Chapter 1: The Science of Psychology

Module 1: Psychology’s Domains

]]The Development of Psychology]]

{{What’s Psychology?{{

%%Psychology%% is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. $*Behavior*$ includes anything we do that can be measured, including all of our outward actions and reactions, such as talking, facial expressions, and movements. The term $*mental processes*$ refers to all the internal activities of our minds, such as thinking, feeling, and remembering.

{{What Are the Goals of Psychology?{{

1. $*Description*$ - involves observing behavior and noting everything about it: what’s happening, where it happens, to whom it happens, and under what circumstances it seems to happen

   Ex. A teacher might notice that her 2nd grade students seem more hyperactive lunch
     on Thursday days. 
   ```
2. $*Explanation*$ - involves finding an explanation for the behavior and forming a theory

javascript Ex. The teacher observes that students are allowed to drink caffeinated beverages with lunch on Thursdays. She forms the theory that caffeinated drinks lead to hyperactive behavior in children.    ```

3. $*Prediction*$ - determining what will happen in the future

   Ex. The teacher might predict that students will exhibit hyperactive, disruptive
     behavior each time they drink caffeinated beverages.
   ```
4. $*Control*$ - changing  or modifying the behavior

javascript Ex. The teacher and the schoool would work together to find a strategy that works best for the students and teachers.    ```

]]History of Psychology as a Scientific Discipline]]

<<Structuralism vs Functionalism<<

%%Structuralism%%: the focus of the study is the structure or basic elements of the mind

Founder: Edward Titchener who expanded on his teacher, Wilhelm Wundt’s, original ideas

Beliefs

• Every experience could be broken down into its individual emotions and sensations
• $*Introspection*$ (the awareness of events that take place in the mind) could be used on thoughts as well as on physical sensations

%%Functionalism%%: the focus of the study is how the mind allows people to adapt, live, work and play

Founder: William James, who was heavily influenced by Charles Darwin’s ideas about natural selection

Beliefs

• The mind helps people function in the real world
• How people “function” better is a result of their own experience

<<Sigmund Freud<<

• He proposed that there is an unconscious (unaware mind) into which we repress all of our threatening urges and desires
• He believed that these repressed urges, in trying to surface, created the nervous disorders in his patients
• He believed that all behavior stems from an unconscious motivation
• Stated that phobias, an irrational fear, is really a symptom of an underlying, repressed conflict and cannot be “cured” without years of psychoanalysis to uncover and understand the repressed material

%%Psychoanalysis%%: the theory and therapy based on the work of Sigmund Freud, emphasizing the revealing of unconscious conflicts

<<Pavlov, Watson, and the Dawn of Behaviorism<<

Pavlov’s Contributions:

• Showed that a reflex could be caused to occur in response to a totally new and formerly unrelated stimulus (an event that provokes a response)
• He discovered the process of conditioning in which an individual expressed a learned (or “condition”) reflexive response

John B. Watson’s Contributions:

• Founder of the %%behaviorism%% view
• In his “Little Albert” experiment, he seemed to prove that humans could be conditioned to have phobias as a result of a stimulus-response relationship

%%Behaviorism%%: the science of behavior that focuses on observable behavior only

Beliefs:

• All behavior is learned
• Phobias are learned through the process of conditioning

All behavior was a result of a stimulus-response relationship

]]What are the major modern psychological perspectives?]]

<<Psychodynamic Perspective<<

A modern version of psychoanalysis that is more focused on the development of a sense of self and the discovery of other motivations behind a person’s behavior than repressed desires.

<<Behavioral Perspective<<

• It’s still also very very influential.
• B.F. Skinner became the new leader of the field.
  • He developed a theory of how voluntary behavior is learned called operant conditioning
  • In this theory, behavioral responses (or “operants”) that are followed by pleasurable consequences are strengthened
  • For example, a preschooler who cries and is rewarded by getting his mother’s attention will cry again in the future

<<Humanistic Perspective<<

• Two of the earliest and most famous founders of humanistic psychology were Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers.
• They both emphasized human potential, which was the ability of each person to become the best person he or she could be.

<<Cognitive Perspective<<

Modern perspective that focuses on memory, intelligence, perception, problem-solving, and learning.

• Cognitive psychology: the study of how the mind processes information, focuses on how people think: how they remember, store, and use information
• Within this perspective, the new field of ==cognitive neuroscience== includes the 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.

• It combines two areas of study:
  • $*social psychology*$: the scientific study of how a person’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior are influenced by the real, imaged, or implied presence of others
  • $*cultural psychology*$: the study of cultural behaviors, values, and expectations
• It reminds people that how they and others behave is influenced not only by whether they are alone or others but also by the social norms, fads, class differences, and ethnic identity concerns.

