UNIT 1

Unit 1, the Scientific Foundations of Psychology. The foundations of psychology can be traced all the way to ancient Greece circa 300 BCE, as Greek philosophers such as Aristotle would question the reason behind psychosomatic conditions such as depression or loss of desire. Throughout the years, dozens of notable individuals made several contributions to the field of psychology, such as French philosopher, Rene Descartes, theorizing the concept of dualism and Paul Broca's groundbreaking research on the human brain. It was not until 18/79 where German philosopher and physiologist Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychology lab in Leipzig, Germany, giving him the title of Father of Experimental Psychology. Wundt took several philosophical ideas and applied the newly created scientific method to them in order to empirically test these theories.

02:15Taking ideas from both philosophy and physiology, Bunt was the first individual on record to refer to himself as a psychologist. After Wundt established the 1st psychology lab, the discipline took off rapidly gaining popularity in the scientific community. It is important to note, however, that human behavior was still studied prior to the foundation of psychology. In 18/41, while teaching Sunday School at an insane asylum, Dorothy Dicks noticed the poor treatment of the patients and made it her life goal to improve asylum conditions for those suffering from mental illness. In 18/83, g Stanley Hall, a student of Bunt, brought psychology to the United States, opening the first lab at John Hopkins University.

02:559 years later, he would go on to create the American Psychological Association in 18/92. In 18/90, William James published Principles of Psychology where he introduced his psychological school of thought, functionalism. In 18/94, Margaret Floyd Washburn would be the first woman to receive her PhD in Psychology from Harvard University. In the year 1900, Sigmund Freud would go to publish the Interpretation of Dreams' where he introduces his psychoanalytical perspective of psychology. Across the pond in the states in 1905, psychologist Mary Whitten Culkin made history becoming the first female president to lead the American Psychological Association.

03:341 year later, over in Russia, Ivan Pavlov would go to publish his classic study on animal learning, giving us the learning concept of classical conditioning. In 1913, psychologist John B. Watson founded the behavioral school of psychology and redefined psychology as the science of behavior. When 1938 came around, cognitive psychologist Jean Piaget would go on to publish his research on how our thinking and thought processes change as we age. Several years later in 1942, psychologist Carl Rogers revolutionized psychotherapy by introducing his humanistic technique of client centered therapy.

04:11And our little history lesson comes to an end in 1948, where behavioral psychologist, BF Skinner, furthered the behavioral approach by theorizing operant conditioning. Today, we have several theoretical approaches in psychology that attempt to explain behavior. Structuralism and functionalism are going to be the first two that we go over. It is important to note that these two approaches have kind of died off over the years, but you still probably want to know them for the AP test. Structuralism was first practiced by Wilhelm Bunt and his student, Edward Titchener, and it suggests that the goal of psychology is to study the structure of the mind and consciousness.

04:47Functionalism was founded by William James and states that the goal of psychology should not be to study these structures but to understand the purpose of the mind and consciousness. Gestalt psychology was founded in Germany by a group of psychologists who were not the big fans of structuralism. A popular motto of the Gestalt psychologist, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Gestalt psychologists emphasized that organisms perceive entire patterns or configurations, not just individual components. The behavioral perspective is going to look into how observable behaviors are acquired or modified through environmental consequences.

05:21Behavioral psychologists hold a firm belief that we are the victims of our environment. Based off the workings of Sigmund Freud, the psychoanalytical perspective is going to focus on how our past experiences and unconscious influences influence our behavior. While the psychoanalytical perspective focuses on childhood experiences and the unconscious mind, the humanistic perspective is going to focus on the motivation people have to psychologically grow. Humanists focus on the present and future in dealing with psychological behaviors. The cognitive perspective of psychology is going to focus on the important role of mental processes in how individuals process incoming information, develop language, solve problems, and think.

06:00A biological psychologist is going to study the physical basis of human and animal behavior by examining the brain, nervous system, and genetics. A psychologist practicing this perspective believes that all of our behaviors are the result of biological processes occurring within our bodies. An off shoot of the biological approach, we have the Evolutionary perspective. Based off the workings of Charles Darwin, the evolutionary perspective is going to apply the principles of natural selection to explain various psychological processes. Psychologists who follow the sociocultural approach look at how individual behavior is affected specifically by someone's society or culture.

06:35It is also important to note that often times psychologists will take an eclectic approach to research, where they draw on multiple disciplines in order to explain behavior. The most common example of an eclectic approach can be seen in the biopsychosocial model, where a researcher examines how biological, social and psychological factors are going to affect our behavior. Now this can be a smart move as each perspective does have its strengths in explaining behavior, which also means that they have their own weaknesses. So picking and choosing between each of the perspective strengths can be beneficial. On our boards, you will see several different domains of psychology listed.

07:09Now I consider these to be the area of focus that a psychologist decides to dedicate their work to. Each domain is home to psychologists who specialize in various perspectives. A cognitive psychologist and behavioral psychologist can both be therapists. They just take different methods of treatment in explaining and treating abnormal behavior. Moving on now, we have research methods in psychology.

