PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

Behaviorism-

• Classical Conditioning: 2 associated stimuli lead to a response (Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson)

• Operant Conditioning: Behaviors shaped/guided by consequences (BF Skinner)

• Observational Learning: Model leads to mimic (Albert Bandura)

Psychodynamic-

• How behavior springs from unconscious drives and conflicts from childhood (Sigmund Freud, alfred alder)

Socio/Cross Cultural-

• How behavior and thinking vary across situations and cultures (Phillip Zimbardo, walter mischel)

Evolutionary-

• How natural selection promotes perpetuation of genes (Konrad Lorenz; mating, animals following who they first see (imprint))

• Brain is prewired for survival

Biological/Neuroscience-

• How body and brain enable emotions, memories, sensory experiences

• structures, neurons, hormones, neurotransmitters (Sperry and Gazzaniga)

Humanism-

• Individual growth and self development vs. the collective (Carl Rogers, Maslow)

• self actualization= potential

• love is the number one need for human beings

Cognitive-

• THINKING

• encoding, processing, storing/retrieving, perception, memory, attention, problem solving

• Irrational/illogical > Rational/logical

• CBT; changing thinking approach (Albert Ellis, Aaron Beck)

TYPES OF BIAS

Hindsight Bias-

• The tendency to after hearing about findings think/say they knew it all along

Experimenter Bias-

• Unconscious tendency where researches treat subjects of experimental and control groups differently to increase chance of proving hypothesis correct

• Not conscious, if experimenter purposely changes data, it is fraud

Social Desirability Bias-

• people responding how they presume the researcher wants them to

Self-Report Bias-

• people reporting their own behavior inaccurately

• researchers pair surveys with other means to measure behavior bc of this

  • Small changes in words can also affect bias

Sampling Bias

• when not everyone has the same chance to be chosen

• should be representative of the population

Experimental Method

1. Starts with a theory that explains behaviors or events by offering ideas that summarizes and simplifies observations.

2. Leads to hypothesis, a testable prediction which specifies which results would support/disconfirm it.

3. Must be given with operational definitions, carefully worded statement of exact procedures so ANYONE can replicate study.

Non-experimental Methods

* Can draw conclusions from these but not causation

Case Study-

• examines individuals/groups to reveal things as a whole

• may be misleading because of personal stories, may not apply to everyone

• ex.: brain damage, animal intelligence, children’s minds

Naturalistic Observation-

• Observing and recording naturally occurring behavior w/out manipulation

• easy to use w/social media and smart devices

• DESCRIBES behavior, not explain

Survey-

• self reported attitudes/behaviors by questioning a random sample of the group

• people share answers to be socially acceptable, * be aware of bias

Random Sampling-

• choosing a sample where the entire populations has an equal chance of being in the sample

• Larger=better but only if representative, cannot compensate w/more people

• Number names or RNG, don’t send out not everyone answers

Correlation

• non experimental research that describes relationship between 2(+) variables

• measure of the extent to which 2 factors vary together, how well they predict each other

Correlation Coefficient

• Helps us know how well each other predict the other one

• from -1 to 1, least strong is closest to 0

Scatterplots

• used to show how variables relate

• Strong positive: one increases and so does other

• Strong negative: one increases other decreases

* Correlational research has directionality problem; cannot tell what causes or effects, could be reversed; may also have 3rd variable

Illusory Correlations

• belief that there is actually a relationship between something

• uncontrollable evens are fed by regression toward the mean; result will move towards average result next time

Experimentation

• used to establish cause and effect by manipulating factors using random assignment

• uses experimental group where they receive treatment

• control group where they don’t

• randomly assigning people to equalize groups and if they differ they can see effect

Placebo

• Participants uninformed- single blind

• participants and administrators uninformed- double bind

• thinking you are getting treatment will relieve symptoms (placebo)

Cofounding variables- other factors that can influence the study

• Accounted for with random assignment

Validity- extent to which a test measures what its supposed to

Ethical Guidelines

APA Guidelines-

1. obtain participants informed consent

2. protect participants from greater than usual harm

3. keep info confidential

4. fully debrief (explain research)

5. must be voluntary

6. no coercion

Animal Guidelines

1. humane care and housing

2. least suffering possible

3. animal acquired humanly and legally

Descriptive Statistics

- Numerical Data used to measure and describe characteristics, measures of tendency and variation

Mode- most frequently occuring

mean- arithmetic average

median- middle number of ranked numbers

%tile- % of scores below given score

Range- difference btwn highest and lowest number

SD- computed measure on how much scores deviate from mean

Positively skewed- one high (more positive) outlier

Negatively skewed- one low (more negative) outlier

Bell Curve

most scores fall near mean, fewer at extremes

Inferential Statistics

Meta Analysis- statistic procedure for analyzing multiple studies to reach overall conclusion

Statistical Significance- how likely our results from a study occured by chance, strive for .05 chance

P-value- probability of no differences in between the hypotheses

Effect size- strength of relationship btwn 2 variables, larger effect size more one variable can be explained