Psychology

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1.1 What is the definition of psychology?

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o Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. Behavior includes all of our outward or overt actions and reactions, such as talking. Mental refers to all the internal,covert activity of our minds, such as thinking, feeling.

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what are four primary goals of psychology?

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• Psychology Four Goals
o Description (What is Happening)
 Involves observing a behavior and noting everything about it.
• What is happening, where it happened, to whom it happens and under what circumstances is it happening.
o Explanation (Why is it happening)
 Finding explainations of what is happening.
 Very important in finding theories of behavior.
• Theories : Id a general explaination of a set of observations or facts.
o Prediction (When will it happen again)
 Determining what will happen in the future.
o Control (How can it be changed)
 The goal is to change an undesirable behavior to a desirable behavior.

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1.2 What were the basic ideas of structuralism and functionalism, and who were the important people in those early fields?

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o Structuralism ( Titchener) :
o How does the mind produce useful behaviors (Functionalism)
 He believed that every experience could be broken down into its individual emotions and sensations.

o Functionalism (William James)
o How the mind allows people to adapt, live, work, and play.
o William James (1842-1910)
 Concerned more with actions the mind performs than ideas the mind has.

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1.3 What were the basic ideas and who were the important people behind the early approaches known as Gestalt, psychoanalysis, and behaviorism?

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o Gestalt psychology ( Wertheimer)
o Early perspective in psychology focusing on perception and sensation, particularly the perception of patterns and whole figures.
o Cognitive Psychology, a field focusing not only on perception but also learning, memory and thought process. ( Adapted from Gestalt)
o Psychoanalysis
o The theory and therapy based on the work of Sigmund Freud.
o Behaviorism ( Watson 1924)
o The science of behavior that focuses on observable behavior only.
o What people do under various conditions?
o Focused on experimentation on rats. Taught a babe to be scared of a white rat. Every time he saw the rat, a loud scary noise would be played.

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1.4 What are the basic concepts of the modern perspectives known as psychodynamics, behaviorism, humanism, biopsychology, cognitive psychology, the evolutionary perspective, and the sociocultural perspective?

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o Psychodynamic perspective
o Study of the unconscious mind and its influences over conscious behavior and on early childhood experiences.
o Focuses on a sense of self and the discovery of other motivations behind a persons behavior.
o Biopsychological Perspective
o Perspective that attributes human and animal behavior to biological events occurring in the body, such as genetic influences, hormones, and the activity of the nervous system.
o Cognitive perspective
o Modern perspective that focuses on memory, intelligence, perception, problem solving, and learning.

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o Sociocultural perspective

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o Two areas of study :
 Social Psychology: Observation, description, and measurement of social behavior.
 Theory of psychological Reactance
 Norman Triplett: Published first article in social psychology.
 Muzafer Sherif : Published social influence.
 Kurt Lewin : B= f (pe)

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1.5 What were the contributions of Skinner, Maslow, and Rogers?

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o Skinner
o Developed a theory of how voluntary behavior is learned called operant conditioning.
o Behavior responses that are follwed by pleasurable consequences are strengthened.
o Maslow & Rogers.
o Emphasized the human potential: the ability of each person becoming the best they could be.
o Self Actualization : Achieving ones full potential or actual self.

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1.6 What's the difference between a psychiatrist and a psychologist, and what other types of professionals work in the various areas of psychology?

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o Psychiatrist : A medical doctor who has specialized in the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders.
o Psychologist : A professional with an academic degree and specialized training in one or more areas of psychology.

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1.7 Why is psychology a science and what are the steps in using the scientific method?

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o Psychology is a science because researchers only want to see what is there, not what their biases might want them to see.
o Scientific Method
1. Perceiving the question
2. Forming a hypothesis: Tentative explanation of a phenomenon based on observation.
3. Testing the Hypothesis
4. Drawing Conclusions
5. Report your Results

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1.8 How do psychologists use naturalistic and laboratory settings to describe behavior, and what are the advantages and disadvantages associated with these settings?

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o Naturalisitc Observation : What people do under natural settings.
o Advantages : Allows researchers to get a realistic picture of how behavior occurs because they are actually watching it occur.
o Negative :
 Observer affect : Tendency for people to behave differently from normal when they know they are being watched.
 Observer Bias : Tendency of the observer to see what they expcted to see.
o Laboratory Observation
o Sutdying people in labratories.

