Psychology test 1

It is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes

suggested soul and body are not separate

• the birth of psychology
• developed 1st pychology lab in 1879
• studied mind objectively and scientifically
• launched psychology as an experimental science
• introspection (looking inside yourself for answers, being reflective)

• father of structuralism
• Structuralism; aimed to indentify the basic elements or structures of psychological experience (take a random object and identify the elements of how people feel about it)
• contribution: systematic observation

• sensation
• feelings
• images

• 1st lecture in psychology
• Functionalism- school of psychology that aimed to understand the adaptive purposes/functions of mental and behavioral processes (adapt, survive, flourish)
• looks more at the whole while structuralism breaks things apart

• 1st behaviorist- psychology is the study of observable, measureable behavior
• Behaviorism- psychology that aims to uncover the laws of learning by looking outside the organism such as rewards and punishments in the environment
• baby Albert

• cognitivism- school of psychology that seeks to describe the mental processes involved in thinking that affects behavior
• cognitive neuroscience- the study of brain activity linked with cognition- perception, thinking, memory, and language

• psychoanalysis- school of psychology that attributed thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and its effects on human behavior
• oedipus complex (kids want to be with their parent sexually) and penis envy (girls feel inferior because they have no penis)

humanistic psychology school of psychology that emphasiszes how current environmental influences affect one's growth potential & need for love & acceptance

• the biggest and most persistent controversy is over the relative contributions of biology and experience
• is it nature or is it nurture? bothbehavior is attributable to both genes and environment but the relative balance of the the two depends on biology and experience

any kind of sytematic error in thinking

• 1. Hindsight Bias
• to overestimate how well we could have sucessfully forecasted known outcomes (I knew it all along)
• 2. Overconfidence
• tendency to overestimate our ability to make correct predictions (we think we know more than we actually do)
• 3. Heuristics
• mental shortcuts that help us make judgements, solve problems, and make sense of our world.
• reduce the cognitive energy required to solve problems
• tend to oversimplify reality (making assumptions)
• 4. Belief perserverance
• the tendency to stick to our initial beliefs even when evidence contradicts them
• once a belief is justified it takes more compelling evidence to change our belief to it did to create our belief

• 1. Descriptive
• based on observation, of an event or events, from which theories may later be developed
• 2. Correlational
• examines the extent to which two variables are associated
• 3. Experimental
•  Exploring Cause and Effect

• 1. Case study
• examines one person or a small number of people in depth, over an extending time period to reveal underlying behavioral principles
• 2. Survey
• technique for ascertaining the self-reported attitudes (biased) opinions or bheaviors of people usually done by questionting a representative, random sampling of people. (an equal chance of inclusion into a sample so that it is unbiased)
• 3. Naturalistic observation
• watching behavior in real-world settings

• Correlation Coefficient- a statisticl measure of the relationship between 2 variables
• scatterplot- graph comprised of points that represents the values of two variables. slope = direction; scatter (amount of dots) = strength
• correlation does NOT mean causation!

• Experiment- controlled condition which an independent variable is manipulated, & changes in a dependent variable are studied. an experiment has 2 parts; there is random assignment and manipulation of variables
• experimental group- recieves the manipulation control group- does not receive the manipulation
• double-blind procedure- the people that are administering the experiment dont know who's in and who's out
• placebo effect- experimental results caused by expectations alone; results from just thinking you're getting a treatment
• independent variable- factor that is manipulated by the experimenter
• dependent variable- factor that may change in response to an independent variable

a statistical statement of how likely it is that an obtained result is probably NOT due to chance