M1 - InQuizitive

1.6 - Mental Processes and Behaviors Serve Functions for Individuals and Groups

  • mid-1800s in Europe

    • Psychology becomes field of study

    • Based on experimental method

    • A System of Logic (1843) by John Stuart Mill

      • declared that psyc should be science not philosophy

  • William James - laid foundation for modern psyc

    • 1873 - left medicine career to teach physiology at Harvard

    • 1875 - first lecture on psychology

    • Early supporter of women in male-dominated sciences

    • Trained Mary Whiton Calkins, first woman to set up psyc lab and first woman president of American Psychological Association

    • believed that mind is too complex to be breaken down

    • ever-changing thoughts: “stream of conciousness”

      • interacting stimuli coming from inside and outside our heads

      • the mind simply has too many inputs to make consciousness understandable for us

    • Functionalism:

      • belief that mind came into existence as humans evolved

      • natural selection improved our minds

        • ex: language, traditions, etc.


1.7 - The Field of Psychology Spans the Range of Human Experience

  • basic sensory, brain processes, abstract thoughts, complex social interactions common universal for all humans

  • Emotional range, however, varies human to human because of their unique background, environment and day-to-day life.

  • Psyc is finally trying to increase its diversity and inclusion

  • internet is very useful to gather data from across the globe

    • many studies now feature samples from dozens of countries

  • psychologists also began to specialize in specific research areas

    • Clinical - and treat mental illness

    • Cognitive - basic skills and processes that make up foundation of mental life and behavior

    • Cultural - how cultural factors can affect mental life and behavior

      • closely linked with sociology and anthropology

    • Developmental - how humans develop mind from baby to adulthood

      • focuses on why certain periods in life are important

    • Health - how psychological processes influence physical health

      • how bad factors like stress, loneliness, etc cause health disorders/death

      • how good factors like optimism and social support promote healthy behaviors

    • Industrial/organizational (I/O) - how psychological processes play out in workspace

    • Relationships - how close (like romantic) relationships are the most consistent predictor of overall happiness and well-being

    • Social-Personality - everyday thoughts and feelings and the factors that influence them

1.8 - What are the Latest Developments in Psychology?

Biology is increasingly emphasized in explaining psychological phenomena

3 major advances that contributed to psychology

  1. Brain imaging

    • Long history of brain-causing changes in mind and behavior

      • Pierre Paul Broca: discovered that damage to specific regions → specific changes in our psychology

    • electroencephalography (EEG): measures changes in electrical activity

    • new devices that measure slight changes in magnetic field caused by blood flow

    • 2 above technologies significantly accelerated progress in psychology

    • fMRI helps but you already know how that works sorta

      Human Connectome Project - Launched in 2010 as a major international research effort to understand brain connectivity

  2. Genetics and epigenetics

    • study how genes are involved in brain

    • shown that nearly all aspects of human psyc have small genetic component

  3. Immunology and other peripheral systems

    • how the brain and mind works with our bodies during times of immune system stress

1.9 - Psychology Is a Computational and Data Science

Very fast computers have changed how psychologists do their jobs

  • Computational Modeling

    • Behaviorism: emphasizes environmental influences on observable behaviors

      • Not as useful alone

    • Cognitive revolution

      • launched by George A. Miller 1950s

      • accelerated by computers

        • simple computerized tasks to indirectly measure components of cognition like attention, working memory, reward learning, etc.

      • simple measurements like reaction times and error rates back then

      • mathematical and computational models now that tell a lot more

  • Big Data

    • how data mining and machine learning are used to identify complex patterns in large data sets

    • made possible by computers

    • big data sets largely available online

    • can be controversial, data ethics created

      • issues with privacy

      • equal access to information

      • control over our information

  • Replicability, Open Science, Data Sharing

    • Replicability: results of a study would be similar if it someone else ran the same study again

    • Open Science

      • more transparent research

      • documenting failed studies

      • sharing data among researchers

    • writing down/publishing research plans early on and allowing other people access to data has been successful for research

      • numerous internet services created to share research data.


1.10 - Culture Provides Adaptive Solutions

  • Evolution has brought specialized mechanisms that help us

    • e.g. calluses on skin from abuse of physical labor

  • circuits in our brain have evolved over time as well

    • especially as we move into a more urban/socialized society

  • living in groups give rise to culture

    • cultural evolution happens much faster than biological revolution

    • Globalization: flow of people, commodities, money, and more around the globe

  • different cultures → different mind

    • ex: Europeans and North Americans are much more analytical than people from Asia

    • Westerners

      • break down complex ideas into smaller simpler ones

      • categorize information

      • use logic and rules to explain behavior

    • Easterners

      • More holistic view in thinking

      • seeing complex ideas as a complicated whole

1.11 - Psychological Science Crosses Levels of Analysis

4 defined levels of analysis reflect common research methods for studying mind and behavior

  1. Biological

    • deals with how physical body contributes to mind and behavior

      • such as via chemical and genetic processes that occur in the body

  2. Individual

    • individual differences in personality and in the differences in personality that affect how people perceive and know the world

  3. Social

    • how group contexts affect the ways in which people interact with each other

  4. Cultural

    1. how people’s thoughts, feelings, actions etc are different across cultures

Studying psyc phenomena at one analysis level is typically favored, but now changing to explain them at several levels


1.12 - Psychological Education Embraces the Science of Learning

The study of how people learn and retain information is one of the oldest and most robust areas of research in psychology

  • Psychologists recently started translating long years of studying learning in labs into the world of education

  • Distributed Practice

    • Learning material in bursts over a long period of time

    • Opposite of cramming, and much better than it

  • Retrieval/Testing-based learning

    • Active recall

    • getting information into your head is 1st part of learning

    • actively retrieve that info from your head to make use of it

    • testing and active recall are that needed 2nd part

  • Elaborative Interrogation

    • asking “why” when ur learning

    • self-explantion

  • Interleaved practice: switching between topics during studying