Psychology 202 Exam #1 Preparation Online Notes

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Chapter 1: Introduction to Psychology

HW: Pages 1-8 (8/28-8/30)

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

Scientific method -> Observable behavior -> mental processes

• Behavior: (observable) ; peoples actions and reactions to different situations

  • Mental processes: Grouped into 2 categories

    • Cognition: thinking, reasoning

    • Emotion: feeling

Goals: To describe, explain, predict and control/change behavior

What do Psychologists do?

• Research vs. Applied

  • Research Psychologists: discover information about behavior and mental processes (behind the scenes)

  • Applied Psychologists: use basic information discovered through basic research to help people (apply)

• Tip to remember: Applied Psychologists apply basic information discovered by Research Psychologists

Where do Psychologists work?

Hw: Pages 1-8 Notes (8/28-8/30)

Introduction to the Science of Psychology

• Subfields: interrelated specialty areas

  • The activities of psychologists in virtually every subfield are affected by human diversity, especially by age, gender, race, and ethnicity.

What is Psychology, and how did it grow?

• Psychology is the science that studies behavior and mental processes and seeks to apply that study in the service of human welfare.

  • Studying, predicting, improving or explaining some aspect of behavior and mental processes.

• Positive Psychology: the focus on the things that make life most worth living.

  • ( happiness, optimism, and resilience)

• When psychologists focus their work on particular aspects of behavior and mental processes, they enter one of psychology’s many subfields.

Subfields of Psychology:

• Cognitive Psychologists: study the basic mental processes such as sensation and perception, learning and memory, judgment, decision making, etc.

  • Thought or cognition

• Biological Psychologists: study topics such as the relationship of genes and brain chemistry to mental disorders, how brain cells communicate with each other when forming memories, etc.

  • Analyze the biological factors influencing behavior and mental processes.

• Personality Psychologists: study individuality ( the unique features of each person)

  • Personality traits, fingerprints.

  • Focus on unique characteristics.

• Developmental Psychologists: Study and describe how mental processes change over the life span in order to understand their causes and effects.

  • Development of thought, friendship patterns, parenting styles.

  • Study how behavior and mental processes change over time.

• Quantitative Psychologists: Develop and use statistical tools to analyze vast amounts of info generated by research results from all of psychology's subfields.

  • Statistical methods to evaluate and analyze data from psychological research.

• Clinical, counseling, and community psychologists: seek to assess, understand, modify, and prevent behavior disorders.

  • Help troubled people get over disorders.

• Educational Psychologists: study methods in which instructors teach and students learn and who applies their results to improve those methods.

  • More learning based

• School Psychologists: test cognitive abilities, diagnose students academic problems, and set up programs to improve students’ achievement.

  • More community based

  • Prevent bullying, early detection of students' mental health problems and crisis intervention following school violence.

• Social Psychologists: study the ways that people influence each other.

  • Study how people influence one another’s behavior and attitudes, especially in groups.

• Industrial and Organizational Psychologists: examine factors that contribute to people's performance in the workplace.

  • Pay attention to the factors that affect the efficiency, productivity, and satisfaction of the workers and the organizations that employ them.

  • Foster positive organizational behavior

• Health Psychologists: study the effects of behavior on health and the impact of illness on behavior and emotion.

• Forensic Psychologists: involved in many aspects of psychology and law.

• Engineering Psychologists: study and try to improve the relationship between human beings and computers/ other machines they use.

• Environmental Psychologists: study the relationship between people’s physical environment and their behavior.

Linkages within Psychology and Beyond:

• Subfields often overlap and so do the activities of the psychologists working in them.

  • Even when psychologists work mainly in one subfield, they are still likely to draw on and contribute to the knowledge of other subfields.

  • To understand psychology, you must understand the linkages between subfields.

  • Each linkage is represented by a question that links two subfields

• Psychology also links to other fields because of shared interests.

