Psych (1)

Front 1

psychology

Back 1

a study of mind, brain, and behaviour which occurs at many levels of analyses

Front 2

science

Back 2

concerned with the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding the natural and social world in a systematic way

Front 3

empiricism

Back 3

theory that all knowledge comes from sense

experience

Front 4

theory

Back 4

an explanation of a large number of findings in the natural world

Front 5

not a theory

Back 5

explanation of 1 specific event; educated unproven guess

Front 6

confirmation bias

Back 6

tendency to seek out evidence that supports your initial beliefs while denying, dismissing or distorting evidence that disagrees with initial beliefs (ex: gun control)

Front 7

belief perseverance

Back 7

tendency to stick with your initial beliefs even if evidence contradicts them (ex: global warming)

Front 8

emotional reasoning fallacy

Back 8

using emotions to evaluate the validity of arguments

Front 9

bandwagon fallacy

Back 9

believing something just because everyone else does

Front 10

"not me" fallacy

Back 10

thinking you are immune from errors in thinking that may afflict other people

Front 11

representative heuristic

Back 11

judging the probability of an event by its superficial similarity to a prototype (ex: holistic healer or school teacher)

Front 12

pseudoscience

Back 12

set of claims that seem scientific but are not

Front 13

base rate

Back 13

how common a behaviour/characteristic is in general population (ex: car accidents 5 miles from home)

Front 14

availability heuristic

Back 14

estimate the likelihood of an occurrence based on how easily it comes to our minds (ex: hot water vs plane crash)

Front 15

hindsight bias

Back 15

"I knew it all along"

Front 16

overconfidence bias

Back 16

tendency to overestimate our ability to make correct predictions

Front 17

quantitative data

Back 17

data presented in the form of numbers (ex: average scores for groups on some task)

Front 18

qualitative data

Back 18

includes studies that collect detailed interview info

Front 19

reliability

Back 19

consistency of measurement

Front 20

validity

Back 20

extent to which a measure assesses what it claims to measure

Front 21

test-retest reliability

Back 21

test scores are similar over time

Front 22

inter-rater reliability

Back 22

two raters should produce similar scores

Front 23

internal reliability

Back 23

how well do the items/questions within a test relate to each other

Front 24

criterion validity

Back 24

assesses the test's accuracy against some benchmark

Front 25

face validity

Back 25

whether it appears like it is measuring the construct of interest

Front 26

standardization

Back 26

consistency across administrations in the procedure used to administer and score a test (ex: MCAT)

Front 27

norms

Back 27

using a large sample to determine cut off scores on a test (ex: 10/40 no depression, 11/40 mild depression)

Front 28

percentile rank

Back 28

percentage of those in the normative group that fell below a given test score

Front 29

halo effect

Back 29

tendency of rating of one positive characteristic to spill over to influence the ratings of other characteristics

Front 30

correlation

Back 30

how two variables are associated

Front 31

causation

Back 31

the action of one variable causing another another

Front 32

epidemiology

Back 32

the study of incidence, prevalence, and distribution of illness or disease in a given population

Front 33

independent variable

Back 33

the variable manipulated by researchers

(ex: room temperature)

Front 34

dependent variable

Back 34

the variable measured to see if the manipulation had an effect (ex: ratings of aggression)

Front 35

quasi-experimental design

Back 35

comparing groups when random assignment is not available or ethical (ex: motivation in depressed vs healthy people.. you have to only use depressed people)

Front 36

experimental group

Back 36

the group that receives the manipulation

Front 37

control group

Back 37

the group that has no manipulation

Front 38

internal validity

Back 38

concerned with questions "can we conclude that change in the dependent variable is attributable to change in the independent variable"

Front 39

external validity

Back 39

concerned with "can these results generalize to other people/settings"

Front 40

confounds

Back 40

differences between the experimental and control groups other than the independent variable

(ex: caffeine effects on test scores: one group might have studied more resulting in higher scores)

Front 41

sample size

Back 41

a portion of a population

Front 42

mean

Back 42

average score

Front 43

median

Back 43

the point at which 50% of the scores fall above and below

Front 44

mode

Back 44

the most frequent measurement

Front 45

placebo effect

Back 45

when the participant gives false results since they were expecting the drug to give those results

Front 46

nocebo effect

Back 46

nothing you do will change your circumstances

Front 47

experiment expectancy effect

Back 47

when a researcher's cognitive bias causes them to subconsciously influence the participants of an experiment (why we use double blind designs)

Front 48

developmental psych

Back 48

study of lifelong/age-related processes of change (biological, maturational, and social changes)

Front 49

post-hoc fallacy

Back 49

logical error where you assume A causes B just because B came after (ex: serial killers drank milk as a baby)

Front 50

bidirectionality of influence

Back 50

human development is almost always a 2-way street

nature changes nurture, nurture changes nature

Front 51

cohort effects

Back 51

sets of people who lived in one period can differ in some systematic way from sets of people who lived during a different period

Front 52

cross-sectional design

Back 52

individuals of different ages are compared to see how they differ

Front 53

longitudinal

Back 53

same group of participants are studied at different ages throughout their lives

Front 54

gene-environment interaction

Back 54

impact of genes on behaviour depends on the environment where development occurs

ex: ugly and pretty baby -- depression

Front 55

nature via nurture

Back 55

children with certain genetic predispositions often seek out and create their own environments

Front 56

gene expression

Back 56

activation or deactivation of genes by environmental experiences throughout development

Front 57

prenatal

Back 57

events that occur before birth

Front 58

neonatal

Back 58

events that occur in the month before and after birth

Front 59

prematurity

Back 59

birth before 36 weeks

Front 60

cephalocaudal trend

Back 60

earliest growth occurs in the head and then the body

Front 61

proximodistal trend

Back 61

growth begins at centre and proceeds to extremities