Intro to General Psych
Which of the following are true of survey research
People are asked to self-report. A disadvantage is that people may not answer honestly.
______ is an historical approach advocated by William James that concentrated on mental processes and the purposes of the mind and behavior in the individual's adaptation to the environment.
Functionalism
______is an approach that concentrates on what the mind does and the role of behavior in allowing people to adapt to their environment
Functionalism
Which psychological perspective emphasizes a person's positive qualities, capability for positive growth, and the freedom to choose any destiny?
Humanistic approach
What challenges can arise from relying on the media for information about psychological research?
Journalists frequently lack the knowledge to evaluate psychological research. The media frequently exaggerate results in order to better capture the public's attention. Due to time and space limitations, media reports frequently omit important details about research studies.
___is an evolutionary process in which organisms best adapted to their environment will survive and produce offspring.
Natural selection
What is the difference between a behavior and a mental process?
Only behaviors can be directly observed.
What does it mean that hours spent watching TV and total number of discipline problems in school are correlated +.45?
The more hours a child spends watching TV, the more likely that child will get into trouble at school.
In some experiments, the same people are in the control group and the experimental group. Each participant is exposed to all of the conditions. What is the term for this type of research?
Within-participant design
The nervous system is made up of _____ of communicating cells.
billions
Which approach to psychology emphasizes the role of the physical processes, such as brain and nervous system functioning?
biological
The two parts of the central nervous system are the _____.
brain and spinal cord
a ___ study is an in-depth analysis of an individual or small group of people.
case
Mark wants to become a successful businessman. He studies how Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, became wealthy. This is an example of a(n) _____
case study
endrites receive messages from other neurons via _____ communication.
chemical
The __ approach focuses on the mental processes involved in knowing; how we direct our attention, perceive, remember, think, and solve problems.
cognitive
The brain is able to juggle multiple tasks simultaneously. That makes it a(n) _____ organ.
complex
In an experiment, the group that receives no treatment is referred to as the ________ group.
control
Sodium and potassium ions move in and out of the axon when the membrane is
depolarizing
______ research serves the purpose of determining the basic dimensions of a phenomenon and defining what it is or how often it occurs, but it cannot provide causal information.
descriptive
The degree to which an experimental design actually reflects the real-world issues it is supposed to address is called ______ validity
external
True or false: Correlational research designs allow for cause-and-effect interpretations to be made.
false
True or false: If two variables are correlated, then one of them must cause the other.
false
True or false: Survey research is the preferred method for studying socially undesirable phenomena such as holding racist attitudes.
false
For a theory to be scientific, there must be some way to prove it wrong. In other words, the theory must be
falsifiable, testable, or falsible
Afferent neurons convey information ____
from the senses to the brain
__cells are the most common cells in the nervous system.
glial
Which of the following is controlled by the autonomic nervous system?
heart
The axon carries electrical _____.
impulses called action potentials
The degree to which changes in the dependent variable are due to the manipulation of the independent variable(s) is called
internal validity
June attempts to study the structure of her mental processes by thinking carefully about the experience of sunlight warming her skin. June is practicing _____
introspection
Pedro is thinking deeply about his feelings and monitoring how he responds to common stimuli. Pedro is engaging in , which is also an approach used by the structuralists in the history of psychology
introspection
A behaviorist might study _____.
learning through conditioning
An experiment involves ______ one variable and observing the effect on another variable.
manipulating
An operational definition is an objective description of how a research variable is going to be ______ and observed.
measured
An operational definition is an objective description of how a research variable is going to be ______ and observed. Multiple choice question.
measured
Like functionalism, structuralism focuses on ______.
mental processes
The functionalists focused on _____.
mental processes and the purposes of the mind and behavior in the individual's adaptation to the environment
Darwin's principle of ___ ___ is an evolutionary process in which organisms best adapted to their surroundings will survive and produce offspring.
natural selection
he biological approach to psychology focuses on the brain and ___ system.
nervous
The central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system are the major divisions of the _____.
nervous system
What is the body's electrochemical communication circuitry?
nervous system
Nerves cells called___ convey information within the nervous system.
neurons
Motor, or efferent, __ stimulate muscles to contract.
neurons, nerves
The scientific study of the nervous system's structure, function, development, and biochemistry is known as ______.
neuroscience
Random assignment reduces the likelihood that the results of the experiment will be due to any ______ differences between groups.
preexisting
The function of glial cells is to
provide support and noutrional
The technique that Freud developed is called _____.
psychoanalysis
is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes.
psychology
Psychology is the Blank study of all human behaviors.
scientific or science
_____ neurons receive information from sensory organs.
sensory afferent
Which of the following flow into a neuron and depolarize its membrane when a neuron is activated?
sodium ions
he peripheral nervous system is made up of the _____.