Chapter 1: History and Modern Perspectives

Hw: Pages 9-19 (9/2-9/4)

Philosophy: what is the purpose of things + why we are here

• René Des Cartes, John Locke

  • Tabula rasa

Science: systematic study of the world around us through observation, experimentation, and the testing of theories using evidence.

• Scientific Revolution in the 1600s

• Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton

Empiricism: idea in which knowledge comes through measurable, observable, and testable information that we can detect with our senses.

• Show me the evidence

• Philosophy (why) + Science (how) = Psychology (lots of whats)

• The Theory of Evolution (1859) : Charles Darwin

  • Evolution, natural selection, adaptations

Early, Historical Approaches to Psychology

• Wilhelm Wundt *Father of Psychology*

  • Birth year of Psychology (1879)

• Edward Titchner

Structuralism: defining the structure, - the what- of consciousness; what are the basic building blocks that exist first that then allow for all levels of thought.

• Consciousness

Introspection: personal observation of our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors

• Ignore what the object is, instead describe your own consciousness experience with it.

Functionalism: idea that our conscious thoughts exist to serve a purpose, of helping us take in information from the world around us so that we might adapt to changes in our environment to survive.

• William James

Psychoanalytic theory: our behavior is deeply influenced by our unconscious thoughts, impulses and desires.

• Sigmund Freud

• Like an iceberg, our conscious thoughts are above the water, and the unconscious thoughts are underneath the water.

Gestalt Psychology: the combination of all that we consciously experience is lost if we try to divide it into its component parts.

• Fill in the blanks

• Max Wertheimer

Behaviorism: psychologists should only be concerned with observable behavior, not thoughts.

• John Watson, B.F. Skinner

Modern approaches to Psychology:

Theory: an explanation that narrows the focus of an investigation; provides a framework for how to interpret what we observe.

• Subfields are informed by one or more theories.

Biological/ Neuroscience Approach:

• Mental processes and behaviors are the result of biological processes.

Evolutionary Approach:

• Mental processes and behaviors can be explained by what evolutionary value those ways of being hold or held in our ancestral past.

Psychodynamic Approach:

• Thoughts and behaviors are interpreted by our beliefs and interpretations outside of our conscious awareness until they are addressed on a conscious level.

Behavioral Approach:

• Behavior is primarily influenced by learning from observable outcomes.

Cognitive Approach:

• Behavior is shaped by the ways we take in, perceive, interpret, categorize, and retrieve information using our brain.

Humanistic Approach:

• Behavior is determined by what choices we perceive to be available to us and our respected, individualized ideas.

Sociocultural/ Ecological Approach:

• Behavior is shaped by factors related to our socio-cultural demographic factors such as race, gender, ethnicity, class, etc…

Eclecticism- Contemporary Approach:

• Most psychologists take ideas from multiple perspectives to answer questions about behavior and mental processes.

Explaining Depression:

Chapter 1: Research

Critical Thinking: process of assessing claims and making judgements based on well-supported evidence.

Thinking like a Scientist:

Why answer questions through a scientific process?

• Human behavior is complex and variable, observation through personal experience isn't reliable.

What makes scientific thinking different from observation through personal experience?

• Objectivity ( not subjectivity)

• Systematic observation

• Defining behavior precisely ( operational definition)

• Repeatable evidence

The Scientific Method:

Observe/ Identify the problem -> Ask a question -> Predict/ hypothesize -> Collect + Analyze data -> Draw Conclusions

Developing Research Questions:

• Theory: set of related ideas or information that is organized in such a way that we can use it to explain or predict behavior (ideas that guide predictions)

• Hypothesis: a prediction based on a theory that can be tested in measurable terms

Testing Research Questions

• Where/ from whom will I gather this information?