07:29Sticking with the scientific method, the first thing we have to do after having our topic of research is to form a hypothesis, which is just going to be our best educated guess of the outcome of our research. Now we are going to have both descriptive and experimental research methods. Descriptive research is going to involve systematically observing behaviors in order to describe the relationship between behaviors and events. This type of research answers the who, what, when, and where questions. A case study is going to be a research method where one person is studied in-depth with the hope of revealing universal principles.

08:05Multiple case studies on the brain are the reason for knowing everything we currently know about the brain. Longitudinal studies are when a researcher follows the same group of people for an extended period of time. We are talking several months to many years. And this is all in order to evaluate a change over time in the individual. It's in its name, longitudinal study, should be pretty easy to remember.

08:26With the priciness, time commitment and proneness to losing participants over time, longitudinal studies are not always ideal, which is why we have cross sectional studies. These are where researchers are going to assess developmental changes by evaluating different age groups of people at the same time. Naturalistic observations are going to involve observing and recording behaviors as they occur in their natural setting. This is done in order to attempt to detect behavior patterns as they already exist in their natural One of the most commonly used descriptive research methods is going to be the survey. Surveys are a cost efficient and very effective way of obtaining information on attitudes and behaviors.

09:04Surveys work by questioning a random sample that represents the target population. Information obtained from surveys and natural istic observations can show a relationship between 2 variables. This relationship is referred to as a correlation. Correlations can be positive where two variables move in the same direction, they can be negative where two variables move in opposite directions, or there can be no correlation at all. Now one very, very important thing to note is that correlation does not equal causation.

09:32I'm sure you've heard your teacher tell you that. All this means is that the two variables being studied do not have a cause and effect relationship. To prove cause and effect, an experiment must be conducted. Experimental research is a scientific procedure used to demonstrate cause and effect relationships by purposefully manipulating one variable, hoping to produce a change in another variable. When conducting research, specifically behavioral research, psychologists stress the importance of operationally defining variables, which is just when we define our variables in a way that can be measured.

10:04For example, anxiety could be operationally defined by the score someone receives when taking the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale. In experimental research, we have several variables, including the independent, dependent, confounding, and control variables. The independent variable is the variable manipulated by the experimenter that is expected to produce a change in our dependent variable. The dependent variable is just going to be the factor factor in the experiment that is observed and measured. The control variable is going to be kept constant during the experiment in order to compare with experimental results.

10:36A confounding variable is going to be any variable other than the ones being studied that, if we do not control them, could affect the outcomes of our experiment. Confounding variables are bad news. Some examples are going to include the Hawthorne effect and experimenter bias. As mentioned earlier, experiments are designed to prove cause and effect relationships. A typical psychology experiment will have both an experimental and control group.

10:59The experimental group includes participants who are exposed to all experimental conditions, while the control group participants are exposed to all of the same experimental conditions except for the independent variable. The control group will often time use a placebo, which is a fake substance, treatment, or procedure that has no known direct effects. The results of the experimental group can then be compared to the results of the control group. Random assignment is used to make sure that every participant involved in the study has an equal chance of being included in the experimental or control groups. Now be sure not to get random assignments of participants involved in experimental research confused with random selection of participants, which are mainly used in surveys and correlational studies.

11:40As you just saw earlier, each research method has their own set of strengths and weaknesses, so a researcher will choose a method that closely matches their research goal. Choosing the appropriate research method can help with limiting the effect of confounding variables. Statistics also come in handy when with research. In order to properly collect, analyze and interpret data that we receive. For AP Psychology, what you're going to want to make sure you are familiar with is central tendency or averages.

12:08These are things involving the Mean, Median, and Mode. When plotted on a graph, we have a normal distribution when the mean, median, and mode all equal one another. A negative skew is where most of the data leans to the right of the bell curve, and a positive skew is going to be when most of the data leans to the left of the bell curve. The standard of deviation is a statistic that measures the typical distance between the scores of a distribution and the mean. Now take a look at the bell curve on the board.

12:34Starting in the middle, when we go one standard of deviation over, it's going to include 68% of the population. With 2 standards of deviation, we have 95% of the population and within three standard of deviation, we have 99.7% of the population. This is more simply referred to as the 68 90 5 99 rule. To calculate the range, you take the highest score minus the lower score. The bigger the range, the bigger the standard of deviation.

13:00There is going to be both descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics are numbers that are going to summarize a set of research data obtained from a sample. Central tendency and standards of deviation are included in this data. Descriptive statistics allow us to summarize and graph all of our data. The process involves taking a large amount of data and reducing it to a meaningful summary.

13:23Inferential Statistics, on the other hand, are statistics that are used to interpret data and draw conclusions. Because of the fact that we are drawing conclusions with these statistics, generally this means that inferential statistics are used during an attempt to prove cause and effect. And our last topic of discussion for Unit 1 will be ethical considerations involved in psychological research. Prior to the establishment of these guidelines, there were no real limitations to what a researcher could do. Now there were some pretty messed up experiments that led to the potential of mental and even physical harm.

13:54I'm looking at you Philip Zimbardo. And as a result, the American Psychology Association along with several other governing bodies, implemented rules to experimentation. In the simplest of terms, the ethical guidelines are as follow. Do no harm, ensure participation is voluntary, debrief any use of deception, provide results and interpretations to the participants, maintain confidentiality, and to accurately describe risks to potential subjects. Not properly following these guidelines could put a researcher at risk of losing their license to practice.