

`

Accuracy

• self rating: high accuracy for extroversion, low for anxiety, very low in some cases

• rating of others is better, but not perfect

• halo effect — infer more positive traits from one real positive trait

• horns effect

`

Framing

• wording of question matters

For a test to be useful, we need…

Test-retest reliability (every time with same conditions get similar result)

Inter-rater reliability (no matter who is scoring the test get similar result)

Construct validity (the degree to which a test captures the intended construct)

Key distinction between operational definition and contruct validity

Operational definition = the specific test of the conceptual variable (e.g. intelligence test)

Construct validity = does your test result predict the relevant things in the real world

(if a test does not have validity, it does not have real value)

For any variable in a population…

There will be a distribution (a graph of all values a variable can assume)

• randomly selected population

Distribution Characeristics

Measures of central tendency: mean, median, mode

Measures of variability: standard deviation (SD), range

Mean

Average score of the variable within a population

• very useful — most psychological research involves analyzing means

• But sensitive to outliers, particularly if the sample is small

Standard Deviation (SD)

How much a score typically deviates (±) from the mean

• High means a lot of spread

• Low means little spread

• 1SD unit = the SD distance from the mean

Outliers

Definition varies; generally a score must be at least 2 absolute SD units away from the mean

• lead to nonrepresentative means

• limit usefulness of means

Median

The value separating the higher half of a population from the lower half

• not influenced by outliers

Mode

The most frequently occurring value in a population

• informative but not often used in formal analysis

Range

The distance between highest and lowest score

• large ranges misleading

• vulnerable to outliers

• SD matters more

The Normal Distribution, Bell Curve

• symmetrical, bell-shaped

• 68% of cases between ± 1SD, 95% between ± 2SD

• no skewness

• no kurtosis

Mean = median = mode

(Most preferred statistics assume a normal distribution)

Skewed Distribution

Negatively skewed: mean is smaller than median and mode

Positively skewed: mean is larger than median and mode

Hypothesis

A proposed explanation of a phenomenon based on evidence

• serves as a starting point for an investigation

• specific and directional

• simple, clear, and testable

The Scientific Method

Research Approaches

1. Descriptive research

2. Experimental research

.

Different study methods have different advantages and limitations

• depends on needs and resources

Descriptive research

General assessment of variables through systematic observation

• not possible to infer causation

• not doing a manipulation

.

• case studies

• surveys

• naturalistic observation

Descriptive – Case Study

An intensive examination of one individual (hard to generalize for population)

• give insight into rare phenomena, proof of existence

• can inspire new hypotheses

• common in medicine, basis of Freud

Descriptive – Survey

Assess many variables in a large population via questionnaire or interviews

• highly generalizable

• valuable in social psychology

Descriptive – Naturalistic Observation

Observation of an animal (or person) in its natural setting without intervention

• highly generalizable (external validity); reduces concerns about the

  observer effect

• Flaws

  • poorly controlled (anything can happen)

  • limited range of variables (few behaviours)

  • difficult to study infrequent behaviours and thoughts

The experimental method

A controlled environment where we study the relationship between a defined set of variables by controlling all the rest

• allow inference of causal relationships between variables

  • manipulate at least one variable (independent variable/IV)

  • measure at least one variable (dependent variable/DV)

  • all other variables kept constant if possible

(change in DV must be due to IV)

• the one that gets no treatment —→ control

Quasi-experiment

One IV is decided BEFORE the experiment begins

• already know one IV before

• cant randomly assign

• experiment-like, ability for causation not as strong

Study Designs

Between-subject Factor Design

• 2+ groups, each given different treatment

.

Within-subject factor design

• one group observed 2+ times (e.g. before/after)

• allow control for confounding variables

• need to be measurable twice

• also attrition

.

Mixed design

• 2+ groups, each observed 2+ times

• allow control for confounding variables

Concerns — sampling

To generalize results, need to make sure study sample is representative

The W.E.I.R.D. Problem

Studies focus on Western, Educated individuals living in Industrialized, Rich + Democratic countries

• 12% of population, 80% of study participants

• Non-WEIRD communities may differ in many ways

Addressing the WEIRD Problem

• More diverse/inclusive samples

• More settings

• Acknowledgment of additional interpretations

• Replication of prior work in different contexts

Concerns — confounding variables

Variables that a researcher fails to control limits the use of the study

• uncontrollable variable that is related to the DV and/or IVs is a confounding variable

Concern — act of observation

People are aware of the hypothesis, could influence subjects behviour (conscious or unconscious)

Observer/hawthorne effect: people behave differently when observed

• can be limited by opacity and/or deception by the researcher

• difficult to prevent, less issue for naturalisitc observation

Concern — the power of expectation

People generally have pre-existing beliefs about how treatments might affect them

• results of study might be affect or determined by the subjects belief in this treatment

Placebo effect

An effect of a treatment that cannot be attributed to the active properties of that treatment

• to control, include a group with no active ingredients (control group)

• placebo responses cannot be explained by active ingredients (there is none) are due to something else

Placebo effect — cont.

single-blinding or participant blinding

• groups do not know which treatment they are getting

• if treatment truly works, affect behaviour more than placebo or no treatment

On the placebo effect

• very common in life sciences

• can work even if knowing they are placebos

• associated w/ neurophysiological changes

• increased over past few decades in America

Concerns — what about researchers?

Researchers, just like participants, can affect the results of a study without intending to

• if want a certain result, might unconsciously behave in a way that grants such result (experimenter effect)

• preferred that researchers and participants are blinded (double-blinding)

• sometimes don’t work “breaking blind”

Ethics in Research

Studies in Psychology follow strict ethical guidelines

• need approval from local ethics committees before experiment

• human + animal research have separate committees

Ethical guidelines

• Informed consent (subject given all relavent info)

• Freedom to leave at any point (attrition (subject loss) is high)

• Protection of participants (no unnecessary harm or distress)

• Confidentiality (data kept anonymous)

• Debriefing (hypotheses + procedure explained, any deception revealed after)

  • deception is often necessary, subjects should still be informed

    of potential harm

Tuskegee Syphilis Study

N = 600 people (399 with syphilis) of African-American descent observed over a 40-year period

• participants not informed of true nature of condition or given proper medical care

• lasting impact on trust