Psychology 101

Learning

acquiring knowledge and skills and having them readily available from memory so you can make sense of future problems and opportunities

Elaboration

the process of giving new material meaning by expressing it in your own words and connecting it with what you already know

Cognitive psychology

the basic science of understanding how the mind works

Developmental + Educational psychologists

concerned with theories of human development

Deep Learning

readily available

Neural plasticity

connection strength between neurons

Retrieval practice

recalling from memory without cues, then checking for accuracy

Old Psychology

Study of the soul

Current psychology

scientific study of behavior

Primary Goals of Psychological Science - Describe

What are the patterns of the behaviors?

Primary Goals of Psychological Science - Understand/Explain

Get a strong understanding

Primary Goals of Psychological Science - Predict

Predict what a person is going to do

Primary Goals of Psychological Science - Influence/control

can control situational variables now

Primary Goals of Psychological Science - Apply

Apply this

Lower levels of analysis

biological influences

Higher levels of analysis

social + cultural influences

Reciprocal determinism

we mutually influence each others behaviors

Common sense

gut intuitions about how the world works

Naive realism

belief that we see the world precisely as it is

Scientific Theory

explanation for a large number of findings in the natural world

Hypothesis

testable prediction

Conformation Bias

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

Belief perseverance

tendency to stick to our initial beliefs even if evidence contradicts them

Metaphysical claim

assertion about the world that is not testable

Introspection

trained observers to carefully reflect and report on their mental experiences

Structuralism

uses introspection to identify basic elements of “structures” of experience

Functionalism

To understand the functions or adaptive purposes of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors

Behavioralism

To uncover the general principles of learning to explain all behaviors (focuses on observable behaviors)

Cognitivism

To examine the roll of mental processes on behavior

Psychoanalysis

To uncover the role of unconscious psychological processes and early life experiences on behavior

Cognition

describes mental processes included in different aspects of thinking

Cognitive Neuroscience

examens the relationships between the brain functioning and thinking

Affective Neuroscience

examens the relation between functioning and emotion

Evolutionary Psychology

applies Charles Darwins theory of natural selection to human and animal behavior

Fitness

extent to which a trait increases the chances that organisms will survive and reproduce

Basic Research

how the mind works

Applied Research

how we can use basic research to solve real world problems

Scientific Skepticism

approach of evaluating all claims with an open mind but insisting n persuasive evidence before accepting them

Critical thinking

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

Scientific thinking principle #1

ruling out a rival hypothesis

Scientific thinking principle #2

correlation isn’t causation

correlation-causation fallacy

error of assuming that because one thing is associated with another, it must cause the other

variable

anything that can vary

Scientific thinking principle #3

falsifiability

Falsifiable

capable of being disproved

Scientific thinking principle #4

Replicability

Reclicapility

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

Decline Effect

fact that the size of certain psychological findings appear to be shrinking over time

Scientific Thinking Principle #5

Generalizability

Culture

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

Scientific Thinking Principle #6

Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence

Prefrontal lobotomy

surgical procedure that severe fibers connecting frontal lobes of the brain from the underlying thalamus

System 1 thinking (intuitive thinking)

little mental effort, quick and reflexive, brains are largely on autopilot

System 2 thinking (analytical thinking)

slow and reflexive, takes mental effort

Heuristic

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

Random selection

procedure that ensures every person in a population has an equal chance of being choose to participate

Reliability

consistency of a measurement

Validity

extent to which a measure assess what it claims to measure

Neutralistic Observation

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

External validity

extent to which we can generalize findings to real-world settings

Internal validity

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

Case study

research design that examines one person or a small number of people in depth, or often over an extended period of time

Existence proof

demonstration that a given psychological phenomenon can happen

Response set

tendency of research participants to distort their responses to questionnaire items

Malingering

tendency to make ourselves appear psychological disrupted with the aim of achieving a personal goal

Halo effect

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

Correlational Design

research design that examens the extent to which two variables are associated

Positive correlation

as the value of one variable changes the other goes in the same direction

Zero correlation

the variables don’t go together at all

Negative correlation

value of one variable changes the other goes in the opposite direction

Correlational coefficient

indicates a measure of the direction and strength of a relationship between two variables

-1.0

perfect negative correlation

1.0

perfect positive correlation

less than perfect correlation coefficient

values less than 1

Scatter plot

Graphing of points on a two-dementional graph which each dot represents a single person’s data

Illusory Correlation

perception of statistical association between two variable where none exists

Radom assignments

randomly assorting percipients into two groups

Experimental Group

in an experiment the group of participants that receives the manipulation

Control Group

In an experiment, the group of participants that does not receive manipulation

Dependent variable

variable in the experimenter measure to see weather the manipulation has produced an effect

Operational Definition

a working definition if what a researcher is measuring

Confounding variable/confound

any variable that differs between experimental and control groups other than the independent variable

Placebo effect

improvement resulting from the mere expectation of improvement

Nocebo effect

harm from mere expectation of harm

Experimental Expectancy Effect of Rosenthal Effect

phenomenon in which researchers’ hypothesis lead them to unintentionally bias the outcome of a study

Double-blind

when neither researchers nor participants are aware of who is in the experimental or control group

Demand characteristics

cues the participants pick up from a study that allow them to generate guesses regarding the researcher’s hypothesis

Institutional Review Board (IRB)

evaluates all research carefully with an eye towards protecting percipients against abuses

Informed consent

informing research participant of what’s involved in a study before asking them to participate

Debriefing

process where researchers inform participants what the study is about

Invasive Research

investigators cause physical harm to nonhuman animal research participants

Statistics

application of mathematics to describe and analyze data

Descriptive statistics

numeral characteristics that describe data

Central tendency

measure of the “central” scores in a data set, or where the group tends to cluster

mean, median, mode

Mean

average

Median

number that is in the middle of the data set

Mode

the value that occurs the most

Range

Difference between the highest and lowest scores

Standard Deviation

measure of variability that takes into account how far each data point is from the mean

Inferential Statistics

math that allows us to determine weather we can generalize findings to the whole population