Gen Psych Ch. 1

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Psychology

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The discipline concerned with behavior and mental processes and how they are affected by an organism's physical state, mental state, and external environment.

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Emperical Evidence

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Evidence relying on or derived from observation, experimentation, or measurement.

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Functionalism

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An early psychological approach that emphasized the function of purpose of behavior and consciousness

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Psychoanalysis

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A theory of personality and a method of psychotherapy, originally formulated by Sigmund Freud, that emphasizes unconscious motives and conflicts.

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Biological perspective

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A psychological approach that emphasizes bodily events and changes associated with actions, feelings, and thoughts.

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Evolutionary Psychology

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A field of psychology emphasizing evolutionary mechanisms that may help explain human commonalities in cognition, development, emotion, social practices, and other areas of behavior,

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Learning Perspective

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A psychological approach that emphasizes how the environment and experience affect a person's or animal's actions; it includes behaviorism and social-cognitive learning theories.

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Sociocultural perspective

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A psychological approach that emphasizes social and cultural influences on behavior.

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Psychodynamic Perspective

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A psychological approach that emphasizes unconscious dynamics within the individual, such as inner forces, conflicts, or the movement of instinctual energy.

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Humanist Psychology

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A psychological approach that emphasizes free will, personal growth, resillience, and the achievement of human potential.

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Basic Psychology

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The study of psychological issues in order to seek knowledge for its own sake rather than for its practical application.

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Applied Psychology

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The study of psychological issues that have direct practical significance; also, the appliccation of psychological findings.

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Academic/research scientists what do they do

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specialize in areas of pure or applied research such as human development, health, education, sensation and perception.

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Clinical psychologists what do they do?

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They do psychotherapy and sometimes research; may work in a private practice, mental health clinic, general hospital, or college.

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Psychotherapsit

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A person who does psychotherapy; may have anything from no degree to an advanced professional degree; the term is unregulated.

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Clinical Psychologist

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Diagnoses, treats, and or studies mental and emotional problems both mild and severe.

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Psychoanalyst

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Practices psychoanalysis; has specific training in this approach after an advanced degree may treat any kind of emotional disorder or pathology.

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Psychiatrist

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Does work similar to that of a clinical psychologist but is likely to take a more biological approach, has a medical degree with a specialty in psychairty

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Licenced clinical social worker, marriage, family, and child counselor

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Typically treats common individual and family problems, but may also deal with more serious problems such as addiction or abuse.

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Critical Thinking

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The ability and willingness to assess claims and make objective judgements on the asis of well supported reasons and evidence rather than emotion or anectdote.

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Hypothesis

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A statement that attempts to predict or to account for a set of phenomena, scientific, hypotheses specify relationships among events or variables and are empirically tested.

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Operational definition

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A precise definition of a term in a hypothesis which specifies the operations for observing and measuring the process or phenomenon being defined.

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Principle of Falsifiability

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The principle that a scientific theory must make predictions that are specific enough to expose the theory to the possibility of disconfirmation.

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Theory

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An organized system of assumptions and principles that purports to explain a specified set of phenomena and their interrelationships.

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Descriptive methods

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Methods that yield descriptions of behavior but not necessarily causal explanations.

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Case Study

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A detailed description of a particular individual being studied or treated.

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Observational study

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A study in which the researcher carefully and systematically observes and records behavior without interfering with the behavior; it may invovle either naturalistic or laboratory observation.

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Psychological tests

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Procedures used to measure and evaluate personality traits, emotional states, aptitudes, interests, abilities, and values.

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Standardize

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In test construction, to develop uniform procedures for givein and scoring a test.

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Norms

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In test construction, established standards of performance. Test a large group to determine which scores are high, low, and average.

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Reliability

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In test construction, the consistency of test scores from one time and place to another.

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Validity

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The ability of a test to measure what it was designed to measure.

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Surveys

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Questionaires and interviews that ask people directly about their experiences, attitudes, or opinions.

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Representative Sample

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A group of individuals, selected from a population for study, which matches that population on important characteristics such as age and sex.

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Volunteer bias

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A shortcoming of findings derived from a ssample of volunteers instead of a representative sample the volunteers may differ from those who did not volunteer.

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Correlational study

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A descriptive study that looks for a consistent relationship between two phenomena.

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Correlation

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A measure of how strongly two variables are related to each other.

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Variables

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Characteristics of behavior or experience that can be measured or described by a numeric scale' variables are manipulated and assessed in scientific studies.

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Positive correlation

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An association between increases in one variable and increases in another, or between decreases in oneand in the other.

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Negative correlation

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An association between increases in one variable and decreases inanother.

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Coefficient of Correlation

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A measure of correlation that ranges in value from -1.00 to +1.00.

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Experiment

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A controlled test of a hypothesis in which the researcher manipulates one variable to discover its effect on another

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independent variable

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A variable that an experimenter manipulates

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Dependent variable

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A variable that an experimenter predicts will be affected by manipulations of the independent variable.

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Control Condition

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In an experiment, a comparison condition in whcih subjects are not exposed to the same treatment as are those in the experimental condition.

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Random assignment

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A procedure for assigning people to experimental and control groups in which each individual has the same probability as any other of being assigned to a given group.

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Placebo

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An inactive substance or fake treatment used as a control in an experiment.

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Single Blind Study

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An experiment in which subjects do not know whether or not they are in an experimental group or a control group.

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Experimenter effects.

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Unintended changes in subjects' behavior due to cues inadvertently given by the experimenter.

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Double-blind Study

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An experiment in whcih neither the participants nor the individuals running the study know which participants are in the control group and whch are in the experimental group until after the results are tallied.

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Field research

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Descriptive or experimental research conducted in a natural setting outside the laboratory.

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Descriptive Statistics

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Statistics that organize and summarize research data.

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Arithmetic mean

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An average that is calculated by adding up a set of quantities and dividing the sum by the total number of quantities in the set.

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Standard deviation

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A commonly used measure of variability that indicates the average difference between scores in a distribution and their mean.

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Inferential Statistics

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Statistical procedures that allow researchers to draw inferences about how statistically meaningful a study's results are.

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Significance tests

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Statistical tests that assess how likely it is that a study's results occurred merely by chance.

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Cross-sectional study

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A study in which individuals of different ages are compared at a given time

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Longitudinal study

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A study in which individuals are followed and periodically reassessed over a period of time

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Meta-analysis

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A procedure for combining and analyzing data from many studies; it determines how much of the variance in scores across all studies can be explained by a particular variable.