Chapter 1: The Science of Psychology

Operationalization

________: Specific description of variable of interest that allows it to be measured.

Objectivity

________ is important because scientists must remain unbiased, unaffected by personal beliefs and values.

Phineas Gage

________: was a railroad worker who had a rod go through his head, and lost chunks of his brain.

Functionalism

________: an early perspective in psychology associated with William James, in which the focus of study in how the mind allows people to adapt, live, work, and play.

Double-blind study

________: study in which neither the experimenter nor the subjects know if the subjects are in the experimental or the control group 1.10 The Guidelines for doing Research With People.

Scientific Approach

________: a system of gathering data so that bias and error in measurement are reduced.

George (Jorge) Sanchez

________- conducted research in the area of intelligence testing, focusing on the cultural biases in such tests.

Applied Research

: research focused on finding practical solutions to real world problems.

Observer Bias

________: the tendency of observers to see what they expect to see.

Psychologists

________ study people and animals.

Psychoanalysis

________: an insight therapy based on the theory of Freud, emphasizing the revealing of unconscious conflicts; Freuds term for both the theory of personality and the therapy based on it.

Psychology

________ is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes.

Structuralism

________ is an early perspective in psychology associated with Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener, in which the focus of the study is the structure or basic elements of the mind.

Humanists

________ held the view that people have free will, the freedom to choose their own destiny, and strive for self- actualization, the achievement of ones full potential.

Objective Introspection

________ is the process of examining and measuring ones own thoughts and mental activities.

Humanistic Perspective

________: Two of the famous founders are Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers.

Wundt

________ believed that consciousness, the state of being aware of external events, could be broken down into thoughts, experiences, emotions, and other basic elements.

Experiment

________: a deliberate manipulation of variable to see if corresponding changes in behavior result, allowing the determination of cause- and- effect relationships.

Skinner

________ developed operant conditioning to explain how voluntary behavior is learned; reinforcements.

Cognitive neuroscience

________: a study of the physical changes in the brain and nervous system during thinking.

Cognitive psychology

________: a field focusing not only on perception, but also on learning, memory, thought processes, and problem- solving.

Hypothesis

________: tentative explanation of a phenomenon based on observations.

Population

________: the entire group of people or animals in which the researcher is interested.

Observer

________ effect: the tendency of people or animals to behave differently from normal when they know they are being ________.

Psychiatrist

________: a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders.

Psychodynamic Perspective

________: a modern version of psychoanalysis that is more focused on the development of a sense of self and the discovery of motivations behind a persons behavior other than sexual motivations.

Representative Sample

________: randomly selected sample of subjects from a larger population of subjects.

Experimental Group

________: subjects in an experiment who are subjected to the independent variable.

Gestalt Psychology

________: The Whole is Greater than the Sum of its Parts.

Correlation Coefficient

________: a number that represents the strength and direction of a relationship existing between two variables; number derived from the formula for measuring a correlation 1.8 Experiment.

Cognitive Perspective

________: modern perspective in psychology that focuses on memory, intelligence, perception, problem- solving, and learning.

Placebo Effect

________: the phenomenon in which the expectations of the participants in a study can influence their behavior.

Psychiatric Social Worker

________: a social worker with some training in therapy methods who focuses on the environmental conditions that can have an impact on mental disorders such as poverty, overcrowding, stress, and drug abuse.

Psychologist

________: a professional with an academic degree and specialized training in one or more areas of psychology.