AP Psychology Module 1-8

tabula rasa

tabula rasa

John Locke wrote a one-[age essay on our own abilities and 20 years later, he completed one of history’s greatest papers that said that the mind at birth is a tabula rasa (blank slate) and experiences shape us.

importance of wilhelm wundt

• He was a professor that created a device with the help of 2 other men that measured the time between people hearing a ball hit a platform and presing a key. People responded fasted when asked to hit the key as soon as the sound occused comparedc to when asked to do so when they were consciously aware of the sound

• was able to measure “atoms of the mind”

• Stated the first psychological laboratory in Leipzig, Germany 1879

• Had two famous students: G. Stanley Hall & Edward Bradford Tichener

• Was a structuralist

what is structuralism and what are its problems?

• early school of thought promoted by Wundt and Titchener

• used introspection to reveal the strucutre of the human mind

• Tichener’s method made people look inwards (self-reflective introspection) and report elements of their expewrience when experiencing different things

• introspection varies greatly per person and have errors

How does functionalism differ from structuralism and who were its supporters

• William James (who studeid the evolved functions of our thoughts and feelings + believed it was adaptive, counsciousness served a purpose) was a functionalist

• early school of through influenced by Darwin; explored how mental and behavioral processes function - how they enable the organism to adapt, survive, and flourish.

• James explored down-to-earth emotions, memories, willpower, habits, moment-to-moment streams of consciousness

nature vs nurture

• the longstanding controvesrt over the relative contributions that genes and experience make to the development of psychological traits and behaviors. Today’s science sees traits and behaviors arising from the interaction of nature and nurture

• psychology’s most persistent issue

What are the 7 approachwes/perspectives of psychology

Behavioral, Psychodynamic, Humainism, Cognitie, Biological (Biomedical), Evolutionary, Soci-Cultural

Behavioral

• Supporters: Pavlov, Watson, Skinner

• Focus: How we learn responses

• Example: How do we learn fears? How do we alter our behaviors?

Biological

• aka biomedical/neuroscience

• Focus: How the body and brain enable emotion, memories, experiences + How genes and the environement influence us

• Example: How does pain go from hand to brain? How much is intelligence, personality, etc. attributable to our genes (or environment)?

Cognitive

• Focus: How we encode, process, store, and retrieve information

• Example: How do we use information in remembering? Reasoning? Problem Solving?

Evolutionary

• Focus: How natural selection promotes gene survival

  • passed down traits

• Example: How does evolution influence behavior tendencies?

Humanistic

• Focus: How we obtain love, acceptance, & self-fulfillment

• Example: How can we fulfill our potential? How can we overcome barriers to personal growth?

Psychodynamic

• Supported: Sigmond Freud(emphasized the ways emotional responses to childhood experiences and our unconscious thought process affect our behavior

• Focus: How behaviour springs from uncounscieous drives & conflicts (what happened to you as a child)

• Example: How can trauma and wishes explain personality and disorder?

Socio-cultural

• Focus: How behavior and thinking vary across culture + situation

• Example: How are we all alike? How do we differ?

Careers in psychology

• psychometrics: scientfic study of human abilities, attitudes, and traits

• some psycholgists conduct basic research that builds knowledge base

• biological: exploring link between brain and mind

• developmental: Changing abilities through life

• cognitive: now we perceive, think, and solve problems

• educational: Infivenes on teaching and learning

• personality: Investigating our persistent traits

• social: how we view + affect one another

• Psychologists may also conduct applied research to tackle practical Problems

• industrial-organizational (I/o) psychologists apply psychological concepts and methods to optimize human behavior in the workplace

• Human factors psychologists focus interaction of people, machines, and physical environment

• psychology is best bases such interventions on evidence of effectiveness

• counseling psychologists help people cope with challenges and crises and improve personal & social functioning

• clinical psychologists assess and treat mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders

  • both administert + interpret tests, provide counseling & therapy, and conduct (b&a) research