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1.9 How do psychologists use case studies and surveys to describe behavior, and what are some drawbacks to each of these methods?

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o Case Studies
o The study of an individual in great detail. Tremedous amount of detail it provides.
o Surveys
o Questionaire about the subject they are studying.

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What is the correlational technique and what does it tell researchers about relationships?

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o Correlation
 Is a measure of the relationship between two or more variables.
 Variable is anything that can change or vary.
o Correlation Coeffiecent
o The direction of the relationship and the strength.
o Positive : If the numbers are positive th two variables increase in the same direction.
o Negative : If the numbers are negative than there is an inverse effect. One goes up the other goes down.
o If the relationship is strong the numbers would be close to 1 or -1.
o Even if there is a relationship it cannot be proven that one causes the other.

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How do researchers use operational definitions, independent and dependent variables, experimental and control groups, and random assignment in designing an experiment?

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o Operational Definition : Definition of a variable of interest that allows it to be directly measured.
o Independent Variable :Variable that is manipulated. The behavior of people do not change this. They cannot control what this is.
o Dependent Variable : Variable in an experiment that represents the masureable response or behavior of the subjects in the experiment.
o Experimental Groups : Subjects in an experiment that are subjected to the independent variable.
o Control Group : Subjects in an experiment who are not subjected to the independent variable and who may receive placebo treatment.

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What are the placebo and the experimenter effects, and how do single-blind and double-blind studies control for those effects?

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o Placebo effect: The expectations of the participants in a study can influence their behavior.
o Experimenter Effect : Tendency of the experimenter;s expectations for a study to unintenionally influence the results of a study.
o Single Blind study : Study in which the subjects do not know if they are in the experimental or control group.
o Double Blind : Study in which neither the experimentor and the participants know if the subjects are in the experimental or control groups.

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How do all the parts of the nervous system relate to one another?

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o Nervous system is a complex network of cells that carries information to and from all parts of the body.

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What are neurons and nerves, and how do they work?

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o The brain is made up of two types of cells, Neurons and Glial Cells.
 Neurons have dendrites, which receive input, a soma or cell body, and axons that carry the neural messages to other cells.
 Glial cells separate, support, and insulate the neurons from each other and make up 90 percent of the brain.
 Myelin insulates and protects axons of neurons that traveled in the body. These axons bundle together in cables called nerves. Myelin also speeds up the neural message.

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How do neurons communicate with each other and with the body?

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o A neuron contains charged particles called ions. When at rest, the neuron is negatively charged on the inside and positively charged on the outside. When stimulated, this reverses the charge by allowing positive sodium ions to enter the cell.
o Neurons fire in an all or nothing manner. It is the speed and number of neurons firing that tell researchers the strength of the stimulus.
o Synaptic vesicles in the end of the axon terminal relase neurotransmitter chemicals into the synapse, or gap between one cell and the next. The neurotransmitter molecules fit into the receptor sites on the next cell, stimulating or inhibiting that cell’s firing.

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What are the different neurotransmitters?

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o The first known neurotransmitter was actetylcholine. It stimulates muscle and helps in momory formation. Curare is a poison that blocks it’s effect.
o GABA is the major inhibitory neurotransmitter; high amounts of GABA are released when drinking alcohol.
o Serotonin is associated with sleep.mood.and appeitite.
o Endorphins are neural regulators that control our pain response.
o Most neurotransmitters are taken back into the synaptic vesicles in a process called reuptake.
o Acetylcholine is cleared out of the synapse by enzymes that break up the molecules.

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How do the brain and spinal cord interact?

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o The central nervous system consits of the brain and the spinal cord.
o The spinal cord serves two functions. The outer part of the cord transmitts messages toa nd from the brain, whereas the inner part controls lifesaving reflexes such as pain response.
o Spinal cord relfexes involve sensory neurons, interneurons, and motor neurons, forming a simple relfex arc.
o Great strides are being made in spinal cord repair and the growth of new neurons in the central nervous system.

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How does the somatic nervous system allow people and animals to interact with their surroundings?

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o The somatic nervous system contains the sensory pathway, or neurons carrying messages to the central nervous system, and the motor pathway, or neurons carrying messages fro, the central nervous system to the voluntary muscles.

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How does the autonomic nervous system control the body's automatic functions and its reaction to stress?

