Chapter 1 Introduction to Psychology and Research Methods

1. Chapter 1Introduction to Psychology and Research Methods

2. What is Psychology? • Psychology • Psyche: Mind • Logos: Knowledge or study • Definition: The scientific study of behavior and mental processes • Behavior: Overt (i.e., can be directly observed, as with crying) • Mental Processes: Covert (i.e., cannot be directly observed, as with remembering)

3. What is a Psychologist? Psychologists are highly trained professionals. In addition to the psychological knowledge they possess, psychologists learn specialized skills in counseling and therapy, measurement and testing, research and experimentation, statistics, diagnosis, treatment, and many other areas.

4. Discussion • What is the difference between a psychiatrist, psychologist, therapist, and counselor? (please define each).

5. Empiricism: The Goals • To measure and describe behaviors • To gather empirical evidence: Information gained from direct observation and measurement • To gather data: Observed facts

6. Fig. 1-1, p. 13

7. Research Method • A systematic procedure for answering scientific questions

8. What Might a Psychologist Research? • Development: Course of human growth and development • Learning: How and why it occurs in humans and animals • Personality: Traits, motivations, and individual differences • Sensation and Perception: How we come to know the world through our five senses

9. What Might a Psychologist Research? (cont) • Comparative: Study and compare behavior of different species, especially animals • Cognitive: Primarily interested in thinking • Biopsychology: How behavior is related to biological processes, especially activities in the nervous system • Gender: Study differences between males and females and how they develop • Social: Human and social behavior

10. What Might a Psychologist Research? (cont) • Cultural: How culture affects behavior • Evolutionary: How our behavior is guided by patterns that evolved during our history

11. Animal Model • When an animal’s behavior is used to derive principles that may apply to human behavior • Examples?

12. Animal Research Some of the most intesting research with animals has focused on attempts to teach primates to communicate with sign language. Psychologist Penny Patterson has spent 35 years teaching Koko more than 1,000 signs. Such research has helped illuminate the origins of human language and has even suggested better methods for teaching language to children with serious language impairment.

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14. Discussion Under what circumstances, if any, would you regard it as ethical to use animals in medical experiments? Veterinary experiments? Psychology experiments? Teaching labs? Product testing? Entertainment?

15. What Are the Goals of Psychology? • Description of Behaviors: Naming and classifying various observable, measurable behaviors • Understanding: Being able to state the causes of a behavior • Prediction: Predicting behavior accurately

16. More Goals of Psychology • Control: Altering conditions that influence behaviors • Positive use: To control unwanted behaviors (e.g., smoking, tantrums, etc.) • Negative use: To control people’s behaviors without their knowledge

17. Critical Thinking • Ability to analyze, evaluate, and synthesize information • What would you expect to see if the claim were true? • Gather evidence relevant to the claim • Evaluate the evidence • Draw a conclusion • Often used in research

18. Critical Thinking: Key Principles • Few truths transcend the need for empirical testing • Evidence varies in quality • Authority or claimed expertise does not automatically make an idea true • Critical thinking requires an open mind

19. Pseudopsychologies • Pseudo means “false.” Any unfounded “system” that resembles psychology and is NOT based on scientific testing • Palmistry: Lines on your hands (palms) predict future and reveal personality • Phrenology: Personality traits revealed by shape of skull

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21. Pseudopsychologies (cont) • Graphology: Personality traits are revealed by your handwriting • Astrology: The positions of the stars and planets at birth determine personality traits and affect your behavior

22. Pseudopsychologies: Some Concepts • Uncritical acceptance: Tendency to believe positive or flattering descriptions of yourself • Fallacy of positive instances: When we remember or notice information that confirms our expectations and forget the discrepancies

23. The Barnum Effect • Barnum effect: Tendency to consider personal descriptions accurate if stated in general terms • Always have a little something for everyone. Make sure all palm readings, horoscopes, etc. are so general that something in them will always apply to any one person!

24. Separating Fact from Fiction • Be skeptical • Consider the source of information • Ask yourself, “Was there a control group?” • Look for errors in distinguishing between correlation and causation (are claims based on correlational results yet passed off as causations?)

