Perspectives:

• Psychodynamic- Behavior is determined by past experiences left in the unconscious and that childhood experiences shape our personality.

• Cognitive- Memory, intelligence, perception, problem solving, language, and learning influences behavior.

• Sociocultural- Society and culture affecting behavior and shapes our cognitive thinking.

Psychological research:

• Experiment

• Case study- In depth research of a few individuals.

• Correlation- How two variables vary together and how one will predict if the other happens.

• Naturalist observation- Observing people/animals in their natural/native environment.

• Meta-analysis- research from multiple studies to reach a single conclusion.

  Descriptive research includes case studies, surveys, observations, and quantitative/qualitative data.

  • Negatives of descriptive research: Observer bias/researcher bias (the researcher changes results of the study to fit the expected outcome) and observer effect/the Hawthorne effect (the people being studied change their behavior due to being watched or fit the expected outcome of the study)

• Mean- The average, adding all scores then diving by the amount.

• Median- Half of the score, half above half below.

• Mode- Most reoccurring score.

• Inferential statistics- A generalization from the result of a sample on an entire population.