<<Biopsychological Perspective<<

Perspective where human and animal behavior is s been as a direct result of biological events in the body. (ex. hormones, hereditary, and diseases)

• $*Biopsychology*$: the study of the biological bases of behavior and mental process

<<Evolutionary psychology<<

Perspective that focuses on the biological bases of universal mental characteristics that all humans share.

• Seeks to explain general mental strategies and traits, such as why we lie
• The mind is seen as a set of information-procession machines

<<Positive psychology<<

Perspective that recommends shifting the focus of psychology away from the negative aspects to a more positive focus on strengths, well-being, and the pursuit of happiness

• One of the founders is psychologist Martin Seligman.
• According to social psychologist David G. Myers, happiness is the key to many things: the perception of the world as a safer place, healthier living, and even the ability to make decisions more easily.

]]Psychology’s Subfields]]

<<Clinical psychology<<

Area of psychology in which the psychologists diagnose and treat psychological disorders in people.

• Clinical psychologists cannot prescribe drugs or medical therapies but instead listen to the client’s problems, administers psychological tests, and provides possible explanations and advice

<<Counseling psychology<<

Area of psychology in which the psychologists help people with problems of adjustment.

• They work with people who have less severe problems, such as stress, marriage, family life, work problems, etc.

<<Development psychology<<

Area of psychology in which the psychologists study the changes in the way people think, relate to others and feel as they age.

<<Experimental psychology<<

Area of psychology in which the psychologists primarily do research and experiments in the areas of learning, memory, thinking, perception, motivation, and language.

<<Social psychology<<

Area of psychology in which the psychologists focus on how human behavior is affected by the presence of other.

• Social psychologists perform research in areas such as prejudice, attitude change, aggressive behavior, and interpersonal attraction.

<<Personality psychology<<

Area of psychology in which the psychologists study the differences in personality among people.

• These psychologists do a few things:
  • study the ways in which people are both alike and different
  • look at the development of personality and do a personality assessment
  • may form new theories of how personality works or develops

<<Physiological psychology<<

Area of psychology in which the psychologists study the biological bases of behavior.

• Physiological psychologists study several things:
  • the brain, nervous system, and the influence of the body’s chemicals on human behavior
  • the effects of drug use and the genetic influences that may exist on some kinds of abnormal and normal human behavior

<<Comparative psychology<<

Area of psychology in which the psychologists study animals and their behavior for the purpose of comparing and contrasting it to human behavior.

<<Industrial/Organizational (I/O) psychology<<

Area of psychology concerned with the relationships between people and their work environment

• I/O psychologists perform tasks such as:
  • helping workers improve their efficiency
  • designing work areas that spark productivity
  • creating materials that assess how well employees are performing in the workplace

Module 2: Research Methods and Ethics

]]Psychologcial Resarch Methods]]

%%Scientific method%%: a system of gathering data so the bias and error in measurement are reduced

Steps of a scientific method:

1. <<Formulating the question<<

Noticing something interesting happening in your surroundings for which you would like an explanation.

ex. teacher observing students are more hyperactive on Thursday, the day the 
cafeteria offers caffeinated drinks at lunchtime

2. <<Developing a Hypothesis<<

Based on initial observations, you form an educated guess about the explanation of your observations, putting it into the form of a statement that can be tested in some way; which is called a %%hypothesis%% (tentative explanation of a phenomenon based on observations).

ex. teacher says “students who drink caffeinated beverages will be more hyperactive.”

3. <<Testing the Hypothesis<<

Using a method to test your hypothesis depending on what kind of answer you think you might get.

ex. randomly select a group of students, and then randomly assign them to two 
groups; give the experimental group 20 mg of caffeine in a noncaffeinated, 
sugar-free beverage and give the control group the beverage w/o caffeine in it;
then measure the hyperactivity observed in both groups over the same period of time

4. <<Drawing Conclusions<<

After measurements have been made, you must organize the raw data, describe it through statistical methods, and draw conclusions from your results.

5. <<Report Your Results<<

Write up exactly what you did, why you did it, how you did it, and what you found, so that others can learn from what you have already accomplished--or failed to accomplish.

