Psych Exam 1

Front 1

What is psychology?

Back 1

The science of behaviour and the mind

Front 2

What are the four goals of psychology?

Back 2

Describe (what), explain (why), predict (when), and control (how)

Front 3

What are some examples of the diversity of psychological issues?

Back 3

Studying the black blow fly, electrical stimulation, ambiguous information, and crowds

Front 4

What are some different ways psychologists could study dreams?

Back 4

Dreams as mental experiences, dreams as cognition, as overt/biological behaviour, or as sociocultural behaviour

Front 5

Rene Descartes

Back 5

Believed in dualism (the body can be studied because it operates according to natural laws, but the soul doesn't so it can't be studied). Wrote the Treatise of Man - about how the body is like a machine

Front 6

Thomas Hobbes

Back 6

Believed in materialism - didn't believe in soul and thought the only important things were matter and energy. Also believed in British Empiricism (all thought/knowledge comes from our senses)

Front 7

Ivan Sechenov

Back 7

Believed that all behaviour depends on reflexes, some simple and some complex (reflexology)

Front 8

Localization of function

Back 8

Belief that certain areas of the brain serve certain areas of the body. Discovered by Johannes Muller, Paul Broca, and Pierre Flourens.

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Johannes Muller

Back 9

Wrote The Doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies and helped with discovery of localization of function.

Front 10

Paul Broca

Back 10

Studied people with brain injuries and found that left brain injury prevented speech

Front 11

Pierre Flourens

Back 11

Studied animal brains

Front 12

Charles Darwin

Back 12

Believed there is no difference between animals and humans, and discovered natural selection (organisms that inherit qualities that allow them to adapt and survive are the ones that go on to produce offspring)

Front 13

Wilhelm Wundt

Back 13

Founding father of psychological science - developed the first psych lab in Leipzig, Germany. Believed in structuralism (analyzing the mind based on the simplest components).

Front 14

Edward Titchener

Back 14

Student of Wundt. Employed introspection in his work (subjects must look inside themselves and report experiences, feelings, etc.)

Front 15

William James

Back 15

Believed the purpose/consequences of our actions is more important than studying the action itself (functionalism)

Front 16

Max Wertheimer

Back 16

Gestalt psychology (gestalt = organized shape/form; unified whole- our brains "fill in the gaps" of things we don't actually see)

Front 17

Phi Phenomenon

Back 17

Our brains can see things that aren't actually there - e.g. in a light experiment people were asked to look at two alternating blinking lights. The subjects actually saw one line of light rather than two blinking lights.

Front 18

John Watson

Back 18

Stimulus-response psychology (we respond reflexively to things)

Front 19

Burrhus Skinner

Back 19

Invented the kymograph. Studied operant responses - believed the important thing was what happened after the initial response (consequences, etc.)

Front 20

Konrad Lorenz

Back 20

Studied ethology (animal behaviour in their natural environments). Discovered imprinting.

Front 21

Sigmund Freud

Back 21

Believed the unconscious mind controls our desires (psychoanalysis)

Front 22

Carl Rogers

Back 22

Believed that people could solve their problems by being more positive about themselves and stopping negative thinking (humanistic psychology)

Front 23

Edward Tolman

Back 23

Discovered that people and animals have cognitive maps (mental representations of paths to follow to get somewhere)

Front 24

Jean Piaget

Back 24

Studied children and found that humans go through phases of cognitive development, and studied schemas (bits of information that distinguish between things)

Front 25

Theory

Back 25

An idea that predicts things

Front 26

Hypothesis

Back 26

An educated guess; "if-then" statement

Front 27

What are the stages of the research process?

Back 27

Select the problem, formulate a hypothesis, review the literature, list the measures, describe the subjects, construct a research design and measurement devices, analyze the data, generate conclusions, and write a report

Front 28

What are some ways of collecting information?

Back 28

Observation, interviews and surveys, case studies, standardized tests, cross-cultural research, physiological research, or multivariate approach

Front 29

What is a case study?

Back 29

An in-depth examination of an individual, group, or event

Front 30

What is the multivariate approach?

Back 30

This is the best approach because it gets information from many sources and uses many different contexts. However, it is expensive and time-consuming.

Front 31

Experimental study

Back 31

Manipulating the independent variable so that you can see what its effect on the dependent variable is - cause and effect conclusion.

Front 32

Confounding variables

Back 32

Extraneous qualities that we don't manipulate but that affect the outcome of our study

Front 33

Correlational research

Back 33

Studying the relationship between two variables as they naturally occur (no manipulation)

Front 34

Spurious correlation

Back 34

There appears to be a relationship between the two variables but there actually isn't

Front 35

Cross-sectional research

Back 35

Studies different groups at one point in time. Can study inter-individual change but not intra-individual change

Front 36

Longitudinal research

Back 36

Studies one group at many different times. Can study intra-individual change

Front 37

What are the 3 main ethics issues in research?

Back 37

Individuals' right to privacy, possible physical/psychological harm, and deception

Front 38

What is the benefits-cost ratio?

Back 38

The researchers must justify to the regulatory body what they are doing based on how useful the collected data will be

Front 39

Descriptive statistics

Back 39

Numerical methods used to summarize a set of data - uses central tendency, variability, and correlation values

Front 40

Inferential statistics

Back 40

Mathematical procedures that allow the researcher to make inferences about a larger group based on data from a smaller group

Front 41

Central tendency

Back 41

Looking for the most typical score - mean (average), median (middle value of the data set), or mode (most common value)

Front 42

Variability

Back 42

How spread out the scores are - variance (how wide the distribution of scores is), standard deviation (how far each point is from the mean), range (highest score - lowest score +1)

Front 43

Correlation coefficient

Back 43

r = -1.00 - +1.00. Values close to -1 and 1 indicate that there is a strong correlation. The sign tells us the direction the variables are going (e.g. if negative, a decrease in one causes an increase in the other).