Introduction To Psychology - Week 1 (Coursera)

Front 1

Cartesian Dualism

Back 1

Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650)

Separation of mind from body

Front 2

Materialism

Back 2

Human behavior is something that can be studied scientifically because it has to follow physical and natural laws.

John Locke, James Mill, Luigi Galvani, Paul Broca

1650 - 1850

Front 3

Herman von Helmholz

Back 3

Came up with techniques to measure neural transmission rates, by multiplying and extending the amount of people involved to a point where it became measurable.

1821-1894

Front 4

Empiricism

Back 4

Figuring out how something works by experience and evidence.

Knowing by the Senses.

Structured experiments to determine the truth and falsity of a phenomenon.

Locke, Berkeley, Hume

Front 5

Luigi Galvani

Back 5

Made disected frog legs move with an electrical current.

1737 - 1798

Front 6

Ernst Weber

Back 6

Found that math can be used as a tool to measure psychological behaviour.

- JND

1795 - 1878

Front 7

JND

Back 7

Just Noticeable Difference

In the branch of experimental psychology focused on sensation and perception, JND is the amount something must be changed in order for a difference to be noticeable, detectable at least half the time.

Ernst Weber 1800s

Front 8

Wilhelm Wundt

Back 8

Established first psychology lab and wrote the first psychology textbook. Father of modern psychology.

Introspection, Structuralism

1832 - 1920

Front 9

Introspection

Back 9

Trained observers reporting what is going on in their conscious mind.

Early 1900s. Heavily criticised:

- indirect measure of consciousness

- subjectivity could lead to bias caused by individual differences

Front 10

Structuralism

Back 10

No longer active approach to psychology - based on introspective review to define the basic structures.

William Wundt 1800s

Front 11

Charles Darwin

Back 11

Worked with finches from the Galapagos.

- "Origin of the Species"

- Evolution theory

Shifted questions from WHAT to WHY:

Funcionalism.

1809 - 1882

Front 12

William James

Back 12

Theorized on the funcion of psychological processes like memory, attention, conscious experience, human will.

Cognitive ideas that we still experiment with today; most were accurate.

- "Principles of Psychology" (1890)

1842 - 1910

Front 13

Freud

Back 13

Hidden dark side of humanity. Clinical approach. Treat disorders with medication. Scientifically untestable.

- ID, Super-ego, Ego: underlying conflicts

- Theory of Psychosexual Stages of Development

1856 - 1939

Front 14

ID

Back 14

Primitive biological drives.

Pleasure principle.

Instant gratification.

Subconscious

Front 15

Super-ego

Back 15

Wants to be perfect in the eyes of society.

Wants to be liked and admired

Subconscious

Front 16

Ego

Back 16

Conflict resolution between ID and Super-ego.

Conscious

Front 17

Freud Quotes 1

Back 17

"Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine."

Front 18

Freud Quotes 2

Back 18

"He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore."

Front 19

Freud Quotes 3

Back 19

"Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a great or lesser extent."

Front 20

Freud Quotes 4

Back 20

"The tendency to aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual desposition in man... it constitutes the powerful obstacle to culture."

Front 21

Freud's clinical, non-scientific perspective

Back 21

Trial-and-error approach:

Basic assumption (symptom, underlying cause)

Method (treatment -> outcome)

Don't care why a treatment works.

Front 22

Behaviourism

Back 22

After Freud. Limit psychological research to things we can manipulate and measure.

Behaviourists are only interested how our experience influences our behaviours.

John B. Watson (inspired by Pavlov)

Example: Little Albert experiment

Front 23

SR

Back 23

Stimulus and Response

Front 24

Little Albert experiment

Back 24

Association. Conditioning.

Watson concluded that phobias were most likely conditioned responses.

Front 25

Cognitive Revolution

Back 25

After Freud, back to a Science of the Mind. Thinking of computers as analogist to humans. Brought concrete notions to things like memory. Talking about individual components between stimulus and response became interesting.

60's - 70's

Front 26

Social Psychology

Back 26

How humans interact with and influence one another.

Front 27

Individual Psychology

Back 27

What makes me different from you?

Personality. Intelligence.

Front 28

Cross-Cultural Psychology

Back 28

The way we think and behave is partly determined by the culture in which we live. There isn't 'a' human behaviour: it's culturally bound.

Newer. Becoming important due to globalization.

Front 29

Clinical Psychology

Back 29

Beyond Freud: not all agree with F.

Examines mental illness and cognitive dysfunction or deficits.

Front 30

Positive psychology

Back 30

Clinical approach that isn't focused on disorders, but on helping individuals reach their maximum potential. 'Clients' instead of 'Patients'.

Front 31

Biological Revolution

Back 31

Understanding the brain.

Neuroscience.

Front 32

Behavioural Psychology

Back 32

Concerned with directly observable responses in relation to observable stimuli and is not concerned with the unobservable or “theoretical” internal states and mechanisms.

Front 33

Cognitive Psychology

Back 33

Primarily concerned with the internal states and processing mechanisms that transform stimulation from the environment into observable behaviours.

Front 34

Developmental Psychology

Back 34

Studies behaviour across the lifespan of a person: from birth to death.

Front 35

Rationalism

Back 35

Knowing by Thinking

Rationalism empasizes use of logical and critical thinking to construct models of natural phenomena.

Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz

Front 36

Observational research

Back 36

Good for generating question, but makes answers tenuous at best due to Hawthorne effect.

Front 37

Hawthorne effect

Back 37

Subjects tend to do what they believe is expected of them in a given situation when being watched.

Front 38

Sane in Insane places

Back 38

Experiment: get admitted to a mental hospital by saying you hear voices. Then, act as sane as possible and see how long it takes to be released. Result: between 9 and 52 days.

Staff didn't believe them, but the other patients did detect that they were sane.

Rosenhan, 1973

Front 39

Positive correlation

Back 39

Both X and Y axis increase/decrease in the same direction

Front 40

Negative correlation

Back 40

X and Y axis increase/decrease in opposite directions

Front 41

NOT causation

Back 41

Causation always implies correlation, but correlation does not imply causation.

Front 42

Scientific Method

Front 43

Hypothesis

Back 43

Theory + Prediction

Front 44

Independent variable

Back 44

The property a researcher manupulates to produce changes in the outcome measure in an experiment.

Front 45

Dependent variable

Back 45

The property a researchers measures for effect in an experiment.

Front 46

T-test

Back 46

Used to compare two sets of data and measure the amount of overlap.

Signal / noise.

Difference between groups / Variability of groups

Front 47

Good Science

Back 47

- Interesting or Relevant

- Replicable

- Generalizable