Chapter 1,2 Psych

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Empirical

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Relying on or derived from observation, experimentation, or measurement

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Psychology

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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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Psychobabble

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Pseudoscience and quackery covered by a veneer of psychological and scientific sounding language.

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Critical thinking

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The ability and willingness to assess claims and make objective judgements on the basis of well-supported reasons and evidence rather than emotions or anecdote.

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Assumptions

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Beliefs that are taken for granted

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Bias

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When an assumption or belief keeps us from considering the evidence fairly, or causes us to ignore the evidence completely

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Occam's Razor's Principle

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Once several explanations have been generated, a critical thinker chooses the one explanation that accounts for the most evidence while making the fewest unverified assumptions

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Phrenology

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The now discredited theory that different brain areas account for specific character and personality traits which can be "read" from bumps on the skull

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Three early psychologies

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Structuralism

Functionalism

Psychoanalysis

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Structuralism

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Early psychological approach that emphasized the analysis of immediate experience into basic elements

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Functionalism

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Early psychological approach that emphasized the function or purpose of behaviour and consciousness

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Psychoanalysis

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Theory of personality and method of psychotherapy, originally formulated by Sigmund Freud, that emphasizes unconscious motives and conflicts

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Five major psychological perspectives

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Biological

Learning

Cognitive

Sociocultural

Psychodynamic

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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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Behaviorism

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An approach to psychology that emphasizes the study of observable behavior and the role of the environment and prior experience as determinants of behavior.

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Cognitive Perspective

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A psychological approach that emphasizes mental processes in perception, memory, language, problem-solving, and other areas of behavior.

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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 personal growth and the achievement of human potential rather than the scientific understanding and assessment of behavior.

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Feminist Psychology

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A psychological approach that analyzes the influence of social inequities on gender relations and on the behavior of the two sexes.

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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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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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What makes a psychological research scientific?

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Precision

Skepticism

Empirical evidence

Willingness to make risky predictions

Openness

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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; that is, the theory must predict not only what will happen but also what will not happen

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Confirmation bias

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The tendency to look for or pay attention only to information that confirms one's own belief

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Representative Sample

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

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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 involve 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, abilitites, and values.

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Standardize

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

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Norms

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In test construction, established standards of performance.

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Reliability

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In test construction, the consistency of scores derived from a test, 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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Questionnaires and interviews that ask people directly about their experiences, attitudes, or opinions.

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Volunteer bias

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A shortcoming of findings derived from a sample 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 one another.

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Variables

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Characteristics of behavior or experience that can be measured or described by a numeric scale.

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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 one and decreases in another.

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Negative Correlation

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An association between increases in one variable and decreases in another.

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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 which participants are not exposed to the same treatment as 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 or given by a medical practitioner to a patient.

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Single -blind study

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An experiment in which participants do not know whether they are in an experimental or a control group, but the researchers do.

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Experimenter effects

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Unintended changes in study participants' behavior due to cues that the experimenter inadvertently conveys.

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Double-blind study

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An experiment in which neither the people being studied nor the individuals running the study know who is in the control group and who is 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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Statistical procedures 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 up 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 show how likely it is that a study's results occurred merely by chance

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Confidence interval

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A statistical measure that provides, with a specified probability, a range of values within which a population mean is likely to lie