• Psychiatrists (may provide psychotherapy) are medical doctors licensed to perscribe drugs and treat physical causes of psychological disorders

• positive psychology: scientific study of humane functioning, with the goal of disocring and promoting strengths & virtues that help individuals and communities thrive

• Community psychologists: study how people interact with their social environment and how social institutions affect individuals and groups

Hindsight bias

• aka “i knew it all” syndrom

• the tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one would have foreseen it

Overconfidence

• humans tend to think we know more than we do

• when asked many factual questions we tend to be more confident than correct

• knowing the answer and then asked how long do you think it would take you to find the answer, we often become overconfident

• results partly from our bias to seek information that confirms them

A theory

• explains behaviors or events by offering ideas that organize what we observe

• an explanation using an integrated set of principles that organizes observations and predicts behaviors or events

• A good theory produces hypotheses (what results would support or cast doubt on the theory)

• theories can bias observation

• a good theory organizes reports and observations, leads to clear hypotheses, and stimulates research that leads to revision + replication

• we can test our hypotheses and refine our theories in several ways: descriptive, correlational, experimental

A hypothesis

• testable predictions

• helps test theories

• often implied by a thoery

operational definition

• phsychologists use them

• carefully worded statement of the exact procedures (operations) used in a research study

• example: human intelligency may be operationally defined as what an intelligence test measures

• example: sleep deprived defined as x hours less than the person’s natural sleep

why is replication important in the research process

• reliability

• descriptions allow people to replicate (repeat) the research

• to verify findings

case study (define, pros+cons)

• a descriptive technique in which one individual or group is studied in depth in the hope of revealing universal principles

• pros: lots of information and indepth

• cons: may mislead us if the individual is atypical, unrepresentative information can lead to mistaken judgement + false conclusions; cannot be generalized because it is only about a specific group

naturalistic observation

• observing and recording behavior in naturally occurring situations without trying to manipulate and control the situation

• does not explain but describes

• offers interesting findings but does so without controlling for all the variables that may influence

• pros: don’t need to be manipulated or controlled, not artificial

• cons: will not give tru causation, or actual variables effecting

survey

• a technique for ascertaining the self-reported attitudes or behaviors or a particular group usually by questioning a representative, random sample of the group

• used to find estimates about a whole population

• answers often depend on chosen respondents and how the question is asked (WORDING IS KEY*)

• pros: fast and inexpensive, can be generalized

• cons: affected by wording, non-reponse error, BIAS*

population of a study vs sample

• population: all those in a group being studied, from WHICH samples may be drawn

random sampling

• **random sample: a sample that fairly represents a population because each member has an equal chance of inclusion (any study needs random sampling**)

• large samples are better than small ones, but 100 representatives samples are better than 500 unrepresentative

correlation

measure of the extend to which 2 variables change together and thus of how well either variable predicts the other

correlation coefficient

• a statistical index of the relationship between 2 variables (from -1.0 to 1.0)

  • negative says nothing about the strength but tells if inverse

• reveals the extent to which 2 things relate. the closer the score gets to -1 or +, the stronger the correlation

illusory correlation

• the perception of a relationship where none exists

• we are likely to notice and recall instances that confirm our belief

• THOUGHT there was a relationship

• we are especially likely to remember dramatic or unusual events which leads to untrue superstitions and correlations

• prone to percieving patterns, whether they’re there or not

does correlation prove causation?

• wrong to assume than an association, sometimes presented as a correlation coefficient, proves causation

• but no matter how strong the relationship is, it does not

• remember; association does not prove causation, correlationindicates the possibility of a cause-effect relationship but does not prove such.

• many associations are states as correlations, the famously worded principe is “correlation does not prove causation, → Also true of associations

• example: even though crime rates increased as icecream sales increased, they don’t cause one another

why do we use experiments

• researches can experiment to isolate cause and effect

• experiment: a research method in which an investigator manipulates one or more factors (independent variables) to observe the effect on some behvairo or mental process (the depended variable). Experiment controls other variables through random assignment

why do we need a control group?

