Psych Exam 1 (Ch.1,2)

Front 1

what is psychology?

Back 1

the scientific study of the mind, brain and behavior

Front 2

5 reasons why psych is challenging?

Back 2

1. human behavior is difficult to predict 2. psych influences are rarely independent of each other 3. individual differences 4. people often influence each other 5. cultural differences

Front 3

naive realism

Back 3

belief that we see the world precisely as it is

Front 4

empiricism: def and what it is the base for

Back 4

premise that knowledge should initially be acquired through observation

Front 5

2 misconceptions about the scientific theory

Back 5

1. theory explains one specific event 2. theory is just an educated guess

Front 6

6 principles of scientific thinking

Back 6

1. ruling out rival hypothesis 2. correlation vs. causation 3. falsifiability 4. replicability 5. extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence 6. occam's razor

Front 7

confirmation bias

Back 7

tendency to seek out evidence that supports our hypothesis and deny, dismiss or distort evidence that contradicts them

Front 8

metaphysical claims

Back 8

assertion abut the world that is not testable

Front 9

pseudoscience

why isn't it scientific?

Back 9

set of claims that seems scientific but aren't

lacks the safeguards against confirmation bias and belief perseverance that characterize science

Front 10

ad hoc immunizing hypothesis

Back 10

escape hatch or loophole that defenders of a theory use to protect their theory from falsification

Front 11

3 most crucial pseudoscience warning signs

Back 11

1. overuse of ad hoc immunizing hypothesis 2. lack of self-correction 3. over reliance on anecdotes

Front 12

3 main factors of why we fall for pseudoscience?

Back 12

1. apophenia: tendency to perceive meaningful connections among unrelated phenomena
2. pareidolia:tendency to perceive meaningful images in meaningless visual stimuli (ex: the nun bun)
3. finding comfort in our beliefs

Front 13

3 main dangers of pseudoscience

Back 13

1. opportunity cost: what we give up
2. direct harm
3. an inability to think scientifically as citizens

Front 14

scientific skepticism

Back 14

approach evaluating all claims with an open mind but insisting on persuasive evidence before accepting them

Front 15

5 great theoretical frameworks of psych?

Back 15

1. structuralism 2. functionalism 3. behaviorism 4. psychoanalysis 5. cognitivism

Front 16

functionalism

Back 16

school of psych that aimed to understand the adaptive purposes of psychological characteristics

Front 17

behaviorism

Back 17

school of psych that focuses on uncovering the general laws of learning by looking and observable behavior

Front 18

cognitive psych

Back 18

school of psych that proposes that thinking is central to understanding behavior

Front 19

cognitive neuroscience

Back 19

relatively new field of psych that examines the relation between brain functioning and thinking

Front 20

psychoanalysis

Back 20

school of psych, founded by Frued, that focuses on internal psych processes of which we are unaware

Front 21

what are basic and applied research and how do they relate?

Back 21

basic research is research examining how the mind works, applied research is research examining how we can use basic research to solve real-world problems

Front 22

heuristic

Back 22

mental shortcut that helps us to streamline our thinking and make sense of our world

Front 23

representativeness heuristic

Back 23

heuristic that involves judging the probability of an event by its superficial similarity to a prototype

Front 24

base rate

Back 24

how common a characteristic or behavior is in the general population

Front 25

how would representativeness heuristic and base rate be related in this example: a girl is the head of the spanish club and likes to sing. someone who meets her assumes she is going to major in spanish theatre rather than math like she actually is..

Back 25

relying to heavily on representativeness heuristic, and not considering the base rate. there is a higher amount of people who will major in math than in spanish theatre so the odds would not jump right to spanish theatre

Front 26

availability heuristic

what is it's nickname?

Back 26

heuristic that involves estimating the likelihood of an occurrence based on the ease with which it comes to our mind
"off the top of my head" heuristic

Front 27

naturalistic observation
(def, advantages, disadvantages)

Back 27

def: watching real world settings without manipulating them
+ : high in external validity
- : low in internal validity, doesn't allow us to infer causation

Front 28

case studies
(def, +, -)

Back 28

def: examining one person or group over a period of time
+ : extensive proofs, allows us to study rare phenomena
- : aren't anecdotal, cant infer causation

Front 29

correlational designs
(def, +, -)

Back 29

def: examines the extent to which 2 variables are associated
+ : cant help us to predict behavior
- : dont allow us to infer causation

Front 30

experimental designs (experiments)
(def, +, -)

Back 30

def: research by random assignment of people t conditions and manipulation of an independent variable
+ : infer causation, high in internal validity
-: sometimes low in external validity

Front 31

self report measures
(def, +, -)

Back 31

def: reports on feelings or traits
+: easy to administer
-: assuming people will fill things out accurately and be honest

Front 32

2 hallmarks of a true experiment

Back 32

random assignment and manipulation of an independent variable

Front 33

6 downfalls of experiments

Back 33

confounding variables, inferring cause and effect, the placebo effect, the nocebo effect, experimenter expectancy effect, demand characteristics

Front 34

independent variable

Back 34

variable experimenter manipulates

Front 35

dependent variable

Back 35

variable experimenter measures to see if independent variable has an effect

Front 36

operational definition

Back 36

a working def of what a researcher is measuring

Front 37

random assignment

Back 37

random sorting

Front 38

demand characteristics

Back 38

cues the patients pick up to generate guesses on the experimenters hypothesis

Front 39

greatest topic of discussion regarding ethics and psych research

Back 39

animal work

Front 40

difference between external and internal validity

Back 40

internal validity deals with the argument of cause and effect and how accurate that data would be and if there were alternate explanations, external validity is seeing how valid it is to the world, can it be applied to a bunch of people in any culture