somatic and autonomic nervous systems
the purpose of the myelin sheath is to _____.
speed transmission of nerve impulses and insulate
Which approach to psychology did Wilhelm Wundt endorse?
structuralism
The behavioral perspective _____.
suggests that observable, measurable behavior should be the focus of study
As you are walking to your car in a dark parking garage at the mall, you hear a loud bang and are suddenly startled. What part of the nervous system was activated by hearing the bang?
sympathetic division
In response to an action potential, the _____ release(s) neurotransmitters.
terminal button
is the soundness of conclusions that can be drawn from an experiment.
validity
__is a broad term for any characteristic that can change in some way.
variable
Efferent nerves convey information _____
away from the brain and toward the muscles
Impulses travel from the neuron's dendrites, through the cell body and the__ to the terminal buttons
axon
The myelin sheath covers _____, insulating them.
axon
What part of the neuron conveys electrical impulses from its start to its end?
axon
Psychologists study _____.
behavior and mental processes
What is a theory?
A broad idea, or set of closely related ideas, that attempts to explain certain observations
What is survey research?
A standard set of questions used to obtain people's self-reported attitudes or beliefs about a particular topic
What is a hypothesis?
An educated guess that is derived logically from a theory
The nervous system is divided into which of the following systems?
Central nervous system and peripheral nervous system
Which of these are types of psychological research?
Correlational Experimental Descriptive
_____research serves the purpose of determining the basic dimensions of a phenomenon and defining what it is or how often it occurs, but it cannot provide causal information.
Descriptive
David recently read a scholarly article about a correlational study that showed that families who eat more meals together tend to have children with fewer discipline problems. Since David's son has been acting out a lot, David decides that he can solve the problem by just having the family eat dinner together every night. What errors did David make? (Select all that apply.)
Failing to distinguish between group results and individual needs Attributing causes where none has been found
Which psychological perspective emphasizes unconscious thought, the conflict between the biological instincts and society's demands, and early family experiences?
Psychodynamic approach
Which of these is an advantage of the case study method?
Researchers can gain a richer level of detail about an individual person.
Which of the following is an example of correlational research?
SAT scores are related to GPA.
What can researchers do after they have conducted a study and generated their conclusions
Share their findings with others. Revise their theories. Collect more data, using the same methods. Collect more data, using different methods.
Which psychological perspective examines the ways in which the social and cultural environments influence behavior?
Sociocultural approach
is a 19th-century school of psychology that argued that breaking down mental processes into elemental parts offers the best way to understand thought and behavior.
Structuralism
______ is concerned with the components of the mind, whereas ______ is concerned with the functions and purposes of the mind and behavior in the individual's adaptation to the environment.
Structuralism; functionalism
A researcher finds that the more hours partied per week, the lower a student's GPA. She questions whether there may be other issues affecting GPA that were not taken into account, such as hours studied, whether the student is attending classes, or whether the student is working as well. What are these additional issues called?
The third variable problem
Which of the following are reasons that researchers might use correlational research? (Select all that apply.)
To investigate real-world events To use one variable to predict the value of another variable To conduct research in situations in which it would not be ethical to carry out an experiment in another way
Psychology has its roots in both philosophy and the natural sciences.
True
True or false: The brain is able to perform multiple tasks simultaneously.
True
Which of these is a limitation of the case study method?
Which of these is a limitation of the case study method?
Scores in bowling go up as ability goes up. This is an example of _____.
a positive correlation
Most psychologists work in ______.
academic settings
Involuntary actions like digestion are controlled by the _____.
autonomic nervous system
Alice is answering a telephone survey about marital satisfaction in the United States. When asked about her own marital satisfaction, she doesn't tell the researcher the truth because she worries that her marriage is worse than many other marriages. Instead she says what she thinks other recipients might say. This behavior is considered _____.
drawback to the survey method
A(n) ______ is a carefully regulated procedure in which one or more variables believed to influence the behavior being studied are manipulated while all other variables are held constant.
experiment
In an experiment, the ____ variable is manipulated by the experimenter.
experiment
In an experiment, the group that receives the treatment the researchers want to study is known as the
experimental group
When a researcher wants to correlate tension with depression, she develops tests that measure these two emotional states. The tests are her _________ of the variables she is interested in.
operational definitions
Random assignment is a procedure in which ____ are assigned to either the treatment or control group on the basis of chance. Multiple choice question. confederates
participants
The autonomic and somatic nervous systems are divisions of the___ nervous system.
peripheral
The field of psychology has its roots in _____.
philosophy, biology, and physiology
__ is a broad idea that can be used to make predictions about future observations.
theory
The brain and spinal cord are structures in the central nervous system.
true
Correlational research involves gathering data on _____.
two sets of variables