• isolate the effects of one or more variables by (1) manipulating the variables of interest and (2) holding constant (“controlling”) other variables

• an experimental group is one in which people recieve the treatment and a contrasting control group is one that does not receive treatment

how do we assign experimental and control group?

• To minimize any preexisting differences between the 2 groups, randomly assigning people to the 2 conditions equalizes the 2 groups (splits people with similar characteristics equally within the groups)

• This way if group differences occur, we can infer that the variable is having an effect

• assign control with random assignment so that each group is random

• ** Random assignment and random sampling are different

importance of double blind procedure

• an experimental procedure in which both the research participants and the research staff are ignorat (blind) about whether the research participants have received the treatment or a placebo

• commonly used in drug-evaluation studies (research staff + participants don’t know)

** Independent vs confnounding vs dependent variables

• independent

  • when a simple experiment manipulates just one factor this is the independent variable because we can vary it independently of other factors (think x)

• confounding

  • other factors (other than the independent variable) that might produce an effect in an experiment

  • random assignment controls for the possibility of this

• dependent

  • the outcome factor; the variable that may change in response to manipulations of the independent variable (think y)

• Both x and y have to be given precise operational definitions that specify procedure that manipulates independent variable or measures dependent variable

validity

a key goal of experimental design is validity, which means the experiment will test what is is supposed to test

how accurate it is, ex: does the intelligence test actually measure intelligence?

definition: the extent to which a test or experiment measures or predicts what it is supposed to

why is it useful to understand statistics regarding psychology?

• statistics are tools that help us see and interpret what the unaided eye might miss

• accurate statistical understanding benefits everyone

• false alarms underscore the need to teach statistical reasoning and to present statistical information more transparently

descriptive statistics

• numerical data used to measure and describe characteristics of groups

• includes measures of central tendency and measures of variation

• used to organize data meaningfully

• simple way is to create a bar graph/histogram

mode, mean, median, range

• all measures of central tendency:

  • mode: simplest; most frequently occuring score(s)

  • mean: most common; arithmetic average

  • median: middle score

  • range: difference between highest and lowest scores

• always note which measure of central tendency is reported. if it is a mean, consider whether a few atypical scores could be distorting it.

• helps to know variation in the data - how similar or diverse the scores are

• the range of scores provides onyl a crude estimate of variation

standard deviation

• more useful standarf for measuring how much scores deviate is standard deviation

• a computed measure of how much scores vary around the mean score

what shape is used to describe a normal curve

• **in a symmetrical, bell-shaped distribution, the mmmr will be very similar or the same

• large nuebrs of data often form a symmetrical, bell shaped distribution

  • example: height, weight, grades

• this bell-shaped distribution is so typical that we call the curve it forms the normal curve

• **roughly 68% of the cases fall within 1 standard deviation on either side of the mean, about 95% within 2

a study have been found to be statistically significant, what does that indicate about the results from the study?

• **Inferencial statistics: numerical data that allows one to generalize - to infer from sample data the probability of something being true of a population (can we apply this to the larger population?)

• to decide if it’s safe to generalize, keep this in mind: representative samples are better than biased samples, less-variable observations are more reliable, more cases are better than few

• statistical significance: a statistical statement of how likely it is than an obtained result occured by chance

  • means you cna generalize your findings to the larger population

  • doe not say anything about the importance of the results

p-value and importance of it

• statistical measure used to determine the likelihood that an observed outcome is the reuslt of chance

• **needs to be 5% or less (most looking for 1%)

why do psychologists study animals

• humans are not like animals, we are animals, sharing a common biology

• therefore animal experiments lead to treatment for human diseases

ethical principles that one should follow when studying humans

• obtain potential participant’s formal consent

• protect them from any physical or emotional harm or discomfort

• keep information about participants confidential

• fully debrief people (explain resarch afterwards)