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41 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Define psychology |
the scientific study of the mind, brain and behavior |
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When thinking of the levels of analysis as rungs on a ladder: What are the lower rungs most closely tied to? What are the higher rungs most closely tied to? |
Low: biological influences (the brain) High: social influence (the mind) |
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Human behaviour is difficult to predict because ? |
almost all actions are multiply determined |
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Define multiply determined: |
caused/produced by many factors |
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Emic approach |
investigators study behavior of a culture from a "native" or insider perspective |
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Etic approach |
study behavior of a culture from the perspective of an outsider |
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What is introspection? |
method by which trained observers carefully reflect and report on their mental experiences |
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What are the 5 major theoretical perspectives of psychology ? |
1. Structuralism 2. Functionalism 3. Bevhaviourism 4. Cognitivism 5. Psychoanalysis |
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Oswald Kulpe showed that: |
people asked to solve certain mental problems engage in imageless thought: thinking accompanied by conscious experience |
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Structuralists (2) |
- emphasized the importance of systematic observation - went astray by assuming that single, imperfect method could provide all the info need for a complex science of psychology |
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Structuralists would ask _______ whereas functionalists would ask _________ |
Structuralists ask: What? Functionalists ask: Why? |
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Basis of functionalism and who were they influenced by? (3) |
- understand the adaptive purposes, or functions of psychological characteristics such as thoughts, feelings and behaviours - influenced by Darwin's theory of natural selection - physical and behavioural characteristics evolved because they increased the chances of survival and reproduction |
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Do structuralism and functionalism exist in its original form today? |
no |
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What is behvaiouralism sometimes called in psychology |
The "black box": we know what goes into and out of it but we don't need to know about what happens between those inputs and outputs |
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How did behaviourists view thinking? |
as another form of behaviour |
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Define cognition: |
term psychologists used to describe mental processes involved in different aspects of thinking |
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What do Cognitivitsts believe about Behaviouralism? (2) |
- That a psychology based soley on reward and punishment will never be adequate because our interpretation of rewards and punishments is a crucial determinant of our behaviour - Thinking affects our behaviour in a powerful way |
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What is cognitive neuroscience? |
Relatively a new field of psychology that explores the relationship between brain function and thinking |
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What is the underlying question of the nature-nurture debate? |
Are our behaviours attributable to our genes (nature) or our environments (nurture) |
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What is the current status of the nature-nurture debate? |
agreed that both genes and environment play crucial roles in most humans |
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What is the underlying question of the free will-determinism debate? |
to what extent are our behvaiours freely selected rather than cause by factors outside of our control |
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What is naive realism? |
The belief that we see the world precisely as it is |
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Why do we trust our common senses largely? (2) |
- because we're prone to naive realism - we assume that "seeing is believing" and turst our intuitive perceptions |
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Difference between theories and hypotheses |
Theories: general explanations Hypotheses: specific predictions derived FROM these explanations |
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What are 2 misconceptions about theories? |
1. a theory explains one specific event 2. a theory is just an educated guess |
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What are the 7 signs of pseudoscience? |
1. Exaggerated claims 2. Overreliance on anecdotes 3. Absence of connectivity to other research 4. Lack of review by other scholars or replication by independent labs 5. Meaningless "psychobabble" that uses fany scientific-sounding terms that don't make sense 6. Talk of "proof" instead of evidence 7. Lack of self-correction when contrary evidence is published |
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What is Ad hoc immunizing hypothesis? |
An escape hatch or loophole that defenders of a theory use to protect their theory from falsification |
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Define patternicity? |
the tendency to detect meaningful patters in random stimuli |
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The principle "better safe than sorry" causes the brain to.... |
tend to seek out patterns and connections among events |
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What is the terror management theory? |
Theory proposing that our awareness of our death leaves us with an underlying sense of terror we cope with by adopting reassuring cultural world views |
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What is not me fallacy ? |
error of believing that we're immune from errors in thinking that affect other people -> can lead us to conclude mistakenly that we don't require the safeguards of the scientific method |
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What is a bias blind spot? |
phenomenon which demonstrates that most people are unaware of their own biases but are keenly aware of them in others |
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Give an example of a bias blind spot? |
People don't think they have accents because we live with or accent all of the time |
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What is opportunity cost? |
What we give up |
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What are the 3 reasons why pseudoscience is dangerous? |
1. Opportunity cost 2. Direct harm 3. An inability to think scientifically as citizens |
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What is scientific skepticism |
approach of evaluating all claims with an open mind but insisting on persuasive evidence before accepting thme |
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What is the correlation-causation fallacy? |
error of assuming that because one thing is associated with another it must cause the other |
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What does parsimony mean? |
"logical simplicity" |
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What is applied research? |
Examines how we can use basic research to solve real-world problems? |
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What is basic research? |
research examining how the mind works
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What does KISS mean? |
Keep, It, Simple, Stupid |