25. Separating Fact from Fiction (cont) • Be sure to distinguish between observation and inference (e.g., Robert is crying, but do we know why he is crying?) • Beware of oversimplifications, especially those motivated by monetary gain • For example is not proof!

26. The Scientific Method • Form of critical thinking based on careful measurement and controlled observation

27. The Scientific Method (cont) • Six Basic Elements • Observation • Defining a problem • Proposing a hypothesis (an educated guess that can be tested) • Gathering evidence/testing the hypothesis • Publishing results • Building a theory

28. Some Terms • Hypothesis testing: Scientifically testing the predicted outcome of an experiment or an educated guess about the relationship between variables • Operational definition: Defines a scientific concept by stating specific actions or procedures used to measure it

29. Theory • Theory: A system of ideas that interrelates facts and concepts, summarizes existing data, and predicts future observations • A good theory must be falsifiable (i.e., operationally defined) so that it can be disconfirmed

30. Fig. 1-2, p. 20

31. History of Psychology: Beginnings • Wilhelm Wundt: “Father” of psychology • 1879: Set up first lab to study conscious experience • Introspection: Looking inward (i.e., examining and reporting your thoughts, feelings, etc.)

32. “Father of Psychology” Wilhelm Wundt, 1832–1920. Wundt is credited with making psychology an independent science, separate from philosophy. Wundt’s original training was in medicine, but he became deeply interested in psychology. In his laboratory, Wundt investigated how sensations, images, and feelings combine to make up personal experience.

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34. History of Psychology: Structuralism • Wundt’s ideas brought to the US by Titchener and renamed structuralism; dealt with structure of mental life • Structuralists often disagreed, and no way to prove who was correct!

35. History of Psychology: Functionalism • William James (American) and functionalism • How the mind functions to help us adapt and survive • Functionalists admired Darwin and his theory of natural selection: Animals keep features through evolution that help them adapt to environments

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37. Educational Psychology • Educational Psychology • Study of learning, teaching, classroom dynamics, and related topics • Promoted by functionalists

38. History of Psychology: Behaviorism • Watson and Skinner • Psychology must study observable behavior objectively • Studied relationship between • Stimuli: Environmental events • Responses: Any identifiable behavior(s) • Watson studied Little Albert with Rosalie Raynor; Skinner studied animals almost exclusively

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41. History of Psychology: Cognitive Behaviorism • Ellis and Bandura • Our thoughts influence our behaviors; used often in treatment of depression • Cognition (thinking) and conditioning are combined to explain behavior

42. History of Psychology: Gestalt • Gestalt psychology: “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” • Studied thinking, learning, and perception in whole units, not by analyzing experiences into parts • Key names: Wertheimer, Perls

43. Fig. 1-4, p. 24

44. History of Psychology: Freud • Psychoanalytic Perspective • Our behavior is largely influenced by our unconscious wishes, thoughts, and desires, especially sex and aggression • All thoughts, actions, and emotions are determined • Freud performed dream analysis and was an interactionist (combination of our biology and environment makes us who we are)

45. Repression • Repression: When threatening thoughts are unconsciously held out of awareness • Recent research has hypothesized that our unconscious mind is partially responsible for our behaviors

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47. History of Psychology: Neo-Freudians • New or recent; some of Freud’s students who broke away to promote their own theories • Key names: Adler, Anna Freud, Horney, Jung, Rank, Erikson

48. History of Psychology: Humanism • Goal of psychology is to study unique aspects of the person • Focuses on human experience, problems, potentials, and ideals • Each person has innate goodness and is able to make free choices (contrast with Skinner and Freud) • Key Names: Rogers and Maslow

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50. Humanism: Some Key Terms • Self-image: Your perception of your own body, personality, and capabilities • Self-evaluation: Positive and negative feelings you have about yourself • Frame of reference: Mental perspective used for interpreting events • Self-actualization (Maslow): Fully developing one’s potential and becoming the best person possible