Chapter 1: Introducing Psychology

Psychology

It is the scientific study of mind and behavior.

Research Psychologists

Uses scientific methods to create new knowledge about the causes of behavior.

Psychologist Practitioners

Uses existing research to enhance the everyday life of others.

Hindsight Bias

The tendency to think that we could have predicted something that has already occurred that we probably would not have been able to predict.

Empirical Methods

Include the processes of collecting and organizing data and drawing conclusions about those data.

Scientific Method

The set of assumptions, rules, and procedures that scientists use to conduct empirical research. 

Values

Cannot be considered to be either true or false, science cannot prove or disprove them

Facts

Have an objective truth value and can be agreed upon by multiple individuals or groups

Levels of Explanation

The perspectives that are used to understand behavior.

Lower Levels of Explanation

Level of explanation that is more closely tied to biological influences, such as genes, neurons, neurotransmitters, and hormones

Middle Level of Explanation

Level of explanation that relates to the abilities and characteristics of individual people

Highest Levels of Explanation

Level of explanation that relates to social groups, organizations, and cultures

Individual Differences

The variations among people on physical or psychological dimensions.

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)

The role of unconscious processes was emphasized in the theorizing of the Austrian neurologist who argued that many psychological disorders were caused by memories that we have *repressed* and thus remain outside our consciousness. 

Structuralism

Uses the method of introspection to identify the basic elements or “structures” of psychological experience.

Functionalism

Attempts to understand why animals and humans have developed the particular psychological aspects that they currently possess.

Psychodynamic

Focuses on the role of our unconscious thoughts, feelings, and memories and our early childhood experiences in determining behavior.

Behaviorism

Based on the premise that it is not possible to objectively study the mind, and therefore that psychologists should limit their attention to the study of behavior itself.

Cognitive Psychology

The study of mental processes, including perception, thinking, memory, and judgments.

Social-cultural Psychology

The study of how the social situations and the cultures in which people find themselves influence thinking and behavior.

• Nature vs Nurture

• Free will vs determinism

The most important questions that psychologists address that remained constant.

Plato

Who argued on the nature side, believing that certain kinds of knowledge are innate or inborn?

Aristotle

Believed that each child is born as an “empty slate” and that knowledge is primarily acquired through learning and experience.

Rene Descartes

Believed in the principle of dualism: that the mind is fundamentally different from the mechanical body.

Introspection

Involves asking research participants to describe exactly what they experience as they work on mental tasks.

Edward Titchener

The best known of the structuralists and claimed to have identified more than 40,000 sensations, including those relating to vision, hearing, and taste.

The Structuralists

Who were the first to realize the importance of unconscious processes?

Evolutionary Psychology

A branch of psychology that applies the Darwinian theory of natural selection to human and animal behavior

Fitness

Refers to the extent to which having a given characteristic helps the individual organism survive and reproduce at a higher rate than do other members of the species who do not have the characteristic.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Believed that many of the problems that his patients experienced, including anxiety, depression, and sexual dysfunction, were the result of the effects of painful childhood experiences that the person could no longer remember. 

John B. Watson (1878–1958)

The first behaviorist and an American psychologist found that systematically exposing a child to fearful stimuli in the presence of objects that did not themselves elicit fear could lead the child to respond with a fearful behavior to the presence of the stimulus

**Hermann Ebbinghaus** (1850–1909)

Who studied the ability of people to remember lists of words under different conditions?

Frederic Bartlett (1886–1969)

Who studied the cognitive and social processes of remembering?

Neuroimaging

The use of various techniques to provide pictures of the structure and function of the living brain.

Conformity

Is a process that social psychologists have found that we are attracted to others who are similar to us in terms of attitudes and interests, that we develop our own beliefs and attitudes by comparing our opinions to those of others and that we frequently change our beliefs and behaviors to be similar to those of the people we care about.

Social Norms

The ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving that are shared by group members and perceived by them as appropriate.