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o The autonomic nervous system consists of the parasympathetic division and the sympatheic division. The sympathetic division is our fight or flight system, reacting to stress, whereas our parasympathic division restores and maintains normal day to day functioning of the organs.

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How do psychologists study the brain and how it works?

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o We can study the brain by using deep lesioning to destroy certain areas of the brain in laboratory animals or by electrically stimulating those areas.
o We can use case studies of human brain damage to learn about the brain’s functions but cannot easily generalize from one case to another.

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What are the different structures of the bottom part of the brain and what do they do?

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o The medulla is at the very bottom of the brain and top of the spinal column. It controls life-sustaining functions such as breathing and swallowing. The nerves in the body also cross over to their opposite sides.
o The Pons is above the medulla and acts as a bridge between the lower part of the brain and the upper part. It influences sleep, dreaming.
o The reticular formation runs through the medulla and the pons and controls our selective attention and arousal.
o The cerebellum is found at the base and back of the brain and coordinates tine, rapid motor movement, learned reflexes.

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What are the structures of the brain that control emotion, learning, memory, and motivation?

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o The thalamus is the switching station that sends sensory information to the proper areas of the cortex.
o The hypothalamus controls hunger, thirst, and sleep.
o The limbic system consists of the thalamus, hypothalamus, hippocampus, amygdala, and the fornix.
o The hippocampus is part of the brain responsible for storing memories and remembering locations of objects.
o The amygdala controls our fear responses and memory of fearful stimuli.

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Early Founders

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Issac Newton
Wrote Princpia
Age of enlightment
Science based reductionalism on complex to simple, by emphasizing basic elemtns.

Wilhelm Wundt
Medical doctor & sensory reasearcher.
Setup first lab in 1879.

Titchner - Descibed structures that compose the mind. (structuralism)

William James - Concerned with actions the mind performs rather than the ideas the mind has.

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African Americans

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Few offered major in psychology untill 1940s

Kenneth B. Clark
First african american elected APA

Effects of racial segregation.

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Woemn In Psychology

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Mary Whiton Calkins
- Offered degree from radcliffe
-Established lab in 1891
- short term memory
-President APA 1906

Margaret Washburn
-First person to recieve degree from titchner in us.

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Behaviorism

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- What people do under various conditions

- Clark Hull = Habit strenght
- ShR = V/ Drive = increased hunger.

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Cognitive Psychology

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Info processin and selective attention

BoradBent - Shadowing

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Social Psychology

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Observation, description and measurment of social behavior
- Theory of psychological reactance

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Social Facilitation

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precense of other people influence ones performance.

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David Shakow

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created training program.
Held famous conference in Boulder Colorado in 1949

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Scientist Practioner Model

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Consumer of new research
Evaluation of new interventions

Reasearcher producing new dat

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• Behaviorism

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the science of behavior that focuses on observable behavior only.

Behaviorism – Watson

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• Biopsychological perspective:

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perspective that attributes human and animal behavior to biological events occurring in the body, such as genetic influences, hormones, and the activity of the nervous system.

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• cognitive perspective:

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modern perspective that focuses on memory, intelligence, perception, problem solving, and learning.
• cognitive perspective: modern theory in which classical conditioning is seen to occur because the conditioned stimulus provides information or an expectancy about the coming of the unconditioned stimulus.

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• Evolutionary perspective

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perspective that focuses on the biological bases of universal mental characteristics that all humans share.

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• Functionalism:

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early perspective in psychology associated with William James, in which the focus of study is how the mind allows people to adapt, live, work, and play.

Functionalism – William James

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• Gestalt psychology:

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early perspective in psychology focusing on perception and sensation, particularly the perception of patterns and whole figures.

Gestalt psychology – Wertheimer

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• pseudopsychologies

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systems of explaining human behavior that are not based on or consistent with scientific evidence.

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• psychodynamic perspective

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modern version of psychoanalysis that is more focused on the development of a sense of self and the discovery of other motivations behind a person's behavior than sexual motivations

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• sociocultural perspective:

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perspective that focuses on the relationship between social behavior and culture.

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• Structuralism:

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: early perspective in psychology associated with Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener, in which the focus of study is the structure or basic elements of the mind.

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Humanism –

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Maslow & Rogers

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Psychoanalysis

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Freud