Psychology 101 Chapter 1

Front 1

Psychology

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The science that seeks to understand behavior and mental processes and to apply that in the service of human welfare.

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Positive Psychology

Back 2

A field of research on people's positive experiences and characteristics, such as happiness, optimism, and resilience.

Front 3

Cognitive Psychology

Back 3

Psychologists whose research focus is analysis of the mental processes underlying judgment, decision making, problem solving, imagining, and other aspects of human thought or cognition.

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Biological Psychologist

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Psychologist who analyze the biological factors influencing behavior and mental processes.

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Personality Psychologist

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Psychologist who focus on people's unique characteristics.

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Developmental Psychologist

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Psychologist who seek to understand, describe, and explore how behavior and mental processes change over the course of a lifetime.

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Quantitative Psychologist

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Develop statistical methods for evaluating and analyzing data from psychological research.

Front 8

Clinical, Counseling and Community Psychologists

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Seek to assess, understand, modify, and prevent behavior disorder.

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Educational Psychologist

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Study methods by which instructors teach and students learn and who apply their results to improving such methods.

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School Psychologist

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Test IQ, diagnose students' academic problems, and set up programs to improve students' achievement.

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Social Psychologist

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Study how people influence one another's behavior and attitudes, especially in groups.

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Industrial and Organizational Psychologists

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Examine factors the influence people's performance in the workplace.

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Health Psychologist

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Study effects of behavior on health and the impact of illness on behavior and emotion.

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Sport Psychologists

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Research is aimed at maximizing athletic performance.

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Forensic Psychologist

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Involved in many aspects of psychology and law.

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Engineering Psychologist

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Study and try to improve the relationships between human beings and the computers and other machines they use.

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Environmental Psychologsit

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Study relationship between people's physical environment and their behavior.

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Empiricism

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The view that knowledge comes from experience and observation.

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Consciousness

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The awareness of external stimuli and our own mental activity.

Front 20

Biological Approach

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The view that behavior is the result of physical processes, especially those relating to the brain, to hormones, and to other chemicals.

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Evolutionary Approach

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View that emphasizes the inherited, adaptive aspects of behavior and mental processes.

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Psycho-dynamic Approach

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View developed by Freud that emphasizes unconscious mental processes in explaining human thought, feelings, and behavior.

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Behavioral Approach

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View based on the assumptions that human behavior is determined mainly by what a person has learned in life, especially by rewards and punishments.

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Cognitive Approach

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View that emphasizes research on how the brain takes in information, creates perceptions, forms and retrieves memories, processes information, and generates integrated patterns of action.

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Humanistic Approach

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View of behavior as controlled by the decisions that people make about their loves based on their perceptions of the world.

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Sociocultural factors

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Social identity and other background factors, such as gender, ethnicity, social class, and culture.

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Culture

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Accumulation of values, rules of behavior, forms of expression, religious beliefs, and occupational choices for a group of people who share common language and environment.

Front 28

Critical Thinking

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The process of assessing claims and making judgments on a basis of well-supported evidence.

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Hypothesis

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In scientific research, a specific, testable proposition about a phenomenon.

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Operational Definitions

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Statements that define phenomena or variables by describing the exact research operations or methods used in measuring or manipulating them.

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Variables

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Specific factors or characteristics that can take on different numerical values in research.

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Reliability

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The degree to which test results or other research evidence occurs repeatedly.

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Validity

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Degree of which evidence from a test or other research method measures what it is supposed to measure.

Front 34

Observational Methods

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Procedures for systematically watching behavior in order to summarize it for scientific analysis.

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Naturalistic Observation

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Process of watching without interfering as a phenomenon occurs in the natural environment.

Front 36

Case Studies

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Research involving the intensive examination of some phenomenon in a particular individual, group, or situation.

Front 37

Surveys

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Research that involves giving people questionnaires or interviews designed to describe their attitudes, beliefs, opinions, and intentions.

Front 38

Correlational Studies

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Research methods that examines relationships between variables in order to analyze trends, test predictions, evaluate theories, and suggest new hypotheses.

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Correaltion

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Degree to which one variable is related to another.

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Experiment

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Situation in which the researcher manipulated one variable and observes the effect of that manipulation on another variable, while holding all other variables constant.

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Independent Variable

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In and experiment, the variable manipulated by the researcher.

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Dependent Variable

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Factor affected by the independent variable.

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Experimental Group

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Group that receives the experimental treatment.

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Control Group

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Group that receives no treatment or provides some other baseline against which to compare the performance or response of experimental group.

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Confounding Variable

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Any factor that affects the dependent variable along with, of instead of, the independent variable.

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Random Variables

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Uncontrolled or uncontrolled factors that affect the dependent variable along with, or instead of, in the independent variable.

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Random Assignment

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A procedure through which random variables are evenly distributed in an experiment by placing participants in experimental and control group on the basis of a coin flip or some other random process.

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Placebo

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Treatment that contains no active ingredient but produce an effect because the person receiving it believes it will.

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Experimental Bias

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A confounding variable that occurs when an experimenter unintentionally encourages participants to respond on a way that supports the hypothesis.

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Double-Blind Design

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Researcher design in which neither to experimenter nor the participants know who is the control group.

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Sampling

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Process of selecting participants who are members of the population that the researcher wishes to study.

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Representative Sample

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Sample of research participants chosen from a larger population such that their age, gender, ethnicity, and other characteristics are typical of that larger population.

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Random Sample

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Group of research participants selected from a population each of whose members has an equal chance of being chosen.

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Biased Sample

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Participants chosen from a population each of whose members didn't have an equal chance of being chosen.

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Behavioral Genetics

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Study of how genes and environments combine to affects behavior and mental processes.

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Epigenetics

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Study of potentially inheritable changes in gene expression that are caused by environmental factors that do not alter a call's DNA.

Front 57

Data

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Numbers that represent research findings and provide the basis for conclusions.

Front 58

Statistically Significant

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Referring to a correlation, or a difference between two groups, that is larger than would be expected by chance.