  • Population

  • Sample

  • N

• Descriptive Research: am I looking to report on what is naturally occurring without my influence

  • Without interference; what occurs naturally

• Experimental Research: am I looking to see what happens under different conditions that I can influence

  • What happens with influence

Descriptive (non-experimental) methods:

• Observation

• Case studies

• surveys/questionnaires

• Interviews

• Correlation research

  • Goal = to DESCRIBE behavior

• Descriptive- Describe behavior

Experimental Methods:

• Conditions

• Controls

• Compare outcomes

  • Goal = to establish the CAUSES and EFFECTS of behavior

• The 3 C’s

Observational Research:

• Naturalistic Observation

  • Key Idea: observing in a natural environment

  • Advantages: see behavior as it really is: useful for stressful situations

  • Disadvantages: no control; no data on reasons of behavior; can only describe

• Systematic Observation

  • Key Idea: structure an environment in which you will observe patients

  • Advantage: more control over contex; can narrow down potential causal variables

  • Disadvantages: not a natural environment -> affects behavior

Case Studies:

• Key Idea: study one or few individuals intensively

• Advantage: rich data; opportunity to study rare conditions or situations

• Disadvantage: no ability to generalize findings to others

Surveys:

• Key Idea: asking the same questions of many participants via paper-and-pencil or online

• Advantage: can get lots of data relativity quickly

• Disadvantage: cannot follow up; no explanation for answers

Interviews:

• Key Idea: asking the same questions of many participants via conversation and systematic questions

• Advantages: can get detailed information; can ask follow up questions

• Disadvantages: time-consuming;other logistical challenges

Correlational Research:

• Key Idea: examines the relationship between two or more variables

• Variable: anything that you can observe or measure

• Important: correlations do not imply that one variable causes the other

  • Ex. Ice cream consumption positively correlates with foot injuries. Why? Both more frequently occur in warmer weather

Interpreting Correlations:

• Range -1 to +1

• Two parts:

  • Sign (positive or negative)

    • Positive: variables move in the same direction (e.g. height and shoe size)

    • Negative: variables move in opposite directions (e.g. class skipping and GPA)

  • Magnitude (size of number)

    • Zero: no relation

    • 1 or -1: perfect relation

    • Closer to either end: stronger, closer to middle: weaker

Correlation-The Third Variable Problem:

• Simultaneous influence of a third (unmeasured) factor on the two variables under study

Correlational Research:

• Key Idea: determining if two or more things seem to be related to each other

• Advantage: can collect data from large N of patients

• Disadvantage: cannot prove that one variable causes a change in the other.

Experimental Research:

• Experimental methods

  • Conditions

  • Controls

  • Compare outcomes

  • Goal: is to establish the causes and effects of behavior

Experimentation (cause-effect):

• Key idea: manipulate one variable and observe effects on outcome variables

  • Hold other variables constant as much as possible; control and random assignment

• Independent Variable: what you manipulate, what conditions you set (treatment vs.not)

• Dependent Variable: what you measure (outcome variable)

Biases and Controls in Research:

• Researcher side:

  • Experimenter bias: when a researcher unintentionally influences participants to respond in a particular way (i.e. unintentionally communicating expectations) - also called observer expectancy effect.

  • Confirmation bias: tendency to interpret evidence as supporting one’s prior beliefs; also the tendency to look only for evidence that supports one's beliefs ( and ignore the other evidence)

  • Sampling bias: choosing people to participate in a study in ways that might influence the result (e.g. only choosing from one social groups)

• Participant side:

  • Placebo effect: participants expectations influence their performance in a study

  • Self Fulfilling Prophecy: if we believe something about ourselves (or perceive that others believe things about us), then we act to fulfill that expectation

Controls in Research:

• Double Blind Research Design: make the experimenter and participants unaware of who is getting the treatment or control condition.

• Placebo: giving a “fake” treatment in order that participants (and experimenter) don't know who gets the actual treatment

  • (e.g. drug being tested vs sugar pill)

• Random Sampling: choosing people for a study in ways that minimize sampling bias; random selection ensures that people (and their characteristics) are more evenly distributed across experimental and control groups