AP Psychology: Chapter 1: The Science of Psychology 

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• Psychology: is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes

• The scientific method is used in psychology to endure there is no biases

  • Biases: personal judgment based on beliefs rather than facts

• Mental Process: refers to all the internal, convert activity of our (human) minds, such as thinking, feeling, and remembering

• The four goals of psychology which aim to uncover the mysteries of human and animal behavior: description, explanation, prediction, and control

• Description: What is Happening?

  • Involves observing a behavior and noting everything about it like what is happening, where it happens, to whom it happens, to whom it happens, and under what circumstances it happens

• Explanation: Why is it happening?

  • Finding explanations for behavior is a particularly important step in order to come up with theories on behavior(s)
  • A theory is a general explanation of a set of observations or facts
  • Theories must be tested in order to become fact
  • A good theory will structure further research by allowing researchers to test whether or not the theory holds true in distinct situations

• Prediction: When will it Happen Again?

  • Prediction is deciding what will happen in the future
  • Something must be done to deal with prediction

• Control: How Can it be Changed?

  • The focus of control, or the modification of some behavior, is to change a behavior from an undesirable one to a desirable one

• Psychology is sort of a new field being only about 130 years old

• The initiation of the field all started with Wilhelm Wundt, a psychologist, who attempted to apply scientific principles to the study of the human mind

• Objective introspective: the process of examining and measuring one’s own thoughts and mental activities

• Structuralism: early perspective in psychology associated with Wilhem Wundt and Edward Titchener, in which the focus of study is the structure or basic elements of mind

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

• Sometimes our brain “fills in” the blanks to see a whole picture

• Gestalt psychology: early perspective in psychology focusing on perception and sensation, particularly the perception of patterns and whole figures

• Psychoanalysis: the theory and therapy based on the work of Sigmund Freud

• Behaviorism: the science of behavior that focus on the observable behavior only

• Stimulus: anything that causes an organism to have a reaction or response

• John Watson wanted to prove that all behavior was a result of a stimulus-response relationship such as that described by Pavlov

• Psychodynamic perspective: modern version of psychoanalysis that is more focused on the development of a sense if self and the discovery of the other motivations behind a person’s behavior than sexual motivations

  • Modern take of it focuses on the unconscious mind and its influence over conscious behavior and on early childhood experiences, but with less of an emphasis on sex and sexual motivations and more emphasis on the development of a sense of self and the discovery of other motivations behind a person’s behavior

• Behavioral perspective: very influential, the idea that our interactions with the environment can explain how we behave and learn and that our behaviors are always reactions to stimuli, either organically or as a result of a trained response

• Humanistic perspective: often referred to as the “third force”, a reaction to both psychodynamic theory and behaviorism

  • Behaviorism was seen as a very “mechanical” theory- stimulus goes in, response comes out, and what happens in the middle is of no bother

• Cognitive perspective: focuses on how people think, remember, store, and use information, became a major force in the field in the 1960s

  • Cognitive perspective: modern perspective that focuses on memory, intelligence, perception, problem solving, and learning
  • Cognitive neuroscience: study of the physical changes in the brain and nervous system during thinking

• Sociocultural perspective: perspective that focuses on the relationship between social behavior and culture

  • Is important because because it reminds people that how they and other behave (or even think) is influenced not only by whether they are alone, friends, in a crowd, or part of a group, but also by the social norms, fads, class differences, and ethnic identity concerns of the particular culture in which they live
  • norms: standards or expected behavior
  • fads: an extreme and widely shared passion for anything, especially one that is fleeting and unfounded in the qualities of the object; a craze

• Biopsychological perspective: perspective that attributes human and animal behavior to the biological events occurring in the body, such as genetic influences, hormones, and the activity of the nervous system

  • Human and animal behavior is seen as a direct result of events in the body. Hormones, heredity, brain chemicals, tumors, and diseases are some of the biological causes of behavior and mental events

• Evolutionary perspective: perspective that focuses on the biological bases of universal mental characteristics that all humans share

• Psychiatrist: a medical doctor who has specialized in the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders

• Psychoanalyst: either a psychiatrist or a psychologist who has special training in the theories of Sigmund Freud and his method of psychoanalysis

• Psychiatric social worker: a social worker with some training in therapy methods that 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

• Scientific method: system of gathering data so that bias and error in measurement are reduced

• Hypothesis: tentative explanation of a phenomenon based on observations

• Replicate: in research, repeating a study or experiment to see if the same results will be obtained in an effort to demonstrate reliability of results

• Observer effect: tendency of people or animals to behave differently from normal when they are being observed

• Participant observation: a naturalistic observation in which the observer becomes a participant in the group being observed

• Observer bias: tendency of observers to see what they expect to see

• Case study: study of one individual in great detail

• Representative sample: randomly selected sample of subjects from a larger populations of subjects

• Population: the entire group of people or animals in which the researcher is interested

• Correlation: a measure of the relationship between two variables

• Correlation coefficient: a number derived from the formula for measuring a correlation and indicating the strength and direction of a correlation

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

• Operational definition: definition of a variable of interest that allows it to be directly measured

• Independent variable: variable in an experiment that is manipulated by the experimenter

• Dependent variable: variable in an experiment that represents the measurable response or behavior of the subjects in the experiment

• Experimental group: subjects in an experiment who are subjected to the experiment

• Control group: subjects in an experiment who are not subjected to the independent variable and who may receive a placebo treatment

• Random assignment: process of assigning subjects to the experimental or control groups randomly, so that each subject has an equal chance pf being in either group

• Placebo effect: the phenomena in which the expectations of the participants in a study can influence their behavior

• Experimental effect: tendency of the experimenter’s for a study to unintentionally influence the results of the study

• Single-blind study: study in which the subjects do not know if they are in the experimental or the control group

• Double-blind study: study in which neither the experimenter nor the subjects know if the subjects know if the subjects are in the experimental or control group

• Critical thinking: making reasoned judgments about claims

• Pseudopsychologies: systems of explaining human behavior that are not based on or consistent with scientific evidence

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