psych unit 1: key terms

Psychobiologist

effects of drugs explain behavior in biological terms

Hypothesis

assumption or perdiction about behavior that is tested through Scientific Research

Structuralism

earliest fields of psychology, focused on studying the coscience (mental) experience

Functionalism

study on how animals and people adapt to their environments

Behaviorist

psychologist that shifts away from the mind to behavior, explaining human thought and behavior in terms of “conditioning,” ex. Pavlov, Watson, Skinner

Theory

more complex explanations created after reseach studies that test the hypothesis

Clinical Psychologist

a mental healthcare professional who evaluates, diagnoses, and treats mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders

Development of Psychology

a branch of psychology that uses scientific methods and controlled experiments to study human and animal behavior and mental processes

Forensics Psychology

the application of clinical and research psychology to legal and judicial systems

Variability

the quality of being prone to change, or how much data points in a set are spread out from eachother and from the center

Random Sample

every member of the population has an equal chance of being selected. Increases likely hood that sample represents the population

Stratified Sample

subgroups within a population that representedd proportionally

Control Group

does not recieve treatment in an experiment

Single-Blind Experiment

one in which participant is unaware of who recieves the treatment and who recieved a substitute

Double-Blind Experiment

one in which neither experimenter nor participants know which recieved which treatment

Placebo Effect

when someones expectations trigger a real psychological response to an unreal or inagined treatment

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

researchers expectations influence the participant’s behavior

Frequency Distribution

arrangment of data that indicates how often a particular score or observation occurs

Jean Piaget

swiss psychologist and philosopher, pioneered the study of child development; created theory of cognitive development

Sigmund Freud

austrailian neurologist fascinated by patients; theorized his patients’ suffering happened in an “unconscious” mind

Rene Descartes

french philosopher, mathematician, and scientist; “father of modern philosophy”

William Wundt

Credited with creating the first psychology lab in Germany (1879), wanting to study human minds

William James

american philosopher and psychologist; “father of American psychology”

B.F. Skinner

focused on effect of consequences in behaviorism

Abraham Maslow

stressed individual choice and free will (as opposed to the conditioning of behaviorists)