<<Naturalistic observation<<

the study of people or animals in their natural environment

• allows researchers to get a realistic picture of how behavior occurs because they are actually watching that behavior
• in many cases, %%observer effect%% (the tendency of people or animals to behave differently from normal when they know they are being observed) occurs
• one of the disadvantages of this method is %%observer bias%%, which is the tendency of observers to see what they expect to see

<<Laboratory method<<

method of conducting research in a controlled environment

<<Case study<<

a descriptive technique that is the study of one individual in great detail

<<Survey method<<

method of conducting research in the form of interviews

• researchers ask a series of questions about the topic they are studying
  • surveys can be conducted in person, on the telephone, on the Internet, or with a questionnaire
• researchers can select a representative sample (randomly selected sample of subjects from a larger population of subjects) from a group

<<Correlation method<<

%%Correlation%%: a measure of the relationship between two variables

• for example, researchers who want to know whether or not cigarette smoking is connected to life expectancy would use the medical records of people who have already died to see if there’s a connection
  • researchers would look for 2 facts from each record: the number of cigarettes the person smoked per day and the age of the person at death
  • now the researcher has 2 sets of numbers for each person that go into a mathematical formula to produce the %%correlation coefficient%% (a number derived from the formula for measuring a correlation and indicating the strength and direction of a correlation)

<<Experimental method<<

the only research method that will allow researchers to determine the cause of a behavior is the %%experiment%% (a deliberate manipulation of a variable to see if corresponding changes in behavior result, allowing the determination of cause-and-effect relationships)

• first, researchers would need to find %%operational definition%% (definition of a variable of interest that allows it to be 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 suspects

%%Confounding variable%%: variable in an experiment that may unintentionally affect the dependent variable

%%Experimental group%%: subjects in an experiment who are subjected to the independent variable

%%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 of being in either group

%%Placebo effect%%: phenomenon in which the expectations of the participants in a study can influence their behavior

%%Experimenter effect%%: tendency of the expermenter’s expectations for a study to unintentionally influence the results of the study

• ways to control for these effects are to give the control group an actual $*placebo*$ (some kind of treatment that does not affect behavior at all) and by using the double-experimenter experiment

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

<<Ethical guidelines:<<

1. Humanitarian

rights and well-being of participants must be weighed against the study’s value to science; basically, people come first, research second

2. Informed Consent:

• researchers have to explain the study to the people they want to include before they do anything to them or with them
• when conducting research with minors, consent forms need to be signed by parents/guardians

2. Justification:

deception must be justified and participants have to be told after the study exactly why the deception was important

4. Right to Withdraw:

participants may withdraw from the study at any time

5. Risks and Benefits:

participants must be protected from risks or told explicitly of risks

6. Debriefing:

investigators must debrief participants, telling the true nature of the study and expectations of results

7. Confidentiality:

data must remain confidential

]]Basic Concepts of Data Analysis]]

• Psychologists have to be able to do two things with the data they collect:

  • %%Descriptive statistics%%: a way of organizing numbers and summarizing them so that patterns can be determined
  • there are two main types:
    • %%measures of central tendency%%: numbers that best represent the most typical score of a frequency distribution
    • the most commonly used measure of central tendency is the mean
    • another measurement is median: the middle score in an ordered distribution of scores, or the mean of the two middle numbers, the 50th percentile
    • the most frequent score in a distribution of scores is the mode
    • %%measures of variability%%: measurement of the degree of differences within a distribution or how the scores are spread out

• %%range%% is the difference between the highest and lowest scores in a distribution

• %%standard deviation%% is a statistical measure of the average variation from the mean score

• %%Inferential statistics%%: statistical analysis of two or more sets of numerical data to reduce the possibility of error in measurement and to determine the differences between the data sets are greater than chance variation would predict

  • Inferential statistics have one thing in common: they look at differences in group measurements that are %%statistically significant%% (differences in data sets that are larger than chance variation would predict)

• Statistical analysis is a way of trying to account for the error that exists in almost any body of data, and %%statistics%% (branch of mathematics concerned with the collection and interpretation of numerical data)

<<Types of Tables/Graphs that Represent Patterns in Data<<

%%Frequency Distribution%% is a table or graph that shows how often different numbers or scores appear in a particular set of scores

• one common graph is a %%histogram%% (provides a visual way to look at data)
• another type of graph used is the polygon (line graph)

%%Normal Curve%%: special frequency polygon in which the scores are symmetrically distributed around the mean; the mean, median, and mode are all located on the same point on the curve with scores decreasing as the curve extends from the mean

• %%bell curve%% is the alternate name for the normal curve, which is said to be shaped like a bell

%%Reliability%%: the tendency of a test to produce the same scores, again and again, each time it’s given to the same people

%%Validity%%: the degree to which a test actually measures what it it’s supposed to measure